The Coffee Shop

I don't have class today (Friday), so I walk toward a coffee shop located across from the largest mosque in the city. Bearded men over 65 and un-bearded men under 65 in suits and doppas carrying prayer mats walk in the opposite direction from me, coming from the mosque having just finished one of the morning prayers.

I walk past the beggars sitting in front of small baskets of 1 kuai bills—cripples with one leg and old women with their faces covered and heads bowed in shame and a man with a rash all over his legs that makes me gag—that sit outside the mosque with prayer rugs piled at the entrance. 

I arrive at the coffee shop and am tempted by this month’s special: a “nutritional breakfast combo” with cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, feta cheese, bread, butter, honey, and tea for 18 kuai ($2.50 USD). I cave and treat myself to this extravagance. 

The rest of the menu features mochas with towering whipped cream, delectable ice cream of every flavor imaginable, cakes, scones, fruit drinks and teas. A woman with a red headscarf and an iPhone 6S with perfectly manicured nails and a penciled-in unibrow looks up at me as I walk past her towards the back of the coffee shop. I set up my MacBook Air and plug in my iPhone as I eat the cheese and bread while young boys—barely six or seven years old—with dirty faces and hungry eyes and raspy voices trickle in one-by-one, selling packages of Kleenex for 1 kuai. Do I support these boys who should be in school and who are giving the money to who know who for who knows what purpose? Or do I bury my nose in my MacBook munching on my bread and butter and chewing gum imported from Turkey while writing out urban theory and esoteric political ideas while I pretend to ignore the rock in my gut and the stabbing pain in my heart of the poverty side-by-side the extravagant and unnecessary wealth I see surrounding me and within me? 

In each and every moment, but especially now, my white skin and blue eyes and PhD education and mother tongue of English and American bank account and government scholarship, I embody Western privilege in a visceral way that I wish I could ignore but never will forget.

Some people ask me, why don’t I do research in the US? Don’t we have enough of our own problems? Why am I going somewhere else to research urban problems? 

But I don’t see it that way. By studying China’s urban development problems and issues of race and gender, it only allows me to see my own country’s issues more clearly. China has taught me about race, gender, discrimination, and freedom on a personal and visceral level that only further exposes the hypocrisy of American democracy in a new light.

 

We’re not so different, us and China. We are linked in so many ways. Our problems are not isolated, but intertwined. The poverty of Detroit is linked to the wealth and development of China. The poverty of China is linked to the cheap prices we all benefit from at Wal-Mart. We are related in our humanity despite the ideological differences of our governments. We are linked in ways like never before. Sometimes it is only by leaving your home that can you look back and see it clearly without the fog of bias. We were raised on the Communist/Democracy binary that is actually not so different after all. My hope for now is to understand and challenge those layers of privilege that multiply and dissolve in different ways in different contexts.  

Later that night, I invite a couple friends over to my house. I’ve prepared for their arrival by buying fruit, candy, shelled sunflower seeds, and snacks for them. When they arrive, I put on the tea. We watch videos online and laugh and chat easily and freely. I’m happy that I remember enough Uyghur that we don’t switch to English, not even once. Though I do struggle to remember some verbs and I misunderstand them a few times.

I show them the “Stressed Out” song’s music video by Twenty One Pilots, and we marvel about how it’s already gotten almost 300 million views, talk about the pressure of debt and they say, “Damn, Americans too are feeling the pressure of money and family and life and work just as much as us.” We too wish we could turn back time and fly a rocket ship far away.

Running errands in China, Part 1: Going to the bank

I have to go to the bank everyday this week because I need to pay rent for the whole year in cash. I brought enough cash from the States to pay for it, but apparently foreigners can only change $500 USD a day.

                     

None of the banks in my immediate neighborhood change foreign currency. So I have to walk a mile each day to get to a bank that does change foreign currency. Technically I could take the bus, but since they’re doing construction for a new subway station down the street, the traffic is so bad between my house and the bank that it would take longer to take the bus than to walk.

