Enjoying life by being kind to all. “The world is a dangerous place, not bad people doing evil things, but people who look on & do nothing” Albert Einstein.
This was definitely an "only in China" afternoon: we managed to get access to a place in Xinjiang that's completely off the beaten path, a remote rocky hill with priceless rock carvings dating back to the stone age.
What's hilarious is that it was all based on a misunderstanding. We got to meet a local here in Wenquan (温泉) - on the border with Kazakhstan - and we asked him about this local attraction we'd heard about, a place where you could find fossils (always fun for kids).
He told us two things. First that we couldn't go there with the RV because, to reach it, you need to go off road through the rough Xinjiang terrain. Second that he could lend us a car and escort us there. And he handed me the keys to a car and told us to follow him.
I found it a bit odd that what I thought was a relatively well-known local kid attraction would be this hard to reach, but I just shrugged it off.
After about a 30 minutes drive through the Xinjiang backcountry, we arrive at the small rocky hill, lost in the middle of nowhere, that you see on the video 👇
We start climbing the hill - naively looking around for seashell imprints - when suddenly our local friend points to a rock and shows us an old carving of a goat.
It took us a little while but we eventually realized the misunderstanding and how lucky we were: we hadn't been taken to a fossil site at all. Somewhere in translation, "fossils" had become "ancient rock carvings," and this unassuming hill in the middle of nowhere turned out to be an extraordinary heritage site covered in petroglyphs dating back thousands of years!
The carvings turned out - for some of them - to still be in extraordinary good conditions, probably due to the extremely dry climate in the area: they mostly depicted local animals such as long-horn goats, stags with extraordinary antlers, leopards or horses.
This experience also says a lot about China. People think this place isn't welcoming to foreigners but tell me in which other country a local would hand a random foreign tourist the keys to his car and personally escort his family to a priceless heritage site that's still in its natural state - only known to locals. Like I said: only in China!
PS: We eventually explained the misunderstanding to our local friend, and he also brought us to the actual fossil place too. So we got two sites for the price of one misunderstanding!
This is really cool. You may think that giant pandas are the most protected animals in China but there is even rarer: this specific type of salamander 👇 that lives only in a few river streams on the border between China and Kazakhstan.
It's called the Xinjiang Northern Salamander, and it's a 350 million years old species that was only discovered in 1989. They're so precious that their natural habitat has been completely sealed off: it's called the "Wenquan County National Nature Reserve" and no-one is authorized to enter.
You can however see some of them in a local research center on the species - where we now are - in Wenquan (温泉) town.
🚨🇨🇳🇹🇼 BREAKING: KMT Chairperson Cheng Li-wen is calling for young people from both mainland China and taiwan to join forces and understand each other.
"For the sake of both sides of the Taiwan Strait, for regional stability, and for the well-being of the next generation, we must firmly choose the path of peace."
In a quiet #Sichuan village, returnee Wang Lili turned an old factory into a chic #French-style #bistro. Using local ingredients, she blends rustic Sichuan charm with Parisian elegance amid bamboo and courtyards, making remote Changjiang Village a popular spot.#Cuisine#Foodie
祖籍吉安的台胞博主“麦狗886”回乡寻根:爷爷,我终于找到你的家了!
"Maigou886", a Taiwanese blogger with roots in Ji'an, returns to trace his family origins: 'Grandpa, I finally found your hometown!'
Jiangsu Province, located in east China, which covers an area of 107,200 square kilometers and has over 85 million permanent residents, has reached a new and higher level in terms of its economic aggregate. It is dedicated to pursuing innovation and high-quality development. @CGTNOfficial@VisitJiangsu@GoJiangsu@JiangsuNow