Tim Boelter

After sleeping for a good five hours Mike and I had a quick meal and visited the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Museum located here in Urumqi. Aside from the museum having two great sections covering the history and culture of Xinjiang, it houses some of the world's most spectacular mummies. One mummy in particular is the world-renowned Loulan Beauty. This mummy is 4,000 years old and is the corpse of a 47-year old woman who was Caucasian with possibly red hair. Before even seeing the mummy we looked at a life size reproduction of what she may have looked like in life. A Japanese forensic company created the reproduction. I was blown away by her beauty and confused as to how she ended up in the Turpan Basin of Central Asia.

Once we entered the room in which she was on display, I couldn't help myself from just staring through the glass at this once living person. I could see individual hairs on her eyelashes, and her hair was still red in color. She was wearing the very well preserved cloths and sandals that she was buried in, and after 4,000 years her skin looked magnificent. Okay, it was a little parched, but your's would be too after such a long time. So many thoughts went through my mind as I looked at her. I never saw such a well-preserved mummy as the Loulan Beauty. It was hard for me not to get caught up in thoughts of wanting to know what her life was like, or wanting to know how she died. Looking at this lifeless body that dates back so long ago made me realize, even more, how complex life on this earth is and how after 4,000 years she seemed so modern.

She was exhumed in what is now a desert in the middle of a continent. How do you travel such vast distances at that time? The questions were overflowing in my head. For me this was an amazing experience, perhaps I was trying to look deeper into what I saw. After we continued to look around at other mummies in the museum I returned to look at her one last time. For some reason I felt I needed to take in her presence before I left.

The museum was a worthwhile stop. What amazed me is that the country of China has 56 ethnic groups (minorities) and 46 of them are located in the Xinjiang province alone.

It's really no secret that most Chinese say they like visiting Xinjiang more than any other province. It's truly a place of amazing variety that ranges from the physical geography of the landscape to a cultural melting pot with a wide range of cuisine and ethnic diversity.

Aside from visiting the museum Mike and I are just getting caught up on dispatches and photo processing. Lao Wang is getting the vehicle looked at for the long and interesting trail ahead. Mike will be posting very detailed dispatches soon.

—Tim Boelter

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