by Chris Tharp
“I find it remarkable,” Simon said, “that so many people still use donkeys as transport. I mean, this is the 21st century. China is rapidly developing into a high-tech powerhouse. Just ten minutes ago we were using computers. I sat there and uploaded hundreds of photographs from my digital camera onto Facebook, and now I come outside only to see men driving carts pulled by fucking donkeys. It boggles the mind.”
“They’re such sad creatures,” remarked Sam.
“I find them quite adorable,” admitted Simon.
“I’ve never been around donkeys until coming here,” I added. “We don’t have many in America.”
“Did you go to the livestock market in Kashgar?” Simon asked.
“Yeah, we did,” I said. “We actually priced the donkeys. How much does a healthy adult go for, Sam?”
“About a hundred and seventy bucks.”
Simon raised his eyebrows. “Wow, that’s a bit dearer than I would I have expected.”
“That’s the going rate, evidently,” I said, “pre-haggle.”
“What I loved about the Kashgar livestock market,” mused Sam, “was how occasionally a serious donkey would let loose a loud, harsh bray that kind of rallied all the lesser donkeys to a common cause. Donkeys from all around would follow suit and loudly bray in solidarity.”
“I remember that,” Simon added. “It would catch on and spread, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah, like a brush fire,” continued Sam. “The donkey’s bray… man, listen to it. It’s a ridiculous sound… HEE-haww! HEE-hawwwww! It’s a vigorous complaint against all the yokes those poor beasts are forced to endure by our hand. It’s a moan of protest—a sound that tells us just how much donkeys hate having to toil for the benefit of humans. It is an implacable honk of slavery. My heart just bleeds for those guys. You can’t help but pity them.”
*
Like all towns in Western China, Hotan was segregated, with newer Chinese residents and the Uyghur majority living separately and rarely mixing. But with each year, more and more Chinese settlers were arriving in Xinjiang, urged on by the government’s view that large, permanent populations of Chinese in the country’s far west will act as an insurance policy to keep the province firmly in the Motherland’s fold. In my travels throughout Xinjiang, it was obvious that the Uyghurs had no love for, and little in common with, their Chinese masters.
In Kashgar, a huge television monitor had been erected in the main plaza, directly in front of the central mosque. This giant screen played Chinese Olympic events throughout the day and evening, yet was coldly ignored by the town’s residents. In any other part of the country, it would have been the site of much rooting and revelry, but no crowds gathered to cheer the Chinese athletes on, because most Uyghurs believe neither themselves nor their land to be part of China.
In Hotan, the Communist Party constructed a huge statue of Mao Tse Tung receiving Kurban Tulum, the old Uyghur man who is said to have traveled 1,500 kilometers across the desert on the back of his donkey to “thank” the great Premier for “liberating” his people, making him the only person in China to share a statue with Mao. The Uyghurs are forced to see this every day, a constant reminder of who is in control of their destiny. That statue is an insult from the east; it only serves to rub their noses in the shit, and they hate it accordingly.
The citizens of Hotan seemed to chafe under Beijing more visibly than anywhere else we had been in the region. The frustration and hostility toward China and even the tourists they brought in was palpable. As we walked the streets that day, we were subject to hot glances and hard stares. The people we passed were all scowls and furrowed brows, and I could taste their anger and disgust. The air was literally heavy with dust, but it was also heavy with the peoples’ despair, which physically manifested itself in the form of that omnipresent, grey-brown cloud.
That evening we went for dinner at a tiny restaurant. We quietly munched on skewered lamb, thick noodles in savory broth, and the heavy naang bread served up everywhere in Xinjiang. Just two tables away sat a man and his wife, also eating dinner. The man sported a black mustache and wore a white skullcap, looking very much the part of a conservative and pious local Muslim. He sat facing us, and throughout the meal he glared our way with eyes afire. He ate slowly and said nothing to his wife, boring into us with an expression of pure, naked hatred. She chewed in silence as well, in the manner of a woman well accustomed to her husband’s foul turns of humor.
