The China Most Tourists Don't See

We were fortunate to take part in a 7-day tour of Western and Central China’s old “Silk Road” to see the routes traveled millennia ago by traders and explorers between the ancient cities of western Europe, eastern Europe, the middle east, and China. A continuing pattern in Western/Chinese trade relations has been a struggle by the west to find trade-worthy goods that would appeal to the Chinese, who had long ago found a great deal of self-sufficiency within their own realm. Hint: this trade imbalance had a great deal to do with the Opium Wars between Great Britain and China in years past. Britain found one thing they could provide to China in a big way, and when Chinese leaders balked, wars ensued.

Nevertheless, some of the earliest imports to China included cotton, ivory, wool, gold and silver. At the same time, China exported silk, tea, salt, sugar, spice and porcelain. The “silk road” was, at one time, quite alive with trade.  

After a 5 hour flight, we arrived in Urumqi (oor-oom-chee), which is the Uyghur (wee-ger) pronunciation of the city in the northwest of China near Kazahkstan. The Uyghur people are one of several Muslim minority groups in China. The Chinese pronunciation of the city is (woo-loo-moo-chee). But the Uyghur language is based on Arabic, and we noticed signs written in Chinese and Arabic.

The View from our Urumqi Hotel

A mosque in Urumqi

"Shopping" with Todd and Sherae Forsyth in Urumqi market

Interesting items at Urumqi market

Breakfast buffet in hotel lobby

One of several 4,000-year-old mummies preserved in dry air of Western China. This man had several faded scorpion tattoos on his forehead and temples--presumably to ward off evil spirits. These mummies were buried in sand under upside-down boats, and marked with large wooden poles or things that looked like boat rudders or oars. 

We were immediately struck by the tightened security, compared to China’s capital. Due to bloody unrest in the region, security measures are stringent: x-ray of bags and pat-down searches entering EVERY building (shops, museums, grocery stores, even parking lots). The people dress and look quite different from those in Beijing. They wear very quaint hats and scarves. It was a delightful experience to see this group of people.

Our guide was a middle-aged “Han” Chinese woman (the majority race in China) named Xin Li. She met us, along with 47 of our dear BYU China Teacher friends at the airport and we hopped aboard a large, comfortable bus. It was great to see those we had gotten to know during training in Provo. Now they are teaching in various major cities in China.

Our first stop was to a market area next to a large government-built mosque. We enjoyed seeing shop after shop of unusual goods including ethnic clothing, unknown dried fruit, trinkets and carvings from various lands.

Next, we saw an interesting museum with extremely old mummies and a beautiful display featuring the various ethnic groups--showing their practices, clothing, food, etc. It was very well done. 

Our next stop was to dinner at a restaurant. It was here that we first saw what would become our typical meal set-up: Liter bottles of Sprite and Coke set in the middle of dinner tables. The soft drinks marked the tables set aside for the BYU group.

We ended up at a very nice hotel. Our room was on an upper floor and strangely, every room was equipped with a pair of yellow rubber duckies on the bathtub. Our beds were rock hard, and we thought we would not sleep the night, but we must have been more tired than we thought because we slept fairly well.

The next morning, we had a breakfast buffet before heading off on a 3 hour bus ride to a smaller town—Turpan.