Tom and I began an early weekend boarding one of the (perpetually late) Ürümqi trains. Three hours later than planned we reached Fukang for tea with Ben and Calum. Brian, a re-returned volunteer, arrived later with Sean and Tom (three Toms caused way too much confusion). We planned to spend the weekend in a Kazakh Yurt in the nearby Tianshan mountain range.

Tianshan reaches from Kazakhstan across North Xinjiang. Tianchi, the Heavenly Lake, had an extortionate entry ticket (¥220, which could pay for a fortnight of food) with no time limit, while the yurt itself worked out at about £3 each per night! Calum was violently ill, so he stayed home; meanwhile the rest of us were herded from bus to bus through tourist-trap tat mazes and “minority villages” into the mountains.

The lake is stunning and worth a visit, but we quickly noticed a queue of tourists posing for photos with a giant, clearly-manufactured rock emblazoned with the lake’s name in red characters. There was this amazing lake stretching into snowcapped mountains and rolling green hills… and they choose to photograph the rock. Sure. As if that’s not enough, the average time spent at the lake by tourists is 20 minutes. 20!

We climbed past the lake to a vantage point dotted with yurts, and recovered from the heat. Yes! Heat – it’s Summer now. 30°C is low (24°C minimum) and air-con is a must. Recovery involved Sharon’s excellent potato salad and naan, some of which we threw for eagles. We were greeted like old friends and shown into our yurt to register with our passports, before a leisurely stroll around the shore to a statue of the Lake Goddess.

Due to the altitude it still gets quite cold at night, so we were glad when they came and lit the fire inside the Yurt. We entertained ourselves with card games, Wusu beer and traditional Kazakh costumes hung up for guests to try (Tom got stuck in a dress). When we came to sleep, bedding was unrolled from stacks against the wall and put to use.

The next day, Ben, Tom and I headed off early to make the train home (or to Lanzhou, for Ben). We decided to walk down the mountain past rushing streams to join the buses on their way down. Our first attempt to board was thwarted by a group of late-coming ladies who ousted us from our seats. Fuming. We had a private car to Ürümqi which was two hours more on-time than our train. The time was spent standing because some jobsworth with a badge had some power to abuse. We weren’t allowed to sit on our own bags, but other passengers were just fine to lounge across every inch of the X-ray machine. Karamay met us with a stroke of luck: we met Cindy, and she gave us a lift.

Despite the antagonising homeward journey, I loved the weekend. As for the next week, in the few lessons I had (Thursday and Friday were holiday) I started trying to teach First Aid but found that the students weren’t hugely interested, and since they kept asking I put a film on instead: School of Rock. It was my second or third last week of lessons (I still need to find out from the school), so I found Chinese subtitles for them. ‘Teacher, we can’t read these!’ Huh? Then it hit me. Someone clever uploaded subtitles next to the PRC Flag using Traditional Chinese characters. Not only are the students taught to read and write Simplified Chinese, it was technically Cantonese, so some of the sentence structure is odd if read in Mandarin (apparently; I wouldn’t know). At least I tried! On Monday it was Dad’s birthday, so we had a long conversation over Skype.

—TJC

Featured image: A snake by the lakeside of Tianchi.