The gate of Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang)

Arrival in Turpan

In my sleep I hear a voice saying: “It’s time to wake up, the train will arrive in 20 minutes.” There, sheer joy wakes me because I will discover another part of China very different from the one I have seen so far. I hurry to gather my things to be ready to get off the train as soon as we arrive in Turpan. The luggage finally ready, dad asks me to take out the map of Oriental Turkestan. In front of the rolling camera, we look at our journey and think about the route. Suddenly, we arrive in front of a station and it hasn’t been 20 minutes yet. So, we keep on looking at the map. Finally, I ask Liu Jia if she can make sure that we’re not actually in Turpan. Well, indeed we are! Now it’s urgent; we manage to gather all our stuff and get off the train. We end up in a small train station. Next to each train door, a controller dressed in sky-blue is looking at me. They are aligned like soldiers. They repeat the same movement to go back into the train. A morning heat hits us and we end up in a place with lots of cars and busses. It’s a far cry from resembling a station exit of large Chinese city! At that moment, a short tanned man approaches us and says he can take us to Turpan for 6 Euros. There, we understand that we’re not in Turpan, but in a city 45 minutes away by car from Turpan. The Turpan station is actually outside Turpan. We accept this honest-looking man’s proposition. On the road, I see sand, lots of sand; it’s the desert. It’s beautiful and wonderfully warm. Dad can’t wait to arrive to Turpan to see how much the city has changed since he was there last, 13 years ago. Here, people are much more tanned, with round eyes and much friendlier than in Beijing. But that’s the effect of large cities, like in Paris where everyone is stressed out and often unpleasant. We stop in a restaurant recommended by the ma who drove us to Turpan, but dad always prefers the little restaurants where the locals go. Finally, this man, named Harkan, proposes to become our guide. After negotiating a good price and a route, dad accepts. A short stop at the hotel to freshen up, recharge the video, photo and telephone equipment’s batteries and to get organized, we meet up with Harkan, for discoveries. First step: resolve the technical problem with dad’s cell phone. I’ve been telling him for days that he has to change the charger and maybe not the telephone, like he thinks. Well, I was right. It’s not easy every day with dad; we don’t agree about everything. But I’m really glad we are taking this trip, we’re getting to know each other.

A birthday in the train

Night train to Turpan

We go into our carriage, number 8, and find in our compartment a mother with her 6 year-old son who runs, dances and jumps everywhere. Once settled, dad proposes we go eat. We head towards the restaurant but it’s too late, there’s no more service. We wait for the food trolley to come around but there is only pork, so for his 56th birthday, dad eats only rice. Dad wanted to buy fruit but they had run out. So at the next stop, dad and Liu Jia got off the train and ran to buy fruit. He came back at the last moment with apples, peaches and a Chinese fruit that’s called “the fruit of long life”. In front of our compartment, there’s a window and the curtain representing nomads with camels and dad plays a lot between the landscape and the curtain. Then, a lot of family members call dad to wish him happy birthday; he’s very touched. For his birthday, I have him blow in his pocket lamp and pretend it’s a candle. I lie down, read my book and fall asleep hoping that tomorrow we’ll be in Turpan.

In the Zhangye train station

An agitated departure

Here, the roads aren’t straight, so it’s as if we are back on the mountain road. We go on until we reach the train station and I am happy because when I tell Liu Jia that we’ll arrive well before the 19:59 train, she says mockingly; “that’s what you think!” And we arrive at 18:15. I remind you that we don’t have our tickets yet. So, dad looks for the ticket booth, finds it, and with Liu Jia heads towards it where a huge line is waiting for them. Dad asks Liu Jia to see if they could pass in front of everyone since we are in a rush, but Liu Jia says that in China that’s impossible. Luckily, dad asks her to translate what he had asked her and, a minute later, they’re ahead of the line! Can you imagine doing that in France? At the booth, Liu Jia looks at the train schedule and asks dad what she should do since there are no more trains for today. Dad tells her to ask whether there are other trains besides the ones written on the schedule. The lady at the booth answers “yes” and that there are four places left and since we are four, we reserved the last sleeper car. We go see our driver, he unloads our luggage and we thank him for all he has done for us. Dad gives him 160 Euros for the two days plus 10 Euros for his return trip. We take the luggage and bring it to the station’s entrance. Dad and Liu Jia go buy tea leaves to make some tea. Yang Dong and I stay behind to watch the luggage. At that moment, dozens of people form a circle around us when they see our cameras. We talk to a man with long hair died in dark blond, with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He supervises a mine. We go into the station and there, a woman begs us to lend her an adult ticket to buy a child’s ticket for her daughter, because here in order to buy a child’s ticket, you must show that a child is accompanied by an adult. This shows that sometimes too much restrictions cause the law to drift. The woman comes back, hands us back our ticket and shows us her daughter’s ticket. We finally get to the platform and wait for the train. After a few minutes, the train arrives with a terrifying noise.

Impatience

Last kilometers


I want to go as quickly as possible to Zhangye and I always ask how many kilometers are left, and if there are airplanes between Xinjiang and Mongolia. Since we are on a sand-filled road under construction, with piles of sand in the middle of it, and dad who as a photojournalist stops everywhere, the journey takes twice as long. We drive on, go up and down the mountains and the car bounces all over the place. I feel like we’re going around the same place for hours now. After a while, we encounter a rich Tibetan and Mongolian family that camp in this region. Since they are natural travelers, we ask them how to go to Zhangye. They recommend the road we are taking despite it being under construction. We continue our route after dad finishes his lamb soup, which he found delicious. I am impatient to arrive as quickly as possible to Zhangye. We arrive in a village a few minutes later and dad gets angry because he can’t find an inspiring place to eat. I think he’s careful to go to places where we won’t get sick. We are in a restaurant belonging to a Hui family where the girls stare at me; in China, my eyebrows are popular with the girls. The master of the place is a chubby man and by talking to him, I understand that he has a son the same age as me. We take a picture all together and after, we resume our journey. The journey is cooler because I don’t argue with Liu Jia anymore. In one village, dad notices a group of people with their heads covered in black, but when he approaches them to photograph them, they run away. Later, we understand that they are people who work illegally in the mines to earn a little money. So, we go on the road again. After a few hours, we end up on a national highway that is in much better condition than the little mountain route we were on. On this highway, the workers are on the side and obstacles are rare. We finally arrive at Zhangye.

