Rain, rain and I’m stuck in my office writing a book. I like books, I like writing, but I don’t like being stuck!
In times like these, my thoughts inevitably turn to travelling, especially thundering through the deserts and mountains of Xinjiang Province (新疆，San Geung, New Frontier)
I have been to Xinjiang five or six times, but never tire of the vast, open spaces and bus or train trips that can last up to 30 hours. I find them soothing, but train trips are of course best. The card playing, the beer, the excellent food in the restaurant car… it’s a moveable feast if there ever was one.
I want to be in something hurtling through something vast again! But I must finish the damned book before the end of July. I will finish it. Then I can get on that train and go into the hinterland. The only problem is that some of the trains（火車，fo che, Fire Car) in China nowadays are so up themselves, they think they are planes （飛機，Fei Gei, Flying Machines):
Wei wei, Friday night it’s full forge ahead again with Happy Jellyfish People’s Democratic Language Bureau’s Cantonese FUNdaMENTAList Crash Course!!!!
You’ll learn everything you need to know about drinking in bars, paying for drinks and a little taxi lingo. Two and a half hours is all you need to set you up for a lifetime of learning the rest of the language straight from Chinese people!
We meet at the Hono (Honolulu Coffee Shop, 檀島咖啡餅店）in 33 Stanley street in Central.
Email me at cecilie@http://localhost:8888/Fish to sign up and receive the course material.
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Saturday night my house was flooded with what at first glance looked like supermodels. 15 young people in their twenties and early thirties stampeded in to have a Sichuan meal, carefully cooked with the finest ingredients by yours truly.
Although I’m firmly in the “kicking for the other team” (the only team) category, I couldn’t help noticing that young women are indeed more beautiful than old; in fact more beautiful than many if not most other things on earth. And the guys were also far better looking than average.
As I stood cooking away at Spicy Potato Cakes, Pork Dumplings, Glass Noodles with Beef, Sweet and Sour and Spicy Eggplant etc, peals of laughter came from the roof where the young and beautiful people sounded as if they were having an excellent time.
Now this experience can be yours! I can’t guarantee that the roof will be full of supermodels, but I can guarantee excellent food and dewy cold beer, a great ambience and beautiful surroundings.
Soon it will be your laughter ringing out over the South China Sea as you stuff your face with a succulent dumpling – and yes! I do vegetarian dumplings too, better and more succulent, in my opinion, than the pork ones…
水餃 – Seoi gau (dumplings)
薯仔 – Syu tsai (potatoes)
好辣 – Hou lat (well spicy)
This is probably my favourite spot in all of China – apart from the Lo Wu Shopping Center of course. It’s Jiayuguan Fort far into Gansu province and is said to be the end of the Great Wall; the Ming Dynasty part of it anyway. Beyond this point was only barbarianism.
The above photos were taken four years ago, but since then pollution has come to town aided and abetted by China’s Go West campaign. It consists of building lots and lots of highways to accommodate the four cars that drive down them every hour.
Jiayuguan is a strange town. There’s only a handful of people, mostly workers imported to handle the many cement factories, but the town itself looks built to accommodate millions and millions.
We took a walk across the railway line where I remembered there was a huge wilderness decorated with snow-capped mountains.
The wilderness was no more; instead there was a water treatment plant and a two new roads had been built. The hills were festooned with electric pylons and the snowcapped mountains, what little we could see through the pollution, had very little snow.
Through the landscape ran a row of gigantic concrete pillars. Was it a new highway, perhaps? If so, why couldn’t it run on the ground? No, a worker told us. It was to be the new high-speed railway to Urumqi. Oh great, good luck. Hope there’s no lightning …
That day we almost became that guy dressed in rags begging for water in front of a mirage. Hot! Water gone! Had no idea where we were! Fortunately a kind foreman drove us back into town, just in time for a gigantic Hami melon. If nothing else, these melons is reason enough to come here. Indescribable! But come in season, August/September.
In the afternoon it was time to swing around the Gobi Desert.
Yes, fort, Gobi and a thing called “Little Great Wall” , all are in walking distance from Jiayuguan Town. There is also a freezing brook (snowmelt) where you can heal your put-upon feet.
Inside the fort many new means of entertainment have sprung up, for of course it’s not enough just to be inside a structure unchanged since the Ming Dynasty and feel the winds of history and look at the same walls that great generals and warriors have looked upon. One entertainment is archery. See the guy to the right? The red arrow is mine. I got him right in the breastbone made of straw! My first arrow-shooting ever, so fairly pleased with self.
Jiayuguan Fort. Go there, I say. But you should probably go about 5.30AM or something. The hordes are worse than any barbarian horde ever trying to scramble over the Great Wall …
