Hey all! This entry is a continuation of a discussion on the Firefly board, so it only applies to those on the FF Board. It has nothing to do with China, and everything to do with an eery coincidence which I’m not going to go into, for fear of spoiling things for the Australians… “we shall speak of it no more!” *spits*

Here is a cap of the symbol of the Circle of the Black Thorn, for comparison to the real life Blue Sun logo:

Then check out the image in the top right hand corner of this page:

Bizarro, hey?

The floodgates are open! On seeing Pat’s entry, what could Christine do but submit her own perspective on life in rural China?

So here she is folks, the hero of the hour, Mushuk’s Salvation, Miss Christine!

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Hey there, I’m Christine!! You may remember me from such blogs as ‘Girls build a snowman in Dushanzi’, ‘Home-cooking in Dushanzi’ or my personal favourite, ‘Mushuk nearly dies but Christine saves the day in Dushanzi!’ Yep, I couldn’t leave Dushanzi without having formally introduced myself, so a big ‘G’day’ to all of Charlottes blessed blog devotees out there.

I’ve nearly hit the 3 month mark here, being the furtherest and longest away ever from home, good old muddy grey Melbourne and i’m loving it! The people are Ace, the food is fantastic and the weather superb. Teaching can be pretty challenging, but mostly a laugh. Teaching the older kids at the college is great in terms of socializing, going out for dinner and finding out about the ins and outs on life in China in a pretty straight up and informal way. I’m constantly being surprised by this place.

The Uygher people are especially friendly. I made the mistake of telling the horde of boys who sit in front of our corner store the two words I know in Uygher, ‘Stop!’ thanks to the taxi driver who took us to the devil’s playground and ‘cat’ thanks to our resident kamikaze. So everyday I walk past now they yell, “Toc tar, Mushuk!!” I guess I’ll forever be known to them as the crazy foreigner with an aversion to cats.

While I am actually quite fond of our little Mushuk, one thing I do have an aversion to here is the politics at the local pool! Not only aren’t there any lane ropes, but people swim width ways, diagonally, upside down and practically back to front at that place! It’s chaos there on hot days. I’ve suffered many a kick in the ribs, elbow to the face but nothing beats avoiding standing next to the women in the showers who don’t mind relieving themselves at your feet. Uh huh, it really happens.

Subsequent to these times when the pool is especially chaotic, I’ve taken to splashing out instead on a massage from the talented masseurs in Dushanzi. Bona Fide Chinese massage, nothing beats it, in fact nothing beats quite like it. I’ve only ended up in bruises once after an especially harrowing experience that involved ‘equipment’. While it might have been good for my inner health as they kept insisting, I’ve since however decided to steer clear of the girls with the masochist massage tools.

While I’m missing Aussie TV here, Charlotte’s DVD collection has been exceptional. When I first arrived Charlotte insisted I give myself to Joss Whedon or forever be damned, so I hesitantly opened my DVD player to his Firefly and what can I say? I guess I was satisfied as I’m now on to series 2 of Angel. I am even a little disappointed as Charlotte no doubt is that we are missing out on the arrival of James Marsters in Melbourne in a few weeks. I’ve never been one to say no to a bit of celebrity head hunting. There’s certainly been no sign of any celebrities around these parts that I’ve seen. Going to the Devils Playground where they made Crouching Tiger has been as close as we’ve come to a whiff of Hollywood in these parts. It’s definitely been one of my favorite places to see. Charlotte and I had fun reenacting the ‘GIVE ME BACK MY COMB!!’ scene and being all touristy and taking heaps of pictures.

Yes, its been wonderful having Aussies here. Our little foreign community may be small but there’s never a dull or at least interesting moment. If Charlotte and Pat aren’t arguing Xinjiang politics with each other while I’m seemingly arguing semantics with myself [or pulling the argument so far off course that your resident blogger gives up and goes to bed, leaving the other two to argue semantics - Ed.], we’re always being entertained at least. We’re off to dinner tonight with Cameron, the winner of the speech contest a few weeks back and a great laugh to be with!! He speaks crazy English in more ways than one.

