Urumqi
Day 1
I arrive bleary eyed from my early morning flight. Chengdu is supposed to be "out west", but I've just travelled three and a half hours to arrive at the Eastern part of Xinjiang - Urumqi. I feel like I've arrived somewhere exotic because the signs have a script I can't read, and the city is brimming with a melting of different ethnic groups.
It's hot and sunny, which I appreciate because Chengdu is quite grey, and sitting in an office all day my body is craving for vitamin D. As I make my way to the hotel, I notice three things (in no particular order): Huawei stores, police stations, and petrol cars. For the first time in China, cars actually stop at zebra crossings. I wouldn't want to break the rules here either.
My friends don't arrive until later in the evening, so I decide to do some cultural activities and head to the Xinjiang Regional Museum. But first, it's lunchtime, and I'm excited to get some delicious food in mah belly. I find a well-rated placed nearby: 弯弯禾田烤包子.
烤包子 = Kao Bao Zi, is basically a baked bao filled with lamb. Think hot pocket, samosa etc. The menu has what all of us lazy tourists want - a "most popular" section with a stamp of approval next to all the classic dishes. I am hungry and point to four things: a bao, a skewer, this tofu and sausage looking dish and some type of sticky rice dessert. I wanted more food but the woman who took my order smiled at me and politely told me that was enough food, and next time to bring friends. Ouch.
Food comes out, and I'm stuffing my face, and downing everything with a cold Wusu (arguably one of my favourite local Chinese beers). Immediate hunger quelched, I start paying a bit more attention to my food and notice the "tofu" didn't really look or taste like tofu. I call the waitress over and she tells me it's 面肺子 Mian Fei Zi: Boiled sheep lung stuffed with the same rice flour they make the Xian cold noodle dish.
The only time I'm come across the word "Fei" is recently, something known as coronavirus 新馆肺炎 i.e. new variant pneumonia. So you can imagine my confusion and needed numerous clarifications including pointing to my chest that this was indeed lung.
Various things at this point cross my mind. My Year 9 science class where a sheep lung was involved (you know who you are). Wanting to know how exactly they stuff said rice flour into said lung. And asking myself if I should be grossed out (this thought lasted 15 seconds before I came to the conclusion it's too delicious to not enjoy).
As I'm still thinking about the mechanics of this stuffing lamb lung business, the music in the restaurant is suddenly turned up, and out waltz a girl in traditional wear with four bowls on her head to give us a lunchtime performance. As someone who dances and can not spot for the life of me, I am very impressed by the part where she turns about 20 times without the bowls falling off her head.
I check the time and it's past 2pm, and I need to learn the history of Xinjiang.
Museum Quick Take:
Not the most foreigner friendly. Apart from a short English blurb here and there, most text is in Chinese, including the audio guide.
Places like China with such a wealth of history means it feels like you're seeing the same thing. I get it - y'all loved bronze mirrors and were great at making them. Not knowing enough about the overall history made it super hard for me to understand how it all fits. I wish I joined a tour, even if it was in Chinese.
Museums in China is not just the place to learn about history. It's a place to rest (they had massage chairs), charge your phones, enjoy the aircon when it's 35 degrees outside..
One and a half hours in and I’m ready to get myself a souvenir magnet and leave. I have lost my will after battling the crowds looking at 4000 year old mummified corpses and even at its loudest, No Scrubs cannot block out the decibels of my fellow museum goers. SERENITY NOW.
I leave the museum, and ffter finding peace climbing a pagoda and enjoying the 360 degree views of Urumqi from Red Hill Park, I am satisfied I have burnt all my lunchtime calories and it's time for dinner. Yay.
It’s 6pm but the sun is still scorching. Makes sense because Urumqi sits in the same time zone as Bangladesh, a four hour difference from Australia and two hours from Chengdu. The official time here is still Beijing time, but locals operate using Xinjiang time - they start work and school at 10-11am, and finish at 7-8pm.
