World China Xinjiang Turpan

Paul Martyn's Travels Paul on the Silk Road

Turpan and the Great Desert 25 Aug 2004

Across the great Taklamantan desert, lives Turpan, a scorched city in the centre of Xinjiang, China's biggest and least populated province. We arrived on a cool day - only 39 degrees C. Our guide told us it was usually 43-45. Luckily the city is built for the heat. One of the main boulevards near our hotel is covered by a wooden trellis, covered by grapes. The shaded road and footpath is quite pleasant - ideal, our guide book tells us, to drink beer and endure the heat. Okay, that we can do!

It is amazing the different people you can meet while travelling. In Uzbekistan on our first night we ran into a small group of English people at a restaurant. I said hello and they completely ignored us. This was very rude and compounded by the fact that we kept on running into this same group - in Tashkent, in Samarkand, in Bukhara, in Kashgar. It became quite comical - we would look for them and lo and behold there they would be - still studiously ignoring us!

Contrast this with a lovely Belgian couple we met in Kashgar. We had gone to the local tourist hangout - John's, where the Chinese food is great and the beer is cold. As usual Michael was looking for a decent red wine and I noticed this couple just finishing a bottle. I asked them if the wine was good - they said it was and introduced themselves. Later we meet again at dinner and ate and drank the evening away. They were Jacobierre, an artist, and his partner Michelle, a florist. They were wonderfully friendly and interesting people and we discussed wine, art, music and travel with them. We sadly left them in Kashgar but luckily saw them again here in Turpan - it was such a pleasant surprise to see some friendly faces again on the Silk Road! One thing I love about travel is just this sort of serendipitous meeting and instant bonhomie that comes in far away places. A lesson the English group should have learnt!

For me the highlight of Turpan was the ruins of an ancient Chinese city called Jioahe. It was not the ruins themselves (Michael loves ruins and was very much at home here) but a visiting horde of Chinese school kids on their version of summer camp - marching along in camoflague uniforms with red flag standards. I watched the flags and young green uniforms approach through the sand coloured uniforms and wondered what was going on. Then they started shouting out "hello!" - one was so keen to wave to us he nearly tripped over.

Later a platoon of kids was marching along near us and I wandered up and motiioned to the leader if I could borrow his red flag, he smilled and gave it me, and I marched off with my troop of laughing kids following! We took photos with them and they couldn't have been more friendly or willing to participate in some fun with tourists. This was only one occasion when we all found the Chinese to be so very open and warm with foreigners!

Another example - We were asked to leave our restaurant at 9pm one night (and no, there were no incidents this time!), and decided to seek out somewhere else to have a drink. Outside our hotel were a number of donkey carts, available for hire by tourists. We are approached by one one fellow with a cart, but explained to him (as best we could) that we were going for a walk. A friend of his decided to join us for our walk. She introduced herself as Pamela (her English name given to her by her English teacher). She wanted to spend some time with us practising her English.

Pamela took us to a wonderful open air food and drink market off the main square of Turpan. The area was lit by colourful lights, and the glare of a stage on which a local singer was performing a mournful ballad (to promote a local beer). The smell of sizzling food was everywher, and young people sat at long tables, drinking eating and socialising. It was a really relaxed atmosphere.

We settled down to have a beer. Pamela told us she was an Uygher (the Muslim minority here) and thus she had a coke. She is a dental student in her third year and loves Celene Dion (poor thing!). Showing what a small town Turpan is, her parents walked buy and we met them, and her neighbours sat down. They were young and also spoke some English. Both loved English Premier League Football which is so enormously popular in China (one wore an Arsenal t-shirt).

Pamela told us all about here life and her ambitions and we happily walked back to the hotel later on. She even wanted us to visit her home and have tea with her family, but sadly we had to decline because of tiredness. Meeting Pamela was quite by chance, but really left us with fond memories of her and of Turpan.

Read on for Xian and the emtombed warriors!