Turpan to Urumqui

Breakfast – We tried the Western style restaurant in the Oasis, filled with all the other westerners.
* Note: Chinese—they don’t like butter or cheese. They hate the smell.
We headed to the Jiaohe ruins. It was originally one of the capitals of the Western Region during the Han dynasty. Genghis left the city in ruins.
Then it was another shake and bake to Urumqui. The old road left a lot to be desired.
Along the way, we watched the building of the new road, both women and men laborers with pick axes working in high winds, dust and overwhelming heat.
The last 20-km was a series of flood washed roads—unrepaired and heavily trafficked.
We had lunch at the “Oversea Chinese Hotel”, an old Russian 1950’s hotel. We had great food (another 1000-plate restaurant). The food was Uighur with Chinese influence… meatballs, noodles and veggies.
It was Friday, so the bazaar was closed, the 8th Route Army Museum was closed. We opted to head to the hotel.

What a surprise! We entered into another world at the Holiday Inn Urumqui…. a Hong Kong quality check-in. The room wasn’t ready so they gave us free drinks while we waited. We ran into Aidan and Rachel, the Brits from the train. We traded a few stories then headed to our room. It had great views of the city, hot showers, laundry and wine and cheese. We got very close with the room service staff after four bottles of wine, cheese platters and 2 cheeseburgers…. all this plus CNN.

Urumqi itself was an unimpressive city, not typical of Zinjiang province. The Chinese government has done everything they can to encourage Han Chinese to move into the area, but Urumqi is still an island of Han Chinese in a region of “minority” peoples.