The World's Best Xinjiang Diary Ever: Golden Week Travels 1

On Sunday 30th September (wow, such a long time ago!) I set off for my travels with Catherine, Liam and Frankie. Our train left Urumqi station at 12.07 and our first stop was a place called Korla (Ku’erle). Korla is a bingtuan. Now I suppose I should try to explain what bingtuan means… I guess it’d help if I really knew myself. The basic gist: bingtuan are both towns and companies set up outside of normal government jurisdiction, and the concept of these towns and companies. They are a Communist tool used to get the most out of the population and resources of a particular area, and were big towards the beginning of the People’s Republic of China in the 50s. Basically everyone that lives in a certain area works for the bingtuan in various enterprises, the children attend schools run by the bingtuan and the bingtuan works as an independent financial sector. It functions like a normal town/village except for the fact that it’s all going towards one common institution. The government tended to set them up in autonomous regions with high proportions of Chinese ethnic minority (ie. not Han), and often used the bingtuan influence (lots of Han Chinese) to prevent separatist movement. Most bingtuan were abolished in the seventies and eighties I believe, but in Xinjiang they were re-introduced and are still going strong. There is some goal to make the bingtuan the biggest global corporation on the planet, and our educated friends say there’s a very good chance this might happen some time soon. Anyway, in Xinjiang there are various towns which were set up artificially (like Milton Keynes!) to serve the bingtuan cause, and loads of Han were sent over from the more easterly provinces to live and work in them. Korla is one such town and therefore is very modern and Han-ified.
It’s also gazillions of miles away from Urumqi. It’s very hard to quite explain the scale of China to people that haven’t been here. It’s massive. We’ve flown across the country and it takes hours. Flying for that long can take you from Britain right out of Europe. Xinjiang takes up one sixth of the entire country. That’s pretty damn huge, people. From Urumqi, centre-north-ish of Xinjiang, to Korla, slightly more southern and west a bit, took us roughly 11 hours. Can you get from anywhere to anywhere else in Britain by train and have it take 11 hours? Maybe Wick to Penzance, I dunno. Anyway, my point is: it’s a long way to go by train. And we were bored out of our minds. On the train journey Liam and I and Catherine and Frankie were forced to sit in two separate pairs as most seats were taken. Liam and I were seated opposite a presumably married couple who had come with several supplies for the journey and who clearly knew what they were doing. We wanted to adopt them as our Chinese parents for the rest of the journey. We also made tea for ourselves for the first time out of those dried up little tea leaves, I think they call them tea pearls or something, anyway in Liam’s we stupidly put about half a cup of leaves to half a cup of water. I heard the woman say to her husband "that’s too much" so in mine I put a pinch less, and then we went to get hot water which is supplied from a tap on every Chinese train (because the distances are all so long and the Chinese can’t live that long without tea and instant noodles, you see). When we came back I took one sip of my tea and practically choked, but as the woman was watching us so closely to see how we’d take it I drank it anyway. Blurgh. Learnt my lesson from that one, didn’t I. Catherine taught Liam how to play Chinese chess, which he in turn taught me. I will be teaching this game to anyone in England who wants to learn, but particularly to my dad because I can tell it’d be his kind of game. We then played a couple of games which were embarrassingly scrutinised with interest by the four Chinese people sitting around us. They laughed whenever we did anything stupid. Which was fairly often. But I got the hang of it, although I’ve since forgotten exactly how to play. Catherine can re-teach me!
So that was how we passed the journey, arriving in Korla at 11pm. The train station, like every station I’ve ever been to since in China, was full of homeless people hanging around and also lots of people asleep on rags with big sacks full of stuff who may have also been homeless but may have just been waiting for their trains. Outside the station there were even more homeless people, including lots of pitiful little children. We went straight to a hostel near the train station and paid 20¥ (that’s £1.33) each for a room for the night. For that price we weren’t expecting much, and we got a very sparse and basic room (a bit like the dorms!) and shared a communal bathroom (sunken toilets, filthy as per) and shower which had no hot water. The beds were basically boards with sheets on them, and the pillows were all smelly and stained. Still, it was cheap… like the budgie.
