Faces at a Banquet

It's been over a month now since I've arrived in Ala'er, and I've got little to show for it. Frankly, the pattern's a familiar one, and one readily detectable in the other scribblings I fuss over by way of acting the "young writer." I begin with a hearty spasm of throat-clearing (such as the reader is currently enjoying), then proceed to describe the setting or the season in excruciatingly fine detail (as evident in the last post). It's a lousy trend, and once the phlegmy expectoration is wiped away, I'm left with an opening line often little better than that prototypical paradigm of purple prose, "It was a dark and stormy night...." The stage set, I begin racking my brain for the characters that need populate and act upon it, a demand that, given the proclivities of my generation, sends me forthwith to the internet in search of archetypes. After an hour-long lesson on stock commedia dell'arte figures by the "experts" at Wikipedia, I am, of course, irremediably distracted (a click on Scaramuccia, for instance, will lead one to wonder why exactly Scaramouche would even want to do the fandango, an irresistible existential question that will result in one learning that Freddie Mercury's real name was actually Farrokh Bulsara...wow!) In any case, my first weeks here have been largely defined by the company I've kept, and I'd be remiss, or simply impolite, not to introduce my new friends and colleagues properly. Impelled by some vague discomfort, I've changed names in most cases to allow me to write more freely. In other cases, I've translated last names literally to heighten strangeness, and to lend to the events herein presented an aspect of what I titter to call the "Pynchon-esque." So, without further ado, I'd like to invite you to dinner.

Another American has arrived at Tarim U, and in order to welcome us, the school has arranged a banquet. She is a woman named Mary Willard, in her mid-forties, short and trim, with glacial blue eyes, graying hair, and a friendly manner (and accent) that marks her immediately as a Michigander. She's taught for years throughout China, and while she's remarkably kind and affable, has about her a well-earned air of weariness. While I was initially bothered at the thought of another American on campus (it spoils all of my best fantasies of demagoguery, after all), our meeting in Akesu was characterized by an immediate and casual intimacy, and precipitated a torrent of commiserating jocularity that only two people from the same country and exiled in another can enjoy. Mary lives downstairs in the same apartment building, and we are already in the habit of having lunch once a week to bitch about the inanities of teaching and campus life and "plan" for our ludicrous weekly lecture series known quite inappropriately as "English Corner."

The banquet is being held at a hotel restaurant on campus. As usual, Ma Ming in the administration seems to think that I am incapable of doing anything by myself, and has sent over my "personal assistant," who goes by the English name Sam, to escort me to the dinner. Sam is a junior here at the University, and a computer science major. He is small and has beady eyes that I find nearly impossible to read. His voice is quite distinctive though difficult to describe in adjectives; I can say only that it is a voice perfectly suited to the sorts of circumlocutions and platitudes he is constantly feeding me. While seemingly extremely friendly, poor Sam is chronically suffering and is that sort of pathetic character which seems so unfit to shoulder the burdens, however meager, he's been given that we have no choice but to feel pity about almost action he undertakes. I'm still unsure about the capacity in which he is "employed" by the foreign affairs office (and whether or not he's tangibly remunerated), but he has been chosen, in any case, to assist me in any and all manner of preparations, which often, it seems, include activities above and beyond those that any reasonable person ought to do for another. While he is at my beck and call twenty-four hours a day, I have been reluctant to call him for anything, since any plea for assistance is interpreted by Sam as the most dire emergency imaginable. Here's a sample transcript of a phone conversation:

Sam: Hello?
Me: Hi, Sam, how's it going?
Sam: Ahhhhhhhh...nothing much. How are you being?
Me: I'm good. Hey, listen, I've got a little problem with my internet.
Sam: Oh my Got!
Me: It's not a big deal. It's just I can't seem to get on the broadband network.
Sam: Oh no, you know, I have a many classes today...
Me: I'm sure. Listen, don't worry about it. Anytime, tomorrow, or the next day. Whenever you're free.
Sam: If I run very fast, I will there in five minutes.
Me: No, Sam, you don't have to...
Sam: I'll call Ma Ming and tell him!

While fixing the problem, he also noticed that my bathroom sink was apparently leaking slightly, and called a plumber. Sam is also frequently used by the administration to conduct an array of chores that probably ought to be done by someone else. I learned a few days after the fact, for instance, that it was Sam who was dispatched to the hospital across town to fetch the results of my medical examination, and who had to wait an entire day navigating the impossible bureaucratic channels to get satisfactory paper copies for my residence permit. He also once carried a brand-new microwave oven by himself from the administration building a half-mile away to my fourth-floor apartment for no really good reason. It went something like this:

(A knock at the door)
Me: Hey, Sam, you ready to go pick up that microwa...
Sam: Oh my Got!
(He rushes in to the apartment and drops the enormous box on the kitchen table)
Me: I thought you were coming over at two and we were getting the microwave together...
Sam: Ahhhhh...well...no...it's no...problem...
Me: Sam, this microwave weighs as much as you.
Sam: No problem...it is my...duty...you know...
Me: This makes me very uncomfortable.
Sam: Can I...have a...water?

You'll notice that Sam almost invariably speaks English with me, and while his accent is rather shaky, his comprehension is about the best of anyone I've met at the University (better, certainly, than most English teachers). Much to my delight, he is confident enough in his English to pepper our conversations with crookedly phrased idioms delivered with a charming air of intentional casualness. Upon leaving one of my classes (which he'd sat in on, the dear), he announced, quite lightheartedly, with the air that one of my generation always assumed of beneficent college-types, that he would love to stay and chat, but he "had some other fish to fry."

So, Sam and I and Mary and another "assistant" with the improbable English name of Penny walk together to the hotel. Penny is a kind young woman who always refers to me as "Elder Brother," an inappropriate translation that's not quite suitable in Chinese either. It is early evening in the middle of March and the peach flowers are just beginning to blossom. I've been finding it difficult to be hard-boiled lately, which is especially remarkable in March, a month that I've always found hard to take. I had thought that there was simply something about the word "March," as a phoneme or as an idea, that rendered those thirty-one days (and one twelfth of my life) irrevocably lost, as days that, because of their middling "March-ness," lacked some essential flavoring, some alchemical quintessence found in, say, the months of June or October whose very names positively ring with the possibility of life. However, as someone for whom inner and outer weather are almost coextensive, the constant sun and mild temperatures here in the desert have induced a change in mood, if not in character, that has been remarkable. These days we discount or render into scientific language the effect of climate upon one's health, and then, having "explained the matter thoroughly," will try and replicate its effects medically or artificially (through light boxes or vitamin D pills), without taking the less material causes of one's malaise into account. In perhaps the same way that a consumptive patient of old would be directed by his doctor to travel to the resorts of Crimea or the Riviera, I feel as though this year I've left March behind altogether, and landed right in April (the kindest month!) It is very difficult to be hard-boiled in April.

Chinese banquets are quite a formal affair, with a deeply prescribed order and hierarchy. Everyone sits around an enormous round table, with a large glass "lazy Susan" in the center. The person with the highest rank (or the most "face") sits in the "seat of honor," or "high seat," and the guests radiate outwards from him or her (usually him) in descending rank. As the "guests of honor," Mary and I are invited to sit on either side of the University Vice-President, who will be holding court in the high seat. Sam and Penny, both students, are positioned at the opposite side of the table, and an array of teachers, deans, and administrators fill in the space between. The Vice-President, a Mr. King, has just returned from a trip to the 2009 session of the NPC (or CPPCC...no one seems to understand the difference, or feels much like explaining what it was he was doing in Beijing.) I expected the middle-aged Mr. King to be any other Party-level administrator, that is, a stuffed-shirt with nice shoes and no personality, but he has a rather interesting background. He introduces himself in English and, upon talking for a few minutes, I learn that he once studied botany at the University of Winnipeg, and that in order to support his studies, he worked as a cook in a traditional German restaurant. I didn't think it proper to ask just how he had risen to the rank of Party bigwig, but after communicating a fondness for German food, and German beer, it becomes obvious that Mr. King and I are fast friends.

