The Week

Because Urumqi is as far from Shanghai as New York is from Los Angeles, I had to take a flight – on China Southern Airlines, one of China’s domestic carriers.

It was not a pleasant flight. Though it’s been nearly ten years since that flight, I can still remember the flight as if it were yesterday. Especially the smoke permeating the cabin.

No, not engine smoke. Cigarette smoke.

Seems China hadn’t gotten the memo that smoking on flights was not a good idea. Don’t know if they still think that way; if you’ve flown on China Southern, or another domestic Chinese airline, please let me know if it’s still true or not.

Anyway, I can’t recall ever being happier that a plane landed. I don’t think I’d have cared if the flight had crash-landed. I was just glad it landed.

But the fun wasn’t relegated to the flight.

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my new boss, the school owner, didn’t speak English. As a result, he met me at the airport with his family, including his 13-year-old daughter, who did speak a modicum of English. She was my translator for the next week.

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. She was a nice enough girl and the family a nice enough one. But I couldn’t help thinking a familiar refrain that I’d thought in Korea, too: the owner of a steel company usually knows steel and the business of steel very well – why in Korea and China (and elsewhere) do people who have no knowledge of English think they can run an English school? I know some people would argue that business is business, but I repeat: how often have you run across a steel magnate who doesn’t know steel? A bank CEO who doesn’t know banking?

Anyway, Scott (he was able to introduce himself in English) was in the computer parts and service business. He apparently was a very wealthy man, but it’s all relative.

He and his family showed me Han Chinese culture amidst the week-long Lunar New Year celebrations. Elaborate dinners at sumptuous restaurants. Our own fireworks celebration in a local park. Skiing, snowboarding, and tobagganing at a local resort. Hitting tourist spots for what I realized later were Han Chinese spins of East Turkestan traditions.

At the hotel in Urumqi where I was staying, I even got the obligatory call from a prosititute, which I’d read would be coming. It’s common in big Chinese cities for hookers to become aware that a foreigner is staying at a hotel, particularly a nice one. Sometimes, the hotels have relationships with these women and will call them. Other times, the ladies will call up or visit the hotel and get the room numbers of the names that are obviously foreign.

Regardless of the method, a call is made, in broken English, to the room where the foreigner is staying. If you’re unaware of this practice, it’s easy to get yourself in trouble because any misunderstanding of what is being said that results in a “yes” response from you constitutes an agreement to whatever has been proposed. A visit to your room, whether or not there is sex or even fondling, even if it’s opening the door to answer a knock before quickly realizing what’s going on and rejecting any advances, can result in your being charged a fee. Refusal to pay this fee often ends up in beatings and/or worse. Many hotels, complicit as they are in this practice because they receive a cut, will not side with the foreigner – and neither will the local police. Of course, you’ll never get anyone to admit that this actually happens.

Though I knew it was coming, the call still nearly fooled me. The woman on the other end said my name, albeit in garbled fashion, and offered to help me during my time in Urumqi. Her English was more than passable enough, and her offer not so transparent, that I nearly acquiesced. Being alone in a strange place and being awoken from sleep early in the a.m. both contributed to my nearly being weak enough to say “yes”. Fortunately, I saw through the scheme before I crossed the point of no return.

As for any interaction with Uyghurs, it was limited to getting kebabs at street vendor stalls or at small restaurants and taking them to go. At the Urumqi hotel, as nearly all tourist hotels, there were only Han working. And no Uyghur food. Outside of Urumqi, at some of the tourist spots, however, there was more Uyghur presence in hotels and restaurants, but we didn’t frequent those places as much.

But I saw Uyghurs everywhere. Eating at and running Uyghur restaurants. Riding bikes through neighborhoods. Operating mom and pop convenience stores. Walking to school. Sitting on curbs. Pushing carts. Selling their wares. Playing hauntingly beautiful and often quite rhythmic traditional songs.

Because of the language barrier, I was unable to ask questions. But I watched and observed, marveling at how marginalized economically a majority population could be in its own land.

After a week being in and around Urumqi, and of wondering when I would head north, we finally left for the nearly 200-mile trip to Karamay.

“We” being Scott (no English) and me (no Mandarin). Scott’s family lived in Urumqi and didn’t make the trip with us.

And for such an uneventful trip where the communication was possible only through hand gestures and monosyllabic stabs at each other’s language, it was unforgettable.

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.

Uyghurnomics: Loyal Supporters? Soccer and the Modern Uyghur Identity (working paper)

Uyghurnomics: Loyal Supporters? Soccer and the Modern Uyghur Identity (working paper)

I'm still working on my next entry "A Week in Shanghai", but I came across this post this morning, so I thought I'd share the link. Quite an interesting read and very illuminating.

Till my next update...