Hetian Five-O

After continuous long days of travel and activity, Monday becomes by default a slow day for Flashy. This is helped by the unusual time confusion. Officially, all of China runs on Beijing time. In practice, given how far west we are, Xinjiang runs a separate clock that sets the time at two hours earlier than Beijing time. hence at 8am the streets are deserted as to most Uyghur locals it is 6am. Afternoons are also often interrupted by Med-style siesta periods between Beijing 2pm and 4pm.

Firstly today, the museum. It is a new, large building (diagonally opposite the Uyghur medicine hospital) about 2km west of Unity Square. Apparently a new one is planned, though only one room is actually used in the existing – for the display of two mummies, assorted artefacts and a coffin. There is a lady doorkeeper/curator who asks us to accompany her on her quick round before shutting up for the afternoon, as she doesn’t like being alone in the room with the mummies.

We also head off to the silk carpet factory – a clear case of touristitis the seasoned might say – but it is interesting and reflects a long held local tradition. You see the women (only) at work and the sales folk seem to know their stuff – or at least price like it. A silk carpet sells for around RMB7k/sq m and wool for between 3k and 6k depending on their fineness. Ordering one bespoke can take a year for silk.

There is also rumour of a winery – putting the desert’s famous grapes to good use – but despite an extensive search amongst the suburbs, none is found.

As the story goes, something odd happened on the way to the carpet factory. One Flashy member got a call from the local foreign affairs office – asking what he was up to, where we were staying and what the plans were for the future. This included an invitation to come and stay at the foreign affairs’ own hotel – given the security situation. This generous offer was politely refused and not too much more was thought of it.

Until this morning that was. Target Flashy was first to leave this morning but he had pre-paid for the room. When we came to check out and recover the deposit (a standard requirement for lower star Chinese hotels) we were told that there was a problem with the Visa card. This problem turned out to be that they could not put it through, or somesuch, as the police were on their way to talk to us.

They were in fact there in the lobby already and turned out not to be normal police or even undercover police but ‘state security’ and took Flashy’s single domestic citizen upstairs for a 45 min long Q&A session on our various activities. We managed to learn that no jade under RMB20k should be considered real and that they were not able to help us negotiate carpet prices as they had never bought there before. I think by the end, passport photocopies and various other rigmarole later, they felt convinced that we were there in a tourist capacity. Unclear whether we would have done better if all dressed in matching shirts at the time – though one snatched line as the lift doors were closing to take the spies and their internee back up to the hotel rooms was to the effect that they were there “from the administration bureau” and wanted to know what foreigners were doing here. It overall seemed a disproportionate response and would likely not have occurred to other visitors if it hand’t been for one Flashy’s insistence on pursuing a career as a journalist (and clearly using his Visa in pursuit of such nefarious objectives).

The whole episode was a little nerve wracking, as further spooks turned up with glasses and man bags and silence reined in the corridors. The rest of Team Flashmen was denied access to the interview room but they consented to have a hotel receptionist present as a guard – with which she must have been delighted.

We finally left only an hour late. I think the hotel and the state security were happy to hear that we were heading out of town. Apparently these interviews can take hours and be relatively unpleasant. This was neither and the mean in crewcuts toddled off happily on foot in due course.

A mere six hours and several police check points later we made it to Shache/Yarkand. Nine years ago every hotel had directed foreign visitors to the Shache Hotel. The same happens again, just it takes more time to occur as one hotel initially accepts us, but on appearance withdraw the offer (at least at the originally agreed price). Some dusty streets and queries later we find a new pad – the Shache is itself full – with a human resources conference we are improbably told.

At least the old town here is still partly intact and it is calmer and friendlier than the slightly siege-esque Hetian.

Hetian in depth in three days

Hetian and indeed all of Xinjiang so far has been visibly more conservative than it was nine years ago. As we have headed west it has become increasingly unusual to see women other than in headscarves. There are also significant numbers of women wearing the full black burqa with just an eye slit in, which previously were only seen in small numbers around, for instance, Kashgar old town. The few Uyghur people we talk to, men generally, also seem to have some interest in our religion and in discussing it. Again, more so than nine years ago.

Perhaps all in part a predictable reaction to rapid change; that is generally seen as being externally imposed?

The town is now huge and sprawling and noisy and unrecognisable. It has grown from around 100k to over 700k in ten years. This growth is housed exclusively in the sorts of buildings in which China and particularly its provinces seem to specialise – ones that look old and rundown even before they are fully completed.