When I get to the bank, the friendly security guard with large yellow crooked teeth at the front door greets me with an amiable smile. He recognizes me from yesterday and helps me copy my passport. I make my way to the “foreign currency and accounts department,” which is comprised of a bespectacled Han boy who looks about 16 years old sitting behind a small desk.

He is currently talking to an old man with a doppa and an old woman wearing a beautiful dark green headscarf adorned with swirls of gold ornamentation. I stand directly behind them, and in typical local fashion, I pay no attention to personal space or privacy concerns, and lean against the desk, staring at them and listening to their conversation. When in Rome, do as, right?

They want to send 100 USD to America. Another bank employee is brought over to translate. She tells them that if they want to send 100 USD, it’s going to be more than 6,000 kuai. The old man pulls out a huge stack of 100 kuai bills. He’s a few bills short of 100 USD, so he pulls out his wallet for a few more. The skinny boy behind the desk prints something out and the woman asks him, “boldima?” which means, “Finished up now?” in the Uyghur language, but the boy doesn’t understand her.

They leave and I step forward but a man walks right past me and sits down in front of the desk. I say to him in Uyghur, “men saqlap turgandim…” or “I was waiting…” He turns to look at me briefly, and says, “It’ll just be a second,” and proceeds with his business. The skinny boy doesn’t say anything, but instead just looks at me and chuckles.

“Shenfenzheng bama?” the chuckling boy asks the man as he throws me a side glance. “Do you have your ID card?”

“What?” The man asks.

“Shenfenzheng!” The boy says, louder this time. “ID Card!”

The man produces it and arranges money to be sent to Turkey.

When it’s finally my turn, I sit down and the boy says, “You didn’t respond to any of my WeChat messages.”

I had given him my WeChat name the day before. I actually hadn’t seen his messages, nor did I have a strong desire to talk to him on WeChat.

“I don’t look at my phone when I’m really busy,” I respond.

As he’s processing my transaction, he asks me which state I’m from, and do I know about the CFA exam, and do I know that there are minorities in Xinjiang, and how did I learn Uyghur, and do I have a Uyghur boyfriend, and when will I be returning to the States, and what kind of food do I like, and would I be interested in playing badminton with him sometime?

After he prints out an authorization to change money form for me, I escape to the next window, where a woman who reminds me of my mom processes the currency exchange from dollars into RMB. I explain that I have to pay my rent next week, which is why I have to come here to change money everyday. How much is your rent and for how big of a house and how many people are living there and what do I pay per month and where am I living? she inquires.

After everything has been processed, I thank her and collect the cash and my belongings, making sure that everything is secure. I walk home along South Liberation Road, through the Grand Bazaar and the main shopping district of the Uyghur neighborhood.

As I walk, I smell delicious fresh lamb meat roasting on the BBQ. A girl of about eight or nine with stunning blue eyes and her hair covered in a satin pink headscarf walks by me, her hand holding a young boy toddling beside her. Speakers are blasting techno pop music while megaphones with recording circuits yell, “Baha chushti! The price has decreased! 10 koy, 10 koy, 10 koy!” over and over again. A sea of people envelopes me as I join the bustling market place, a crowded swath of customers and hawkers alike, that make it possible to only take small steps forward. I hold my purse tightly. I smell BO.   

Stores on either side of me sell dish soap, soccer jerseys, baby clothes, Turkish tea, snake oil, neon orange and pink tennis shoes, imported foods from Turkey, carpet cleaning services, teapots, curtains, and vases for washing guests’ hands. Street vendors are selling stolen phones, anti-cockroach poison, socks, raisins by the kilo, and cut up cantaloupe, watermelon, and honeydew for 1 kuai a slice. I walk past a Halal butcher where a recently slaughtered sheep rests on the ground, its head lack and its blood flowing from its neck into a metal pan. Full sheep hang from the butcher shop. I ask for 10 kuai worth of meat and the butcher cuts off a slice of the sheep and weighs it before putting it in a plastic bag for me.

