I came to know of this book during my adventures in genealogy, which I undertook in October whilst resting in Alabama after returning from my year in China. In the course of my research I found the location of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s land, in modern-day Zack, Virginia. Archibald Rhea was my first paternal ancestor to come to America, and his story is wound up with that of all the original Scotch-Irish migrants to America. He came over in the late 1720s, settled first in Pennsylvania (around what I believe is now Norristown or Eagleville) and eventually went south and west through the Appalachian Valley to settle that land. He was a founding trustee of New Providence Presbyterian Church in Raphine, only a few miles from the site of his home. His family had to flee the area, along with most of its residents, after the threat from Native Americans intensified during the French and Indian War in 1755.
I learned all of this while also preparing to move up to my current residence in Washington, DC. It so happened that I would be traveling, in reverse, the path my paternal ancestors took from that first foothold down into what is now Etowah County, Alabama. After seeing the site of my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s land and grave in what is now Happy Valley, TN, I continued up the Great Valley alone and drove near the site of his father’s land in Wythe County, VA. The next day I came to Zack, where the only thing I knew for identification was the bit about founding the church and that the “Kennedy-McCray” mill is on the site of what was once Archibald’s land. I happened to meet a man named McCray there, who said he currently owns the land, and he talked to me for a while about the history of the area and I told him what I knew from my research. He told me that the creek on which my ancestor’s land stood is called Walker’s Creek, named after the first white man to settle this far west in the Colonies, John Walker. His reconstructed cabin was just a couple of miles down the stream.
John’s grandson Joseph Walker was an even more ambitious mountain man, being the first to lead a white party of significant size to California over the Sierra Nevada. Joe is the subject of the book that Mr. McCray strongly recommended to me, Westering Man. Mr. McCray mentioned that the book’s early pages delved into the social and economic reasons for the Scotch-Irish migration to Appalachia, before focusing on the Walker family.
Two things struck me about this book before I was halfway through reading it: Joseph Walker and his family were at once superlative characters, and yet exemplary of the white pioneers who made the white American journey west the singular cultural remembrance in American society. That story – “How the West was ‘Won’” – is very different than the one I was told in school.
Gilbert leaves no stone unturned in his literary quest to animate this amazing man. He masterfully segues each paragraph into the next, and progressively fleshes out the details in a highly informative and fascinating way. I stole any five-minute interval I could to read this amazing work, which combines the history of the Scotch-Irish in Appalachia, the economic and social realities of life on the “old frontier” before the American Revolutionary War, and the circumstances of an extraordinary man whose legacy sheds a new light on the things we consider “American” to this day.
The most poignant character contrast is that of Walker with his contemporary and sometime employer, “The Pathfinder” John C. Frémont. Frémont (or the stories Frémont tells about himself) characterizes the common archetype of the of the Western frontiersman: an ambitious white man running roughshod over unseen lands, then standing nobly atop high peaks and declaring the glory of the Republic and Manifest Destiny, all interspersed with violent episodes with the native peoples. He was (mostly) the total opposite of Walker, who held a deep fascination with exploring but not “civilizing” new lands and had a real respect and camaraderie with Native Americans. Walker was generally kind to those he guided, heavily favored diplomacy over guns, and made it a point to not tell tall tales about himself.
This book, though a historical work, makes me ponder the kinds of imagery and justifications our leaders today take when they authorize gunship diplomacy, unilateral intervention and a conflict-based “survival of the fittest” mantra. What Gilbert makes clear through Walker’s pioneering and leading of the Westering movement is that violence did not win the West. Of course, neither was the process completed via some kind of idealistic peace-waging with the natives. Nevertheless, Joe Walker was a man the likes of which we miss in our characters today; a respectful, understanding, and eager explorer, not a conqueror.
Kashgar, alas and alack, did not impress. I built the concept, the wispy words of friends and former blog posts describing that something which lives in the storied culture of travelers from millennia ago to the present age as “Kashgar,” in my mind too much as a place completely different from China. In many ways it does differ from the culture of its political overlord, but it’s also disappointingly clad in the same architecture and layout as other Chinese cities. To make matters more depressing, the old town is under the ball and hammer in a classic example of Chinese “restoration.”
We got a room at the Chini Bagh, which used to be the British Consulate in Kashgar during the “Great Game” of the 19th Century. I thought we would go to Tashkurgan the following day, but we decided to stay in Kashgar to arrange better transportation opportunities and secure passage to Urumqi. I gave my dirty clothes to be laundered, and it turned out to be 84 kuai – about five times higher than I ever paid to launder clothes at hotels in China. Furthermore, the Chini Bagh’s service was generally awful, despite its reputation as one of the more famous hotels in Kashgar.
After eating at a local place, I used the Internet for an hour – had to stay fresh on the job search. The next morning we secured the room for another night before embarking on some haphazard sightseeing. Per the Lonely Planet’s one-size-fits-all recommendations, we taxied to a nice mausoleum, the Abakh Hoja Maziri, and a livestock market with no livestock. I also came down with a sore throat due to the inefficient, overpowered air conditioner in the hotel room. It didn’t help that I drank a couple of delicious Sinkiang Dark beers in the cafe of the hotel, thus lulling my immune system into a relaxed state.
Glazed Tile Detail at Abakh Hoja MaziriConstruction Tools at the Abakh Hoja MaziriRestorative Construction Worker at Abakh Hoja MaziriPenitent outside Id Kah Mosque
In the afternoon we strolled around the half-rubble old town. Historically (i.e. until about 2008) Kashgar’s Old Town was the largest intact authentic Silk Road town, dating from the days when it served as a vibrant hub for the many cultures that passed through its streets bearing all the goods one could want in Eurasia. The extent to which it has been destroyed is painful to witness, and I think that it is exemplary of cultural-related development in modern China: demolish the real McCoy and put up a fake version of it. The story unfolding in Kashgar’s old town ties together many of the themes of China’s “growing pains:” transition from old infrastructure to new, forced displacement of residents from traditional community spaces into new high-rise apartments, an overriding focus on municipal district-level quarterly GDP growth, the bizarre preference of Chinese tourists for “Disneyland” culture to authentic artifacts and places, and the central government’s efforts to exert control over restive minorities by undermining their shared cultural heritage. Note that the images below are not unique to Kashgar; different versions of these scenes are found all over China.
