China re-entry

Friday 10 October 2025

When we applied for our Chinese visa last year we were provided a two year multi entry one.  So when discussing ‘the big trip’ this year it seemed churlish not to re-use it.  Months and months of planning ensued and, finally, we were off for China trip number two.  Our friends Emma and Richard kindly dropped us up to Honiton train station and we trundled up to London Waterloo.

We stayed at Caitlin’s who has conveniently bought a flat in central London. I’m sure she knows she will be forever visited by friends and family ‘just passing through’. 

Saturday 11 October 2025

We took a Bolt (Uber thing) to London Bridge, train to Gatwick and had a super quick check in at the north terminal. The check in lady hadn’t heard of Kashgar (where we were flying to in China) which was curious.  Interesting juxtaposition of the news story next to Air China desk.  

A nice swift security and then, there we were, airside and stress free. I noticed that our boarding time for our Bejing flight was nearly 24 hours after our first boarding time in London - a combination including a 10 hour flight, 6 hour lay over in Bejing and a 7 hour time difference. 

Sunday 12 October 2025

As we were flying east, Saturday swiftly turned to Sunday.  We were also pretty much flying in the dark for much of it.  We landed at Beijing Airport about 05:40 (all times local).  It took us until 07:30 to pop out into domestic departures mainly due to a long passport control queue but also because I faced quite a period of questioning to enter the country.  Apparently arriving here for 3 weeks again, exactly after year, is unusual and required extensive questioning.  Copy of my passport page by the time I left...

We then spent two hours ambling up and down domestic departures jumping through a series of IT/phone/app hoops to buy a drink and power bank.  UK power banks aren't allowed on domestic travel here unless they have a CCC logo on.  And few Chinese exported power banks have this so it was easier to find in Beijing.  Our WePay wouldn’t work (essential for many small payments here) so first we had to connect to Wi-Fi (this involved collecting a password after scanning your passport) then connecting our Wise payment card to WeChat.  It would have no doubt been easier if it wasn’t 0200 UK time as our mental capacities were flagging.   Eventually success! And we killed two more hours finding some food, tea and more ambling.  I'd forgotten that Chinese water dispensers offer both hot and cold.  

The flight to Kashgar, back towards west from whence we’d come, was 6 hours and I think I slept for half of it.  We were the only white people on the plane.  It was interesting how many people stood in the aisles for the flight.  It’s no doubt a healthy thing to do and we were fortunate everyone doing this was slim and easy to squish past.  Great views of the Tianshen Mountain range - some of it sitting on the Chinese/Mongolian border.

Our hotel pick up didn’t work as expected but a taxi only cost us 27 yuan (~£3) so no drama. We popped out for an explore and we realised that the tower seen on our arrival was an observation deck one.

So up we went to watch the sunset. Kashgar is a very sandy coloured city, which is not surprising as it's on the western edge of the Taklamakan Desert.

In 2009 the Old Town was flattened and rebuilt, ostensibly to make it more earthquake resilient, but in the process it wiped out historic Uyghur homes.  It has been replaced with a mock ancient centre of alleyways and pretty houses: but there is nothing old about any of it.  Other parts of the city are experiencing similar fates and turning into a beige concrete plateau.  Sadly, most essence of the historic Silk Road has been erased. 

The night lighting took some getting used to as it was constantly morphing from one gaudy colour to another.

The Old Town has a vibrant night market and we found corn on the cob (for me) and lamb skewers (for not-me) for supper and plopped into bed for a much needed horizontal sleep.