The next morning, we left our room for coffee and breakfast. A fresh, glistening yellow turd once again graced the courtyard’s drain grate. After eating, Simon went back to the hotel, and Sam and I headed to the travel desk of a large Chinese hotel in the center of town in an attempt to book a flight back to Shanghai. The pretty woman behind the desk spoke zero English; this went for everyone at the hotel, and was to be expected in Xinjiang province. With my tiny amount of Chinese I’d picked up during the trip, along with the guidebook—which contained the Chinese characters for all the place names—we managed to convey where and when we wished to travel, and soon our tickets were secured.
Our flight left from Ürümqi, Xinjiang’s capital city. How we would get there was still an open question. We could travel back to Kashgar and jump on the train—a two-day trip—or take the twenty-four-hour sleeper bus through the heart of the Taklimakan. The latter was the cheaper and more practical option, despite the fact that the “beds” on Chinese sleeper buses are generally designed for Chinese-sized people. Tall Westerners such as us find that it’s impossible to fully stretch our legs on such buses, and after a few hours, what is supposed to be a comfortable ride becomes an endurance test aboard a rolling torture machine.
When we walked out of the hotel, we heard a man’s voice reverberating through the street.
Sam pointed: “Check it out.”
Across the road, a man was shouting. His cries were a high-pitched wail that seemed to erupt from the very core of his being. He was half-crawling down the sidewalk, carrying a young child in his arms. He was beyond distraught, drenched in misery and inconsolable desperation, appealing to the passersby for some sort of assistance, it seemed.
“What’s he doing?” Sam asked.
“Probably some sort of extreme begging.”
“Is the kid sick?”
“Could be,” I said. “Or maybe he just drags him out of the house to score sympathy points, like the beggar women with their naked babies on the sidewalks in Bangkok.”
“Hmmmm….” Sam pursed his lips, taking in the scene. “I wish I could understand what he’s saying.”
Puzzled by the man and his child, we walked back to the Happy Hotel to get Simon and then head for lunch.
“The smell is getting worse, I think.” Simon complained as we walked away from the effluvial complex. “I can’t stand it any longer… I can feel the typhoid taking root. This whole town is a shithole.”
“It’s not so bad,” I said, denying the obvious. “Besides, we still haven’t seen that much.”
“Well I’d like to see a restaurant soon,” said Sam. “I’m starving.”
“Okay,” I said. “What are you guys in the mood for?”
“How about some Chinese food?” asked Simon. “I’ve been eating nothing but mutton and bread for two weeks now and am well stopped up. I haven’t had a decent shit in yonks.”
“Yeah, I could do with some actual vegetables,” Sam said.
“And it would be nice to eat away from the glare of Al Qaeda sympathizers,” said Simon.
“Well then, Chinese it is.”
My pronouncement proved to be premature, however, as we soon discovered that actual Chinese restaurants were hard to come by in good ol’ Hotan. We walked around for over an hour in search of an open place serving up proper, oily Chinese grub, but kept coming up short. I would have never believed that one day I would have to look hard to find a Chinese restaurant in China, but this was only China by the loosest of definitions.
Eventually we happen
ed upon an actual Chinese joint and were warmly greeted by the husband-and-wife owners when we stepped through the door. We were their only customers and ordered large, diving into a huge lunch of beef, chicken, and countless veggies, all fried up in heaps of oil in a big metal wok. We washed this feast down with ice-cold beer, far away from the disapproving glances of any local Muslims. For just that hour, we were back in China and glad for it.
After lunch we hiked to Hotan’s main traditional market in an attempt to flatten our now-distended bellies. The markets in the towns and cities of China sell everything, and are often the clearest glimpse into the character and soul of a place. Visiting the local market is always a must, and that of Hotan was no exception.
