The pointed finger

Our beautiful big red bus arrived in Yining at 18.45 but we didn’t know if our train left at 20.21 or 22.21.

All Chinese trains run on Beijing time and Yining and Urumqi, the city where we were headed, operate on local time (two hours earlier) so we were in a hurry to get to the station just in case – the lovely parents of Xian Jun (the kind man in the Almaty bus station) helped us towards a taxi and we were on our way.

We had to go through security checks at the station. Passport, body scan, luggage checks and I caused total uproar when, halfway through my body check, I realised I hadn’t put our passport bag through the X-ray machine and I dived off the scanning pedastool to pop it through – the women running the whole process dissolved into fits of giggles…pointing to where I should be, waving and gesticulating when I stood in the wrong place, and loving the chaos I was causing 🙂 …and amidst all the laughter and warmth we were still scanned fully, including the soles of our feet, and they even found our hair cutting scissors – which were just short enough to be allowed.

It was a lovely way to arrive into China and two of the women accompanied us to the waiting area because we had no idea where to go. Their warmth with each other and obvious delight at how chaotic everything had been was lovely.

We sat down to wait and a young girl in a wheelchair came and adopted Rosa. She had a translation app that works way better than ours and they chatted away for a couple of hours.

It was a very relaxed environment and everywhere was spotlessly clean – we were supposedly in the heart of one of the most oppressive parts of China and whilst undercurrents are not easily felt when there is a language barrier, and train stations not usually the hot bed of political turmoil, there were none of the physical signs of the oppressed. People avoiding eye contact, sitting in as tight and small a space as possible…a clear military presence. We saw none of that and the most exciting that happened in the three hours we were waiting was a woman’s suitcase falling down the escalator – I was delighted for the young man whose job it was to sit at the bottom and look after the escalator – it looked like one of the worlds most tedious jobs and finally he was in charge of an ‘incident’ 🙂

When it was time to leave we took lots of photos with Rosa’s new friend and her mum, and went to queue up with everyone else.

No-one has a paper ticket (please note Turkey!) …it’s all done by scanning your ID card or your passport. Admittedly the passport scanner wasn’t working but the women who found us in the queue and took us to the right part of the queue (for foreigners we suspected) – simply entered our passport number and through we went. We headed for our hard sleeper carriage – we had two top bunks and one middle bunk and due to the number of times I have to go to the loo in the night, I got the middle bunk.

The train left at exactly 22.21 and we larked about a bit to the incredibly entertaining public address system on the train and then climbed into our bunks, which were only slightly reminiscent of coffins.

Lights out was at 11.00 sharp.

It was okay, there was only enough room to sit up if you were on the bottom bunk …longer journeys would be more challenging, but we liked the open feel of it.

We arrived into Urumqi, a city name that has been a hot word in our family for six months or more even – our arrival city in China…and we were finally here, at either 5.30 or 7.30 in the morning (we never did solve that mystery).

We were hungry and wanted to eat noodles so we headed out of the station into a space age world, we hurt our necks looking at skyscrapers… Some fully functioning, some under construction, some with only the skeleton in place – there were some wonderful pieces of architecture and some sterile, featureless, oppressive buildings that did not let the light in.

We sat on a wall and took a breath. I looked up ‘restaurant’ on our map and it turned out there was a ‘vegan and vegetarian Buddhist restaurant’ only 6.5 km away – a mere hour and a half’s walk…none of us were desperate to walk that far but what else were we going to do at 6.30/8.30 in the morning so we headed off into the ‘land of Urumqi’.

The walk was particularly dull to start with, four line highways, very little green of any kind and occasionally no pavements either, there were no people or shops, just cars, trucks, buses and scooters… but after 40 minutes we turned down a little side street and we were in a different China.

People taking their children to school (…now do they go to school at 7.15 or 9.15 – both felt wrong!) vegetable sellers with bags, carts, and flat beds, all beginning to set up on the edge of what looked set to be a thriving local street market. The buildings all around were lower, the shops lining the street were intimate and interesting and we saw our first cat, a timid thing that didn’t want to come too close but a cat none the less.

