Visit Police Station again
The first thing we do today is the police office for another security check. It goes quick.
We go up to 4000 meter. Marloes buys a bottle of oxygen, who knows what will happen. But our guide says normally the Chinese tourists need this extra but the foreign tourists can do without. Obviously we, as foreigners are fit. I am certainly not fit these last few years, so I already had very light headache when we went to the National park. We will see how we are up there. We will spend the night a little lower.
Two Timezones
We went to the Chinese time zone. Now we are two hours later, this means 6 hours difference with The Netherlands and 5 with Portugal. The interesting thing here is, that the locals keep the Bishkek time. China is so big and they don’t have time zones, but locally they use their ‘own’ time, at least here in Kashgar. That is good for us. The guide, tells us both times. We meet in the morning at 10:00 Beijing time, but for here it is 8:00. The guide didn’t want to start earlier, that was too early.
China’s minorities
China has more than 50 different minorities. We visit a small dance show from the people from the hotel. A big room is transferred to a stage room. Some at the reception already wear the traditional clothes of the minorities others do it in their normal clothes. They have clothes for the visitors too.
We choose hats and dresses to wear and we sit on the bench with a table full of snacks and tea with milk. We see dances from the people originating from Tadjikistan. I asked if they are from that country they said: “No, we are Chinese Tadjiks.” It is so big that there are large differences between the people too.
Our guide also belongs to these people. There are a lot of different people in China, you can spot the differences easily. Luik, our guide says that my father and I don’t have the real Chinese features, our faces look like one of the many minorities. Interesting to hear this. There are also some Koreans in the room but the Asian tourists are ‘alike’. Marloes is the only tall lady from the ‘West’, she has the attention and dances with them. At the end we are all invited to dance. We drink something after the dancing, and we see a man who gets oxygen from a machine. I like that too, so they bring me a machine and I inhale fresh oxygen for 10 minutes while drinking my beer with ice cubes. Marloes tries the oxygen for a minute, but my father is okay, he doesn’t need it. He just walks slowly and doesn’t talk out there.
