More Silk Road yarns from Turpan

I've not had much chance to write since leaving Khotan, but now I have some time, here's a bit of what's been going on since:

Last day in Khotan I made another attempt to visit the silk factory... The decision to go there again was rewarded with an enjoyful bus journey to the village where the factory was based, during which I was surrounded by young school kids, asking numerous times "What's your name?" which seems to be the only English sentence most children have learnt in school in Xinjiang province. The one exception was one young girl who had a little notebook of English phrases and would sneak a look in there then come back to me and ask something like "What's your telephone number?". Off the bus I had a quick game of football with some of the boys before going to the silk factory. After some effort I convinced the lady in the silk shop that I wanted to be shown around the factory. She obliged for 10 yuan and i was shown about 7 buildings each housing machinery and staff processing the different stages of silk production from selection/removal of good/poor quality cocoons, bathing them in hot water to help soften the raw silk before separation of the filaments, through to the final stage of weaving. A reasonable visit, but a shame noone there could speak any English, which would have made it far more worthwhile...

In the afternoon, i caught an overnight bus towards Urumqi, I was told by ticket desk and drivers to get off at some stop called something like Toloxan, to change for Turpan, which is where I wanted to go, I decided to skip Urumqi.. Journey was on a sleeper bus, first along the Southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert and then northwards straight across the centre on a highway built by the oil companies mining the oil resources in the desert. During the evening we stopped at a small village for dinner where while standing outside a cafe I was attracting the attention of two young girls. Whenever I caught them looking at me, they would embarassingly cover their faces and burst into a fit of giggles. Slowly they edged closer and closer and then started chatting to a man next to me, after a while one edged closer again, looked up at me and asked 'What's your name?". Their (English) names were Delilah and Alice and were probably about 8 or 9 years old. Delilah spoke a little English with a beautiful, clear English speaking accent, we exchanged a few questiond/answers in English and Mandarin and I sang her a bit of a song I know by a famous Welsh singer. I also know a song about a girl called Alice, but the currently popular version is not suitable to sing to a young child, so I left that out.

I was awoken early by one of the drivers and told to move seats to accomodate a family who wanted to be together, zzzz, soon after I was awoken again and told to get off. I looked around, was he talking to me ?, yes, I looked outside, but we were virtually in the middle of the desert, no bus stop here ! Just a couple of mining buildings. It turned out (or so it seems) that the drivers decided as I was the only one going to this particular stop, they would get me off here, rather than take the 20km or so diversion from the Urumqi main road to Toloxan and back again. Just throw the foreigner off here and just show him a cab... no amount of suggesting they take me to the bus station - as per my ticket - helped and i just had to resort to the fact I was off the bus and had to take a taxi to Toloxan, but nothing i could do really. So i reached Toloxan (or whatever it was called) and took a shared taxi and eventually arrived in Turpan...

Had been recommended a hotel here, only 40 yuan for a single room with bathroom, asked at reception but he said there were only rooms for 150 yuan ! or a dorm for 30, I mentioned the recommendation and questioned his pricing, but he would not admit any such rooms were available, so I took the dorm room, which was a bit like a prison cell. the toilets were 150m away across a courtyard and the showers which were next to the toilet were only open from 15:00 - 21:00. Later, someone else checked the dorm room and said she was also being shown a single room available for just 40 yuan, which is when I found out that prices seemed to depend on who was working at the desk. So the next morning, I asked then man who had served me the day before again, faced with more facts, he now admitted, there were cheaper rooms available !! So I left as I didn't like his hotel anymore ;)

Turpan (吐鲁番, Tulufan in Chinese) seemed a pretty friendly town, loads of kids in the streets would say hello to me and a couple of cafes even had English menus which was a stroke of luck. This is mainly due to a large number of tourist sites in the vicinity of Turpan, there is nothing in the town itself, but it is a popular base for visitors to arrange tours of the sites around. Though smaller, it had a similar friendly feel to Khotan, in that the number of foreign visitors seems still low enough that the locals have not yet reached the stage of treating foreigners with indifference and still see you as a bit of a curio.


Left: Emin minaret and mosque in Turpan.
Right: Ancient ruined city of Jiaohe.

During my short time in Turpan I found time to visit the Emin mosque/minaret which is in the middle of a field a couple of kilometres walk out of the centre and also the the ancient ruined city of Jiaohe. The ruined city was interesting as much of the design was still intact, remains of building and pathways were clear and gave a feel for what it might have been like there so many, many centuries ago.