CHINA DAILY Monday, February 16, 2015 CHINA 7

GROUND LEVEL

Reunion repays debt of gratitudeNan maker meetswith landlords frompast who helpedduring hard times

By GAO BO in Urumqigaobo@chinadaily.com.cn

Turgonjan Maola returnedto his life as an assistant at hisson’s shop after he fulfilled a16­year dream — a reunionwith two kind landlords — inlate January.

The 56­year­old Uygur hadalways thought a lot about thetwo people who rented a housetohimandhelpedhimwhenhestarted his business as a makerofnan,oven­bakedflatbread, inShanghai and Suzhou in the1980s and 1990s. He had failedto maintain contact with thembecause he lost their addressesand phone numbers after hereturned to Urumqi, capital ofthe Xinjiang Uygur autono­mous region.

“I even didn’t know the cor­rect characters of their names,but I never forgot what theydid for me,” Turgonjan saidafter a six­day trip to meet thetwo men who had been sohelpful in the past.

In the early 1980s, Turgon­jan went to Shanghai to makehis living. With insufficientmoney, and lacking familiaritywith Mandarin, he found itdifficult to survive and wasforced to return home.

In 1984, he married PatigulYusup in Kashgar and went toSuzhou with her in 1985. Thecouple rented a house fromWang Jinda.

“Wang was very helpful,”said Turgonjan.

In 1989, his wife becamepregnant, and the couple wentback to their hometown.

“When Dilixat, my eldestson, was 4 years old in 1994, Idecided to go to Shanghai to

make a better life for him,”Turgonjan said.

The family found themselvesstruggling again, with littlecashandnorelativesor friends,until Yang Meidi came to theirassistance. Yang not onlyoffered them a roof over theirheads but also helped them setupananstall.Heboughtwheatflour for them, and once thenan pit was fired up, the familybegan to feel settled.

“My father would probablyhave lived likeavagrant, sleep­ing in the park without help,”said Dilixat. “Grandpa Yangalso dealt with the proceduresinvolved in my schooling, so Icalled him Shanghai grandpa.”

In 1997, the family moved toSuzhou again and lived inWang’s house.

“He emptied a room for us tobecome the nan shop andbought flour to help the busi­ness get started,” Turgonjansaid.

Wang was also treated like afamily member.

“He treated me like hisdaughter and my son calledhim grandpa,” Patigul said.

The family’s life hasimproved much since thosedays. Turgonjan managed to

accumulate enough savings tobe able to return to Xinjiang in1999 and settle down in Urum­qi to run a shop selling driedfruits and nuts.

Dilixat, 25, knew his fatherwished to findWangandYang,so he sought help from themedia at a time when it wascollecting stories about Xinji­angers in other provinces.

With the help of the media,Turgonjan managed to findWang and Yang, and flew to

meet them.“The reunion meant so

much to me,” said Turgonjan.“I could hardly pay back theirkindness, but paying them apersonal visit made me feelbetter.”

Dilixat has continued thefamily’s nan business. He runsa shop and also an online store.

“My grandpa made nan inthe county and my fatherbrought nan to Suzhou andShanghai,” Dilixat said. “I cansell it all over the countrythrough the Internet.”

Turgonjan closed his shopyears ago but helps with pack­aging at his son’s business.

“I am living a happy andaffluent life now, but I will nev­er forget the ones who helpedme,” he said.

Quick bio

Name: Turgonjan MaolaAge: 56Hometown: UrumqiJob: Nan maker

Turgonjan Maola (right) now works as an assistant at his son’s nan shop in Xinjiang. His son, Dalixat, continues the family’s nan business,and he helps his father to track down the two landlords in Suzhou and Shanghai. SHAN KUN / FOR CHINA DAILY

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Chengdu report

The Dujiangyan Irrigation System, close to Mount Qingcheng, is a must-see for visitors from home and abroad. photos provided to China daily

By Li yu and peng chao

Chengdu, a hub city in southwestern China, is expecting more global visitors in the coming years as it aims to build itself into a world-class tourist destination and shopping center.

The city was named one of the “52 places to go in 2015” by The New York Times in January.

