“Do you by any chance know of any jiujitsu gyms in the area?” I messaged an American woman I knew on my first day in Xinjiang.
“Let me send you Jay’s contact information,” she replied. “He does some martial arts. He’s from England and teaches English here.”
I contacted Jay immediately.
“I’m a blue belt in BJJ and looking for somewhere to train,” I inquired hopefully.
“Yes! Let’s train tomorrow,” he suggested.
I was thrilled.
The next day, I met up with Jay on the public bus. We headed to the martial arts studio, where he trained Chinese boxing, called “sanda.” Sanda is like Muay Thai but with takedowns and no elbows. They also trained some grappling, he had explained.
After taking a crowded elevator up to the seventh floor of an OB/GYN hospital, we made our way into a room covered in blue and pink puzzle mats. Every surface was covered with a gray tinge from soot. We were in one of the most polluted cities in China. Many people there still used coal to heat homes and cook food.
One wall was lined with mirrors and a punching bag hung from the ceiling in one corner. Careful not to be late, I quickly ran into the women’s changing room, which was a small closet in the back of the room.
When I entered the small enclosure, a shy but wide grin stared back at me. The girl sitting on the floor in a white gi with dark hair down to her waist stared at me but didn’t say anything.
“I can speak Chinese,” I said in Chinese, smiling. Her demeanor immediately relaxed.
“I’m Guzelnur,” the girl said in Chinese, embracing me in a hug and kisses on each cheek, a common greeting for Uyghur people. After changing into my gi, I entered the mat room to find the whole class already lined up.
“Please, coach, can you teach class today?” the head sanda instructor implored in Chinese, his hand outstretched for a handshake. Taken aback, I reluctantly agreed. I was only a blue belt after all. Besides, I hadn’t had time to prepare a lesson.
I taught the fan sweep that day. From then on, I was referred to as “coach” (jiaolian) or “teacher” (laoshi) at the gym, despite my insistence that they call me by my name (Tian Ran in Chinese).
After that first class, I stayed after to drill with Guzelnur. After an hour of fan sweeps, we exchanged the usual small talk and introductions. When she said her age, I couldn’t help but ask her, “Are your parents pressuring you to get married?” She nodded and we chuckled knowingly together. Uyghur girls start being pressured to get married around 25 years old.
“Yes, but I want to go abroad first. I just keep telling my parents that I need to finish my studies before I get married,” she said. This was a common dream among young women.
We took selfies with kissy faces in the studio mirrors for her social media, frequently collapsing into fits of giggles over our own ridiculousness. At the time, I did not speak Uyghur yet, but we conversed well in our mutually accented Chinese.
“Let’s get dinner together, please, please!” she begged.
I soon found myself in a Uyghur restaurant eating polu, a rice pilaf dish with lamb and carrots, topped with fresh, homemade yogurt. She refused to let me pay for anything.
“Come over and hang out at my house,” she insisted. I agreed, curious to learn more about my new friend.
Her “house” was a room in a shared dorm. I had assumed we would shower there, since we hadn’t done so yet. But her place didn’t have a shower, nor a washing machine. Turns out that hygiene standards are different when you live in the middle of the desert in an impoverished region with few water resources.
“We should live together in the fall!” Guzelnur squealed in excitement at one point, jumping up and down while holding both of my hands.
“Really?” I breathed. I could hardly believe my luck. Full immersion with a Uyghur roommate was exactly what I needed to learn a new language.
“Of course!” she said, pinching my cheeks and giving me a big hug.
I nodded as butterflies filled my stomach. I was half scared, half excited.
“This is the happiest day of my life!” she exclaimed.
A couple weeks later, I moved in to Guzelnur’s apartment across the street from the local college where I took Uyghur classes. And that is how I spent several months training sanda and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu while living without a shower or a washing machine. We took sponge baths and hand washed our clothes.
They rearranged the kickboxing schedule by changing two lessons a week to grappling instead of striking. I traded my jiujitsu lessons for a free membership and trained sanda with them twice a week. Later, we went up to four nights a week of grappling. The students loved the challenge of learning a new martial art. The students were a mix of both Chinese and Uyghur.
That first year was an adventure and I grew close to my jiujitsu teammates. They were like family. And considering that I was far away from home, this was the comfort that enabled me to survive in a land so different from my own.
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