Hiking Hua Shan and Heng Shan the Chinese way: stairway to heaven and a printer on the top of a holy mountain

We spent most of the time remaining on our visa hiking holy mountains. You might be wondering why I am writing a blog post about it: hiking is a very ordinary thing, isn’t it? It is the same everywhere in the world. You just find a hill and a path, get some supplies, put on hiking boots and walk up until you’re on the summit, right? But in China, also hiking surprised us. Or, at least hiking holy mountains. Anyway, it deserves its own post.

On the top of Hua Shan

 

The importance of being well dressed

 
Dan, our young host from Xi’an, tells us about a holy Daoist mountain called Hua Shan not far from the city. She says it’s one of the five most important mountains in China. Hiking a holy mountain seems like good thing to do, so we decide to hitchhike to the place the trail starts. Dan and her family are way too hospitable and generous to let us hitchhike, though. They insist on driving us to the Huashan town at the foot of the hill themselves. In view of their incredible hospitality, we are relieved they are not trying to fly us there with a private jet or buy us a spaceship, so we don’t even protest. Dan also gives us a map of the hill and explains us in detail how to get to the top. Under the mountain, we say goodbye to each other.

We soon find out that in China, also such a simple thing as hiking is done in a very different way than we are used to.

The surroundings of the hill are very civilized – the way to the top actually starts in the city. At the foot, there is a monastery with a park where every square meter of land is carefully maintained. We want to start hiking the next morning, so we spend the afternoon in the park. We buy some food for the hike – some plastic packages of something we think might be tofu, and some purple sausages. Then we camp in an almost dry stream bed because it is the only hidden spot we can find. I don’t manage to sleep at all as the temperature is still way over 30°C.

The whole night, there is a stream of people with lights and shining phones walking past us up the hill. Hiking at night seems to be a thing. And when I say hiking, I mean walking sometimes in flip-flops or dancing shoes, fancy clothes and with umbrellas.

Early in the morning Vojta wakes up and I give up my efforts to fall asleep in a puddle of my own sweat. We hide our backpacks in shrubs at the edge of the stream bed and join the endless procession moving slowly up the hill. The number of people on the path didn’t seem to grow or drop as the day came.

As the mountain is very steep and rocky, there seems to be just one way to the top from this part of the town. There is an entrance fee to be paid at a big gate. It is more expensive than anything we have tried to buy in China so far but the price is the same for everybody. We don’t have to pay a fine for being foreigners as we had to in some other countries. (It would be pointless here anyway as pretty much all the tourists are Chinese. Pretty much all the tourists are also more elegantly dressed than us (we can again see some people in dresses and sandals even though most wear running shoes and pants one would expect).

Then, we continue to walk up. Instead of a path, there actually are gentle, polished, well-maintained stone stairs going through a gorge between cliffs, along the dry stream bed with occasional puddles of water. On the other side of the stairs, along the rock face, there is a line of stands selling drinks, fruits, instant noodles, souvenirs, hats, umbrellas and pretty much anything you can think of. Sometimes the valley gets a bit wider. On every such spot, there are colourful gazebos, benches or statues. More important spots have boards with information about the place, poems or legends. Often it also is translated into English and sometimes the translation makes sense. 

No watching while walking!

On the opposite side of the stream bed, we sometimes see small stone staircases or ladders going up the cliff, to carved holes half hidden by vegetation. We try to climb up one of these ladders, but almost immediately a guard appears, shouting at us to (probably) get down. So we go back to the crowded path and the mystery of a hole in the rock remains unsolved. 

 

 

It is early morning, the cicadas scream like crazy. The stairs going through the gorge are protected from the sun by the cliffs and trees and washed by occasional small streams of cold water running down the rock face, so the temperature is almost bearable. The shopkeepers catch the water in pipes and run it over their fruits and water bottles to keep them cool, and then the water flows down the stairs. We are walking fast because I want to cover most of the distance before the deadly heat comes.

Soon, the path gets steeper. That doesn’t mean it is any more difficult or any less maintained and polished, though. If the trail goes up a cliff, there is a perfect, comfortable staircase carved in the rock, with railing, electric lighting (now switched off) and all. We soon find ourselves on a cascade of ancient staircases, with (contemporary) artificial platforms. People use them for taking selfies. Even though we are basically climbing a cliff, at any point the ascent doesn’t get any more technical than walking up the stairs in a building.

The people with umbrellas, dressed in skirts, sandals and office shirts still look as fresh and as elegant as downstairs. We also notice the typical Chinese fashion trend: if you’re a guy with a big belly, the right summer outfit for you is to tuck your T-shirt up and roll it above your belly. If your tummy is big enough, it will hold the T-shirt rolled up. Vojta tried it too but his belly is too small, so his T-shirt keeps unrolling and falling loose. Too bad for him.

Fashion trend for this summer.

Mountain shopping

 

Then the slope gets less steep again – we are almost at the North Peak, one of the five peaks the mountain has. We can now see how pointy it is. The peak has the form of a narrow rocky ridge with a top we can’t really see as there is a building. Stairs and paths are carved into the rock even on places where the surface is almost horizontal. Houses and stands selling stuff appear again. There also is a shop with some dried plants, dead snakes and some things we can’t identify. That’s new – we didn’t notice a shop like that downstairs. At one of the stands, you can pose for a picture with a sword. The place is even more crowded than the hiking path as there is a top cable car station near here.
 

Wanna do something for your health? Get a dead lizard!

