The Long Hitch Home

by Jamie Maslin

  Further on, huge frozen desert hills riddled with caves and cloaked in dusty air gave way to rows of fruit and nut trees, then to vast tiered mountainsides. These were simply mind boggling. I’d seen tiered rice paddies elsewhere in Asia, but here the scale defied belief. They covered every hill and mountainside for mile after mile, leaving not a patch of ground unusable, transforming once unproductive highlands into vast terraced strips of workable fields. It was a truly monumental feat, so typical of the Chinese propensity for man-made scenic drama on a grand scale. And I was on my way to see their most renowned example: The Great Wall of China. I wanted to reach its terminal western section where a fortress was constructed during the Ming dynasty at a spot which signified the end of ancestral China.

  Located just beyond the outer edge of the city of Jiayuguan, on the fringes of the desert, was the Great Wall frontier post, “The First Pass Under Heaven.” It wasn’t quite what I expected. In fact, first impressions left me decidedly underwhelmed. Having, on a previous trip, visited an eastern section of the Great Wall a few hours outside the Chinese capital, Beijing, I had conjured up similar dramatic images of a giant never-ending serpent of stone, rising and falling at insane angles over craggy mountains that stretched to the horizon as if encircling the entire globe. Not quite so at Jiayuguan. Here it was all a bit mediocre. The landscape of the immediate vicinity was flat, rusty-colored desert scrub, and the wall practically non-existent beyond the fortress. Little more than a few vague battered clumps dotted the landscape, broken remnants that boasted nothing of the wall’s distant eastern glory or the epic two thousand mile journey it traverses to the shores of the Pacific. But if the wall was a disappointment then the fortress was an unexpected treat. Rising from the bare surroundings was an imposing barricade of pale vertical brick, incised along its length with battlements, radiating the sun to a degree that seemed wholly beyond the capacity of this morning’s bleak exposure. Perched on top of it were several pagoda towers, faded in color, sterilized after seven hundred years of sand blasting from the desert.

  The wall pre-dated the towers by almost a thousand years, and once signified the end of China. Beyond lay the wild hinterland, home to nomadic people: Mongols, Huns, Manchus. Here these supposed barbarians roamed free—hairy, milk-drinking undesirables that the wall was constructed to keep out. It was the ultimate “them and us” mentality, an ancient gated community of ludicrous proportion, drawing a physical and mental line between civilization and barbarism.

  I made my way through a dark vaulted tunnel entranceway into an empty courtyard, silent but for the fluttering of red and yellow flags. On all sides loomed the clean lines of the fortress walls, thick barricades of brick that enclosed me within a neat womb of order, distinct from the wild beyond their reach. In an adjoining courtyard were a handful of Chinese tourists, all making their way down from the parapets above on a wide ramp that would once have seen rampaging cavalry clambering up it in a frantic effort to rain down fury on invaders below. At the summit sat one of the pagoda towers, its three layers of precise classical roofing rising up at the corners in embellished peaks, decorated here with the heads of miniature dragons. Fragile-looking lattice window paneling stretched along its two upper tiers, contrasting sharply with the thick and squat brick walling at its base.

  Brick was the constant theme throughout the fortress, recalled in a nearby English placard:

  It is said that, during the construction of Jiayuguan, a highly skilled craftsman named Yi Kaizhen, proposed an accurate material-consumption scheme upon his careful investigations, calculations and designs. When the Pass was completely finished, all the building materials were just used up, with only one brick left. To commemorate this skilful craftsman, people kept the brick at the back eave of Huiji Tower, which stands in the West trap court.

  To the west was the place China cast away its undesirables: the Gate of Sorrows, where countless numbers were exiled beyond the country, expelled into a life of uncertainty outside. Forlorn departing messages were scratched along the tunnel walls. As recently as the late Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century, common prisoners were banished here, thrown out with their entire families with no hope of ever coming back, their foreheads bearing the marks of the eternally ostracized, painfully tattooed with permanent black characters. I tried my best to soak in the place and appreciate its history, but in truth I was disappointed. I’d pushed hard over the last few days, and had done so often with the motivation of reaching The Great Wall. Even with the Jiayuguan fortress, it was nothing like the splendor to the east.