The market was located clearly on the Uyghur side of the tracks. The men baked bread and sold intricate carpets, while the women manned the clothing stalls. Kabob smoke filled the air, causing my mouth to gush saliva, despite the fact that I was still nearly sick-full from lunch. Men sat at tables sipping tea and smoking cigarettes, eyeing us warily as we strolled by. The narrow streets were full of jostling locals buying and selling or just passing through on donkey carts or motorcycles. This was a real, working market—gritty, multihued, and expansive—all the mystical splendor of Central Asia laid out for us to see. Simon stopped here and there to snap photographs, while Sam and I walked and turned our heads in 180-degree arcs in an attempt to fully absorb the scene. Suddenly, Sam cried out: “OW!”
He stopped and put his hand on a spot on his upper back.
“What’s up, man?”
“Motherfucker…” He bent down and picked up a rock from the street. “Someone just threw a rock at me.”
“What?”
“Someone chucked this rock at me and it hit me in the back.”
We turned around to spot the culprit, but no one stood out in the general hum of the scene.
“Did you see that?” Sam asked Simon who was just catching up.
“See what?”
“Did you see someone huck this rock at me?” He shook the stone in his fist.
“Naw, mate. I was taking photos of that hat stall. Why would someone throw a rock at you?”
“That is a very good question,” Sam said, releasing the rock, which fell onto the uneven street below.
We pressed on through the market, basking in the sights and smells, until we heard the familiar sound of a man’s howling voice.
“Isn’t that the guy from before?” Sam said. “The one carrying the kid?”
I searched for the source, and just up ahead saw a cluster of people gathered around a man who was kneeling on the ground.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
Again he screamed to the sky, calling to God Himself for comfort. He still held the boy, only as we approached, we noticed that the child’s face was pale blue and his limbs stiffened.
We were wrong: this man wasn’t begging. He was absolutely crazed with grief. He had crawled all day through the dusty streets of Hotan, screaming out to God, carrying the body of his dead son.
*
Sam and I got out of Hotan as soon as we could—that night—to be certain. We abandoned the Happy Hotel, even though the rooms were paid up through the morning, and bought tickets on the first night sleeper bus back to Ürümqi. From there, two days later, we would fly back to Shanghai and then on to Korea, our home. Simon planned to tough it out in Hotan one more day before moving east, further along the southern Silk Road, all the way the route’s terminus in the lonely outpost of Golmud. I shook his hand, wished him well, and along with Sam, climbed onto the bus and squeezed my body into the micro-bed, settling in for the long ride across the Taklimakan.
Like most bus journeys in that part of the world, it took a near-eternity to get out of town. A bus doesn’t leave until it’s totally full, and this was no exception. I noticed that there were a few empty bed/seats, and hoped in futility that the driver would press on, but this, of course, was expecting too much. He stopped several times on the way out of town to pick up more passengers, at one point pulling over to the side of the highway while he loudly negotiated a fare over his cell phone.
We waited thirty minutes for these final passengers to arrive. They came by taxi, and got out, stashed their bags underneath, and proceeded to take the last four beds, which happened to be directly above us. Each of these men sported the requisite mustache and skullcap of the truly devout.
The bus jolted into gear, beginning its lengthy journey across one of the most inhospitable places on the planet. At the same time, one of the four men above began his monologue.
In loud and theatrical Uyghur, this young man proceeded to hold court among his three peers. He talked and they listened and he talked some more. From his mouth poured forth an uninterrupted cascade of passionate, guttural language. Every few minutes one of his rapt compatriots would humbly interject or finish a thought, but otherwise it was all about this one man and his one voice.
This went on for hours, building in a crescendo. From the frequent Allahs and Mohammeds peppered throughout this ongoing soliloquy, I managed to suss out the general subject of his rant. This guy was endowed as a religious authority by his friends and embraced it for all it was worth, delivering a several-hour sermon for all of the bus to hear. As I looked up at him, his black eyes were animated and ablaze; his chest heaved, and beads of sweat formed above his mustache. The man radiated zealotry. Several times, as if to prove his piety to the rest of the Muslims on the bus, he dismounted the upper berth and prostrated himself in prayer on the ground, only to return to his perch and sing.