To my right are two male administrators, whose names I don't remember, or didn't learn. They were introduced to me by Ma Ming with an unjustifiable amount of reverence and seemed generally indifferent to the proceedings of the banquet, talking to each other, exchanging phlegmy laughs, and smoking through most of the evening. Both were physically almost interchangeable: they wore gray suit-jackets and slacks with white shirts, and I seldom looked their way to see either without a sort of venal smirk in which I couldn't immediately read the six figures of his salary.

To the right of the Two Administrators sits the dean of the economics college, a woman whose English name is the wickedly appropriate "Brandy." She is in her forties, but has about her a certain litheness and confidence of body, as well as a perpetual expression of incredulous and jaded amusement that I cannot help but find at least vaguely erotic (picture the way Anne Bancroft always raises her eyebrows slightly in The Graduate, and you'll get the idea). I saw her once riding through campus on a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket, though when I asked her about it later, she denied owning or even ever riding one (I am, incidentally, certain that it was her, making her denial all the more attractive). My naughtier thoughts aside, we've actually gotten on rather well. In compensation for a guest lecture I gave in her economics class (yes, about economics - as a white American, I am, it seems, an expert on everything), she recently invited me to a wedding, about which I've written a short post, unpublished, as it was written immediately upon returning that afternoon, and is therefore mostly a blithering panegyric on the virtues of being delightfully drunk at 3 PM. I'm not sure I wrote anything about the wedding, come to think of it. Just fustian and thinly veiled Mrs. Robinson references. You won't be reading it any time soon.

Next to Brandy is Ma Ming, the foreign affairs officer, who I've already introduced. Like most Chinese people I've met here, I vacillate between liking him immensely and mistrusting him completely. In the middle of a friendly conversation, for instance, his demeanor will turn somewhat serious, and he will instate some ridiculous taboo against taking my bike off campus by myself, or getting too close to the river. I'm often taken aback at his attempts to curtail these elementary and harmless freedoms, and mostly assume that the enjoinments he makes are not indicative of Mr. Ma himself, but of the overbearing system of which he is a representative. Nonetheless, I feel needled by betrayal when, in the midst of a good round of drinks, he will broach sternly and with an air of what I can only really call smugness, that I oughtn't to hang around Uighur men, who, despite being Muslims, are always drunk, and looking for a fight.

Beyond Ma Ming sit Sam and Penny, and just to their right, the lovely Almagul, who arrived to dinner a moment late, after we were all seated, and so was only introduced to me indirectly. Almagul is a Uighur English teacher here, and it would be difficult to describe her without lapsing into the worst sorts of poetic vagaries. I won't subject you to them, and it will suffice to say that my Moleskine is strewn with short lyrics often involving almonds (this is beginning to sound Fobertsian...). She has straight black hair and dark eyes and pale skin and she throws her head back when she laughs. The first time we had lunch together, she mentioned that she had read Walt Whitman in college (pronounced Val Veetmun...I turned to liquid quicker than Sappho transposed into a Lawrence Alma-Tadema painting). I've gotten to know Almagul rather well in the last few weeks, and she will certainly be featured in greater detail in posts to come. She has since introduced me to many Uighur and Kazakh students here, and we go out to lunch or dinner two or three times a week. Hints of romance have begun to circulate amongst a number of the teachers, who have nothing better to circulate in this one-horse town. Given the circumstances, I am rather certain that any attraction I have will remain patently aesthetic, for better or worse. Almagul invited me to lunch at her home, where she still lives with her mother and father. I learned not only of the deliciousness of lamb manta and the hilariousness of Uighur dubbed American B-movies on XJTV (it was a rip-off of The Fifth Element but featured a guy with a mustache and a fat stoner with a rasta hat...JPat, you must know this one), but also of her brother Hosayn, also in attendance, who is a local police officer with a very strong handshake and a knife on his belt. Also, she has a crazy boyfriend, who is, you guessed it, a police officer - I'm in way over my head. Anyway, it seems to me she's one of the only teachers here who actually cares about her students, and my heart always races when I see her walking on the sidewalk under the willows.

Next to Almagul sits Jane, our mutual friend. Jane, her English name, is a Han English teacher who is one of the funniest and most easygoing people I've met here. With most of my Han "friends" here, I've had to abstract and distill the practice of friendship down to its culturally inert elements, relating to people with universally acceptable ideals and flavorless behavior. Jane, on the other hand, has the sort of whimsical, jaded, and self-deprecating attitude that one associates with Americans and other beings with a higher-order consciousness who accept irony as a fundamental element of life. (This is opposed to the vast majority of the students and other teachers here, who, I am increasingly convinced, because of their Orwellian education system and inordinately conservative political culture, have never had so much as a glimmer of independent thought. I will be more than happy to write about this at some length in, perhaps, my next post on teaching. If it tastes of cultural imperalism or neo-colonialism, so be it. I'm not a "racist" per se, the notion of race having been thoroughly deconstructed, but I'm more and more certain of the superiority of certain cultures, or certain aspects of cultures, over others. I'm more than sick of the postmodern and Panglossian neo-sophism that all cultural phenomena have a right to exist by virtue of their existing. Of course, I'm being a bit arch, but I also feel as though I've lost the reader's attention, and need to earn it back.) Anyway, Jane also has a taste and appetite for television serials from the 90s and "Sex and the City" on DVD, and as such has a delightfully one-sided view of American culture. As a result, she is convinced I am some sort of rakish libertine from the hyper-modern Babylon of New York City, a myth I am more than tickled to propagate. In short, Jane is a certifiable "hoot," and she has already announced that I am a member of the inner circle of her coterie here on campus (much like, I am tempted to think, the Verdurins' "little nucleus" in Proust), a clique which includes also Almagul, and a few other peripheral members.

Next to Jane and Almagul sit two other English teachers, Mr. Fish and Mr. Mild. Mr. Fish is a thin middle aged man with a large forehead, rheumy eyes, and a large, toothy grin. As the head of the Foreign Language Department (i.e. English...there are no other foreign languages here, but they refuse to change the name), Mr. Fish is responsible for scheduling my classes and giving me instruction and feedback about my teaching. In practice, this entailed his stopping by my apartment, handing me a thin textbook (the student edition, not the teacher edition) and a class list written in shorthand, then quickly backing towards the door, bowing, smiling, and shaking his hands. After trying in vain to interpret the hieroglyphs of my schedule, I called him back to interpret. He tried equally in vain to communicate with me in English, then gave up and nattered at me in Chinese (luckily I was able to figure out the important points, such as class times and locations). When I asked what requirements or oversight there would be for my teaching, he said simply that my classes were whatever I felt like teaching, and that he had no requirements whatsoever, a license I have since discovered is completely false. When I asked whether I ought to give assessments or grades, he looked at me quizzically and smiled, then beat a hasty retreat. There is something fishy about Mr. Fish.

Mr. Mild is a short young man with dark wet eyes, glazed with anxiety, set like little raisins in the plump dough of his baby's face. He is always well dressed, usually in dark slacks and a sweater vest, set under a somewhat professorial sportcoat, and his black hair permanently retains the neat rows of the harrow of his comb. He walks quickly, leaning back slightly, and stuttering from side to side, his hands thrust deep in his pants pockets, with his books tucked tightly under his arm. I see him most days in the teaching building where we work, and he smiles a quick and insecure smile while making some awkward gesture with his hand indicating acknowledgment before hurrying off to class. Mr. Mild has just arrived at the university, and as such, Mr. Fish has taken the tragic young man under his fin. What this means, in effect, is that Mr. Fish has detected in Mr. Mild a timid and servile character, and has cagily availed himself of an easily exploitable resource for performing administrative chores and busywork. As the equally exploited White-Guy-in-Residence, I sympathize with Mr. Mild. In any case, he's helped me to interpret some of the more recondite aspects of the Chinese classroom, and is a friendly face on a campus in which scowls and squints are universal.

