08 Oct 2008
I am an early riser. At home I’m usually in bed by nine, and up by five. Today I arose early to a dry and cold morning. Thankful for my supply of two-in-one coffee sachets, I set myself to making a morning cuppa with their water boiler. The coffee never tasted better under the circumstances. There was no hot water from the taps, which is not a problem for brushing, but poses one for shaving and showering. The faucets leak, the flush weak and the toilet smell. Just as I had expected from a state run enterprise. Pathetic. I looked out the window. The place is already bustling with people going on with their business. I plan to check out of the hotel near noontime so I have the entire morning to explore the place and get on some of those rides.
The Chinese are early risers too. An army of cleaners and attendants are already out there, getting the place ready
for the day’s visitors. There are scores of boatmen by the river, checking life jackets, inflating sagging sheepskins and carrying out maintenance tasks on their motors. I approached a kiosk offering rafting on the river.
“You’re too early. We need at least three people to push off. Please wait” says a female attendant.
Instead of waiting I decide to ride the ski lift up the dunes for a panoramic view of the area, and when up there to slide down the dunes on a sled, all for a fee of course.
The morning air crisp, the sky clear and the scenery magnificent. Below me the mustard coloured waters of the Yellow River slows to a lazy crawl as the gradient of the land is comparatively gentle in these parts. It is yet too early for any activity on the River. The pedestrian bridge across the River can be seen clearly to lead to a hamlet on the opposite shore. A green belt of vegetation stretched back from either side of the River, and beyond that, the vast expanse of desert. Behind me, on a slight ridge, runs the Lanzhou-Baotou-Beijin
g railway line. I can hear the constant chugging of trains but could not see them from where I stood.
After indulging my senses atop the dunes I approached a station where I climbed onto a sled, more a square plastic platform, for my slide down the sandy slopes. The tourist brochure touted the pleasurable sounds of singing sand as one slides down the dunes. To be honest I didn’t hear any. Before I can even finish saying Jack Robinson, I’m already at the foot of the dunes, a thin layer of
fine dust around my neck and behind the ears. That ride up and down cost 50 yuan, quite a sum for the average Chinese.
Down by the river I met an elderly couple in their seventies.
“Ni hao! Are you from here?” I ventured.
“We live in Yinchuan, and we’re here to check out the place. Its much prettier now compared to a few years ago” says Old Mrs Ma in clear standard Putonghua.
“But the admission charges are too high” I protested.
“We got in for free. We’re retired you know” Old Mr Ma chipped in, his heavily accented Putonghua making him hard to understand.
“Are you from南方?” the South, meaning south of the Yangtze River. My own Cantonese accented Putonghua a dead giveaway.
“No, I’m from Singapore”
“Ah Singapore! Very clean and beautiful”. A standard compliment from almost everyone I met and talked to in China.
“But it’s a small place,” I said, self effacingly. “Have you been there?” knowing full well the answer.
“No. What brings you here to Ningxia?”
“I’m very interested in the history and culture of Ningxia, especially the ancient Xixia Kingdom”.
“Mr Zhang Xianliang is an expert in the history of Ningxia. He gives public lectures at the Ningxia Film Studios outside Yinchuan. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
I was sorely mistaken. I have indeed heard of Zhang Xianliang 张贤亮. I have even read one of his books, albeit in a translated version by Penguin. He had written about his quest for a wife in his banished days during the Cultural Revolution, spent in the Chinese Gulag, right here in Ningxia. Half a Man is a Woman. How could I not have known!
As more day trippers arrived, we finally got the numbers for the river raft ride. Sharing a raft with me was a middle aged couple from Anhui Province. whom I believe are mid-to-low level party cadres. I can tell from the way they are dressed. Together with their six year old son and sixty year old mother they must have paid a fortune for the ride, unless of course, being party cadres they paid nothing. It cost me 60 yuan for a half hour ‘drift’ downstream. Besides us thrill seekers there is a raft attendant on board, constantly steering the raft with his paddle. I asked if he could stop paddling and allow us just to drift along, 漂 as advertised. He said we’ll never reach our destination if he did that. Our little cadre appeared a little nervous on the raft ride, but was all excited when we switched onto a motorised boat on our return leg.
So, having been there and done that, I checked out of the resort inn and caugh
t the two yuan bus back to town. Due to concerns for their hygiene standards I usually refrain from eating in small towns. Skipping lunch, I continued doggedly on my journey to Yinchuan. The bus to Yinchuan is luxurious by comparison. The stewardess welcomed us aboard with a short announcement and proceeded to distribute bottles of mineral water to the passengers. Herein lies the trap. Being hungry and thirsty I drank two bottles in quick succession. I was to regret this later.
Despite having travelled in China many times there are some things that continue to irk me. Take for instance riding on the long distance buses. From the time you get on the bus your fellow travellers, indeed practically every one of them, will be yelling into their cellphones. I often wonder the need for one, considering the magnitude of yelling. Then there’s the myriad of ring tones, some downright jarring to the ears. The answering parties seem to delight in setting their ringers to the maximum, and then letting them ring for an incredible length of time before even going “Wei”! And nobody cares if anyone listens in on their conversation. So what if everybody in the bus gets to know who owed what sums of money, or who had just had a tiff with her mother-in-law, or who had left his lover behind. I can only imagine the racket they create on board if cellphones are to be allowed inflight. It is already happening inside Chinese airplanes, albeit usage restricted only on the ground, before take-off and after landing.