Between mine and pasture

From the black of the mine to the green of the plains

Today, I wake up in the middle of this four hard-bed dormitory that hurt your back all night long. For once, I am quite happy to wake up because we have to go by car to Zhangye. I find myself facing dad and Yang Dong who are taking their time when we actually have to leave quickly. That’s group life: to find a common rhythm for everybody without arguing. I decide to quicken the pace and bring down a bag, then a second, a third, a fourth and so on until I realize that I have brought everything down. I wait for the two late-comers but they don’t come; I go back upstairs to see where they are and I find them in front of the window photographing, filming and looking at what is essentially the city of Reshui, that is, its mine and factory. It’s a group of buildings surrounded by dozens of black and terrifying coal mountains that swallow up your vision by their imposing size. A few meters in height, these pyramids are transported by men covered in black, the black of the mines, of work, of coal, but also the black that marks their lives. These men stack them roughly like pyramids, and in the evening before going to bed, to forget the difficulty of their labor, they head towards a shack to drink loads of beer and perhaps sleep a little. The next day, they go to the bathroom, get ready, and do something that is natural to them: they spit a coal-black liquid mixed with leftover beer. Morning grooming finished, they leave their house and look at the night sky, thinking they still haven’t seen a blue sky, since they begin work when the sun is still asleep and finish after the sun has gone to sleep. They dump the coal outside so that trucks can transport it to another place. The trucks leave in all directions and we, in our small car, take the road towards the Zhangye train station where we will take our train to Turpan. A few minutes later, we find ourselves in front of a tent around which graze a dozen goats, sheeps and Yaks. We get out of the car and see that it’s the last Tibetan family to keep its heard at the bottom of the mountain and that soon, they will move it towards the top of the mountain. These Tibetans invite us to go into their tent where in the middle of it, a white liquid in a kind of basin is heating with coal. We encounter a mix of smells and tastes, and when we drink this strange tea, we see that it’s Yak butter tea. The man of the house is tanned with slit eyes and a Tibetan cap on his head. Our tea finished, we say goodbye to our new friends and resume our journey.

Further on the road

We take the car and since night begins to fall, we decide not to stop until we reach the place where we’re going to sleep. The entire way I play Snake to beat Yang Dong’s record, which I reach little by little. Since the driver is tired, we stop in a small town called Reshui where we have no trouble finding a hotel. We take a 4 person room for the 4 boys and a single room for Liu Jia. One night, for five people, costs us only 12 Euros. As always, I take too much and barely finish a quarter of my soup. We try to solve the cell phone problem: we can’t make nor receive calls. That worries me a lot because the person who informs us about trains and hotels won’t be able to call us. We go back to the hotel and bring the luggage to our room. In the room, there are 4 beds each as hard as the other, but at least we have a place to sleep! The driver settles down and turns on the television to watch a young singer sing children’s songs. Meanwhile, I write. Then everyone falls asleep and I continue to write so that you can read my texts. During the night, the hotel fill up with drunks and some of them try to break down the door. Luckily, they don’t manage to. When I finish, I go to bed and wait, impatiently, for morning to come.

Birds island

Men choice

Few kilometers from there, a restaurant sells a kind of fish banned from fishing because if its rarity. We take one and during the entire meal, we have to hurry to avoid problems with the police. Little episode less rejoicing when traveling: toilets!! There, it’s a hole behind a wall where lie all the organic trash of the people that went before me. Frankly, when you’re not used to it, it’s not easy. I find dad to talk about today’s journey. In the end, we decide that it would be better to stop somewhere before Zhangye for the night and continue the journey tomorrow. Dad thinks it’s time to call Ghazi, an Ouigour painter and a friend of dad’s that advised against traveling with a Chinese interpreter, since Xinjiang was , like Tibet, invaded by China so the Ouigour see the Chinese as invaders. We take the road for “Bird Island”, one of the most touristy places in the area. Liu Jia goes to buy 5 tickets and the fee for crossing by car. She comes back and tells us that we would have to pay the astronomical sum of 50.5 Euros! I look at dad and he says that according to our budget, it would be better to meet people for free than birds that come at a cost. We continue our journey and eventually stop for a drink. An hour from “Bird Island” we meet another Tibetan family. A little 4 year-old boy starts to run, jump, climb on top of the tent and do summersaults. We get along well. He shows me games he’s lucky to be able to play, since he lives in nature. Little, I used to say that I didn’t want to live in Paris, but in nature. After a while, unfortunately, one gets used to the city. The little boy is quite small and has blood red cheeks from the fresh air. He has a Tibetan parent and a Mongolian parent. Then, I take out my computer to write. Close to a tent, in the fresh mountain air, I write the previous day’s text. Since it’s cold, I take my PC and warm up with a cup of Yak butter tea. And then I see the little one run, for a reason I don’t know. A few minutes later, he comes back with a kitten in his arms and gives it to Liu Jia. Before leaving, Liu Jia gives him a little toy and something to eat.