Today, we made a blitzkrieg tour around the Urumqi area.  We started with a trip to the Xinjiang Museum, known for its very well-preserved mummified corpses.  These aren’t Egyptian mummies with their elaborate wrappings, but corpses dried out by the baking heat and salty clay of the desert.  Interestingly enough, not all the mummies were Asian – some were Caucasoid as well!  Not too surprising since we are on the far western border of China.  The museum also had a number of other displays, including some extensive ones on traditional dress and tools of the local (non-Han Chinese) minorities.  This included a loom! a much more complex number than I was expecting, six treadles and six shafts, warped with a complex ikat-dyed warp.  I asked if they had any books on the weaving, but there weren’t any at the museum (in English or otherwise).  Oh well.  At least I got a good look at the loom, though I couldn’t take photos in the museum.

After the museum, we went to a Friendship Store, which is a state-run tourist shop which (at least in theory) offers quality goods at a price not ruinously cheating to tourists.

It consisted mostly of a rug shop and an extensive shop full of jade jewelry.  Guess which one I made a beeline for?

Yep, the rug shop.  They had the most EXQUISITE rugs there, silk from a quality of 400 rows (of knots) per foot up to 1000+ rows per foot (!!).  I was flipping through the carpets and fell absolutely in love with a pretty 2’x3′ one, 800 rows/foot.  I inquired about the price, and unfortunately misplaced a decimal point in the conversion, so I thought it was about $300.  Turns out it was nearly three THOUSAND dollars!  Although, given that it had 900 rows/foot, that’s over 4400 knots per square inch!  I guess that’s not surprising that it was so expensive.

At any rate, I was severely disappointed, especially after thinking such a treasure might be within my grasp.  I was ready to turn away and go look at the jade jewelry, but the saleswoman persisted and insisted on showing me some of the cheaper rugs.  She showed me one that had “only” 600 lines/foot (which is about 2500 knots/square inch!), and I had to admit that it was very pretty.  It was bargain-priced at a mere $1000, which was still way out of my price range, and I kept trying to explain to her that no, I really didn’t want the rug, it was too expensive for my budget – no, no, really, no, I don’t want it!

Well, the more I said I didn’t want it, the more the price kept mysteriously dropping.  At the final point, when I said I could really only spend $500 and it was still out of my price range (the cost at that point was around $600), she went off to look for her manager and B. leaned over and said, “I have the feeling you’re succeeding at the wrong thing.”  She came back and said she could drop the price to $530.  I thought about it for a little longer, consulted B. on which one of the two he liked better, and finally the two of us decided to buy it.  It turned out that I got a better deal than I thought, even: the woman who ran the store was furious that she had given me such a deep discount!  Apparently she had gone below their approved floor price.  At any rate, it is a beautiful rug, 2×3′, and B. and I both like it a lot.  Here’s a photo (click on the thumbnail for the larger photo – which still doesn’t do the rug justice; it’s GORGEOUS!).

After that we went to Tian Chi, which is well-named “Heavenly Lake”.  It’s a beautiful blue lake tucked away in the mountains:

And then, on the way back, we stopped by a Khazakh yurt!

The Khazakhs are a semi-nomadic minority that lives in felt huts called yurts.  This one was by the side of the road, and our guide talked the resident into letting us take photos of the yurt and its interior, which was very neat and clean:

I took a good look at the wall of the yurt, which was made of heavy sheets of felt, sewn together:

Neat!!  Someday I want to make a piece of felt that large.

We returned to the hotel and I gratefully caught up on sleep for the first time in nearly a week.

A brief interlude to mention that about 1/3 of websites seem to be blocked from China, including most of the major blogging sites (Livejournal for example), Wikipedia, etc.  A lot of the blockage seems entirely random – I can’t see how online fiber arts shops would offend the Chinese censors, for example.  At any rate, I feel fortunate to be able to post to my blog at all (all things considered), but I regret to tell you that one of this hotel, the Chinese censors, or my ISP is blocking FTP transfers, meaning I can’t update my website right now, and possibly not until I get back.  C’est la vie.  I will post the better photos in my blog for now, and update my website when I get a chance.
Meanwhile, here is a photo of B. in front of a Shanghai McDonald’s:

After a 13-hour flight, we landed in Shanghai (China’s eastern shore) and promptly set off the next day for Urumqi, a desert city in the far northwest of China. It took roughly 5.5 hours to fly the length of China, and between that and the jet lag, we were thoroughly exhausted upon our arrival.
The following day we got up early and went to the Turpan area, an oasis in the midst of the desert. Turpan is renowned for its grapes and melons – the intense heat makes for sweet fruit, and the irrigation permits the growing of crops in one of the largest deserts in China. The farmers grow fresh grapes and also make an astonishing variety of raisins – we saw a lot of them in the night market.

We spent most of the day going to the ruined cities of Jiaohe and Gaochang. The ruins were moderately impressive, but mostly what I remember was the intense heat and sun on the crumbling adobe. In Gaochang, we took the trip out to the best-preserved ruin by donkey-cart, which proved somewhat amusing as our donkey decided to take a detour while the driver was back in the street picking up a dropped bag.

As the intense heat of the day faded, we went to see the karez museum. The karez are a series of tunnels and wells that were dug as the original irrigation system hundreds of years ago – some of the wells 100 meters deep (so said the tour guide), connecting to underground tunnels that carry the water out to the fields. There are over 1000 karez irrigation lines, all dug by hand – our guide, Jack, said that some of the original karez workers are still alive, and that because of the cramped conditions (the tunnels were no more than 1 meter tall, and excavated completely by hand) they are noticeable in having permanently bent backs.

At the karez was an arbor dripping with the grapes for which the Turpan area was known.  I was quite impressed:

We finished up the tour part of the day with a feast with an Uigur (local minority) dance troupe – they roasted an entire lamb for us, which looked kind of grisly:

But the dance costumes were quite pretty – I wanted one for next year’s AIDS Ride!

After a three hour ride, we returned to the hotel, exhausted.

Just a quick note from Shanghai – we stopped here overnight after a 13-hour (!) flight, and are flying out to Urumqi right after lunch. We’re staying in a four-star hotel, which means INTERNET ACCESS in the rooms! I’m not used to traveling in such luxury. Usually I duck out to an Internet cafe in some hole-in-the-wall right around the block from my backpacker hotel, but here I am in air-conditioned (!) comfort. I is happy.

I’m still not sure about the group tour format – I am having to suppress my urge to go out and explore the city on my own – but I suppose I need to give it a fair chance. Thus far it’s mostly meant being herded around like lemmings, but perhaps it will get better with time. Or not. I intend to enjoy myself, either way.

I knitted like a maniac on the plane flight, and have knitted one entire sock and 1/4 of the second. I expect to finish the second sock today, as it’s a 5-hour flight to Urumqi.

One minor, but amusing note: the traveling tiger (who is, natch, with me on this trip) met a MOOSE yesterday! My brother, whose website is The Meandering Moose (it runs in the family, I guess), brought his little meandering moose along on this trip two, so the moose and the tiger hung out for awhile.

I’ll be taking off for China in about five and a half hours. Fully packed, and the traveling tiger is (of course) with me – I bought him a little companion in the airport (a fellow tiger) and will be traveling with her as well.

Not much to say, anticipating lots of fun on this trip. More once we get to Shanghai.