Ürümchi, December 5

I am in Ürümchi, the capital of Sinkiang (officially: Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region). The bus between Almaty and Ürümchi was a new experience to me: it had berths instead of chairs. You can actually stretch out and all passengers get a blanket. That doesn't guarantee a good night rest though, cause the driver will smoke, cough, talk loudly and experiment with the lights in the corridor now and then.

The border crossing was a new experience too. Nothing like the chaos at the Kyrgyz crossing. This one is very thorough, with a lot of security. Between the Kazakh and Chinese guards there is a stretch of about 3 km where all vehicles have to drive between two lines of wired fence, with cameras and guard towers about every 20 m. And so at last I arrived in the Middle Kingdom, welcomed by a whole team of neatly dressed guards. The Kazakh potholed stretch of asphalt then becomes a modern highway, with blinking tunnels and viaducts and streetlights all around.

Unfortunately the bus arrived in Ürümchi at 3:40 AM, while it was snowing heavily. So I took a taxi (chuzucher) to the Silver Birches hostel, where I stay in a tiny, noisy dorm.

Ürümchi, or Wulumuchi as the Chinese call it (the Uygur language is unpronouncable for Chinese) is supposed to be a city with two faces. The Uygur and Chinese inhabitants do not mingle or speak each other's languages. Today I walked through the Chinese part of town. As all things the Chinese make and do, its scale is big. Skyscrapers, flashy neon lights, broad avenues with heavy traffic. You'd think one truck to clear the streets of the snow would be enough. But this is China, so I witnessed a whole fleet of trucks brushing their way through the city this morning, one after the other and 10 m in between. An impressive sight. Hordes of workers meanwhile clear the pavement with shovels. Unfortunately, by the afternoon the same pavement has become covered in patches of phlegm, which freeze and make walking around still very much a slippery business.

I found this small restaurant in an ally and decided against the more suspicious looking things on the menu. "Hill bacteria fried shrimp", "fried dragon leg", and "spicy eggplant fried tiger" were just a few that needed careful consideration. When translating your menu into English, it's not advisable to use a computer for translation. While I was copying the characters for shrimp, tiger and eggplant into my notebook (might be handy in the next restaurant) a British man walked into the room and began speaking in Mandarin to the lady. I asked him to join my table. He ordered some tiger legs and we had a nice conversation about Chinese politics (somehow it's always one of the first things you discuss with fellow westerners here). He appeared to be a coordinator of a Macao-based English teaching programm. In case I want to work as a teacher in Ürümchi, he gave me his e-mail.

Now that's very nice, and while these tigers are actually quite tasty, I don't feel like ending my journey just yet. But I may return to Ürümchi at some later point in time. It could really be a funny experience to teach here, learn more Chinese characters in the process, and enjoy the food and culture. Especially when it would be in summer, when it isn't snowing all the time.