Dragged myself awake and out of bed by half nine after a rather pleasant hot shower. I'd been travelling for a single day and I already appreciated the joy of a shower! We jumped in a taxi and asked for the bus station, which turned out to be literally just down the road. At the bus station we bought 119 kuai tickets to Yan'an, on a sleeper bus, and then asked if there was a bus to Xixia Wangling (Western Xia Dynasty Tombs). The tombs are Yinchuan's main attraction, but lie far out from the city. Obviously at a long distance bus station they wouldn't have buses to the tombs, but we thought it was worth a try. No luck. We asked at information if we could leave our bags, and to our surprise, there was indeed a cavernous left luggage room. We now know that they have these at every bus and train station in China, but at the time, and being used to typical Chinese lack of organisation, we didn't know. We left our bags and walked out into the main square of Yinchuan, which is like a diddy Tiananmen, to look for a bus. We saw the 31 which went to Xixia Park but we thought that was just a park and not the actual tombs. There was nobody to ask either. We did a full lap of the square and found a man fixing a bus and asked him. He told us the name of a different square and then pointed back in the general direction of the long-distance bus station we had just come from. We decided instead of searching forever we'd just ask a taxi driver for the square, but the first one we asked said it didn't exist! So we mustered our courage with some street food (horrible baked things, it turned out, ick) and tried another taxi. This taxi driver, a woman, seemed friendly and I asked if she could just take us to the bus stop for the tombs. She said okay so I got in the front. Then she unsurprisingly asked why we didn't get a taxi all the way to the tombs. We said it was too far, and therefore too expensive. She said she'd take us there, wait, and then return us to Yinchuan bus station for 100 yuan. We worked it out and actually it wasn't much more than we would have paid doing it all by bus so we accepted, though even at that point we suspected she'd find a way to squeeze more money out of us. 100 seemed far too reasonable to me so I worked out roughly how much money she'd make by staying in the city for an equal length of time and it did seem like she'd still be making a killing in comparison at 100, so our suspicions lessened a little. So off we went. For the entire journey I was sitting in the front and not making conversation which was a bit awkward. I just can't seem to get over my shyness of talking to Chinese people! We got to the tombs and started to walk up a never-ending driveway to what we hoped were the tombs. Halfway there a little golf cart bus thing pulled up with loads of Chinese tourists on it, and we hopped on too. It was bone-chilling going up the path with the wind whipping past us, but we were already getting more resilient in terms of the cold. We were dropped off at a museum which was fairly interesting; a bit about the Western Xia period and lots of artefacts, including many of the originals of replicas we'd seen at the Ningxia Museum the day before. We left the museum and walked on for a bit on foot until we found another place to go into. In this building there were lots of waxwork models depicting the rise and very momentous fall of the Western Xia Kingdom - it was 'obliterated' by the Mongols on orders from Genghis Khan on his deathbed. Wondering where the actual tombs were, we climbed a little corner tower thing and spotted a giant tomb (therefore an emperor's tomb, not just a courtier's (who had mini tombs, dotted all over the place, which we'd already come across)). It was tomb number 3, Li Yuanhao's. We found a path towards it and took our photos before the population of China (read: tour group) could catch us up. The tombs look a lot like beehives or termite hills now, because they were destroyed by the Mongol army and grave robbers, but originally they were all constructed like pagodas, some with 5 floors and some with 7. After taking a photograph of ourselves with a Kalavinka (a Buddhist deity thing with wings), we got back in the taxi. We'd been a little worried that she'd have left us, as the tombs really were in the middle of nowhere. Ah but she was still there, waiting to take our money off us. Next the taxi lady asked us if we'd seen some city place, but we'd never even heard of it, so when she offered to take us and told us that it was a must-see, we agreed to go and have a look. We guessed she might add a price onto the 100 for this but we thought it couldn't be too excessive. When we got there we discovered it was a film set which had two replica "cities": one Qing Dynasty and one Ming Dynasty, and a courtyard dedicated to the Cultural Revolution. Basically producers used the cities as film sets for period dramas and films. It was surprisingly interesting, and apparently vital to the Chinese film industry - hundreds of films had been made there, though we hadn't seen any. It would have been more interesting if we had, I suppose. I had the fright of my life when a sheep baaed behind me - that was because I was already on edge from one of the film sets which was like caves full of skulls and spiderwebs. Then in one of the caves there was this giant 'spider' hanging from the roof with a woman's head and loads of breasts... creepy stuff. There were also lots of freakily realistic models of humans and animals, and even some real camels and horses. There were little houses we could go in which were built and furnished in either the Qing or Ming style, and a boring two storey museum dedicated solely to movie posters. We thought, naively, that it was just films that had been filmed in this set, but then we came across Harry Potter and some old British classics and realised it was, in fact, just a random selection of posters. Finally we visited the small Cultural Revolution courtyard. There were posters up like the old denouncing posters and then a room like a prison cell, with a model of a prisoner in it, as well as cuttings from old newspapers on the walls. There were also a lot of film stills about the Revolution and it looked really intimidating. Outside there was a platform with a desk on it, a microphone, and Mao's Little Red Book, clearly where announcements (and denouncements) would have been made. In front of it there was a model of a man on his knees in the intellectuals' dunce hat. What bothered me most was that the Chinese tourists there seemed really into it, and took photos of themselves beating the model, pointing guns at him and doing the Communist fist-clenched salute. I also held a gun, but as a Western Imperialist Running Dog I can safely say that it was ironic; I certainly didn't feel the sincere zeal for it that these people do!