Each store’s sign has both Chinese and Uyghur, and sometimes also Russian, English, Turkish, or Korean. I hear cars honking and a pair of trumpets blasting a happy tune in time to a drum, competing with the sound of jackhammers blasting the road ahead for the subway. All around me people are talking, sharing their stories, their worries, their fears, their loves, and their dramas. I hear Chinese and turn to see a group of tourists eating kabob for lunch at 10 am local time and drinking pomegranate juice out of season. As I walk past the construction, it smells like burning plastic and gives me a headache.

As I keep walking, I see five middle-aged women sitting near each other, each with small white Styrofoam platforms in front of them, selling what looks like bok choy. I consider asking them how much it is because they look like pretty good vegetables. I ask one of the women what they’re selling. They’re selling a special type of dye, made out of this bok choy-like vegetable, for the purpose of drawing on a unibrow. I then realize that all of the women have a dark unibrow drawn on. “OH, your eyebrows are so beautiful!” I exclaim. They nod in agreement. I tell them no thanks and keep on down South Liberation Road.

I keep walking in the morning sunshine, past the white mosque and the bazaar with the Carrefour and a woman with sparkly red high heels and a man in a suit with rotting teeth and a handmade dutar instrument maker shop and an old man selling trinkets and an armored tank with officers standing with their heads and guns poking out of its middle. 

Ussul Oynaylimu?

After jiujitsu, I change into clean clothes and hop in the back of a cab. I tell the cab the name of the restaurant and the address, which he repeats out loud to himself several times before plugging it into his GPS. I apply foundation and bright red lipstick using the mirror from my compact as we speed down an 8-lane road through downtown. I think that the cab driver must have gotten lost because he drops me off in front of a glimmering hotel with gold adornments. Fancy, I think to myself, praying this is the right place. As I walk up the steps to the second floor, I hear raucous laughter. I tell the host my friend’s name and he directs me to the room where the laughter is coming from.

A group of 12 of my friend’s friends are seated around a massive lazy susan with dishes lined around the edges—the males on one side and the females on the other. I know a couple of the people there, and my female friends and I embrace warmly and excitedly since we haven’t seen each other since last October. I greet the other women in turn, and we press our cheeks against the other’s, right then left, in greeting. I press my hand against my heart and bow slightly to the men, greeting them with “essalam eleykum.” My friend introduces me to the ones I haven’t met. Everyone else has already finished eating, but they encourage me to eat anyway and I awkwardly shove food into my mouth to abate my growling and starving stomach.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone--stares at their phones, busily typing messages, scrolling WeChat news feeds, and liking Nice (read: Instagram) photos—their phones mere inches from their face, their noses buried in their online life, the light from their phones reflecting off their eyes and foreheads. I slurp the tofu tomato soup and munch on the mushroom salad and devour the fried eggplant and sip the black tea, trying to make small talk with the girl next to me who doesn’t put down her phone the entire time I’m there.

A few people exit for home, and one of the dinner party members takes out a dutar and plays us a song while singing a folk song. Another one of the guests dances with the 3-year old daughter of one of the other guests, as the 3-year old dances and sings along beautifully turning her wrists and moving her arms and neck in time to the music. We clap and sing along while marveling at her cuteness.

At one point, the other guests pressure her to ask me to dance with her. When she asks me, “ussul oynaylimu?”, I can’t say no. So I get up and do my best imitation of Uyghur dance that I can while everyone cheers and claps along. At the end of the song, we bow to each other in thanks.

The rest of the evening commences in taking an endless stream of selfies with each other, not without a “beautification” software that removes the bags under my eyes and makes me look skinnier and whiter.

At 10 pm, we head out and exchange numerous goodbye pleasantries with each other until one of the ladies complains that can’t we just go home already. I just follow the crowd.

I chat with my friend as I walk her home, happy to use the “sen” (informal form for “you” reserved for close friends and family) rather than the “siz” (formal form for “you”) form of the verbs. It feels good to talk to someone like that. It feels like you’re talking to a sister.