Arrived

My Books > The Great China Quest > Arrived

The first surprise of the trip happened yesterday before we even got out of Guangzhou. Our boarding cards mysteriously directed us to business class for the 5 hour flight. We’re still not sure what happened (we didn’t want to ask any questions!) but it was fun to look down on the economy class for the first time in our lives.

Urumqi is different from any other city we’ve visited in China. A lot of people here look Eastern European and radio music has traces of Russian and Arabic influence. Road signs are in Chinese characters and Arabic script.

After checking in to a very nice hostel, we went to a little coffee shop where a boy named June who worked there spontaneously and unexpectedly wrote us a poem then read it to us over the shop’s loudspeakers. The text of his poem appears (as he wrote it) below the video.

We also met a very kind woman named Dr. Yang and her son at a little noodle shop. She told us her incredible tales of her long history of consulting fortune tellers and she thinks she may be able to help us find one today. We’re well on our way toward accomplishing:

Challenge 1: Find a fortune teller and get your fortune told.

[youku id=”XMTkyOTY4OTI4″]

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Poem by June (许晓龙) in Cite Coffee, Urumqi

Time goes by, the good friend ship has gone,
The sky is blue.
There are many happiness in Cite Coffee,
This is my sweet valentine,
Say that you love me, don’t go away,
When you feeling empty you should drink…latte coffee.
It’s like dancing or a beautiful girl,
A summer’s day we are meeting here is very difficult,
So love is thanks giving.