Anyway, I hope we’re going to the night market. The night market Rocks!!

That’s all from me. Laters

Heigh ho folks, here’s a treat for you. Following absolutely NO prompting from me, my neighbour and fellow Australian Patrick spontaneously decided to write a guest blog entry, giving his impressions of this place from his perspective, showering you with his pearls of wisdom and insight into the wonderful place that is Dushanzi.

Here is Pat striking a thoughtful pose, and me attempting to look thoughtful and merely looking like a d*ckhead.

So, without further ado, I shall pass the reins over to our very own Patrick:

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I am Pat, and as a purely preventative measure against further nagging from Charlotte, I post this guest web-log. Or ‘gublog’, as I am told it is more correctly known to those in the cyber-know.

Firstly, please duly note my trepidation in writing this in the wake of Charlotte’s superb entries – really rather like an amateur dabbling on Picasso’s unfinished canvas, or just any run-of-the-mill journalist writing for The Colac Herald. Secondly, I must be honest with you from the beginning and confess I never really liked Firefly. In fact, to be severely honest, I don’t even like science fiction.

With those possible offences to Charlotte’s fan base out in the open, I shall continue.

I arrived in Dushanzi in the middle of February. It was the arse-end of the winter and within a month the snow had melted and the greenery had appeared. This is my third time to China but my first to Xinjiang, and my immediate impressions were positive. Xinjiang is not China in many respects – compared to the east coast, it is sparsely populated and naturally extremely beautiful. The enormous deserts, mountains and basins are quite literally overwhelming. This, along with the friendliness of the peoples here, has endeared the province to me and I say without a doubt that Xinjiang is alongside Yunnan province as China’s greatest treasures.

Life in Dushanzi is not so much a trial as a challenge. In my first week here, I came home to discover my hot water system had crashed through my bathroom roof and smashed my basin in two – I did, however, find that if I placed one foot on a fallen beam and semi-straddled the large cylinder, I could still take a pee. In my second week, I took up swimming at the local indoor pool (surely a sign that oil has made this town very wealthy by Chinese standards…) and discovered that stares at the foreigner on the street were a trivial affair compared with stares in the change room showers. In my third week, our little foreign population was joined by Christine and so now I have not one, but two woman constantly mothering me.

Teaching English is a wonderful medium to discover a country, but is a career I am not certain I am cut out for. I teach at the local college – a vocational college for students aged 17-23 from around Xinjiang and China. After my first day of teaching, I noted in my journal that it reminded me of a Central Asia version of Degrassi Junior High. The fashions are ostensibly 1980s and the grounds are rather drab, but the students really are very kind hearted and well meaning. Week fifteen and I unfortunately cannot record any amazing improvements in my students English. The mid-term evaluations I had them do returned some interesting results. On a positive note –

“…I wish everyone to study much knowledge from you. We like to change into the man like you.”

OR

“Patrick is a good teacher. We are bad students”.

Less flattering for myself –

(Q: I don’t like English class when…) “stern. Flay. Berate. Harshness.”

OR

“ I had a bad mind and the class atmosphere is very death.”

Classes are generally fun, though sometimes draining – often responses in English are as tough to come by as bacon and eggs at a Muslim restaurant. Saying that, my recent foray into music teaching proved rewarding and a tear could be detected in my eye as I had these children maul the words of Waltzing Matilda in a rendition on Anzac Day.

There is much to see in Xinjiang and I’ve tried to make use of weekends to see it. Highlights are the Silk Road trading posts of Turpan and Kashgar, the Canadian Rocky-esque Heavenly Lake and the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Urumqi. Last month I ventured to the Ili Valley on a sleeper bus to see the sight of the 1967 Sino-Russian conflict and the town today, along with Kashgar, most associated with Uygur uprisings in Xinjiang (including fatal riots in the last decade). The issue of Sinification of Xinjiang (or the colonizing of this province by Han Chinese from the east and the repression of and racism towards Uygurs and other nationalities) is one of great concern to me and in many respects is far more shocking and pressing than the famed Tibetan cause. Without space nor time to expand on the issue here, I do implore you to read more on this. Try typing Uygur into a search engine or have a read of the US State Department reports on human rights and religious freedom in China.