We took a couple of breaks, we weren’t in a hurry and 6.5 km with our rucksacks on was definitely a workout! This ‘vegan and vegetarian Buddhist restaurant’ better be good 🙂

The last three kilometres were really interesting, full of people going about their lives and chatting away to each other – it’s amazing how something as mundane as a women haggling over the price of two kilos of onions is absolutely fascinating when it’s conducted in Mandarin, on a street filled with different smells and sounds…everything was interesting to us.

The kilometres fell away and here we were, stood outside a derelict looking block of flats…no restaurant.

Of course there wasn’t a restaurant! Great walk though 🙂

…we wandered up and down the street trying to get the map to tell a different story, and then gave up…we ate some old rice cakes and a bit of fruit and no one said much for a bit.

We picked up our rucksacks to head…somewhere, and walked past a little restaurant with six tables in it. The woman who ran the place came outside and smiled at us which was all the invitation we needed. Rosa told her we were vegetarian (so brave! Mandarin is hard…) …and she told Rosa that all the food was vegetarian – ‘the Buddhist vegetarian and vegan restaurant’ it was not, but we were all set for our first Chinese meal.

We had little bowls of pickles and salads, spring onion pancakes, fried eggs and something gloopy that might have been tea.

It was all delicious, we had fun eating with chopsticks (some of us a little more expertly than others) and the whole meal cost £2.50.

The mood had lifted and we were up for whatever the day brought us…it was around 9.30/11.30 by this point and we wandered slowly back to the square we had passed on the way…an open area with benches and trees and a monument in the middle, a perfect place to sit in the shade and watch the world.

First to arrive were a group of older women, all in masks, who sat on the next bench, this had ‘daily routine’ written all over it, easy paced familiarity and the occasional laughter floated over to us.

At the far end of the square a group of young people in red began setting up some tables and talking to people as they walked through the square. The older men were doing laps of the square and getting accosted as they passed the red team.

I went in search of a toilet which led me to the local recycling area, a hard working crew with pretty old equipment, it looked like it hadn’t had any money spent on it since the last revolution but I could see stuff was being sorted and my six months worth of feeble Mandarin study (ten minutes a day on Duolingo 🙂 came stumbling out – the woman I spoke to pointed to a man who pointed towards a building – it was the same building someone in the square had pointed at when I’d muttered ‘toilet’ fifteen minutes before but it was a pretty big building and looked like council offices so I felt a bit awkward about going in to use the loo… in the end needs must though and the women’s was the third door on the left (in case you’re ever there).

Unburdened I wandered back to the square and after about fifteen minutes the local policeman came to talk to us. He asked to see our passports, he wanted to know when we had arrived in China and what we were doing in Urumqi.

We knew the area we were in was a sensitive one in China so we guessed not many tourists came and plonked themselves in this square on a Tuesday morning. He walked a little distance away and made a call. He came back and the woman on the phone, speaking very good English, asked us more questions about the purpose of our visit to China, were we meeting anyone in China, what type of Visa did we have, where had we crossed the border, (what were the mating habits of the ring tailed lemur …you get the picture) and after a few minutes he told us that we were very welcome to use the toilets in the building behind us (lucky because I already had) and if we needed any help the police at 97 police station, he pointed to the corner at the end of the street, would be ready to help us…a fine mixture of making sure he knew exactly who we were and why we were there, and at the same time making sure we were okay …he walked away and we resumed our people watching.

Curiosity finally got me, what were the people in red doing over in the corner? I wandered over to see that a small queue had formed – the red team were offering free blood pressure checks and my heart filled with something warm that wasn’t just my blood, I love a good bit of free health care!

As I walked back I remembered that one of my goals for being in China was to do Tai Chi in a park with  Chinese people, and even though there were no Chinese people doing Tai Chi and this was clearly not a park, I couldn’t resist. I stood in the pose Louise, Nour and I had been taught in our free staff Tai Chi classes in the Spring. The pose is actually a whole body work out and involves standing like you are sitting on a high stool with your arms held out at shoulder height. I did it for about a minute which caused great amusement to the bench gang and by that time the policeman was back, with two women from the council offices.

