People on the streets of this modern Chinese outpost could easily be mistaken for denizens of any major Western metropolis, though at a less hectic tempo. Urumqi (pronounced oo-room-a-chee with the "oo" silent) is the north-westernmost large city in Xinjiang, the Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Long hair and unusual haircuts are not uncommon with young males. My own Western hairstyle no longer attracts so much attention. Here in Urumqi there are many Caucasians so my own ethnicity also blends in. There is still a good deal of staring, but mostly by people who look like they have just arrived from the country.  

Better hotels in China use modern card keys for room access. Some are magnetic striped, others are smart cards. Parking meters also use smart cards to collect parking fees, as do the public buses. Directly across the street from the city square I found the Hoi Tak hotel, an excellent five star establishment with sticker-shock room rates. As I went through my practiced routine of asking for discounts and then suggestions for more budget friendly alternatives, the accommodating receptionist summoned the assistant manager Morris, a tall twenty-something German national. We had instant rapport and he offered a can't-refuse deal: 400 Yuan (about $49) with a lavish buffet breakfast. It turned out to be one of the best hotel values I've had in China, very comfortable. 

The restaurant next to the Hoi Tak Hotel serves real Chinese food, delicious and cheap. Like most Chinese restaurants new diners are seated with others at a large round table. A meal of noodles and chicken with free tea set me back a mere ten Yuan (about $1.25). A gourmet buffet lunch in another nearby hotel cost 38 Yuan or about $4.70. The scrumptious dinner buffet cost 110 Yuan, but on certain evenings a 2 for 1 offer made it cheap, indeed. On one of the main streets I found an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant with the improbable name of "Excellent Pizza." The 35-Yuan ($4.40) price includes selections from a large Chinese buffet, several kinds of pizza and all the beer one cares to drink. The only problem is its popularity. Competition for access to the food presented a challenge. I found three separate KFC restaurants around the city. In one I noticed the excitement of a couple teenage girls playing the restaurant's scratcher game; one of them had won something.  

I love riding city buses. Everything works like you would expect it to work and the fare is usually one Yuan or about twelve cents to anywhere in the city. The seats are always hard, but most have one padded seat for oldsters like the disabled or me. Buses are rarely crowded. Automated fare collection for locals works by waving a smart card across a detector mounted at the front of the bus. People watching on buses is enlightening and buses always go where lots of people are interested in going. That means all popular places in the city are accessible by bus. I have never seen so much thoughtful kindness on public buses anywhere else in the world. Mothers with babies and old folks (including me!) regularly find other riders surrendering their seats for them. For some reason, young men are the least likely to show such consideration. 

Most Uighur women wear dark brown woven scarves over their hair, though some fully cover their faces as well. Men wear funny little square shaped caps called dopas to distinguish them from other ethnicities. For the rest of the people high fashion attire is common with both men and women. One day while having lunch in a KFC near my hotel in the central shopping district I counted nine people wearing older "Mao-style" clothes as I registered a hundred dressed in fashions indistinguishable from people on the streets of New York. Even their mannerisms mimic those seen in America or Europe.  

I found myself feeling a bit sad as I pondered the widespread loss of individual national identities around the world. Rickshaws, donkey carts, and even bicycles seem to have been banned in downtown Urumqi. I did eventually find the Uighur and Hui "ghettos" where many of the old cultural ways have survived, where the donkey carts mingle uneasily with twenty-first century conveyances and street markets manage to hide some of the plastic artifacts produced in modern day factories.  

Down one side street in the old area I discovered a man with a "cannon" contraption making puffed rice. Each batch required a loud explosion that could be heard for blocks away. Over the muzzle he tied a transparent "garbage bag" to catch the puffed up rice. Another guy on the street with an equally Byzantine machine produced puffy "corn curls" in a less violent, but equally bizarre process.  

Nearby, several groups of men sat playing chess. I stopped to watch one game for a while and became flabbergasted at the totally incorrect moves given to each piece; pawns and rooks moved diagonally, knights capturing opponents at the corner, etc. Finally as one game ended, I blurted out "bu shi" and lifted the pieces, moving each in the "correct" way for the chess I know. The players while amused, clearly disagreed with my crazy ideas and proceeded to start another game with their own rules. Later on the Internet I discovered there are indeed several different sets of rules for the game in use around the world.  