It is a bit windy and as we are at 1600 meters of altitude, the temperature is still nice and fresh. It is almost noon, so it will probably not get worse. From the top, we can see the land around us. The mountain seems to be rising very abruptly from a completely flat landscape.

We try to eat the purple sausages we carry for lunch, and we find out they are sweet. It’s actually the most horrible food we’ve tried in China so far. So we eat our tofu supplies instead. Luckily, there are those stands with instant noodles we’ve been making fun of.

The path continues on a ridge (it is very safe and protected with a lot of railings) to the remaining peaks. They form a kind of a pointy ring with precipitous slopes around. It is very airy and gives one vertigo a bit – I’ve never been to a mountain this pointy and steep (and this easily accessible) in Europe. Except for the crowds and tourist attractions, the mountain looks like in a fairytale.

Here on the top, there are no water streams anymore. But there still are shops selling bottled water and many other stuff. The goods are supplied by bearers who carry sticks on their shoulders with heavy load suspended in the front and in the rear. The bearers also collect waste and carry it downstairs. People throw a lot of garbage but the place is not dirty; the system seems to work.

We go to some of the other peaks. On one of them, there is a platform where people put up tents to wait for sunrise. On another, there is an open-air photo studio with a lot of printers. Tourists can have their pictures printed immediately, at 2000 m on a rocky peak. There also is a path made of planks, suspended on the rock face. It is very crowded, so we avoid it.

Along the ridge, there still are trees, pavilions, temples, ancient inscriptions (probably) and small nooks carved in the rocks. The air is fresher the higher we get, so I like the mountain more and more. I try to imagine what the place looked like centuries ago. Even with all the printers and swords and love locks on railings, the mountain seems magical.  

When we are walking down, it is already dark. As the staircase is so user-friendly, it is not even hard to climb down at night. And there still is a never-ending stream of people going up. The zigzag path below us is illuminated by hundreds of electrical lights and it looks like an Elvish kingdom. As we are descending, it’s getting hot again. We decide not to reach the scorching spot where our backpacks are, and stay in the middle of the climb even though we have no camping stuff. We just lie down on the ground in the shrubs, and after the last night up I fall asleep immediately. 

Wishes come true

 

Some days later, several hundred kilometers north, in a temperature lower by almost 20°C, after crossing from the Shaanxi province to Shanxi province (yep, the names are a trap for Europeans) we are hitchhiking to another holy mountain. Mount Heng is located near a town called Hunyuan and it happens to be on our way. It also is one of the five most famous sacred Daoist mountains. This time, we do our best to shop for supplies with more care and try not to buy any sweet sausages. We end up with plastic packages of unknown white content as usual. Most of it probably is tofu or vegetables and some of it are eggs. At least we hope so.

Today seems to be the day of wishes come true. In the morning, Vojta thinks about buying a water melon. Our next driver (who totally could not understand anything we might have been saying) stops at a melon stand next to the road and offers us one.

At the foot of the sacred mountain, we are looking for water on a huge parking lot near a touristy temple. There is none. It can just be bought in shops in tiny plastic bottles. So we keep walking up along the road and we find a small river dam. It is accessible and relatively clean, with no garbage on the shores. Even though nobody swims in there, there are fishers so the water is probably not too polluted either.

Besides filtering some water for drinking, we can also wash our socks and T-shirts and go swimming after a long time. The fishers on the shore stare at us as if we were some water monsters. This is the second time already, so it makes me think swimming probably is unusual, unpopular or maybe inconvenient in China. I am so happy I can bath that I don’t care, though. We eat our melon and are having such a good time that we only feel sorry we don’t have any beer to chill with. A family who is having a picnic nearby ask us to take a picture with them, and then invite us to their picnic. We manage to communicate with them a bit through a translation app. It is an elevating conversation because they understand we don’t understand Chinese. (We have not always been this lucky.) They also share their beer with us and when they need to go, they give us their remaining fruits. I’m wondering whether China is reading our minds today. It’s almost scary.

Heng Shan mountain: the ‟undeveloped part of China”

 

The way to the hill starts on a huge parking lot with a big building with a lot of ticket counters. Actually, most people take a bus or cable car to get to the top. We like walking, though, so we just pay the entrance fee and walk along the road. We are the only ones and it is a nice hike. There are not even too many cars passing us by.

After several kilometers, there is another huge parking lot with a line of shops and stands. The road ends here and from this point, everybody have to walk. Also this mountain has a long stone staircase instead of a path.

Heng Shan seems not as large as Hua Shan and a bit less crowded (even though it still is considerably crowded compared to mountains in Europe). It also is full of temples, caves, gazebos, shrines and boards with inscriptions in Chinese and in lousy English. All of them are on the same side of the mountain, pressed against the rock face. In one of the rooms, I come across an aged monk who tells me something and gestures when he talks, so I get an idea of what he means. It’s reassuring.

Disaster hidden trouble site

Later, we even meet a tourist who speaks English. He comes from a southern part of China and we exchange a few sentences about hiking. ‟It’s my first time here,” he says. ‟I don’t go to these undeveloped parts of the country much.” 

To me, this region seems completely normal. I knew that this part was more rural than the most touristy regions but I am surprised it actually is considered backward. I’m wondering what a developed part of China looks like. If developed means crowded and urbanized, it scares me. 

On the official top of the hill, there is a paved area where people take selfies and then go back again. There are no printers. The stairway continues on a grassy ridge but we are the only ones to follow it. Nobody else seems to care what’s behind the official summit. It’s a lovely walk, though. There are no crowds and the views are nice. Finally, even a Chinese sacred mountain feels familiar.

