A Longer Than Expected Morning in Karamay!

Our breakfast at the Gem Flower Hotel was very pleasant, even if it was rather amusing to be seated in the gaudily furnished pink bridal section of the restaurant with the somewhat incongruous Louis Armstrong's "Hello Dolly" and Elton John's version of The Lion King song "Can You Feel the Love Tonight?" being played at full volume. It never failed to surprise us just how much western styled music was played in China. 

For a nice change, we had a good breakfast with delicious melon, tomatoes, pickles, hard boiled eggs, some freshly made shallot bread and of course steamed rice - mifan. Once again, the staff was efficient and helpful, bending over backwards to ensure we had enough food. We must say, we really enjoyed the friendly, if rather quirky Gem Flower Hotel. 

Our mission that morning was to urgently exchange some money. With the surprisingly high prices of the national park and tourist attraction entrances fees, we were fast running out of cash (to say nothing of clean clothes) and we were highly relieved that there was a Bank of China in Karamay - apparently the only bank which would exchange US dollars for Chinese Renmimbi.  

It is well to note that it is very difficult to exchange foreign currency in Xinjiang. And so far, we had found it impossible even with the assistance of our guide Abdulrahman. Well, actually it was again, impossible.... And how you would fare without a guide or friendly English speaking local (which don't appear to exist in northern Xinjiang), is beyond us.
 
Over breakfast, we mused about just how easy it had been in Mongolia. We could withdraw money, buy food, medications or really anything we wanted with complete ease. In a country so vast and with such a tiny population, it was quite incredible how user friendly it was and how surprisingly efficient the infrastructure was - especially compared with what should be a very modern China.

While Alan and Abdulrahman faced the Bank of China, Sabir and I stayed in a shady tree-lined back lane of Karamay. Sabir kindly placed a DVD into the recording unit of the car. Yes, you guessed it - it was of course the dreaded "Diva and Her Stupid Lute Players". To my absolute delight, the DVD refused to play and so in as much sign language as I could muster, I indicated to Sabir that it was OK not to have the DVD played. Hmm, BIG mistake. Sabir must have thought that I was disappointed and went to no end of trouble to make the frigg'n thing work. Again, I was subject to the awful shrieking opera of the diva and her crew - over and over. In the end, I decided that going for a walk was a better option. Sabir seemed horrified that, in his care, I had left the safety of his car but for me there was No Turning Back to that DVD again...

I was however, not sure that finding Alan and Abdulrahman still queued in the Bank of China after a good hour was a better substitute for the diva's DVD. When I arrived Abdulrahman had pasted on his familiar Impassive Face, while Alan was looking alarmingly resigned. Neither Alan nor I are the most patient of people - and it is always a bad sign when things are going badly wrong, that Alan is looking calm....

If we were not about to travel over 460 kilometers that day from Karamay to Boertala, the comedy of errors that followed would have been quite hilarious... Apparently, Alan and Abdulrahman were initially told by one of the bank managers that it was impossible for us to exchange US dollars. But then it was alright - but they could not find the correct forms. The responsibility for serving them was then crazily handed over to an obviously inexperienced, pimply faced young man who did not have a clue what he was doing. By the time I arrived, the poor guy had laboriously filled in another incorrect form and was being berated by one of the savage, cruel faced female managers. No-one seemed to offer this unfortunate man any assistance. Probably no-one knew what to do either. After all, northern Xinjiang is not exactly brimming with foreigners wanting to exchange money.

Our poor bank teller became more and more distressed, dropping forms and then all our money on the floor. But in his panic, he had not seemed to notice, and repeatedly insisted that we had not given him any US dollars. And so it went on, on and on. In the end the savage faced managers disappeared, leaving our poor young man on his own to deal with us. At that stage I was unsure whether I felt sorry for him - or hated him. Regretfully, it was beginning to be the latter....  

After another half and hour, to our surprise, the usually unflappable Abdurahman said he had, had enough and decided to withdraw money for us from his own account. When his own credit card was rejected, we nearly gave up... Finally, he managed to withdraw the money and we were out of the miserable bank in a flash. I bet the bank teller was pleased too.
 