We went straight back out to get something to drink and to check the train times for the next day. As we were perusing the timetable a crazy homeless woman ran over and ripped Liam’s bottle of Sprite right out of his hand, then danced around with joy (and madness) until a staff member told her to go away. She went away a short distance but still hung around. I felt quite sorry for her really as she was quite clearly desperate and also didn’t have all her marbles, but it made everyone else nervous so we went back to the hostel where we spent quite an uncomfortable night on the boards.
The next day, a Monday, was the 1st of October, which is National Day in China and is therefore a national holiday. We got on a bus outside the train station and went into town. Catherine is really into markets so on her request we went into a nearby street market. Markets in China can be a bit hit and miss. Some of them are a bit like British jumble sales and sell a lot of cheap tack and clothes and toys. However street markets are also probably the best places to get properly traditional and well-prepared street food, and to mix in with the local people best. Sometimes you can find a few stalls with great finds too. Mostly the atmosphere is really friendly and bustling though occasionally we’ve found some more hostile markets. This market was one of the good ones and I tried some tasty fried vegetable pasty/wrap things.
When we came out of the market we wandered into the more modern, Han part of town. Here, after a trip to a coffee shop, we found the Children’s Park which we went into, and had a brilliant time. There was a mini theme park and Liam and I tried out pretty much every ride, particularly the dodgems, while Catherine and Frankie went somewhere else for a bit, I think to a Chinesey-looking building, I forget. Chinese theme parks are great. Well I don’t know about the bigger ones, but these little ones in the public parks have no concept of safety regulations and so some of the rides are absolutely mental. We also went in these crazy bubble things. Basically they’re big clear plastic balls, and you climb inside a deflated one and they inflate it with a pump. Then they push you out onto a man-made lake, and you get to roll around the bubble like a hamster in one of those ball things. Kudos to the hamsters for staying upright; it’s harder than you’d imagine. Plus when they push you into the water it’s actually impossible to not fall on either your face or your ass. Elegant. Like the rest of the rides, these bubbles have not a snowball’s chance in Hell to pass EU health and safety – you’re in them for a few minutes but after about two you run out of air. At one point Liam, Frankie and I were all just lying on our backs desperately trying to conserve our oxygen, completely red in the face and exhausted. All the laughing and trying to stand up/walk/run (if you’re skilful) just makes the oxygen levels run down faster. Brilliant! What’s also great is watching your friends try to run towards you in a bubble, and either go backwards or fall over in what is such a spectacular fall it almost looks contrived. But take it from me, those tumbles were genuine.
When we came out of the theme park we went to a nearby restaurant and had some hongshao niurou mian (beef and noodles in a flavoursome soup) and suannai (literally sour milk, which is yoghurt. A traditional Uyghur speciality, they often serve it almost too sour to stomach, so sugaring it is absolutely necessary.)
After our dinner we went for a wander around Korla. In the morning, at the markets, we had seen what seemed like the sum total of the Uyghur population in Korla, and now we were exploring the brand-spanking-new Han parts of town. There were some very interesting buildings there (read: the architects need to be shot. For example, the coffee shop we had gone into that morning had been inside a pink German-style castle (don't ask)) but in cultural terms it wasn't anything special. We also managed to fit in a visit to People's Park where a giant group of Uyghur lads took a photo of them with me and Catherine, and a viewing of a folkdance competition, as well as another trip to a coffee shop - Korla was slightly lacking on tourist sites. Frankie's money belt (actually a bumbag under all her clothes) made her look a few months' pregnant, so, much to our amusement, she entered a specialist mother and baby shop, with Liam acting as the happy father-to-be. The VERY attentive shop assistant didn't seem to catch on until right at the end when she noticed me and Catherine outside practically wetting ourselves with laughter.
Finally, we went back to the train station where we intended to very easily board our train to Aksu. How naive. We had been told that if we got off the train at Korla, as we did, our tickets were such that we could get back on any Kashgar-bound train in the next 4 days. Just before the train was due into the station, we decided to check that that was indeed the case. Of course it was not. Our tickets had to be stamped and signed by a certain member of staff. Catherine ran off with an assistant to find said member of staff to get all four of our tickets done at once. Apparently she had to urge them to speed up as they were naturally completely unbothered that we might miss our train. Fortunately Catherine was back just in time, and onto the train we hopped, with very little time to spare.

Delighted to be off on my travels : )