 

 

 

Phenomenology of China: things just happen, what the hell

Squeezed in a truck, we are swallowing miles of China. We are leaving Xinjiang and heading east through the desert. I have a lot of time to think.

Phenomenology (I apologize for oversimplifying) describes things in a way they appear to us, ignoring the possible true nature of the things themselves. In philosophy classes, I always struggled to understand this concept. China finally illustrated it for me. (Yay.) As we are hitchhiking through this country as Europeans, without knowing anything about it and without speaking the language, many of the things we come across just appear. And we don’t have the slightest idea what the heck they are actually supposed to mean.

China feels more distant and different to me than all the countries we crossed before. It’s not just because we are unable to learn any Mandarin and because we meet no people who would speak any western language. Everything seems different: food, roads, cars, towns, the way people communicate, their gestures... But we are not traveling across a third of the planet for things to be always the same, are we? Eventually, we just accept that things happen and we are not even surprised we don’t understand them. Everything becomes a part of endless exploration. And it’s fun.

An easy guide to missing the Chinese Wall

 

Our two truck drivers make 1300 km in 1 day, taking turns in sleeping and driving. They just stop twice for bathroom and food. (They invite us for the meal and it is delicious). We communicate with them a bit through Google Translate (VPN is needed) and their WeChat. They are very polite and compliment us, and it is not creepy. They also beat my personal record for the longest ride I’ve ever hitched. I am almost wondering if they have any human needs at all. They seem like robots with superhuman abilities.

They leave us in Ningxia province, not far from Mongolia, and continue their hell ride to Beijing. In one day, we crossed a distance we expected to cross in a week. Suddenly, we have plenty of time to hang around.

In our Chinese map, there is a line of squares near us: the Chinese Wall. So we decide to hitchhike to it. It’s still scorching hot even though we are not in the desert anymore. Fortunately, the flower patches with water sprinklers are still all around so we can use them as showers to cool a bit. And people still don’t understand us, don’t speak any language we speak and don’t use gestures while they talk. When a car stops and we show our hitchhiking letter to the crew, they talk in fast Chinese at us. When we point at the sentence saying ‟sorry, we don’t speak Chinese“, they reply by talking in fast Chinese as well. The only way to find out if they want to give us a ride or not is to start getting into their cars and see if they protest. They usually don’t. So we hope it means they agreed to give us the ride.

A view from the hill above the monastery

Somehow, we manage to get to the spot where the wall is in our map. In the real world, there is none.

Even though the thing is visible from the space, we managed to miss it from the Earth. Great job, congratulations to us. Instead of the wall, there is a monastery. Some young kids seem to have some kind of a holiday bootcamp in there. A young boy speaks fluent English and helps us communicate with the monks. (I will remember him very well because it is the 5th time in China we can speak in a language we understand with someone. There will be 4 more occasions in the weeks to come). The monks let us take some water and enter the sanctuary.

 

Even though I don’t understand the meaning of any symbols, the place is calm and peaceful and the peace spreads on to me as well. We also climb the hill behind the sanctuary. There are trees but it doesn’t make the air any less sweltering. The countryside all around us is covered in fields and an endless labyrinth of brown irrigation channels. It seems to be gleaming with heat. The fields are green, though, and I can’t imagine how that is possible.

At night, the temperature stays almost the same and mosquitoes come. We put up the tent in a lemon orchard, on parched ground, and don’t even try to hide much.

A VIP delegation from Outer Space

The next day, we are woken up by farmers. We hang around in a nearby town and manage to buy internet card for the rest of the month. Even the cheapest plan available in the shop has unlimited data. The further east we get, the more we realize how bad and overpriced all data plans in Czechia are compared to almost all countries we’ve been to. 

Somewhere in Ningxia

Since we finally have internet, we can contact people. We remember Faker. It is a young guy we met on the very first day of our trip. He had just finished his studies in the UK and was on his way home to China, unsuccessfully trying to hitchhike out of Prague for 2 days already. After getting stuck as well, we invited him to my place in Prague. The following morning, all of us managed to get a lift and we parted for good. Now, Faker has been home for several months, having crossed Pakistan and Afghanistan. We find out he lives in a totally different part of China, so no chance to meet up. Pretty much everybody lives in a totally different part of China, it seems. Except for Dan.

Dan is Faker’s friend, she is a Hospitality student, speaks English, lives in a nearby province and will be happy to meet us. So we go to the motorway and start hitchhiking to the city of Xi’an.

The crew at the toll gate seem very confused by our presence. They seem convinced we must need something, and they zealously try to find out what that is. They are unwilling to believe we just came here to hitch a ride. Gradually, almost 10 people surround us. They greet us as if we were an official delegation of a distant land, and as we are showing them our hitchhiking letters and pictures and telling them through the translation app that China is an exciting country, they call their boss and then the boss’ boss. Each boss greats us almost ceremoniously. Then the manager of the toll gate shows up. He eventually understands what we are up to – and decides to help us. 

Helpers

He orders his employees to bring us drinking water, and writes a sign on a cardboard for us. Some of the staff then start waving at cars and show us the ones with the license plates of our destination. Thanks to – or despite of – their help, a car stops pretty soon, and the show is over.

Insane heat, insane hospitality and an endless option to do inappropriate things

The next city, Guyuan, is in higher altitude, so the temperature becomes almost nice. We camp in a cozy park with pine trees, and I feel absolutely blissful. If you were wondering what is the key to ultimate happiness in human life, it’s temperature under 25°C. You’re welcome. I was glad to help.

