Xinjiang: Time Management

For some reason, all of China is officially on Beijing time, so no matter how far West you go, you remain in the same time zone. I’m not sure of the political or economic reasoning behind this system, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say it’s some sort of communist symbolic move to remind people that Beijing decides everything, even the time, and is the functional if not geographical center of the country. Indeed, as I traveled through Xinjiang I found propaganda billboards and signs urging cooperation and extolling the contributions to the city brought by the People’s Republic of China.

Of course, when you’re closer to the border with Kyrgyzstan than the nearest Chinese province, and the majority population is not Confucian, Han Chinese but Muslim and Uighur, most people don’t pay much attention to Beijing, and make the time two hours earlier. The effect is that officially scheduled things are done on Beijing time, but day to day life occurs on local time.

I should make it a personal policy, in fact I think it should be a general rule never to arrive in a new city after dark. It is inevitably too late and I am inevitably too tired to do anything, and things are generally much more disappointing than they seem the next morning. I arrived at my hotel in Kashgar around 11:00, or 3 hours after sunset. I navigated the confusing reception desk system which involved multiple buildings and, after a short argument, secured a bed in a dorm room. The room, as I found out later, was occupied by two Tajik men, one of whom spoke English and was very friendly. I went to sleep almost immediately.

I woke up at 7 to catch a bus at 10, figuring I’d walk to the bus station through old town and maybe buy some snacks along the way. What I forgot was that it was really 5, so few people were around except a few sidewalk sweepers, taxis, and the occasional old man driving a two-wheeled donkey cart. By the time I got to the Mosque I’d found a few places open and bought some steamed buns before heading on to the bus station.

At this point I should note, nothing in my suburban New Jersey upbringing prepared me for the informality of many things involved in travel in China. Sure, I’ve gotten used to buying things in markets and haggling when occasion calls for it, but after arriving in Kashgar I experienced a whole new level of informal. To start, the taxi driver who took me to my hotel from the airport didn’t put on the meter. The price he gave me seemed fair and I was too tired and taken aback to argue. He then proceeded to give me his card and tell me he could take me out of the city on day trips to all the places tourists like to go. At this point I’ve only haggled for souvenirs, not services, and the idea of hiring a guide or going where public transportation does not was a strange one to me. I boarded a bus Tuesday morning to Karakul Lake, almost 200 km out of town on the Karkoram Highway, which has existed since before there were highways as a mountain pass connecting China and the Silk Road to Tajikstan. Karakul Lake is a glacial lake amongst the icy Pamir mountains, and it seemed like a good destination for an overnight trip. The bus left at 8:30/10:30 and stopped about five minutes later at the gravel parking lot that is the international bus station, where it stayed for about an hour and a half. We finally got going again, and 10 minutes later stopped for a bathroom break. Though initially I was irritated by this system (none of the officiousness of the transportation I’m used to), I quickly decided to let it go; I was in no rush, after all. At the third stop I got off to buy some snacks: bagels, of all things, seem to be a staple around here, along with a naan hearth bread the size of a dinner plate.

I should also mention that making the decision to not worry about the pace of the bus, or what time it was or using informally arranged services was helped immensely by a phone call from two classmates, Huijuan and Bamu, whose itinerary I was roughly following at a 24 hour lag and would meet up with Wednesday in Kashgar. They called to give me the number of the man who’s yurt they’d stayed at at Karakul lake, and tell me they’d probably hitchhike on to a further destination, and pick me up on their way back the next day. Also, they’d arranged for a driver to take us on a day trip to the desert on Thursday.

Well, Karakul Lake was nothing short of incredible. I met up with Muhui, the 20 year old who, with his father and two sisters, takes in tourists while his mother stays with his eleven year old brother at school in Kashgar. The lake was shaded by huge icy peaks, and its shores were dotted with yurts, camels, yaks and sheep. This was a new kind of tourism for me, and yet if felt comfortable and familiar. Mahui could speak a little English and a little Mandarin, but his sisters just whispered in Uighur, busying themselves making yak milk tea on the stove in the center of the yurt and setting out mats to sit on.

The tea had a very earthy green flavor, and was accompanied by hearth bread which I nibbled at while watching the sisters bake new loaves in a dutch oven on the stove. On my second bowl of tea, I realized I was out of breath, and had to start eating and drinking more slowly while intermittently taking deep breaths.

After the tea, Muhui took me on his motorbike around the lake, to take some pictures and see a bit of the area., which is truly scenery like I have not seen before. There was nothing, there was nobody, except the occasional shepherd or tan building. As crowded as China’s eastern cities are, I had found a place that was empty.

I returned and had some more tea, though I declined the freshly baked bread as I’d been eating bread all day and expending very little energy. I planned to walk around the little yurt encampment, but I instead lay down for a bit and actually fell asleep. When I got up, one of the girls was making dinner, and I sat around the stove with the family to warm up a bit and watch. I’m not the greatest conversationalist, especially when I’m not sure of myself, but I did my best in varying languages, trying to learn the names of the family and a few basic words, before finally asking the question I’d been avoiding: Where is the bathroom? I was directed to an area a couple dozen yards off with a stone screen and a pit. It was cold, so I hurried back to the yurt, and found myself panting when I got there; the cleanest air in China, and my first slight asthma problem? Only then did I finally realize that I’d gained a significant amount of altitude, and the cold, thin air was the likely cause for my shortness of breath and lack of energy.

Trying to mentally work up an appetite, I watched the older sister make pasta, to my surprise with a pasta machine, which she clamped to her cutting board and used to roll out the dough. The pasta was served with a simple stew, of which I ate as much as I could before declaring I was really, really full. As it was too dark and too cold to do much else, we went to sleep soon later on the mats and warm duvets the girls had just laid out.

In the morning it turned out my classmates had in fact decided to return to Kashgar the night before, so after breakfast of more tea and bread, I asked Muhui how I could get back to Kashgar. He said a bus should be through in half an hour, and we should go up to the road now to wait. Perhaps because of Muhui’s lack of hesitation at flagging down the first passing car, and perhaps because my sense of adventure had been piqued, I instead negotiated a ride back in a pickup truck with several Uighur men and four or five sheep on the back. An excellent way to round off my adventure into uncertainty.