I think that is enough from me. Should time have sufficed, I would have loved to tell you more about our little foreign community here but as it is you’ll have to tune into Big Brother 5 or repeats of Melrose Place to get an idea. It’s been a pleasure blogging with you (… is that right?).

It was 5 in the morning, and I was lolling awake in bed, marveling at the forces of nature. The wind had blown up a gale, and I had just got up to close my bedroom window, cause the curtains were flapping around like they owned the place. I still had the kitchen window open, and as I was lying awake, listening to the hurricane outside, I heard something that sounded a little too lifelike to be wind induced. Infact, it sounded like a cat, screaming like its life would end.

I sat bolt upright. Mushuk!

I ran around the apartment, looking in all his usual sleeping spots. Nowhere to be found. Mushuk!

The nasty thought was rapidly insinuating itself into my mind. The inevitable had happened. During his nightly jaunts out on my window ledge, where I usually trusted him to be sensible, the wind had proved too much for my light-as-a-feather (not!) feline companion. He had surely plummeted the two storeys to the ground.

From that point, everything was a bit of a blur, a big, hopeless, distraught blur. I ran outside, determined that if he was still in the land of the living, I’d have to find him. As I went around to the back of the building, I saw in the darkness (they turn off the street lamps at 3am) a streak of black running across the road, through the fence. I couldn’t have been sure if it was him – after ten minutes of searching, I’d started to convince myself that the streak of black was my mind playing sadistic tricks on me.

Finally, after almost giving up a few times, I remembered that Chris had a torch. Reluctant to leave off the search, even for a moment, in case Mushuk wandered even further off in his panic, I dashed upstairs and rapped feverishly on Chris’s door. At five in the morning, mind you. Poor Chris, whipped out of bed to be faced with a half hysterical neighbour, begging a torch. In hindsight, I couldn’t have done better. Cause downstairs Chris came shortly after, and looked in all the spots where I was half afraid to look – right below the window where Mushuk had fallen. I didn’t want to think about finding a small bloody ball of black fluff, so I’d been looking in the direction that I could have sworn I’d seen the black streak run towards.

Only a few minutes later, I heard a cry from under the building, “Charlotte! I’ve found him!”

The wind was blowing hard, and must have muffled my words to her, “Is he alive? Is he OK?” because she gave no answer.

So, imagine my impatience to get to the other side of the fence, which requires dashing 100m up to the hole, and then 100m back again. By the time I got there, I could see Chris, on her hands and knees, halfway under the building, making meowing sounds. Pat had joined us by this stage, awakened by the kerfuffle when I’d knocked on Chris’s door (or perhaps by the blood curdling cat’s scream earlier), and we both stood by as Chris heroically extracted one small, scared ball of kitty fluff and urine from under the building. I’m going to ask her if she’s considered a career in firefighting.

So back we trundled inside, tiptoeing up the stairs, scared and half crazy cat over my shoulder. I bid goodnight to my fellow rescuers with thanks and praise, and then took Mr I’m-fine-out-on-the-ledge-I-swear back inside my apartment, to looked him over for broken bones. None that I can see, but a few small grazes. And a huge gash in his self esteem. Poor little thing’s flouncing round the place now, adorned with a new nickname, Limpy. That’s one lucky cat.

Only eight more lives to go.

On our third day in Kashgar, we thought that perhaps a day trip might be the go. So we hired a car, along with a driver and an tour guide (theoretically English speaking) called Ablimt (pronounced Ablimit). Deb was pretty keen to see the Taklamakan desert, which as I may have mentioned before, is the second biggest shifting sand dunes desert after the Sahara. I’m a huge fan of golden shifting sands deserts, and I can’t get enough of sitting at the top of one, with my feet buried in the sand, the sun on my shoulders, with a good book for a few hours. I love it. That’s one of the reasons I liked Dunhuang so much.