A Hall of Doorways through WallsYou Can't Come InThe Neighborhood Path to NowhereUighur Women Walking in the Old NeighborhoodA Silk Road HomefrontWhat Happened to the Neighbors Out Back?Historic Neighborhood Restoration in the People's Republic of China
Since Kashgar was underwhelming, covered in nasty dust and we had a few days to kill before Eid ul-Fitr, we sought out transport to the Khunjerab Pass, the highest motorable border pass in the world at 4,693 meters – nearly as high as that low-oxygen, high-star count night at Nam Tso in Tibet. We first sought the services of the folks at CITS, which has an office right next to the Chini Bagh. Their price to see both Karakul Lake and the Pass was 1,700 RMB for the both of us – pretty expensive. He called the border office in Tashkurgan to ask about foreigners getting to the border, and the officer told him that foreigners without a forward visa (to Pakistan) could not go up to the Pass. This disappointed us, but we still wanted to get up into the scenic highlands of Tashkurgan. The fellow who runs the cafe at the Chini Bagh offered to do the trip for only 1,000 RMB. We sealed the deal, albeit without the Pass as a part of the package, and proceeded to eat WAY too much da pan ji and tasty yogurt at some place that night.
We awoke the next morning to leave for Tashkurgan at ten on the Karakoram Highway. The driver pulled over to allow us to buy hot naan bread on the way, surprisingly tasty for breakfast. We passed Karakol Lake about three hours into the journey; it is beautiful, but the weather was too cloudy for it to be really majestic. After that, I fell asleep until at some point we had to get out of the taxi and present our passports at a police checkpoint. In this part of Xinjiang, they also have the silly registration-checkpoint speed limit that Tibet has. The road was badly washed out in some spots on the Highway.
Arnab on the Karakoram HighwayMe on the Karakoram Highway
I awoke in Tashkurgan at 15:00, five hours after leaving Kashgar. We lodged at the ubiquitous jiaotongbingguan or “traffic hotel” where we rested for 30 minutes, then got some laghmian for lunch. Arnab and I sat around waiting on the driver for an hour or more (during which I burned through more of Team of Rivals) until he finally came down to the lobby and drove us to a couple of sites. The river delta-meadow at the east end of Tashkurgan is beautiful and idyllic, ringed by massive mountain ranges. This great peace of cool weather, clean(-ish) air and pastoral quiet was totally sullied when a family living in a concrete yurt there, no doubt spurred on by the presence of tourists, switched on the fake ethnic music. It was as loud as a rock concert and echoed off all the mountains – and worst of all, the amplifier was pointed directly at the walkway into and out of the middle of the field, where we were strolling. After we escaped that visual siren’s trap, we climbed up to the ancient fort ruins where I took some more landscape pictures. We then returned to the hotel, ate dinner including Arnab’s precious tudou si, and slept. By the end of the day, we found out that we wold be able to see the Khunjerab Pass, and we agreed to pay 350 RMB extra to the driver for this purpose.
Welcome to Tashkurgan Deceptively Pastoral MeadowRiver in Tashkurgan Meadow"Princess Castle" in TashkurganTashkurgan River Delta Meadow
The next morning, the 9th of September, we left for the Khunjerab Pass. The Karakoram Highway here rolls through amazing, epically beautiful scenery through a long straight valley set on either side by world-class mountain ranges, the Karakoram. Tajiks abound in this part of China, especially in Tashkurgan and the southern valley. To reach the Pass we had to pay ten kuai and turn in our passports at the customs station just south of Tashkurgan; this earned us a permit to move forward to, but not far beyond, the border. Along the Highway we passed within about 20 km of Tajikistan, 80 km of Afghanistan, and 40 km of Kyrgyzstan. One kilometer before the border with Pakistan, we stopped for what seemed like an hour – it was hard to tell since we were 4600 m up and our heads hurt. When enough tourists queued, the border army police opened the gate, one of the army men sat in our taxi, and we drove up to the border itself at the pass, which is quite wide and long. The Chinese road is paved right up to the line itself, at which point it abruptly ends. The Pakstani side of the Highway is a rough dirt track. We stood in Kashmir, currently controlled by Pakistan, for a bit. I had to wear Arnab’s coat since it was so cold up there and I was not prepared. Some Pakistani border guards came and we shook hands with them. One of them said Arnab “looked Pakistani,” which made him laugh ironically since he’s of Indian ancestry. After maybe ten minutes, we were shooed back into the cars by the Chinese police.
The Border PermitStation South of TashkurganGoats on the Karakoram HighwayKarakoram Highway Ascent to the Khunjerab PassThe Highest Border Gate in the WorldThe Border of Kashmir and XinjiangArnab in "Occupied Kashmir"Me Straddling Pakistani Kashmir and Chinese XinjiangArnab and Me with Pakistani Border GuardThe Sign Says it All
Thus, on the fifth anniversary of my joining AIESEC, I visited the highest border crossing in the world and stood astride two worlds.
We ate da pan ji in Tashkurgan for lunch and had to pay for the driver’s share. After we got our passports back, we had an uneventful return to Kashgar. Upon our return there commenced an episode in which the Chini Bagh did not honor our reservations, so we got a room at the much more pleasant Home Inn just down the street. At first the concierge said “no foreigners, you don’t have a permit” so I showed him my visa, when he replied “oh, yes you do.” Do they really believe that foreigners can / do get into the country without the proper paperwork?
I slept fitfully that night and awoke on Eid ul-Fitr, Friday the tenth. We saw about twenty thousand penitents pray at Id Kah Mosque. I felt disliked by the locals and very out of place. This was right around the time when Obama had announced the “end” of “combat missions” in Iraq, and it was the day before September 11 and when that guy in Florida said he would burn a Koran. It may have been my imagination, but it sounded like the imam said “Obama” a lot during the prayer. This was the first time I had ever seen any kind of Muslim religious ceremony, and I think that Eid ul-Fitr counts as the top example of such an occasion.