They had brought drinks for us and wanted to see our passports again. It was all very friendly and the policeman had another women on his phone asking us very similar questions to the first ones and then I looked up and our four neighbours had stood up.

They were all in the Tai Chi pose but instead of their hands gently pointing towards each other they had their hands held out ahead of them with their index and middle fingers on each hand pointing towards us. They looked like they were pointing pretend finger guns at us, which was actually pretty powerful, I could feel the intent and my still warm heart leapt!! I left Theo and Rosa with the policeman and the lovely women from the office and went and joined in.

I think I managed a muscle straining three minutes…and as perfection would have it, the oldest of the woman did over ten minutes, easily longer than all of the rest of us…it was a bucket list moment for me, made better by the fact that they all rubbed the top of their aching arms when they stopped  🙂

Our beautiful big red bus arrived in Yining at 18.45 but we didn’t know if our train left at 20.21 or 22.21.

All Chinese trains run on Beijing time and Yining and Urumqi, the city where we were headed, operate on local time (two hours earlier) so we were in a hurry to get to the station just in case – the lovely parents of Xian Jun (the kind man in the Almaty bus station) helped us towards a taxi and we were on our way.

We had to go through security checks at the station. Passport, body scan, luggage checks and I caused total uproar when, halfway through my body check, I realised I hadn’t put our passport bag through the X-ray machine and I dived off the scanning pedastool to pop it through – the women running the whole process dissolved into fits of giggles…pointing to where I should be, waving and gesticulating when I stood in the wrong place, and loving the chaos I was causing 🙂 …and amidst all the laughter and warmth we were still scanned fully, including the soles of our feet, and they even found our hair cutting scissors – which were just short enough to be allowed.

It was a lovely way to arrive into China and two of the women accompanied us to the waiting area because we had no idea where to go. Their warmth with each other and obvious delight at how chaotic everything had been was lovely.

We sat down to wait and a young girl in a wheelchair came and adopted Rosa. She had a translation app that works way better than ours and they chatted away for a couple of hours.

It was a very relaxed environment and everywhere was spotlessly clean – we were supposedly in the heart of one of the most oppressive parts of China and whilst undercurrents are not easily felt when there is a language barrier, and train stations not usually the hot bed of political turmoil, there were none of the physical signs of the oppressed. People avoiding eye contact, sitting in as tight and small a space as possible…a clear military presence. We saw none of that and the most exciting that happened in the three hours we were waiting was a woman’s suitcase falling down the escalator – I was delighted for the young man whose job it was to sit at the bottom and look after the escalator – it looked like one of the worlds most tedious jobs and finally he was in charge of an ‘incident’ 🙂

When it was time to leave we took lots of photos with Rosa’s new friend and her mum, and went to queue up with everyone else.

No-one has a paper ticket (please note Turkey!) …it’s all done by scanning your ID card or your passport. Admittedly the passport scanner wasn’t working but the women who found us in the queue and took us to the right part of the queue (for foreigners we suspected) – simply entered our passport number and through we went. We headed for our hard sleeper carriage – we had two top bunks and one middle bunk and due to the number of times I have to go to the loo in the night, I got the middle bunk.

The train left at exactly 22.21 and we larked about a bit to the incredibly entertaining public address system on the train and then climbed into our bunks, which were only slightly reminiscent of coffins.

Lights out was at 11.00 sharp.

It was okay, there was only enough room to sit up if you were on the bottom bunk …longer journeys would be more challenging, but we liked the open feel of it.

We arrived into Urumqi, a city name that has been a hot word in our family for six months or more even – our arrival city in China…and we were finally here, at either 5.30 or 7.30 in the morning (we never did solve that mystery).

We were hungry and wanted to eat noodles so we headed out of the station into a space age world, we hurt our necks looking at skyscrapers… Some fully functioning, some under construction, some with only the skeleton in place – there were some wonderful pieces of architecture and some sterile, featureless, oppressive buildings that did not let the light in.