Our morning's saga in the bank meant that we saw virtually nothing of Karamay, a large mostly industrial city less than 230 kilometers from the Kazakhstan border. The city's name literally means "black oil", also the name of a nearby mountain. A comparatively new city, Karamay was first developed in the 1950's when the huge oil fields were discovered and opened up for exploitation by a joint Soviet Union - China project. Until then, the vast, remote desert land around Karamay was virtually uninhabited. The prosperous city of Karamay city literally "runs on oil" and the Dzungarian Basin upon which the expanding city sits, holds around one fifth of China's discovered oil reserves; its massive production of fuel projected to hit 20 million tonnes per year by 2020. Today, the city houses a population of around 300,000 people, most of whom are of Han Chinese origin and work in the petroleum industry. The remainder of the population are either Hui or Uyghur.

I must confess however, that the little we did see of Karamay was of a very pleasant city with tree lined streets and lots of shady park lands. But it held very poor memories, and we were very soon out of the city and heading full steam toward our next destination of Boertala. 

Toward Boertala and Farewell to the Altai Ranges

As we drove out of Karamay, we asked Abdulrahman about water supplies for the surrounding desert oil fields as we had read about the Chinese government diverting water from the famous Irtysh River to Karamay for the city's drinking and water supplies. As mentioned in past blog entries the Irtysh River's source is in the Altai Mountains in China, close to the Mongolian border - and flows rather counter-intuitively north into the Russian polar region. Our understanding from our readings was that the decision was undertaken by China without any consultation with the "downstream" seriously affected countries of Russia and Kazakhstan, with the case against the diversion ending up in the International Courts. By then however, it was apparently all too late. We understood also that moves were made by China to divert water to Xinjiang's capital city of Urumqi but the situation was so contentious, it was highly unlikely that such a diversion would happen again. As usual, Abdulrahman was absolutely non-committal.

Out of Karamay, the landscape was dominated by endlesss oil rigs and huge petrochemical industrial sites accompanied by rows and rows of identically built high rise apartment buildings, obviously to accommodate the oil workers. These "pop up cities" and their "suburbs" were everywhere in Xinjiang. What the poor workers would do - other than work - in these god forsaken places, was beyond us. They were literally erected in the middle of a desert nowhere. 

About half an hour out of Karamay, the landscape at last revealed some natural beauty with a series of massive, striking red ferrous outcrops. We guessed they soon would be mined for iron ore too. 

 
 
Another hour's drive on the very good Trans China Highway, and again the countryside had softened with extensive cropping of sunflowers and heavily headed fields of oats and barley crops. 

Running parallel to the highway was the Northern Xinjiang Railway linking Urumqi to Alashankou on the Kazakhstan border, laden by endless train carriages carrying kilometer long streams of petroleum carriages. The railway line is 460 kilometers in length and connects all the major cities and towns of the southern Dzungarian Basin, forming a section of the Trans-Eurasian Railway from Rotterdam in Holland to Lianyungang, in north-eastern Jiangsu Province, north of Shanghai on the far eastern coast of China.

And then to our surprise, we came across as far as we could see what looked to be a vast expanse of netted land. On closer inspection, it was not netting, it was hectares upon hectares of solar panels. We had never seen anything quite so extensive and again wondered why China was never given any credit in the western media for its mind boggling scope of environmental initiatives to address the severe effects of the "desertification" resulting from climate change. 

 

Our journey took us south, skirting the industrial cities of Wusu and Kuitun. In the distance was the sad and fading scenery of the Altai Ranges, now shrouded with thick white clouds. 

We were travelling again through true desert inhabited by sparse gorse and tamarisk, paradoxically interspersed with village oases housing fields of heavily cropped, brilliant green beans, maize, sunflowers and what looked like a variety of bush tomato. It was easy to spot where the water was.

