Post-Eclipse Depression
We arrived at the eclipse viewing site (identified as the post location above) Thursday night. We went through some of the most beautiful Chinese countryside we’ve seen so far, and it’s in a pretty nice place. It seems like it was a small village which has been built up somewhat for the eclipse, and there are tents set up like in a military camp. Our tents have a partition with two beds on each side. There are a several hundred people camping, and a kitchen churns out generic Chinese buffet food for three meals a day. A line of kiosks sells the usual merchandise, and a further line of stands grill mutton kebabs and serve beer. Thursday night a bunch of us had a lot of beer, including me.
On eclipse day, we woke up to clear blue skies. They didn’t stay that way — it got quite hot and a bunch of puffy cumulus clouds developed. Since the eclipse wasn’t until 6 pm Beijing time (more like 4 pm local sun time) we had a lot of time to kill, which included buying white eclipse t-shirts (the ones issued were a hot dark blue, and Chinese people are small — a Chinese XXL is like a US L) and a honeydew-variety Hami melon, which was delicious. Around 4:30 we took a bus out to the site, and then walked north, in the direction of the clear part of the sky, to a mound where several of the group had set up. It was near a nice shady spot where I sat for awhile, and a woman with binoculars announced “there’s a hoopoe!” Wow. I could imagine telling people “we got clouded out for the eclipse, but we saw a hoopoe!!“ It’s an exceptionally beautiful white and brown bird with a large crest.
Meanwhile, Ray decided to go further north to the next mound, which was somewhat higher and which had a beautiful view. The clouds were still around, and we looked at them and tried to guess which ones might interfere with totality. As totality approached, it turned out that the big ones we’d been tracking weren’t going to be a problem, but a little one had showed up that was right next to the sun. Minutes before totality, I saw it shade the main mass of people watching; a minute later, it shaded the group on the first mound. Ray decided to run down the hill to try to evade it, but I stayed on the higher mound. Ultimately, it blocked half of the corona for me for the first 30 seconds of the eclipse, but otherwise it had gotten out of the way for everybody else, leaving everyone with a beautiful eclipse with lots of high drama and lots of feelings of relief. Mercury and Venus were easily visible, and there was a prominence on the right side.
Of course, if we’d been able to drive into the next valley up an hour earlier, we probably would have seen no clouds whatsoever, and all of the drama could have been avoided. The scientific group also had completely clear skies all day long, to the southeast. But the valley north of us was just a little closer to the Mongolian border than the government wanted large groups of people to be located. Stupid paranoid governments. It was probably not such a bad decision to make everyone camp where they did, but it was pretty stupid not to allow free movement in viewing.
The next event was a “gala dinner”. We drove half an hour to some Ethnic Restaurant with Dancers and Yurts which seemed never to have done anything after dark — there were no lights on the tables other than candles which blew out immediately in the wind, and there was a light at the back of the stage pointing at us, and none pointing at the dancers and musicians. For awhile they at least turned lights off so we had a nice view of the Milky Way and saw the International Space Station drift across the sky. As we drove back from this debacle, a physician in the group termed our mood a “post-eclipse depression”.
Saturday was a 700 km drive back to Urumqi, 12 hours including lunch. As we drove, I finished a book that three of the bus travelers had independently bought copies of called “China Road” by Rob Gifford, an NPR correspondent in China for six years. It had lots of good explanations of the history and current state of things in China, interspersed with a travelogue on pretty much the same route we’ve been traveling, in his case Shanghai to Xi’an to Dunhuang to Urumqi to the Kazakh border. He talks (in Chinese) to many people, including Tibetans and Uighurs, about how they really feel, and the way he presented everything resonated very well with me as I read it. We’re relating our experiences and providing our opinions, but I recommend this book to any of you who might want a deeper analysis of what the future might hold for China and its place in the world.
Last night there was another generic Han Chinese dinner. The food has been getting a little different and better, or else I’m losing my discrimination. Afterwards, a few of us went back to Fubar, had a bunch of European beers and hookah, and then almost everyone got a 4:30 wakeup call for an 8:30 flight to Beijing. We have our train tickets for our 6 pm train to Shanghai, and we’ll spend the rest of the day doing some last-minute shopping. I could shop for a new camera — mine jammed AGAIN with the dreaded E18. I think I’ll try other company besides Canon; you should too. Hopefully Google searches for Canon E18 Canon E18 Canon E18 will find this page.
No Internet on the train, but I’m sure Shanghai, Seoul, and Hong Kong will be well connected.