Urumuqi

Our final stop on silk route is Urumuqi. The attraction in Xin Jiang is mostly its natural beauty. The first stop is South Mountain Ranch（南山牧场）, where we visit a working Kazakh yurts. We are served a salty tea drink and some fried snacks. The tea must be an acquired taste, since I did not enjoy it too much. The fried snacks were pleasant enough, but the weather is cold and the food cool down too much, making it taste greasy.

But we were not just here for food. The travel agency has also arrange for us to witness some other activities: horse racing, courtship on horseback and sheep football. Horse racing, as the name suggested is kids racing their horses. The riders are all in their teens, with the youngest as young as 6. Their horsemanship is incredible.

Courtship on horseback is another traditional event. Here a young man would follow the object of his desire on a horse ride to the far end of the field. Along the way, he can say anything he wants. On the return trip, the ladies show their true colors. If they are unhappy with anything he says, he gets a solid whipping by the ladies. On our visit, the young men could all use some help with courtship, since all of them were whipped hard by the ladies:)

The last event is football, except instead of pigskin, a sheep carcass is used. Men on horseback would wrestle each other for the sheep, and if successful wrestle the sheep from an opponent, ride a round about the field and throw the sheep into a basket. His teams will attempt to block for him, while the opponent attempt to take back the sheep, all on horseback. While there is not crash like in football, the action was fierced and the man were all very much into it.

After lunch, we visited Heavenly Mountain and Heavenly Lake(天山天池）. Again my impression of Heavenly Mountain is heavily influenced by martial art stories of Lian Yu Shen（梁羽生）. But this time, we were all greatly impress by the natural beauty of the region. Again, we rode the cable car up the mountain to heavenly lake. One thing I immediately notices is the water of Heaven lake is not as clear as I had expected. I was comparing the water to Tahoe, which is much clearer and blue in color compare to the rather muddy water of Heavenly lake. However, there are layers upon layers of mountain with a snowy peak at most remote shades of mountain, giving the area a certain romantic feel. It is not Tahoe, but certainly has its own charm.