The newspaper described Chengdu as “a panda and food capital”.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding has more than 100 giant pandas living there.

Established in 1987 when six giant pandas were res-cued from the wild, it oper-ates as a nonprofit organiza-tion specializing in protect-ing, researching and breeding giant pandas.

Since the base opened to the public in the 1990s, it has attracted millions of tourists from home and abroad.

Many of the pandas born and raised at the base are sent to foreign countries as nation-al gifts to promote friendly exchanges between China and the world.

Chengdu is also known for its spicy and diverse cuisine.

The liberal use of red-hot chilies, mouth-numbing Sich-uan peppers and fierce chili bean paste creates the area’s distinctive style of cook-ing. The intense flavors have made Sichuan cuisine famous around the world.

“The first impression of Sichuan cuisine for many people is spicy, but actually, 70 percent of dishes are not,” said Peng Ziyu, a 70-year-old cook who served former French president Jacques René Chirac Sichuan dishes during his visit to China.

Peng said Sichuan cuisine has a variety of flavors, which can satisfy different tastes from all over the world. “Peo-ple may not like every single dish from Sichuan cuisine, but they are sure to find some they can enjoy,” he said.

UNESCO named Chengdu as a “City of Gastronomy” in recent year.

Editor and writer Justin Bergman said he decided to include Chengdu in The New York Times list of places to go because it is one of the most dynamic cities in China that combines rich cultural heri-

tage with fast economic devel-opment.

The city’s cultural heritage attractions include the Jinsha Museum in western Chengdu. The museum preserves one of the 21st century’s most signifi-cant archaeological discover-ies on the original site.

A gold mask and the Sun and Immortal Bird are rep-resentative items among the

gold and jade articles, which date back about 3,000 years.

The Shrine of the Marquis Wu, a must-see for history lovers, was built in AD 223 to celebrate the wisdom of Zhuge Liang (AD 181-234), prime minister of the Shu Kingdom.

Mount Qingcheng is about 70 kilometers from downtown Chengdu and is one of the Taoist sacred mountains. The

Dujiangyan Irrigation System, close to Mount Qingcheng, was built about 2,200 years ago and is still in use.

Chengdu is one of the fastest developing cities in China. It is home to more than half of the Fortune Global 500 com-panies and large numbers of international fashion brands.

S i n o - O c e a n T a i -koo Li Chengdu, a new

100,000-square-meter shop-ping center in the city’s down-town area, boasts internation-al fashion and lifestyle brands including Gucci, Cartier, Ralph Lauren and Moleskine.

The Chengdu International Finance Square opened in Jan-uary last year and is a cluster of about 300 luxury jewelry and fashion labels.

By the end of last year, Chengdu had the fourth-high-est number of luxury brand outlets in China, after Shang-hai, Beijing and Shenyang.

“Chengdu will continue to upgrade tourism facilities and services to meet local, domes-tic and international demand,” said an official from the city’s tourism bureau.

He added that the city planned to build itself into a world-class tourist and shop-ping destination in western China.

Currently, there are 63 national A-class tourist sce-nic spots, 140 star-rated hotels and 364 travel agencies in Chengdu.

The city attracted 186.2 mil-lion domestic and foreign visi-tors in 2014.

Of these, 1.97 million were foreign tourists, an increase

of 11.66 percent from a year earlier.

A report published by the China Tourism Academy ranked Chengdu fourth out of 60 Chinese cities for tourist satisfaction in 2014.

Getting to Chengdu is becoming easier as the city has more international air routes. Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport is the largest in China’s central and western region and has direct flights to places including London, Amsterdam, Frank-furt, San Francisco and Mel-bourne.

The State Council recently approved the construction of a new airport in Chengdu, which will make it the third city on the Chinese mainland to have a second airport, after Beijing and Shanghai.

Chengdu was the first city in western China to adopt the 72-hour visa-free policy, which allows passengers from 51 countries to spend three days in the city if they have valid third-country visas and onward flight tickets.

Contract the writers at liyu@chinadaily.com.cn and pengchao@chinadaily.com.cn

Chengdu makes its mark on the tourist map

Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding has more than 100 giant pandas.