What's an Yinchuan? \ A Tale of 5 Cities

"Then it dawned upon me – yes, Yinchuan! this place i (and 99% of you) never heard of, capital of a lost kingdom up in the north. With only one million inhabitants, there is no mistaking about this place: it’s a village, and therefore my next destination."

I wrote these (unpublished) lines almost a month ago, back in the much bigger as expected Xi'an. Now, before I am leaving Yinchuan, i feel it would do injustice to this city not dedicating writing about it. Well, Yinchuan is the small (China-wise) and big (desert-wise) capital of the far-off tiny province\autonomy of Ningxia, just on the brim of the giant, empty province of Inner Mongolia.

Two months ago, still deep in the Beijing jungle, i presented in my Hebrew blog about 5 places I have chosen as potential places for "part B of my time in China - settling-down a bit": Beijing, Qingdao, Kaifeng, Xi’an and Yinchuan (of which I only inadvertently heard). I never thought i would made it to all of them, but each one seemed good, yet none perfect, and my indecisiveness and stubbornness brought me always forward.

Beijing has many foreigners, culture, history, high prices, subway-system and the feeling of a world-town; Qingdao has history, beautiful beaches, great buses, a nice foreign community, a sweet hostel and a lot of style; Kaifeng has Jews, a nice university, very cheap prices, history, old-China feeling; Xi’an had another sweet hostel, many foreigners, history, and a huge building boom.

Yinchuan has none of the above. It’s just a simple, nicely developing city in the middle of nowhere China, with great air and good people. But i was wrong in what i wrote above - it is a city for all its worth. Many people, wide avenues, markets, a skyscraper or two, big hotels, malls (don't worry, folks, the Chinese buying spray is still going on, the world is saved!) and only Chinese. Almost no foreigners come here, and the ones that do all retell their path to here in a semi-mystical tone, as if it was a scene out of “Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind”. Something led us here.

(Something weird happens, by the way, when one spends three weeks roaming the streets and seeing only Chinese: the contrast is gone, and people don't really look Chinese anymore)

Back to the fivesome. The average modern Chinese, who dislikes small towns and yearns for dazzling touristic places, would have rated these 5 cities as follows: 1. Beijing, 2. Xi’an 3. Qingdao, 4. Yinchuan and Kaifeng (regarding the latter, there was mostly astonishment when people heard i love it enough to want to live in it. i can imagine how would people react to the former). At least at this period of my travels, i'd have rated it exactly upside upside-down, maybe with Beijing a bit above.

But they are all good, and offer their share of living. And indeed, as i made it here, knowing my road ends here and it's decision time, every one of the five was back on the table, an alluring possibility. That's why i didn't right a lot recently, there was really not much going on, other than endless calculations and deliberations. i hate it when i become "that guy".

But now i'm set - it's back to Kaifeng for me. I think. Pretty much sure.