Unfortunately, there was plan foiling afoot.

What we’d failed to take into account was that we were actually going on this trip on the WETTEST day that Kashgar had had all year. You see, it maybe rains with torrential, flooding rains, once a year. Our trip coincided with that day.

Now, add to that the fact that many of the roads on the way out to the Taklamakan were a) dirt, b) undergoing road works, or c) all of the above, and you start to get an idea of how our trip went.

I think the first word that springs to mind is, “mud”.

The car trip should have taken 3 hours one way. It ended up taking closer to six! But lord, was it an experience, and the landscape that we saw was lovely, not to mention unexpected. The oasis just kept extending Eastwards from Kashgar, and we saw crops, tall trees, and oh, lots of mud. There were a few times where we were afraid we were going to have to get out and push.

Check this out – the car you see in this pic is actually bogged, and it looks like a better off road vehicle than our little sedan, but did that deter our driver? Not one bit!

Note the large audience on the left hand side: none of them were offering to help the other car out of the bog. This was a strictly spectator sport.

So. Sara, Deb and I exchanged looks, and someone made the brilliant suggestino that perhaps we should get all of our gear up off the floor of the car, cause there was a good chance that even if we made it through without getting bogged ourselves, we could have a mini flood at our feet inside the car. The road was THAT deep inwater.

Our driver revved the engine, and bravely ventured into the small road-lake-thing. A few times, I heard the revs on the engine go higher than they should have, given our speed, and then we began the slippery upwards climb out of the bog. I thought to myself “this is it, there’s no way we’re making it out of this. We’re gonna be stuck here, and we’ll miss the market tomorrow!”

But I thought too soon, cause with increasing speed, we suddenly made it out of the bog, accompanied by the hoots, cheers and applause from our audience. Three thrilled foreigners cheered their driver from the back seat.

Now, don’t think for a second that the adventure was over, because we also had to cross a flood plane, on the most tempororary bridge I have EVER seen in my life. I’d never seen a pontoon bridge before – good greif, I didn’t even know what a pontoon bridge was until then. Shall I enlighten the unenlightened? A pontoon is apparently a bridge that is supported over water by boats, rather than having solid foundations in the ground. It’s a floating bridge! Check it out!

So, we finally made it to the Taklamakan, and saw the rolling dunes of the desert. But then there was something wrong with the picture – there were kids on bicycles, speeding up and down the hills, not sinking one centimeter into the sand. The weather was just a little spitty by that stage, but we could see that walking up into the desert would be nowhere near the hard labour that it had been in Dunhuang – the sand was wet and hard, just perfect for little Uyghur kids with bikes to go speeding around, obviously lovin’ it.

After a bit of a wander into the desert, our guide, Ablimt, asked us if we wanted to ride some camels. Now, bear in mind that because my shoes were wet, I’d taken them off to walk in the sand. The wind was blowing up a gale, making the droplets of rain like little bullets. So I was cold and wet, and here was Ablimt asking me if I wanted to ride a camel. Well, you can guess what my answer would have been.

OF COURSE I BLOODY WELL WANT TO RIDE A CAMEL!! They’re only, like, my most favorite semi domesticated animal in the WORLD!

So, Ablimt says something to one of the kids in Uyghur, and of he scuttles, returning not five minutes later with an old, dignified Uyghur gent, camel and baby camel in tow.

When I saw the camel and her baby, I instantly felt a little guilty, but utterly enchanted at the same time. Here was this poor old dam, freshly spring shorn, torn from her nice warm stable, and her poor little kid brought along for the ride, just to satisfy the whims of some pampered Western tourists. But my LORD, that baby camel was cute! He was skittering and scampering around the whole time the old Uyghur gentleman (he wasn’t a “guy”, he had the distinct air of gentleman about him) was putting on the camel saddle.

