Bizarre Bazaar

This morning we went to a famous local bazaar that's filled with vendors hawking mostly dried fruit and nuts of every description, and lots of dry goods -- daggers, scimitars, furs, cloisonnes, Russian and Cashmere trinkets, handmade silk and wool (Persian-style) rugs, silk and wool clothing, Persian pointy shoes and Genie-in-a-lamp style lamps, Urghur drums, Chinese cymbals, Kazakhstan tars (sic) and zithers, lighters of every description, jade carvings, bone carvings, and more. 

As you can see from the picture of the glass urn, Chinese medicine booths were also selling dried caterpillars you could grind up to make tea, along with other things that were less identifiable.



The bazaar was centered in a 6-story store very much the size of a 1970s era JC Penney's, but taller, with escalators between floors, but the bazaar had spilled out into the surrounding neighborhood.

Unfortunately, as we pulled into the bazaar, our tour guide informed us that the knife restrictions on carry-on bags also apply to checked baggage when flying out of Urumqi, so any knives we bought would be seized at the airport. Bummer!  Since the region is famous for it's knives, we'd been planning for 6 months to buy all our nephews real Xinjiang Urghur daggers and scimitars for Christmas presents.  The best alternative we could find is China Mail (notorious for losing packages and delivering months later) who would charge $26-$50 a package to mail home.  Sorry guys, not gonna happen.

We shopped for about 30 minutes when Kayla got very nauseous, weak and pale.  We sat for quite awhile by a fur trader and kept fanning Kayla while putting cold water on the back of her neck.  After 60 minutes, Becca bought two small rugs and we left for the hotel.  With a little bit of ice cream, orange juice and air conditioning, Kayla somewhat recovered, and is now crashed for a power nap, as are Robby and Rachael.



I was sorely tempted to buy a Russian fox hat, like you see soldiers wearing in the movies, but they were asking $60, so I couldn't justify it.  If you'll look closely at the picture of the fur cummerbund they were selling there, you'll notice the German Shepard colorings.  Yup, dog furs were mixed along with the fox, ermine, sheep and goat, and Fido fur wasn't very appealing.  I'm guessing that, along with many counterfeit brands present in some of the dry goods, there were pelts of endangered species as well -- I think I saw a real snow leopard pelt, and I know they're endangered.  Not good on many levels.

On the plus side, we did find a very cute Urgur hat for Shagang that he liked a lot, and was happy to wear around.