The watchful eye of the Colonel follows you in decently-sized Chinese city. Good thing KFC is Halal (note the Arabic name for "KFC")!
First, sorry about the lack of blogging activity! I guess the history of this blog was to document my travels, and so to there has been very little bloggable activity because, well, I haven't been traveling! The fact that I've been just living and working in the past few months, and my existence here is a pretty mundane one.
I guess the one exception to all this that I have been sort of "transferred" to the Foundation's field office in
Xinjiang Province, which is basically as far west in China as you can get. Well, I think "transferred" is too formal a term, as it connotes that I actually have a position at the Foundation when, in fact, I'm just a lowly intern. Basically, they needed someone to go help out, and I figured, "What the hey!" So now I spend most of my days in
Ürümqi, the provincial capital and apparently the furthest city inland from the sea. Interesting eh! I guess you can call it my own "Journey to the West"! Hehe, that's a play on the Chinese classic,
Journey to the West (西游记)...except without the Monkey King (although - fun fact! - did you know that
Journey to the West was originally set in Xinjiang! But I digress...).
Sometimes Ürümqi can be even more polluted than Beijing! Hard to believe! The city is surrounded on three sides by mountains, so the pollution often gets trapped. I wish I could say this was fog, but it's pure pollution.
I live next door to this smokestack.
Anyhoo, Ürümqi is a laid-back kind of place compared to Beijing, and relatively small as a sub-3 million population city. Xinjiang is populated by both Han Chinese and Uyghurs (also Uighurs), and the Uyghur culture is very much different from what one would consider Chinese. Uyghur people are Muslim, and so Halal Xinjiang cuisine rules the roost here (luckily, Xinjiang food is
awesome). The Uyghur language is derived from Turkish, and the script is also Arabic. Given the recent unrest in other parts of minority-populated China, it should probably be brought to your attention, dear reader, that Uyghur-Han Chinese relations are (and always have been) quite tense. As a
Slate feature recently reported, Xinjiang is kinda like Tibet without the Dalai Lama or the
Beastie Boys.
Here are just a few views from my limited walks outside the 2 km distance between my apartment and office!
Right by Ürümqi's famous Big Bazaar. It could be Central Asia for all you knew...
Silk Road = Desert = Camels. Whee.
Xinjiang is probably the only place in China where this sign means something.
Ice sculptures = yet another Olympics advertisement opportunity!
The principal hazard of attending ice sculpture festivals.
Olympic rings and...two rats arm wrestling? (It's the Year of the Rat!)
Whole cities of ice! Whoop whoop.
Icey, brightly lit grandeur.
China: the only place where you can have a church at an ice festival but not for realz. Joke, joke! There are churches in China. Uh, quality unknown. Let's just leave that topic as a "No further comment" for now, eh? :)
More ice cathedral...
The Fuwa ice sculptures kinda looked like popsicles. Yum.
Mythical creatures in ice! 
Creepy clown.
Giant snow head. I can't quite make out the name at the base of the snow head, but my best guess is that I'm kissing Stalin.
'Nuff ice and snow. Pretending to play soccer (sorry, football) with Fuwa.
Olympics theme. Yes, yes...we get it. 
I think they mean "Please Do Not Enter", but this literal translation is cute, too. Just look at that doggy with the snorkel...and the friendly "Hi". Love it. 