The Islamic Faithful along the Id Kah Mosque on Eid Ul-FitrA Man and his Son at Id Kah Mosque on Eid Ul-FitrEid Ul-Fitr at Id Kah Mosque in KashgarMen Pray on Eid Ul-Fitr at Id Kah MosqueOn Knees for Allah on Eid Ul-FitrThe Thousands Ruk'u on Eid-ul Fitr at Id Kah Mosque
After the morning ceremony, I relaxed most of the day. At the infamous Fubar, just outside the Chini Bagh, I met a friendly fellow named Brian from San Francisco. We talked for awhile about the Karakoram Highway – he was looking to cycle up to Karakul Lake – and agreed to meet for dinner later that night. Despite it being Eid we had a hard time finding a proper restaurant; the place where we wound up was rather dirty. At Arnab’s insistence we got da pan ji again. Arnab, not being much of a drinker, retired after this to prepare for our 24-hour train journey to Urumqi the next day. I joined Brian at Fubar for a drink. Before we even reached the bar I started feeling a bit queasy. In the middle of our conversation at Fubar I had to excuse myself to employ the facilities. Post-facilities I felt fine again, so it was clear that the da pan ji was bad, though I was the only one to get ill.
The next morning, my final act before departing to the train station was to check my email for any news on DC employment updates. Fortuna had smiled upon me – I was accepted to a three-month internship at the New America Foundation‘s Open Technology Initiative! My search for some form of employment had finally come to an end. I sent a quick positive reply, and we began our grueling nine-day journey from the farthest point in the PRC from Beijing back to the city that had been my home for a year. Thus commenced my final fortnight in China.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/prestonrhea/5016453503/” title=”_mg_3403.cr2 by preston.rhea, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4152/5016453503_989b15c418.jpg” width=”500″ height=”399″ alt=”_mg_3403.cr2″ /></a>
We went to Yarkand because it was on the way to Kashgar and the Lonely Planet described it as a town of the “by-gone Silk Road days.” Though I would not recommend going to Yarkand on an out-of-the-way day trip when you are on a time budget, I was glad we stopped on our way through. There is the nice Altyn Mosque, an old royal and a common mazar or Islamic graveyard, and a shrine to Ama Isa Khan, a Uighur princess from the 16th Century who collected Uighur poems and music. In this way it reminded me of a sort of Central Asian Rose Hill Cemetery.
The price to enter everything was just 15 RMB. The sleepy old town makes for an interesting walk-through. The only negative I can recall was that when we awoke in our hotel, there was a massive dust storm which did not subside until Eid on the 10th, five days later. Thus the old town was covered in dust so I did not bring my camera fearing damage to the sensor, which was a stupid decision. We hired a taxi to Kashgar instead of waiting for a bus, which took a long time in finding a third and fourth person to make the trip worthwhile for the driver. Eventually, after bumping over rough roads partially washed out by rains and rivers, we arrived in Kashgar that evening.
On our 24-hour sleeper bus ride across the Middle Silk Road and the Taklamakan Desert, I saw lots of oilfields and derricks and I read hundreds of pages in the amazing Team of Rivals. We drank tea and ate laghmian, or Uighur pulled noodles, at a roadside stop once sundown came at 21:30 Beijing time, 19:30 Xinjiang time (this is done because Xinjiang is so far from Beijing, whose time zone is officially imposed on the entirety of the PRC). I got very fitful sleep thanks to the bad roads and discomfort.
I awoke in the morning while the bus crossed over the Aksu-Hotan Cross-Desert Highway. The Taklamakan Desert seemed like the beach without the ocean: sporadic but plentiful trees and shrubbery on low rolling dunes, a far cry from the massive Arrakis-dunes of Dunhuang. We disembarked in Hotan, a major point on the Southern Silk Road. We forced down a cheap Chinese lunch before trying to get a room at the the Yingbingguan hotel, but they said “no foreigners allowed.” So we went to their other branch, which tried to shoo us away with “we have no rooms, try the Yingbingguan.” I explained that we had already tried to get a room there. After the concierge called the Yingbingguan, she said “Okay, we have rooms.” It frequently happens this way. We took a nap to remedy the poor sleep we fought for on the not-so-sleeper bus.
Our Hotel in Hotan
Later that afternoon we visited the Hotan Cultural Museum which despite its poor translations includes two ancient well-preserved Indo-European mummies. Their shoes were interesting, not unlike the traditional shoes Uighurs wear today. The museum also boasted a spiffy wooden coffin with Buddhist and Chinese-language paintings on it. These were the people and artifacts who made Hotan an important Central Asian trading hub famous for its jade, the most highly prized form of the stone in China. It seems that Chinese demand for reliable access to Hotanese jade spurred the development of what we now know as the Silk Road.
That evening, Arnab and I had a misadventure trying to reach the Imam Asim Shrine when our driver went the wrong way down a sandy desert path and got the taxi stuck. It took over 30 minutes to help get him out, and a guy on a motorcycle came by to help. We sandwiched on the back of his whip and tossed about in the thick sand until we reached the blacktop, when we got back in the taxi and the driver took the correct, non-sandy road to the shrine. The mosque had a peaceful, quiet air about it. It is out of the way of the main town drag just inside the desert, and there are Tibetan-Mongolian influences in the burial mounds. That night we ate overpriced local food at the night market and watched some of a cultural performance in the square.
The Driver is Stuck in the DesertWritings on the Wall of the Imam Asim ShrineThe Imam Asim Shrine
The bus to Yarkand did not leave until about nine the next evening, so we had plenty of time to see the Sunday Market. It was fascinating; one can find everything and everyone from around the area comes to see and sell. It is much bigger than Kashgar’s Sunday market, and we were the only foreigners there; we only saw two small clutches of Chinese tourists whilst perusing the market. It is held in a vast space which includes packed covered shopping arcades and several long avenues with three rows of goods. The only negative (major for me) is that in Xinjiang for some reason, raw meat and delicious pastries offered outdoors are absolutely swarmed with yellow jackets, and I have a phobia. How the butchers and sweets-sellers sit and butcher and sell these things all day long while surrounded by a cloud of wasps I will never understand. We got lost in the massive market for a couple of hours, and aside from the heat, the escape from the vespid plague most relieved me.
Musicians at Hotan Sunday MarketYoung Girl at Hotan Sunday MarketSo Many Boys in Xinjiang Play with Toy GunsSilk Saleswoman at Hotan Sunday Market
We spent the rest of the day eating a long Chinese lunch, the only kind of food readily available in daylight during Ramadan, and I read plenty in Team of Rivals. The bus took six hours to reach Yarkand at 3 AM and was super-uncomfortable, not least because the driver played loud Uighur KTV videos at the front where we sat.
