Urumqi

I was in Western China to see the eclipse yesterday. Today, I took a three hour plane ride further west to Urumqi. China is bigger than I thought it was going to be. 

 

So far, I have visited three Chinas. Beijing is big and modern, with lots of skyscrapers, and a subway, and all that. It is also where I saw some of the great big monuments, like the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and (just outside of town) the Great Wall. Xian contnued a little of that...although it was not nearly as new and modern. The second China was the days I spent at Emei Shan and around there. On the way there, I passed a lovely night on a sleeper train with a young couple, a mother, and her about nine year old daughter. The little girl wanted to look at all the pictures I had on my computer (my astrophotos). The Tingling Mountains, which were more tunnel than vista on the train, were in some ways, the "typical" China one thinks of in postcards and things. They featured craggy peaks, a river flowing by temples, farms, and such.  All very green. Emei Shan, with its temples, and shrines continued that feeling.Finally today, I am in a third China. Urumchi is a town out in a much drier climate. (It was not raining, and I actually went for a walk with the sun!!!--I have seen the sun clearly maybe five or six hours the whole trip so far.) And the people are different. There are more Uighurs, an Indo-European looking clan, more akin to the Turks than Chinese.

 

Urumchi was also the first place I saw troops out on the street. There had  been some horrible riots here last month, and, believe me, there will  be none this week. I even got caught taking a picture, and a nice young man with a machine gun, and two of his well uniformed friends kindly asked me to delete it from my memory card. I complied and deleted the one he knew about. You know, even though he did not speak English, and I did not speak Chinese, he managed to get his poipnt across clearly.

 

By the way--I am as far from the ocean today as somebody can be while on the earth!

 

Tomorrow the silk road museum.....And perhaps off to Kazakhstan.

 

The picture I sent today was of totality in the fog. Isn't it moody.

 

PS....I have not had internet connectivity all day, so have not been able to send this and other messages. It is possible when I do get connected again, we will have several days of blogs uploaded at the same time.