I checked into my hotel before dinner, and my room felt like it came off the set of Austin Powers. A four-post double bed with fairy lights above sits in the centre of the room, and directly in front by the window is a green leaf shaped bathtub. EVERYTHING IS PURPLE, including the carpet, the walls, the right is velvet and the left a mosaic of reflective mirrors and tiles. I count four velvet poufs and one purple velvet couch.
Dinner is a family affair, and I am invited to join my friend's family at a popular local Xinjiang restaurant. When you eat with any Chinese mums, you must be prepared to eat and try everything. That is exactly what I did. Sheep lung was back on the menu, as were skewers, baked baos and others. Two things I really liked - the fresh mint and black tea brew and a delicious desert onion (沙葱 sha cong), a sweeter less spicy version of spring onion, and only found in deserts in SW China.
It's still bright outside when we finish dinner at 9:30pm (reminds me of European summers), and despite my friend's brother telling us this pretty much counts as day drinking and is too early, we head to a craft brewery. There's the standard variety of European favourites here - Hoegaarden, Leffe, Vedette - but they also have an extensive selection (at least 40) of local brews from Urumqi to Beijing, Wuhan and Shenzhen.
Food segue - Australia needs to up our beer snack game. Mini cubes of spicy deep-fried instant noodle should be on every menu.
Post-beers, we check out a bar with live music. It’s popular, and we snag the last table in the back corner. It's the perfect spot for people watching. Couples and girls ready to mingle sit in pairs around a table that curves around the stage in front of the band. A couple of single folks sit at the bar. The low tables are groups of 4-5, predominantly guys, and they all have ambitiously pre-purchased slabs of room temperature beer accompanied by their ice buckets.
I tried to order a cold beer, but failed and ended up asking for ice.
People enjoy the performance part. Talking doesn’t seem to be that crucial and dice games are played. One guy is dared by his friends to ask for a girl’s number (WeChat in China's instance). He succeeds despite wearing a basketball jersey and his friends hail him a god (actual hailing was witnessed). The singer is singing “pop songs” and I know zero. They put the lyrics up on the TVs, which makes it easier to try and sing along. As the night goes on, people are getting more rowdy (like singing loudly in their seats rowdy), and the mic is passed around as we get into in a group karaoke session. I must had done some impressive lip syncing, because the next thing I know, a microphone is stuffed in my face to sing the chorus of a song I have never heard before in my life. Sheer mortification sets in and I flail my hands in front of me in the same way as if I unknowingly walked into a large spiderweb on the street.
Eventually they play a song we all knew: 宋冬野‘s 《斑马，斑马》. Song sung. beers drunk. It's been a great first day but there is only so much watered down beer and passive smoking I can handle. We get a cab back and I return to my 80s shag pad (trying not to touch any of those velvet poufs).
Day 2 (Food)
Day 2 is a dedicated food day. I am excited - my friend and her family have been in Urumqi for generations, and they promise to take me to all their favourite places. There are also five of us, which means I don't eat to eat a whole lamb leg all my own.
For breakfast, I fly solo, and my friend recommends Mr Liu's Fast Food 小刘快餐 next to my hotel. The restaurant has 73 reviews on Dianping (China's Yelp) and an average rating of 4 stars. Under normal circumstances, I probably would not have picked this place, but they tell me it's the best. The menu is in Chinese only, and there are no pictures. Feeling the pressure of needing to make a decision as I can feel the impatience of the man behind me, I choose the first bao on the menu.
The lady who takes my order looks at me with a mix of concern and mild judgement and goes "just one?"
I add a second bao, point to an egg something I wasn't sure I had tried before (鸡蛋醪糟), and a serving of shredded potato, Sichuan style.
To get your baos, you need first to line up, and once at the front yell (clearly) your order, and if it's to have here or to take away. It's chaotic and everyone is screaming their different orders. In the 20 minutes I've been here, there have been at least 100 people come through.
"36 baos, 12 meat, 12 mushroom, 12 carrot. 3 meat to have here, the rest take away."