Shopping malls abound; the old town is completely goner and exists only on the outskirt suburbs. There is a train station about the size of the Great Hall of the People, that sits at the hazy end of a vastly wide Soviet style avenue that cuts a straight swathe through from the edge of town – the whole crumbling empty edifice to service one train a day in each direction (predictably sold out for many days in advance). Even the police station has been replaced on an enlarged scale – matching the huge PLA HQ just east of Unity Sq.

The development is no different to anywhere else in China, but has happened more recently and has replaced a town that had many fewer close equivalents. Quiet roads of streetside stalls are instead now wide lanes of traffic chaos that could be anywhere in China.

The town is still only about 3% – 4% non Han Chinese; but the Chinese seem to be more prominent around the centre of town – both in shop holding (the Queen Duke coffee house doing a reasonable cappuccino) and in taking to the square to line-dance at night (watched by bewildered Uyghurs and guarded by police). One local shop is owned, inevitably, by some recently arrived Sichuanese. They think the situation here is fine and that the young are relatively open-minded; they just find it too dusty – hardly a unique problem in China,

We also take to a Sichuanese for dinner. It has been about nine days of lamb kebabs and nan bread and oily Chinese food now seems healthy. Hetian has a small “China Town” of about 10 restaurants, pedestrianised, barriered, guarded and patrolled. We take a table in between some police and some army; and test the gong bao chicken (rather too much cucumber).

Hetian is also the first town we encounter problems with accommodation. C-trip, the popular Chinese booking website, calls us to say that the hotel we have booked won’t take us (as foreigners) and a further hotel tells us that there are now only four in Hetian that are authorised so to do – and hence we end up at the “Zhe Jiang” – a very standard model of a ‘modern’ Chinese hotel. Everything seems to point to high local sensitivity.

Hetian’s tomb of the Imam Azim

Converted Khotan and Kashgaria to Islam in the 11th century. About 30km out of down, down a long poplar avenue into the desert. A sandstorm added to the atmosphere and gave an appropriately unreal light.

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The tomb is a series of pole, flag and sheep carcass festooned mounds – before the main event, surrounded by a palisade and beside which a small trellised mosque has been built.

Aside from the occasional pilgrim chanting, and our crunching feet, the only sound is flags snapping.

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Images from the Khotan Sunday market

A truly sensory experience.

Spices, meats, motorbikes, vegetables, donkeys, thousands of people – and a rainbow of smells. It felt like a proper central Asian market – selling everything from honey to fridges. Not a single unscarved woman.

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The meat stalls that indicated their speciality with the animal in question’s head in front were particularly eye-catching.

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Minfeng, the road west and the end of the Uyghur towns

We repeat yesterday by rushing to another 10am omnibus – this time a sleeper: three beds wide and two levels high. Each bed seems to be just on five feet long, which makes for cosiness. To ensure tidiness, every passenger must take off his or her shoes and place them in a plastic bag. The result however, is an unrepentant olfactory experience; enhanced by the lack of opening windows or regularly operational air conditioning.

Something over 4.5 hours later we are in Minfeng. The desert has been appropriately barren in between, but the even smaller towns through which we whizz are remarkably verdant. We manage to see some wild camels though.

There seems to be a surprising number of police and armed police around, for a town of maybe a few tens of thousands. The armed police are driving round in small convoys of Korean-war era looking green vans with red banners along the side: “We will severely attack criminals”.

The Minfeng bus station is not one of the world’s great marvels of infrastructure and the attached canteen seems to specialise in a brutality towards the roasting of lamb kebabs, likely rarely matched in the annals of cuisine. Given the price they charge for them too, it seems they must be burning currency to generate the cooking flames.

The combination of fine food, dust, flies and an influx of about 1000 teenagers on a school trip decide us in favour of immediately catching a further bus to Khotan/Hetian. It means sadly leaving what is likely to be our last properly Uyghur town before re-entering the ambit of sinification further west in the major centres of Hetian and Kashgar (though these were previously this area’s historical cultural centres).

At 3.30pm we thus depart once more – this time on a bus that is virtually empty but for us and which travels quietly and gently until the town of Yutian, about halfway when both security and traffic seem to increase.

All day we have been passing through police checkpoints but they get more serious as we head west and in one town we have to pull to the side as two lorries of soldiers (in full battle dress including bullet proof vests and weapons) are driven slowly through the town under police escort with sirens going.

There are also slightly more cars and other vehicles and our driver seems to sense this and becomes toot-crazy – somewhat changing the atmosphere on our semi-private bus.

