Eddy Chan is not James Bond: 11/3/07 Jiayuguan City

We're staying in the railway station hotel next to you guessed it, the railway station at Jiayuguan with the afternoon sun streaming through our partially open curtains. I've picked a room without a bathroom so we can't shower because there are no shared showers available either. It seems some of the rurals are happy to go for entire winters without showering and some of them smell like it too.

The Chinese and my 'Rough Guide to China' really weren't kidding when they sai this place was bleak and desolate. The town itself is a it of a ghost town reminiscent of Kim Jong Il's Pyongyang charade. The streets are wide and well kept here but there aren't any private cars - you only get the odd minibus and taxi roaming about on the prowl for passengers. The footpaths are deserted and the architecture is the most communist I've seen in China. There are vast expanses of rubble between the obviously bureaucratically planned state housing estates - just rows and rows of neatly laid out identical looking squared off 5 storey apartment buildings.

Show me another train station in China that's deserted during the day...

I reckon the majority of the population here works for the state as well - everybody seems to wearing some sort of state enterprise uniform! This seems to be the CCPs M.O in the impoverished north west of China, plan a city, build it, pay people to go and live there then wait for the commerce to come to naturally grow until the city can support itself. One of my many theories about China. You can tell there are some really bad 'Simcity players' working for the CCP bureacracy - I hope my blog is still readable after this...

Nice roads, where are the cars???

Jiayuguan is an example of failure - there is a Soviet style amusement park just sitting idle because there are no kids or they can't afford to go there. Abandoned shops and unfinished high-rises lay about too, it really does look like Pyongyang!

We should be having more fun tomorrow with a trip to the old fort and the day after we move to Dunhuang to see some Buddhist art caves. I needed today to arrange all the requisite tickets for the 'Eddy Chan' tour around Gansu - unfortunately we don't have the time or money to get to Urumqi....

Check out this garbo - he looks like an ex-con on the run!