About 100 kilometers out of Boertala, the soils had obviously improved and we were driving through beautiful lush orchards of stone and pome fruiting trees, vineyards and maize. Grown mostly for medicinal purposes, magnificent acres of brilliant lavender and marigold plantations lined our road. To the south lie the simply magnificent snow clad - and very familiar to us -Tian Shan Mountain ranges. Some 520 kilometers to the south-east, lie Xinjiang's capital city of Urumqi. 

It was hard to believe that after all our journeying of some 1,700 kilometers through northern Xinjiang, that we were still north of our favourite and very familiar city of Urumqi, a destination we had always regarded as being in the very, very far north of Xinjiang Prefecture!

 

At We Arrive at Last in Boertala

Abdulrahman and Sabir must have been exhausted from the long five hour drive which they shared roughly in sectors of 100 kilometers each. Being Ramadan, neither had eaten or drunk anything for the duration of our trip. And being highly conscious of their religious obligations, we had not eaten anything either (well, we had smuggled a few toffees quietly between us....) and were starving hungry.

Our amusingly named Sunshine Hotel was located right in the main drag of down town Boertala. It looked promising we thought. There just must be a supermarket or at least a store nearby to buy some food.

Entry to hotels in Xinjiang is now very strict and once again we were subject to having to pass through x-ray machines and have our baggage searched. The Sunshine Hotel was particularly security conscious, being equipped with formal security desk and what appeared to be a full time uniformed - if rather short - police officer, complete with a pistol and baton. 

 

To our surprise our policeman, unlike the surly faceless lot we had encountered so far, took an instant shine to us. Speaking remarkably good English he insisted on escorting us to our rooms, helping Alan with setting up English television and then asking us if he could take us shopping. Famished and exhausted, we agreed - soon after regretting our impulsiveness. After all, surely this guy was out to take us to friends' shops and get a cut for his efforts.

True to his word, out diminutive police friend was waiting for us at the foyer. Virtually whisking me off my feet he grabbed my hand as he literally danced down the main street of Boertala. "I will show you the supermarket where you must buy some beer" (did we look that obvious?). Then I will take you to the markets where you can buy the best Uyghur bread in town. And then I will show you where to buy some fruits and tomatoes!". Our March Hare friend was out of control with his enthusiasm. And we loved it...  
 
To our amazement we were not taken to any hidden friends' shops or to any of the Ubiquitous in China Carpet and Jade Sellers. Our policeman friend was deadly honest and we were very grateful.

To our delight he showed us an underground supermarket which was just a few doors up from our hotel, and where we stocked up on cold beer (we had learnt the term "bing pyjou by then), biscuits, snack foods - and for me, still sniffling and coughing - more tissues. As we left, I noticed a cosmetics shop next door and wondered if it would be worth asking if they sold kohl pencil sharpeners. I knew it was a big ask to explain such a complex request but Alan didn't need to be quite so dismissive "Of course they won't" he hissed. "For goodness sake let's get on and buy some things we really need". Read: Alan loves bread.... And so much for my blunt kohl pencils. But I didn't forget the shop or the smiling young woman owner.  

Our friendly policeman then whisked us off to the local wet markets where we bought fresh flat bread, bananas and tomatoes - just a pity we couldn't find any cheese. Alan was in his element with the bread and so was I. Bliss....

While we were shopping, it was just a bit obvious that I was for some reason a great curiosity, especially the Boertala women who would amazingly come up and cuddle me! Then they would roar laughing. I laughed too with a slightly falsely "God I hope it's not because they think I'm an ugly foreigner" feeling. Maybe it was my blonde hair? Yes, that was fake but my large Anglo Saxon nose wasn't...  

When we returned to the hotel, Abdulrahman and Sabir were most impressed with our shopping and took off to do the same. We ate lunch at 6.00 pm but it was fantastic!

Late in the evening we dined at the hotel restaurant which also had - can you believe it - an Italian menu as well as the traditional Chinese? Our Spaghetti Bolognese tasted somewhat Asian but it was fine. Eating it with chopsticks was another matter!