  I got back on the road, this time with a new motivation. From here until the distant shores of the Mediterranean, I would be following a branch of the fabled network of ancient Silk Road trading routes that spanned the great cultural and geographic divide between the continents of Asia and Europe—the world’s first superhighway along which technology, religion, armies, commerce, and ideas once flowed, threading their way across one of the greatest, most inhospitable land routes on earth, an environment so hostile that for millennia it served as a cultural firewall, allowing East and West to develop distinct characters totally independent of each other.

  I was about to cast myself beyond the shadow of the Gate of Sorrows.

  * * *

  Three rides from Jiayuguan and by late afternoon I stood on a desolate expanse of road by a turning for the city of Yumen. Beyond stretched a barren landscape swathed in a low-lying opaque sky, tarnished by a coffee-colored diffusion of dust. It was bitterly cold, with a vicious chilling wind that tore straight through the thin fleece and sweater I had on. I would need to buy more clothing, not for comfort’s sake, but survival’s. I hadn’t packed any winter gear when setting off as it would have been a cumbersome dead-weight through the Australian outback and the tropics, but those environments seemed a world away now. With practically no vehicles on the road out here, and only about an hour of light left, I was tempted to call it a day, to head into Yumen and find a room where I could warm up. But after a magnificently long ride the day before I was slightly more inclined to push my luck, if only for a little longer. Thirty minutes passed and on the distant horizon appeared a lone white SUV, its form, like my anticipation, growing steadily on approach. It began to slow, but sadly not for me, making its way instead onto the access road for Yumen, just before my position. I tried to remain upbeat, but as I cast my attention back towards the expanse of cold and empty asphalt, I couldn’t help but let out a deep sigh. Suddenly, the sound of shouting stole me from my bout of self-absorption. At the bottom of the access road were two guys of about my age standing by the SUV, hollering my way, gesturing for me to join them.

  My resolve faltered; Yumen it would have to be. It wasn’t a long drive to reach Yumen, but in that short time I got the distinct impression that giving me a ride had been more for the guys’ amusement than a desire to help. Neither spoke any English and both kept talking at me and laughing at my inability to respond, as if this, along with me simply being in their car, was the funniest thing imaginable. It was good to have a lift but since the laughter was at, rather than with me, I was keen for it to come to an end.

  Soon I was riding into an ugly town, with little to distinguish it from the multiple other Chinese towns I had passed through on the way here. Clasping my hands together, I made a sleeping gesture to indicate a hotel. We stopped at a restaurant instead. I knew the routine. If they were eating, then they would want me to join them. I’d already had a meal today—my average daily consumption for a long time now—and considered declining, but in the end I decided to accept so I could warm up.

  It was an interesting-looking establishment, containing multiple fish tanks to make sure that the “catch of the day” was seriously fresh, wriggling only moments before hitting the table. I hoped popularity was an indication of quality, as the place was heaving. Soon after sitting down, three of the guys’ friends arrived, two men and a woman. They looked at me aghast, and the guys at them with an amused, self-s
atisfied expression of “look what we’ve found.” Laughter followed, most of it aimed at me, which only came to a close when the food arrived.

  First out was a communal fish stew in a large elegant porcelain bowl that contained the entire creature from head to tail. This was followed by a procession of plates containing everything from battered pork in a sweet and sticky bright-red sauce, to unknown meat served with succulent green vegetables. By now, I was fully used to sitting at a table with others talking a language I didn’t know. I would nod and smile occasionally, but mainly just got stuck into the food, which, it’s got to be said, was exceptional today. At one stage I was presented with a spoon—amid more laughter—but persevered with chopsticks and was pleasantly surprised at my increasing competence with these, which grew daily.