We sat on a wall and took a breath. I looked up ‘restaurant’ on our map and it turned out there was a ‘vegan and vegetarian Buddhist restaurant’ only 6.5 km away – a mere hour and a half’s walk…none of us were desperate to walk that far but what else were we going to do at 6.30/8.30 in the morning so we headed off into the ‘land of Urumqi’.

The walk was particularly dull to start with, four line highways, very little green of any kind and occasionally no pavements either, there were no people or shops, just cars, trucks, buses and scooters… but after 40 minutes we turned down a little side street and we were in a different China.

People taking their children to school (…now do they go to school at 7.15 or 9.15 – both felt wrong!) vegetable sellers with bags, carts, and flat beds, all beginning to set up on the edge of what looked set to be a thriving local street market. The buildings all around were lower, the shops lining the street were intimate and interesting and we saw our first cat, a timid thing that didn’t want to come too close but a cat none the less.

We took a couple of breaks, we weren’t in a hurry and 6.5 km with our rucksacks on was definitely a workout! This ‘vegan and vegetarian Buddhist restaurant’ better be good 🙂

The last three kilometres were really interesting, full of people going about their lives and chatting away to each other – it’s amazing how something as mundane as a women haggling over the price of two kilos of onions is absolutely fascinating when it’s conducted in Mandarin, on a street filled with different smells and sounds…everything was interesting to us.

The kilometres fell away and here we were, stood outside a derelict looking block of flats…no restaurant.

POf course there wasn’t a restaurant! Great walk though 🙂

…we wandered up and down the street trying to get the map to tell a different story and then gave up…we ate some old rice cakes and a bit of fruit and no one said much for a bit.

We picked up our rucksacks to head…somewhere, and walked past a little restaurant with six tables in it. The woman who ran the place came outside and smiled at us which was all the invitation we needed. Rosa told her we were vegetarian (so brave! Mandarin is hard…) …and she told Rosa that all the food was vegetarian – ‘the Buddhist vegetarian and vegan restaurant’ it was not, but we were all set for our first Chinese meal 🙂

We had little bowls of pickles and salads, spring onion pancakes, fried eggs and something gloopy that might have been tea.

It was all delicious, we had fun eating with chopsticks (some of us a little more expertly than others) and the whole meal cost £2.50.

The mood had lifted and we were up for whatever the day brought us…it was around 9.30/11.30 by this point and we wandered slowly back to the square we had passed on the way…an open area with benches and trees and a monument in the middle, a perfect place to sit in the shade and watch the world.

First to arrive were a group of older women, all in masks, who sat on the next bench, this had ‘daily routine’ written all over it, easy paced familiarity and the occasional laughter floated over to us.

At the far end of the square a group of young people in red began setting up some tables and talking to people as they walked through the square. The older men were doing laps of the square and getting accosted as they passed the red team.

I went in search of a toilet which led me to the local recycling area, a hard working crew with pretty old equipment, it looked like it hadn’t had any money spent on it since the last revolution but I could see stuff was being sorted and my six months worth of feeble Mandarin study (ten minutes s day on Duolingo 🙂 came stumbling out – the woman I spoke to pointed to a man who pointed towards a building – it was the same building someone in the square had pointed at when I’d muttered ‘toilet’ fifteen minutes before but it was a pretty big building and looked like council offices so I felt a bit awkward about going in to use the loo… in the end needs must though and I found it quite easily.

Unburdened I wandered back to the square and after about fifteen minutes the local policeman came to talk to us. He asked to see our passports, he wanted to know when we had arrived in China and what we were doing in Urumqi.

We knew the area we were in was a sensitive one in China so we guessed not many tourists came and plonked themselves in this square on a Tuesday morning. He walked a little distance away and made a call. He came back and the woman on the phone, speaking very good English, asked us more questions about the purpose of our visit to China, were we meeting anyone in China, what type of Visa did we have, where had we crossed the border, (what were the rules of Mahjong…you get the picture) and after a few minutes he told us that we were very welcome to use the toilets in the building behind us (lucky because I already had) and if we needed any help the police at 97 police station, just in the corner at the end of the street, would help us…a fine mixture of making sure he knew who we were and why we were there, and at the same time making sure we were okay …he walked away after another few minutes and we resumed our people watching.

