Silk Road Tour - Part 1

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Today starts the official week long holiday called “National Day”, in honor of the Communist Party taking over China.  We booked a tour through a Chinese man, “Marvelous” Marvin Wu, who has been putting together trips for the BYU teachers in China for many years.  (We think he has gotten wealthy from BYU teachers!)  He calls this one the “Silk Road” trip, after the old trading route to Europe and beyond.  In the morning we flew to Urumqi in the far northwestern part of China.  (A bunch of coal miners were killed there just the other day.)  A local tour guide holding a “BYU” sign met us and we gathered on a bus.  It was so fun to meet up with several of the BYU teachers from our “class of 2014” and talk about each other’s problems, sharing the highs and the lows.  Some teach at universities that adore the BYU teachers, some are less loved.  Some had yet to even start teaching as their schools were on different schedules. 

The bus first took us to a Muslim bazaar/market where Anne learned she needs practice at this bargaining thing.  Clyde says they offer us the “round eye” discount (meaning a higher price) so Anne didn’t end up buying anything.  It must get really cold here because they were selling animal fur lined hats, coats, leggings, etc.  This area of China is called an autonomous region and the people here are more closely related to the middle-easterners (the 5 –stans countries) than the Han Chinese.  They are bigger (taller/heavier) and dress more modestly.  Few of the older people even speak Chinese here.  The signs look like Arabic.  We had a nice dinner with local food specialties not too spicy.  There was more meat (but not pork) than what we see in Chengdu.  The hotel was nice but they still have no padding on the beds here.  It is like sleeping on a box spring, without the spring!


Thursday, 10/02/2104  In the morning we had a nice breakfast at the hotel and then were taken to a museum of the different cultures in the region.  It gave us just a taste of what the people and their lives are like here, going back to cave people.  We would like to learn more.  What followed was a three hour bus trip to Turpan past China’s largest wind farm.  It went on for miles without a speck of vegetation of any kind.  The area is supposed to be the 2^nd lowest place on earth after the Dead Sea.  It looked like it had been scorched with an A-bomb – no living thing – plant or animal.  On one hill we saw what looked like ancient burial grounds.  In this middle of nowhere there was one truck stop where we all stocked up on snacks.  And unfortunately that’s the only place travelers can find a bathroom – it was hard not to throw up from the smell.  But the sky is very clear here, so that’s a plus; crisp and clean and no air pollution.



Scorched earth - not a living thing!

Model of Their Irrigation System

Grapes in drying shack

 

Next the bus took us to the Jiaohe Ancient City, an abandoned place that reminded us of Tattooine in Star Wars.  Built around 100 BC, it was on a mesa surrounded on two sides by rivers and high cliffs.  They dug dirt out to make the sunken roads and then packed the dirt into adobe to make the buildings – kind of like American Indians.  When it was complete there were 7000 family units, government offices and even a baby cemetery.  We loved the place and wish someone would do a Discovery Chanel style documentary on it.  We got back late to a very dirty hotel room, long black hair on the carpet, sticky something on the counters, but nothing we could do about it.  No dinner provided so we ate more of our snacks.

 

Jiaohe Ancient City

Gaochang - Ancient Walled City

Friday, 10/03/2014  Breakfast at the hotel involved a lot of greens.  Anne found a hard-boiled egg she could eat.  We were taken to another abandoned, no vegetation, 1st century BC walled city, Gaochang.  It was so big we had to be taken around in golf cart type vehicles.  We just can’t spend enough time in these fascinating places.  I hope I will have time to read about them some day.  Apparently Genghis Khan attacked this city and destroyed it.  And then much of any relics left were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.  Too bad.

Off to a Tuyugou Valley and a pure Uygur village.  Think of a photo of some very poor town in Afghanistan/Pakistan and that’s about what you get.  Again very barren and dusty, except for where the irrigation is.  I guess melons and grapes/raisins are their main trade.  We walked through the town as a group and then to some very interesting looking graveyards. 

 

Yes - this is someone's home

A cemetery

  While walking through the village, a teacher in our group, Ann Perry (also from Texas), tripped when a village woman offered to let her come take a look inside her home.  She fell on her arm and broke something.  There was no doctor or medical clinic there.  One of the other teacher’s had been a doctor in the US; a urologist, but at least a doctor, so he and his wife helped tie her arm up with some of our silk scarves purchased earlier.  There were no taxis in the place either, so the village elder ordered someone with a car to take them to the nearest city with a doctor/hospital.  We continued on with the trip and they met up with us again later that day.  Ann had broken her elbow in 7 places.  She chose to continue with the week-long tour.  What a trooper!  She later had to fly to Hong Kong (twice) for surgery.  Anne never did see her scarf that she had donated to the cause.

Out to Fire Mountain (aptly named – the scorched earth look) and a visit to the Pachikli Grottos.  We climbed down some cliffs to see caves painted inside with 1000’s of Buddha images and statues.  (I'm afraid if you've seen one Buddha, you've seen them all.)  Then back to Turpan and (Oh No!) the same hotel from the night before for lunch.  But at least it was a little more edible than the lunch yesterday.  We also visited a Muslim Temple. 

From here we had a long bus ride to some place (not sure of the name) to catch an overnight train.  Another new experience to be reported later.