Next, there’s the bus operators’ fascination with Hong Kong made kungfu and gangster movies. On practically every trip I had to endure these trash, starring no less than Messrs Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I often speculated their collusion in paying these bus operators, in return for exposure to the vast Chinese market. However it is to be different on this bus to Yinchuan.
Before the start of our journey the driver put on “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, and instantly a man seated towards the rear shouted
“看过了，再换一套, 有动作片吗?”
”Seen it already, change to another, do you have action movies?”
The driver shot back
“只有这一套，看过就睡觉去!”
“This is the only movie on board. If you’ve seen it go to sleep!”
Here is my kind of driver.
Having related the negative aspects, I must report thankfully, that the disgusting habit of smoking and spitting in the bus has effectively stopped. Just a few years ago smoking in the bus is rampant, and the sound of hawking from someone’s throat was enough to send me into a mental bracing position. I’m inclined to think that it must be the result of pre-Olympics public education and rigorous enforcement. But then again, even now I feel somewhat queasy putting my backpack on the floor of the bus.
The effects of two bottles of water in quick succession soon manifest itself. I got to go. In fact I had just emptied my bladder at the last stop, the mid-way point, but my waste tank seemed to top up rather swiftly, close to overflowing. It became quite unbearable. I find myself calculating the time to the destination by estimating the speed of the bus and the remaining distance to go, and hoping for light traffic when we reach Yinchuan.
“Are we there yet? Are we *%#@! there yet?” Just like Shrek’s donkey, appropriately personified by Eddie Foulmouth Murphy.
I also thought tenderly of my father. On our only trip together back to his home village in China we had to transit via Hong Kong. For some reason there was a lengthy holdup in the queue. And he got to go, badly. My poor father. He’s not sighted, and he needed assistance to go to the toilet. Anyway, all those thoughts took my mind off having to go. I have learnt my lesson. Confucius said “Drink little before go on long ride.”
I arrived at Yinchuan Nanmen (South Gate) bus station in the late afternoon and took a ca
b to a Home Inn hotel right in the middle of town. I must say that the facilities they provide are really good value for money. This hotel chain, Rujia 如家连锁酒店 is one of several such enterprise, proving to be a boon for the budget traveller in China. It wins, hands down, compared to those overpriced star graded, often musty and downright lousy, government-run rest houses 迎宾馆. A Home Inn hotel can be found in all Chinese Provinces and Municipalities except Tibet. It cost only about 190 yuan per room per night for two, excluding breakfast. The rooms are clean and fresh, with purified hot and cold drinking water and free broadband. Thanks to that I am current with all the latest emails and news of the outside world. The Home Inn hotel room décor is exactly the same anywhere, right down to the colour and number of drinking mugs, bath towels and clothes hangers. The floor tiles and walls are similarly coloured white, yellow and blue. It looks and feels familiar, no matter which city you wake up in.
At the hotel lobby I chanced upon a billboard advertising local tours. There are four itineraries. After settling in I called the tour company.
“Sorry. There are no tours to the Xixia Tombs tomorrow. It is off-season, and we are alternating our tour destinations. Would you be interested in Shapotou? The Xixia Tombs would be on the day after tomorrow” says a sweet and professional voice over the telephone. That always seems to be so before you pay them.
“No, thank you. I’ve just come from Shapotou this morning. I’ll make my own way to the Tombs then”
This alternate plan was based on information gleaned from the same billboard which says that for 88 yuan a bus leaving from the Beimen (North Gate) station will take one to the Tombs for the entire day. I shall do just that tomorrow.
First, I needed a shower. Fine particles of Shapotou sand found its way into my every nook, corner and orifice. Well, just about every. Next, I crave for a beer and some food. There is a noodle shop, fast food style, a la MacDonalds just next to my hotel. Why, its even painted brightly in red, yellow and white.
红元帅, 清真食品 Red General, Halal Food, the sign exhorts. The restaurant looks well patronised, but the real clincher for me here is the cleanliness of the premises.
“I’d like a bottle of ice cold beer, a plate of ham and egg fried rice and a bowl of spicy wild mushroom mutton noodles.”
“Fifteen yuan fifty please.” An astoundingly cheap price.
Unlike at MacDonalds you get served at your table. Incidentally MacDonalds do not have a presence here, nor Starbucks. Their market survey shows that they are not likely to amass a huge following of hamburger chompers or sippers of expensive coffee in this neck of the woods. Fried chicken is a different story. KFC, and its Taiwanese clone Dicos already have a visible presence here.
My dinner arrived promptly, served by a bevy of young waitresses fresh out of school. They are to be addressed as fuwuyuan 服务员, service attendants. Heaven forbid that you address one as xiaojie 小姐, which we do commonly in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In China xiaojies are those found in places of questionable repute.
