| ESCAPE FROM DONKEYLAND |
[18 Aug 2008|08:21am] |
"Dust. Choking clouds of it envelope Hotan. Everywhere and everything is covered in a fine desert silt. The air is a brown haze, obscuring the new Chinese buildings and the mud-built Uighur structures that lead into their rabbit warren-like compounds, with their carpet looms, teapots, and dried dung. Even the famous statue of Mao shaking the old man's hand can't be seen through the dull screen of airborne dirt.I have dust in my hair, dirt granules in my mouth that grind on my molars, dust clumps up my nose and dirty dry desert earwax in my ears. I breathe it in and cough or sneeze. It scratches my eyes. It saturates my clothing and shreds the skin of my ass. I am covered in dust."
I wrote this a couple of days ago, in Hotan, hunkered down at a Turkish-style coffee house (a rarity among the tea-centric Uighurs), attempting refuge from the onslaught outside. I am now longer in Hotan, but in Urumqi, having braved a 24-hour bus ride across the dunes of the Taklamakan to make it back to civilization.
And Urumqi is indeed civilization, with a shiny downtown core and spanky shops selling designer clothes. All of that Chinese oil and mining money is based here, making the city much more cosmopolitan than you might think, despite the fact that it's rated as the most inland city in the world. Not a sea in sight. Let's just say I won't be going for sushi tonight.
(Civilized is indeed a relative word. Here I am at a huge PC room filled with modern equiptment, only having to endure the Chinese dude sitting across from me repeatedly hocking loogies onto the bare floor. Fucking savage. Death to serial spitters.)
Is Hotan civilization? Well, that's hard to say. It's located on the rim of one of the nastiest deserts in the world, inundating the place with dust for much of the year. Most of the population are hardscrabble Uighurs barely getting by, farming melons or raising sheep and goats. As the center of the country's jade trade, there is some real money there, but it's all in the pockets of the Han Chinese (go ahead boys), who buy and sell the semi-precious gems.
We found Hotan to have the heaviest vibe of any place we've been on this trip. The beggers there were sadder and more desperate than other parts of the country. The poverty was more apparant. The hatred in the eyes of some of the local Muslims was unmistakable. If ever a real Islamic insurrection occurs in China, it will likely start in Hotan.
A DISTURBING SIGHT
We were walking down the street the other day (attemtping to find a place to sell us plane tickets - that in of itself a chore), when we came upon a beggar. He held his young son in his arms and crawled down the street, moaning for help, or money, or both. He was the most distraught beggar I had ever come across; there was none of the shame and humility that a lot of Asian beggars exhibit. This guy was screaming into the universe. He was crazed and inconsolable.
An hour or two later, Sam was in a different area of the town, at the main market, and he came across a small crowd that was gathered around the same beggar. The beggar still held the boy in his arms, but now the boy was NOTICABLY PALE AND STIFF-LIMBED.
The man was crawling through the streets of town, holding his dead son.
That's a first for me.
(Maybe a hoax? A drugged boy? A good actor?)
DEATH TO THE INFIDEL
Sam, Simon, and I were eating a a literal hole-in-the-wall Uighur restaurant, a place serving soup, noodles, bread, and mutton skewers. Next to us sat a very conservative looking Uighur man (white skullcap, moustache) and his wife, who was well-covered up. Throughout our meal, he glared at us, rarely taking his eyes off our table. His was a look of death, one of complete hate. You could tell that our presence really bothered him, that it consumed him, and that he would like nothing more than to ram meat skewers through our eye sockets and should "Allah'u Akbar!"
Most of the Uighurs we met or dealt with have been great - very kind people. But I got the sense that some folks in Hotan would have welcomed an Al Qaeda operation at our hotel.
THE "HAPPY HOTEL"
The Lonely Planet, that holy and wholly inaccurate guidebook, recommends a Uighur-run hotel near the place we stayed our first night in Hotan. Wishing to save a little money and acting on the book's enthusiastic write-up, we moved in.
The book says that the Uighur family that runs the place is "extremely happy to receive foreign guests." We were received with casual indifference, to say the least. They couldn't even located the key to our room, but had to break the lock and put in a new one. And it didn't take too much to snap the cheap metal contraption.
The "hotel" was located in a courtyard off of the main street and was anything but "happy." Dirty, pantsless kids played in the filthy outdoor enclosure. One of them had just left a bright yellow turd in the grate on the concrete. This seemed to be a habit, as the act was repeated the next morning, which is no surprise, since people pretty much piss and shit at will in those parts, Muslim decency be damned. Flies buzzed in profusion, and the smell of grease and human waste hung in the air like damp laundry.
