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.