As often said, the first gulp of beer tasted the best. I took a long gulp. It was sim
ply refreshing after a long day. The fact that I can get beer in this halal restaurant didn’t quite surprise me. For being the capital of the only Muslim Autonomous Region in China this city looked decidedly unIslamic. Two ancient structures, one a Taoist temple and the other a drum tower 鼓楼 dominated the city’s busy crossroads. The people on the streets also exhibit less of their religious affiliation as compared to those in neighbouring Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. In those places you can see young and old men wearing long beards and white skull caps and the women wearing long sleeves up to the wrists and covering their hair with a length of black linen. Not here in Yinchuan. For the next few days I was hard pressed to spot more than a handful of the Prophet’s followers, not counting my visit to the Islamic Cultural Centre outside the city. But scratch the surface and you will find one. The young waitresses at the Red General are all Muslims, as is the well heeled young couple whom I were to meet two days later on the local tour; and middle aged Mr Zhang whom I spoke to while touring the Cultural Centre. They all looked no different from the average Han, only that they profess the Islamic faith. Mr Zhang even admitted that he drinks occasionally, if not only to prove, in his own strange way, that he is not a backward Muslim.
That bowl of noodles was simply delicious. The texture of the noodles smooth, yet firm and the taste wholesome. Take it from someone who grew up making noodles. With the noodles came a generous amount of lean mutton cubes swimming in a spicy broth, topped with plenty of chopped coriander leaves, spring onions and genuine wild mushrooms. I presume the authenticity of the wild mushrooms can be proven by the fact that one of them still had a few grains of fine sand in it. But that didn’t dampen my appetite. Perhaps I was hungry. The ham and egg fried rice had a tad too much oil. In any case rice is not the Northerners’ forte. Here I was assured that their ham is actually cured from beef, not that I cared.
After dinner I took a stroll along walking street nearby. There is the usual gamut of branded fashion and shoe retail shops, and the more upmarket eateries, which most of the local citizenry can ill afford. Earlier, on the wall of the Red General I saw an ad looking for managers and chefs, paying a relatively grand (or paltry) monthly salary of 3000 to 4000 yuan (S$600-S$800). There are not many shoppers here on walking street, as most have gravitated to the next street parallel to this. Here, the goods sold are more affordable. Most of the wares are on pushcarts, hawked by illegal itinerant vendors, ever vigilant on the lookout for their nemesis, the health inspector. Outside Nanmen bus station there is a crowded night market which sells mainly inferior goods. I am quite surprised to see the bus terminus closed for the evening. It appears that long distance buses do not depart from here at night.
09 Oct 2008
Early this morning I set off for Beimen station, eager to be an early visitor to the Tombs. I should have known. I sometimes marvel at my own gullibility. There are to be no public buses to the Tombs from Beimen. The tourist season is over. There are two ways by which I can visit the Tombs, 30 kilometres to the south west of the city. One is by joining a tour group, and the other by taxi, which will cost me dearly. Since I am not in any such hurry as I can join a group tour the next day I switched to plan B. By now I realised I should be more wary of what I read and what I am told. Too many times I have taken what they tell me at face value.
Plan B is to make a return day trip by bus to Inner Mongolia. Ever since reading Jiang Rong’s The Wolf Totem 姜戎:狼图腾 I have been fascinated by Mongolia, both Inner and Outer. The book traced his life as a student sent to the border region of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, and provide an insight into the settler’s wanton destruction of the delicate steppe environment.
First, let me attempt to describe the general topography of the area. The Yellow River generally flows from west to east, but here in Ningxia it makes a dramatic turn to the north, then back to west-east and after an appreciable distance, turns sharply south before resuming its west-east flow. Somebody (Confucius?) once said: “A picture is worth a thousand words” , so the Chinese have always described this part of the river as “just like the Chinese ideogram ji 几”. Ningxia, carved out from a good part of Inner Mongolia exactly fifty years ago, occupies the entire left upward stroke of the ideogram. Running south-north for 250 kilometres on the outside, parallel to the River is a range of mountains, with peaks reaching more than 3000 metres. This is the Helan mountain range, 贺兰山. Every Chinese child have
heard of these mountains, immortalised by Southern Song’s General Yue Fei's rousing patriotic poem Man Jiang Hong 满江红.
“驾长车，踏破贺兰山缺”
I too have memorised these lines when I was an adult student of Chinese Literature. Throughout Chinese history these mountains have acted as a natural barrier between the marauding tribes on horseback and the sedentary populations of the fertile plains. However at various times, the entire area including the territories to the west and east of the mountains, have been ruled by nomadic tribes, or erstwhile nomadic tribes that have settled down to a sedentary lifestyle. The Xixia people of the 10th to 13th century is an example.
Today, Plan B entails taking the bus to the Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe, 阿拉善左旗 on the western foot of the mountain range. That is the convoluted way the Mongolians name their places of abode, bearing in mind that in the days of olde, there is no such thing as a fixed place of abode for them. They are what the settled Han called 逐水草而居的民族 the people who chase the water and the grass. The Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe is now known by the more mundane name of Bayin 巴音. The town of Bayin is actually not more than thirty kilometres on a migrating goose flight path from Yinchuan, but the bus route would have to skirt the mountain ranges by going round it from the south. That will make it a distance of about 110 kilometres or two hours bus ride away. To go to Bayin I had to take a bus leaving from the Nanmen bus station, the other end of town.
Outside the station I stopped at Dicos the Taiwanese KFC clone for a breakfast of chicken sandwich and coffee. Here I met a solitary Ang Moh having his breakfast, and decided to have some fun at his expense.
I asked if I could speak to him as I was learning English.
