Took an 8:30am bus to Yinchuan (銀川) from Lanzhou (蘭州) this morning. I only slept for 2 hours the night before and Charlotte stayed up all night, so we slept for most of the 6 hour bus ride, except we woke up near the end to watch the movie we had seen on a previous bus about the evil English imperialists in Hong Kong again (movie: 葉問).
Bus, Car, Train
Getting to the bus station, our first goal was to find a way out of Yinchuan as we did not plan to spend the night there; we were just going to use it as a place to find a way to Hohhot (呼和浩特). We arrived at the bus station just to find someone threatening to commit suicide by jumping off the second floor of the bus terminal. The security inflated a huge balloon under him and then he was pulled to safety. Finding no buses going our way that afternoon we thought we might need to spend the night and decided to find a taxi so we could go check the train station and go to the tourist site we wanted to see before leaving.
The first cab driver wanted to charge us around $24 which we knew was way too expensive, the guide book said it should be about $13 as did blogs we had read. We found another cab that agreed to take us to the train station on meter then to the tourist site and back for $15, which seemed fair so we agreed to go with her. At the train station there was a huge line, but we finally got up and actually found there was a train leaving at midnight that had 2 soft sleeper beds。 They were not together, but at this point that did not matter, we were set for our next leg of our trip.
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Charlotte had to get a picture of the big safety balloon and the guy on the edge of second floor
Western Xia Tombs (西夏皇陵)
We spent out time in Yinchuan at the Western Xia Tombs (西夏皇陵) which include the mausoleum is the first emperor of the Western Xia empire 9西夏) which existed between 1038 and 1227, before Genghis Khan (成吉思汗) destroyed the empire. The large mud structure is what is left of a pyramid that was placed over the grave of the first emperor who died in 1048. There are other mausoleums on the sight as well, but this is one is in the best condition and is the largest.
Only in China*
*this might happen in other countries too, but I have never witnessed it (thankfully)
When we were at the ancient city in Turpan (吐魯番) we noticed some Chinese tourists using the 1000+ year old city walls as props for their pictures, we found this pretty funny, but also kind of sad, but since they didn't seem to be doing any damage or anything it was mainly just funny. However at the West Xia Tombs it was brought to a new level. We finished looking at the main section and decided to walk on the outside of the walls that surrounded the mausoleum. The walls were also part of the ancient site and were made in ~1084 AD. We turned the corner of the wall and saw some Chinese tourists that we had seen walking that way. The 2 that we saw started laughing hysterically when they saw us, then we saw their friend who was squatting and pooping at the fence that stands about a foot from the ancient wall. We turned around and went the other way. I should note that we just came from a museum that was maybe a 5 minute walk with plenty of bathrooms.
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Arriving at the tombs
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
The main mausoleum, with a lot of cool mountains in the background
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Charlotte looking at the mausoleum
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Matthias in the same spot
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
The guide book describes it as melting ice cream
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Up close of one of the guarding towers
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
The wall around the tomb, before we turned the corner to go around them
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
One of the many things they excavated from the tombs
First Dealings with the Chinese Police
After leaving the Western Xia Tombs we found our cab driver who would drive us back to the train station. On the way she started mentioning how we should really pay her more than we had agreed to. We discussed it and thought maybe we could give her an extra $3 if she drove us to town, which normally is a $1 cab drive, but before we could say anything she said we should pay her an extra 80 RMB, which is about $12. We had already paid her by meter for the trip to the train station and then had agreed and already paid 100 RMB for round trip ride to and from the tombs. When we got back to the train station she demanded we pay the extra 80 RMB. We tried to just leave as we had already paid everything she agreed too, but she grabbed Charlotte and didn't let her go and started yelling to anyone who would listen. Charlotte then called the police to come. It took a couple minutes for them to arrive in which she plead her case to other cab drivers and I spent the time trying to make sure Charlotte stayed calm. We weren't going to argue with her, just tell the police what happened and take their advice, if they said pay we would pay.
The police arrived and all the cab drivers surrounded him yelling that we should pay more. Luckily she didn't lie and told the police that say she agreed to the deal, but said we took too long (we where only at the tourist site for 1 hour and skipped a decent amount of it). He agreed with us, but suggested we pay an extra 20 RMB, $3) we agreed, to just get it over with, but she refused to accept it. He then brought us to the police station, away from the other cab drivers. His boss was at the station he heard the story and also agreed with us. She was claiming we should pay her 80 RMB. Even if we paid her the meter rate for the entire time it would have only been an extra 50 RMB. He then said we should pay an extra 25 RMB, again this was fine with us so we gave it to him, who tried to give it to her. Now she started crying and yelling that she missed the time she should have turned her taxi in, the cop gave her no sympathy as that was her own fault for agreeing to a deal that would take longer than she had her car for. She kept yelling that she needed 80 RMB more and that she didn't even want the 25 RMB. Finally she just said, ok just give my 10 more, since that is only $1.50 to get this over with we gave it to her and she took off. The police then talked to us and were just laughing at it, saying that they actually have to deal with the taxi driver disputes quite often.
Dinner
Luckily we didn't know what we would do for the 5 hours between the tourist sites and the train, but the taxi craziness took care of about an hour and a half of that time. With the rest of the time we found a restaurant downtown and got some good food.
 |
| From 77 Days in China |
Bread and Chinese chicken pizza for dinner
Train
We got on our train around midnight and separated into our rooms. In my room was one woman who actually spoke a little English, turns out she graduated from university the year before and was now an English teacher. She took the opportunity to ask me a lot of questions about the US and my opinions on China, which was interesting as it was my first chance to see what Charlotte has been getting asked throughout the trip. She obviously had a very skewed view of America, she asked if we traveled a lot within the states and I explained how we did, however usually we drove or flew rather than taking trains. She then asked if it was possible to fly between states and if there were trains that went between states. She was also amazed when she asked where my money came from to live while being a student. When I explained we get money from the government (grants) to do research which included money for living expenses that I saved, she could not understand why I did not have to give the money I did not spend back to the government.
The hardest questions she asked were about China, she had only been traveling the last 2 years within China and only to a couple cities like Beijing and Shanghai. She wanted to know what my opinion of Chinese people are, I tried to explain that its hard to make generalizations of an entire country, because we have met some amazingly nice people who have gone out of their way to help us, but just that day we saw someone poop on a 1000 year old wall and got scammed by a taxi driver. She just kept asking, but I couldn't really give her an answer. She also could not understand why we could not go to Tibet when Chinese tourists are allowed to. I tried to explain that it costs more for foreigners to go, but I don't think she understood why the Chinese government wouldn't let us there without paying a lot of money.
Funniest moment was when she was asking me constantly about my opinion of Chinese people, I asked what she thought of Americans and she responded right away saying "I don't think they are very nice" :) I responded that usually Americans are a lot more private than Chinese so I could see how she might think that, usually Americans don't like telling strangers everything about their life, of course she got embarrassed for asking so many questions, but I told her I was fine with it.
After I had blown her mind enough about how many things she thought about the United States was wrong, we all went to sleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment