A Little Information About Urumqi
Urumqi is the capital of Xinjiang. The population is over 2,000,000 people and the city had a "Wild West" feel to it. Urumqi means "beautiful pasture" in Mongol. It is considered the farthest city in the world from the ocean with a vast Salt Lake in the East, pine covered hills in the South and sand dunes in the Northwest. The climate is extremely arid, has very little precipitation but is still an oasis. Not only was clean but also had the fantastic Hoi Tak Hotel run by a Hong Kong group. Absolutely ***** service and food. The entire area had some of the tastiest melons ever and visiting one market, the melon vendor insisted we take one for free. Very hospitable, friendly people.
From Urumqi you can fly to Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan and Russia, if you are interested. (Priceline.com Airfare - save up to 40%)...But we were going to train to Turpan in the evening. Before that, a museum visit was scheduled and a local concert.
The Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum was one of the first small museums we visited on this trip. They had a wonderful collection of minority clothing, jewelry, etc., from some of the 13 different ethnic minority groups. The best part was the mummies. There were 21 specimens in the collection (12 men, women and babies discovered in tombs) in an unbelievable state of preservation and the fossil of a human head that dated back 10,000 years.
These corpses, or mummies, were dried by the natural environment unlike the mummies in Egypt that were created by embalming. The "Loulan beauty" is one of the best preserved and famous ones in the museum. She has reddish brown skin, thick eyelashes, large eyes, long hair and is estimated to be around 4,000 years old.
Time for lunch in a local restaurant where a little group of musicians entertained in the courtyard. Chinese music basically sounds like fingernails scraping on a chalkboard to me, but it was still fun. And I adored this little girl playing by herself in front of the musicians. With the one-child restrictions, the Chinese dress and treat their children like little gods and goddesses.
Another interesting day filled with completely unrelated sightseeing.
