Started off today by visiting the Xinjiang province museum (新疆維吾爾自治區博物館)。 Unfortunately when we got there it was closed for an hour and a half in the middle of the afternoon (I didn't know China had siesta's too). Luckily sometimes it is good to be a foreigner as the security guards saw us and decided we can go in even though technically they were closed. The museum has a large part about showing different tribal clothing of people living in China, then a section talking about how even though everyone is all different they are all Chinese, and then there was a section that was really interesting with 3800 year old mummies from an ancient desert kingdom, Loulan or Kroran (樓蘭), that was once very prosperous but mysteriously abandoned around 330AD.
Uigher (維吾爾) Neighborhood
After the museum we headed to an international bazaar in the Uigher neighborhood. It was a real disappointment as it seemed just like a really bad mall. We then walked around some of their local markets with food. After we had walked around we got a cab back to our hotel to get lunch. On the way the cab driver told us that we should not have been in that area, more specifically Charlotte should not have been there. We didn't understand why because there were a lot of tourists there, but it turns out that the area we were in was the exact location where riots occurred last summer where the Uigher people killed many Han Chinese (which is what Charlotte would be considered). You can read about it online, but everyone's story here is much different then the reported news. The news say it was a couple hundred dead, but locals said it was closer to a couple thousand. It was really amazing that we would never have known walking around the city that a year ago it was in complete turmoil. The only difference I noticed when in that area is that we weren't getting constantly harassed to buy things and they pretty much left us alone. Also every corner, and intersection there were police/military vans. I guess that should have been a red flag in China
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| From 77 Days in China |
International Bazaar
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| From 77 Days in China |
Outside the Bazaar
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| From 77 Days in China |
Spices for sale
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| From 77 Days in China |
People look very different from the Han Chinese
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| From 77 Days in China |
Meat for sale
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| From 77 Days in China |
Chicken and Nan bread
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| From 77 Days in China |
Lamb
Flight to Lanzhou (蘭州)
After lunch/dinner we went to the airport and got flight back to Lanzhou. We got in late and after checking into our hotel we walked to the train station, but couldn‘t get the train tickets we wanted (surprise!). We then went to the KFC to get something to drink. Charlotte got a coffee and I got an orange juice, however the orange juice came steaming hot! I was very confused and Charlotte said they serve OJ hot or cold, we asked to replace it with a cold one, but they said they were out of cold, so I had to keep the hot orange juice. I ended up letting it cool overnight and drinking it for breakfast.
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