In the morning we get some food in a restaurant for free again even though we were just asking for water. It seems that in China, not only Uyghur people are ready to feed illiterate aliens just because. I’m still wondering, though, whether it’s maybe some kind of tarof we abuse by not refusing enough. But how can I protest genuinely against being offered food! Is one minute of refusing not enough?

We cross mountains. The terrible heat suddenly turns into a terrible downpour, and then it is scorching hot again.

Old town of Xi'an

Before arriving to Xi’an, we find out that Dan paid subway tickets and a hotel for us. Just like that. She just announced it as a fait accompli, there is no chance of protesting. All we can do is to thank her thousand times and go to the address she gave us, and we meet there. She is a very young student of Hospitality and seems to be excited about her major – and pretty much about everything, actually. She did a part of her studies in the UK, she speaks some English and is extremely polite. She is so polite that it is hard to even trying to keep up with her in politeness. The next day, she goes to classes, so we explore the city on our own. 

Xi’an is the first big Chinese city we ended up in. It is also important and historical, which I didn’t know before. The weather is still swelteringly hot. I melt in liters of sweat whereas other people carry cute umbrellas and look fresh. In the subway, a young, elegant woman starts a small-talk with us in English. Apart for breaking the stereotype that Chinese people don’t talk to strangers, she also is so far the seventh person in China (including a customs officer) who speaks a western language with us, so I would love to talk with her for hours. She gets off soon, though.

Vojta wants to go to a museum, but there is a waiting line several dozens of meters long, so he gives up and we spend the day in the old town. Even though Xi’an is not the most touristy city in China, the ancient lanes are stuffed with stands selling fried octopuses and tons of souvenirs such as mugs with Mao Zedong, books of quotes by Mao Zedong, purses with wrongly translated slogans by Mao Zedong and T-shirts with Mao Zedong or Obama or both combined which is probably meant to be a joke. By far the most bizarre souvenir are play cards with Osama Bin Laden. 

We then turn up at a ceremony in a Buddhist temple. We do things wrong but a young student shows us where to stand correctly. After the ceremony, we end up getting a piece of watermelon from the monks. Even though there is a plenty of Chinese tourists, the watermelon is only given to us and some homeless people on the street. We don’t even have our backpacks with us so we have just no idea how this happened. The watermelon is tasty, though.

Eventually, we go to dinner with Dan. The food is delicious even though in the menu there was a meal translated as ‟High-quality smell of urine sub-surface“ that we didn’t dare to buy. At one point, I stick my chopsticks into the meal and the waitress comes almost running, tries to confiscate the chopsticks from me and force a spoon on me instead. For some reason, sticking sticks in the meal probably is very inappropriate.

Dan invites us to go with her to her parents’ village the next day, which is an offer we can’t refuse – we can’t wait to see her family and spend more time with some people again.

The village looks more like a part of an endless tapestry of family houses. Dan’s mum, dad and young brother are already waiting for us and pick us up from the train station by car. After stepping out of the air-conditioned station, the wave of heat almost knocks me down. The weather is so deadly hot that nobody spends more time than necessary in a place that is not air-conditioned. It is almost noon, all windows are shuttered and the streets are completely deserted as if nobody was living here.

Our friend and her family

Dan’s parents are both physicians: her mother specializes in traditional Chinese medicine, and her father in the western one. They share one cabinet: on one of the walls, there are shelves with mysteriously looking jars, and on the opposite side of the room, western-style medicines we are used to. In contrast to the European controversy and discussion whether the Chinese medicine is scientific enough, for Dan’s parents, both approaches seem to be in harmony.

Western and traditional medicines

Dan’s parents are very warmhearted and even more extremely polite than Dan. It almost seems like a contest in politeness that we are inevitably losing. They keep telling us how brave we are because we travel, and we thank them thousand times for their generosity. They even give us a present, and we have nothing but a postcard for them. We soon run out of compliments to return, so we repeat the old ones over and over. The family invites us for a delicious home-made meal, the most delicious one we’ve had in China. Dan also takes us to visit her aunt, who is also very warmhearted and polite. Even though we probably are very bad at politeness and other cultural conventions we ignore, Dan and her relatives are some of the first people in China (except Xinjiang) we manage to have a real conversation with. We are trying to pronounce some Chinese words and each other’s names, we show each other photos and we relate. 

The best meal in China

Dan also takes us to an old fortress with a museum. In the cellars, the temperature drops to 31°C and it seems almost fresh. Were it not for the fierce heat, the place would be pleasant. We actually are in the valley of Huang He, the Yellow River – the place where Chinese civilization started. In this heat it doesn’t feel like a place for living whatsoever, let alone starting a civilization.

Valley of the Yellow River

Trees on a drip feed. Is it too hot for them to survive?

In the evening, the politeness contest continues and we lose spectacularly – Dan’s family insists on bringing us to a fancy hotel. We try to persuade them we would gladly camp on their floor, but we have no chance. After a pretty long negotiation, they tell us the hotel has actually been already paid for. (We eventually find out that was not the case, but it’s too late and they don’t let us pay anyway.)

I can’t believe all this started by hosting the young hitchhiker half a year ago back in Prague. We offered him a spot on the floor for camping and some pasta with tomatos. In return, we are treated like kings. It just doesn’t feel fair. Also, I am wondering how many social customs we violated and how many expectations we failed to meet. However, I am so excited we finally talked and spent some time with people here in China. This country still seems so unfamiliar and unfathomable, but I am so grateful to Dan and her family for letting us into their lives a bit. This is why we travel, after all.