The ride itself was more like a carnival ride, him leading the camel, baby prancing around infront of and behind us as we went, and we each only rode for a couple of minutes. Not quite what I’d had in mind when I first thought about going out to the Taklamakan. I’d had visions of saddling up camels with two days of rations and water, and venturing out into the desert for a proper trek, not this silly fairground routine. But the elements were against it, alas, so we had to content ourselves with seeing a baby camel.

Once we were done, we paid our negotiated 40 yuan to this old guy, who then turned around and handed some of the cash over to the kids who’d been spectating, and occasionally offering some assistance.

I love the way in this photo, the baby’s stickybeaking over the old guys shoulder, wanting a piece of the action.

Then it was home again. ~insert five hours worth of witty commentary here~

This whole camel thing had completely stuck in my head. I just couldn’t get the image of the baby camel out of my head. When we got back to the hotel, we went in though the main lobby rather than going round the side, and in the main lobby, they had a little table, where a resident artist painted traditional Kasgarian scenes onto t-shirts and rice paper. This scene of the camel and her baby out in the Taklamakan, and the sight of someone drawing pictures of camels, and my other favorite beast of burden, donkeys, got me all enthusiastic, and I went and commissioned a painting to commemorate my day. He took two tries to get it right (over the space of two days), but the finished product is, I think, my most beloved purchase that I’ve made thus far in China.

There’s apparently a place in Kuytun where I can get my paintings that I bought in Dunhuang and Kashgar mounted onto a proper scroll mounting. By scroll mounting, I mean, like this one, which is just a copy of a very famous painting of a very famous tree in Sichuan(?)

Have I mentioned that I am addicted to scroll paintings? I could be vastly delusional, but the seem to be such a classy decoration.

Anyway, more in coming days about the Sunday Market, and the Mor Pagoda (Miss Bron, darling, I’ve not forgotten about you, I’m just going in order. The story of the Pagoda day is one of my faves. I think that that was my most favorite day in Kashgar, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself!)

Love to all,
Charlotte

The ever observant Katie made a comment about the purple furry coat I was wearing, and I decided it deserved a quick entry of its own. Not in the least because Katie was the person who was practically solely responsible for me first paying attention what I was wearing, while we were in France together. I don’t know whether she’s aware of how much I owe her in that sense – if it weren’t for her, I’d still be wearing shapeless t-shirts, denim jackets (fine for some, but a disaster on me), and clothes that did nothing to take advantage of my best features, and minimise the visual effects of my … ahem … worst.

Most of the clothes that I wear now are from my tailor. Getting clothes made is easier, cheaper, and more gratifying than any shopping experience I’ve ever had in Melbourne. Seriously, that lady knows how to make clothes. And she knows what I want out of clothes! I get to choose the material, the style, the perfect cuffs, neckline, everything. She’s my hero.

In my last few months here, I’m going crazy at her shop, getting about two garments made every three weeks or so, so that I can go home with a complete new wardrobe. While Sara and Deb were here, they got some stuff made too, and there’s an extra skirt on it’s way to being finished for my mum (they didn’t have the right material while she was here).

So, here’s to my tailor, and to Katie, who made me care in the first place!

Charlotte

So, after the Id Kah mosque, which we were not allowed into, we wandered through the practically deserted front square (you will remember that the square was blocked off by a large sheet iron fence), and managed to pick our way through the construction site towards the back of the temple, and all of a sudden, we found ourselves in a street bazaar. It was like something out of Indiana Jones, except the buildings were browner, and in places more ornate than Indy’s stomping grounds.

The roads were either very authentic, or there was a WHOLE lot of construction and street works going on in Kashgar. The streets in this area of town were a full metre or so lower than the level of the sidewalks and shop fronts. But it somehow managed to NOT look like an Old West town – it managed instead to look busy, exotic, and surprisingly thriving. Everywhere, there were people out on business, and the thing that amazed me most was that there were just SO many shops selling nan, yet it all must get eaten by the end of the day, or the nan shops would not be baking it all everyday. None of my photos quite do justice to the bustling nature of this street bazaar – perhaps it was the fact that it had been raining the day before, dirty, dusty rain, which covered everything in this film of brown.