Next to Mr. Fish and Mr. Mild sits Mary, and next to her, Mr. King, the Vice-President. After introductions are made, and greetings exchanged, drinks are poured, baijiu for the men, and sweet red wine for the women. Drinking in China is not a casual affair, and, like the banquet itself, follows a strict hierarchy and order. While in the West one might sip one's beer or wine from a large glass throughout a meal, liquor or wine in China is served in cordial glasses, and it is taboo to so much as touch your glass without first making a toast, at which point everyone, or the selected individuals with whom you will drink, will stand and listen, offer a response, and then drink, saying either "cheers," a phrase that has entered the lexicons of some of the more modern individuals to denote drinking only a sip from the glass, or the more traditional "gan bei," which translates as "dry glass," meaning, of course, bottoms up. It's actually quite a bit of fun, as it turns drinking into a central, rather than a peripheral, activity, though it inevitably calls to mind my recently vanished college days, in which drinking was not only the central, but usually the only element of the evening's activities. As such I can't help but relate the organization and ceremony of it with a certain puerility and insecurity over one's alcohol consumption, though it is perhaps reflective of the Chinese character as a whole: I cannot drink unless I announce it, and unless everyone else is doing it too.

Deeper reflections on alcohol in Chinese culture will have to wait for further posts, but I ought here to give a short description of the local firewater, baijiu. Baijiu, pronounced bai-gee-oh, is, along with tasteless, sudsy beer, the key staple of Chinese drinking culture. While liquors such as whiskey and vodka are available in big cities, they are generally associated with Western culture, and are only for the rich. I have found bottles of Russian vodka, labels written in Cyrillic and imprinted with the image of a snarling wolf, and bottles of expensive imported Jack Daniels whiskey for sale in Ala'er, but it is baijiu of every sort that literally bends the shelves here at every convenience store and supermarket. Besides being an indigenous tipple with a long cultural history, baijiu is very often dirt cheap. While baijiu can get very expensive for the connossier, my own favorite brand is a so-called erguotou from Beijing, a 500 mL bottle of which retails for RMB 5 (about seventy-five cents). Before you judge me for my skinflintery, it should also be noted that most baijiu has a considerably higher alcohol content than most American liquors, usually ranging from 52 to 60% alcohol. As a result, purchasing baijiu of a higher price ensures only a small step up on a scale of taste ranging from low-end lighter fluid (thanks, Foberts!), to a mid-range nail polish remover, to the very expensive and top-shelf diesel fuel enjoyed by only the richest gentlemen in town. The vitriol is rendered all the more inscrutable by the puzzling fragrance of sorghum (sorghum?) which can be literally watched as it rises in a haze off the miniscus of the cordial glass like gasoline on a hot summer day. Spending more than the bare minimum rings only of conspicuous consumption, and makes about as much sense as buying a thousand dollar toilet plunger. (Notes on Chinese wine are forthcoming in the unfinished post "The Great Chinese Wine Tasting.")

The honor of the first toast goes to Mr. King, who rises from the "high seat" and lifts his glass. Everyone stands up and takes their glass in both hands. Mr. King addresses the group in Chinese, and while I am not sure of everything that he says, he is overall very politic and prescribed in his well-wishing. He finishes by turning to Mary, and then to me, and announces that we ought to have a successful and happy time here at Tarim University, which is the theme and occasion for the event, and a phrase that will be repeated innumerably over the course of the evening. The first drink is always a gan bei, and as everyone drinks and sits down, a parade of waitresses in matching lavender silk pajamas begin to file in, carrying dishes of all sorts, and rushing to refill our glasses. Most food in China is substantially, if not unrecognizably, different from the oily fare you order at the local Panda Express. The first dishes are appetizers, or cold dishes. There are plates of crushed cucumber, thin-sliced cold duck aspics, pickled eggs, shallow bowls of cold steamed spinach and bok choy, diced beef tripe in chili pepper and vinegar, a plate of salted peanuts (try picking those up with chopsticks!) and even a small tray of cigarettes, stacked in an attractive little pyramid. Each dish is presented first to Mr. King, who must eat first before others can partake. Since the food is slowly and periodically rotated on the "lazy Susan," it is assured that each person will get a chance to sample some of everything. The guests reach for the nearest dish with chopsticks and lift down a bite-size portion, which is either placed on a small saucer, or directly into a waiting mouth. There is no compunction against putting into the dishes, which are shared by everyone, the same chopsticks which were just a moment ago lolling across your tongue.

The first slug of baijiu still burning like a tire fire in the back of my throat, Mr. King turns to me and asks in Chinese, "So, Luo Ze Rui," (this is my Chinese name) "have you adjusted to life here in China?" This is one of the ten or so questions I am habitually asked by anyone and everyone on virtually a daily basis, and I have a stock answer well practiced, that I find both satisfactory and flattering. "Yes," I say, "I've adjusted quite well. Life here in Ala'er is very quiet, and very peaceful. However, I am not quite used to the climate in Xinjiang. It is very dry, and I hear the sandstorms are very terrible." The line works perfectly. Everyone loves thinking that the place which they call home and with which they identify is mostly hospitable, but to which full adjustment must require an induration that constitutes and defines its regional character. Mr. King smiles. "Yes, it is very, very dry in Xinjiang. The sandstorms especially are bad in the spring. You certainly don't want to be outside in a sandstorm. Even the people from Xinjiang find them very terrible." Mr. King has accepted my deference, and has made a nod of his own. "I'm sure they are used to them," I say. "I hear that people in Xinjiang are like cowboys." This is, of course, the perfect thing to say. The cowboy, or niu zai, is the hydrogen bomb of American coolness. Mr. King grins widely. "People in Xinjiang are different from people in the East." I deftly lift a peanut and drop it into my mouth. "I hear also that Xinjiang people drink liquor very terribly." Mr. King lifts his freshly refilled glass of baijiu. "I do not know about Xinjiang people being cowboys, but certainly they do drink liquor very terribly." I raise my glass as well, touch it to his, and, uttering "gan bei," down another glass of liquor.

The Two Administrators seated next to me overhear and, still puffing arrogantly on their cigarettes, begin chatting with Mr. King and chortling hoarsely while sticking their thumbs in my direction. My mind having temporarily achieved a state of satori courtesy of the aromatic hydrocarbon now breaking the dam of my blood-brain barrier, I am oblivious to their incomprehensible prating and can focus only on almond-eyed Almagul an immeasurable distance across the table as she reaches across her body to spear a slice of fresh cucumber. "Hey, Ze Rui!" I turn towards Mr. King. "They want to know if in your country they drink lots of baijiu." I turn towards the Two Administrators, nodding like supercilious pigeons. I take a sip of tea to clear my mouth. "In America they only drink whiskey and vodka, and not baijiu. But certainly, Americans can drink a lot of alcohol. Beer and wine also." At this the Two Administrators nod and snicker slightly. They are aware of baijiu's relative puissance and since red wine is considered a woman's drink, they seem to doubt my patriotic characterization. I decide to take them to the mat. "In America, college students especially drink a lot of liquor and beer." In China, students found overly drunk can be expelled by the headmaster. Their lips curl in distaste. Brandy, sitting next to the Two Administrators, turns my way and raises her eyebrows. "In America," I explain, "my major was English literature, and my other major was drinking alcohol." Mr. King laughs and raises his glass again, this time gesturing to the Two. The four of us touch glasses, and with a brief ode in praise of cultural exchange, we mutter "gan bei" and take down another one.