  If my assumption that I was little more than an object of amusement had at all been in doubt, then it was confirmed when some beers arrived. A rather obvious conspiracy was hatched among the group, who proceeded to take it in turns to toast me, doing so with increasing frequency between mouthfuls of food. For etiquette to be observed I had to drink with the one toasting me, but the others could sit it out until they were leading the toast. It wasn’t like we were knocking back spirits so I plodded on, but after several bottles I decided to turn the tables. I sussed out the weakest link and proceeded to toast him again and again and again, eventually winning by way of submission.

  On culmination of the meal and drinking contest, the driver of the SUV turned to me and began miming singing into a microphone, complete with contrived “la la la” sounds. More laughter followed and it soon became clear that he wanted me to tag along with them to a karaoke bar. If it hadn’t been for several beers I would have probably bailed out, but instead thought, “Oh, what the hell.” I agreed, but insisted on going there by way of a hotel to dump my backpack. A quick stop at a fair priced place nearby and on we went.

  Just walking the short distance from the SUV to the bar was painfully cold. By now it was dark, and the light’s departure had seen the temperature dive much further. Inside the entrance to the bar hung a thick drape of fabric, mitigating loss of heat whenever anyone opened the door. Pushing through, we entered into a dark hallway that led up a flight of stairs lined with colored lights. At the top was another drape, this time made of plastic cut into multiple strips, beyond which lay a small reception. Another red corridor gave the place a dodgy strip-joint or brothel atmosphere. We headed first to our left and into one of multiple private rooms decked out with the necessary apparatus: comfy seats, chunky microphone, big screen television, and a remote controller to select the songs.

  Everyone wanted me to go first, but for now I managed to squirm my way out of it and sat back nursing a beer while the others took turns singing with gusto to Chinese pop. After a while we piled down the corridor in the opposite direction to a large communal room with a stage and a huge screen. We had the whole place to ourselves and this time refusal was not an option. My problem was there were only four songs in English: Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On; Michael Jackson’s Thriller; and two Madonna tracks, Like a Virgin and Bad Girl.

  With a reluctant sigh, I got up on the stage and let them take their pick. First up was Like a Virgin. I can’t really say my heart was in it, but I plowed on regardless, doing my best to vocally lament on being “touched for the very first time.” They loved it, and immediately selected another, this time Celine. As I stood up there “singing”—although it could hardly have been described as such—and looked down on the audience below, my world took a surreal twist. I knew they couldn’t understand a word I was saying, nor me them, so halfway through the song I decided, for my own amusement, to mix things up a bit. It was probably a symptom of spending too many long hard days on the road far from English speaking company, but I stopped singing and commenced a stand up comedy routine with the microphone instead, doing my best to remember jokes from an old Bernard Manning video I used to own, while effecting his guttural working-class northern English accent.

  “This bloke goes into a Chinese restaurant and says, ‘Hey, you!’ and the guy working there replies, ‘Err, how you know my name?’”

  Blank expressions from the crowd. I launched into another.

  “Burglar breaks into a house and he looks about him and thinks, ‘I’ll have that television, I’ll have that nice antique clock over there,’ and a voice behind him says, ‘I can see you, and Jesus can see you.’ He spins around and it’s just a parrot on a perch. ‘Fucking hell,’ says the burglar, ‘was that you?’ And the parrot says, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You scared me half to death you did,’ says the burglar, ‘what’s your name?’ ‘Archibald,’ replies the parrot. ‘Archibald!’ laughs the burglar, ‘That’s a funny fucking name for a parrot.’ And the parrot says, ‘Not as funny as that pitbull over there called Jesus.’”

  I was rapidly running out of material so finished up with my favorite.

