Daniel Lang - Journal

Turpan

2008-08-17T15:10:00.003+02:00

I am in Turpan now. And it is stinking hot. Wasn't worth coming here really - nothing much to see and I have caught a really bad cold. Spent the day in bed today watching the Olympics and crappy Chinese TV. I always thought German TV was bad, but Chinese programming is the pits! You can either watch Chinese soap operas - modern day, historical, fantasy or military. Or talent shows where people with absolutely no talent get an audience of millions! Or CCTV 9 - an English language propaganda channel for the government.

To top it all off I can't access my blog - so have been writing my regular journal and will have to type it up when I can post again. I'm really getting sick of this stupid internet repression here in China!

It's too hot outside during the day (46 degrees Celsius), so everything happens here either in the morning or in the evening. Went to the Ernin Minaret and the Jiaohe Ruins (both not really that fascinating) and have been stuffing my face with the local grapes - they are really excellent and about the only good thing about Turpan. Have decided to head back to Urumqi and then to Kashgar one day earlier. There has been another attack by Uyghur rebels in Kuqa, again some people died. Will talk to the people in Urumqi about how safe it is to go to Kashgar!

Tianchi Lake

2008-08-10T09:07:00.004+02:00

Set off to Tianchi Lake by bus (80 Kuai return) from Renmin park in Urumqi. The weather was cold and rainy and the bus ride was pretty weird - we drove through Urumqi for ages picking up other Chinese tourists from various places and then stopped on the highway to refuel at a petrol station. This stop was pretty bizarre, as only one car or truck or bus could refuel at a time - although there were eight pumps. So all the people inside the bus were herded out to wait in the cold at the other end of the petrol station. Then after about 20 minutes the our bus was finally allowed to refuel.

Just before we arrived at the lake we stopped at the obligatory Chinese medicine presentation/store. I don't get the Chinese tourists - I think if the bus companies didn't stop at one of these stores trying to flog medicine, jewelry, silk or any other useless souvenir, the tourists would actually be quite unhappy about it. It's a part of the experience of the trip, and everybody - except the foreigners - willingly files out of the bus and into the stores.

We arrived at the entrance to the lake - where we had to pay a hefty 100 Yuan entrance fee - and then I had to change into a smaller bus (another 20 Yuan), as I didn't feel like lugging my backpack up the serpentine road. I walked to Rashit's Yurt on the southern shore of the lake, past all the horrible Chinese tourist facilities that have sprung up on the one side of the lake. Concrete benches and tables in the shapes of toadstools and tree stumps line the beginning of the path - the area is called "fairy walk", but it luckily stops after a while and the Chinese tourists don't seem to walk any further, as there is only a "normal" path around the lake. Rashit is a Kazakh who taught himself English and has made a good living with renting out a yurt and providing three meals a day for 50 Yuan. I was the only person there, as the Olympics have made getting a visa nearly impossible and the flow of tourists to Xinjiang this year has been extremely low. Most people I talked to were really pissed off about the Chinese government's restrictive visa policy - for some it has meant a dramatic decline of their income.

After leaving my backpack in the yurt I explored the surroundings along the lake and then it started raining again, so I headed back to the camp. Rashit's wife gave me a huge bowl of stew and the little coal oven in the yurt made it nice and warm. I ate by candle light and the carpet covered interior glowed in a lovely orange and red. Tianchi Lake lies at 2000 meters above see-level and during the first night I woke up and had to throw another couple of blankets over me - the oven had burned all it's coal and it was bitterly cold! The felt blankets were so heavy that I could hardly move under them, but it was definitely better than freezing.

The next morning the sun was shining and I got a tasty potato stew for breakfast and then I set of into the surrounding mountains for a long hike. The mountains here have an uncanny resemblance to the mountains near Oberammergau in Germany. It really felt strange knowing that I was in China, but thinking that everything looked so very familiar and like "home". I didn't see anybody the whole day except for some shepherds in the distance that were herding sheep and goats. When I stopped for a late lunch in the afternoon I was suddenly joined by three little kids who were looking after four young cows. Only one of them could speak Chinese so we had a little conversation about how many cows (6) and how many sheep (23) the family owns. I shared my two oranges I had packed with them and then they discovered that I had some chewing gum with me, so I also parted with that! It was already late late in the afternoon and I headed back down to the lake to arrive just in time for noodles and a cold beer. Three other travelers from Germany, England and Spain had arrived during the day, so we spent the evening talking. The yurt was definitely much warmer with four people sleeping in it and the weather was much better too, so I wasn't cold anymore.

