In the vicinity of the Hongshan Hotel are a couple of pleasant parks which are useful for orientation. One is Renmin Park , a little to the west of the Hongshan, which runs from north to south right through the centre of the city, cooled by various streams and lakes. The other is Hongshan Park (Red Mountain Park; daily 6am-5.30pm, ¥10), clearly visible on a hill to the north of the hotel - the park entrance is about ten minutes' walk north of the Hongshan, and it's a pleasant place with boating, pavilions and pagodas, and a steep hill to climb. At the top it's cool and shady and you can sit and have a drink, or watch the locals clambering about over the rocks. The view over the city, with desert and snowy mountains in the background, is spectacular; the number of tower cranes will also give a measure of the amount of construction going on in Urumqi.

The major sight in Urumqi is the Xinjiang Regional Museum (Mon-Sat 9.30am-7pm, Sun 9.30am-5pm; ¥5 downstairs exhibits, ¥15 upstairs) on Xibei Lu in the north of the city. The building itself is an interesting one, with a palpable Russian influence - painted reliefs as well as a great, green dome. Unfortunately, given the huge size of the museum, the number of rooms open to display at any one time is limited. The downstairs exhibit focuses on the Silk Road and includes an array of tools, fabrics, coins, jade pieces, pots and pictures. Unfortunately, there are no English labels, and the rooms are very gloomy. The upstairs exhibit, on the other hand, does have some English explanations and is much more impressive, including a number of ancient and particularly well-preserved corpses retrieved from the dry desert sands, including the so-called "Loulan Beauty", a woman with long fair hair, allegedly 3800 years old, recovered from the city of Loulan on the southern Silk Road. The Loulan Beauty, of a distinctly non-Chinese appearance, has been taken to heart by some Uigur Nationalists as a symbol of the antiquity (and validity) of their claims for sovereignty over these lands. There are also some antique shops to browse in on the museum site. To reach the museum take bus #7 from Xinhua Bei Lu.

Shopping in Urumqi can be quite an eye-opener in the crowded, affluent streets just south of Minzhu Lu and west of Jiefang Bei Lu. Fashion boutiques with pseudo-French and Italian names have started springing up - Hong Kong consumerism has reached China's final frontier. For a taste of something with a more local flavour, head south of here, down Jiefang Nan Lu. The shops become steadily more Uigur-orientated, until you reach the Erdaoqiao market, the main Uigur bazaar of the city. Here it's the usual dusty jumble of kebabs, melons, clothes and knives being traded amid jostling donkey carts. The major mosques of the city are all located in this area, too, around Jiefang Nan Lu.