“Are you English?” I asked, trying hard to sound struggling with the language.
“I’m American” he answered guardedly at first.
“From where?”
“Florida”.
I almost blurted out ‘I’ve been there’. “I thought only old people live in Florida”
“Actually my parents live there,” he clarified.
“Are you a peace corp volunteer?” A lot of them in these remote areas are.
“No, but I teach English at a school here,” he warmed.
“Ah, are you going to write a book about China then?” noticing that he had a notepad on the table.
“No. I’m not. You speak very good English” he complimented.
I very nearly returned the compliment when I caught my tongue. This is all really my cheeky vicarious revenge on travel writers like Singapore-basher Paul Theroux who often writes condescendingly of the natives.
It is a beautiful day, the air crisp and the sky clear (like Snoopy's opening line : it was a dark and stormy night). The bus initially headed south on the well maintained highway, running parallel to the mountains. On both sides of the highway are fenced-in ranches, and occasionally I caught a glimpse of horses, cows, goats and sheep grazing on sparse grassland. Perhaps the grass would be taller and greener during the summer months. In the hazy distance at the foot of the Helan stands the vast Mausoleum complex, silent sentinels from the past. The road then takes a westerly course, and at a manageable break in the range, began a slow gradual ascent across to the other side. Just before the climb I spotted remnants of an ancient wall stretching perpendicularly down the left side of the road, the right side presumably being deemed too high for the invaders to overcome. My map indicates this portion of wall as belonging to the Ming era, circa 14th to 17th century. Having cleared the pass, the road then runs northerly along the western foothills towards Bayin.
Bayin is a typical town on the fringes of the Tengri Gobi of Inner Mongolia. Its main economic existence is due to mining, both coal and salt, black and white, a curious combination. There are also mines prospecting for aluminium and some other metal ore whose Chinese term I am not familiar with.
Outside the bus station I hailed a taxi.
“Can you drive me to see the sights around here?” I asked the young driver.
“I can take you to a famous Lamasery near here” he offered. Tibetan Buddhism is predominant here in Inner Mongolia.
“No thanks” having been to quite a few famous ones in Qinghai last year. “How about somewhere scenic?”
“There is a vantage point near here where you can have a good view of the surroundings”.
“Alright, how much for an hour’s hire?”
“Twenty five yuan”
“Twenty five yuan”. Sounds reasonable to me. Five Singapore dollars.
The taxi took me t
o the top of a hillock near the town centre. Here one can see for 
miles around. To the east is the highest peak of the Helan, at 3556 metres, already snowcapped at this time of the year. To the west, the vast expanse of the arid grassland. Further out there to the northwest, a few hundred kilometres away and not within sight, is the ruins of Karakhoto, 黑水城 one of the larger cities of the 
Xixia Kingdom. At the turn of the twentieth century, when China's attention was diverted by the Revolution, many ‘explorers’ from the West arrived here in search of their proverbial pot of gold. The likes of Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, Albert von la Coq, Peter Koslov and many others came, and made off with invaluable treasure rightfully belonging to the Chinese people. In particular an exquisite statue of a double headed female bodhittsava was excavated by the Koslov mission here in Karakhoto, and can now be found in a museum in St Petersburg. Karakhoto is now known by its Mongolian name Erqina, its meaning, Black Water City, unchanged.
Back to Bayin. Here below me in the near distance, I can see both the grubby, grimy part of the old town and its none too appealing new section. Atop this hillock there is a well manicured park with a cenotaph as its centrepiece attraction. On closer inspection it is actually a memorial to the founding fathers of the Mongol Alashan tribe. They have led their people here, finding refuge from their more aggressive Mongol cousins the Dzungars, an erstwhile dominant tribe during the time of the Qing dynasty. The memor
ial details in both Han and Mongol script the brief history of the eastward movement of these people under the patronage of Kangxi, the 17th century Qing monarch. Eventually the Dzungars were defeated by the Qing and the whole of the Dzungarian Basin near the present Kazakhstan border became part of today’s troubled province of Xinjiang.
I got back to Yinchuan about five in the evening. As I got on the
packed city bus to the hotel I stood next to two Uighur lads who
were already seated. They looked about eighteen and are obviously students. Perhaps I stared a little too hard. The one seated on the aisle seat stood up and offered this grand old man his seat. This affords me the opportunity to speak to the one seated by the window. I asked him about his Uighur head gear. Patiently he explained, in his toneless Putonghua typical of Uighurs and Westerners in general, that his grandmother had just passed away; thus the special kind, and colour of hat. Uighurs have always been suspicious of the Hans and to a lesser extent their co-religionists the Huis, and I was therefore quite surprised at his willingness to speak to me, if only to explain his cultural practices to the ignoramus Han. I told him where I was from and that I empathised with the plight of Rebiya Kadeer, an incarcerated Uighur nationalist. He instantly brightened up and shook my hand warmly. On that short bus ride I got to know that his name is Abdul Salam, 阿布都萨拉姆 is the awkward manner by which his name is rendered in official Chinese documents; and he is from Aksu on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, and that both of them are students here at the Northwestern University for Minorities. In my heart I wish them well. I should have invited them both for dinner. It was a wasted opportunity to make friends, and to find out more about these unfortunate people, whom history had put in a radically alien cultural and religious environment of the Han Chinese.
