The City

Rather than rivers, mountains, and lakes, we are surrounded here by a jungle of concrete and steel, sidewalks covered by highway overpasses of whizzing cars, and skyscrapers.

Red Mountain (a popular park in the center of downtown and not ironically named after the color of the Communist Party) is situated such that when you climb to the top, its scenic overlook faces the Urumqi city skyline of towers puncturing the sky, as if the overlook is set up as a place of worship to the gods of money, concrete, and capitalism.

When you’re walking to the Grand Bazaar, you have to walk under a huge highway overpass, which was built only a few years ago to accommodate the growing demand for individual cars in the city. The overpass blocks the sunlight, creating a damp feel and dusky smell, giving an extra chill to the air. As I wait for the light to change, I can hear the cars rumbling above while the honking of cars underneath reverberate against the concrete ceiling. Even with the new freeways, more and more cars every year make even the freeways clog with bumper to bumper traffic, slowing the cars to snail speed and demanding the subway construction that now exacerbates the traffic even more.

Nonetheless, people continue to praise the god of concrete. People say, our city will be better, more convenient, and more developed once the subway comes. Our city is getting more developed as more movie theaters, clubs, and restaurants move in, satiating the desires of a human race that craves leisure. But only more consumerism can satiate the need, locking us all into an unending cycle of work to exhaustion, work so you can afford leisure to alleviate the exhaustion, leisure that you need because you hate your life and your job. So you spend all your money to fill the empty space in your heart, and then work more so you can afford the leisure that you need.

And yet people continue to worship the concrete gods, who make the city gray and dark and hard and unfriendly, continue to worship the cars that pollute and clog the streets, and pay homage to the buildings that block the sunlight and suck the life and beauty out of the city and its nature that is slowly fading away.