The gray Xinjiang sky was laced with coal dust, matching the color of my undifferentiated Chinese apartment block and the color of dirty laundry water. There were ten of us foreign teachers there, all forced to live in the same building as the foreigners who’d stayed there before us. Our ‘free’ computers were bugged and surprisingly riddled with porn viruses. Karamay University, who had control of my passport, also had a key to my apartment. Often when I got home from school there would be someone inside already, repairing some item which I’d never reported was broken, because it wasn’t. We were constantly watched. This was life in the Chinese section of Karamay, Xinjiang, China, February 2003.
When we first arrived, we were paraded from one dinner with Chinese dignitaries and leaders to the next, being surveyed and scrutinized like aliens. They stared while we sucked on gelatinous chicken feet. We had no idea what we should do with the phalanges. (Should we really spit them out in the ashtrays? Or on the floor, like in the other restaurant?) They watched us awkwardly spear rubbery pea-sized snail meat from their shells with toothpicks. They gasped in etiquette horror when we freely and desperately reached for our glasses of Wusu pijiu (beer). Protocol stated that in order to drink, a toast had to be made with the entire table, and the glass had to be downed in one. It was a real pain in the ass.
We were hungry. We wanted a bite of food, and of life, without people creeping up on us in pleather shoes, always watching. We wanted to be free! We were young and exploring the world! But the Chinese had us under their fierce gaze. It wasn’t until we met our Uyghur friends that we could ease out of their grip, and finally feel like normal human beings.
It took courage to approach the Uyghur ladies at the tandoori near my apartment block. I walked past it every day after school. The salivating smell and the heat from the oven cut their way through the dry cold. The ladies reached inside the oven and pulled out flat round breads with swirling patterns. They flicked off specks of oven stuck to the bottoms, then sprinkled sesame seeds on top. Buying them became a regular after school treat for me, along with the comforting solace found in the women’s dark, comforting eyes.
The Uyghur people are of Turkish descent and primarily Muslim, and have lived in Xinjiang a lot longer than the Han Chinese people have. The Chinese decided to inhabit the area because of the natural resources here–a ton of oil, coal and natural gas. So, they arrived and put up their gray buildings, built their roads and restaurants, and started to suppress the local culture. That’s why we couldn’t find them at first. If we foreigners were scrutinized, why would Uyghur people want to hang out with us and be further watched themselves?
As soon as my friends and I were bold enough to decline invites from our Chinese watchers–which they were not pleased with–we explored other corners of the city with our new friends. We ate in the tiny baimien places, where stodgy noodles were hand pulled, slapped down, then tossed in a wok with spring onion and egg, or mutton and bell peppers. It was the simplest of dishes and cost next to nothing, but it filled a void. I wasn’t sure what that void was at the time, except hunger.
My Chinese colleagues told me I’d get fat if I ate so much baimien. But I loved that one-stop bowl of deliciousness, so I defiantly went back lunch after lunch, and remained un-obese and satiated.
We explored further into Uyghur food, to our colleagues and minders’ chagrin. We ate plov, rice cooked all day with a base of mutton, fat, and carrot, served with a cold vegetable salad with cilantro, onion, and lime to balance the heft. We loved palm-sized meat pies cooked in the tandoori stuffed with equal parts mutton and mutton fat. A communal favorite was Da Pan Ji- Big Plate Chicken–a glorious saucy dish comprised of an entire chicken–head, feet, and all the other bits, stir-fried with potato chunks and peppers. Just when we thought the dish was finished, flat hand-pulled noodles were tossed in with the leftover gravy in the pot, which everyone slurped up to seal the deal.
When summer rolled around we’d go to the outdoor market at 10 p.m. when the heat abated, where we ate meat-fat-meat-fat-meat kabobs served on naan, with pomegranate juice, Fanta, or free-flowing beer. Our Uyghur friends would sit with us, telling stories, playing music and singing. The comradery was warm. Handfuls of kebab skewers majestically appeared through the night until 1 a.m., as long as the desert winds didn’t blow the stalls over first.
There were invites to Uyghur women’s dances, too. Large and small women gathered to eat, dressed in colorful brocade, black hair thick and braided, hands strong. First, we feasted. There was no ceremony or judgement, and no special paraphernalia required to consume the food. After we ate, we’d go to the disco and dance in circles around the room, twirling hands in the air, mimicking our friends, laughing and feeling like extended family. That’s what we were missing. Looking into the eyes of people.
Sometimes, the conversation turned to suppression of the Uyghur culture at that time. That was 2003, and now 15 years later, the damage is more harsh, and becoming irreversible. The thought of losing Uyghur culture is heartbreaking. The weather, temperament and political climate were harsh out in Karamay, Xinjiang, when I was there. The only thing that brought comfort and color was the traditional, genuine warmth of sharing a bowl of noodles or breaking bread with our Uyghur friends, who welcomed us, treated us as family, and filled us up.
