Fall National Holiday

Ancient adobe village

Our once in a lifetime.

Over the fall holiday Paul and I took a trip to the northwest part of China. There were about 50 of the 80 of us BYU China Teachers doing a group tour. I must say it was an adventure! Our first stop was Urumqi (pronounced ur-rum-chi, kind of…). 

Some of the desert was oddly without sand or anything else.
just barren rock.

It was a 3 hour flight to one of the most desolate places we have ever been! It kind of rivals the remote parts of Zion’s National Park. Urumqi is apparently the place on earth most distant from an ocean, and of course, it is a desert which continues for hundreds of miles. 

It was very undeveloped and impoverished. Our accommodations (especially our accommodations!)  and everything about the trip made Xi’an look like the lap of luxury. During the trip, all the signage was in both Chinese and Arabic . This is the most heavily Muslim area of China, has a significant Arab influence, and has had separatist movements at various times. A very different world.

A very remote poor village. 

We made a trip to the local bazaar and went to a dinner show. The costuming and dance was very different from anything we have experienced and was an interesting combination of Chinese and Arabian. The next day bright and early we boarded a bus for a drive to Turpan. The drive was flat and straight and a lot like driving through Wyoming without any hills.

Miles of chili peppers and other colorful items stacked

on the desert to dry out.

On the way we saw lots of red hot chili peppers spread out on the sand to dry. Actually quite fascinating!  We have eaten them here and they don’t lose any heat out on the sand! We visited the Jiaohe Ancient City and it was an impressive ruin. The occupants built buildings out of homemade bricks and everything was the same color.  We could see where it could be incredibly hot there in the summer.

The big communal farms have been broken down to smaller

plots where individual families have been given individual 

government quotas to grow and give to the government. Once

the quota is met, they can eat or sell the rest. This family is out

harvesting their cotton. Notice their corn plot in the back

ground, and even further back, their grape vines.

Another family harvesting their cotton

Spices for sale

Our next mode of travel was by “soft” sleeper train to Dunhuang.  This was an adventure. Each couple was booked with another couple from the group to spend the night in a small sleeper compartment for four. Yup – we had bunk beds! Every time you nodded off we would pass another train and the bright lights would light up the room and of course they had to sound the horn. Looonnnngggg night!

Ahh, Dunhuang the home of many camels. We rode a camel and had a ball!  The weather was perfect and we rode for about an hour, up one hill and down the other. All the hills were pure sand – just like in the movies. It made for great pictures!

 During the trip we stopped at several ancient ruins, caves, cities, etc., different and unique from our previous experiences.Some relics were in amazing shape for being hundreds or thousands of years old.

Others we were told only had cave art and carvings in European museums from 19^th century looters.  Anything left behind was badly defaced or destroyed by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s.

. Life in general in all the areas we looked at appeared to be very simple and difficult for many of the inhabitants. Fortunately not for all.

Karla Thompson came with us. We had a great time. It was a once in a lifetime trip -  we are sure we only want to do it once in our lifetime. We were glad to get home. And it was nice to be comfortable enough to call our little apartment home. Just a little more knowledge and experience to put under our belt about the amazing country of China.