The desert stretches out the same as ever in either direction – as I guess one would expect a desert to do. But there appear, as we approach closer to Hetian, more development areas (i.e. gateway, empty paddocks and choreographed lines of lamp-posts). There seem to be a few that are sponsored by Tianjin – on China’s east coast. Apparently a wealthy town (or an SOE) taking a sponsorship role for a poor one is not totally unusual. So there is a Tianjian mushroom growing centre here in the Taklamakan.

Hetian is heralded by a cloud of haze. It could be sand, as occurs often but it seems to hang over this town especially. We have trouble finding a hotel as apparently now only four (the West Lake, the Zhejiang and two others) are allowed to take foreigners. We haven’t had this in the last couple of towns given the size of the caravanserais but normally when one checks in, passports or ID cards are scanned and these scans go straight through to the local police station – another new development over the last few years.

The Zhejiang, where we end up, is just near Unity Square – home to a larger Mao and a slightly smaller Uyghur man shaking hands in fake bronze. There are police everywhere. Teams of between six and twelve armed police march through the streets, police cars and vans with silent sirens drive slowly around and Unity Square itself, home it seems to a carnival and a line dancing party has van loads of armed police and ordinary police on all sides and a half company in the middle surrounding the flagpole and carrying riot shields. As always when there is so obvious an armed presence, there is a slightly uneasy feeling.

This is a big town, especially compared to where we have come from – including Dunhuang. In the centre where we are, it is also fundamentally physically a Chinese town – even though the majority of “Chinese” people are in uniform. The night market has apparently been bifurcated, with some down by the grand bazaar, further east and much less disciplined, and some next to Unity Sq. Each is bustling but each is also more market than “dine in” venue.

We still end up sitting down to our millionth lamb kebab, on a corner beside a building site that promises six “imperial” high rises to be completed shortly and turn Hetian into an international city. The image of what represents modernity or internationalism is uniform across China and requires high buildings and plenty of cars. Nowhere we have seen, or see later that evening on a long walk around town, is there any sign of stalls or people selling beer. This becomes something of an issue for Flashy as the desert has been merciless and tea does not seem to refresh so effectively. But it is a more reassuring indication of the town’s underlying character than much else we have seen.

Qiemo – a small Uyghur town about to change

We spend a night in Qiemo; accompanied it seems by a Korean an Australian and a Brit who all happen to be passing through at the same time and who we see, to our surprise, at various points.

Qiemo is a small town clinging to the edge of the desert as are they all around the southern Tarim basin. After arriving at the bus-stop and sitting down to the ritual of kebabs at a nearby fly-factory, I decide to walk off into town in search of a hotel. Dressed as a lighthouse however (in white suit and matching high pith helmet), I seem to soon attract the attention of three policemen. They are improbably driving a police liveried golf cart and execute a u-turn to drive past me. They seem to appreciate a wave.

It is a hot day. There is a small mosque with a plain car parked outside with some sort of roof-top radar pointed towards the front door. Also of course, there are quite a few security cameras around. Security cameras, wifi and the quality of the vehicles are three rather noticeable technological changes over the last just few years.

Qiemo has a small clothing market (secure one large Uyghur cap) and a very large, landscaped square – Culture Square (of course). There is also a jade market – about half staffed by Han Chinese but by the time we get our act together we are too late to visit the Qiemo museum.

Given it is Friday, there is quite a stream into the mosque around 5pm for prayers. One Flashy is able to get in because his shorts are the magic length of below the knees. The night market is sparsely populated and the electricity is erratic and as a result the food stalls provide little LED lamps for every table.

The ‘Business Hotel’ where we are staying has another suprising range of new 4WDs outside it – provided it seems by oil workers. Qiemo has an airport with flights once a week and is the nearest town to the large, and largely self-contained TaZhong oil field. There seem to be a few of these workers letting off steam in the night market too – but otherwise it is a small, calm, relaxed Uyghur town – certainly less altered than Ruoqiang (which is a county capital).

The centre of town has a physical resemblance to the classic low rise China High St but the older khaki mud homes and poplar lined avenues are only a block to either side. It still seems to have a number of high rises under construction or recently completed, which compete to ruin the atmosphere – and a bazaar with mosque like crenallations and domes at either end that adds a bit of central asian disneyland. Presumably by the time one might be back, all the high rises will be complete – and the vehicle traffic and speed increased to appropriately modern level.