I woke up the next morning with a really bad sunburn on my arms and neck - although I had put on lots of sunscreen the mountain sun had been too much! I covered up and headed out for another day in the mountains - this time I walked around the lake past the touristy area along the path that leads all around the lake. Strangely enough nobody seems to walk past the temple. The Chinese tourists just head back and so I was completely alone. The path was pretty new, but in some places nature had reclaimed the path already, with mudslides and rocks covering the path at times. Some goats above me ran through the forest and small rocks started to pelt down the mountainside. One of them hit my arm and left a nasty bruise. I was lucky the rock wasn't any bigger and that it only hit my arm! I had decided to hike up the mountain exactly opposite of Rashit's camp, so I left the path and started to climb up a ridge. The scenery was amazing and it was serene and quiet - something I have really missed while living in China! And again I didn't see another person until I had reached the peak! Like the day before a shepherd turned up from nowhere. He was clearly surprised to find a foreigner up on his mountain, but I managed to tell him that I was staying at Rashit's camp, and that seemed to clear everything up. He didn't want any of my raisins I was eating and headed off to his sheep again. I stumbled across some Edelweiss and Gentian on the way down, which made me think of the Alps again! I took a different route down the mountain through a river gully and then arrived back at the yurt just as it was getting dark. I was really hungry and ate my huge plate of hand-pulled noodles in an instant!

The next day I relaxed and took the bus back to Urumqi in time to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The atmosphere in Urumqi was a little intense with a lot of army vehicles patrolling. The soldiers looking pretty fierce with their machine guns. I watched the ceremony at the hostel I was staying at and was pretty amazed how the Chinese pulled everything off. When I get back to Beijing I will go to the women's Hockey final I think - friend's have a ticket and have invited me! It will be interesting to catch some of the atmosphere of the Olympics when I'm back.

Urumqi

2008-08-04T15:10:00.002+02:00

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.

Lanzhou

2008-07-31T13:12:00.004+02:00

I have not seen another foreigner for three days now while staying in Lanzhou. A very strange feeling, as nearly everybody on the street looks at me with interest and and the kids often say: "Look, a laowai!"

Lanzhou itself is more interesting than I thought it would be. Have basically been wandering the streets. There are a lot of small street markets and food stalls. No tourists means that most street vendors won't try and sell you things - something very soothing after Xi'an. Lanzhou feels a little backward, everything seems about 15 years behind Beijing. The clothes people wear, the buildings, the cars, the restaurants, just everything. I find this quite a nice contrast to fast paced Beijing. It feels more real. And although Lanzhou is supposed to be China's most polluted city, I have actually seen a blue sky here every day! Unlike Beijing!

I'm staying in a cheap hotel near the train station - couldn't find a hostel anywhere. And the last two nights I got a phone call with a women offering me a "massagy". It took me a while to realise she meant "massage". I declined.

Yesterday I did an excursion to the Binglingsi grottoes - Binglingsi meaning thousand Buddhas. They are one of the best preserved and oldest Buddhist grottoes in China. The grottoes are about 70 km from Lanzhou. It was quite a lot of trouble getting there. First I tried to find a tour that goes there - none were available. But one travel agent offered to take me there for 650 Yuan. Too much. So I tried to find a small bus to take me to Liujiaxia dam and then catch a boat to the actual caves. At first I couldn't find the right bus, but then an extremely friendly woman helped me out and made a few calls to find out which minibus I should be taking and she pointed me in the right direction. So I was standing in the rain on a road in Lanzhou on the banks of the Yellow River waiting for a little bus to pass heading for Yongjing. The fifth bus I flagged down was the right one! Of course I was the only white person - all the other passengers were locals with huge bags and suitcases. I think most of them had been shopping in Lanzhou. The busdriver first wanted to rip me off and wanted 30 Yuan for the trip. I gave him 15 Yuan in the end. I think 13 Yuan was the actual price - that's what another passenger paid, who got on a little later than I did. After two hours of driving through rugged but fertile countryside that got more and more mountainous, I got off the bus at Liujiaxia dam. There was a group of Chinese tourists waiting to fill up one of the little boats with one more person, so I was lucky and didn't have to wait. The return trip cost 95 Yuan. The alternative would have been a slower boat for half the price, but then I would have had to wait another hour at the dam. So we sped the 50 km to the grottoes up the Yellow River in a little nutshell speedboat. The driver chainsmoking. A "no smoking" sticker right next to his head. The scenery was very striking - red sandstone cliffs on either side of the river that were weathered into the most fantastic shapes. After maybe an hour we arrived at the grottoes where we got off and I spent two hours walking around. With my student card I got a discount and paid 25 Yuan entrance fee. There are around thirty or so grottoes still intact and in them one can find Buddhas and figures made of stone and clay and incredible frescoes - unfortunately you weren't allowed to take photos. The grottoes are situated in a side valley of the Yellow River. And as you walk up, you get to see glimpses of the biggest statue cut into the cliff and watching over the valley: a 27 meter tall Maitreya Buddha - extremely well preserved. Just the sight of this huge statue was worth the effort of coming here. The two hours on site weren't really long enough, but the boat was waiting, so I headed back. I waited for another bus to come along, but after an hour of waiting I got fed up and found a taxi which I shared with three Chinese people to Lanzhou. The ride cost 50 Yuan - 5 Euros - and I had lots of fun communicating with the driver and the other three in my broken Chinese. Got back to Lanzhou pretty exhausted - the trip had nearly taken 12 hours all in all.

