Yili, Crazy Day

  Yining, China
Friday, September 7, 2007

Crazy Bridge

The pinnacle of this crazy day came when walking across the Yili River bridge, I heard what sounded like the sound of people yelling at a car accident.  When I focussed on the scene, I realized that a woman had just jumped or had been pushed out of a moving taxi crossing the bridge.  As soon as she got to her feet, she takes two steps, climbs the bridge railing and jumps into the swift moving Yili River. 

Dumbfounded, I just stood there for a few seconds wondering if what I really saw just happened.  Did a woman just get thrown out of a moving taxi and then commit suicide in front of my eyes?

Dog Motorcycle Passenger

With everyone else on the bridge, I rushed to the downstream side of the bridge and tried to see if she was OK.  She apeared, rolling over and over in the shallower water, screaming.  Her legs didn't appear to be moving.  In the meantime, a male passenger from the cab makes his way to speedboats docked on the north side of the river.  A speed boat with two drivers and this guy from the cab cross the river below her, jump into the shallow part of the river where she has ended up, roughly yank her onto shore, and then onto the boat.  

Crazy Bridge, herding cows

Crazy.  And before this happened I had been talking with two friends about how wild this bridge was...before we saw the attempted suicide.  Standing there for just 10 minutes you see cows being herded by, donkey and horse carts whizzing past loaded with passengers, produce or building materials, dogs riding as passengers on motorcycles, cars from BMWs to fake Toyotas driving by, dump trucks, cattle trucks, and sheep trucks passing by the dozens, and wedding processions stopping for photos.  And at each end of the bridge you have a set of cafes were you can sip tea or beer or enjoy a meal while this madness passes you.  This bridge, as the Lonely Planet China implies, really is the heart of Yining.

And this was just the pinnacle of this crazy day.  An hour or so before the woman jumped off the bridge, I stopped into a small shop to buy some water.  Before I knew what was happening, the shopkeeper ushered me back into his house behind the shop so that I could advise him as to what he should do with what he believed were real one million dollar bills that his father had acquired during the war.  He said he'd already tried to cash one at the Bank of China and it got confiscated.  Flummoxed, I told him that if they were real he should board a plane today and cash the suckers in the U.S.  Luckiliy, I eventually broke to him that they had to be fake but he didn't seem to willing to hear that...  

Instant Hail Storm

He also had a strange colleciton of photocopies of random things in English...all junk that I guess his dad had collected as a soldier in WWII.  There was a copy of a light bulb box that looked like U.S. cash, a bunch of fake ads called 'space bills', along with copies of the million dollar bills.  Random.

 Then, a couple hours after the woman jumped off the bridge, several hours after the million dollar bill investigation, I went to make a phone call to Doug and Esther, the Americans I stayed with in Chengdu.  I couldn't get through (later I realized I wasn't prepending a zero to the number), so I thought I'd pop into the Internet cafe next door and shoot them an e-mail.  It seemed like a nice day when I went into the cafe.  Fifteen minutes later, while typing the e-mail, a hail storm like I never seen before in my life bombards the city of Yili.  Everyone in the cafe...Chinese and Uighur alike, went to the window and stared out in awe.  I'm telling you, the streets and sidewalks were covered in M & M sized pieces hail in a matter of seconds. 

Appeased, I went back to typing my e-mail.  Minutes later, just as I was grabbing the mouse to click send, I hear a loud pop at the end of the computers to my left.  A second later a flash flood of gray water rushs past my feet and more pops signal each of the computers shorting out.  I look up and realize that a huge drain, to my left, in the corner of the cafe has burst and is now flooding the entire floor with gray water.  

Flash Flood

After a few minutes of pleading and trying to get the attention of the poor, distracted, overwhelmed cafe employee, I got my deposit back and went outside only to discover that the entire neighborhood I was in was also flooded.

Bizarre.

Oh!  And I almost forgot.  Just before we witnessed the attempted suicide, my two friends and I had just returned from the most derelict amusement park I have ever witnessed.  It was like a ghost town amusement park where a few employees had snuck back in and attempted to jerry-rig a few rides so that they worked. 

Derelict Carnival, bunny rabbit ring toss

By the way, the next day I returned to the bridge and learned from the speed boat driver that the woman in the taxi was distraught because the man told her he would not marry her.  I also learned that she broke her leg, which alleviated my worry that she had paralyzed herself. 

Very strange because two days from now, as you can read in my next entry, I would return to this bridge to take pictures during my friend's cousin's wedding.

And, add to all this strangeness that I accidentally had already arrived in Yili once before because I was confused by its three names (Yining, Yili, and Gulaj) as I wrote about in the 2 sunsets, 2 sunrises, 1 sleeper bus entry.