We had fun, poking around in “antique” shops (yay me, I managed to NOT spend anything!), and at one point, passed a shop that I couldn’t have resisted if I tried:

OK, so I went in, and was finally in a shop with GOOD quality traditional Uyghur instruments, instead of the crappy tourist things that they sell in the Uyghur markets in Urumqi. The place was manned by the owner’s son, who actually spoke amazing English. He let me have a go on some of the nicer instruments, and then one of his mates gave us a demo on this looooong necked instrument whose name I forget. It sounded just brilliant.

This was about the only time that I’ve rued taking my fiddle to China – airlines will only allow one extra piece of carry on luggage in the form of precious musical instruments. I think I’d be pushing it a bit to try to get my fiddle and this bazouki thing that must have been almost two metres long into an overhead locker…

The instrument that I’m holding in this pic is actually much harder to play than you’d think, considering the tuning and spacing is practically identical to a violin. I guess a cello player would have a better time of it. They were using a violin bow to play it though!

Our next stop for the day was the town square, where resides one of the biggest Mao statutes in China. It’s symbolic, really, that one of the biggest (and few remaining) Chairman Mao statues is in Kashgar, which is very heavily populated by Uyghurs, who are amongst the more militant ethnic minorities in China. There have been terrorist threats and attacks in the past few years. So, what better way to keep the natives in check than to put a statue of the (still, despite the fact that he’s DEAD) official head of the Chinese government in the main town square. But he obviously doesn’t like his view much – he was continuously hailing a cab the whole time we were there (not my joke, don’t blame me), but alas, no twenty metre tall cabs passed by, at least, not while we were there:

Near the square was a botanical garden, which we thought would be nice to visit, but after having seen the Summer Palace in Beijing, practically every other garden pales in comparison. Add to this, the fact that the dust rain had turned all the trees from green to khaki, and the whole thing was a tad ho-hum. BUT, right next to the park was another attraction that we’d not considered – the FERRIS WHEEL! As it turned out, this was the perfect opportunity to get a feel for the old-new juxtaposition of Kashgar:

You can see the old city in brown, interspersed with the blocky white Chinese apartment buildings. It’s amazing, how a building made out of dirt can seem less dirty than a white tiled building after a dust storm…

Here’s a close up of some of the Old City buildings. They’re like something out of Aladdin. All you’d need to do is take out the cars and motorbikes, and it’d practically be Agrabah. Or something… Do I watch too much TV?

It was while we were up on the ferris wheel that I made a shocking discovery about my mum – she’s NEVER been on a ferris wheel before!! The whole time we were up there, while Debbie and I were sticking our cameras out the windows of the cabin to get clear shots, my poor mother was cringing and telling us to sit down. She’s such a good sport, though. I’m not a good sport, though, and thus am including this pic of Debbie looking utterly unphased, and Sara – well, the grimace tells you exactly how she felt about it all.

What a trooper. *evil laugh* I swear, though, Sara and Deb are just the BEST to travel with. They’re not worried about anything (except the odd ferris wheel), which makes me the most highly strung of the group. I was mostly only highstrung when I was getting frustrated by the language, where I felt like I should have been understanding, and wasn’t.

Now, if I don’t publish this portion of the blog soon, I’ll never get it out, nor get to bed.

Apologies for the tardiness. I was spending time with my Friends. And my that, I mean the six maladjusted New Yorkers – I got three seasons of it on DVD in Urumqi, and have thus been spending HEAPS of time with “my Friends”… Aie.

More in the next few days about our trip to the Taklamakan, to the Mor Pagoda (they say that Tripitaka stopped there with Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy, on his trip to India to get the Buddhist scrolls), and the Sunday Market.