I am an early riser. At home I’m usually in bed by nine, and up by five. Today I arose early to a dry and cold morning. Thankful for my supply of two-in-one coffee sachets, I set myself to making a morning cuppa with their water boiler. The coffee never tasted better under the circumstances. There was no hot water from the taps, which is not a problem for brushing, but poses one for shaving and showering. The faucets leak, the flush weak and the toilet smell. Just as I had expected from a state run enterprise. Pathetic. I looked out the window. The place is already bustling with people going on with their business. I plan to check out of the hotel near noontime so I have the entire morning to explore the place and get on some of those rides.
The Chinese are early risers too. An army of cleaners and attendants are already out there, getting the place ready
for the day’s visitors. There are scores of boatmen by the river, checking life jackets, inflating sagging sheepskins and carrying out maintenance tasks on their motors. I approached a kiosk offering rafting on the river.“You’re too early. We need at least three people to push off. Please wait” says a female attendant.
Instead of waiting I decide to ride the ski lift up the dunes for a panoramic view of the area, and when up there to slide down the dunes on a sled, all for a fee of course.
The morning air crisp, the sky clear and the scenery magnificent. Below me the mustard coloured waters of the Yellow River slows to a lazy crawl as the gradient of the land is comparatively gentle in these parts. It is yet too early for any activity on the River. The pedestrian bridge across the River can be seen clearly to lead to a hamlet on the opposite shore. A green belt of vegetation stretched back from either side of the River, and beyond that, the vast expanse of desert. Behind me, on a slight ridge, runs the Lanzhou-Baotou-Beijin
g railway line. I can hear the constant chugging of trains but could not see them from where I stood.After indulging my senses atop the dunes I approached a station where I climbed onto a sled, more a square plastic platform, for my slide down the sandy slopes. The tourist brochure touted the pleasurable sounds of singing sand as one slides down the dunes. To be honest I didn’t hear any. Before I can even finish saying Jack Robinson, I’m already at the foot of the dunes, a thin layer of
fine dust around my neck and behind the ears. That ride up and down cost 50 yuan, quite a sum for the average Chinese.Down by the river I met an elderly couple in their seventies.
“Ni hao! Are you from here?” I ventured.
“We live in Yinchuan, and we’re here to check out the place. Its much prettier now compared to a few years ago” says Old Mrs Ma in clear standard Putonghua.
“But the admission charges are too high” I protested.
“We got in for free. We’re retired you know” Old Mr Ma chipped in, his heavily accented Putonghua making him hard to understand.
“Are you from南方?” the South, meaning south of the Yangtze River. My own Cantonese accented Putonghua a dead giveaway.
“No, I’m from Singapore”
“Ah Singapore! Very clean and beautiful”. A standard compliment from almost everyone I met and talked to in China.
“But it’s a small place,” I said, self effacingly. “Have you been there?” knowing full well the answer.
“No. What brings you here to Ningxia?”
“I’m very interested in the history and culture of Ningxia, especially the ancient Xixia Kingdom”.
“Mr Zhang Xianliang is an expert in the history of Ningxia. He gives public lectures at the Ningxia Film Studios outside Yinchuan. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
I was sorely mistaken. I have indeed heard of Zhang Xianliang 张贤亮. I have even read one of his books, albeit in a translated version by Penguin. He had written about his quest for a wife in his banished days during the Cultural Revolution, spent in the Chinese Gulag, right here in Ningxia. Half a Man is a Woman. How could I not have known!
As more day trippers arrived, we finally got the numbers for the river raft ride. Sharing a raft with me was a middle aged couple from Anhui Province. whom I believe are mid-to-low level party cadres. I can tell from the way they are dressed. Together with their six year old son and sixty year old mother they must have paid a fortune for the ride, unless of course, being party cadres they paid nothing. It cost me 60 yuan for a half hour ‘drift’ downstream. Besides us thrill seekers there is a raft attendant on board, constantly steering the raft with his paddle. I asked if he could stop paddling and allow us just to drift along, 漂 as advertised. He said we’ll never reach our destination if he did that. Our little cadre appeared a little nervous on the raft ride, but was all excited when we switched onto a motorised boat on our return leg.
So, having been there and done that, I checked out of the resort inn and caugh
t the two yuan bus back to town. Due to concerns for their hygiene standards I usually refrain from eating in small towns. Skipping lunch, I continued doggedly on my journey to Yinchuan. The bus to Yinchuan is luxurious by comparison. The stewardess welcomed us aboard with a short announcement and proceeded to distribute bottles of mineral water to the passengers. Herein lies the trap. Being hungry and thirsty I drank two bottles in quick succession. I was to regret this later.Despite having travelled in China many times there are some things that continue to irk me. Take for instance riding on the long distance buses. From the time you get on the bus your fellow travellers, indeed practically every one of them, will be yelling into their cellphones. I often wonder the need for one, considering the magnitude of yelling. Then there’s the myriad of ring tones, some downright jarring to the ears. The answering parties seem to delight in setting their ringers to the maximum, and then letting them ring for an incredible length of time before even going “Wei”! And nobody cares if anyone listens in on their conversation. So what if everybody in the bus gets to know who owed what sums of money, or who had just had a tiff with her mother-in-law, or who had left his lover behind. I can only imagine the racket they create on board if cellphones are to be allowed inflight. It is already happening inside Chinese airplanes, albeit usage restricted only on the ground, before take-off and after landing.
