The night market of Burqin (布爾津)

The night market is famous for grilled fish from Irtysh River (額爾齊斯河).

五彩灘，布爾津。Rainbow Beach, Burqin, Xinjiang.

Xianjiang has many area with is type of scenery, this is probably the smallest, but I am glade that we saw it.  We flied to Altay then took a 3-hour drive to Burqin to check in the hotel then went to the Rainbow Beach in time for the sunset.  It is on the bank of Irtysh River (額爾齊斯河) which is the only river flowing toward west in China.

新疆抓飯, Urumqi

The tour guide took us to this small roadside restaurant just outside of the airport for lunch before flying out to Altay (阿勒泰).  She claims that it has the best local Uyghyr (維吾爾) food.  We had some dishes to go with noodle, which tasted like Japanese Undo noodle.  But the real highlight is the rice dish that they were cooking.  We finally had a plate of it, it was good, better than many of the same dishes that we had latter on during the trip.

解放廣場，烏魯木齊，新疆。Liberation Square, Urumqi, Xinjiang, China

The square is right outside of Hoi Tak Hotel (海德酒店) that we stayed for the first day at Urumqi.  It is in memory of the communist army victory over Nationalist army in 1949.  At that time, my parents already established in Taiwan, away from the turmoil as Nationalist army of Republic of China was defeated by Mao's army all over China.  It is now a peaceful square where local citizen come to exercise every morning. 

Trip to Northwest of China

It is a 12-day trip that covers Northern Xinjiang (), Dunhuang () and Xian () with my sister's family.  I brought with me photographic equipments which include Nikon D4, 27-300mm VR, 16-35mm VR and Coolpix A.  It is a much lighter weight traveling pack, in some occasions I may hope that I have better lens but overall, the set up does its duty.

Many times, I carry only Coolpix A which is a 27mm, DX format pocket camera.  It does its duty but Nikon 1 can do almost the same with same picture quality.

For this trip, I did not use a backpack, but a shoulder bag.  A few times I hope that I have the backpack, but most of the time the shoulder bag is alright.

Coolpix A at Taoyuan Airport