Just Thinking

I have taken to throwing darts. Kiwis and Brit expats against the Americans. 6 against 2 unfair odds but we have a good time. Every Friday we all get together for beers peanuts and team darts. The first time we took to the board, we were a disaster. Lately though we have been holding our own thanks to practice. I broke down and bought a board. Now we have home and away matches. What a hoot! It's a great way to end the week, share stories, and ponder the world outside. So everyday I practice heaving darts at a board. It is a zen thing for me, like yoga. It helps me clear my mind and focus. Well maybe not, but I'd like to think so. One thing it does do for me is it helps me avoid the things I really need to get done. Like this blog entry. I want to finish this adventure to Xinjiang Provence but I am having panic attacks about it. Not that I felt physically threatened, it was more psychological then anything else. I spent long hours in my hotel room waiting. Waiting for Colin, waiting to decide what to do. The time in Yining is the same as it is in Beijing though it is 3000 miles to the west. The time difference and the fact it was the same time as someplace else really messed up schedules. Noon felt like nine am but it also felt like the middle of the day. I never got used to it. I would wake at seven, and it seemed like four in the morning. I would do my yoga and then go down stairs to the restaurant to eat twice tortured eggs. At breakfast the Chinese would stare at me with blank faces. The Arabs, Russians and Uighur would look at me quizzically, like who are you? I haven't seen you around these parts. The last day in Yining I made friends with some Russian Business men at the breakfast table. I couldn't speak Russian and their English was limited to hello. We traded pictures of kids and we were able to tell each other where we were from. They thought I was one of them. That made me feel better. But every breakfast I would try to eat alone. The Chinese made me feel very uncomfortable. The hotel was also a favorite meeting place for the military. Funny it is the only place foreigners can go to get a room too. What's that old saying, keep your friends close, keep your enemy closer. People from the military would eye me up one side and down the other, never saying a word. After three days I just accepted it as part of the territory. After three days I was getting used to everything. Mornings usually ended with me watching the Australian Open on Chinese Government TV and waiting. On this particular day, I was waiting to hear from Colin, we were going to his grandparents house for lunch and to talk. Colins grandfather, a professor of history at the college in Yining is the preeminent authority on the Uighur. We were going to talk about that and to see if we could get grandfather to take us to a Uighur village. I thought what a great photo op. This is exactly what I had come to do and see. I was stoked! ten went by no call. Eleven, nothing. At noon I decided to call Colin. No answer. At noon thirty I called again. The phone was shut off. At one oclock, Colin calls me. His voice is stressed. His English is incomprehensible. The only thing I could understand at the time was policeman, I come to your hotel now. When Colin got to the hotel it was 1:30. He came with his friend we call Big Dog. They came in. Colin was hysterical. He was mixing Chinese and English together. I told him to calm down. Colin described how the police had called him that morning and told him to meet with them alone at an undisclosed hotel. They wanted to talk to him. When Colin arrived at the hotel he was told to go to a room on the second floor that people were waiting for him. When he walked into the room two men in plain clothes met him. They sat Colin down in a chair opposite the two men. One of them asked the questions the other took notes. Colin said this went on for a couple of hours. They would ask Colin a question and thirty minutes later ask him the same question. They asked him about his family what his parents do what he does, if he has brothers or sisters, where they work why, who I am what am I doing in China, why did I come to Xinjiang, did I have family and where are they, on and on. Colin said the questions became very personal and that he was scared. Any time the Chinese Secret Police start asking personal questions about you and your family is not a time to celebrate. You do not want the SP probing into your private life. Enough said. It took Colin a good thirty minutes to calm down. From there we went to see his grandparents on the other side of town. Colin had told his parents and everyone what happened with the police. From that point on, my options became very limited. We went to lunch and it was delicious, but there was no discussion about the Uighurs, there would be no going to the village like I had hoped. Colin's Mother met us there to help with lunch and everyone was a little edgy. The table conversation was light and polite. We ate lunch we left, Colin, Gou Li, and myself. Before we hailed a cab for the ride back to the hotel, Gou Li took Colin to a phone store to get a Xinjiang phone number. In China, you buy the cell phone and then you purchase numbers. Every provence has it's own prefix. Colin had a Jiangsu prefix on his phone which was already being listened to. Gou Li decided to get Colin a Xinjiang number in her name so that the SP couldn't trace the calls. Even Gou Li became suspicious of me. I carryed my photo bag to lunch and she could not believe that all there was in the bag was camera equipment. Right there in the street, she wanted to see what was in the bag, so I opened it for her right in the street. She seemed almost dissatisfied that she didn't catch me with something more than cameras and equipment. The SP had every one freaked out. Now the family thinks I am not who I claim to be. That hurt.
I felt suddenly on the defensive. I felt very alone and very isolated. Funny how a small moment can change so much. When they dropped me off at the hotel all I wanted to do was hide. Now I was concerned.

