Changji, China

I love this city. It's like being in ChinaStan. The city is a mix of central asia peoples from neighbooring countries, the local Uigyer people and Han Chinese. The food in the streat is rather good with central asian rice, mutton, sheshkabab, etc. ...

My last day in Xinjiang was spent mooching about Changji with LX and Ma Jun. It was exactly the kind of day of doing nothing much in particular that I needed in order to wind down from too many days of seeing and doing way too much! First we went off ...

... and uneventful, at any rate. Once we got to LX's hometown, the scene changed. Unlike reports of Urumqi being a ghost town, Changji was remarkably alive and, well, normal. Lots of people out in the square. People at night markets, KTV signs flashing. ...

... of the night. It had been good to meet LX's friends and to go do something as inane as play pool. Wandering around Changji put me completely at ease and destroyed any last butterflies of fear I might have been feeling, but I was worried that my body ...