Cheers till then,
Charlotte

PS, thanks to all who are commenting – it gives me inspiration to keep blogging. Every now and then, I think that there are only a small handful of folk reading (a very beloved handful, you know who you are, ye faithful commenters!).

Holidays, blissful holidays, are over, and it’s back into the grind now, but let me tell you a bit about my holidays, and make excuses for why I’ve been so lax in blogging.

Firstly, I’ve been away.

Secondly, my mum’s been here, along with an old family friend, come to see li’l ol’ me (although I suspect that I’m merely an excuse to come to this corner of China…*grin*).

Thirdly, I’m lazy. I could have blogged days ago. But with laziness defining my spare time (ie the time when I’m not traveling), bloggage was not so forthcoming.

However, I have a black cat in my lap, and have the urge upon me. Therefore, dear friends, I regret to inform you that you are to be subjected to more of my ramblings. I have begun with the apology. Herein begins my account:

Fleeing from the admonition from my headmistress that I was to look after my mother properly, I took the last two days of last term off school, and met my mum, Sara (yes, for those of you who don’t know, I call her by her first name, long story) and our friend Debbie at the Urumqi International Airport. It’s not hard to be an international airport when Xin Jiang borders onto six other countries, and it’s a shorter flight to Islamabad than it is to Beijing. This oh-so-slightly pretentiously (but still accurately) named airport is a testimony to modern standards of efficiency. At least in some ways. I’m talking about the escalators. See, when I first went to this airport with Jessie, we thought that the escalators were just not working. None of them were moving, and they didn’t even go in pairs (you know, up, down…). Finally we worked out that they are SENSOR escalators – just like an automatic door, you stand at the landing of the escalator, and it starts to move in whatever direction you want to go. So if you stand at the bottom, it’ll go up, and if you’re at the top… well, you get the idea.

Our connecting flight to Kashgar was not for several hours, so after admiring not only Urumqi Airport’s automatic escalators, but also the Uyghur market in town, we got to meet Patrick’s family, who were arriving at Urumqi just half an hour before we were due to leave. They’re a funny bunch. (and I mean that both ways…) I saw the look on Pat’s face when he first caught a glance of them. He shook his head, groaned, and buried his face in his hands, and it wasn’t long before we saw why. Along came this small gaggle (well, only four really) of obviously Australians, who had tailored their look specifically to embarrass their beloved son/nephew. All four of them, mum, dad, aunt and uncle, were wearing an item of clothing which is universally associated with being Australian (at least in Australia), but which no self respecting Australian would be caught dead wearing. I should amend that – they’d only wear it if it meant that they could bring a blush to the face of their offspring.

They were all wearing Corked Hats – that is, baggy wide rimmed hats with corks dangling from strings, lining the rims. The idea is that they’re supposed to keep the flies away from your face, but nowadays they’re much better for embarrassing relatives. It worked a treat, the look on Pat’s face was priceless. Here they are. Pat, don’t hate me for putting in this pic. It’s really too priceless to leave out – your family is adorable.

Jumping ahead to the next highlight. This one took place in Kashgar Airport. As we were getting off the plane, I passed by a group of beautiful people, westerners, and I overheard them talking. Their accents were Aussie, and with a smile, I said to them, “you guys Australian?” A brassy blonde grinned back and said,

“yeah, we are! What are YOU guys doing all the way out here?”

With an answering grin, I replied “I was about to ask you the same question!” At this point, the line off the plane had moved on, and I was no longer in conversation distance. But then at the entrance to the terminal, the group of Aussies were behind me again, and I turned around to the blonde again, and said, “so, what ARE you doing here?”

She gestured towards a bloke holding a very fancy looking video camera, that I’d somehow managed to miss seeing before, and said, “oh, we’re here from The Great Outdoors, filming a segment about the Silk Road.”