I will never take a sleeper bus again unless absolutely necessary – words I later ate in a double-size meal. I spent the twelve-hour ride to Turpan either getting tossed by the bus bumping along unfinished roads, or fitfully turning and trying strange positions for my legs, which were at least a foot too long for the small space you are allowed below the next person’s seat-bed. As this bus ride was the passage from Gansu Province into the considerably more restive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, we were boarded twice by police who checked our IDs; they had a scanner for the Chinese IDs but they just glanced at my passport and continued on.
I arrived at the Tulufan Bingguan as recommended in Lonely Planet at 8 in the morning, where Arnab had arrived the night before. I took a freezing cold shower and we met a guide he spent time with the night before. We agreed to a slightly inflated price (I think) of 100 kuai per person for just us touring because we were too late to catch the minibus tour. However this turned out well because even though we went to the traditional karez irrigation works and the Buddha Caves, these were things we didn’t want to pay to see.
We wanted to eat a tasty Uighur breakfast, but we had the not-so-good fortune of landing in Xinjiang during Ramadan so proper Uighur places were closed until Eid on September 10th, nine days later. Our driver took us to a pretty crappy Chinese breakfast, including salty milk tea, at the jiaotong bingguan (bus station motel) for 10 kuai. He then took us to the Buddha caves and past the “Flaming Mountains” where we did not pay to enter the “official viewing area” to see. The Flaming Mountains are a bit over-hyped although they look cool, like Mars; but we saw them in the morning and I’ll bet they look best as the Sun sets.
The Flaming Mountains
Next we went to the Grape Valley, which was my favorite part of the day. Our driver took us in the back way, so we drove through the whole grape-growing neighborhood, which was devoid of tourists because they all enter through the pay-60-kuai entrance. (Our driver wound up extracting 30 kuai each from us for the benefit of taking this better tour). We drove right to his friend’s small grove/restaurant. I wish we had gotten out and walked a bit, but it was still beautiful to sit in the shade of the grapevines. At the restaurant we were invited to cut our own grapes from the ceiling vines (for free!) and we sat down to those and some fresh watermelon, rounding it out with a massive pot of Central Asian chai tea and a tasty mutton dish with peppers and home-made noodles.
Turpan Grape WomanI Cut the Grapes in TurpanArnab Enjoys the Fruits of Turpan
We relaxed with the powerful copper-colored chai and the numerous grapes in the comfort of the vine shade until we were ready to visit Jiaohe Ancient City. It cost 40 kuai to get in but it’s a pretty well-preserved ( in ruinous terms ) ancient Silk Road desert city dating from the Han period. The Chinese predictably congregated only 1/3 of the way up the 1.5 km path through numerous ruins to take pictures at the touristy “scenic spot” with fake costumed Han desert women. Arnab and I continued on up to the end of the path, even though the Sun was awfully punishing and there was almost no shade. Our reward was a most interesting and totally tourist-free (save us) stay in the ruined Great Buddhist Temple, which still had some weathered Buddha statues in its prayer place.
The Great Buddhist Temple at Jiaohe RuinsFaded Buddhas at Jiaohe RuinsStupa Graveyard at Jiaohe Ruins
Then we went by the karez irrigation works but decided we didn’t want to pay 40 kuai to see it. Subsequently we went to photograph the Emin Minaret from the outside since entry costs 50 kuai. That evening at our hotel I encountered a loud group of American exchange students and talked with a girl studying at UIBE who did not know that foreigners could join groups, whether at the University or in the city.
We wanted to leave Turpan by train, but we were forced settle for a sleeper bus since no train tickets were available for days. Twenty-four hours across the Taklamakan Desert to Hotan was to begin at 13:00 the following afternoon That night we went to a waterfront restaurant whith great food and good tea. We enjoyed huge kebab and da pan ji. We sat for a while and listened to the music the Chinese danced to, then we went to bed. The next morning we ate some beef noodles and got on the bus to Hotan.
A lot of Uighurs were conscious of the Iraq “war mission” ending right at that time. Our Turpan taxi driver, the guy who sold coffee at the hotel, and a man on the bus to Hotan all mentioned the Iraq pullout and asked if I liked Obama. I think the Uighurs on the bus to Hotan spoke in their language about how some people in the US think Obama is a Muslim.
Saturday the 28th was a largely wasted day spent on the train from Xi’an to Dunhuang, where I arrived at about 09:30 on Sunday morning. I immediately went to query the ticket office for trains from Dunhuang to Turpan, but their mei you said it all: there are no trains to Xinjiang from Dunhuang. As a foreigner, they could have been lying to me, but they said the same thing to a nice group of independent Heliongjiang travelers. They asked if I wanted to join them in hiring a car the next day bound for Urumqi. I politely declined, explaining that I wanted to stay in Dunhuang longer than one day. This disappointed me a bit, since independent traveling Chinese would be much more interesting than those traveling in tour groups which seem to make up the vast majority of tourist traffic. They even looked more interesting than tour groupies; the woman had long dyed-red hair and the man was decked out in desert gear.
I caught a cab to the famous Charley Johng’s Dune Guesthouse, and I stepped into the cozy courtyard just in time to meet two French folks, Murielle and Mattieu, who have been cycling the Silk Road from France since April and will continue to points beyond through April 2011. We caught a bus to the Mogao Caves for 9 kuai in front of Charlie Johng’s Cafe, which is in town unlike the duneside guesthouse. The caves are interesting but very expensive: 180 kuai with an English guide, which is practically necessary since they can get you into some caves you would not see otherwise.
At the caves I saw the first real Tang Dynasty art I had ever seen with my own eyes. It was brilliant and superbly detailed, an evident example of why the Tang Dynasty is so revered in Chinese culture. That painting covered the walls and roof of the cave with a reclining Buddha shaped like a coffin. My favorite cave, though, was Cave 237, which had a super-psychedelic Song Dynasty mural which centered around a guy (a Buddha?) playing a guitar behind his head like Jimi Hendrix, while other Buddhas played in a concert surrounding him, and a supreme Buddha glowing with cool colors pontificated over the scene. I want that as a poster. This cave was partially ruined by White Russian refugees who were locked in the caves by the locals after the Russian civil war. The museum at the Mogao Caves is sharp, but not nearly as interesting as the actual caves.
Mogao Caves Main HallThe Dunhuang / Mogao Caves Bus
We took the bus back to town and ate some food near the market, which is at once interesting and orderly. I was pleased by the Dunhuang market for simply being the best of both clean / modern and ethnic / interesting; usually in China it’s all blown out to one end or the other, and even the ethnic part is rarely that authentic (except in Hotan). I also began to work out bus transportation to Turpan when I discovered that I would have to go to the other bus station. I planned to leave the 31st, two days later, to meet Arnab in Turpan.
