Fire (吐鲁番火焰山) And Ice (天山天池) Around Urumqi (烏魯木齊)
Posted On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at at 7:52 PM by Alvin
We had long been fascinated by the huge, rugged, wild and sparsely populated province of Xinjiang (新疆) and we spent over 2 weeks in this scenic province. We hit the provincial capital of Urumqi (烏魯木齊) and visited the Great Bazaar (大巴扎) which had loads of stores selling dried fruits, spices, herbs and perfumes - an airy version of the bazaars in the Middle East. The true beauty of Xinjiang lied in the many dramatic landscapes outside of Urumqi - a 3 hours' bus radius. We visited the desert town of Turfan (吐鲁番) that was located at a distance of about 200km from the southern slopes of the snow-capped Tian Shan (天山). On the way to Turfan we saw numerous wind power turbines (達板城風電), salt lakes and Tian Shan shimmering at a distance. The main event in visiting Turfan was of course the Flaming Mountains (火焰山) made famous by the epic fantasy fiction, Journey To The West (西遊記) with the well-known characters Master Buddhist Monk (玄奘) and Monkey King et al. We came face-to-face with the Flaming Mountains and felt almost scorched - yeh, it was that dry and hot ! We also visited the historical ruin of 交河故城 as well as the Grape Gardens of 葡萄溝. Despite being only 20km from the arid soils of the Flaming Mountains, world class grapes in 葡萄溝 could prosper - all thanks to the ingenious use of the underground irrigation systems. We joined up with two great gentlemen from Liaoning (遼寧) for sharing the car and they had travelled by train from home in Shenyang (瀋陽) (~3,000 km) via stops in the province of Gansu (甘肅) - whew, pretty long distances they made !
Cooler weather
awaited us as we travelled to the northern slopes of Tian Shan and spent
a refreshing day by the glacier lake of 天山天池. We based ourselves in the
functional town of Fukang (阜康市) which was about 20km from the pristine
lake. We walked around the entire lake in about 5 hours passing through
endless fresh air (!), alpine meadows, pine trees, collections of
lake-side villages - all under the watchful eyes of imposing snow-capped
mountains and a blue blue sky ! We thoroughly enjoyed the
almost-Switzerland feel and found the scenery vastly different from
those of Central China (中原). Xinjiang being roughly six times the size of the other provinces of China and situated smack in Central Asia, had always enjoyed a reputation of being the remotest frontier and had a tantalising mix of ethnic peoples such as Uygers, Mongolians, Khazaks etc. and we looked forward to our next few days journeying to the northern part of Xinjiang (北疆). 
Cooling Off On The Peak
Posted On Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at at 2:50 AM by Alvin
I had lost count of the years since I last went up the famed Peak of Hong Kong and we could not have chosen a better day as the weather yesterday was a humid and stifling 33 C and what a better way to cool off ! The views from The Peak was as stunning as I had remembered; we tried to pick out the skyscrapers or landmarks where we used to work - Prince's Building in Central, AIA Tower in North Point, Shun Tak Towers at Sheung Wan, Hopewell Centre and Immigration Tower in Wan Chai etc. We circled around the Peak Walking Path for an hour amongst the green moss and cool refreshing air, as well as scaling up to the Austin Park for a hydration break and sampled the excellent and delightfully airy Park W.C. - Ha Ha ! We took the bus back down to sea level for a well-deserved tea break and it was only then that we realised how tranquil and peaceful it had been up The Peak as we were overwhelmed by the lunch time working crowds in buzzling Wan Chai ! Such a memorable day out.