 

 

Visit to the zoo

Saturday, 09/13/2014
As our class duties ramp up, we can’t keep one day straight from another.  On the 13^th we took a bus excursion around the first ring road to see what we could learn about getting around. We have bus cards and you have to put money on them every month.  What’s left over is forfeited.  The first ring road is kind of like FM 1960 in Houston; stop go, stop go, lots of traffic. We ended up at a big, five-floor bookstore where we hoped to find anything that was printed in English, but no luck.  Books and magazines were piled waist high everywhere.  We had to climb over piles just to get around.  

On the way back we saw an interesting looking park and hopped off the bus to investigate.  It was called the Chengdu Cultural Park.  It had a war memorial and several pagodas and wall carvings.  Next door was the Qing Taoist Temple.  It cost 10 yuan ($1.60 US) to enter.  There are actually several buildings, all very old, in the complex.  Each one ornate and some filled with huge religious statues.  We watched one man painting wall hangings (calligraphy?)  I am not sure what to call them yet, but he signed them with his “chop” – a red stamp.  It seems everything here needs to be stamped with red ink or it’s not valid. 

Sunday, 09/14/2014
Lucky us, we were again invited to dinner after church. This time it was the Busby family.  They have four high-energy kids and he works at the US consulate.   She is the Primary president.  The food was so good and it was so nice to eat on matching dishes.  We had ice cream for dessert!  Wednesday Anne returned to the Busby’s for a Primary presidency meeting.  She did not want to take a taxi but chose to learn something new.  She walked to a bus stop, took a bus to the metro station, and took the metro to the Busby’s stop.  From door to door, it took one hour each way.  

Friday, 09/19/2014
We all had the day off and planned to go see the giant panda preserve.  We (ourselves and the Hadds) got up early and headed out the door at 7AM.  Before we could decend the stairs, the building boss, Miss Li, handed Marilyn a note saying that she needed to be in the director’s office at 9AM for a ride to the police station to complete her resident visa permit.  Oh so typical.  No previous notice, just a demand appearance.  So that canceled our panda plans.  Marilyn sadly went back inside the apartment and the three of us took a bus to the zoo.  We needed the practice of getting there to the zoo on a bus, since the zoo is on the way to the panda place. 

Some walking at both ends and two buses later we arrived at the zoo.  We weren’t expecting much, so we were pleasantly surprised.  We had the place to ourselves at the beginning but it never got crowded.  We are used to bus loads of day care center and school children everywhere in the US, but not so here.  We did get to see one giant panda in a cage and many other wonderful animals like white tigers, and grizzly bears.  The weather has turned a bit cooler, so the animals were more active.

Sunday, 09/21/2014
Oh boy, our first day as Primary leaders.  But we lived through class and Sharing Time.  They started the full block of meetings, but here it only goes 2-1/2 hours.  Clyde was the Sacrament Meeting speaker.  Members gave him complements on his talk regarding  the Book of Mormon. 

Afterwards we were invited to the MacKay’s for dinner.  Carolyn and Howard ( a non-member) are from Canada.  He works for Shell Oil and they are really treated well here.  They live in an ultra-modern high rise with every available amenity.  She put on a real banquet:  roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, several different kinds of veggies, and hearty bread.  She served apple cobbler, chocolate cake and ice cream for dessert.  Lowly teachers like us can’t afford those types of grocery items, nor can we get them on the side of town we live in. 

We received an email saying that two teachers have not shown up and Marilyn Hadd and Anne were to take a turn subbing in their classes this week.  That meant two extra classes for Anne and working on her day off.  Again, it was typical, very little notice.  It made for a much busier week.  

Thursday, 09/25/2014
During a break between teaching classes on the old campus, Clyde took a walk around some of the tiny shops that line the first ring road.  He came to a “hole in the wall” type of store that had some phones on display.  Anne is unable to work with the cheap, dumb phone that we got after we first arrived.  It has many things in Chinese and we couldn’t get it to work correctly.  She wanted a “smarter” phone.  He asked to see one of the lower-end smart phones and, surprise – the kid spoke very good English!  After trying out the phone, Clyde was able to get the price down from 600 RMB to 400 RMB (around $65).  But he didn’t have enough cash at the time, so he said he’d be back.  We both went this evening to check out the phone, but we also took our old Verizon phones with us.  We thought it was worth a try to see if this kid could figure out why they didn’t work here.  (We had called Verizon twice before we left the states to confirm that the phones would work in China, and that the phones were unlocked.)  Anyway, the kid (his English name was Scorpion) switched the SIM cards out of our dumb phones, worked his magic, and our Verizon phones now work!  WooHoo!  They have the Chinese number we use locally.  (You would still call our “281 . . .” numbers to talk to us on our WiFi (Republic) phones.)  Anyway, we are excited to have working smart phones!  (We hope they continue to work!)  We offered to pay him for his service, but he declined.  He just liked practicing his English on us.  We told him we’d recommend him to the Hadd’s because they want to upgrade their phones.  On the way back to our apartment, we passed a small guitar store.  Three guys were jamming on the sidewalk.  We stopped to listen.  One of the guys went into the shop and brought out stools for us to sit on as we listened to them play.  Very nice!