Sitting in a 网巴 (internet bar) with chainsmoking, young Chinese men and women playing online computer games. It's eerily silent, as everybody has headphones on and nobody is talking. You can just here the clicking of the keyboards and the mice... Waiting for my train to Urumqi to leave this afternoon. Didn't do much, just got some food for my 18 hour train journey and found this internet bar.

The Terracotta Army

2008-07-28T15:26:00.005+02:00

I went to the terracotta army today. Didn't want to do a tour, so I walked to the train station - where I saw something very disturbing. Three people were cleaning up after a traffic accident. A scooter had crashed and the rider had cracked his head on the curb. The body was gone, but you could see the blood and the three were scooping up bits of brain and bone with little paper cups. Nobody here in China wears a helmet. Not a very nice way to start the day. Very glad, I didn't see the actual accident...

I took the number 306 bus from the train station to the terracotta army site, about one hour away. Very convenient and cheap - 7 yuan one way. The actual museum is made up of the three pits, where they have found the army, a museum housing two bronze chariots and a circular cinema, where they chow a 360 degree film about the army. The film was actually quite interesting, although a lot of it was reenactment, something I usually hate. But as the film seemed quite old and the fact that it was 360 degrees gave the film the feeling of an art installation, making you have to choose in which direction to look and what to watch. This very post modern effect was quite unintentionally, I am sure.

The whole complex and the way they present the army is a bit dated, but on the whole the site is so vast and interesting that it is still definitely worth coming here.

I am leaving for Lanzhou tomorrow evening with the night train. Lanzhou is the most polluted city in China! But I really want to see the Bingling Thousand Buddhas Caves nearby. The past few days here in Xi'an have been great and very interesting. A completely different China, when compared to Beijing or Shanghai. It is much more the way I imagined China to be like, with lot's of life on the street. Street vendors everywhere. Everything a little dirty. Just not as sanitised as Beijing is at the moment before the Olympics.

Xi'an

2008-07-26T06:10:00.004+02:00

I have arrived in the former capital of China. Will cycle along the old city wall today and then to the Shaanxi Museum.

Beijing Life

2008-06-09T05:13:00.003+02:00

I have decided to revive this blog, as I will be traveling to Xinjiang at the end of July. I have decided to leave China when my visa runs out - which is in September - maybe go traveling to Vietnam, Laos and Australia, and then move to London for a while. Life in Beijing the last year has been hard, but also fun and a great experience. I have been trying to study the language at University here, finding it extremely difficult. Originally I had planned to stay at least one more year, but I changed my plans, as my girlfriend suddenly broke up with me out of the blue a few weeks ago. Still trying to cope with the pain and grief after nearly five years together.

I spent the weekend in the small town of 丰城 (Fengcheng) in Inner Mongolia with some friends, some eight hours drive northwest of Beijing. We left Friday evening by minibus and came back Sunday evening. Our little international group of 13 had a fantastic time riding old and stubborn horses, eating roast lamb, drinking and eating around a bonfire - we introduced the local kids to roasted marshmallows, driving through the steppe on quad-bikes, partying with the locals - including a short stint at karaoke, lazing around on the banks of a lake and generally enjoying the open countryside, clean air and starlit skies. Still feeling very sore from the horse riding and have a slight sunburn, but it was fantastic to get away from the smog, noise and sprawl of Beijing!

Ulaanbaatar to Beijing

2007-08-22T08:22:00.000+02:00

18. August 2007 - 19. August 2007

Baynaa took us to the train station in Ulaanbaatar in the morning and after getting on the train we again had a stinky compartment - we were sharing with two Italians who absolutely reeked of unwashed clothes and unwashed bodies. It was disgusting and we really didn't enjoy the ride very much. Thankfully it only took around 30 hours.

