Alex Shnitman

Macau & Hong Kong

Alex Shnitman — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 13:24:07 +0000

We shared the compartment of our sleeping train from Yichang with a crippled fortune teller, whose services the train attendants were very happy to use during the quiet hours of the long ride. The train dropped us off at Guangzhou on the coast of the South China Sea. I remembered just one thing from here: the city market from which I started my previous trip to China, with all the world’s misery in the alleys and all the world’s species in the frying pans. It was a difficult landing back then. Now it looked nothing like that. This time it was beautiful booming city with wide green avenues; even the concrete road overpasses were freshly painted yellow and carpeted with flowering plants. Either Guangzhou changed its face or I changed my outlook, I don’t know. We didn’t stay: we had had enough of Chinese cities, and were leaving China altogether. This was the end of our trip. We boarded a bus to Macau.

After a short ride the bus unloaded us in the parking lot of a large shopping mall. We asked when we would continue to the border and were amazed to find out that this was, in . . . → Read More: Macau & Hong Kong

Chengdu and the Yangtze River

Alex Shnitman — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 05:50:25 +0000

Chengdu was where I finally crossed the path of my previous trip to China. It looked just the same. But then it looked the same as Xi’an, too — all the big cities look alike in China. The only major news was the metro: four years ago it was still under construction, and now it’s running, new and sparkling, filled with excited citizens for whom it is still a novelty. The nearly identical hostels completed the picture. No matter where you go, you’ll have English-speaking staff, a bar, a restaurant and people from all over the world. Sometimes I think it’s too much, all this sameness: you can almost forget which city or which country you are in.

We lazily dragged ourselves to see the Wenshu monastery, but found out that we had no more energy or interest in sightseeing. Our trip was coming to a close, and we were spent — all we wanted was some rest. We went to look for Chengdu’s new contemporary art museum, which was located inside a vast complex of IT companies — Chengdu’s Silicon Valley. I almost felt at home there: IT people are the same everywhere. I could even make out . . . → Read More: Chengdu and the Yangtze River

Xi’an

Alex Shnitman — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:50:15 +0000

We landed in Xi’an and transferred to our hostel. Hostels are a delight in China, and seem to get better and better as we go. This one was arranged around three connected courtyards, and featured a colorful travelers’ restaurant, as well as a steep narrow staircase leading down from one of the floors, opening in Alice-in-Wonderland-style into a huge and lively bar, in which every guest in the hostel had a right to one free beer every day. The place was well-staffed, and generally designed to cater to every need of the traveler so that he could not make himself leave.

Xi’an is primarily known for one major tourist attraction: the buried terracotta army that was found here in 1974 and is being unearthed and pieced together ever since. Qin Shi Huang, the emperor who built it 2200 years ago, was a remarkable man: after unifying China for the first time into one empire, he standardized measures, currency and writing, as well as started the Great Wall and built this army — so besides his well-earned place in ancient history, he can now be considered the biggest single contributor to the modern Chinese tourism industry.

We joined a guided . . . → Read More: Xi’an

From Lhasa to the Himalaya

Alex Shnitman — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:23:40 +0000

After one day of walking around Lhasa, we were to spend the rest of our trip to Tibet inside a jeep, looking at its views and people through the window: the impracticality of independent travel in this land forced us to settle for a “Land Cruiser tour”. We set off in the morning and started our long drive eastwards. The scale on the jeep’s altimeter topped out at 3000m; there isn’t a single spot in Tibet where this scale is valid, so the needle climbed back to the zero mark and passed it, crawling up on its second round, along with our jeep.

Our first destination was Yamdrok lake, one of the four sacred lakes of Tibet. We climbed a 4700m pass and descended to the lake shore. Tourism has definitely brought many changes to Tibet. A traditional feature of mountain passes had always been strings upon strings of prayer flags, fluttering in the wind and sending their messages into the distance. The flags are still there, but now in their shadows lurk indefatigable souvenir sellers who descend upon every arriving car and start nagging. “Looki looki!” they shout, tapping your shoulder and pulling at your shirt. Mandarin Chinese . . . → Read More: From Lhasa to the Himalaya

Lhasa, Tibet

Alex Shnitman — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 18:34:06 +0000

The first segment of our journey to Lhasa was an 11-hour bus from Dunhuang to Golmud. Outside the window was the flattest landscape on the planet: it looked as if someone had tossed sand all over the place and then flattened it with a ruler. With nothing to look at in that direction, we had to find entertainment within the bus. A TV above the driver was playing Chinese karaoke, and two girls sitting behind us propped themselves on our headrests and sang the songs right into our ears. That was entertaining enough. This musical ride seemed longer than it really was. Towards the evening we arrived in Golmud.

Golmud is a pretty featureless town. We had a few hours to kill, so we walked around a little bit, happening upon a bunch of people dancing in the street without any obvious reason, and then wandering into a restaurant where we had to select skewers with meat and vegetables from trays along the wall, and then prepare them ourselves in a bowl that was boiling on our table with a number of different sauces. It was a very confusing experience. When our time was finally up we were delighted: . . . → Read More: Lhasa, Tibet

Urumqi & Dunhuang

Alex Shnitman — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:38:23 +0000

If Kashgar still felt very much like Central Asia, the trip to Urumqi finally forced us to bid our farewells. The capital of the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region is sadly not Uighur anymore — the Uighurs comprise a wee 12% of the population, squeezed out by waves of Han Chinese immigration. Urumqi is now a standard big Chinese city with everything that characterises one: high-rise glass buildings, hectic traffic, spitting people, and even the token park with a pet pagoda, like in every other city in this country.