By this point, the main dishes have begun to arrive in quick succession. There are bowls of boiled lamb soup with radishes and potatoes, a full chicken basted in a syrupy demi-glace, a whole fish covered in oil and chili peppers, a heaping plate of roast goose pieces with green peppers and carrots, and a questionable looking aliment which I was told is stir-fried duck heart. At this point I am feeling very good and am wielding my chopsticks with a dexterity beginning to border on flashiness (peanuts, two, nay, three at a time!) I am a daring young knight in the court of Mr. King, whose tales of life in far off Winnipeg never seem to wane in interest. Brandy is just beginning to tell me of her trip to Texas, when Mr. Fish and Mr. Mild come over, each bearing a tiny chalice of baijiu. "Luo laoshi," (an expression meaning Mr. Roberts, or Professor Roberts) "eh...we would like to drink with you!" stutters Mr. Fish in English. I grab my glass and stand up, nearly knocking over a nearby tea cup with the hem of my corduroy jacket. "Eh...we want you...to..." begins Mr. Fish, in English. After pausing a moment, he slips into rapid Chinese and begins interrogating Mr. Mild, standing to his right. "How do you say that again? Sick-cess-ing?" Mr. Mild squints thoughtfully and turns his head towards the ceiling "Uh, it's successful, right? Successful?" Mr. Fish gasps. "Sick-cess-fool. No, that's not it, Mr. Mild. That's not it at all." He shakes his head balefully and turns to me. "Luo laoshi, we wish you be sick-sessing at my school!" Mr. Mild nods in obeisance, and the three of us touch glasses and drink.

Mr. Fish and Mr. Mild return to their seats, and Brandy continues her story of her trip abroad to Texas. I barely listen to what she is saying, in pitiful English, as I am busy watching her eyebrows dance up and down. She went abroad, it seems, to study for a semester at Tarim University's sister school around Dallas-Fort Worth. Brandy discusses the similarities of Texas to Xinjiang, in terms in climate and flatness, a resemblance I am for whatever reason overjoyed to confirm and extend to the American Southwest as a whole. "Our nations are very similar," I utter half-drunkenly in Chinese. "The area is about the same. In America, we have many different ethnicities, languages, climates, and cultures. In China it is the same. They are both very large nations and have many different kinds of places." I am the golden-haired poster boy for cultural relativism. I am the great postmodern promise of internationalism incarnate. Brandy nods at me, and smirks. I wonder for a moment how charming my American accent must sound in Chinese. "Yes, Ze Rui, you speak correctly, our countries are very similar, but also very different."

I nod in agreement and look over at Jane and Almagul. They are chatting secretively and pointing at me. Almagul is beautiful, with her black hair parted down the middle, and her smile, and her dark, almond-eyes. They catch me looking at them and, after a brief conference, stand up. "Ze Rui, we would like to drink with you," says Jane. I shoot upwards, raising my glass, just filled with baijiu. "We would like to be friends with you, OK?" At this the two of them set to giggling. "We would like to get to know you...better, and then we can be friends, OK?" I bow with a flourish, lifting my glass over my head. We drink, and sit back down. Almagul smiles at me, and for a brief, alcohol-fueled moment, everything makes perfect sense.

I continue to prod at the food, but by this point, the baijiu seems to have taken complete control. It is, to be honest, more potent than I am used to, by almost fifty percent, and as such still has a strange and very real hold on me. The faces of those I have met are beginning to swirl around me in a kaleidoscope of grotesques. "Hey, Ze Rui!" Another drink from Brandy, sitting now atop a white hotel blanket, snapping on her stockings. "I just want you to know that I'm available to you..." "What?" "I said, if you ever have any problems here at the University, I'm always available to help." "Oh, absolutely, you're very kind." The Two Administrators, now two barking, bobbing crows, cackle in delight, then suck deeply, and in perfect unison, on a fist-sized honeycomb of cigarettes. "Ze Rui!" I wheel around to see Mr. Fish and Mr. Mild wearing straw-boaters and peppermint candy shirts, with bright red carnations in their button holes. Mr. Fish is holding in one hand the teacher's edition textbook I haven't got. "Ze Rui! We would like to toast you again to your sick-cess-fool and haplessness!" "Eh, Mr. Fish, happiness, no?" Mr. Fish whaps Mr. Mild firmly over the head with the book, meanwhile transforming into a grinning bug-eyed perch, hair knotted into a long, oily queue tucked beneath a stiff black Manchu's cap. "Ya nincompoop! You'll never learn nothin' so long's ya live!" Mr. Mild, a whimpering doe-eyed Pekingese, shrugs and lifts his baijiu in his paws. "Ze Rui!" Ma Ming is goose-stepping stern-eyed in red-star cap and olive suit in bright red and gold glory flanked by Sam and Penny in matching blue-Mao's caps and farmer's denim trousers. "Ze Rui! Gan bei! Together our University will have a bright future and harmonious aspect!" "Ze Rui!" It is Almagul-Aphrodite skin blushing blue-violet Bouguereau on the fresh green breast of a riverbank about whom flutter a dozen milky cherubim, each with the twittering puckering face of Jane. I turn into wan Cupidon in exaggerated contrapposto and steal lavender-draped Almagul-Psyche into the rosy-fingered dawn. In a daze I look to the abstemious Blue Virgin Mary clothed in her luminous mandorla, and receive a graceful smile. The room is full of perfumes, my mouth full of the purple taste of baijiu and the wild chemical spice of chiles. I am awash in colors, in languages. The synaesthetic is alive in me again, the pitiful romantic, the heady sensualist. I am crowned Comus, belching Bacchus, panting Pan prancing through the tender Arcadian glades of spring. I smell lilacs blooming in the desert air. "Ze Rui! Ze Rui! Ze Rui!"

I look to Mr. King. He is rolling back and forth in his chair. As the "guest of honor" sitting in the "high seat," he is particularly subject to the desires of others, and is compelled to drink at every turn in which anyone invites him to do so. I too have accepted every toast, but Mr. King is a small man, and he has not recently graduated from an American college, placing him at an extreme disadvantage. He is reeling now, focusing intently on the carcass of the picked-over fish set in front of him, refusing to say a word to anyone. It is obvious that I, a Connecticut Yankee, have drunk Mr. King "under the table" in his own court. I am suddenly a god. No, better. I am an American in the full confidence of his youth. In my pride I rise with a swagger, and invite the entire table to a toast. I've been planning a rousing encomium for some minutes now, on the virtues of hospitality and friendship and just how delighted I am, and I clear my throat to begin, and suddenly the room goes black.

Everyone makes a shocked utterance, and then pulls out his or her cell phone. The table is, for a moment, dimly illuminated in the light of digital mobile handhelds, which give some sense of the contours of the plates, and who it is who is complaining about the lack of electricity. Within moments, the waitresses rush in with candles and assure us that it is only a temporary problem. However, while I am finding the opportunity to continue dining by candlelight delightfully colonial and romantic, the tone of the evening has changed completely. The conversation has ground to a halt, and everyone suddenly notices just how late it is. With a few sonorous grunts, Mr. King declares the banquet finished and rolls into the supporting wings of the still-smoking Administrators. Mr. Fish strides for the exit, with Mr. Mild puttering behind him. Brandy winks and goes outside to what might be her waiting motorcycle. I try and say a quick good-bye to Almagul, but she is quickly hurried away by little nurse Jane. Before I can follow, I am accosted by Ma Ming, Sam and Penny, who assure me they've had a wonderful time, and confirm our mutual friendship. I am suddenly drunk. My two assistants escort me back to my apartment in the dark.

Excuses, excuses

Dear Reader:

It seems once again that my ambition has exceeded my talent and discipline. It's been almost two weeks since my last post, and I'm afraid that interest in my serialization will flag markedly if I don't provide the faithful with regular sustenance (cerealization?) By way of an excuse, I will tell you that I wake up early every morning to sit at my computer and peck fitfully at my latest post (a modernist and kaleidoscopic rendering of the many characters that populate my days and nights), before surrendering to the allure of news updates on the Times and the irresistible chuckles of The Onion. Also, it's springtime, and I've got better things to do than sit at my computer all day. Is this the birth or the death of the writer in me? Could they be the same thing?

Anyway, here are some pictures of the campus and environs, with captions, to accompany my last post.

Place Names: The Place

Please note that these were taken about two weeks ago, and that things have "greened up" significantly since then. The willows on the square outside my window are full of tender yellow-green buds, and the administration has begun the absurd practice of watering the grass by inundating it completely. It's beginning to look a lot like Venice...

