fours

i’m here for lunch at least twice a week. yay noodle/sushi craving. it’s pretty ok.

i totally want to go to the Guca brass band festival this summer. i hear it’s a tiny bit touristy, but that if you go early, you can catch the smaller “semifinal” regional countryside festivals in the weeks leading up to the big one in Guca.

apart from that, no reason to stick around. unless you want to gamble with thai tourists…

had a short but fun visit (uighur disco is great!). you should also check out my friend michael’s blog from korla for korla pictures. VERY few foreigners, oil boomtown, lively uighur and han (mostly sichuanese) communities. plus there’s a 1350RMB flight on China United Airlines from Beijing Nanyuan airport (the air force base, see entry in the Xinjiang section…).

a fun, chill, manageably-sized, modern chinese city—not too big, not too small. plus the food was so great! spicy, tingly, awesome.

when i went, the old town was pretty saturated with chinese (and a few western) tourists buying random crap from the souvenir stalls that have taken over the downtown. the “old town” now more resembles a shopping mall (set inside beautiful chinese architecture), though there are some out-of-the-way residential areas left for wandering around. but i guess western breakfast at the cafes is a bonus.

but definitely try heading north towards the jade dragon snow mountain, to check out the relatively undeveloped villages up there: yuhu, baisha, etc. here’s a picture taken in yuhu.

Xiahe is a majority-Tibetan town in western Gansu and home to Labrang (or Labuleng) Monastery, the biggest lamasery outside of Tibet. a constant stream of brightly-dressed pilgrims come from all over western China to turn prayer wheels for hours. awesome, especially if you can’t make it to Tibet.

psst: there’s a super-cheap flight from Beijing Nanyuan airport to the airport in Korla, Xinjiang for only 1350RMB. it’s run by China United Airlines (owned by the Air Force; Nanyuan is a military airport) and flies old Soviet-era jets, but is a great deal and puts you a few hours from Kuqa and Urumqi. you won’t find tickets or information online (besides this picture my friend took) but you can just show up at the airport the morning of the flight and buy a ticket.

finally went to xinjiang (really only korla, oil city south of urumqi) this winter! right after the snowstorm. it was bitter cold.

came for the proscuitto di parma, stayed for the charm-a! okay, that was terrible.