"20 baos, 6 red bean, the rest meat"
"You've run out of meat? Okay I'll take the cabbage"
I've lost track, but somehow it works and everyone gets their baos.
Against my friend's advice to pace myself (food-wise), I buy a third bao on my way out because they are just so bloody delicious.
The rest of the day we walked all across old town sampling the "best of".
Xinjiang-style baked buns 新疆烤包子 Xīnjiāng kǎobāozi
Xinjiang-style lamb soup 新疆羊肉汤 Xīnjiāng yángròutāng
The best lamb soup (it was bloody delicious)
Lamb hooves 羊蹄子 Yáng tízi
Sheep lung & stuffed intestine 面肺子 miàn fèi zi
Lamb kebab 烤羊肉 kǎo yáng ròu
Day 3 (Last day at heavenly places)
On my last day in Urumqi, I head to 天山天池 Tianshan Tianchi (Heavenly Mountains Heavenly Lake).
Tianchi (lake) sits in a valley on the northern side of the Bogda Peak of Tianshan (mountains), around 100 kilometres away from Urumqi. Tianshan is a mountain system that spans across Xinjiang, and through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan with a length of 2,500 kilometres from east to west.
My driver is Hui (self-disclosed when I got in the car after asking which ethnicity I was), and he is a bit too chatty for me at 9 am. I should have pretended to sleep but instead grunted my way through the first 20 minutes as the caffeine took effect.
My driver is curious about Australia. He wants to know about the people there, about life in Australia. He asks me what it's like being Chinese in Australia. It's a long drive, so I start my response with "Australia has a very long history, dating over 65,000 years ago..." before quickly realising my Chinese vocab is not going to get me through this.
I move swiftly to things I know how to discuss with ease - high cost of living, housing affordability, and finding good schools for kids. My driver seems to lose interest, but I've run out of caffeine and regret not telling him about the time I saw a wallaby bouncing down the road at O'Connor shops.
Luckily, we soon arrive at Tianchi. It’s only 10 am but the sun is out and it's already 30 degrees. I’m very happy with my decision of shorts and a sleeveless top and remembering to bring my sunnies, but I look around and realise I missed the dress code memo.
Everyone is covered from head to toe. Full-brimmed hats. Masks. Neck wraps. Veils. Scarves. Long sleeve tops that cover most of your hands. Trousers. Umbrellas. No one says anything to me but I feel eyes looking at me with pity that this poor girl is going to get so tanned.
It's another hour from the car park where I'm dropped off to get to the starting point of my hike up Horse Tooth (Maya) Mountain 马牙山. A 40-minute drive to Tianchi (the lake), another 20 minutes to the base of Maya Mountain, and then finally a 10-minute cable car ride takes me to the starting point of the climb.
The temperature drops as we move up the mountain, and I notice the veils and scarves are now replaced with Canadian Goose and thick puffy jackets. This time, my fellow travellers were very concerned, and I was asked multiple times whether I was cold.
Remind me to wear a t-shirt that says "I'll wear a jacket if I'm cold" in future.
The hike gets me nearly 3,000 meters above sea level, and it’s one of the most incredible views I have seen.
The snow-capped Bogda Peak 博格达峰 sits majestically 5,445 meters high ahead. Below it, vegetation is rich. Dense pines protrude out. Tianchi gracefully nestles itself between the peaks, the water pristine as it comes directly from the melted ice caps.
The scenery takes my breath away (both figuratively and literally as the altitude makes me feel like I've been doing a Zumba class for the past hour).
It takes me about 3 hours to hike up and back. I finally make my way to the lake itself, which is now brimming with tourists as busloads of tour groups have been dropped off post-lunch.
Last 40 minutes back to the car park and I am taken straight to the airport. Security is fast (it's a small airport) and I have time for one final meal. Truth be told, three days of hardcore Xinjiang lamb and I’m down for a sandwich, but I hold steady and go for a final Big Plate Chicken 大盘鸡.
I'm home and grateful to be in my bed. Xinjiang has been incredible, but I am very excited to eat a salad and not have to use a squat toilet.