We were led into our room, which was adjacent to the kitchen. It was three-bed affair with no AC. One small window gave the place a modicum of ventilation, which was very necessary, since unholy sewage fumes wafted forth from the hellmouth of a squatter toilet in the "bathroom" connected to the room. This bathroom was little more than a tiny sink, a broken mirror, a barely-functional water faucet, and a stained ceramic hole to poop in. Anytime anyone had to enter this foul room, a wall of pure jenkum-gas blasted forth, causing anyone unfortunate to be in the main room to gag.
Outside of the room's window was an old bed, on which was piled copious amounts of filthy laundry. On the sill sat a cracked egg that had sat their for an indeterminate length, its yellowish contents running down the outside wall like a waxy drip of hardening snot.
I know these were poor people, and the room was cheap, but... could they at least have cleaned up the egg?
SERMON ON THE BERTH
Yesterday Sam and I boarded the bus to Urumqi, more than happy to be leaving the menacing environs of Hotan. Unless you're buying jade, there's really no reason to stick around.
Our bus was a "sleeper bus," with three rows of cramped beds, stacked double-decker. These beds are built for people of Chinese-height. There's no pretence in making Westerners comfortable. I'm 6'0" (182 cm) and didn't stand a chance. Sam, being 6'3", was screwed.
The bus was almost out of town, when it stopped for ten minutes. A taxi rolled up, out of which four Uighur men emerged and boarded the bus, taking the upper berths above us. Each of these men sported the requisite moustache and white skullcap of the truly pious.
The bus jolted into gear, starting its interminable journey. At the same time, one of the youngest of the four started his interminable monologue.
In loud and theatrical Uighur, this young man proceeded to hold court among the three of his peers. He talked and talked and talked. He went on and on and on and on. Every few minutes one of his rapt audience would humbly interject or finish a thought, but otherwise it was this one man and his one voice.
This went on for hours. Not one or two hours, but more like SIX. As I looked up at the man, his eyes were animated and afire; his chest heaved, and he gave off the unmistakable vibe of a religious zealot. Several times, as if to prove his piety to the rest of the Muslims on the bus, he dismounted the upper birth and prostated himself in prayer on the ground, only to return to his perch and SING.
At one point Sam and I decided to fight back, and attempted to carry on a loud and sustained conversation about American literature, but our spirit was one to match that of the upper deck mullah, and we were soon silenced, once again sentenced to the guttural cadence of his admonishments and inspirations...
THE END OF THE LINE
This return to Urumqi marks the end of real travels. Yesterday and today's cross-desert jaunt was the last new ground covered. Sam and I fly back to Shanghai in the morning for another meeting with Caf, and then we're off to Busan on Thursday.
It's been a crazy trip, one that I'll follow up with photos and perhaps a couple of more cohesive reflective posts once I'm back in Korea, where the internet is plenty and unrestricted.
Choosing to visit China during the Olympics was both a boon and a bust. Because of visa restrictions and extra-security, fellow travelers were few. Most places were uncrowded. In many spots it was obvious that we were among the only visitors in town. We never once walked up to a hotel and were denied a room because of lack of vacancies - and this was during peak seasons. Aside from a couple of big tourist sites mobbed by package tourists, we never in the slightest felt like partof a crowd.
Of course the Olympics ended up being a splinter in our ass as well. The security was mighty, often onerous. Our busses and cars stopped at innumerable checkpoints, where we dealt with uniformed and armed Chinese soldiers, police, and local Uighur security - who were usually unarmed and unshaven, in dusty and untucked uniforms. We were once denied reentry to a PC Room, because they had monitored us the day before and saw that we visited banned websites via proxy servers. Our bags were repeatedly searched. We never knew if we'd even be able to get to certain parts of the country, as authorities had the power to "close" certain places to tourists at will. We found this out face to face with a cop in Golmud, who refused to issue us permits to travel the southern road into Xinjian, severly altering the original course of the trip.
I've estimated that Sam and I have spent 136 hours on trains, busses, and in cars over the last 25 days. That's almost six days straight, or a good 25 percent of the time we've been gone. Jesus. Factor in time in the air, and you have about another 10 hours. This is the most ground I've ever covered in one month.
So China? A real mixed bag. Some of the best and worst stuff I've come across. The Koreans complain about about the Chinese whenever you bring them up:
"Oh... Chinahhh... So g-uh-reasy, so -d-uh-rty."
And they're right. The food is incredibly greasy, often served in massive pools of oil. And the place can be filthy. The worst bathrooms I've ever come across have all been in China (and I've traveled throughout the poorest parts of SE Asia). And often, at least out West, the people just go outside, wherever they can.
But this is a massive country, fully of extremes. It's run by a load of fascist bastards, but sometimes you wonder if they're only doing what they have to to keep the whole gig from falling apart.
Who knows.
Whatever the case, I'll probably be back. But next time I'll make sure that they Olympics are nowhere near its shores.
2012 seems like a good time.
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