Urumqi Museum

I left Turpan for Urumqi to catch a flight later on that evening to Shanghai, ending my western adventure. I think this part of my six week trip was one of the definite highlights, even though I didn't get to explore Kashgar and the Uighur heartland. Still, I know I'll be back one day so I guess I can wait. Xinjiang's capital Urumqi didn't really hold any attraction for me but while I was passing through I did find a little time to pop into the newly reopened Xinjiang Museum. This was a great place with some excellent exhibits. There were mummies from 800BC, four thousand year old woolly hats (my Dad has one just like it) and other items of clothing, dessicated dumplings from the Tang dynasty and all manner of random artefacts amongst the displays of fine craftsmanship.

They were really pushing the 'individual cultures living happily under the all-embracing umbrella of Chinese nationalism' angle and one of the introductory plaques really rammed this down your throat:

'The ancient western regions mainly refer to today's Xinjiang. Xinjiang has been an inalienable part of the territory of China. This is a region where multi nationalities live and many kinds of religions prevail. At the same time, here was also the hub of the Silk Road and the place where the world civilisations assembled. As far back as the time of the Stone Age, there were human footprints here. In the long historical development process, the people of all nationalities living in here have worked in unity and helped one another, worked together, created distinctive ancient civilisations with their own hands and intelligence.

After having scaled mountains and forded streams, walked all over grasslands and deserts, the archaeologists of Xinjiang have excavated and collected a large number of unearthed relics and articles that have been handed down from ancient times. We have selected a batch of fine works from them and run this exhibition of these precious relics and auxiliary exhibits from the stone age to Qing dynasty for the purpose to show the contributions the people of all nationalities in Xinjiang have made for safeguarding the reunification of the motherland, for enriching the motherland's cultural treasure-house, and to make the masses of audiences receive the education in patriotism.'

Yes, quite.

While the blatant nationalism wasn't exactly endearing, the 1400 year old sense of humour of Tang dynasty sculptors really was. Check out that camel's grin!