Also, to keep your appetite for me whetted, I present you with a parodic "bizarro"-blog created by my mysterious doppelganger, "Foberts."

The Abbreviated Journals Of Foberts

Anyone familiar with my inner circle's penchant for portmanteau will identify its author immediately by elimination, as only one of the two knows the word "postcolonial." The post from Sunday the 22nd is a disarmingly complete picture of my unconscious, and a masterpiece of Freudian condensation. Anyway, it's the yang to my yin (or yin to my yang...a good discussion topic) and I hope the author finds it within himself to keep up the good work.

Soon, I swear.

Place-names: The Place

It occurred to me, after a breathlessly terse e-mail from mom, that given the lack of context for last post's caducean cliffhanger, I may have unnecessarily pushed some of my more concerned readers beyond the edges of their seats. Worry not, though; my aesculapian misadventure was merely the result of bureaucratic, and not medical, exigency, and its details, as I shall soon relate, are more Kafka than Kildare.

Anyway, before getting to the drama, I ought to introduce the setting. The hesitation I feel when trying to write has been due to the discomfiture of inadequately or improperly expressing exactly this, and to the concomitant anxiety of setting in stone a series of first impressions that are almost certain to seem hopelessly callow in even a few weeks time. If our first impression of a place is the strongest, it is also probable that at some point in our habitation there we will regard our initial thoughts with a certain scorn, with a dismissive incredulity, as one who first moves to a new city will explore with excitement his new neighborhood and silently envision himself as a regular, say, at the pub across the street, or picking up a few daily necessities at the Spanish grocery on the corner, when mere months or even weeks later, the thought of going into such places will be so foreign to his habits that he will have no choice but to regard his preliminary imaginings as a kind of naïve fancy. I have no doubt that I will suffer the same embarrassment upon re-reading my own “first impressions,” and will likely regard them in the future with either indifference, or the sort of self-deprecating and “eye-rolling” pleasure one gets from reading one’s old journal entries; for it’s not the first impression, or even the last impression, that will characterize one’s experience in a place, but the tiny seed of some memory, quite trivial or even unknown to us at the time, that will at some later date unexpectedly burst into flower, redolent with all the details of one’s environment, its fragrance the very essence of that season or that year. Further ruminations on this will have to wait for later posts, in which I'm feeling at greater ease to wax poetic. In any case, I'll try and circumvent my disappointment by thinking of my observations as a historically dependent chronicling, rather than an objective evaluation. I've got to get on with it.

From space (a once transcendent "god's-eye" view rendered miraculously banal by the daring Promethei at Google), Tarim University is a large gray square, about one mile by one mile, set amongst smaller gray-green squares and rectangles, on the edge of a wide, veiny river. From farther up, the river assumes a distinctly meandering shape, and is seen to compose the spine of a rather fertile looking crescent, its deep green especially striking against the colorless surroundings. Just to the south is the enormous and inhospitable Taklamakan Desert, while some miles to the north, beyond the city of Akesu, the nearest train station, is the Tianshan range, a snowy fractal that separates southern Xinjiang from northern, culturally and climatically. Just beyond the Tianshan range to the north is what is known as the continental Pole of Inaccessibility, the spot in Eurasia farthest from any ocean, and a delightfully appropriate phrase whose allusion to the supposed motivations for my excursion will have at least a few of my readers rolling their eyes (and the precise syntactical inversion of which will cause Sara Griffin to die of laughter at my bawdy and irreverent wit).

While intoxicating to imagine your place in the world from such a height, dallying with geography never paints a very accurate picture of life. From what I've seen of it, Ala'er is an exceedingly small strip of bicycle and motorcycle shops, restaurants, and a few banks and small hotels all of which are laid out on either side of a wide, four-laned boulevard that runs for a mile or so up to the University: a sort of Main Street, PRC. Just before the campus is an enormous grassy park, with trees and fountains, behind which stands the imposing local government building, and a surprisingly modern museum reminiscent of Pei's glass pyramid at the Louvre. Everyone keeps telling me that the "park" is in fact a "square," and that it is therefore the largest square in all of China ("Even bigger than Tiananmen!") Given the Chinese predilection for calling a spade anything but, I generally whistle under by breath and feign amazement. Similarly, while I've been told to be very impressed by the architecture of the museum, no one can tell me what's inside. While rather unjustified, I'm actually put at ease by the small town pride that people seem to have in their local landmarks. Never having been raised with the urbanite's bedrock confidence in the cultural significance of his surroundings, I'm far more sympathetic with the passionate and at times desperate struggle for regional dignity that constitutes life outside of the metropolis. Ala'er, as one of the most remote places in China (a country increasingly characterized by cultural disparity between urban and rural), manifests this provincial proclivity for panegyric proliferation perfectly. It out-Winesburgs Winesburg.

I've still yet to get a satisfactory answer on the exact character of government here, but I've gleaned that Ala'er is organized and overseen by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, an autonomous military administration that oversees, and is invested in, local economic and agricultural development (stock of which is publically traded). On paper, it's a rather frightening hybrid. The system was founded in 1954 by Wang Zhen, one of the Eight Immortals of the Communist Party, as an effort to increase military presence in the restive frontier region; given its remoteness and the vulnerability of supply lines from the east, the garrison took to becoming economically and agriculturally self-sufficient. This development was self-propagating and served not only to feed and clothe the army that was stationed there, but also to increase regional infrastructure and increase the immigration of ethnic Hans. While the XPCC was abolished during the Cultural Revolution, it was reinstated in the eighties after the Soviet invasion of neighboring Afghanistan, and has been hard at work ever since bringing water to the desert, spreading the good word of blind faith in industrial development, and imposing the tackiness of modern Han civilization on a people with fundamentally no cultural, linguistic, or religious similarities (I hope to expostulate against Chinese cultural imperialism on purely aesthetic grounds in a later post ...won't that be a treat?) Anyway, while not ostensibly a police state as you might imagine it, I am reminded early each morning of the area's martial character by the muted shouts from the army headquarters a few blocks away as the soldiers do their drills. I've got half a mind to get up early and see what I can see, though my interest has yet to be strong enough to actually get me out of bed before sunrise.

Beyond the University to the south is an improbably long causeway that runs across the length of the Tarim River basin to a small agricultural and industrial settlement. Beyond that is the desert. The area around the city is characterized by small agricultural communities such as this, which are designated by a number and the word "tuan," (the one on the other side of the river is #12 Tuan), a word that variously translates as group, organization, or perhaps given the somewhat military character of the district, regiment. Many of the houses in the tuan are mud brick hovels, many with roofs of straw and sticks, encircled by low brick walls. Chickens and small white dogs run rampant, and large herds of grazing goats and sheep are a frequent sight by the side of the road. Cotton is the major cash crop here, it seems, and the shoulders of the long poplar-lined avenues leading to and from the tuan are littered with bolls and chaff dropped from the preposterously over-laden trucks that speed down them. Besides a quick trip to the market at #12 for some wickedly spicy snacks, I've yet to really get outside Ala'er, and it should be noted that Ala'er is significantly more developed than its satellites. There is stable water and electricity, an array of fresh vegetables and meat, and supermarkets that sell everything you could need (though not everything you might want. I'm going through a harrowing withdrawl, the two foundations of my personal food pyramid, coffee and cheese, having been hastily excised from my diet). I'll go out this weekend and take some pictures of town to give you a better sense of my environs.

