One Day in Urumchi

I look out of the window in my apartment, and the gray smog is oppressive, making the buildings near mine almost impossible to see through the haze. The city looks dark and uninviting as I look out on the streets and buildings that are dirty with the traces of coal smoke and listen to the distant honk of car horns and scream of police sirens. I don’t want to go outside into the cold, the gray, the noise, and the chaos. Every fiber of my being fights against it, wanting to stay inside behind my double-paned windows and hot-water heated home.

But I force myself to leave in the morning, and when I walk outside, the smog is hardly noticeable down on the ground level. Despite the warnings on my phone that today’s Air Quality Index is “hazardous,” the black soot in my air filter at home, and that it looks dark and gray like a big storm is coming even though it’s 11 am and no storm is coming, I don’t register the heavy pollution in the air I’m breathing. 

I’m walking quickly along with everyone else, speed walking with our hands in our pockets and our shoulders tensed upward toward our ears, head bent against the cold wind, and we speed walk together, passing each other as we walk down the street, past women with headscarves, men with fur Russian hats, and women and men with faces covered with masks, students in their uniforms jogging to class, men in suits and women in high heels walking to work. We walk past the bumper to bumper traffic, walking faster than the cars that are at a standstill in traffic. 

When we reach the intersection, cars are honking and weaving around each other, as the roar of a bus engine fills the air. The bus accelerates and the driver changes gears, weaving past cars and barreling through the intersection, almost running into a person and then a car, but no accident occurs. The security guards at the bus stop—one male and one female—are pacing back and forth and bouncing on their toes, periodically going into the shed where a space heater glows orange with heat, and they crouch over it, rubbing their hands together and bouncing with their knees. Street sweepers with face masks and clothes bulky with layers making them waddle under the weight of their wool liners and thick down coats are shoveling the snow next to the sidewalks. 

I stop at TG’s house, and when I walk in, I’m immediately hit with an oppressive, humid heat like a sauna. It is at least 85 degrees in here, a coal stove burning in one corner. My glasses fog up and I take off all my layers—my coat, sweater, hat, scarf, and gloves—and sit for a while despite the taste of coal irritating my throat. The coal stove is leaking fumes into the room. I wonder about her two small children who breathe this toxic air every day, but know better than to say anything. TG has other more pressing concerns on her mind and it’s better to breathe this air than to freeze.