We travelled through very barren looking countryside - the edges of the Gobi desert. And saw a lot of camels and flat, sandy and dusty landscape.

Lena and I got out our Chinese textbooks and we tried to brush up on our little Mandarin we can speak. Crossing the border into China late at night was an experience, as we all had to leave the train (the carriages had to be put on a different undercarriage, as the rails are a different gauge). At the station we all had to go through customs and get our visas checked and then we had to wait for our train to come back. The station was blasted with dreadful chinese pop and easy listening classical music... But we were in the fresh air and didn't have to smell the Italians!

We arrived at Beijing Railway Station at lunchtime the following day, managed to queue for a taxi and got to our hostel without a hitch. And the hostel turned out to be more of a hotel: clean, friendly staff and cheap!

Mongolia - Stepperiders

2007-08-22T07:21:00.000+02:00

14. August 2007 - 18. August 2007

We were picked up from the train station and drove straight out of Ulaanbaatar to a ger camp about an hours drive away from the capital. The camp is a small business run by Mendee and his wife Baynaa. We had booked it on the internet and it was absolutely fantastic. We can only recommend it: www.stepperiders.com

The camp is tucked away in a valley on the side of a hill with a breathtaking view and no civilisation in sight. There are three gers for the guests (nice and clean and warm), a ger for meeting and eating and two gers for cooking and living. Also after the disgusting toilets on the train, the latrine-toilets at the camp were spotlessly clean and wonderful! There is also a shower with water that is either heated on the stove or by the sun.

The first two days in the camp we spent with a very nice English couple - Jane and Andy - and Baynaa and her two children - Tamujin and Anujin, as Mendee was on a horse trek with some Americans. We relaxed, went walking in the lovely countryside, helped to collect cow dung for the fire, played with the children (that mostly consisted of us playing "horse" with them and carrying them on our backs until we were gasping for breath) and I even braved the horses the second day.

I strapped on a helmet and jumped on my little Mongolian horse Andy and I had named Clive. Lena and the two others gave me good pointers and off we went with our guide Hassaa. And I even got the hang of it after a while and enjoyed myself! It was a lot of fun and exhilarating to canter accross the steppe.

On our way back to camp we were invited by a Mongolian family to their ger for some Arak - fermented mare's milk. It tasted like sour buttermilk with a slight vinegar taste. Not really great, but not really bad either. I am sure it is ok if you get used to it. The inside of the ger was extremely warm, as the family had just slaughtered a goat that was being butchered in front of the ger and were cooking parts of the meat on the stove in the ger. We were also offered dried yoghurt that looked like biscuits, but tasted like very, very strong Pecorino. The children gobbled them like sweets - we definitely preferred the Arak.

We stayed for four days at the stepperiders camp, enjoying every minute of it. The food was really good, and Baynaa and Mendee were extremely friendly and helpful hosts. We were very sad to leave, because it was so peaceful and relaxing.

Irkutsk to Ulaanbaatar

2007-08-22T07:02:00.000+02:00

13. August 2007 - 14. August 2007

We boarded the train to Ulaanbaatar at five o’clock in the morning and were not very happy about the fact that we had to share our compartment with the big, black and stinky dog „Tim“. Not only did „Tim“ stink, he also bit Lena in her shoe! Thankfully „Tim“ and his Russian owners left the train after about 9 hours. We were then joined by a very nice Russian woman and her son. After hours of waiting at the Russian border, we finally drove on into Mongolia. There, customs only took a fraction of the time. Also the people seemed much more relaxed and friendly.

A Few Days at Lake Baikal

2007-08-12T12:55:00.000+02:00

9. August 2007 - 12. August 2007

We had booked a home-stay in Listvjanka on the shore of Lake Baikal. After arriving at Irkutsk we were picked up by mini bus and driven there. To our great surprise Anne and Malcolm - the couple we had shared a compartment on the train with - were also staying in the very same flat with us! Our host Svetja worked at the local sanatorium and only spoke Russian. But we managed to communicate with our little phrase book and a lot of smiling. Svetja had two grown-up children who had been camped out to the family's datsha. Svetja would make a Russian breakfast every morning at nine. It included bread, jam, cheese and meats. And every day of our stay somehting special like sweeet dumplings with quark filling or lovely deep-fried pancakes with sour cream and home-made jam. We got our own set of keys, so we could come and go as we pleased.