Curiosity finally got me, what were the people in red doing over in the corner? I wandered over to see that a small queue had formed – the red team were offering free blood pressure checks and my heart filled with something warm that wasn’t just my blood, I love a good bit of free health care!

As I walked back I remembered that one of my goals for being in China was to do Tai Chi in a square with other Chinese people, and even though there were no Chinese people doing Tai Chi, I couldn’t resist. I stood in the pose Louise, Nour and I had been taught in our free staff Tai Chi classes in the Spring. The pose is actually a whole body work out and involves standing like you are sitting on a high stool with your arms held out at shoulder height. I did it for about a minute which caused great amusement to the bench gang and by that time the policeman was back, with two women from the offices.

They had brought drinks for us and wanted to see our passports again. It was all very friendly and the policeman had another women on his phone asking us very similar questions to the first ones and then I looked up and our four neighbours had stood up.

They were all in the Tai Chi pose but instead of their hands gently pointing towards each other they had their hands held out ahead of them with their index and middle fingers on each hand pointing towards us. They looked like a child’s immigration gun  land it was powerful … and so exciting, I left Theo and Rosa with the policeman and the lovely women from the office and went and joined in.

I think I managed a muscle straining three minutes …and as perfection would have it, the oldest of the woman did nearly ten minutes, easily longer than all of the rest of us…it was a bucket list moment for me, made better by the fact that they all rubbed the top of their aching arms when they stopped 🙂 

We were beginning to think about moving on – we had been in the square for a couple of hours by this point, when a vision in sparkles and turquoise wondered past with a small entourage. She was talking on her phone and paid us little attention initially – she had the air of a celebrity, what was she doing?

One of the joys of not having a clue about what’s going on is you can make it up…we could see underneath her hard scarf what looked like a sparkly tiara, so clearly royalty of some sort…a long lost empress? – a wannabe pop star?, maybe part of the tourist outreach programme that the policeman had called up…?

It turned out she had her own internet channel – she was a bit of a dance sensation and we could see the comments flooding in on her channel, and before any of us had had a chance to say…’errr’ we were on our feet and being taught how to dance.

It was brilliant fun, and no one seemed at all bothered by our enthusiastic and utterly embarrassing attempts to mimic her grace and elegance. One of her gang rushed off at one point and brought three huge loaves of warm flat bread and we all had a little sit down and a munch before it was time to dance again.

After an hour or so she and her gang had places to be and peace descended once more…we dosed a little before a young family arrived on the bench next to us and the brave toddler came and checked out the new arrivals in his square…we tried to be entertaining but were more bewildering I suspect…I got my guitar out (I mean why not!?) which brought another woman over to talk to us.

She thrust a 20 yuan note into Rosa’s hand and point blank refused its return. Our queue to leave, she was so generous and kind, wanting to buy us food and give us money and she didn’t look rich…the only way to stop her was to go.

We waved to the little boy who stared back at us, gave our newest friend a big hug and set off for the train station.

We bought some experimental street food that turned out to be one of the seven wonders of the culinary world and decided a taxi was a great idea.

The four and a half hour/six and a half hour wait at the train passed pleasantly…a game of crib, an interesting new yoghurt drink, packet noodles, (with boiling water provided at every station) and the China version of chocolate and it was time to queue for our train.

The train arrived on time, the system for getting us all onto the train worked flawlessly, it left exactly on time and lights were out by 11.00…we were on our way to Chengdu.

Three days hosted by a man who had had a vision for a different sort of education for Chinese children and come to England to study. He earned enough money in his two days a week working as a cleaner to earn enough for a modest living and he applied himself to both his studies and  his dreams…the Chengdu Waldorf School is the result and it just happened to be in the heart of ‘Xiāng Māo‘ land – our chance to see Pandas!

Interesting fact: Translated literally, Xiang Mao means bear cats 🙂