View from the fancy hotel

The Uyghur region of China: curfews, checkpoints, tank barriers, and hospitality of Xinjiang people. Hitchhiking through the oppressed Muslim province

The driver who gave us a ride–let’s call him Mansur–is on his way back from a business meeting. Even though he looks way younger than us, he seems to be quite a successful businessman. He doesn’t understand very well why anybody would deliberately hitchhike to another continent just to see what it looks like. To helping us, though, he doesn’t seem to necessarily need understanding our motivations.  

How to make friends the very first day

‟Where exactly are you going?” he asks us.
‟Any place on the way to Urumqi is fine.”
‟Are you sure? Where are you staying tonight?”
‟We will camp at the place we get to.”
‟Oh, but it must be tiring.”
‟It’s fine, we are used to it. We always camp.”
‟Listen, come for dinner tonight. You can stay in my family’s home for a couple of days, take a rest and then you can continue to Urumqi.”
‟??!”

Suddenly, it is easy to forget we are in Xinjiang, the most surveyed and oppressed region of China; the Chinese province the least known in the west, as not many westerners come here. The Chinese authorities describe it as dangerous, with Islamic riots and attacks going on. Critics say that this mostly is the government’s propaganda and excuse to bully the local Uyghur people who technically are Muslim and probably are not obedient enough to the party.

From what my cousin told me after hitchhiking through China a few years back, I expected people to be suspicious, mostly reserved, cold and indifferent compared to those in Middle East and Central Asia. No conversations with strangers turned into friendships, no random invitations to people’s homes, no lunches turned into week-long visits. So I was mentally prepared for long waiting and being on our own. I expected police checks, haggling and hardships. I totally didn’t expect being invited for a visit after 3 hours we spent in the region, by the very first person we happen to talk to. I think I must readjust my preconceptions about this country’s people a bit.

Mansur is warm, fluent in English, and–given the circumstances–fairly talkative.

A specimen of the local flora.

Little annoyances of Xinjiang

He slows down to stop at a gas station. Or at least I think it’s a gas station. It looks like a fortress expecting a zombie attack. The place is enclosed with a high fence wrapped in razor wire. There is a barrier across every access road, at the entrance there is a booth with a guard, and the gates are surrounded by massive tank barricades that look like something from a WWII movie.

‟I’m afraid they won’t let all of us in”, Mansur says, maybe a bit embarrassed.
‟Are we not supposed to be in your car? We can get out. Can we just walk in there?”
‟I’m not sure. I’d better just go there alone as a driver with the car. Can you wait for me outside?”

We are waiting at the exit and I’m wondering whether this place is so special or whether all gas stations in China look as if they were ready for war. Normally, we go to petrol stations to get drinking water and to use bathrooms. It seems, though, that we must find another way in China. Later, we find out it’s not like this in the entire country; it only is one of the specialties of Xinjiang.

As the journey continues, we are talking with Mansur about his studies in another province, about our trip and about the Chinese language. It reveals that our new friend actually is Uyghur–member of the Muslim minority–even though he is not religious himself.

Somewhere in Xinjiang

Visiting an Uyghur family

At the entrance to his town, there is a police checkpoint. All of us must show our IDs but we pass smoothly. The city is bigger than the one at the border but Mansur says it actually is very small. It also is very clean, full of flowers and quieter than I imagined Chinese towns would be. At the gate leading to the block of flats Mansur lives in, there is a reception with guards that check people going in. We are wondering whether the reception is there just to protect the inhabitants, or to survey them. In any case, we suppose that hosting people from abroad isn’t exactly on the list of things Mansur is allowed to do. (Camping is not allowed either to foreigners, but that would be our own problem.)

‟Are you sure you won’t get into troubles because of us?” we ask.
‟Don’t worry.”
The guards write down we are entering but let us pass.

We arrive to a big cozy flat full of carpets. Everybody is smiling and saying hi. A family dinner is being prepared. Nobody seems surprised we showed up unexpected. Mansur introduces us to a friendly lady, a smiley girl a bit younger than us and the father of the family.

As usually, we ask if we can help them with the preparations, and as usually, we are not allowed to do so. We get seated on the carpet at a long low table. We are served loads of delicious vegetables with rice and meat. Everything seems so nicely familiar, like back in Kyrgyzstan or Kazakhstan.

I also realize that the language the family is speaking is not Chinese. I don’t know anything at all in Uyghur either but it sounds a bit like what we heard in Central Asia, so I try saying thank you in Kazakh. The lady smiles even more than before and answers something. The following hours and days, I just keep saying rakhmat to everybody. We also keep getting food, tea and everything we could think of, so there always is something to thank for.

Big annoyances of Xinjiang

After dinner, we go for a walk with Mansur. The weather is still sultry. The streets are mostly empty. We walk a few blocks, to a place under trees, with a food stand and some tables. Mansur buys some soda. We are almost the only visitors.

‟This is my favorite place”, Mansur says. ‟Normally, there are more people.”
‟So where is everybody?” I’m wondering.
‟It’s because of the curfew.”
‟Oh... so we are not supposed to be out at all?”
‟No, we can be out. Just not too much.”
‟Why is there a curfew, actually?”
‟Because of security. There have been some troubles,” Mansur says vaguely.
‟Big troubles? What happened?”
‟No, not big. I think. But it’s OK now,” he says, avoiding details again. I am wondering whether he wants to present a positive picture of his country, or whether he is afraid to speak about these things.
‟I see. How long has there been a curfew?”
‟This one not too long. But before that there was another one. It sometimes happens. Then it is revoked. And then there is a new one.”
He also tells us that Vojta is not supposed to have the beard that has grown on his face over the last week.

