The Meeting

Training in Shanghai was boring. I think the only excitement was how the other Academic Director trainees and I compared where we each were going; I was regarded as an anomaly because I was the one going out to Karamay in the wild, wild west. I would be closer to Moscow than I would be to Beijing.

The first two days of training were at the main office – only twice did we go out to observe, and on both occasions, we only went to the closest EF school, which was about a fifteen-minute drive.

To that point, I’d eaten nothing but Chinese food and interacted with either native English-speaking foreigners or with Han Chinese. I’d not yet met a Uyghur, but I had looked up where a sizable population of them lived in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t close to where I was staying in Pudong, and with training starting early every morning, I hadn’t yet ventured out into the labyrinth that is Shanghai.

A chance meeting on the third day of training changed all that; in retrospect, it changed the course of my entire time in China.

On that third day, Wednesday, we trainees visited a branch school in another part of Shanghai, further away, and this is where I met Yoldash. I don’t really remember his name, but I would give him a fake name here even if I did know it.

He taught English, but it wasn’t until later that I realized how unusual this was, even in Shanghai. Uyghurs don't often work at such established franchises in the rather nice positions of English teacher. That Yoldash was able to speak such good English was then, though not later, another surprising revelation to me.

He and I talked for as much time as we could. He was pleasantly surprised at my knowledge of and interest in Uyghurs and particularly amazed when I told him I was going to Karamay, for he had dozens of friends from there.

I didn’t hesitate when he invited me to a party/celebration at a restaurant in his neighborhood the next night. Where it was and how’d I get there or back to Pudong were of no concern to me. I had to meet him and his friends.

The next night, my stomach flipped in excitement as the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. My fellow trainees were with me, and we beheld this restaurant together: neon Chinese characters and Arabic-eque script. My companions were skeptical, but the Uyghur writing convinced me were at the right place – well, at least at a Uyghur restaurant.

The front door opened into a lobby area where Yoldash greeted us in typical Uyghur fashion: right arm across his torso so his hand, in a fist, rested on his heart.

“Assamau-alaikum,” he greeted us.

“Vei-alaikum-assalam,” I answered tentatively, not sure I said it correctly.

But Yoldash smiled broadly. “Nice to see all of you. Follow me.”

We followed him into this large ballroom-style room where, in the middle, was a large, empty wood floor with two huge chandeliers hanging above. Surrounding this empty area, camped on thick carpet, were dozens of round tables, each with a white tablecloth blanketing it like snow blankets a meadow and illuminated by smaller chandeliers. Intricately patterned rugs hung on the walls next to ornate lamps and portraits of people with Central Asian features.

From third grade to ninth grade, I had taken ballroom dancing at my parents' behest. This room reminded me of that ballroom, except where the stuffy reluctance of pre-teens doing something their parents had forced them to do infiltrated that room, the mouthwatering aromas of lamb, fish, and chicken permeated this one.

Whereas those ballrooms of yore were full of the youthful nervousness and innocence, this room was filled with celebration, not of anything in particular, but of life, of being with good friends and new ones.

And where that old ballroom boomed with classical ballroom music, this one reverberated with laughter and the gutteral beauty that is the Uyghur language.

The images of this restaurant, new to me on that night, would become familiar to me in the coming months.

But on this night, it was all new. Exciting. Educational. Illuminating. Yoldash introduced our group to scores of people. With every introduction of me, there accompanied exclamations, smiles, and warm hugs or hearty handshakes.

I was the one going to Karamay. I was the one who knew who Uyghurs were and what was going on in the west. A surprising number knew English and I was able to learn a lot more than I already knew. I was given lists of phone numbers to call, restaurants to visit, and people to talk to. One man gave me a particular name, that of his cousin, and she would become my best friend in Karamay, my Uyghur “sister”, if you will.

I left the restaurant that night with confirmation that I had made the right decision and was headed to the right place.

But it would be a week or more before I was able to hit up the contacts I’d made in Shanghai. Lunar New Year was on the horizon and my first week in East Turkestan would be spent in Urumqi with the owner of the school, my boss.

And he didn’t speak a word of English.