Xinjiang, translated as ‘the New Frontier,’ is the part of China that isn’t really China. Up through the 1980’s, and especially before the 1940’s, the province of Xinjiang was almost completely inhabited by the Uyghur people, who look, speak, eat and worship differently from the average Han Chinese. With the opportunity for a week off from HKU, I had the choice to travel to Vietnam or Thailand with my Tufts friends, or to Xinjiang with my elder brother, Michael. It was easy to pick the latter, since the prospect of having a family member tour me around a city in an isolated region of China was a bit more unusual that your standard 9-day trip to Thailand or Vietnam on the “tourist trail.”
In order to save a bunch of money on the airfare, I booked a flight out of Shenzhen, which is the city that sprung up on the mainland side of the HK border, once it was opened to Hong Kong at the end of the 70’s. Due to the difficulties of making a 9 am departure, my brother Michael put me in touch with a Chinese friend he had made in Korla, who had since moved to Shenzhen. Traveling out to Korla was uneventful, thankfully, besides a couple of interesting exceptions. First of all, the flight attendants on Shenzhen Airlines were unfailingly beautiful, young and fairly tall. It really let me imagine the “golden age” of American air travel. Then as the flight continued onwards, I was momentarily freaked out by what was going on in the plane. I was minding my own business, trying to sleep or whatnot, when I noticed that some people on the plane were doing some stretching excercises, then as I looked around, I realized that the entire cabin was participating, in unison, with these in-flight exercises. What was going on was that the pretty flight attendants were leading the passengers along with their own demonstrations and the PA system, and nobody seemed able to ignore them. This instance, while unimportant, was probably one of the most alien experiences I’ve had in China so far. I cannot fathom an entire American plane participating in anything besides a meal, let alone in perfect unison. Oh, I almost forgot, I was the sole waigoren (white-person) on the plane, but as soon as I left Hong Kong this became the normal state of things. Therefore, when I saw another foreigner waiting for the short flight (~250 miles) from Urumqi to Kurle (Korla), I didn’t really hesitate into introducing myself and entering into a conversation with him. Tim was a geologist working to extract some of Xinjiang’s vast mineral resources; he flew into China on a regular basis from his HQ in West Australia.
After nearly 24 hours on the go, it was quite a relief to finally arrive in Kuer’le (Korla) and look upon a familiar face – my big brother. It wasn’t too hard to find him at the nice, new airport, although my flight was the only arrival at KRL (it seems that a single aircraft makes three round trips every day to Urumqi and that is the only regular service to Korla). When we arrived in front of his apartment building near the center of town, I was taken aback when I had to get out of the way of a bell-covered horse pulling load of cargo. After dropping off my stuff at Michael’s apartment, we walked across town to the restaurant where I would meet some of his friends for dinner. One of the most striking details of his apartment building is that it lies immediately adjacent to a Uyghur ghetto where the buildings lack running water and are composed of old-fashioned bricks. One day as I looked out of Michael’s window I saw some locals cooking on an outdoor flame, another day I saw crowd gather for a funeral.
The Uyghur ghetto and Chinese district as seen from the apt.
We arrived at dinner somewhat early, and Michael’s friends gradually showed up. When everyone was accounted for, about nine other people, I was thereby dining with the entire expat population in a city of 400,000!!
I spent the next day, in one of the most landlocked cities on Earth, finishing an assignment for my music course. In my free time that day, Michael walked me through the Uyghur neighborhoods, introducing me to some of his friends (none of whom spoke any English) and bringing to my first Uyghur meal. For well under one US dollar, I had some delicious lamb kebabs and some crunchy naan. It was an introduction to a different world of cuisine – to say that Uyghur kebabs are greasy doesn’t begin to describe the difference between these kebabs and the ones you would find in a American-Greek restaurant.
Around midnight that evening, we headed West on the overnight train to Kashgar, the epicenter of Uyghur culture. At this point I think it is necessary to explain China’s time zones – or lack thereof. Despite China’s geographic size, 4th largest in the world, all of China technically runs on a single time zone! So midnight in Xinjiang felt more like 9:30 or 10:00, based upon the solar day. Korla’s sun would set around 9:30 or 10 on the official time, despite the fact that this was the end of winter!! I can imagine that the sun actually sets around midnight in mid-summer. This ridiculousness gave rise to the paradox of Xinjiang having an unofficial and official time – unofficial time runs two hours behind Beijing. This blur of what one defined as the “proper” time was confusing – for even the bus station clocks ran on unofficial time, but one could never be sure which time designation someone was alluding to.
To be continued…
