Next book on the travel/history shelf:
Next book on the shelf is Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China’s Ancient Silk Road
They reach Turpan, and hit some blocks in terms of going further. One of their group, David, decides he has had it, and wants to return not only to Beijing but to America. But … they are so far away … how will he return? You can’t just hop on a plane from Turpan … it’s in the middle of nowhere … But David feels he literally must get the feck OUT. He speaks no Chinese. He decides to take the bus back to Beijing. Everyone, especially Mark who has been to China before, tries to talk him out of it. But David is firm. No more for him.
The first sentence of the book gives you some idea of the tone of the whole thing:
From the beginning it was a silly idea, without the slightest utilitarian purpose or merit.
hahaha
From Night Train to Turkistan: Modern Adventures Along China’s Ancient Silk Road
We ate in the market that night. The free market in Turpan was the largest, most vigorous I’d seen in China, row after row of stands attended by Uighurs who flamboyantly hawked their goods. They wore round skullcaps circled with bands of fur and tall boots made of hardened felt. At a boot stand, Mark and I tried, with little success, to learn what process was employed to stiffen the felt. Also, I asked if it would be possible to have a pair made for my size twelve feet. The boots had no soles or treads other than the rounded felt; the Uighers who wore them walked with a curious sway, as if they were crossing a pitching deck in a moderate storm. The boots were reputed to be very warm, though what made them such eluded explanation.
We ate noodles with shards of mutton and hot pepper for dinner. The preparation was an elaborate process. On a thick piece of wood, dough was flattened by a young Uigher girl, her older sister stretched the dough into noodles with an exaggerated accordion motion, swinging her arms theatrically. Their mother did the actual cooking, first frying the bright red hunks of lamb in deep oil at the bottom of a soot-blackened wok, then adding the noodles, onions, and peppers.
There was a whole section of the market dedicated to noodle stands. The chefs stood beside their coal-burning stoves yelling and touting their noodles. Behind the cooking area, each of the stalls had rows of long benches, like a Turkistan version of a German beer garden. Modern tape players serenaded diners with high-pitched music.
Turpan in early evening was a place of sharp, surprising images. The sun setting over the desert threw a golden haze over the dusty streets and alleys. Wild-looking Muslim children played in the dirt, striking homemade tops with rough whips. Irrigation canals lined the streets.
Off the main streets, away from the Han troops and the revolutionary statue at the city center, it was quite easy to forget that you were in China. The blue-eyed Muslim men and women didn’t wear Mao suits or surgical masks, and didn’t spit on the street.
This was a feeling that lasted exactly as long as you could delay dealing with the other China, the official China of permission and reports; the China of CITS and Public Security bureaus.
“We would like very much to arrange your itinerary,” the CITS manager told me when I arrived in her office to make arrangements. “But there is a problem with fuel.”
“What kind of problem?”
“There is none on road.”
I pulled out my worn map. “You mean all along this road,” I traced the loop around the Takla Makan, “there is no gas?”
She nodded, seemingly relieved that I had understood so quickly.
“But how do people get from one town to another?”
“Bicycles. Many bicycles in China.”
“They bicycle across hundreds of kilometers of desert? And how do they get food and medicine? Here in Hotan,” I pointed to the town at the bottom of the desert road, “they make carpets famous all over the world. How do they get these carpets out of Hotan? On a bicycle?”
“Oh no. Trucks. Trucks, of course.”
“But if there’s gas for trucks, why isn’t there gas for your jeeps?” I pointed toward the new Japanese jeeps parked out front.
“Different kind of gas,” she said quickly, “for trucks and jeeps.”
“You mean diesel? But you have diesel jeeps?”
“But they are Japanese diesel. The trucks are Chinese. Japanese and Chinese use different kind of diesel.”
What struck me as so odd about this encounter was that I knew this woman was intelligent. And educated.
David left that afternoon. Mark went with him in the taxi on the hour-long trip across the desert to Daheyon. He returned looking heartbroken.
“It was a nightmare. I left him standing beside the tracks with his handful of phrases. The station was jammed. It’s five nights to Beijing …”
I was in no hurry to leave Turpan. Each morning I woke up to the sound of braying donkeys — there were many donkeys in Turpan — and had breakfast in the EXCURSIONS room. Uighurs like coffee, and the EXCURSIONS room offered the best I’d had in China, along with twists of fried dough. Afterward, I would walk around town while the sun rose. This happened around ten o’clock …
Each morning the rising sun burned away the thick ground fog, gradually revealing a series of dramatic images: the veiled woman hurrying into a walled entrance way; the minarets of the mosque floating disembodied atop the sea of fog; a stream of donkey carts loaded with sugarcane heading to the bazaar. And always there were the old men with spiked grey beards, arms folded into their coats, leaning against mud walls. They struck me, without exception, as angry.
The men were a reminder that, though it looked peaceful enough, Turpan had a past of celebrated violence. When Dr. Albert Regal, a Russian botanist/spy, escaped from house arrest in Turpan in 1879, his guards were executed according to local custom described in Foreign Devils on the Silk Road:
The victim was incarcerated in a specially built cage known as a kapas. His head, firmly secured, stuck out of the top, while his feet rested on a board. The latter was gradually lowered, day by day, until on about the eighth day his neck finally broke.
