Xinjiang: Yining (Yili)

From Urumqi we continued west to Yining on our way to Kazakhstan. The train was full as it's the start of the 5-day May 1st holiday. This time it was on the fast train, not smoky, for a change. In fact, there were constant announcements threatening that the train would come to a complete stop if cigarette smoke was detected. I was highly skeptical, but certainly kept it to myself.

Until the Qing Dynasty of China took control of Xinjiang in the middle of the 18th century, Yining area had been mostly claimed by nomadic people, from Indo-Iranian to Turkic and Mongol. Also, at that time Russia was also asserting its interest in the region. 

As a result, the artifacts around town are not particularly old, certainly not by Chinese standards. There was the old Uighur town with brightly painted houses, and the 1930s planned hexagonal community. Since it was the May Day holiday, there were a lot of Chinese tourists. It was rather festive.

We were not motivated to take a 120km ride to see the alpine Lake Sayram.

On the High Speed Train from Urumqi to Yining. Check out the colorful seat coverings and the spiffy airline-like attendant uniforms. Checkout the guy(below) with the megaphone, who drove me crazy with endless announcements: Safety slogans, "no smoking" threats, and travel tips says SL.




The landscape was all desert for the first 3 hours. Sun-Ling and I dozed off. Then, after passing through several long tunnels, we entered the Yili Valley with green fields, grazing animals, and several huge solar farms. SL continued to doze.






1600+ passengers disembarked at Yinning, the terminal station (1st below). The line at the taxi rank was very long so we walked out the main road where there were still a lot of people hailing or waiting for taxis. But in 5 minutes we were rolling towards the HULEJIA Hotel (2nd below) and its neo-1950's architectural style.




Just 3 minutes from the hotel we found a restaurant and had a nice meal of wonton dumplings with Spring greens inside, and a liang pi noodle variation, and soon after a granilla bubble tea and iced coffee at out fav drink shop Mixue Ice Cream and Tea.






After dinner we walked up to the Kazanqi Folk Tourism Area; that is, the Old Town. Many tour groups were walking around, some taking horse cart rides. The












Many of the buildings had Russian or Eastern European architectural influences.






The next we walked up the New Garden Hexagonal City, laid out in 1934 in a hexagonal plan. See the map (first below). Lots of tourists and more Russian and Eastern European influenced architecture. Not to mention the Eastern Orthodox Church (2nd below)










One of the highlights of the hexagonal city is the Accordion Museum. They also had a collection of pump harmoniums, brought overland from Europe I suspect.


In the evening we walked south through the Night Market (1st below), where I tried a cold yogurt drink, to the crowded Han (Chinese) Street Bazaar, a huge building with hundreds of food stalls, but nothing vegetarian worth trying.










Some final mosque shots.

Xinjiang: Urumqi

From Turpan we headed west, the first ~100 miles to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Urumqi, long a post on the Silk Road, only became the capital of Xinjiang in 1884. The name Urumqi is Mongolic rather than Turkic. The Chinese name is Wulumuqi which is quite fun to say (woo-loo-moo-chi).

Today Urumqi is a modern metropolis. Save for a few historic mosques, even most of the mosques are new. Unlike Turpan, all the mosques are rather relaxed, normal, since they are mostly Hui mosques, as Uighers consist only 1/8 of the population, down from 1/4 at the beginning of Qing rule 250 years ago. So, it looks like muslims in China are as free or unfree as christians, Buddhists, etc, unless any of the adherents are separatists - as in the case of Uighers - there must be greater degrees of suppression. Alas, our timing was bad as all the museums were closed on Monday, rather unusual for China. Below are photos of the Shaanxi Grand Mosque built in 1883.







We left Turpan by train from Tulufan Bei (Turpan North) Railway Station, first below. The waiting Room is second below.




I made a new friend on the train. He's ethnically Kazak and resembles some of my Meckley kin.


Fence and Windmills and Mountains - On the Train from Turpan to Wulumuqi.


The train had been through a dust storm somewhere between Hotan and Turpan, and there was dust flying everywhere creating a layer of fine yellow dirt on the floor when we disembarked at Wulumuqi South Station.








Like many hotels in China, our hotel in Wulumuqi had a room service delivery robot (here parked in the lobby next to the low-tech water cooler).


Lunch = Veggie Baozi plus Noodle Soup.




Then to the Grand Bazaar for some souvenir shopping. The Tower is a replica of the Kalon Tower in Bukhara.




We ate dinner at the famous Ling Ling Rice Noodles restaurant. The spicy nian gao were unbelievably tasty. The best ever! No wonder there were so many yellow-clad moto delivery people waiting outside.








The second day we rode the bus (1st below) to Hongshan (Red Hill) Park, with its Buddhist Temple (2nd and 3rd below), and pretty good views from the top of the hill. Lots of folks enjoying the spring flowers at the park including a team building excursion of hair salon employees.
















On the way back to the hotel we stopped by People's Park and sat for a while in the shade, and walked by the closed Confucian Temple (with red doors), and spotted a Christian church with Chinese architectural stylings.






For dinner we came upon a small resto serving what could be called a Chinese "burger"; Chinese "veggie burger" for us. ;-)


Then to a different nian gao place where the crescent-moon-shaped noodles reminded Sun-Ling of childhood Chinese New Year's meals in Shanghai