9/28/2006 China Day 3: Tian Chi, Xinjiang - Techno Yurt!

Woke up at 6 AM, packed, and checked out of my hotel. Took a taxi (6 RMB) to the city park to catch a bus to Tian Chi, not knowing the park was only 6 short blocks away from my hotel.

There were several tour groups offering tours of Tian Chi - all at the same price. I didn't want to join a tour though; I just wanted to get a ride up there to explore on my own, so I would be able to hike up the mountain and be able to spend the night if I liked. The tour group was taking a chair lift up the mountain and only spending 2.5 hours exploring before returning the same day.

The price of the bus ride only to Tian Chi was interesting. It was 40 RMB round-trip if you went and came back the same day. However, if you slept there and you wanted to come back a different day, then you would have to pay another full 40 RMB for the return trip. This was the same across all tour groups.

Their reasoning, if you only think about efficiency, was sound. However, this kind of reasoning totally ignores building a reputation for good service, which is what I hate about Chinese (small business) ultra-efficiency. Their reasoning was that they are always able to fill up their minibus with paying customers (my bus up was full). So if they have to bring you back on another day, that means that they have to leave an empty, paying seat on the way up, so you have to pay full price for that seat on that day too.

So of the 5 or so tour groups there, I chose the one with a permanent physical office there because I figured if there were any problems, I could come by and find them more easily. All of the others had just set up signs and a couple of stools and were shouting out to passers-by. I slightly regretted this decision over the next couple hours because another tour guide was cuter, but more importantly, she helped me out a lot over the next hour or two, telling me where to get breakfast, food, and water for the trip, and how to get back from Tian Chi on a different day on the municipal bus for 20 RMB.

On the bus ride up, I met a couple Chinese guys visiting Urumqi and Tian Chi from a different province. We had the usual conversation about where was I from? How did I speak Chinese? And was I really of Chinese origin even though I was born in America? However, I wasn't happy with my hotel situation in Urumqi. I didn't want to pay 160 RMB ($20) per night for a room. So I asked one of the Chinese men how much he was paying for his hotel. He told me 20 RMB, which I thought was great, as long as the rooms weren't too dingy. I think there is some disctinction between hotels that can take in foreigners and those that can't, so I as concerned that I might not be able to get in for that reason. He told me that his hotel was around the city park, andI didn't ask for more details than that because unless he had the actual address on him, nothing else would have really helped me.

The trip up to Tian Chi was otherwise uneventful. When we got there, we stopped at a tourist trap selling Chinese herbal medicines. It seems that many or all tours do this, as several other tour buses stopped there while we were there. This was a minor annoyance because I wasted 30 perfectly good minutes standing around at an ugly roadside shop instead of hiking or even just relaxing in Tian Chi.

I did, however, meet Brian, a Scot traveling China for a couple weeks during this stop. He was on the same bus as me - we just hadn't noticed each other until we got off the bus. And even then, most Westerners apparently wouldn't be able to distinguish me from a Chinese person. Brian is finishing his Ph.D. in Risk Management in 1 month in Scotland. He came to China ostensibly for a conference in Beijing, but really just came to travel China.

Brian packed light because he was planning to spend the night in a yurt. I packed heavy because I was planning to rough it up to 2 nights - sleeping outside in my sleeping bag and a bivy sack. I was carrying 5+ L of water for 2 days because I didn't have a water filter (left mine at home thinking water in China would be too chemically polluted to want to drink even if filtered). 5 L x 5 kg = 11 lbs = :-(

So with my bus ticket purchased at 8:15 AM, I had an hour or so to kill before the bus left at 9:30 AM, and I was hungry! I went to a restaurant recommended by the cute tour guide. It was a little hole in the wall, but it was awesome. I had a bowl of beef(-flavored) noodles for breakfast and ordered a mixture of 20 freshly steamed pork and vegetable buns for the hike. The 3 women working in the restaurant were so happy to have a foreigner who spoke Chinese visit their restaurant, and everyone including me was smiling. It was a wonderful breakfast.

The bus ride up to Tian Chi was uneventful. Brian met Rashid (or was it the other way around) in the bus parking lot. Rashid is a famous yurt host in many Western guide books because he is friendly, has a nice place, and speaks perfect English. He told me that he has never visited an English-speaking country, and that he developed his English simply by speaking with his many inerational guests. So Brian made arrangements to stay at Rashid's for the night (40 RMB) and we began our hike up the mountain.

It's not a very tall mountain - perhaps 6000 feet. There is a waterfall or two on the way up, and the main attraction is a lake at the top. It's a nice lake, but nothing you can't see at Lake Tahoe, California, and certainly falls short of Yosemite and Kings Canyon national parks (also in California). In the afternoon when all the tour buses arrive, te place is overbooked and the tourists overwhelm the serenity of the lake.

Rashid's place is the best yurt place to stay at the lake for 2 reasons. First, it is on the water's edge, whereas all the other yurt places are back off the water's edge. The other reason is that his place is at the far side of the lake relative to where the chair lift arrives and all the Chinese city-slickers congregate in their dress slacks and dress shoes. So with a 30 minute walk to the far side of the lake, you can get away from the tourist crush even in the afternoon.

When Brian and I arrived at Rashid's after 2 hours of hiking, there were already 2 tour groups of 20 Germans and 16 Dutch. While this is much more than the usual number of guests, it gives a good idea of Rashid's popularity. It was almost 4 PM at the time. Brian and I sat down to have a late lunch. I ate some of the steamed buns that I had brought up. Brian at rice with carrots and corn prepared by the camp. We each had a beer (5 RMB each).

After lunch, Brian decided to go for a 3-hour horseback ride to the top of some vantage point where you can get a better view of some nearby snow-covered mountain peaks. I declined, preferring instead to hang out at camp, enjoy the scenery, maybe meet some people, and maybe write some in my journal.

What I ended up doing was meeting 3 cool English guys: Dan, his younger brother, Rich; and Dan's friend, Matt. They were playing a card game called Shithead. I watched a round, and then they dealt me in. Dan and Rich, especially, are the coolest blokes. They have the funniest shit to say, and they have comical brotherly arguments in too much detail about shit that nobody cares about.

We had a great time shooting the shit and playing cards until Brian came back from his horseback ride. Dan speaks and reads pretty good Chinese (500 characters) because he taught English in China for a year some years ago. Turns out the 3 English guys had a tiff with the Germans and Dutch because the English guys had arrived the day before and stayed in a yurt. Then, when the Germans and Dutch arrived the next day while the English were out, Rashid somehow put a full contingent in the yurt the English were staying in. Well, instead of asking Rashid if there was some sort of mistake, the invaders simply pushed all of the English guys' stuff out of the way and set up their own. Then, when the English came back, the foreign occupiers chased them out of the disputed yurt yelling, "No way! Get out! This is our yurt! We already paid for it! Go talk to Rashid!" Typical self-important Germanic peoples! We're not actually sure whether it was the Germans or the Dutch who were actually responsible for this, but it's easier for us just to blame them all in a blanket fashion.

So Brian came back and the 5 of us (3 English, a Scot, and an American) had lamb kebabs (10 RMB) and the same carrot-corn-rice from lunch for dinner. I believe the lamb kebabs were a special treat because the English had decided to buy half a lamb (raised in Rashid's camp) from Rashid for 200 RMB. In an act of cosmic retribution, the Germans and the Dutch didn't get any kebabs.

After dinner, the English didn't want to just play cards and fall asleep, so we decided to go looking for the magical, mythical dance club hereafter and forever known as "Techno Yurt"! Yes, I said dance club in the middle of a Chinese national or provincial park where on any typical summer night, you can expect a sum total of 20 foreigners staying overnight. And no, we weren't high. We walked for a good 30-45 minutes, but we never found Techno Yurt that night. Too bad, because the ladies have no idea what they missed.

That's about it. The English slept happily in the same yurt as Brian. I would have slept in the same yurt too, but I decided to test out my fancy cold-weather camping gear, so I slept outside in my sleeping bag and bivy sack with several layers of clothihng on and a hat. I'm happy to report that I was warm as a bunny even though it was probably 0ºC or colder at night. Went to sleep at 11:30 PM.

That's it for now, Fluid People! Talk to you soon.