The University itself is about what I expected, and is not much different than other Chinese universities I've seen. There are teaching buildings, administrative buildings, drab-looking dormitories, some dried out quadrangles and empty fountains, basketball courts perpetually packed with male students (basketball is a national obsession here), and a rather monumental library, all set among handsome and collegiate-looking avenues of tall, wiry poplars. Greenhouses and orchards testify to the University's original purpose (it was founded in 1958 by none other than Wang Zhen as the Tarim University of Agricultural Reclamation) and I'm told constantly that the fall is the best time to be here, as the orchards on campus provide students with the freshest possible pears and apples, which can be plucked, it seems, whenever you're so inclined. It's a lovely place for walking, and trees are general across campus. Poplars are the most common, and the most striking; they line many of the avenues around campus, giving to the school's scenery an air I can only reluctantly describe as Continental. I think I could write an entire post on the poplars alone, and well may. Aside from the poplars, there are an abundance of mimosas, their hollow seed pods rattling in the breeze, yellow willows just now beginning to bloom, and ornamental arbor vitae, which, in the proper mood, seem as dreamy as the cypresses of Van Gogh. There are also a couple of other species I can't really identify, though I believe one common type in the parks to be some sort of ailanthus, judging by the seed pods, and another some sort of sumac. In almost all cases, the trunks have been whitewashed with lime, and are planted in neat and well-ordered rows. Because of the low profile of most of the buildings and trees, and the dry climate, the sky here is enormous and almost always sunny, setting most views of the campus in an open composition. Coupled with the muted pastels of the dust-covered flora, and the beige earth tones of the buildings, the visual effect of the university and the town is one that I seem constantly to want to call Impressionist. Here's a nice Monet that gets it fairly well in terms of style (and poplars!), though even this is a bit too colorful. Here's another. I'll hunt for more, and will post them at my leisure. There are also a number of paintings by Corot that capture the emotion of the place in subject and composition, if not in technique or style. I'm also reminded of this painting by Rousseau in my dreamier moods. It's probably Rousseau I am reminded of primarily, especially when regarding the mimosas (actually silk trees), and poplars (see the two trees on the left for the perfect representation of the view of the poplars outside my fourth floor window before the sun has risen).

Indeed, life here seems to be full of that air of leisure, that quiet Sabbath stillness that characterizes so many works of that school. Despite it's location thousands of miles from the capital, Xinjiang still runs on "Beijing Time," a decision that seems patently silly until you realize the obvious political significance; if you give the west its own time zone, you might have to give it other sorts of autonomy too. What this means is that the sun rises at around 9 AM and sets about twelve hours later. Classes don't begin until 10 AM, and run until 2 PM, when there is a two hour siesta, and then four more hours of class until 8 PM, when most people have dinner. Because of the dry climate, the sun rises and sets almost imperceptibly; without, certainly, any of the dramatic crepuscular coloration we are wont to commonly imagine. The world turns from black to blue to white, and back again. While somewhat inconvenient at times, I've found the new schedule actually quite pleasant, since my exiguous commitments ensure that I eat my dinner everyday while it's still light out, with children playing on the sidewalk outside my window; twin sensations that have immediately set my body clock to summer, and which have had a wonderfully positive effect upon my mood. Each day is dry and sunny, and there is the unmistakable savor of spring in the air, the strength of which seems to increase by the hour.

As a residential college, everyone lives on campus, faculty and administration included. It's quite insular, and my assertion that I like it here very much is met with laughter from my students who utter the age-old collegiate complaint that there is "nothing to do." Such an ubiquitous utterance reminds me, of course, of my own Bowdoin, to which Tarim U has a number of similarities. Both are quiet, clean, and cold (overnight, anyway), set next to a small town, and located at an inconvenient distance from the nearest reasonably sized city. Sadly, I think the students may have a point. While Brunswick boasted at least a Few Good Bars, I've yet to find a single adequate watering hole in Ala'er (a post on drink would be an interesting one...I'll add it to the list). In any case, the students here are friendly and, it seems, like college students anywhere in the world (I've picked up a few subtle differences that I can discuss later). Despite its surprisingly small student population (about 10,000), the University is exceedingly spread out (space, as you might imagine, is not at a premium here), and almost every student owns a bicycle. Luckily, the campus marketplace is a stone's throw from home, and the teaching building where my classes are a mere five-minute walk (it's the oldest building on campus, in front of which stands a statue of, you guessed it, Wang Zhen.) Nonetheless, I shall of course be purchasing a bicycle for trips into town, for adventures into the countryside, and, eventually, for at least one trip to the desert.

I walked the other day to the eastern fence surrounding the campus where there is a small park with an ornamental hill. From the top of it, one could look off across a field of short brush hemmed in by rows of dusty poplars, beyond which lay another, and another, and so on off into the hazy distance. The thought of so much land beneath my feet set my mind reeling and my heart pounding in my chest; I felt again the unmistakable physical desire to walk, to "ramble," the same irresistible impulse that perhaps pushed Wordsworth out of doors, or set Turgenev wandering through the enchanted dreamscapes of his hunting sketches. There is of course a fear pulling me back, but I think that the motivation of a truly perfect day with not a thing to do will be positively overpowering. I can already hear the heat of the day, and feel the white buds on the poplars stretching in the sky.

This is taking a lot longer than I expected. Next time: New Faces, A Trip to the Hospital, and How I Drank the University President Under the Table Without Really Trying.

A Stately Pleasure Dome

Hello, all. Sorry for the long delay. I've been resting on what laurels I've given myself for my last post, while silently planning its rival, a comprehensive opus with thick brushstrokes and an open composition; an Impressionist masterpiece, worthy of the subtle colors and leisurely pace of life that have "impressed" me thus far. Needless to say, the self-imposed pressure has been tremendous, and I've failed miserably. As a break from my high aesthetic standards, I've decided to write a post that emulates in form the very antithesis of art, which is, of course, MTV Cribs. In any case, I'll try and be more frequent about posting from now on, and will try and take myself less seriously.

Yes, a pleasure dome fit for the Khan himself! Upon first entering the campus, we immediately drove to my new apartment, about which I’d been harboring some misgivings. Chinese apartments don’t generally furnish many luxuries, including “standard” ones that we’re accustomed to in the US, such as hot water, toilets, stable electricity etc. My worries were dispelled immediately as Ma Ming opened the door and ushered me in to a veritable Xanadu. The apartment is simply enormous: a dining room with seating for four, as well as hot water heater and refrigerator; a bathroom with washing machine, heated shower, and western style toilet (no gates to Gehenna here!); a kitchen with stove, rice cooker, and utensils; a palatial living room with southern exposure, as well as television, sofa, and two chairs; two offices, one of which is furnished with its own desktop computer; two bedrooms with queen sized beds; and a sun porch on the southwest corner for drying laundry and, as I’ve found pleasant of late, reading a book in the afternoon with the windows open. There are windows on three sides, affording pleasant and sunny views over one of the campus quads, and the entire apartment is clean, well-lit, and well-furnished. If all of this wasn't enough, I was in the midst of unpacking when a group of students (no doubt an envoy from Mr. Ma) arrived at my door with a large basket of apples and oranges. To paraphrase the inimitable Michael Glantz (though he likely doesn't remember), I felt like a sultan. See the photographs I've taken for a better view: A Stately Pleasure Dome

This is not to say that my new habitat is perfect. In fact, just beneath the surface lurks the dirty, though actually rather obvious, secret: everything is "Made in China." Yes, despite its appearances, the shoddy materiality of certain objects has come to light. While great-looking from ten feet, from two it's obvious that the wardrobe, for instance, is merely particle board with a crumbling faux wood veneer, and just the other day the handle to one of the windows on the porch snapped off in my hand. Furthermore, because of the proximity of the desert and the general aridity of the climate, every surface is thinly powdered with an almost imperceptibly fine layer of dust. It's something you just get used to, I suppose, and I have no complaints; this is almost certainly the largest apartment I will ever inhabit. It really beats hell out of being an unemployed, penniless, ne'er-do-well, living with his parents, and all I had to do was travel half-way around the world.

A pathetic post, but the curse has been broken. Do check out the photos. Stay tuned for my next post, which may or may not feature the grisly horrors of a day long visit to a rural Chinese hospital. To pique your interest, I'll say but two words: pancreatic ultrasound. See you soon.

Trains and Automobiles

The photographic counterpart to the previous post. Enjoy!

Trains and Automobiles.

The Great Train Bloggery

Grab a cup of coffee or a stiff drink. It’s story time!