For those non Aussies out there, let me just explain. The Great Outdoors is a popular, and very well known Australian travel show, in a prime time spot during the week. A better spot than they gave Firefly. So it was pretty exciting for me to see the crew here, with their pricey video camera as carry on luggage. Pretty cool.

See, Kashgar was at one time the academic and economic hub of the Mongolian/Turkick/whoever-was-in-charge-at-that-point-in-time empire. It is at the Western edge of the Taklamakan desert, in the middle of a gorgeous Poplar strewn oasis. The buildings of the old city are made of mud brick, and the streets meander around in a confusing, yet charming way. It’s literally a city where old meets new, where taxis from the airport share the road with donkey carts lugging veggies/firewood/people to market. The Chinese administration has been having a field day, knocking down the Old City of mud, and putting up blocky apartment monstrocities. See the Ferris Wheel photos tomorrow for that. Shame on them. Although I suppose it’d be nice for those in the mud brick houses to have plumbing and sewage. But regardless of the new encroaching on the old, there’s still enough picturesque stuff to keep three Aussie shutter bugs and a TV crew happy. Despite the rain. But more about that tomorrow, too…

We arrived in the middle of a dust storm in Kashgar, so the touchdown was kinda rough. The whole city seemed to be under a film of dust that had been deposited by the muddy rain the night before, and that whole mud theme seemed to dominate our very enjoyable stay in Kashgar.

Our hotel was built around the site of the Old Russian Embassy (before 1949, Kashgar used to be a kind of information hub for the Far East, at least for the British and Russians. The Old Russian Embassy, and the Old British Embassy have both been turned into hotels now, and from what I saw of the suites in the Russian Embassy, they’d be an ideal place for a How To Host A Murder night. Very romantic settings, high ceilings, rich window furnishings. We ourselves were staying in the cheaper (but I gather better plumbed) building Three, a two year old building with the most GORGEOUS plaster decorations on the walls, done in the old, and very intricate Uyghur style.

So. We arrived on Thursday night, and the thing that draws most tourists to Kashgar, the Sunday Market, wasn’t happening till… you guessed it. Sunday. For our first day there, we decided to try to walk around a bit, get our bearings and such. Good god, but I’ve never been to a place where I’ve lost my bearings more. Usually, once I know which direction I’m pointing in, I never lose that sense of direction. But in Kashgar, perhaps it was the fact that both Debbie and Sara thought we were in different places than I thought, perhaps it was because our map was really shitty (I love you, mister Melways!), or some heinous combination of the two, but I felt terribly, terribly lost that day. It wasn’t until we somehow bumped into a Han Chinese guy from Beijing (who we assumed was a tourist, could have been the map that gave it away), who spoke amazingly good English, that we suddenly found ourselves in front of the landmark that we’d actually set out to find. As it turns out, this bloke we met, was actually the guide for The Great Outdoors team. That suddenly made Kashgar seem a little smaller and less intimidating.

Cursed Disney songs, get out of my head. It’s a small… ARG!

Anyhow, the aforementioned landmark was in fact the Id Kah Mosque. We could have been forgiven for not finding it, as the entire square was closed off by a DIRTY GREAT BIG SHEET IRON FENCE!! Our Great Outdoors friend was also looking for the Mosque, and he somehow managed to finangle us a deal whereby we paid a Uyghur lady 5 yuan each (less than one Aussie dollar) and she led us to the place in the construction barrier where the sheeting had been pried loose, and we squeezed through. To magnificent results, I might add. Check this out!

The thing I like about mosques, at least the old ones, which I never realized before, is that they have gardens on the inside! I only managed to sticky beak into two mosques, and they were open for tourists (the Id Kah one was really quite closed. Decidedly so), but the gardens made them just a delight. Christian churches need more gardens, I think… They’re nothing to these grand trees at Id Kah.

Right, so I’m beat and have class tomorrow morning, but I have the blog urge upon me. So I shall publish this, and promise more tomorrow night, ok? Wow, there’s so much that I want to tell you all about! I’ve had just the best holiday ever!

Cheers for now, Charlotte