Through the land of fences: crossing the border from Kazakhstan to China on foot

The road slowly climbs down the hills and we cross Zharkent, the last city before China. It is July 10, 2017, the starting day of our Chinese visa. Arriving at a specific spot on the planet on a specific day seems to be quite a challenge while hitchhiking, but we are now pretty good at that.

40 km and a couple of tiny villages left. The last driver finds it funny that we are hitchhikers and he takes us up to the border even though there is nothing and he is not going there. He lets us out just in front of a massive barrier. There is a booth and a couple of soldiers with shiny buttons and fancy military hats.

When I was planning this trip a few years ago, before I actually looked at the map in detail, I once had a dream about crossing to China. In my dream, there was a nice path to the border, going through lush meadows and decorated buildings with upturned roofs every now and then. Unsurprisingly, I was pretty wrong in my dream. 

There are some stands and cars and fields behind them. Except for that, just a lot of fences and barricades wrapped in barbed wire.
The driver greets the officer at the gate. ‟They are hitchhikers from Czechia,“ he laughs and turns around to go back to Kazakhstan.

Yes. The sign is upside down.

We are at the end of the world. Ahead of us, there seem to be just miles of barbed wire, fences, gates, barriers and more barbed wire. The place looks scary and I expect things to get hard. Especially since we are trying to enter China through Xinjiang, the oppressed province of the Uyghurs (there actually is no other way to enter China from Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan). We are required to have some special permits that put you under strict control. We obviously don’t have any because it’s too much bureaucracy and money and government control. The question is whether the border guards know we are supposed to have these permits. But we first actually need to get to the customs.

The alert area is not near

We go to the barrier and I address the officer with the most important-looking hat. It is the one our driver talked with. 

‟Excuse me, sir, which way is China?“
‟You must take a bus.“
‟Is the bus for free?“ It is the very same question my cousin asked a guard at the very same place 2 years ago. I’m expecting the very same frown followed by long bargaining.
The officer smiles: ‟Yes, it is.“ 

The bus comes. There is quite a few Kazakh-looking people waiting with us, carrying large bags, boxes and packages. The soldier tells us to follow him and talks to the drivers. They look grumpy at first but then they let us in. The bus seems to be free only if the border guards happen to like you.

It has no seats, only beds. We are squeezed in the aisle with many other people, watching endless fences flickering past. We also cross a gray river surrounded by barricades.

The bus stops. There are still fences and buildings with guards all around. We must take all the baggage and go through the check. It takes a lot of time. Then we go back to the bus and drive on. The driver wants money. We give him the few Kazakh coins we have left. Then we go through another check. There is a big crowd and a huge scanner that scans people. You must step on a moving belt and it drives you there and back through a big frame. 

A large sign on the wall under some Chinese characters says: ‟THE ALERT AREA IS NOT NEAR.“ It sounds sinister, whatever it’s supposed to mean.

A sneeky picture from the bus the officer hitched for us.

More fences and barbed wire and more checks.

‟Where are you from?“
‟Czechia.“
‟How did you get to Kazakhstan?“
‟From Kyrgyzstan.“
‟Where is your Kyrgyz entry stamp?“
‟In my second passport,“ I answer with resignation, expecting the same 4 hours rigmarole as the one we went through at the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border. The officer indeed asks us why each of us has two passports.
‟Because your rule says that we only can get a visa in our home country, and not more than 3 months before coming. But 3 months ago, we were already in Azerbaijan. So we had to send one passport home to get your visa. But we didn’t want to stay in Azerbaijan without any passport...“

They don’t understand and we explain it all over again. They call another officer, we explain it over and they call a third officer.
‟Ok, but we will search all your belongings,“ the third officer says. I am happy because it’s still two officers less than in Kazakhstan. A lady digs in my backpack and asks for my phone. I give her my prehistoric push-button Nokia. She is turning it over and staring at it as if it were a hand axe.
‟You have no other phone?“
‟No,“ I say, expecting a question about a tablet. It doesn't come. No questions about permits to the Xinjiang province either, fortunately. They also don’t ask us much where we are planning to stay, so I don’t have to show them the address of a random hotel in Urumqi I copied from the web. We tell them we continue from Urumqi across the country to Mongolia and they seem ok with that.