I tried to walk with a few hostel-mates into the desert behind the guesthouse, but there is heavy risk of a high fine so we didn’t cross the fence. After all, it’s not possible to hide from the authorities in the desert like it is in the forest. I wrote some emails that afternoon, and while at the computer I met a fellow traveler named Nathan from Geneva. He was at the caves with us, and we discussed the possibility of going to the Jade Gate the next day. Unfortunately, I never got to do that due to time and money constraints. Two South African fellows, Rudi and Adriaan, became pals of mine for the duration in Dunhuang. They met a girl at the next hostel named Eva from El Paso, and we all went to town to eat in the market. The open-air atmosphere made up for the lackluster food. Rudi wants to get involved in politics in South Africa, which provided plenty of good conversation. Upon returning to the hostel we enjoyed some peanut cakes, had a couple more beers and retired just before midnight.
Desert FenceThe Sizzling Dunhuang Night marketRudi Can't FailEva and the Local Goods
The next day I went into town to buy a bus ticket to Turpan, set to leave at 18:00 on Tuesday the 31st to arrive at 05:00 the next day. Nathan and I ate lunch at a tasty Sichuan place; he mentioned that he will study for a year in Osaka. I informed him of my favorite restaurant to have a nice kao ya sendoff in Beijing the next day before he went back to Geneva.
That evening Rudi, Adriaan, Eva and I made reservations to ride camels and camp in the desert dunes. It cost 300 RMB total, with 100 RMB up front at the Dune Guesthouse. A van took us away at five in the evening to the house of Li, the handler. I downed four bottles of water before mounting the camel, which made me stop twice to micturate before we got to the campsite. Li had a good sense of humor and sang a lot, even giving instructions in a sing-song voice. The camels did not run, only walked, and were much more enjoyable than the horses in Inner Mongolia. The desert sunset fantastically exploded in the sky like an engine of creation and widsom. We scrambled up the top of an exquisitely seductively curved dune ridge to watch the Sun dip down farther along the Silk Road. It is a highlight of my trip, although the wind blew and sand got everywhere. From the top of the ridge, we descended into the dune valley where Li had set up the tents and was cooking our basic dinner of noodles and hard bread. This valley’s vibe made us feel we could have been anywhere on Earth, even off Earth. There were no sounds, not even the wind, and we laid back for a few hours to stare at the stars. I saw a few meteors and several satellites. Li sang songs and Eva played her guitar a bit; though she did not know that many songs, I was able to teach her “California Stars” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” We hit the sack around 11:30. I used my camera bag as a pillow.
Desert ShackDesert GraveyardAdriaan's Third EyeDesert of LegendGod's Rays over Dunhuang
Li woke us just in time for the sunrise, then we rode our camels back to his place. We payed Li the remaining 200 RMB directly, so it’s clear that he gets his fair cut. That day I chilled out and read some in Catch-22 before going into town for a quick dinner with Rudi and Adriaan to prepare for the bus ride. Thirty minutes before bus left, I decided to stay one more day in Dunhuang to relax rather than be stuck waiting for Arnab in super-hot Turpan. I easily transferred the bus tickets to next evening, the First of September. We walked along the market area while eating an ice cream and caught the bus back to the guesthouse, where we reviewed Adriaan’s pictures form the desert on his iPad. As the day grew long, we returned to town to eat an extremely delicious rou jia mo. A few Portuguese travelers invited us to drink some beers with them in the open air market, after which I made the stupid suggestion to go to KTV at Babyface. It was the worst KTV I have ever experienced: bad song selection, the sound was too quiet, the beers were expensive and worst of all the experience forever tainted the image of KTV to the Portuguese first-timers. When we left the KTV part of Babyface, we spent two minutes in the pitiful dance club downstairs which had twelve people in it besides we laowai. As we left, a young shirtless Chinese guy ran after us desparately yelling “Wait! Wait!” I guess we were the most interesting thing to happen there in a long time.
Li the Camel-ManDunhuang Crew
I relaxed and read some Catch-22 the next day, then hopped on the sleeper bus to Turpan after eating more delicious chao mian.
This is the Great Silk Road Trip, so it had to actually start on the Silk Road. Xi’an, formerly Chang’an in its days of glory, was the capital of Tang China and is the eastern terminus / beginning of the Silk Road. Its history and location in the center of China’s interior make Xi’an the ideal beginning to a Silk Road excursion – once your visa is secured.
I left Warren’s apartment in Hong Kong at 06:00 to catch the Shenzhen airport bus at 06:50. The bus was only half full, rendering unneeded my pains to get a ticket the previous night. The border police detained me briefly when entering China, which marked my fourth straight frisking by the authorities and gives me a 1.000 average for staying flagged in the Chinese immigration system. I broke my six-month no-McDonald’s streak when I ate an egg McMuffin for breakfast at the airport. I slept on the plane and during the hour-long bus ride from the airport into Xi’an. Ten hours of transit ended when I finally set my bag down at the Seven Sages Hostel at about 16:00.
A walk around the Muslim Quarter was first on my agenda. It is my favorite memory from Xi’an; the neighborhood itself is interesting and there are plenty of tasty snacks to sample. It is the center of the Hui Muslim ethnic community in Xi’an. These are Han Chinese people who are traditionally Islamic, so many of their cultural practices are more typically Chinese than their other Muslim minority brethren in China. In the Quarter I entered the serene courtyard of a neat Chinese-style mosque, which was not the famous Great Mosque that requires visitors to pay an entry fee. A few men read their Qurans and chatted quietly while I photographed the architecture. The call to prayer squawked from a loudspeaker as I returned to the busy streets. I dined on savory yang rou pao mo (crumbled bread in lamb stew) and I sampled giant versions of “Chinese chips,” which I believe are called humabing. The most memorable Xi’an snack was the huashenggao or peanut cakes. Huashenggao reminded me of peanut butter bars from back home, except much larger and cheaper. I smashed two kilos of the stuff between my teeth in less than five days, which cost only about 30 kuai.
Mosque Leaf LadderHumabing, or "Chinese chips"Huashenggao, or peanut cakes
That evening I relaxed at the Seven Sages Hostel and drank tea with two girls from Northern Ireland and Nora from Austria as they watched Juno.