Next, there’s the bus operators’ fascination with Hong Kong made kungfu and gangster movies. On practically every trip I had to endure these trash, starring no less than Messrs Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I often speculated their collusion in paying these bus operators, in return for exposure to the vast Chinese market. However it is to be different on this bus to Yinchuan.
Before the start of our journey the driver put on “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, and instantly a man seated towards the rear shouted
“看过了，再换一套, 有动作片吗?”
”Seen it already, change to another, do you have action movies?”
The driver shot back
“只有这一套，看过就睡觉去!”
“This is the only movie on board. If you’ve seen it go to sleep!”
Here is my kind of driver.
Having related the negative aspects, I must report thankfully, that the disgusting habit of smoking and spitting in the bus has effectively stopped. Just a few years ago smoking in the bus is rampant, and the sound of hawking from someone’s throat was enough to send me into a mental bracing position. I’m inclined to think that it must be the result of pre-Olympics public education and rigorous enforcement. But then again, even now I feel somewhat queasy putting my backpack on the floor of the bus.
The effects of two bottles of water in quick succession soon manifest itself. I got to go. In fact I had just emptied my bladder at the last stop, the mid-way point, but my waste tank seemed to top up rather swiftly, close to overflowing. It became quite unbearable. I find myself calculating the time to the destination by estimating the speed of the bus and the remaining distance to go, and hoping for light traffic when we reach Yinchuan.
“Are we there yet? Are we *%#@! there yet?” Just like Shrek’s donkey, appropriately personified by Eddie Foulmouth Murphy.
I also thought tenderly of my father. On our only trip together back to his home village in China we had to transit via Hong Kong. For some reason there was a lengthy holdup in the queue. And he got to go, badly. My poor father. He’s not sighted, and he needed assistance to go to the toilet. Anyway, all those thoughts took my mind off having to go. I have learnt my lesson. Confucius said “Drink little before go on long ride.”
I arrived at Yinchuan Nanmen (South Gate) bus station in the late afternoon and took a ca
b to a Home Inn hotel right in the middle of town. I must say that the facilities they provide are really good value for money. This hotel chain, Rujia 如家连锁酒店 is one of several such enterprise, proving to be a boon for the budget traveller in China. It wins, hands down, compared to those overpriced star graded, often musty and downright lousy, government-run rest houses 迎宾馆. A Home Inn hotel can be found in all Chinese Provinces and Municipalities except Tibet. It cost only about 190 yuan per room per night for two, excluding breakfast. The rooms are clean and fresh, with purified hot and cold drinking water and free broadband. Thanks to that I am current with all the latest emails and news of the outside world. The Home Inn hotel room décor is exactly the same anywhere, right down to the colour and number of drinking mugs, bath towels and clothes hangers. The floor tiles and walls are similarly coloured white, yellow and blue. It looks and feels familiar, no matter which city you wake up in.At the hotel lobby I chanced upon a billboard advertising local tours. There are four itineraries. After settling in I called the tour company.
“Sorry. There are no tours to the Xixia Tombs tomorrow. It is off-season, and we are alternating our tour destinations. Would you be interested in Shapotou? The Xixia Tombs would be on the day after tomorrow” says a sweet and professional voice over the telephone. That always seems to be so before you pay them.
“No, thank you. I’ve just come from Shapotou this morning. I’ll make my own way to the Tombs then”
This alternate plan was based on information gleaned from the same billboard which says that for 88 yuan a bus leaving from the Beimen (North Gate) station will take one to the Tombs for the entire day. I shall do just that tomorrow.
First, I needed a shower. Fine particles of Shapotou sand found its way into my every nook, corner and orifice. Well, just about every. Next, I crave for a beer and some food. There is a noodle shop, fast food style, a la MacDonalds just next to my hotel. Why, its even painted brightly in red, yellow and white.
红元帅, 清真食品 Red General, Halal Food, the sign exhorts. The restaurant looks well patronised, but the real clincher for me here is the cleanliness of the premises.
“I’d like a bottle of ice cold beer, a plate of ham and egg fried rice and a bowl of spicy wild mushroom mutton noodles.”
“Fifteen yuan fifty please.” An astoundingly cheap price.
Unlike at MacDonalds you get served at your table. Incidentally MacDonalds do not have a presence here, nor Starbucks. Their market survey shows that they are not likely to amass a huge following of hamburger chompers or sippers of expensive coffee in this neck of the woods. Fried chicken is a different story. KFC, and its Taiwanese clone Dicos already have a visible presence here.
My dinner arrived promptly, served by a bevy of young waitresses fresh out of school. They are to be addressed as fuwuyuan 服务员, service attendants. Heaven forbid that you address one as xiaojie 小姐, which we do commonly in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In China xiaojies are those found in places of questionable repute.
