King’s Mansion & Mausoleum

Hami’s sights are concentrated all in one place in the south-west of the city which I reached by taxi.

Kings’ Mansion 

I lined up to buy the ticket for the Mansion (or palace) of the Hami Kings just before it opened at 1000.

Like my old guidebook said, it is a bad recreation of the palace but there’s an excuse for it being recreated.  The place was destroyed in the Kumul Rebellion of the 1930s in which Kumul Uyghurs conspired with a Hui General to overthrow the Chinese governor.  No excuses for the bad recreation though, right down to the paint quality which appears to be fading.

The main part of the palace is located up a hill and overlooks the city.  BTW, Kumul is the Uyghur name for Hami.

The exit from the Mansion grounds was through a very large tourist trap selling touristy stuff, including jade.

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Muqam Centre

Across the road from the mansion are two standalone buildings within the same compound.  The first that I entered was the Muqam Heritage Centre, supposedly dedicated to the traditional Uyghur classical music.

However, only one hall was dedicated to the music and only the inform of photos and a few instruments.  Others were dedicated to food and other subjects.

Unfortunately, my visit didn’t coincide with a performance.

From the photos of the Uyghur community here involved in food and music, their facial features here look more Chinese compared to people I’ve seen in further west.  In my restaurant last night, there was a woman that looked completely Chinese but she spoke Uyghur to her colleagues.

Museum

In the next building was the Hami Museum.  Most interesting were two whole nests of fossilised dinosaur eggs.  There were three large dinosaur skeletons and a few chicken-sized ones but I couldn’t work out from the captions if they were all real.

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Mausoleums

Crossing the road back to the first side, I visited the Hami Kings Mausoleum.  They appear to use Hami Kings, Uyghur Kings and Hui Kings interchangeably here.  As I understand it, Hui Muslims speak and appear like Chinese and as such, exclude Muslims from other minorities who have their own languages.

I visited the tombs and mosques as follows:

• The tomb of the 6^th Hami King lies in a small group with others in the courtyard surrounded by the mosque and later tombs.
• The tomb of the 7^th Hami King is a domed with the typical Islamic influence.
• There’s no sign of the tomb of the 8^th Hami King.
• The tomb of the 9^th Hami King takes on a Chinese style, next to another Chinese-style mausoleum called the Taiji or Wazir mausoleum.
• The Id Kah mosque is supposed to be the largest indoor mosque in Xinjiang, as most of the others I’ve seen have large semi-outdoor and outdoor areas as overflow.

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Altun Old Town

Next to the mausoleum was Altun Old Town, which is supposed to have character and atmosphere.

There was a large outdoor food hall area which I imagine would be quite nice at night, but not nice enough for me to specially return to.

There were more eating places in front of and within the contemporary buildings that lined the main road.  They had attempted to make old-style façades that didn’t try as hard as in Kashgar or Hotan.

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Rest of the day

I had seen the bus that ran all the way to the railway station so I thought I’d give that a try.  Quite surprisingly, they didn’t accept WeChat pay but only Alipay.  My foreigner version of Alipay didn’t work either.  Luckily a kind soul gave me CNY1 but I think the driver was happy to waive the fare.

The bus took a very indirect route which gave me a good idea of the city.  I saw two significant newish mosques, one of which seemed quite large.  Together with photos I’ve seen of some in Urumqi, I started to doubt whether the mosque I saw earlier was in fact the largest indoor mosque in Xinjiang.

I returned to last night’s restaurant for a delicious beef ball soup with slices of mushroom, cloud ear mushroom, tofu and glass noodles.  Very tasty even before I put the vinegar and chilli into it!

I finished the meal with some Hami melon again, this time purchased from a roadside stall instead of a fruit shop.  It was the same price from a stall but a smaller portion, which doesn’t make sense.  However, it was slightly sweeter but not enough for the reputation of Hami melons being famously sweet.