I woke up late the next morning. For nearly two hours I cycled around the old city wall, a less interesting experience than I had expected. The Western gate hosted the end of a “Willpower Walker” race involving a bunch of men in pink shirts. Fifteen hundred years earlier, the same spot was the beginning or end of the merchant journeys connecting the material and economic prosperity of Europe, China and all the lands between. The bike chain broke and took ten minutes off my journey, and I was 20 minutes late returning the bike which everyone rents for 100 minutes. I explained my story to the attendants, who downgraded my time such that I was not fined. So, travelers beware: when renting bicycles to ride on the walls of Xi’an, 100 minutes is not enough time unless you ride at breakneck speed!
Modern Old City WallWestern Gate with Willpower Walkers
It was 13:30 when I finished cycling. I snacked near the wall, then retreated to the hostel to launder clothes and shower. I met Nora and we set out to see the Little Goose Pagoda. Unfortunately, transport is not abundant in Xi’an; we arrived at the pagoda too late to enter. As a consolation we walked to the Muslim Quarter and ate too much. Finding nothing left to do in Xi’an (I had already seen the Terracotta Warriors in Atlanta), I watched Inglourious Basterds and drank more tea before I retired at 1. I left on the K591 to Dunhuang at 10:56 the next morning.
The Great Silk Road Trip began when my time as a Beijinger ended: at 20:00 on Sunday, August 22, 2010 when I boarded the T107 train at Beijing West Railway Station bound for Shenzhen. It was a hard sleeper, thankfully, so I spent a little less than half of the train’s 27-hour journey sleeping or lying on my top-level bed. On Monday, while the train chugged through Jiangxi Province, I chatted for an hour with a Hong Kong Cantonese who set up the Hong Kong Delivery Company two decades ago, and is now a successful businessman. He encouraged me to sign up for courier work to enjoy free flights. Too bad I no longer have a valid Chinese visa! I also spoke with a guy from Los Angeles who is developing flight routes to a new airport in the Bay Area, and an older guy from Hong Kong near my seat who told me about how to cross the border from Shenzhen to Hong Kong.
Snow warned me that this train was frequently a couple hours late, and this was true tonight; the train pulled in at 21:00 to a lightly raining Shenzhen. I walked across the border; it was a bit hard to understand the process due to bad signage. I changed money on the Hong Kong side – a mistake, as the rate on the China side was HK$ 112 to RMB 100, but in it was HK$ 108 to RMB 100. I took the MTR to Sai Wan Ho, which takes over an hour from the border station since Sai Wan Ho is on Hong Kong Island and requires about three transfers. On the metro I serendipitously met Paul Wilson, an AIESEC EP from Bristol, UK who had just finished a two-month ET in Changsha. My Chinese SIM card didn’t work in Hong Kong so he texted my couchsurfing host, Warren, that I was nearing his metro station.
I met Warren and Flo, an Italian couchsurfer, in Sai Wan Ho, a cool residential area that isn’t so overwhelming as the rest of HK Island’s North side. Warren and Flo were on the hunt for dessert but I was yet un-sated with an evening meal. Our first destination, then, was a delicious street food noodle vendor. Fried noodles with chicken and sausage was HK$20. We then went for dessert, where I got a papaya milkshake thing with tapioca balls.
Warren is a fantastically nice human being. he’s a New Zealander by birth, a geography teacher at an international school in Hong Kong by day, and the founder and lead operator of Hong Kong Pub Crawl, Hong Kong’s first backpacker pub crawl, by night. We said goodbye to Flo after dessert and Warren and I went to his tiny but amply rooftop-ed flat. I slept for six hours, showered and ventured to the visa office. While waiting for my number to be called, I met a guy from Birmingham who is an architect in Shanghai at the visa office. We chatted about mutual acquaintances. It took 45 minutes of waiting and walking in 4 wrong doors and 2 wrong elevators to complete the visa process.
After leaving my passport with the Chinese consular services, I went to Tsim Sha Tsui to get a camera lens for Patrick and myself; I took the Star Ferry from Wan Chai pier. The Star Ferry is the most interesting, and also cheapest, way to get around Hong Kong. After getting the lenses and a new camera bag, I ate shrimp wonton noodle soup in a small place near Nathan Rd. for HK$23, then I Star Ferry’d it back to Wan Chai. A HK$6 public light bus which took a while landed me at Warren’s and I got to see some of the city from the windows. I dropped things off and rested while it rained outside. I was off to see the city again at 3 PM.
I walked around the central escalator near Soho / Central and fell asleep sitting on a bench in a small park for half an hour. Then I met Warren and Shaun for their rugby league, which Warren kindly invited me to join. It was a touch game, and it being my first time to play I sucked hard; but it was fun, and the seaside at the HKU sports fields made it even better. After two hours of vigorous rugby, I left to meet Charlie for dinner and drinks and shisha in Wan Chai. It was great to see him for the first time in a year. I then retired to Warren’s.
I picked up my China L, or tourist, visa the morning of the 25th. Next, I took the tram to Victoria Peak, but regrettably I left my camera at home that day. The view from Victoria Peak is one of the world’s great vistas, and I was lucky to be in Hong Kong on a fogless, not-too-cloudy day. You can see many of the islands that make Hong Kong so interesting. When I was done gazing, I walked down Old Peak Road, which is a nice, green nature preserve until you reach the lower levels. Less than thirty meters away from the preserve’s border, within plain view of massive condominium windows, I saw a big snail with a healthy-looking shell slicking its way across a rock while a small army of strange ants paraded around it. As I contemplated the wonder of the scene, vibrant life contrasted with the height of modern cosmopolitan living, I said aloud: “Hong Kong is very cool.”
The rest of the walk down to Admiralty was confusing and urban. I eventually met Van next to a sports complex. We had a tasty lunch of some spicy Hong Kong noodles, then we took a subway to the end of the line on Lantau Island; one of her coworkers had recommended a place there to rent a bike and ride a trail on the island. We didn’t find an especially natural trail, but we did find someone’s secluded Confucian shrine at one abrupt end of the bike path against the beach, and we sought in vain to take our bikes on the sky gondolas that go past the Big Buddha. We also had by far the most delicious Oreo milkshake ever created; it was so good that after I finished mine I said “what will life be like now after that?”
