David & Zina Cox: Day 35 Trip to the Silk Road

Day 35

We got up at 4 a.m. to meet the taxi that Eva had arranged for us at 5.a.m. We got to the airport about the same time as the Clarke’s and the Pace’s with Lily. Lily is a Chinese girl that met with one of the BYU couples in Ji’nan last year while they were riding the bus. She was a big help to them and they became quite close. That couple wanted her to experience more of China, so they paid her way to go on this tour with us. The Shauerhamer’s were about 10 minutes behind us, but we had to wait for the desk to open, so it really didn’t matter. Everything went well with the flight and we arrived safely in Urumqi about 1 p.m. We met the other people that were here from BYU for the tour and we were finally on our way to check in at the hotel about 3:30. We had to drive around for a while because we couldn’t get into the hotel until they had everything ready for us.

We quickly dropped our things off in the hotel room and then went to the International Bazaar in the Muslim area. There were armed guards in several places because there had been warnings that there might be some unrest during the National Holiday in China. We felt safe enough. There was a whole lot to buy there, but we only ended up with a warm had for David that we paid 50 RMB for (about $8 US) after bargaining with a twelve year old girl. She was tough!

This is the little girl we bargained with to get David's hat.

These knives are specially made in Xinjiang Province, but if you buy them, you can't take them out of the province. Makes sense, right?

The Mosque in the square of the Muslim Bazaar.

Outside of the Muslim Bazaar

Just a sampling of all the things you can buy here. I had a hard time passing these up for my granddaughters, but I only had so much luggage space...

Urumqi was built in 1985 or so from the small village it was to the capital city it is now in the province of Xinjiang. This are is famous for its part in the Silk Road. The Silk Road was first a passage way for the Chinese to get the bigger horses that were in the Middle East. Chinese horses to this point were small and they wanted bigger horses for their military. Later it was used for trade to get spices and silk to the west. We noticed that lack of people riding bikes in Urumqi and our guide said it was because they were encouraging people to buy cars and the city was not really set up for bikes to be ridden. This area is surrounded by mountains and desert.

Dinner was at an ethic Chinese restaurant. Lots of spicy hot dishes! Lily couldn’t even help us with the names and what was in them because she was unfamiliar with the local food.

Dinner with Lily at our table. They gradually put all the dishes on the Lazy Susan and you turn it around to serve yourself. No forks at this meal! We are all getting better with the chopsticks, but Lily, of course is the best. She showed us how to get the long noodles out of the soup bowl into our bowls. We were so glad that we had Lily along with us!

These are all different kinds of raisins! Who knew for about all we see in the US are the black or green ones. We are raisin experts now after this trip.

After we got back from the dinner, we walked around with the Clarke’s, bought some ice cream because we were looking for some of the local yogurt that was supposed to be the best in China and couldn’t find any. In looking for the yogurt, we went down a set of steps that we thought would take us to the other side of the street and find the grocery store that was supposed to be in the area. What we found was a huge underground shopping mall! It went on for blocks in both ways. There seemed to be mostly higher end stores down there. We never did find the grocery store. I bought a nice strand of pearls for 200 RMB (about $63 US).