Getting to Xinjiang

First, let me tell you what it took to get here (Turpan). It took lining up for three hours at X'ian's train station and then finding out that all the tickets to my destination of choice were sold out. I bought a ticket to Lanzhou, the world's most polluted city and the gateway to western China, instead. Then I waited from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for the next train to Zhangye, site of the largest reclining Buddha in China, located along the Hexi Corridor (once the sole western passage in or out of the Middle Kingdom). Once again not my destination of choice. In the process of waiting an army of farmers build a little fort around my seat. They were lying in a semi-circle around the seat with their feet pointing at me. A few candles and a Chinese dicitonary and I could have had my very own cult experience. These guys looked like they were worshipping me in some strange way. Once on the train, I found out that I could stay on if I was prepared to stand for the next 24 hours after the train passed Zhangye at midnight.

This was translated to me by a Mongolian lady on the train. The train conductor didn't speak a word of English. Dorna, my translator, was a Chinese language professor in UB who told me about her English teachers, Dave and Charlotte, in Hovt, Mongolia. When her husband pulled out the Canon Wordtank V80 things really got rolling. Thanks to this baby we were able to talk about the cold in Mongolia, her husband studying in Japan, her surprise trip to Bejing to pick him up from his ferry ride across the water and their vacation to visit his mother in Wumunqui. In the bunk next to her a man who looked like some kind of drug kingpin was stretching. He was an army commandor of some sort. I guessed this because the three guys in army uniforms around him were doting on him. They refilled his hot water, washed his fruit and brought kleenex boxes when necessary. He in turn offered us some ginseng fruit and grapes before asking the Mongolian lady to translate for him. I wish he hadn't. He asked if I wanted a Chinese boyfriend while I was in China with a special sort of leer. Of course, then I had to tell him about my 'boyfriend', a computer techie in North America that was coming to meet me in two weeks. Also, I decided a while ago that I was going to be whatever age people guessed. This time I was 24 and a student.

Midnight rolled around and the Kazakh guys next to me were still singing old folk songs, clapping and drinking vodka. I got off the bunk and walked from carriage 14 to 7, the restaurant, paid 30 yuan to sit there until 7 a.m. and then paid 10 yuan (too much) for a bad breakfast that bought me another 2 hours sitting. The Mongolian couple joined me. We talked using the Wordtank. They fed me various foods. Their tickets also ran out at midnight but around 5 they were able to upgrade to sleepers for the remainder of their journey. Around 9 a.m. I was kicked out to carriage 5, the hard seats. Basically, I stood in an aisle with hundreds of other people with my backpack by my feet for five hours. Every 10 minutes a stupid food cart came around and I had to pick up my backpack and hold it over the people crammed onto the seats next to me while trying to push my butt away from the stirfry noodles coming through the carriage. The woman next to me had sliced her finger badly and it was bleeding through the bandaid. A man stood on his chair to stare at me with his mouth wide open. The guy in the seat at the window had his hand between his girlfriend's legs. Everyone pretended not to notice. There were sunflower seed shells everywhere. When one of the women next to me started speaking to me in Chinese I smiled and shrugged. She must have thought I was deaf because she wrote her question down. I don't speak Chinese. I don't read Chinese. Everyone turned to stare some more. Then I was offered food and water. I realized that the women took it upon themselves to look after me when they realized I was alone. Now I had hands on my butt when a food cart came around to prevent me from being clipped and someone always picked up my backpack and held it on their knees until the cart had passed. I loved those ladies.

At 2 p.m. I finally arrived at Daheyan. Now it was only a one hour car ride to Turpan (pronounced Turfuan). My first surprise: the taxi driver didn't rip me off! He quoted me 10 yuan for the ride, drove me to a bus, bought me a ticket and gave me back 2 yuan in change. I was happy. Tired but happy. Sweaty but happy. Thirsty but happy. Hungry but happy. You get the picture.

Tomorrow I'll tell of what it's like here.