On the way back to the apartment, I bought my ticket for the 06:50 bus to Shenzhen airport. A quick apartment stop was the prelude to meeting Warren at Temple St. on Kowloon to dine on street food. He promoted his bar crawl heavily to the passers-by and never slowed down on the witty, intelligent banter. I was lucky to have such good hosts, which improved my Hong Kong trip by an order of magnitude. Van and I had a beer each at Dusk til Dawn in Wan Chai and tried to guess if people in the bar were pilots or not (they have a special for flight crew members). Then I crashed for four hours before awakening, saying goodbye to Warren, and catching the bus. I REALLY wish I had stayed in Hong Kong one more day, if not one more week (though that would have killed my savings). It’s a great place with such a diversity of experiences.
All my Hong Kong photos (few though they are) can be found here.
This weekend Lukas, Jerry, David and I absconded with our bodies to enjoy a weekend Great Khan-style in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia (a province of China, not the independent country where I turned down the opportunity to help expand AIESEC).
First we took the Friday evening overnight K263 train to Hohhot, the capital of Nèi Měnggǔ province. Though not the first “hard sleeper” train I had ever taken (that honor goes to the Qingzang Railway), The K263 was the first sleeper train I had taken which did not have compartments for the groupings of six beds, three in a stack. There were only walls between every other stack of beds, allowing the feet of abnormally tall people like myself to obstruct the train car’s walkway. After a few beers and a couple of swigs of the Scottish Collie whisky Lukas brought along, we climbed into bed just in time for the 22:00 lights out. The nightcap protected my slumber from the rumblings of the K263, even when we stopped in heavily polluted Datong at the unholy hour of about 02:00.
The train pulled into Hohhot at 05:00 the next morning, and we stumbled out into the city which is the butt of many jokes by both laowai and Chinese for its conjured image as a rough industrial splotch on the remote Mongolian frontier. In the dark of the morning, it seemed to be mostly correct. Hohhot was not our final destination; we were headed to the grasslands tourism hub of Xilamuren, but the first bus did not leave until 07:00. Dico’s, the Chinese fast-food chicken chain, was the only establishment open for breakfast near the train and bus stations. After a terrible breakfast there we purchased our bus tickets to Xilamuren, about 21 kuai for a two-hour bus ride. In and around the bus station, touts claimed that in Xilamuren the grass was dead because it “had not rained in over a month” and that only their spot had any tall grass. We ignored their lies; Lukas’ friend had been caught in an Inner Mongolian downpour within the past week.
When the bus platform opened we climbed in the back and watched the drunken or senile (or both) antics of an old bald Inner Mongolian man. We could not understand his stuttering mixture of what must have been Chinese and Mongolian. The local bus riders watched him with amusement. It emerged that he had not purchased a ticket but still expected to ride the bus, and no amount of pleading by the bus driver and the passenger whom he had slighted could get him to move. The bus pulled out with one too many passengers, but as it reached the gate pavilion a police woman stepped onto the bus and demanded that he get off the bus and buy a ticket for another bus. He still would not move. Physically removing him would have been far too embarrassing and a huge no-no in the Chinese concept of “face,” but the driver and police woman found a particularly Chinese solution. The bus driver announced that there were problems with the bus and so we would have to swap buses. He pulled back around to the bus platform and ushered everyone off, taking care to get the old man’s scarf off the bus seat where he left it. Someone then escorted the man back into the bus station while the bus pulled up to the road and the driver instructed us to run after it, and we all jumped on and the door shut with the proper dues-paying passengers safely aboard. Before the bus could leave the station altogether, the old man came running and yelling along the side and stood in front of the bus, decrying the injustice meted on his head. I could not see what happened next, but I guess someone physically held him back while the bus entered the streets and drove away.
Hohhot is at the southern base of the Great Blue Mountains which rise to form the grasslands plateau. The bus ride from the relatively polluted city into the mountains grants the rider with beautiful views of striking green grassy hills and a sky as blue as any Alabama has to offer. By the time we reached Xilamuren, pollution was a totally forgotten phenomenon. The wind was brisk and ever-present, like the outlet of a great oxygen factory. This made us smile; when you live in Beijing, this sort of thing is a pleasure even if you just sit still for hours.
The bus dropped us off in a large tourist settlement full of concrete “yurts,” so we decided to walk up the road to find a car that could take us to a smaller collection of yurts. Less than five minutes after walking up the main drag of Xilamuren, a woman on a motorcycle asked us where we were going to which we replied “Ulan Bator.” She offered us a stay in one of her yurts, which she promised were much fewer in number than the large settlement and were suitably far away from this agglomeration at seven kilometers up the road. After haggling the transport price down to 50 kuai for all of us and 100 kuai total for the yurt she agreed to our conditions. We waited for about thirty minutes before her older sister took us up to the yurt settlement, which was an arrangement of about twenty yurts of differing amenity levels around a common courtyard. It was small and nice, surrounded by nothing but grasslands and a few similarly-sized yurt settlements hundreds of meters to kilometers away.
It was only 10:00 so we dropped our bags in the yurt and ordered some goat or horse milk tea, I am not sure which. The yurt boasted a picture of Kublai Khan at the back and a small table in the middle of the raised platform, which was our sleeping surface. We relaxed with the tea and enjoyed the view of the grasslands, though the sky was rather cloudy and the air a bit chilly. After a couple of hours and a few bites for lunch we were ready to ride horses.
Lukas Negotiates the Horse Prices
I have ridden horses only thrice, the last time over ten years ago. Each time I rode a horse that was unruly and would run off from the rest of the group, frightening the hell out of me, especially when one almost knocked my head off by nearly running me into a tree limb. I told myself that now I am no longer a boy and I should be able to deal with it. We paid for five hours of horse riding at 20 kuai per person per hour. The first bad sign came when the guide angrily yelled and cursed at the manager that he had been riding all week and did not want to ride today. He had a sour and angry look on his face the whole ride and would curse randomly. Having an unhappy guide is not a desirable thing.
Within thirty minutes, after the horses began to trot and gallop, I was moaning in pain. My horse’s stirrups were far too short. Even once I figured out the sort of rhythmic rise and fall to avoid being jostled like a jackhammer by the horse’s trotting, my knees quickly gave out since I could not stretch them into a resting position. It was like I was squatting the whole time, so I was unable to keep up the proper riding stance. Plus, I received a terribly painful blister next to my tailbone from rubbing against the saddle. After two hours of this, I knew I would never make it for three more, even though I felt bad for being the spoilsport to the others’ fun. David was an experienced rider and Lukas handled his horse well enough, and while Jerry had a tough time of it he was clearly not in the same sad shape as me. I started screaming with frustration and pain halfway through the ride, to which the guide paid no heed. Thankfully, we stopped at a hut to relax and enjoy some tea, but every movement was painful. From that point forward, we rode the horses at a walk back to the camp and everyone was sore. Even right now, forty-eight hours later, sitting down and standing up is laborious and the blister’s pain has not yet been halved.