Before beginning, I might like to take a moment to give the reader a brief explanation, as I see it, of what might be called my motives for such a trip. Besides my increasing frustration at finding gainful employment stateside, and my conceited attraction for such an exotic and remote locale, I suppose I felt somewhat foolishly upon leaving that the proper mix of daring, will, aim, and fear might make a virtuous man of me. I feel acutely a sense which perhaps we all feel, and which may even constitute the fundamental expectation of our lives, that the circumstances in which we find ourselves daily are incidental only, and that if we were to find ourselves in a novel and unfamiliar environment we would, through the action of some physical or even chemical process, be rendered utterly transformed. As I young man, I’m still held by this delusion, and as such have naively gone forth to catalyze it myself.

Having bought two days previously the only ticket I could find at such a late and inopportune date, I arrived at the train station expecting something like the worst. While I had dreamed of a soft sleeper car (complete with compartment door and writing table) furnished at the university’s expense, my tardiness guaranteed me only a hard seat, the rather proletarian means of domestic transit “enjoyed” by the majority of Chinese. My uneasiness was compounded by my irrational fear of thieves (the seeds of which were planted by my Lonely Planet guide and nourished by two days alone in a hotel room). As such, I was able to enjoy the deliciously unreasonable practice of cleverly making little stacks of 100RMB notes, and stashing them shrewdly throughout notebooks, socks, and, much to my delight, atop the title page of “The Sweet Cheat Gone” in the middle of the two volume edition of Proust that I’ve deemed it necessary to bring along. (Never has the weight of pretension been so tangible. Incidentally, if you detect in my blogs particularly byzantine or torturous sentences, stuffed with every sort of clause and circumlocution, you’ll know that it is certainly due to the fact that my own writing voice follows, though quite unconsciously, with the utmost obsequiousness the rhythms and tones of whomsoever I am at the moment reading. I would have done well to tote along a slim volume of Hemingway, if only for medicinal purposes). After a light lunch of some surprisingly tasty dumplings, I went to the waiting area.

The room was completely packed. If you’ve ever seen Hitchcock’s The Birds and remember the famous scene in which the characters exit the house and are surrounded by a swarm of menacing, though apparently harmless crows, you’ll have some sense of the awkwardness and trepidation with which I entered this supposed hive of rogues and cutpurses. I found a spot to sit and wait for a few hours, and was quickly approached by what I thought was a rather kindly looking old woman, who promptly snatched my book from my hands and began looking at it with the utmost intensity. The young man sitting next to me pointed to his head and shook it balefully, the universal sign, it would seem, for crazy. Luckily a station attendant came to my aid, ensuring I’d have at least something to read for the long trip ahead.

Soon enough, the train began boarding, affording me the too-brief pleasure of looking out over the platforms, with their steaming trains and well-dressed porters, all of which evoked for me something of another world and another century. I, like most Americans, I think, continue to be allured by the romantic prospect of train travel (a national distinction, I believe, kept firmly intact by the absurdities of Amtrak’s price policies). I quickly entered, however, the chaos of crowding bodies shifting and hoisting luggage, of porters arguing over seats, and was happy to finally find my compartment and meet the people who, for the next few days I was sure, would be sizing me up and digging through my baggage, leaving poor Proust in tatters, and finally ferreting out of my well-guarded messenger bag my passport and visa while I slept. That these people happened to be a handsome young couple, my age, a family of three and their friend, and a father and his young daughter, was therefore beside the point. They informed me that this was the slow car and would take upwards of 60 hours, confirming my worst fear, and that while we were in fact sitting on the hard sleeper car, we would not be able to sleep on the bunks above, which were crowded with blankets and hot water thermoses.

It was a slow train indeed. We not only seemed to stop at even the smallest of stations, but frequently would be stalled on designated sections in the middle of the countryside for upwards of half an hour in order to let other trains pass. The view outside was generally quite interesting, and while I was beginning to grow extremely excited by the prospect of such a leisurely trip and of the many months of adventure that lay ahead, and thereby dismissive of my earlier fears, the threat of exhaustion seemed to grow with the setting sun, leaving me wondering how, just a few moments earlier, I could have had such a bright outlook. I began to regard my circumstances as a prisoner might regard his own; escape, while possible, would be unthinkably inconvenient. While a few mischievous souls tried to climb to the top bunk where they might hide beneath the piles of blankets to catch a night’s sleep, most, though not all, were rather hastily, and I might say cruelly, removed by the perambulating guards. Nonetheless, I tried to make the best of it, and, by trying to see in the discomfort and unpleasantness an opportunity for some ascetic development, I ceded the compartment seats to the others, and made myself uncomfortable on the fold-down aisle jump seat, and rather quickly fell asleep.

Rather proud of myself for having the wherewithal to sleep in such an absurd position, I felt fine the next morning, and quite confident in my ability to endure the trip. The train was then winding through Henan Province, characterized mostly, it seemed, by factories and pollution. We passed through Xi’an after lunch time and then began to wind through the remarkably mountainous yellow soil terraces of western Shaanxi Province. By this point my panic of the night before seemed a chimera, and I began conversing in earnest with the people in my compartment, for whom I became the cynosure and the entertainment. The dollar bill in my wallet provoked near-endless conversation about American culture and values, the general mood of which was characterized by a sort of impassioned insecurity (“Everyone in America has a car. In China there are lots more cars today, too! Everything is very modern and developed now!”) We made fast friends. I also met, though wordlessly, the Uyghur family in the next compartment. I am somewhat sheepish to admit that their looks fascinated me, and I found myself staring at them more than was probably polite, though the gaze was frequently returned. The couple was traveling with two young children who provided me with a lighthearted diversion from staring out the window. The little boy, no more than two, donned a sweatshirt with two little piglets and a pair of maroon legwarmers, and despite some initial hesitation, smiled continuously at the funny faces I presented him. His sister was a girl of six with cropped hair and dark eyes, and a pink sweater with a strawberry on it.

For the most part, people spent the day loafing, reading, chatting, and eating. Carts periodically rolled down the aisles selling sunflower seeds, instant noodles (a steady diet of which seemed to sustain virtually everyone on board), and packaged sausages, as well as beer, water, and sweat tea. Other carts also came by selling airline-esque meals out of Styrofoam containers that no one seemed to buy. Despite the drop in price on each additional pass (down to a measly 2RMB), I refused to touch the meals myself, the logic being that if the Chinese people would not eat them, then they must have been truly inedible. Additionally, the tedium of sitting in one spot was not infrequently punctuated by the many pointless whistle stops which our slow train afforded us, giving passengers a chance to catch a breath of “fresh” air, smoke a cigarette, or buy noodles from the many touts crowding the platform. By the beginning of the second night we had entered Gansu province, with dusty, towering peaks encircled by tunnels and tracks on which puttered distant, toy-like freight trains. As the sun set, I wrapped myself up in my jacket and, with a desperate, physical craving for a horizontal surface, crawled beneath the bench for a nap. I was not disturbed by any of the attendants.

The next morning we awoke to the dry scrubland of central Gansu, including the westernmost section of the Great Wall. The landscape reminded me quite a bit of Texas, or the American Southwest, with long, flat stretches of arid vegetation giving way to distant plateaus. The mood on the train seemed rather more positive than in the days previous, and it began to occur to me that despite all of the discomfort, most of the people on the train were just as excited about the journey as I was. It was a great, long road trip, all the way across the nation, and I think that while the necessity and discomfort rendered it banal for some, for many the journey contained all of the dynamism and romance that a car trip from New York to San Francisco might have for an American. I got to thinking, as I’m wont to do, what Walt Whitman might think. As I got to know and become friendly with my fellow riders, I began to find in their attitude and character an unstudied casualness not stifled by politeness or compunction. This is not to say that there was any rudeness. But one does not see in America the sort of warmth and physical effortlessness with other people. Food is offered around as a matter of course, people chat idly and openly, perfect strangers lean upon one another to take naps with utter carelessness. Could it be that Whitman would have admired something in this national character as well, in this loafing, embodied natural ease? It is something like how Whitman imagined and sang of himself, and something that one finds ironically lacking in the American character. There isn’t much celebration of the self, certainly, but then it might be the case that a real celebration needn’t be announced with the sort of artificial triumph that a cynic might be able to detect in the ecstatic enumerations of waltzing Walter. Such an attitude might be easily made manifest in the simple self-confidence that this culture seems to afford one, and it lacks the violence and perversion so often detected in Whitman, who was, while surely a tremendous lover, also a hell of a fighter. Here one is afforded a certain casual intimacy as birthright for living amongst so many others. It should also be noted that while Whitman was intoxicated with his own scent and longed to be near to it, the Chinese make no great deal of the matter, and don’t cover up with deodorant either.