As often said, the first gulp of beer tasted the best. I took a long gulp. It was sim
ply refreshing after a long day. The fact that I can get beer in this halal restaurant didn’t quite surprise me. For being the capital of the only Muslim Autonomous Region in China this city looked decidedly unIslamic. Two ancient structures, one a Taoist temple and the other a drum tower 鼓楼 dominated the city’s busy crossroads. The people on the streets also exhibit less of their religious affiliation as compared to those in neighbouring Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. In those places you can see young and old men wearing long beards and white skull caps and the women wearing long sleeves up to the wrists and covering their hair with a length of black linen. Not here in Yinchuan. For the next few days I was hard pressed to spot more than a handful of the Prophet’s followers, not counting my visit to the Islamic Cultural Centre outside the city. But scratch the surface and you will find one. The young waitresses at the Red General are all Muslims, as is the well heeled young couple whom I were to meet two days later on the local tour; and middle aged Mr Zhang whom I spoke to while touring the Cultural Centre. They all looked no different from the average Han, only that they profess the Islamic faith. Mr Zhang even admitted that he drinks occasionally, if not only to prove, in his own strange way, that he is not a backward Muslim.That bowl of noodles was simply delicious. The texture of the noodles smooth, yet firm and the taste wholesome. Take it from someone who grew up making noodles. With the noodles came a generous amount of lean mutton cubes swimming in a spicy broth, topped with plenty of chopped coriander leaves, spring onions and genuine wild mushrooms. I presume the authenticity of the wild mushrooms can be proven by the fact that one of them still had a few grains of fine sand in it. But that didn’t dampen my appetite. Perhaps I was hungry. The ham and egg fried rice had a tad too much oil. In any case rice is not the Northerners’ forte. Here I was assured that their ham is actually cured from beef, not that I cared.
After dinner I took a stroll along walking street nearby. There is the usual gamut of branded fashion and shoe retail shops, and the more upmarket eateries, which most of the local citizenry can ill afford. Earlier, on the wall of the Red General I saw an ad looking for managers and chefs, paying a relatively grand (or paltry) monthly salary of 3000 to 4000 yuan (S$600-S$800). There are not many shoppers here on walking street, as most have gravitated to the next street parallel to this. Here, the goods sold are more affordable. Most of the wares are on pushcarts, hawked by illegal itinerant vendors, ever vigilant on the lookout for their nemesis, the health inspector. Outside Nanmen bus station there is a crowded night market which sells mainly inferior goods. I am quite surprised to see the bus terminus closed for the evening. It appears that long distance buses do not depart from here at night.
09 Oct 2008
Early this morning I set off for Beimen station, eager to be an early visitor to the Tombs. I should have known. I sometimes marvel at my own gullibility. There are to be no public buses to the Tombs from Beimen. The tourist season is over. There are two ways by which I can visit the Tombs, 30 kilometres to the south west of the city. One is by joining a tour group, and the other by taxi, which will cost me dearly. Since I am not in any such hurry as I can join a group tour the next day I switched to plan B. By now I realised I should be more wary of what I read and what I am told. Too many times I have taken what they tell me at face value.
Plan B is to make a return day trip by bus to Inner Mongolia. Ever since reading Jiang Rong’s The Wolf Totem 姜戎:狼图腾 I have been fascinated by Mongolia, both Inner and Outer. The book traced his life as a student sent to the border region of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, and provide an insight into the settler’s wanton destruction of the delicate steppe environment.
First, let me attempt to describe the general topography of the area. The Yellow River generally flows from west to east, but here in Ningxia it makes a dramatic turn to the north, then back to west-east and after an appreciable distance, turns sharply south before resuming its west-east flow. Somebody (Confucius?) once said: “A picture is worth a thousand words” , so the Chinese have always described this part of the river as “just like the Chinese ideogram ji 几”. Ningxia, carved out from a good part of Inner Mongolia exactly fifty years ago, occupies the entire left upward stroke of the ideogram. Running south-north for 250 kilometres on the outside, parallel to the River is a range of mountains, with peaks reaching more than 3000 metres. This is the Helan mountain range, 贺兰山. Every Chinese child have
heard of these mountains, immortalised by Southern Song’s General Yue Fei's rousing patriotic poem Man Jiang Hong 满江红.“驾长车，踏破贺兰山缺”
I too have memorised these lines when I was an adult student of Chinese Literature. Throughout Chinese history these mountains have acted as a natural barrier between the marauding tribes on horseback and the sedentary populations of the fertile plains. However at various times, the entire area including the territories to the west and east of the mountains, have been ruled by nomadic tribes, or erstwhile nomadic tribes that have settled down to a sedentary lifestyle. The Xixia people of the 10th to 13th century is an example.
Today, Plan B entails taking the bus to the Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe, 阿拉善左旗 on the western foot of the mountain range. That is the convoluted way the Mongolians name their places of abode, bearing in mind that in the days of olde, there is no such thing as a fixed place of abode for them. They are what the settled Han called 逐水草而居的民族 the people who chase the water and the grass. The Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe is now known by the more mundane name of Bayin 巴音. The town of Bayin is actually not more than thirty kilometres on a migrating goose flight path from Yinchuan, but the bus route would have to skirt the mountain ranges by going round it from the south. That will make it a distance of about 110 kilometres or two hours bus ride away. To go to Bayin I had to take a bus leaving from the Nanmen bus station, the other end of town.
Outside the station I stopped at Dicos the Taiwanese KFC clone for a breakfast of chicken sandwich and coffee. Here I met a solitary Ang Moh having his breakfast, and decided to have some fun at his expense.
I asked if I could speak to him as I was learning English.
