China: A Long Journey VI – Yinchuan I, Travellers’ Hardships

Soon we realized why the tickets were cheaper than we expected. The train had no air-conditioning. It is something the Chinese can’t live without. He can live without heating. I witnessed it in Sichuan where hot weather suddenly switched to cold. But it wasn’t that cold, fortunately, as the temperature got below zero only few times. However, the fact that southwards of the Yangtze River people usually don’t have heating the temperature was the same inside and outside. China accustomed me to cold but I never got used to a switched on air-conditioning. In fact, it is almost impossible for when you get from beautiful outside 40 degrees to a room you are hit with a freezing wind of inside 19 degrees. Well, at least it seemed we won’t be sickening a cold. I happily watched harmless fans slowly turning from left to right and provided us with normal room temperature. It was impossible to open windows more than a tiny little bit and upper beds had almost no air. We won’t catch a cold. We will simply burn, slowly.

They say the most frightening hour has luckily only sixty minutes so after a sleepless night we finally get all wrinkled at Yinchuan. However, suffering was far from end. We made a beginner’s mistake for we refused to take a room without windows in a seemingly not very stable building. Then we didn’t know we eventually would end in some similar room, so we just cheerfully set out to different end of the city thinking it wouldn’t be big deal to find some accommodation. They refused us in smaller hotels because of our foreign nature. When we trudged with our ever heavier backpacks by maybe fifth hotel and soon again to another we moved to a hotel of higher category. The higher category means the accommodation was more expensive and had more ostentatious reception. Despite it is almost no problem to bargain in China (even in hotels), the final price wasn’t that scary. Although, the receptionist looked at us as we were some kind of criminals, eventually she gave us a room. Hurray! We have a room!

Now it is time to get to smoking hot streets of Yinchuan, get a map and explore this city. As usual, we will have many experiences and larger knowledge of local Muslim community for Yinchuan is the capital of Muslim autonomous region of Ning-sia.

Text/photo: Hana Bášová