Later that day I was introduced through the young man in my compartment to a couple of students from Tarim University who he had just met, and who were returning to school for the second semester just as I was. I was a bit startled by the reverence with which the two regarded me, bowing slightly as they talked and calling me laoshi, or teacher. The young woman (I might say girl) seemed to think that my Chinese was much better than it was, and upon their departure for their own car, I had the general idea that they were taking me under their wing, and that we would have a better chance of buying a ticket to Akesu if we got off in Turpan. They left me with a pouch of some impossibly sweet miniature tangerines, and a vague sense that I was some young British officer on his way to the Great Game.

That night, after a furtive nap on the top bunk (the security of which was provided for by my new friends), I sat on the aisle jump seat watching the darkness of what was by then surely Xinjiang. It was pitch black except for factory lights far off in the distance, and small orange dots that were either campfires on the plains or the flaming caps of oil derricks. The scenery was beginning to please the Romantic in me, a part which, somewhat to my surprise, seemed to have atrophied somewhat from disuse. While some part of me still marveled at the distances that were behind me and my home, I by and large regarded the Romantic conceit of the trip in much the same way as one might look with disbelief at a pair of one’s own baby clothes, recently rediscovered in some fusty drawer, the scent and touch of which immediately stir old affections, but which, if we were to try and put them on, would be positively ludicrous. I felt somewhat wistful at the loss, but felt none of the same frustration and desperation that may have impelled me to travel this far in the first place. A larger part of me than I thought existed now wanted simply to travel to the University to begin teaching, a part of the trip to which I had hitherto, I’m embarrassed to admit, given little thought. The frantic romance was gone, and I felt as though I’d unshouldered some kind of needless burden.

After saying goodbye to my new friends in the compartment, I got off early that morning in Turpan. The five University students insisted on carrying my bags, and generally trying to make me uncomfortable by being as effusive and helpful as possible. It was cold and black, and the train station was swarming with touts and taxi drivers. I quickly imagined myself alone, and felt tremendously grateful to have so many of “my students” around. Since the train we were to take to Akesu didn’t leave until six that evening, the six of us rented a room for the day in the train station’s hotel to get out of the cold and put down our bags. After a spirited card game, and a nap, we took a walk around town, stopping for a nice lunch of bai mian, a traditional Xinjiang noodle dish. The shops in town were rather exciting. Butchers sold whole pig heads and live chickens, the front of the dry goods stores were decorated with attractive piles of golden raisins and almonds, and the Uyghur gift shops sold real sheep leather jackets and traditional hats, as well as some impressive ornamented jackknives. The town was hazy with coal smoke, and I wondered whether the smell of it must be like what most of the world used to smell like a century ago. It seemed that the farther out I traveled, the further back in time I went as well.

That evening we stepped outside to get our train. The station, with its hazy afternoon light, made me feel as though I were positioned at some tremendous altitude (Turpan is, ironically, located in one of the lowest places on earth) and that the trains now hissing on the platforms were bound towards some enchanted country in the clouds. The platform was positively packed, and the train was even worse. People with standing room only tickets crowded the aisles, and everyone shouted and pushed. I was lucky enough to have a window seat, and even luckier to have endured the trials of train travel thus far. I would not be able to stand, let alone go to the bathroom, for at least the next twelve hours. My new friends and I talked well into the night before we finally, and awkwardly, fell asleep.

After a bleary night, I awoke to a somewhat less crowded train, and the bright landscape of the northern part of the Taklamakan Desert, the names of old Silk Road cities such as Kuqa and Korla ringing in the air. The stark desert soon gave way to some more developed areas of mud houses, with long roads lined with poplars that stretched off into the pale blue distance. While everything was covered with dust, the effect was not to deaden the landscape and its flora, but rather to enhance something like their inner spirit, just as pastel colors might strike us even stronger than radical and affronting saturated ones, if we are in a mood to receive them. Indeed, I felt generally that the dust gave to the scrubby bowers and lime-ringed poplars a somewhat magical aspect, a sort of bluish haze that one associates with moonlight, giving to the environment as a whole a dreamlike unfamiliarity such as one might wake up to see when the first snow of the season has cast the world outside our windows with the charmed character of a fairy tale. There are certain paintings by Gauguin that capture and express, with even deeper effect, the emotion that such places bring up in me, and I can understand the artist’s need to escape from his own habitat in order to enjoy the secrets of another.

We arrived in Akesu at last around one o’clock, almost 100 hours after I’d arrived at the Beijing train station. I quickly bid good-bye to the students, thanking them profusely for all of their help and friendship and assuring them that I would “see them in class,” before meeting the much imagined Ma Ming, the foreign affairs officer with whom I’ve been corresponding for almost a year to secure visa papers. He’s a casual and friendly young man with a soft face and dark, wet eyes behind a pair of surprisingly hip square glasses, the type of person I generally find agreeable. After a lunch of bai mian in Akesu, we met with the driver who was to take us to Ala’er and the University. We piled into the sporty SUV and began chatting about life at Tarim University, about which I was very anxious to learn (and about which the reader will have to wait for subsequent blog posts). The school and the city are located about 130 kilometers from Akesu down a dry and tree-lined road. The area is characterized, as is all of Xinjiang, I suppose, by dust and sand, though here certain patches of soil were pure white with salt. Cotton fields lay fallow for the winter, and the flora generally called to mind a dried up bouquet from some special occasion tied up with straw that one might find in warm, yellow sunlight in a forgotten corner of one’s attic. The driver chain smoked and blasted Uyghur-style karaoke on the dashboard DVD player, and proceeded to pass into oncoming traffic every sort of vehicle imaginable: truck, car, motorcycle, bike, donkey cart, and even a camel. We arrived at the enormous gray administration building of Tarim University much quicker than we probably should have.

I’d like to say that my trip out here gave me the confidence or self-possession that I believed such an intentional endeavor into unfamiliarity might bestow upon the brave, and that by placing myself in a completely foreign environment I would by necessity come to control more completely my own actions, and earn that emulsion of character I’ve always admired, and thought to be the very qualification for manhood, or something like it. In a word, I came to be independent, and to see what I might learn about myself when truly “all alone.” What a surprise, then, that I found myself depending, as it were, on the kindness of strangers for not only the success and ease of the trip, but for the pleasure and character of the experience as a whole. Should I be disappointed in myself for lacking the wherewithal to stick to my guns, to suffer for my virtue? Or is true independence the ability to reach out to others in any situation, even when you’re half-way across the world? In America, the notion of dependence is positively sodden with a kind of sickness, with a character of protracted immaturity. However, it might be the case that there is more maturity, more virtue, more integrity to be found in refusing the stubborn independence that I have always felt could be cultivated in such a way that my actions would naturally emanate from its source. While I have long admired those who are capable of such rocky isolation, and have struggled in spite of myself to tailor my actions to such an attitude, I’m beginning to learn that such rigid adherence to a personal code of non-interference seems to emerge, in myself at least, not from any inward identity, but from a kind of artificial and immature posing, composed of puerility and stubborn cowardice. Harder by far it is to reach out to a stranger than to suffer inwardly, and it requires much more of the daring, the adult, and the virtuous character that I had previously misidentified in those who reach out to others not at all.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for our next installment: A Stately Pleasure Dome