Visiting the Ghost City 魔鬼城

What do you get when you combine two Americans, six Filipinos, a bunch of cameras, camels, dinosaurs, and a big red bus? Answer: quite a party!

Destination: The Ghost City
Location: 100km north of Karamay (about 1 1/2 hours by bus)

This "city", which is more of a geological park, got its name from the sounds that are made when the frequent winds whistle and howl through various rock formations. This location has been made famous by various movies which have shot scenes here, only one of which you might know - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Having personally never seen this movie, I don't know which part was filmed here, but we have now seen where they did it! How exciting.

Ok, first, let me back up a bit so I can share a few stories and pictures. All 8 of us (Tiff, me, and the 6 Filipinos) decided a couple weeks back to take a tour to the Ghost City during the May Holiday. Last year we got a full week off for this holiday - a bit like Spring Break in America - but this year the powers-that-be decided that too much time off at once was bad for business, so they cut it to 3 days. The tour we bought included three places - a river valley, a dinosaur park, and the Ghost City. All of us boarded a bus with about 25 other subdued Chinese people who were just a bit uncomfortable with the loud atmosphere we brought. Example: all of us singing a karaoke song to pass the time on the big red bus. You don't have to be Chinese to understand why that would turn heads.

Our first stop was a river valley that wasn't much to see except for one thing - trees. We actually saw Chinese people taking pictures hugging trees! Why? I mean, we have trees here in the city, but these were old trees, trees with big trunks, and they took pictures because this was the first time they had seen a tree so big that two people together couldn't put their arms around.

Stop number two was a dinosaur park - a park dedicated to the site where dinosaur bones had once been excavated a few decades ago. Were the bones on display? No. Did they show where they were unearthed? No. Was the entire park shaped like a big dinosaur with fake dinosaurs walking around everywhere? Of course! The redeeming part of this park was the many and different places we could take pictures and goof around. Check out the slide show to the right of this entry for examples of these pictures.

Finally, after a short lunch, we made our way to the Ghost City. We made a quick stop to ride some camels and the rest of the time was spent walking around the park and snapping many pictures. There's really no way to try to describe to you the enormity and beauty of what we saw, so I think it's best to let pictures and one video do the trick. If you're receiving this via e-mail and can't see all this, log onto the website for better results.

We're Perfectly Safe

Just wanted to send a quick message to all of you who may have been worried about news of a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that hit our region yesterday morning. The earthquake hit at 6:33am on March 21st along the mountain range that separates Xinjiang from Tibet (the dotted line on the map represents the mountain range and our city is a little further north of Urumqi, the capital city you see on this map). We've received a couple of e-mails and even a phone call from a friend in Japan (Yoshi!) making sure that we are safe. The good news is that we didn't feel a bit of the earthquake where we are in Karamay, even though we did wish we could have felt something. I did some research on the maps we have here and found that our province of Xinjiang, the largest in China, is so big that the distance between our city and this mountain range is the same as the distance between Dallas and Nashville. There's very little chance we could have felt this earthquake or its aftershocks, even though it was very intense. In fact, China's most devastating earthquake occurred back in 1976 and was about the same intensity as this earthquake here in Xinjiang. The difference? The '76 quake was centered near Beijing where an estimated quarter of a million people passed away compared to the reported 261 deaths here in the sparsely populated Xinjiang.

Another interesting fact to note: news of this earthquake hit foreign press yesterday morning at 9am, two and a half hours after the actual earthquake. The first article to hit Chinese news arrived 24 hours later.

We'll be posting more pictures early next week. Thanks for your concern and we hope you all have a wonderful Easter!

A Visit to Yili in Xinjiang

We're finally finished with our traveling, and after the adventure we just had this last week we're about ready for a break! Coming to live in China has been a very different experience for us and of course, like any country, we've had to adjust, but nothing could have prepared us for the crash course in "culture shock" that we just received this week. First of all, we want to give you some background as to why and where we went. China celebrated their New Year this month with an entire week-or-so devoted to festivities and family. As a general rule, during this time all children (grown-ups) are supposed to travel home and spend time with family, similar to Christmas in America. We had planned on just relaxing for a couple weeks after our history tour of China while waiting for school to start, but our good friends Heidi and Sam invited us to join them in visiting his hometown and we just couldn't refuse. Not only would we be able to experience the history of China by living in a very old village, but we were also able to attend Heidi and Sam's last wedding. We went to a small town about 5 hours by bus outside of Yili (they call that a suburb) near the border of China and Kazakhstan to visit Sam’s family. It was such an amazing adventure, very unforgettable, and a great time of getting to know of Chinese friends better.

