China! First stop Urumqi

2009 08 10 – Day 45 – Urumqi

Urumqi (woo-lum-uh-chee), capital of China's western-most province Xinjiang (shin-jiang) was my first stop-off in China primarily because the train from Almaty terminates there.

Pausing in the square in front of the station to take in our new surroundings, my fellow travellers and interrogation survivors are Alex, Rob and Akanuma.

We were all in the hunt for a cheap room for a night or two, so we teamed up and, with the help of our intact Lonely Planet guide book, found somewhere with a four bed room for 100 RMB (Renminbi), which is about £10.

The view from the front of our hotel:

Urumqi and Xinjiang contain a number of different ethnic minority groups, the largest of which are the Uighur (wee-gur) who are ethnically and culturally closer to Central Asia than China.  In downtown Urumqi, such cultural roots are evident in the architecture, and language (Arabic I think, but certainly not Chinese) on many shopfronts and advertisements.

Many streets had shop fronts like this: tightly packed, small frontage but deep garage like spaces.  Each shop had a quite focused product range, but the variation between shops could be anything from stationary to petrol pump parts.
It was somewhat bewildering to look around and see almost no latin characters.  I understood nothing!  At least in Russia most of the characters looked somewhat similar to what I knew, but the Chinese characters were indecipherable to me.  Fortunately for our little posse, Alex had some survival Chinese skills and a decent phrasebook.  If his first vocal attempts were met with consternation, then Akanuma tried his hand with writing communications as many traditional Japanese characters are the same in Chinese.  It was a funny little set up, but it worked most of the time.

People set up to sell their wares wherever and however they can.  I'm not sure I'd want to buy the fish from this particular stall.

Who needs doll's houses and toy soldiers?  There is no toy more classic than fruit!

Man power has yet to be fully sidelined and such hand carts are a common sight.