Urumqi

On the sleeper from Lanzhou to Urumqi I met a girl travelling with her mother who spoke fluent German - it was quite disconserting at first, as I hadn't spoken to anybody in German for ten days. She works for an Austrian company and was on her way home to Urumqi for a three week holiday. They were Uigur and it was very interesting talking to them.

Urumqi - the capital of Xinjiang Autonomous Region - is like any other modern Chinese city. The only difference being that you see a lot of Uigurs. And that was quite starling for me the first day while walking the streets. Seeing so many people that are not Han-Chinese in one place needs some getting used to. Also the language is Turk based, so you often feel you are not in China anymore just by listening to people talk in the market for example.

It was raining today, so I spent the day doing nothing much, just some laundry and reading and writing...

16 people were killed yesterday in Kashgar - apparently by Uigur separatists in a bomb attack. I actually was planning to go there next week and spend a couple of days there. Will watch the situation and decide in a couple of days. Some news sites seem to be blocked again - bbc, cnn and the guardian - so I can only really access German language news.

I'm heading to Tianchi lake tomorrow and will stay there for a couple of days.