  “Jesus is walking through Nazareth and he sees this great big crowd of people stoning this prostitute to death. He yells out, ‘Oi, you lot, fucking pack that in! Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.’ And this great big rock comes flying over his head and hits the prostitute smack in the mouth. He turns around and says, ‘Sometimes mother, you piss me off!’”

  It was all in the delivery.

  I signed off.

  “You’ve been a wonderful audience. My name’s Jamie Maslin. Goodnight. And God bless.”

  I promptly handed the microphone back, turned on my heels, and without so much as a glance backward, headed off to my hotel.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hypothermic Hiatus

  In a sense, you could say I would be leaving China today, not officially, there was a long way yet before that, but culturally. If all went well I would make it to the country’s Xinjiang province, a giant final-frontier wild-west, made up of sprawling deserts, vast arid plains and some of the world’s highest mountains, bordered by eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan. Often described historically as “Chinese Turkestan,” Xinjiang, or Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region as it is officially known, has far more in common with the former Soviet Central Asian republics (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan) than to China, sharing much of the “stans” culture, history and language, which belong to a larger closely related family.

  Central Asia has seen a sweep of history as big, daunting, and complex as anywhere, covering thousands of years, punctuated by successive waves of conquest and migration, the rise and fall of mighty empires—including the Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great, and the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan—and dynamic cultural exchange brought about by the famous Silk Road trading routes that traverse its territory, linking the civilizations of East and West. It is a region of staggering diversity. The huge wider Turkestan region outside of Xinjiang was artificially splintered in the 1920s when the U.S.S.R. created the separate “stans.” Before then the area’s general populace had little concrete notion of borders or nation states, with people identifying themselves along religious, tribal, linguistic, occupational and social lines.

  As for Xinjiang, it was declared an autonomous region of China in 1955. At the time its population was more than ninety percent non-ethnic Han Chinese, with the vast majority being Uyghurs, who speak a different language (similar to Uzbek), write in a different script (slightly modified Arabic) and practice a different religion (Islam). Today around fifty percent of Xinjiang’s inhabitants are Han Chinese, forty-two percent Uyghurs, six percent Kazaks and one percent Kyrgyz, along with several minority ethnicities. Such a huge swing in the area’s racial demographic is no mere accident, but the intentional result of “sinicisation,” that is, the encouragement by Chinese authorities of mass immigration into the region by Han Chinese settlers, with the intention of diluting Uyghur nationalism. Despite the “autonomous” in its official name, Xinjiang is very much under the control of Beijing, wit
h any political dissent or separatist desires being met, as in neighboring Tibet to the south, with an iron fist. In Chinese characters, the “jiang” in Xinjiang comprises the symbols for bow, field, land, and border, an appropriate amalgamation for this untamed frontier and historic mixing bowl of nomad and settler. Covering sixteen percent of the country’s land surface, and an area slightly larger than Western Europe or Alaska, Xinjiang is by far the biggest of China’s provinces, but is, nevertheless, largely empty, having only one major city, Urumqi, and a total population of just thirteen million. With Urumqi being the farthest city in the world from the ocean, and the province never nearer than two thousand miles from any coast, it is besieged by fearsome weather conditions, something it looked likely I would encounter today.

  Come dawn I stepped out from the warmth of the hotel’s lobby into a brutal all-encompassing freezer. I had on every item of clothing in my possession, whether clean or not, multiple layers of socks, underwear and T-shirts, all worn in a futile attempt to create enough dead-air space to keep the cold at bay. Despite my lack of winter attire, I decided to push on into the horrendous conditions, striding off along the road past a lone donkey cart. I could have stuck around in Yumen and tried to find somewhere local to buy winter clothing, but not being a particularly big place, it seemed unlikely to have the sort of modern lightweight gear that I was after; thick black gowns and fur-lined hats, perhaps, but I needed something portable that would fit in my pack and see me through the coming wilds of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. If I could just hold on until the next big city, Urumqi (the capital of Xinjiang), then I was sure I could find something appropriate.