I tried to block out this man’s tirade, but nothing I did could stem the tide. I tried to read from a book of short stories. I tried working on a crossword. I tried to nap. At one point Sam and I attempted to drown him out with our own loud American conversation (something about J.D. Salinger, I think, since it was his stories I was reading), but quickly lost focus and energy. I then tried to really concentrate on and enjoy the fantastically violent Uyghur-dubbed Rambo IV that played several times back-to-back on the coach’s TV, but nothing could block out the endless drone of this young man’s fervor. The only thing that gave me any kind of solace was a fantasy played out in my head that involving the use of long, sharp knives.
Eventually the Imam of the Bus simmered down, and like the rest of the passengers, fell into a light sleep. I tried to snooze as well, but the cramped quarters made this impossible. The only way to stretch out my legs was to thrust them out into the aisle, but the metal edge of the bed’s frame just cut into the bottom of my calf, creating a whole new annoying pain to reckon with.
The Taklimakan basin is home to China’s state-run petroleum industry. Most of the other vehicles on the road were oil trucks. The few settlements we passed through were all drilling stations: towering metal assemblies lit up by orange orbs; alien permanence among the ever-shifting dunes. The men that work such stations must be deeply acquainted with the dull ache of isolation and loneliness.
After many hours, we stopped at a wind-beaten outpost in the middle of the wasteland. It was a truck stop of sorts. A large building stood defiant against the perpetual onslaught of dust and sand. Inside the building was a small store and dingy restaurant, along with a brothel, glowing hard against the night in white-and-red neon. A dozen or so bored-looking prostitutes lingered on couches in front of the glass storefront. I lit a smoke and watched them, squinting in the grit-filled air. Several of the girls noticed my curiosity and jumped up, revealing slim hips stuffed into hot pants or miniskirts, cleavage, and brown legs. Wobbling in ridiculous platform heels, they rushed to the edge of the glass and hurriedly waved me over. I raised my hand and waved back. They lingered at the window, smiling, and beckoning with grand, arcing gestures. I went to wave again but gave up midway, dropping my arm and releasing my cigarette, which fell onto the dirt. I snuffed out the ember with my foot, turned, and walked away over the parched ground. As I re-boarded the bus, I tried not to think about the thousand
s of truckers and oil workers that had been in and out of those poor, poor girls.
Epilogue
In July of 2009, less than a year after our visit, Ürümqi was wracked by five days of ethnic rioting. What exactly set it off is up for debate, though many maintain that the unrest was in reaction to the murder of two Uyghurs in the southern city of Shaoguan. Uyghurs in Ürümqi reacted with protests that quickly turned into a rampage, with mobs attacking Han Chinese in the streets; they in turn organized and struck back accordingly, resulting in blood on both sides. Chinese authorities say 197 people were killed and 1,721 injured, though Uyghur exile groups maintain that the death toll is much higher. The crackdown was swift and harsh, with the Uyghurs bearing the brunt of it: Many men were detained and some “disappeared” in the police sweeps that followed.
The rioting seems to have poisoned the climate for Uyghur-Han relations, with things just getting worse since 2009. Recently Uyghur separatist groups staged bloody attacks within China, both inside and out of Xinjiang. In October 2013, a car driven by alleged Uyghur separatists plowed into a crowd at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, bursting into flames and killing five. Thirty-eight people were injured, including foreign tourists. In March 2014, a group of black-clad Uyghur men and women entered a train station in Kunming and attacked bystanders with knives, killing thirty-three and injuring more than a hundred. A month later, a similar attack was launched in Guangzhou, injuring six. In May 2014, two cars packed with explosives plowed through safety barricades and detonated in a busy street market in Ürümqi, killing thirty-one and injuring ninety. And on October 18th, 2014, just two days before I sent the final edit of this book to the publisher, four Uyghur attackers armed with knives and explosives killed eighteen Han Chinese at a farmers’ market near Kashgar.