21/8/25
Oddly, for a day where we were going to be departing on a long journey, we felt a little purposeless. Breakfast, which was far superior to the day before, was eaten slowly.
Back on the 14th November, we’d met Chiara in Italy. She had told us of her plans to cycle across the world. Now, she was in Chengdu as well! With her boyfriend Omar, she’d travelled continuously from Italy on the way to Japan. Sadly they were an hour later than they’d initially expected. We met them at the train station, where they were meeting a Uruguayan couple who had brought their forgotten knife for them from Kashgar. Sebastian and Mauge were heading the way we’d come. We walked over to CRE with them as they sought to retrieve their bikes.
Exciting as the cultural mixer was, we needed to head off to pickup some more bits and pieces. For one, we’d forgotten that Frankie’s front light had stopped working. There was another Decathlon a few minutes away by taxi. We also bought a couple of little bike bags to add some more easy access storage. In the Merida shop next door, we found a new Shimano bottom bracket. We figured it couldn’t hurt to pick up another one.
Time wasn’t on our side anymore and we started feeling a little panicky. Working up a bit of a sweat, we raced back to the hotel. Only to find we couldn’t get in the room, they’d failed to apply our ‘diamond tier’ trip.com reward of guaranteed late checkout.
Down to our last 60 minutes, we rushed towards the station. Buying some bread from a roadside stall, then running through the supermarket to buy as much food as we thought reasonable. We even found time to buy one last Cotti coffee. Sadly they had no more oat milk and we had to “make do” with coconut.
We arrived at the station only 30 minutes before departure. A recent policy had been introduced on flights in China, banning power banks without visible quality marks. ‘Scare stories’ had been circulated that we should expect this to be applied to trains too. Having taken several trains with no problems, it confused us. Now we had four power banks and an assortment of tubes and liquids we wondered if we’d be queried. It was a breeze. No one cared.
By the time we found the platform our passports had been checked twice. At the door to the carriage we had to produce them once more for extra, intense scrutiny. For the moment we were the only residents in our compartment. Identically furnished as the high speed sleeper trains, it looked comfortable. However, there was dirt and hair all over the floor. The bin in the toilet was full of water. There was no toilet paper. Barely any soap. Men smoked freely in ‘smoking areas’ by the doors. No ventilation so we had no choice but to inhale their second hand smoke. The train departed at 15:41. We would hopefully arrive two days later in Kashgar.
When Frankie went searching for an unoccupied toilet she found the ‘hard sleepers’. No door, 6 beds to a compartment. Far less comfortable. The train stopped a couple of times in the evening. We still had no comrades yet. Knowing there was a three hour break to the next station we relaxed, ate some flat bread with cold but deep fried tofu and watched Destination X.
After dinner we started reading some more about the Ughyer people and their current persecution. It was all starting to make more sense. Or less sense depending on how you look at it. Xinjiang isn’t really a province of China. Sure, they’ve appropriated it. But it’s as much China as the West Bank is Israel. The people who live(d) there were mostly Muslim. For two millennia Kashgar had formed the juncture of the Silk Road. Blending cultures from the region and embodying firmly Middle Eastern traditions. China wished to take this frontier, essentially pushing the people to the brink. Then using their actions to defend themselves as justifications for their collective punishment. A tale as old as time itself.
Forcing the Ughyer people to ‘assimilate or die’ was one of the ongoing genocides in the world. Tragically unbelievable that such things still occurred in 2025. We read of the human rights abuses including reeducation camps, forced DNA capture, creating technological systems to monitor and hunt them across China. The more we delved, the darker it became. Han people occupied the beds of Ughyer women after their husbands had been taken. Diluting the gene pool. Forced sterilisation was routinely performed. Organ harvesting was the most disconcerting thing to read about. Organ transplant centres were more than doubling in the province. Demand not borne out by the statistics.
Han people in China were engineered to agree with the ‘hard line’ of Beijing. Adverts were played to them on their beloved Douyin showing dancing Ughyers in Xinjiang. Critics such as Ilham Tohti were imprisoned for life. The saddest part was the lack of support given by other Muslim nations. Scared by the financial strength of China, and pressured into agreeing with their actions, many instead praised the actions of China.
At 10pm we decided to think about sleep. No one had joined us yet, and we were due to make multiple stops overnight. The train trickled along slowly, and impressively smoothly.
