Matt and I arrived in Urumqi two days ago, and today we flew from Urumqi to Kashgar. It is amazing here! The Lonely Planet had said that Urumqi looks like it was "imported lockstock and barrel from China." With that glowing description, I didn't have very high hopes for it. However, Matt and I both loved it. It definitely felt like a Chinese city, but it was so much more diverse. Along with ethnic Chinese, there were tons of Uyghers, Russians, Kazhaks, and other nationalities I can't place. The down side of this is that it is much harder for me to communicate with people because they have very different accents than I am used to, and some of them don't speak very good Chinese. It is bad when I can't tell if someone is speaking Chinese or Uyghur language, and even worse when I realize they are actually trying to speak English! Strangely, many more people speak English here than in Beijing.
We spent our first day at Hong Shan Gongyuan (Red Mountain Park), which was a deserted and very bizaare amusement park with random dog/clown statues and dilapidated carnival rides. Then we had a delicious lunch and walked around enjoying the foreign - ness of everything. the best part was the night market! All the wonderful food! Middle Eastern music was playing and people were selling tons of delicoious fruit and the best bread in the world. It is sooo delicious, except when they let it get soggy with lamb grease, that is the worst! It was freezing cold, but I am really looking forward to going to the Erdaqiao Night Market again.
Another interesting note is that Urumqi's airport is 100 times nicer than the Beijing airport. Very strange. Aren't the Olympics coming up in a few years?
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