The unknown mummies of Ruoqiang

> Before we farewell our drivers we do a tour of downtown Ruoqiang. This takes us to the new (opened late 2009, apparently) and impressive Ruoqiang Museum, surround by the pools and greens of, of course, Culture Square. >
> It is very ethically correct, architecturally, looking like a giant mud-brick mosque. Incongruously there are however three massive stone buddhas guarding the entrance – a reference to the importance of the ancient towns in this area to the dispersion of Buddhism from India, through southern Xinjiang and into China proper. >

> Inside, despite the tens of millions of dollars spent on the building (according to the project sign that reigns in the lobby), the lights are off. A gaggle of pals stand watch by the door (we have to lock away all electronics they say) but there are few actual visitors. >
> What is most extraordinary however are the mummies. These are the desiccated corpses exhumed from digs around the southern Tarim basin that prove that the area was settled from the west – most likely by people from north eastern Persia, rather than from China. >

> The Tarim Mummies and their significance to the history of the region and the politics of Chinese control mean it is hard to believe that these are the real thing (given that you can see on the streets outside entirely fake BMW X5s, even down to the kidney grill, built by a hitherto entirely unknown manufacturer merely badging itself “VIP”) – but the staff are insistent that they are and that they belong to Ruoqiang.

>

> Some mummies apparently went missing from the Urumqi Museum some time ago and here, apparently, they now are – including the most famous – the Beauty of Loulan – a very Aryan looking lady who happens to be one of the best preserved. Some of the mummies are supposed to have reddish hair and to be wearing tartan like material. We don’t see this but the chaps are dfintely facially fluffy, in a very western way. >
> Somewhat illegally we are able to snap some photos – as if these are the real versions then it is the first time any of us have heard of them being relocated after their period of disappearance. >
> The historical descriptions are all rather cleverly worded. They refer to different settlements, such as Loulan and Miran, in terms of Chinese imperial chronology – without definitely saying that they were “Chinese” (which they weren’t). Reconciliation of the reproductions of Gandharan (i.e. Bactrian-Graeco-Buddhist) murals with the implication of Middle kingdom membership, is avoided altogether.

Qiemo – Tarim town #2

Literally, the Silk Road.

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Is this the real Ruoqiang?

Ruoqiang (若羌）should be, and historically was, the most isolated town in China. It sits at about the last habitable spot on the Tarim river, as it rolls the Kun Lun melt north into the wilderness, separating the physically very different Taklamakan (sandy) and Kumtagh (stony) deserts. On the way in we pass No 36 Bingtuan – one of the Xinjiang bingtuan’s state farms that dot the province.

The only information we could find on Ruoqiang (in Chinese and English) were variants on the same theme: one horse town, water shortage, one guest house, horse may be dead. Some surprise then when as the green belt that signifies an oasis rose into view, it was accompanied by cranes; with the Aerjin Shan range (a spur of the Kun Lun) rising to the south over the town.

The town is big now. There are multiple 20 storey apartment blocks, an “Olympic” gymnasium, a massive new museum, and a huge market that looks like a steroidal version of Yuyuan in Shanghai – or indeed any other modern, curved roof, crypto-oriental pastiche.

There are also quite a few large hotels; with forecourts full of new Range Rovers and Landcruisers. Clearly Ruoqiang’s nascence is only news to us.

But the whole town is empty. It has been built and it is ready to be filled. The apartments look empty, the new shops are vacant and the streets ate calm and quiet. Wonder for how long?

There is however a hugely prominent police and army presence. The police drive around regularly but not on own – in pairs of cars; there is even a fake Chinese hummer full of troops – though they drive towards the mosque and, disappointing our image of the menacing soldiery, pull in nearby to buy jade trinkets.

Uyghur youth are a lot more confident, or outgoing, than their Chinese contemporaries but when a girl and her infant sister stop to ask us where we’re from, we get a 3km/h drive by from a roving minivan of police. A little like Turkmenistan. It’s been a while since a foreigner in China would get stopped just for a photo – now though, all the children have smart phones. In Xinjiang in 2004 it was showing then the back of digital cameras and trying to explain that they weren’t going to develop straight away.

For a town with notional water shortages, the sprinklers are going full noise in “culture square”.

Made it to Miran

After around 600km through the Kumtagh desert, around lunchtime yesterday we made it back to tarseal and onto route 315, which connects Qinghai with Xinjiang. It was a mettled road until only about three years ago.

70km along we got to the turn off for Miran, an historically major Buddhist-Gandharan centre and cultural dispersion point.

Significant remnants remain, particularly of the castle. The town’s history is patchy but it was a settlement in the first few hundred years AD and then was rebuilt by the Tibetans, then the power in the land, around the 8th century.

We decided, perhaps foolishly, to walk to Miran from the road. Anyone who has been in similar circumstances will know that somehow deserts distort distances and what looked to be a few hundred metres away was around 4km. We obviously decided to do this in the middle of the day. Pith helmets were deployed.

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