My adventure across the Chinese border and back again: Part 1

I take the overnight train heading southwest and arrive in Kashgar 21 hours later. I don’t have any singles on me for the bus, so I walk over to a stand selling fruit and other snacks. I buy some nectarines from a girl with clear, olive skin, a youthful face with large, brown eyes that remind me of Bambi, her hair covered with a red headscarf that flows in the wind and reaches down to her waist. After I pay, she sits back down and opens the Chinese zoology textbook she was reading and taking notes in.

I get on the bus, which displays various messages in red, scrolling Chinese characters in between each bus stop: “Kashgar: An Ancient, Scenic City Full of Chinese History and Culture,” and “Kashgar: An Important Crossing on the Ancient Silk Road,” and “Kashgar: China’s Ancient City of Trade.”

I get off the bus and walk in the formidable sun down Handicraft Alley to the sounds of artisans banging hammers on bronze and various metals to mold teapots. I arrive at my hostel, a converted traditional home. It is a beautiful two-story red brick home with a central courtyard and a balcony.

The adorable girl at the front desk has a friendly smile and a shy demeanor. At first I mistake her for a local and try talking to her in the language of the local people, a Turkish dialect, but she shakes her head at me and says that she is Han Chinese. We switch to Chinese and she smiles widely and her shoulders relax. In a soft, giggly, high-pitched voice, she invites me to dinner with the staff at 9 pm Beijing time for only 15 kuai, saying: “They eat a lot of meat here, so sometimes it’s nice to eat some Chinese food with vegetables here at the hostel.” She shows me to my room lined with bunk beds. I will share it with a few other girls, one American, one Japanese, one Chinese, two French and two Taiwanese. There are no locks or keys on the door to the dorm, just trust.

The next morning, I get ready to go to the bazaar, making sure my arms and legs are completely covered, put on sunscreen, and tie my yaghliq (headscarf) around my head, covering my hair, and put my sunglasses on. My identity as a foreigner is successfully concealed. As I walk down the street, nobody gives me a second glance. When I’m used to being stared at so much in China, being ignored is a welcome relief.

I walk down North Liberation Road and turn left on People’s Boulevard towards People’s Park, past the enormous Mao statue, completely white except for the red star on his brimmed cap, his right arm extended straight at a 45 degree angle to his body, indicating his subjects to follow him on continuing forward advancement.  Across from the statue is a huge cartoon of a man and a woman doing traditional dance and wearing traditional dress. Huge Chinese characters on either side of them read, “Long live ethnic solidarity, and long live the ancestral mother country!”

The bazaar is huge. It’s crowded, loud, chaotic, and beautiful. Vendors in stalls, pushing carts, and sitting on carpets along the sidewalk are selling wood carvings, bronze handicrafts, hats, clothes, naan, samsa, fruit, shirts, yogurt, vegetables, date juice, raw meat, fish, and ice cream. A man with a long, white beard wearing a doppa sells me some fried dough coated in sugar with lamb meat inside, and keeps yelling, “Istanbul! Istanbul!” As soon as I open my mouth to speak, he knows I’m a foreigner. Without asking, this man assumes I’m Turkish. He gives me his card, and tells me to call him so he can host me as a guest at his house for dinner.

At the bus stop, a picture of Mao and a hammer and sickle serves as the background to messages on a yellow background in bright red Chinese characters that read:

"Construct for the whole country a civilized city;

Build socialism and a harmonious society;

The Chinese dream is civilization;

Study and implement scientific process of development."

I buy an orange baby shirt that says, “SWAG LIFE.” I can’t help myself. It’s just too hilarious. It will make a good gift for one of my friend’s kids. I’m Aunt Sarah now to more than a few youngsters. A crowd of twenty or so men gather around a vendor who is selling shirts for 5 kuai. A man on a wooden cart advertises a random assortment of imported soaps from abroad, including one tube of imported Colgate toothpaste from Uzbekistan. I wonder if he knows that Colgate toothpaste is almost exactly the same in every country (except for perhaps the strange vanilla flavor one can buy in China). I buy some new headscarves and a pair of black leggings so that I can cover my legs when I wear skirts.