‟It’s actually illegal to have a beard”, Mansur smiles. ‟Or, it is allowed only to old men. Not to young ones. Because one then looks dangerous. You will probably be fine, though, as you’re a foreigner”, he adds.

We then talk about Mansur’s life. As his business is doing well, he can afford studying in a different region at a university in which is better than universities in Xinjiang. That’s where he learned English. Now he is home for holiday. Except for that, he hasn’t traveled much.

‟Is it because you are not interested in other countries, or because traveling is too difficult?”
‟I would like to see some other countries, but I don’t have a passport.”
‟Is it so expensive and hard to get one?” I am wondering.
‟It’s that we are not allowed to have passports.”
‟Oh... sorry, I didn’t realize...”

It seems quite difficult not to stumble across delicate topics. Mansur never gets offended, though, and patiently explains us everything–without going too much into details, being negative or judging anything, though.

He is happy, despite the security issues and security measures. He has worked hard and has been lucky, he says, so his family is now quite well-off. He is glad he can help people now. He also says the countryside in the region is beautiful and he even offers to take us to a lake in the mountains on one of the following days.

The less touristy part of China

First days in the Uyghur province

We spend the following days with Mansur and his family. Vojta shaves his illegal beard. Mansur helps us a lot: he goes shopping with us for some equipment we need, shows us the right stores and as we can‘ t read labels in Chinese, he even finds the products for us (such as glue for my broken shoes). It takes some effort to talk him out of paying for the things too.

We went to a bookstore to buy a roadmap of China, and we found this gem

We decide not to buy a Chinese SIM card here–Mansur is not sure if there are prepaid cards at all in Xinjiang, and buying a plan is very hard or impossible for foreigners. We will have to do without internet until we get to the next region.

We also ask Mansur what software he uses to access blocked content on the web, and are surprised to find that he doesn’t use any. He just doesn’t try to circumvent the ban. We find it quite interesting because in Iran–our previous dictatorship with filtered internet–literally everybody used VPN. Maybe there is just no need for people to use other than Chinese apps. He indicates–in his usual minimalist way–that his phone undergoes checks. He doesn’t say clearly whether it is because it is a company phone, or whether there is something more to it. I prefer not to ask him any more questions.

In the morning, Mansur leaves to work, and comes back several hours later. We stay with his family and prefer not to leave the neighborhood at all, so that we don’t have to go through the reception and attract more attention than necessary. Also, we genuinely enjoy staying with these people. We already learned not to be shocked by the fact that in these parts of the world, people don’t mind hosting complete strangers who don’t even speak their language. We are aware, though, that if you are a Chinese Uyghur, it might require even more warmth and bravery.


Eventually, we find a way to communicate a bit–through music. I take my flute and play some songs I know. In Europe, this flute is the simplest and most unimpressive instrument ever; every schoolkid learns to play it. Here, though, it is exotic and our hosts seem genuinely interested in it. Then, the father of the family brings his string instrument and plays some of his tunes for us. Later on, as I start playing another song, he joins me and reproduces my tune, and we play together. It is a Czech song talking about the Altay sky as something dreamy and distant, and here we are less than 1000 km far from the Altay Mountains, playing the song together with an elderly Uyghur man. It is a moment of connection even though we don’t share a language.

When the time comes to leave, we ask Mansur whether he will go with us up to the mountain lake he mentioned.
‟I’m sorry but I can’t. We are not allowed to go up there now.”
‟How come?”
‟We cannot leave the town without a permit. Because of the curfew, you know? It is a new rule now.”
‟I’m sorry for that... Do you know until when?”
‟No. It happens every now and then.”
‟Does that mean that nobody can leave the town?”
‟No, no. Chinese people can. You will be fine too, I think. It’s just us.”

I don’t really know what to say. I am wondering what is it like to face things like that every day of your life. Mansur doesn’t seemed bothered, though. He is probably used to that. Or, he just doesn’t show any negative emotions.

Before we leave, Mansur translates a letter for cops into Chinese for us, explaining what we are doing and asking them to let us go on. We hope it will help us at checkpoints. Mansur’s mum prepares some packages with food for us and insists that we take them. We are saying goodbye to each other like old acquaintances. They wish us luck but I can’t help thinking it’s them who need it most.
 

Tea in a guard's booth

Sayran lake: a hidden beauty. Also, no checkpoints

Mansur drives us to the end of the town. When he leaves, we realize we were stupid not to have him translate our hitchhiking letter into Uyghur too: the first person who stops for us drives us back to the town, despite our protests, because he doesn’t read Mandarin. We don’t have Uyghur in our phone translation app either. This will be fun.

So we walk through the entire town again to an eastbound road. The heat is suffocating and soon we are bathing in sweat. Luckily, there are lawn sprinklers everywhere, so I sometimes shower with them with all my clothes to make the heat a bit more bearable.

At the end of the town, we need to go through a checkpoint: our letter helps and the guards let us pass. The motorway is smooth, solid, with guardrails, like in Europe. We are still not used to that; it is almost scary to hitchhike on it. It is quieter than in Europe, though, because of all the electric cars. Soon, a driver of a small truck gives us a ride. We are on the road again.

The crew of the next car that stops–probably a father with sons–don’t trust us. They seem to be afraid of us. They read our letter, have a discussion together and want to see our passports. After looking at our visa, they take us in. We drive for a long time and start climbing up the hill. Coniferous trees replace parched fields.