We probably are the very last people from the bus to have our passports stamped. But we get the bloody stamps and that means success.

We find ourselves on a vast, empty boulevard lined by flowers, decorative lamp posts and huge concrete buildings. There are some decorative carriages and a couple of people with umbrellas even though it’s not raining. After several hours, no fences or barbed wire. It’s almost unusual.

As the air is sultry again, I wash my T-shirt in one of the sprinklers, and we delve into the town.
I’m so happy that I don’t mind I don’t understand any signs anywhere. We made it. We crossed probably the most difficult border on our way. We are in China!

Behind the border

The quest for food

We expected to still be able to communicate in Russian a bit in the border town of Khorgos. We very quickly find out we were wrong. We seem to have crossed to a different world where everything is different. There also are no ATMs, taxi drivers, sim card sellers, shops with crap and all the usual stuff you find at borders. The town actually seems very quiet, clean, full of perfect lawns and flowers. A bit too perfect, maybe. Places such as something that looks like a park and something that looks like a bus station (or maybe a bank, it’s hard to tell) have security checks at the entrance. There are some people on the streets, some very quiet electric cars and some cars with three wheels. It is way less crowded than I imagined any Chinese town would be, though.

The only familiar element is a guy with a backpack, asking us directions to Kazakhstan. He is a Russian student, a hitchhiker as well. Even though he speaks Chinese, in Xinjiang he used trains because hitchhiking was a bit slow and he was running out of time. To me, hitchhiking seems still way easier than trying to find a train station, getting through the security check and getting a ticket.

Khorgos

But first, we need to buy food. We were smart enough to exchange some Chinese money in Kyrgyzstan already, so the basic condition for buying stuff is met. It is not so easy to identify grocery stores, though. When you find one, it is not so easy to identify food. There is just a lot of plastic packages with stuff inside and inscriptions you can’t read. Our attempts to ask for bread in Russian fail, as well as any attempts to ask for bread in our quasi non-existent Mandarin. We must find some other basic thing to eat instead of bread.

In the next store, Vojta discovers boxes with ready-made noodles. When we are buying them, the shopkeeper finds us funny. She finds us even funnier when we are sitting on the chairs in front of the shop, trying to find out how to use the little kits with stuff packed in with the noodles. She shows us. Then she is watching me, amused, as I am pretending I know how to eat with chopsticks. Vojta told me that Chinese food was pretty disgusting for Europeans because our taste is different. The noodles are delicious, though, so he maybe was wrong.

The lady calls her colleague to look at us. I try to tell them some things from the first page of my Chinese phrasebook. They laugh at us even more and give us a watermelon. They also let us refill our water bottles at the store. When we are leaving, they smile and wave at us. We probably made their day. They made mine.

The most unexpected ride

Our major success at buying noodles and saying hi to somebody filled me with pride and sense of achievement in our new country. We still need to find a hitchhiking spot, though. The town is actually very small and rural, so sticking to the biggest road gets us out. At the end of the town, there is a checkpoint in the middle of the road. We have no idea why it is there but nobody cares for us, so we just walk through.

There is no good hitchhiking spot because Chinese roads seem to have things like guardrails. After Central Asia, we are not used to that anymore. But we don’t know anything about traffic rules in this country and we suppose everything we do is illegal anyway. So we don’t care and just start hitchhiking and showing our sign with the name of the next town. Electric cars are passing by – the road is so quiet it almost is disturbing. We are wondering whether we should also try to wave at the slow tricycles and vehicles loaded with veggies. Cops pass us by several times and don’t care, so we conclude standing here might not be illegal.

Before we have time to get bored, a car stops.

‟Ni-hao. Nǐ qù nǎ-lǐ ?“ I try my best in my pseudo-Chinese, showing the driver our hitchhiking letter in real Chinese.
‟I know but this is a motorway, get in quickly,“ the young guy answers in perfect English.

Note: this story happened in summer 2017. The border situation might have changed considerably since then. For updated info please see the Khorgos crossing forum at Caravanistan.