Ever since I lived in Beijing almost two and half years ago, to this date, I've always wanted to visit Yunnan; China's southern most province, a place named for its clouds, but more notably known for its immense mountains, it's easy to like. And as you learn by living in China, you become the envy of any Chinese national just by spending a day there. I marked my planner as soon as I found out this semester's Chinese holidays; Labor Day in May, Dragon Boat Festival in June, and QingMing on April 1st. Travel time. As a foreigner, that's what these days were to me, days to escape Zhengzhou.
In reality, QingMing is about travel, yes, but to a destination that is a grave, hopefully not your own. As much as I could tell, like a Memorial Day with more vigor and less nationalistic pride, QingMing is about honoring one's ancestors. As so, the living offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks and more. Mostly though, from the bus window, I just saw neon sparklers, a single branch of leaves from a tree, and empty alcohol bottles acting as attentive love.
But before that happened, we had to leave Zhengzhou, which despite what you may have expected, isn't easy. First, we had to get approval. We had originally wanted, for a second attempted try, to head West to China's Wild West, Urumqi.
After four weeks of hesitation, the school was still floundering for an answer to our request, finally, after a few more ignored emails, they called, "Why?", they wanted to know. It's not safe, not to be trusted and it'll be cold, their reasons.
True, it would have been cold--- 35 degrees as a high and that's not in Celsius. Urumqi is just the capital of Xinjiang province in the far West of China's automonous region. The miles that seem to stretch endlessly share borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Don't even ask me how to pronounce that last one. In addition to holding the world's most inland city from the sea, dedicated with a monument, The Heart of Asia; the region also boasts mountains, deserts, highlands, lakes, oil, and more deserts. Oil being the reason for the Chinese strong hold on it. A week before the holiday, China Daily noted on the front page teaser, "Xinjiang, crippled by blizzard."
But its controversary, the other two reasons--it is not safe, the people can not be trusted--intrigued me. I wanted to go! A China with Muslim characteristics greater than its Chinese, wo sei, my favorite Chinese idiom as to say, holy crap! As Peter Hessler writes in his book, River Town, everything has Chinese characteristics: democracy, Shakespeare, arguably anything. Even Bugs Bunny, as I've learned, has a Chinese voice and scream.
Xinjiang, however, is still a wild card in the eyes of the Chinese, with mosques, bazaars, a Turkish-based language and Italian-looking people, the Uighurs. 35 hours in a train seemed worth it to me.
But yet again, I wouldn't find out. The administrators won with denial. We took our licks where we could and settled for an extra day of holiday time during Labor Day as a conselence prize.
All of this, six days prior to takeoff and yet somehow we came to be seated with Lucky Air, which only seemed to be more ominous than good, headed for Kunming, capital of Yunnan. Who can deny the province of clouds?