We get back in the taxi and the woman suddenly announces that she's charging us an extra 100 for this detour. We didn't have much choice in the matter because we were still in the middle of nowhere, so we figured we'd argue with her about it when we got back to Yinchuan. When we got there though, she simply refused our bargaining and so we ended up giving her an extra 100 after all. She said it wasn't her car so she had to pay more, plus tolls plus the detour... though she said she understood we were students and didn't have much money, she claimed she too had no choice but to ask for more. Cheek.
It was freezing cold so we power-walked our way through the streets in search of a restaurant, and eventually found a little out-of-the-way place. The woman instantly said "oh they don't understand" and then when we said we did and conducted everything in Chinese she seemed to find it hilarious and kept turning round to the other staff and giggling. Ordinarily we would have walked out at such rudeness, but we just couldn't be bothered to find another place. We ordered fried aubergine and small fried lamb, both of which were really nice and very filling! The whole restaurant smelt of toilet, but the toilets themselves had their own particularly special smell. We left and went to the bus station to get on our bus to Yan'an. We waited about an hour and then went to the gate to board the bus. About 5 minutes before it was due, we were told that no bus would be running to Yan'an because of the really bad weather conditions, and that we could get a full refund on our tickets. We were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. A staff member took our tickets and returned with our refund, which was nice of her. We thought we'd try our luck at the train station. Liam had previously researched and found that to get to Yan'an by train you have to go through Xi'an! (Huge detour.) But off we went anyway.
When we got to the train station we thought it best to look at timetables before joining one of the three giant snaking queues. There didn't appear to be anything going to Yan'an so we decided we'd try for Baotou if there actually was no train to Yan'an. There was a train at 18.43 to Baotou and we joined the shortest queue at 6pm, thinking if the queue were efficient we'd make it. However we had the slowest of all the queues (sod's law) with a really inefficient clerk and loads of people pushing in. We got really annoyed, as you might, and started badmouthing everything at which point the man in front of us told Liam he understood what we were saying and agreed. That didn't stop him from letting someone in in front of him though, even knowing what a rush we were in. I was surprised that nobody tried to push in front of us - apparently the Chinese consider it an achievement to push in front of a white person (this has to do with the old inferiority complex thing they have with us Imperialist Powers, originating from the days of yore...). Several have tried to push in front of me during my time in China and realised I am not a weak option! I have no issue with physically pulling/pushing them out of my way if they try their luck. I also tell them to queue. This is often met with looks of complete bewilderment. 'Queuing? What is this queuing thing you talk of? We have certainly never come across such a thing in OUR country!' When we learnt the Chinese for 'to queue' we were really surprised that they actually had a word for it, seeing as they definitely don't understand the concept of the action.
I digress. We'd pretty much abandoned the idea of Yan'an by now and so when we finally got to the front we asked for tickets to Baotou instead. We'd missed the 18.43 ticket-selling cut-off point (depending on the station, this can be 20/15/10 minutes before the train is due to leave) and thought the next train was at 4am, fortunately (I like to look on the bright side) it was only at 00.40. We had little choice but to go and wait for the next 6 hours: it was very cold out and neither of us were hungry, and there was nowhere else to go! Our tickets were 67 yuan, for no seats. Comfy.
The waiting room was freezing and the toilets vile. I went off to walk simply because I couldn't feel my toes and I thought perhaps I could walk some sensation back into my feet. It didn't work, but I did come across a smaller waiting room with comfortable seats, a hot water machine, and a TV screen. I went right in and nobody stopped me, but it seemed like a first-class lounge or something and I expected to sit in it, we'd have to pay. I heard the woman at the desk outside the door saying it was 8 yuan to enter but that seemed too good to be true! What was the craic with this? Why was everyone sitting out in the freezing cold with plastic seats as hard as nails when for 8 kuai they could have comfort? Cheapskates! (This is when I notice my superior rich Westerner attitude creeping in...) Anyway I fetched Liam and it was in fact true that for 8 kuai we got entrance and a cup of hot tea that we could refill when we liked. Heaven! We played cards and ate some hongshao niurou fangbian mian (instant beef noodles) to warm us up. When they opened the doors to let people onto a train, it felt like they'd opened the door to the Arctic Tundra. We spent a lot of time practically hugging the bars covering the radiator; this was our survival method.
Suddenly at around half ten/11pm, they rather unceremoniously switched the lights off in the room and turfed us all out. However when we came out (last, as they hadn't bothered to tell us what was going on and we had our stuff to get together) they directed us into an even smaller, warmer room with a small group of people in it, to wait. Other people tried to come in, and the staff wouldn't let them even when they offered to pay. We seemed to have somehow stumbled onto a bit of luck at last, and this is where we were at the end of the day - passing the last few minutes until the train would arrive.
Tomb 3 and the impressive mountain scenery behind it.
Me in front of Tomb 3. If I hadn't known it was a tomb, I'd be looking around fearfully for some monster termites right about now...
I am a Kalavinka.
And Liam is a Ming Dynasty peasant.
And this is one scary-ass spiderwoman. The photo does not do justice to how much we were creeped out by this.
And now I am a Red Guard, about to do damage to the dirty dirty intellectual.
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