We took a couple of hours’ rest in the yurt and instructed the camp’s cook to prepare a roast leg of lamb for us. After our rest we ordered some regular dishes which were surprisingly tasty albeit expensive since this was a tourist resort. Upon finishing our beers and the regular dishes, a server brought in the glorious roast leg of lamb and placed it at the center of the table. Our eyes lit up at its steaming mountains of perfectly-cooked flesh and well-rendered fat over thick, large bones. The cook provided two knives, and we wasted no time in carving and savoring the flavorful bounty. Lamb is one of my favorite things to eat in China, but it usually comes low-quality and thinly sliced as the barbecue shish kebab yang rou chuan’r sticks that must accompany any warm night out, and the cold ones too when it’s not so deadly icy that the stall cooks stay indoors. This leg of lamb was orders of magnitude above those miserable sinews in comparison, cut fresh from a healthy specimen killed that day. We sliced everything until only a small altar of forearm-sized bones remained on the table. Coupled with teacup mixtures of Scottish Collie and Pepsi, we were satisfied that we had organized a good dudes’ weekend out.
Sunset of XilamurenRemnants of the Evening Feast
Once we licked our lips clean of the lamb’s flesh, the proprietor called us out to the courtyard in the center of all the yurts to dance around the bonfire with the rest of the Chinese tourists. We participated for a bit and played the regular laowai celebrities, getting our pictures taken with all of the Chinese people. We then stepped out beyond the commotion of the techno dance party around the bonfire and walked into the darkness of the grasslands to enjoy the starry night sky. It was the second-best star-scene I have seen in China, next to Nam Tso lake in Tibet. Twenty minutes granted us with several shooting stars, possibly of Perseid origin, two satellites, and the full arching band of the Milky Way, interrupted only by fireworks from the courtyard and from other yurt settlements.
Before we made it back to our yurt, a Chinese businessman invited us to join him and his colleagues in their yurt. We grabbed the two small bottles of Mongolian baijiu we purchased earlier and the large bottle of Pepsi and accompanied him to his yurt. Eight Chinese businessmen greeted us. They were just getting started on their evening of drinking, and in the middle of their table sat an entire roast lamb. Lukas and David had seen this very lamb slaughtered earlier that evening. They invited us to sit at the table,happy that we had brought a gift of liquor. Before they carved the lamb, they had us all sing a song from our homelands and drink a full bowl of the 132-proof baijiu. I sang “This Land is Your Land,” and Jerry sang “Henry the Eighth,” while Lukas sang a Czech song and David sang a Colombian song. After we sang and downed the strong liquor, we were granted a blue khata scarf, a tradition shared by the Mongolians and Tibetans from their long history of cultural exchange. The businessmen didn’t sing songs, but the girl who served food sang a song while each businessman stood at the front of the yurt, and when she finished singing he would down the bowl of baijiu and take the blue khata scarf. Once this finished, one of our hosts began carving the lamb and offered everyone a generous slice, with we laowai receiving the first cuts.
Over the course of the evening we consumed about one-third of the lamb, six or seven slices for each of us. We were heartbroken that we could not eat more of it, but it was clear that our hosts purchased the lamb more for its “face” value than for the actual enjoyment of its succulent meat. It was more important for the boss of the company to show that he could buy the whole lamb than it was to finish eating it, a fact bolstered by their generous offerings of very expensive cigarettes – I turned them down because I don’t smoke, but if I was engaging in business negotiations with them I would have to accept and smoke them regardless of my personal practice. Once we finished eating and chatting, the boss of the company directed us all in a simple drinking game in which he turned away from the circle and beat a plastic bottle with a chopstick while we all passed a pack of cards like a hot potato. When the boss ceased tapping the bottle, whoever had the pack of cards had to take a shot of baijiu. This continued for nearly an hour, so by the end of the evening we were all in merry spirits indeed. During our chat, the businessman who invited us boasted that his son is the official in Beijing’s Chaoyang District (where the Central Business District and my office are located) who ultimately signs off on every construction approval in the District. We surmised that these men, in addition to being the executives of a textiles company, must be semi-influential Party members as well.
Exhausted from so much eating and drinking, we went to bed at about 23:30 and groggily arose with the Sun at 7:30. It was certainly hilarious to rise from the floor of the yurt to be greeted by the bony remains of our lamb feast from the previous night. We chugged some water and set out on a grasslands walkabout. Unlike the first day, there were no clouds in sight and the sun glowed warmly on the steppes. We walked for nearly four hours, simply enjoying the perfect quiet and the clean air. It is incredible that this idyllic natural escape is such a short hop away from the incessant clamor and choking air of Beijing.
Our Gracious HostsLaowai Grassland Nomads
We packed up our things from the yurt and caught a ride to Xilamuren’s bus stop, where the first bus to pass blew right down the road since it was full. Not long after, a Chinese couple in a minivan offered to take us to Hohhot for a fee. The man driving wanted to milk the foreigners for a handsome sum, but we managed to pay only 25 kuai each – just 4 RMB more than the bus ticket would have cost. He exclaimed to his wife repeatedly that he could not believe he was taking us for such a small sum.
When we left their van in Hohhot, we ate some spicy noodle soup and then went to the Great Mosque, built in fully Chinese architectural style. Even the minaret is topped by a Chinese-style pavilion roof, the crescent moon on top offering the only indication that this is an Islamic structure. You can walk around the courtyard for free, but only people coming to pray can enter the prayer hall. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the shade of Hohhot’s completely not-old Old City, a disgusting “cultural preservation” that is full of lowbrow street games and low-quality art auctions.
Relaxing at Hohhot's Great MosqueChinese Minaret at Hohhot's Great Mosque
We boarded the K90 train, which we dubbed “the famous jiǔ líng,” at 21:21 and laid our saddle-sore bodies right down to sleep. I was thankful for the shower Monday morning, as none of us had cleaned anything but our teeth and our hands since we left Beijing. The inexpensive and largely free-form trip was the most fun weekend trip I have taken in China, crowned by our night with the Chinese businessmen.
