Hami

During our holiday that began last Tuesday, my friends and I traveled to Dunhuang. By Friday, we had seen everything we had wanted to in Dunhuang, so we pulled out a map of China. We decided to travel even further north into Xin Jiang Province to the small city of Hami. We took a bus for six hours from Dunhuang and arrived in Hami at nine in the evening. Because all of China is on Beijing time and Hami is quite west, it was light out until about ten.

When we first got to Hami, my friends and I got a hotel room. We left our backpacks there and went out for dinner. At dinner, we met a young Xin Jiang girl and ended up talking with her until about one in the morning. We walked back to our hotel room to find that they were kicking us out because we're not Chinese!

I was so angry because I didn't think it was fair. We had paid for a room and were given a receipt, and now they were putting us out onto the street at 1:30. I yelled at one of the workers in Chinese. Really. I said that in America, there are tons of Chinese people and they can stay at any hotel they want. I told her that she's a person, I'm a person, everyone is a person; we're all the same. How inhumane of her to put us out onto the street! (Ok, so I don't know the Chinese word for "inhumane," but I think she got the idea.)

To be fair, it wasn't a personal dislike that these people at the hotel had with us- they wanted us to stay but they didn't have the right paperwork, apparently. It was an issue with the Chinese government and the hotel not having the right paperwork to house foreigners, but it makes me wonder what would lead a government to discriminate in this way. And anyway, they let us have a room and we paid for it, so how can they take it away?

So there we were, on the streets of a strange city at two in the morning. We were tired, frustrated, offended, upset, and more. Luckily we found another place to stay, but it cost twice as much.

We slept in the next day and got over our outrage at the previous night. We met up with our Xin Jiang friend and spent the day learning from her about the culture and language of the Xin Jiang people. We also learned a lot about the interactions between the Xin Jiang people and the Han Chinese. She showed us around Hami. We visited several parks, rode some rides, ate Xin Jiang food, and took too many pictures.

Our train left at nine that night, and we had to say goodbye to our friend. It was a strange feeling. I doubt if we'll ever meet again. She was so kind and sweet and beautiful, and we really got to know her throughout the day. Because of her, my memories of Hami will be of the fun times we had that day, and I won't think about what we experienced the night before.