The hard sounds, restricted syllables and tonal sounds of Chinese suddenly punctuates the air. I look up and see a group of Chinese tourists, about 5 college-aged men and women wearing matching black t-shirts saying “Journey to the West” in English and saying “Wo qu!” (I go!) in Chinese. Two of the boys are carrying tripods and huge, expensive looking cameras. All of them stop in front of me, towering over two elderly women in headscarves selling fruit and asking what the Chinese name of the fruit is.

I sneeze from the smell the smoke from the charcoal grills cooking kebabs on either side of me. I keep walking past rows and rows of shops selling soap, scarves, spices, and dried fruit.

At noon I get some lunch: soup with sheep meat, tender and fatty and fresh that melts in my mouth, with oily and spicy broth. I also order some momo-- big, soft steamed buns-- to dip in the broth. When I’m done, a tall, thin man with stunning green eyes tells me my total and collects my bills. Here one always eats first, and pays second.

I exit the restaurant and a man is standing on the back of his small pickup truck and shouting while eating a piece of honeydew melon. He is shouting about how cheap and delicious they are. I buy a single piece of watermelon from another guy. I try to bargain the price down and in the end, accidentally give the money to another guy, who ends up being his older brother. He jokingly teases me for my mistake, and says to me as I leave, “Come back tomorrow, okay?”

I buy some nuts and dried fruit for my trip to the Pamir mountains tomorrow. The woman in the shop tells me that my purse is pretty, and that my mastery of the language is good. But her husband shouts over her and pushes her aside, trying to sell me the raisins he has imported from Pakistan. I ask for 5 kuai’s worth of the dried apricots, so she fills up the bag to the point where she knows that it’s 5 kuai and her husband tells her to put more in. She says, “you know it’s the right amount.” But he insists that she put more in, so she does and she throws the bag at him and it lands in the container of almonds. He measures it and it’s 8 kuai, so he says to me, “why not add a little more and make it 10?” I agree because I actually do want more dried apricots. He lets me taste all of the different raisins he has, there are big and small and purple and green ones, and all of them are very sweet. “Come back tomorrow! And bring your friends!” they say as I leave.

A man wearing a doppa with a long white beard and missing teeth has a cart with a huge block of ice on it. He puts ripe blackberries on the block of ice and the juice drips down, making a sweet drink in a huge container that he puts in glass cups. I drink it as I stand there chatting with him and then give him his cup back. I walk away without paying, so he yells after me and I’m embarrassed. I apologize, handing over 2 kuai. At the next shop, I buy some fresh naan. I ask for some hot pieces, and the young boy working asks me to wait for a couple minutes--there are a few pieces cooking in the tandoori oven. A moment later, he grabs two pieces straight from the oven and puts them in a plastic bag for me. My mouth waters. They have bits of salt and garlic inside, and they’re delectably soft and warm when I break off pieces to eat.

I walk through the “old” city towards the hostel. The air is so dusty from the construction that I can taste it on my tongue. Every other building is being worked on, changing the facades of the homes to be almost identically complete with fake balconies, and flowers and Chinese flags hanging from every window. I’m not an expert on Turkish architecture, but it looks almost European to me.

Maybe they can tear down their homes. But they can never crush the spirit of the people here.

I buy some yogurt from the elderly woman sitting on the curb with a blue and green headscarf and tan, wrinkled skin. She pours the yogurt into a plastic bag for me, and I walk back to the hostel. I take off my headscarf. I eat the yogurt in the enclosed courtyard with some blackberries that one of the girls at the hostel has bought, which caused her lips and teeth to turn blue. After eating some, I tell her I don’t want anymore, and she insists. I tell her to give some to the other foreigners sitting across the courtyard. “No… every time I see foreigners I just get so scared because I can’t speak English at all,” she tells me. I try to tell her that they are from various countries in Europe and they can’t really speak English either. She’s not convinced.

A little girl talks to me in the Turkish dialect while her mom does some cleaning around the hostel, telling me about her younger brother and sisters. She tells me that she goes to a Chinese school and has a test tomorrow. She doesn’t like sports but she likes to sing and listen to music. She asks me what time it is, and I tell her 11:15 am. She confirms in response, “Beijing time or local time?”

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P.S. Sorry I missed the posting last Friday. I’m having trouble with my Internet and my VPN here. Postings might be sporadic for the next couple weeks, but I will continue to try to post every Friday.