“Are you English?” I asked, trying hard to sound struggling with the language.
“I’m American” he answered guardedly at first.
“From where?”
“Florida”.
I almost blurted out ‘I’ve been there’. “I thought only old people live in Florida”
“Actually my parents live there,” he clarified.
“Are you a peace corp volunteer?” A lot of them in these remote areas are.
“No, but I teach English at a school here,” he warmed.
“Ah, are you going to write a book about China then?” noticing that he had a notepad on the table.
“No. I’m not. You speak very good English” he complimented.
I very nearly returned the compliment when I caught my tongue. This is all really my cheeky vicarious revenge on travel writers like Singapore-basher Paul Theroux who often writes condescendingly of the natives.
It is a beautiful day, the air crisp and the sky clear (like Snoopy's opening line : it was a dark and stormy night). The bus initially headed south on the well maintained highway, running parallel to the mountains. On both sides of the highway are fenced-in ranches, and occasionally I caught a glimpse of horses, cows, goats and sheep grazing on sparse grassland. Perhaps the grass would be taller and greener during the summer months. In the hazy distance at the foot of the Helan stands the vast Mausoleum complex, silent sentinels from the past. The road then takes a westerly course, and at a manageable break in the range, began a slow gradual ascent across to the other side. Just before the climb I spotted remnants of an ancient wall stretching perpendicularly down the left side of the road, the right side presumably being deemed too high for the invaders to overcome. My map indicates this portion of wall as belonging to the Ming era, circa 14th to 17th century. Having cleared the pass, the road then runs northerly along the western foothills towards Bayin.
Bayin is a typical town on the fringes of the Tengri Gobi of Inner Mongolia. Its main economic existence is due to mining, both coal and salt, black and white, a curious combination. There are also mines prospecting for aluminium and some other metal ore whose Chinese term I am not familiar with.
Outside the bus station I hailed a taxi.
“Can you drive me to see the sights around here?” I asked the young driver.
“I can take you to a famous Lamasery near here” he offered. Tibetan Buddhism is predominant here in Inner Mongolia.
“No thanks” having been to quite a few famous ones in Qinghai last year. “How about somewhere scenic?”
“There is a vantage point near here where you can have a good view of the surroundings”.
“Alright, how much for an hour’s hire?”
“Twenty five yuan”
“Twenty five yuan”. Sounds reasonable to me. Five Singapore dollars.
The taxi took me t
o the top of a hillock near the town centre. Here one can see for 
miles around. To the east is the highest peak of the Helan, at 3556 metres, already snowcapped at this time of the year. To the west, the vast expanse of the arid grassland. Further out there to the northwest, a few hundred kilometres away and not within sight, is the ruins of Karakhoto, 黑水城 one of the larger cities of the 
Xixia Kingdom. At the turn of the twentieth century, when China's attention was diverted by the Revolution, many ‘explorers’ from the West arrived here in search of their proverbial pot of gold. The likes of Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, Albert von la Coq, Peter Koslov and many others came, and made off with invaluable treasure rightfully belonging to the Chinese people. In particular an exquisite statue of a double headed female bodhittsava was excavated by the Koslov mission here in Karakhoto, and can now be found in a museum in St Petersburg. Karakhoto is now known by its Mongolian name Erqina, its meaning, Black Water City, unchanged.
Back to Bayin. Here below me in the near distance, I can see both the grubby, grimy part of the old town and its none too appealing new section. Atop this hillock there is a well manicured park with a cenotaph as its centrepiece attraction. On closer inspection it is actually a memorial to the founding fathers of the Mongol Alashan tribe. They have led their people here, finding refuge from their more aggressive Mongol cousins the Dzungars, an erstwhile dominant tribe during the time of the Qing dynasty. The memor
ial details in both Han and Mongol script the brief history of the eastward movement of these people under the patronage of Kangxi, the 17th century Qing monarch. Eventually the Dzungars were defeated by the Qing and the whole of the Dzungarian Basin near the present Kazakhstan border became part of today’s troubled province of Xinjiang.I got back to Yinchuan about five in the evening. As I got on the
packed city bus to the hotel I stood next to two Uighur lads who
were already seated. They looked about eighteen and are obviously students. Perhaps I stared a little too hard. The one seated on the aisle seat stood up and offered this grand old man his seat. This affords me the opportunity to speak to the one seated by the window. I asked him about his Uighur head gear. Patiently he explained, in his toneless Putonghua typical of Uighurs and Westerners in general, that his grandmother had just passed away; thus the special kind, and colour of hat. Uighurs have always been suspicious of the Hans and to a lesser extent their co-religionists the Huis, and I was therefore quite surprised at his willingness to speak to me, if only to explain his cultural practices to the ignoramus Han. I told him where I was from and that I empathised with the plight of Rebiya Kadeer, an incarcerated Uighur nationalist. He instantly brightened up and shook my hand warmly. On that short bus ride I got to know that his name is Abdul Salam, 阿布都萨拉姆 is the awkward manner by which his name is rendered in official Chinese documents; and he is from Aksu on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, and that both of them are students here at the Northwestern University for Minorities. In my heart I wish them well. I should have invited them both for dinner. It was a wasted opportunity to make friends, and to find out more about these unfortunate people, whom history had put in a radically alien cultural and religious environment of the Han Chinese.
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