One evening as I walked a street market I heard a small voice ask, "Do you understand me?" I did and thus began a mutually agreeable association with "Jenny," a twenty-four year old ethnic Hui Chinese tour-guide-in-training. The youngest of six daughters, she wanted to practice her English and offered to show me around town "freely." Eventually it became clear she meant without charge, for the privilege of having someone with whom she could practice English. Her stressed English needed lots of practice before she would be ready to lead another tour of foreigners, something also noted by her supervisor at the Natural Tour Company. For several hours during each of three days we explored the city repeating phrases for understanding, both of us learning things. At one point she insisted on taking me to a little hole-in-the-wall cafe that served traditional Hui food where I enjoyed a bowl of Bean Starch Soup, "not as good as her mother's" she insisted. Another day we hiked up Ghost Mountain, though I’d call it more of a hill than a mountain. The day before I left Urumqi we spent some time in a WongBa near her sister's home. As I worked answering e-mail, she got the owner to help her set up her first e-mail account with yahoo.com, "so I could write her." 

Up until now, I have had no trouble getting Chinese currency out of the ATM machines operated by the Bank of China. They have all been connected to the international financial networks like Cirrus. However, when I tried the machine at the central branch of the Bank of China here I got a surprise: even though international network access is advertised on the machine display, my card is unacceptable! The next day I visited a teller inside the bank and learned the display showing international network access is wrong in the Xinjiang Autonomous Uighur Region. Immediately the teller understood the problem and initiated a telephone verification of credit card validity with a bank branch in Beijing. Five minutes later with one signature and I had a stack of crisp new one hundred Yuan Chinese notes.  

Every time I presented one of the hundred Yuan bills for payment the clerk proceeded to carefully inspect it for authenticity, feeling for designed ridges, looking for watermarks and embedded strips and passing the bill through an ultraviolet light source illuminator. I can only deduce there must be a lot of counterfeit bills floating around in China. Most of the fifty-Yuan bills also got the same treatment.  

Competition among the mobile phone service companies is fierce. In addition to the several major service companies offering startup deals that include free or inexpensive cell phones, large crowds of individual entrepreneurs cluster around the big companies with new and used phones for sale. The telephone swap meet goes on every day, people buying, selling and trading up. Speaking of cell phones, everyone seems to have one. However, I can only conclude the units must be defective because most people find it necessary to shout at the top of their lungs into the devices. In restaurants, on buses, in hotel lobbies someone can be heard screaming at the poor soul on the other end of the line. 

Single time zone across China means it doesn't get dark here in the far west until 21:30. It starts getting light at 07:00. However, at no time did I hear the Islamic call to prayer one hears in most other Muslim countries. All of the minority groups are Muslim in this part of China and there are about as many mosques scattered around town, as there are Christian churches in an American city. However, I never saw any activity around them and never heard a muezzin. 

The International Grand Bazaar includes a landmark 80-meter high tower. Around the base is a bas-relief sculpture of the "Twelve-Makam" folk music traditions of the Uighur people. One of the buildings contains four minaret-like towers at each corner making it look like a mosque. But, it is just one of the sales-exhibit halls. Several bronze sculptures of camels are positioned around the mall. In the evening a real live camel appeared on the scene and tourists enjoyed brief camel rides. One evening a display of equestrian skills entertained shoppers in the mall. During my second daytime visit to the Bazaar the professional photographers stationed at the entrance to the mall got interested in my disappearing camera and a "conversation" ensued. After we all agreed Bush is "Bu How" or no-good, attention turned to other world leaders. Most agreed Saddam is "bu how," but just as I began to feel we would all agree on everything someone in the back offered "Osama bin Laden How!" By now I had admitted to being an American and wondered how many of that guy's friends might agree with him. With that thought in mind I quietly slipped away. 

As the expiration date on my first visa approached I searched out the Public Security Department where I could get a thirty-day extension. While in the office I met Josie from the government's Global Friendship Exchange Center where I learned of a program to hire native English speaking people to teach at the University. She offered me a job for 3000 yuan per month plus a free apartment, free transportation anywhere in China for three months and a round trip air ticket home for signing a one year contract to teach 16-18 hours a week. A few decades ago I would have been tempted. She also noted the possibility of getting a second visa extension with the cooperation of a government agency like hers. I had previously heard second extensions were next to impossible. Actually, both she and the agent in the PSB office were exceptionally helpful and friendly. I had the impression additional visa extensions might not be that exceptional. 

Our comfortable newer air-conditioned bus to Turpan left at 11:30 for the four and a half hour journey. Despite reports to the contrary, our four-lane highway turned out to be excellent. Not far out of town we passed a large wind farm like those in Southern California. Massive turbines made by Vestas and Bonus sat atop the towers turned by the three blades moving in the wind. This is the beginning of my exploration off the beaten path, so reports might become a bit more sporadic.  The Kodakgallery album of photos for this visit to Urumqi is here.

Until my next pause to write, 

Peace,