You know you've experienced true culture shock when you find yourself wanting to say aloud “You want me to do what?!” or my favorite “You mean that’s edible?!” The house we stayed at had no plumbing, electricity was an obvious afterthought of the past decade, heating was provided by a coal heater in each room, and don’t even think about Internet access. Where’s the bathroom, you say? Outside, subject to the elements (you can see the little brick structure in the picture on the left). How cold was it? It snowed 4-5 inches while we were there! On top of having to squat on two boards over a hole in the ground (freezing our rears off – literally), the lack of a shower kept us feeling a bit dirty. I know it sounds horrible, and I don’t know how they live like that on a daily basis, but for visiting purposes it was quite a unique and fun experience. We stayed for about 4 days with Sam’s family filling the time mostly with sleeping, games, and eating. Oh, the eating! During this holiday when families are together eating is quite an ordeal. It was also an interesting learning experience for us. For instance, did you know that a turtle shell is edible? Have you ever tried eating a fish? (when I say eating a fish, I mean eating the WHOLE fish, bones and everything from head to tail). Have you ever eaten any part of a pig besides its torso (i.e. its tongue or ear)? If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, then you know a bit of what we’ve experienced this past week. Ha! What an experience!

The main reason we were there, though, was for the wedding, and we thought you might enjoy hearing how a different culture does weddings. Heidi and Sam have been married for a couple years and this is their third and final wedding – they’re now finally done getting married! Amazingly this is very typical here in China. As a general rule (there are exceptions, of course) a Chinese couple has two to three weddings. They have one wedding with each set of parents in their respective towns and then a wedding where they currently reside (those three celebrations become two occasionally if they happen to live in the same town as one set of parents). The main ceremony is held in the town where they live and work and is attended by mostly friends and co-workers. This is where the bride gets all made up, they exchange rings and ride around in a decorated car. The wedding we attended can be summarized more as a large banquet where friends and family on Sam’s side get a chance to meet the new bride and toast to their marriage. In this picture you can see Heidi (in red) and Sam toasting a table full of guests. Just a side note: red is the color of weddings here and is the color of the bride’s clothes; ironically, the traditional white used in America is actually considered the color of mourning worn at funerals. Another fun fact is that all gifts given at a wedding are cash, and all cash given at the weddings hosted by the parents goes only to the parents. We asked Heidi later and found out that Sam’s family walked away with around US$1,200 after paying for all banquet expenses. They actually make money by marrying off their children! I can just hear both sets of our parents right now just wishing we got married in China. Sorry!

The wedding was very nice but the next day we were ready to be gone, back to the land of regular food and a seat in the bathroom. I’m not sure if we’re jaded because we’ve been traveling this whole month, but traveling in inner-China is not pretty and we don’t want to do it anymore for quite a few months. The bus, besides not being made for any person taller than…well…Tiff, is filled with smoke and lacks a bathroom (this picture shows us just stopped in the middle of the road taking a bathroom break). Ralph White and Pat Brook would have enjoyed the challenge of traversing some of the dirt roads on their bikes that we did in a bus – and I’m not joking. Was it safe? I guess so. Fun? Not entirely. An adventure? Oh, most assuredly yes.

I guess the most good that came out of this trip was the time we were able to spend with our friends. Tiff got some quality time with Heidi discussing her upcoming baby and even being able to tell her stories from the Word that she had never heard before. We played many games and had numerous conversations together. Sam’s family (pictured below) really liked us and asked us to come back. Right now we’re just glad to be home preparing for the start of the next semester, but I think this trip – our first real experience of Chinese culture – will be the last of its kind. We’re back in Karamay now, happy in our little piece of America called the apartment. We hope all of you had a good Valentines Day, and now that China has officially celebrated the lunar new year (Feb 18^th this year) we wish you all a happy 2007!!