Then, the Sayran lake appears. It is huge, dark blue, surrounded by distant mountains, and deserted. Our drivers leave us on the shore; it seems they came here, to the middle of nowhere, just to take a few pictures and go back again. The weather is fresh and it makes me absolutely happy. There is just a house at the lake and a couple of yurts in the distance. When we are putting up our tent on a nearby pasture, watching marmots (or whatever that is), it feels as if we were somewhere in Central Asia again and as if checkpoints and curfews belonged to a different universe.

The Sayran Lake

 

In the morning, we find out that the lake shore actually is a favorite tourist spot: tourists park their cars on the emergency line of the motorway, climb under the fence, go to the beach, take a few pictures and sometimes make a picnic. Young guys from nearby yurts try to sell them horse rides. Every half an hour, cops come and tell the tourists to go away. The tourists leave, the cops leave, and immediately new cars stop in the emergency line and everything repeats. 

We have a lot of time to watch the scene happen over and over: after having a breakfast and taking a swim in the lake (we are the only ones to do so), we get stuck for several hours. Tourists ask us to take pictures of them, they smile a lot, read our hitchhiking letter, say ‟oooooh” an ‟aaaah”, and leave. The young local horsemen try to tell us something in English; I try to tell them something in Mandarin. Both of us fail. Anyway, the weather here is so nicely fresh that I don’t even mind being stuck.


Then we get lucky: a father and a son give us a ride, and they are going all the way up to Urumqi.  

Vojta's bag and the horsemen of Sayran

Urumqi: how to get overwhelmed by hospitality

They might be Chinese, not Uyghur, but I actually can’t tell the difference very well. Anyway, they speak Chinese to each other. The young guy has an online translation app; although the rendition usually is poor, we manage to communicate a bit. The way is long; we see many more plateaus, fields and fortified gas stations. Our hosts take us to a small diner for lunch–we get a mountain of delicious food again and we are not allowed to pay for it. Vojta warned me it was impolite to finish your meal in China as the host might think they have not prepared enough food; the portions are so huge, though, that there is no way of finishing them anyway.

Urumqi is big–the biggest city in Xinjiang–and that scares me. A big city will mean a lot of crowds, a lot of traffic, a lot of surveillance and a lot of effort to find a camping spot and a way out. But we are extremely lucky: our drivers are passing less then 5 kilometers from the junction we need to get to. 

They are pretty surprised we want to get off at night in the middle of nowhere, on a suburban bypass with not even a place to stop. But they agree to stop anyway. We walk across a rusty bridge with no sidewalk, go down the embankment and climb over some railings and fences. The air is stifling again. We are in a dull industrial neighborhood. But we quite easily find a small hidden field to camp on. Also, we will be able to walk to our next hitchhiking spot without having to use public transport–an amazing coincidence in a city of 3.5 million. 

In the morning, we try to find some drinking water on our way to the hitchhiking spot. It is more difficult than we expected–not that people were unhelpful, though. 

It is quite hard to find any people whatsoever in this suburb. Eventually, we get to a small shabby square with a lot of shops and little restaurants. In front of one of them, there is a water pump. I address an elderly man nearby, show him our phrase sheet with the sentence ‟Is this water OK for drinking?” and point at the pump. He answers something vague which I interpret as yes, so we try to use the pump. Some ladies come out of a store, making grimaces and pointing at their stomachs. So the water is not good, then. Before we manage to say anything, they take us in the store. We try asking them for water and they take the entire phrase sheet from us and start reading it all. 

Besides the request for water, some basic words and sentences explaining that we are from Czechia and we are hitchhiking to Mongolia, there are things such as: ‟Can we put up a tent here, please?”, ‟I don’t eat chili”, ‟I don’t eat offal” and ‟I have a diarrhea”.

 

Our Chinese phrasebook. It would make Monty Python jealous.

While we are trying to explain them we just need to fill our water bottles, we get tea and two huge plates of noodles and veggies. I suspect they are without chili and offal. We manage to take the phrase sheet back before our hosts get to the phrase: ‟I have been bitten by a snake”. We eventually manage to understand that there is no drinking water here. But we eat the noodles–delicious again–, drink the tea, show the shopkeepers some photos, give them some postcards of Prague and let them take some selfies with us. They also let us use their bathroom and wash our T-shirts in there. Some of their neighbors come to see us too. Our hosts won’t hear about us paying for the noodles, and they also boil some eggs for us and give us a big dumpling.

We are leaving overeaten, with clean T-shirts, plenty of new supplies, and some new pictures. The only thing we don’t have is water. We don’t dare asking for it again in this neighborhood.

The advantage of having privileged passports and living outside the system (or are we just lucky?)

We spend several hours urban hiking: we cross some brownfields and construction sites, walk along some roads not meant for walking, find out the intended hitchhiking spot is not good enough and end up taking a long stroll along a motorway. The initial 5 kilometers turn into 10. It is sultry, the traffic is heavy and noisy and we are covered in sweat and dust. 

We realize we got through Urumqi without seeing a single checkpoint. It’s almost surprising. I’m wondering whether the surveillance is automated here, or whether we avoided all of it simply by traveling in a way the system might not be built for.

In the afternoon, we finally head east again. We get a ride by a Chinese-American family visiting their home country. Then a truck driver. Then another truck driver. He is Uyghur. He drives us to his town. His wife and he take us to a restaurant and invite us for a huge, delicious dinner.