Listvjanka used to be a tiny fishing village squeezed bewteen the mountains and the shore of Lake Baikal. It has turned into one of the main tourist places on the lake, as it is easily accessible from Irkutsk. Rich Russians have built themselves little castles - and I mean castles eith towers and turrets! - right on the lake-front. Next to these new post-modern horrors of architecture the tiny wooden, Siberian houses with their colourful windows and carvings seem strangely out of place. I am sure they will all have disappeared from Listvjanka in a couple of years, replaced by more castles and modern buildings.

The tourist information in Listvjanka is staffed by a clique of bored Russian girls that can speak a little English. But don't even bother asking for information or a map of the area, as all you will get is a bored stare and the answer: "We don't know." or "Sorry, the maps sold out yesterday!" Why bother having this tourist office? It is the second worst place in Listvjanka, only surpassed by the cafe next to the tourist office! If you want ot be thrown back into communism, come to this place! Sit down and enjoy the spectacular view of the lake and the harbour. And enjoy it for a while longer, because although there are six waiters and waitresses nobody will bring you a menue! The staff will completely ignore you, even if you wave! Enjoy the great view. Then, after a very long time a waitress will come with a menue. She will not smile and hand you the menue without cathcing your eye. After you have chosen your order wait again for ages. And I mean ages! Then place your order and wait (again). And then the food will come... The only positive thing about this place! The food we had was reasonably priced and very good! The salad with Omul (a local salmon), potatoes, tomatoes and mayonaise was excellent.

The fish we ate in Listvjanka was fantastic! Cheaper than the meat dishes and always really nice. And at the other restaurant we went to the service was even good!

Lena and I spent our second day hiking in the surrounding mountains and we ended up at a fantastic sandy beach on the lake, where we went swimming. The water was absolutely lovely - cool, refreshing, clean and very clear! We walked for hours without seeing anyone, except the occasional Russian camper. At one point Lena became a little worried, as we had to climb along a narrow path, a sheer cliff dropping into the lake... But we arrived back in Listvjanka safely in the evening - tired and with aching legs.

Today we took the boat to Irkutsk and will leave for Ulaan Bator tomorrow morning at 5:30.

Moscow to Irkutsk with the Trans Siberian Railway

2007-08-12T12:09:00.000+02:00

5. August 2007 - 8. August 2007

We flew from Berlin to Moscow on the 5th. Lena's parents and brother had driven us to the airport with our back-packs stuffed to the limit for half a year abroad.

My hand luggage was checked for explosives - I had to go into a little room and the security people used an ancient machine to suck particles from the inside of my bags. Then they put the vacuum device into an even more ancient looking computer to get an analysis... pretty bizarre...

After arriving at Moscow Domodevo and taking the express train into town, we managed to use the metro to get to Komsomol'skaja metro station. We locked up our bags at one of the three train stations and tried to find out from where our train would depart at 11 o'clock that night: Nobody at the information desk spoke English, so after some guessing and looking around we assumed correctly that the train to Irkutsk would leave from Jaroslavskij station.

Lena and I hung around the station for a few hours, shocked by the cliché that nearly everybody was either drinking or completely drunk! Normal looking young menwere out cold, lying on benches or propping each other up, or in a drunk embrace - snoring quietly.

From Moscow to Irkutsk we shared our compartment with a lovely English couple from Norwich - Anne and Malcolm. Thank God we weren't thrown in with the Germans in the compartment next to us. Anne and Malcolm dubbed them the "Happy Clappies". They started singing and played the guitar at 10 in the morningand stopped late at night. Luckily they quite often departed for the resataurant carriage to continue their singing there... They behaved as if they were part of a Christian sect or something...

Every carriage has its own attendant - nearly all of them women, dressed in blue and white uniforms. At every stop they lock the toilets, open the doors and wipe the hand rails with a little cloth. After two days we also found out that tere wasa shower in one of the carriages, and we happily paid the 111 Rubels to be able to use it! The food in the restaurant carriage was ok, but too expensive for what it was, but we bought our supplies from loclas selling fruit, vegetables, bread, dumplings, drinks etc. at some of the stops. The rural places had a much better and wider range range of products than the stops in the cities.

The landscape varied only subtlely: birch trees, wide and open pastures and the occasional small village or town with expansive vegetable gardens. We covered 6700 km from Berlin to Irkutsk, crossing seven time zones, and our sleeping pattern is a shambles...

Off and away

2007-08-05T00:06:00.000+02:00

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow morning Lena and I are heading for Moscow to board the Trans-siberian Railway in the evening! We are really excited and will post something new about our trip as soon as we get the chance to.

Daniel

Welcome

2007-07-31T14:55:00.000+02:00

Dear Friends,

Welcome to my new journal/blog.

As I will be travelling to China for 6 months, I thought this would be a good way to stay in touch...

Hope it will work.

Daniel