Our hostel, another one in the chain of youth hostels which are also very much alike across China, was a very agreeable place to stay. Located next to a branch of Carrefour, the French department store, and surrounded by a green park, it was a place to get stuck and unwind for a few days — so we did. Every evening a wonderfully colorful traditional food market was taking place right outside the monstrous Carrefour building, almost as a sign of defiance to Western influence: rows of stands offering every imaginable kind of food, some of it still alive and crawling. There was even seafood, despite the fact that Urumqi, as it . . . → Read More: Urumqi & Dunhuang

Kashgar

Alex Shnitman — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 10:53:12 +0000

There’s no sense that etches stronger into the human memory than the sense of smell. As we were walking the streets of Kashgar, the Chinese signs looked familiar, and so did the endless streams of scooters, the people’s faces and their language; it were the smells, though, which really took me back right away to my previous visit in this country four years ago. The dust, the people, the spices in the food — they all combine to create a unique smell fingerprint which stays imprinted in your mind.

In fact Kashgar, at the far west of China, is not even a Chinese city — it is the home of the Uyghur, a Turkic Central-Asian people which is distinct from the Han Chinese ethnically, linguistically and religiously. Under Beijing’s auspices the Hans settled here in large numbers, but the Uyghur still retain the majority and give this city a distinct face. Kashgar was a key oasis on the Silk Road, and in many ways it still is — at the crossroads of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and China, this area forever remains a fountain of commerce. Beijing has moved in in brute force and Kashgar’s old city is currently being . . . → Read More: Kashgar

Song-Kol, and the last of Kyrgyzstan

Alex Shnitman — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:58:11 +0000

After the Tian Shan trek we needed some rest. It came in the form of a three-day camping trip on the shores of the Song-Kol lake, which we reached by jeep, the lazy way. The lake, at an altitude of 3000m, is surrounded by green valleys used by the Kyrgyz shepherds as their summer pastures, called “jailoos”. The village dwellers from the lower valleys erect their yurts here in spring and move in for the season, bringing along their livestock. Yurts strewn around the plains, herds of cows and the occasional yak grazing the grass, and horses galloping across the fields all day long: this was the backdrop for our holiday.

Our driver stayed with the shepherds in a yurt, resting and drinking kumys (the fermented mare milk that is the national drink of Kyrgyzstan), while we stayed in our tent. Kumys is an acquired taste, so I bought a bottle from the shepherds and tried to acquire it. It hasn’t been a total success. A much better buy was fish, straight from the lake, which they fried for us to supplement our self-cooked dinner.

One of the yurts doubles as a “store”: along one side of the yurt there . . . → Read More: Song-Kol, and the last of Kyrgyzstan

A taste of the Tian Shan

Alex Shnitman — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 11:35:07 +0000

The Tian Shan, Chinese for “Celestial Mountains”, is a massive mountain system that straddles the borders of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and China. It is a very popular destination for mountaineers, thanks to its glaciers and rugged peaks, but there’s also a lot on offer to amateur hikers like ourselves. We went on a 5-day trek in the valleys south of the city of Karakol, armed with an old Soviet Army topographic map that’s been newly reprinted for hikers.

The predominant type of hikers in this area are Russian mountaineers traveling in large groups, called “expeditsiya”. This form of travel was very popular in Soviet times, and the tradition continues to thrive now. Armed to their teeth with the best possible equipment, and with dead-serious expressions more appropriate for executioners than vacationers, these platoons of men (sometimes joined by a few tough women) march across valleys and up the mountains, conquering and moving on, in the sun and in the rain. It’s quite impressive to watch, and very amusing to try to squeeze a smile out of them during conversation. I found that after an initial resistance to socializing these men are actually quite eager to talk and share information. And information . . . → Read More: A taste of the Tian Shan

Lake Issyk-Kul

Alex Shnitman — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 11:31:00 +0000

A very comfortable (for a change) minibus ride took us from Bishkek eastwards to the shores of lake Issyk-Kul, and then beyond to the town of Karakol. Long being the base for mountaineering expeditions into the nearby Tian Shan range, this city has seen its fair share of travellers even before the modern age of backpacking, and these days mere backpackers are lost here among the cyclists, trekkers, climbers and other athletic types who flood this area during the summer season.

Before heading into the mountains ourselves, we decided to spend a couple of days on the lake, so we went to a yurt camp in Tosor on the lake’s southern shore. The lake itself is immense — the second biggest saline lake in the world after the Caspian Sea. Its water is clear and welcoming, if a bit too cold for more than 5 minutes of swimming. The yurts, too, are quite interesting and ingenious structures. Made of a wooden structure covered by felt rugs, they’re warm and very cozy, and their portability is a perfect match for the Kyrgyz nomadic spirit. The nation is so proud of them that a drawing of the wheel that supports the . . . → Read More: Lake Issyk-Kul