 

Qitai

We ended up in Qitai, nowadays a little unimportant town. In history, though, it used to be a major trade point. China is still called ‟Kitai” in some languages after this town. It looks completely ordinary. We find an ATM that works with our Mastercard and withdraw money for the first time. I am surprised it works and doesn’t involve passports. We meet a young guy who speaks Russian; he plans to go to Russia for his studies. He tells us Xinjang has bad reputation and is economically weak because of the violence going on here. He thinks the region deserves better. It reminds me that Xinjiang actually is considered poor and backwards–compared to Central Asia, though, it looks neither poor nor backwards, roads are better quality than in Central Europe, and the ubiquitous irrigation systems for flowers look pretty sophisticated and expensive.

We are walking out of the town at night, looking for a camping spot. The broad streets lined with blooming bushes and flowers are almost completely empty, and on every major intersection there is a police booth. Sometimes it has a flashing blue light on the roof. It looks almost surreal. We take minor streets to avoid the booths and end up camping in a pretty dense artificial wood interwoven by an irrigation system. (All flowers and trees in most parts of the region seem to be artificially planted and watered; without that, there would probably just be a huge desert).

We leave the motorway and continue by country roads for several days. We are passing across a green fresh plateau, through villages and small towns. Sometimes there are yurts again. The towns are spacious, colorful, clean and lively and they are small enough to be walked through. There are green plains around and even the heat is more bearable.

At every entrance to or exit from a town, even on country roads, there are checkpoints. Our passports in Latin alphabet usually confuse the guards. They probably don’t know how to read them, so they just stare at them, try copying something from the visa or scan them and let us pass. Sometimes they ask our drivers questions but they never give any of us hard time.  

At a Buddhist shrine

Eventually, we need to cross mountains. We are traveling with two young guys who probably aren’t in a hurry, so they stop every now and then to take pictures of the stunning views. There are also yurts and swift creeks and everything is beautiful, except for heaps of garbage in the water. After more than an hour of an uphill drive, we go to a Buddhist shrine together. It’s the first time I see one. The colorful prayer flags flutter in the wind, the decorated columns and upturned roofs look like in a fairytale and remind me how far from home we are. Then, we cross the top of the mountain chain and start going down. Except for a town under us, the view is scary. We are at the edge of the Gobi desert that we will need to partially cross. As far as the eye can see, nothing but flat land with rocks. It seems like going to Mordor.
 

Encounter with the police

When we get dropped off at the motorway near the town, it feels like Mordor, too. The heat is suffocating, the sun beats down on our heads and the temperature of the wind must be way over 40°C. The mountains we’ve been in less than half an hour ago feel like an unreal paradise.


We start hitchhiking under a bridge–at least we are in the shade–and we get stuck. It’s hardly surprising: ahead of us, there are just a few towns, and 1000 km of Gobi. It seems nobody is going there except trucks, and trucks are not stopping for us. A few foreign rally cars pass us by. The water in our bottles is getting hot. I’m wondering how long it can take to run out of the 6 liters we have. It shows that it might take quite long: every now and then, people stop, telling us they are not going our way and asking whether we are OK. A family gives us a 5 l can of water. Their trunk is full of picnic baskets; I’m wondering what they will drink at the picnic–but the lady insists.  

Then, we see a police micro-bus slowly pulling over on the rocks under the bridge. Some cops get out and stare at us for a while. Then they crawl through a hole in the fence and go towards us. It seems we are in trouble.

Anyway, we greet them politely and show them all our letters meant for cops. They also check our passports and suggest us through a translation app they will take us downtown. It sounds better than taking us to jail but we don’t want to give up anyway. We explain them again that we prefer to stay right here. For a moment, it seems it will work: they go back to the car. Too bad, their commander is probably firm, so they come back. We are negotiating through the translation app; eventually it seems we managed to convince them to only take us to a better hitchhiking spot. They just won’t let us stay here, so we go with them.

Their car is pretty full already, so we are crammed in like sardines. I end up holding the cops’ weapon, as it was lying on my seat. It is a metallic bar with some claws at the end. I’m wondering whether it’s meant for catching aggressive dogs, or people. Since I have it on my lap without the cops protesting, I hope it’s for dogs. 
 

A letter for cops and what it's supposed to say. We aren't sure it actually says that, but we weren't once arrested, so it worked.

They drop us off in front of a hotel on a parking lot. There are also some of the rally cars we saw on the motorway and we meet one of the crews: they are European. It shows that the place actually is near the easternmost road going towards the motorway–so the cops held their promise.

After several hours of walking, a sultry night in an orchard and an offered watermelon, we get picked up by one of the trucks crossing Gobi.

Overnight, we get teleported more than thousand kilometers east, to a different province with ordinary gas stations, fewer barriers and fewer guards. 

On our way east

After the week in Xinjiang, it feels almost strange not to show your ID twice a day. I am surprised how smooth our crossing was, though. I am wondering whether we were extremely lucky, extremely unimportant or whether the region actually is easy to cross for foreigners. And I am wondering how difficult it would have been to do anything considered ordinary in Xinjiang–anything people usually do–such as buying petrol, using hotels or buying tickets. Not to mention things necessary for a permanent life. Also, I am acutely aware of how unfairly privileged I am just because I happened to be born in a country that respects people’s rights and is rich enough to have the right treaties. A short trip across Xinjiang teaches a universal truth: the value of a human being’s existence is determined by their passport.

Note: this story happened in summer 2017. The situation might have changed considerably since then. For updates about traveling through Xinjiang, please see the Caravanistan forum.

The meal in this restaurant was actually delicious