It was Colin, "My parents want invite to you a huoguo a Xinjiang speciality very delicious." Huoguo loosely translated means hot pot. Hot because the soup is boiled to vapor and the broth is made up of spices and chilies. Meats, vegetables and noodles are brought to the table to be put into the soup and cooked. There are two pots on the fire. one inside the other. the inner pot is a sweet pot where fruits are put to cook. The outer pot is the spicy hot pot. Three days on the road, sleeper bus and train, my system said lets go for it! That night I met Colins' mother father and all of Goulis family. We drank Baijao and ate Huoguo. The baijao is a liquor made of rice. I have tasted some pretty raunchy stuff in my day but nothing compares to baijao. Baijao is a cross between cough syrurp and Saki. At about one hundred proof it proves to be a very intense experience when slamming it down during a toasts. Chinese men like to fill their glasses up and drink it all one time. After three glasses and many toasts to me and I to the family I felt I could conquer anything. I am an easy drunk and three four ounce glasses was, well way too much. Much of what I said I cannot remember. Though, I do remember Colin's father. Dads nickname is Happy. Happy was very happy that night. So happy in fact he wanted to go into business with me to open up a barbecue place in America and me thinking right, sure, must be the alcohol I don't even know this guy. So trusting. . Trust only goes so far as to who you know and how you know them. But tonight I trust everyone!! Colin's mother on the other hand, is a tall handsome woman with reddish wavy hair. She is the serious one in the family. Usually what she said went. She kept looking at me with skepticism. Her sister works for the tourist industry in Yining. A beautifully dark exotic woman. She was the person who got the deal at the Friendly Hotel for me. Her estranged husband joined us and never said much. Colin's aunt sat on one side of me, the estranged husband sat on the other. Colin says the relationship is "complicated" That is an understatement. There was Guoli's brother that sat next to Happy. He kept toasting me and laughing. Colin's brother and his girlfriend came. Nana, is half russian and native of Yining, a lovely gentle person. She is at the university of Beijing studying to be a doctor. Her parents are doctors. Rounding out the table was Colin's cousin who in Chinese culture is referred to as a brother, and Colin's best friend Big Dog. I come to find out later that Big Dog is a big mooch and not such a great friend. Most of what I ate I can't remember. I do remember it being the spiciest meal that has ever crossed my lips. My bald spot was soaked in sweat and my cheeks were burning, my lips were numb and I kept eating. No one spoke English except for Colin and his brother. So I listened and marveled at where I was. I was eating huoguo one hundred km from the border to Kirghistan. I am so drunk now I think I understand Chinese fluently. We all laughed at my Chinese and had a great time eating huoguo. Then they drove me back to the hotel where I poured myself onto my bed and slept, restlessly with the fire extinguisher, and a glass of snow next to me.

My Room the Police and Hot Pot

The hallway on the second floor is dimly lit with two small lights at either end of it. My room sat underneath the stairwell. The passkey lock was always hard to see. I never saw anyone on my floor when I would walk up to my room. Yet, once in my room I could hear voices, people laughing and arguing all around me. Doors would open and shut. I could hear the rush of footsteps in the hallway. But once I stepped out of my room, the hallway was silent. It felt empty. The hotel kept it's rooms coldish, just above what would be thought of as uncomfortable. I wore a fleece pullover all the time. The hallway though was cold. My room was plush in a midgets perspective. Hallway lights were used to light my room with. I thought I was in a twilight episode. The smoking room was big enough to hold a card table and three chairs. Cigarette burns covered cheap carpet the floor. A very dim light overhead lit the room. It felt made for espionage. A lounge chair hid in the other corner of the room. My bedroom was the size of my bed. A semi comfortable twin with a small TV at the end of it and a night stand next to it. My room overlooked the back entrance to a restaurant. Every morning I would stare out the window at the frozen world outside and watch the meat man pull up in his three wheeled motorcycle cart, the back end piled high with animal parts and a scale. The meat steamed in the morning air waiting to be sold. The meat man ran from the restaurant to the cart pulling body parts from the back end weighing and rushing them in. My shower had hot water when it felt like having it. Sometimes, in the early morning I could coax a few minutes of warm water out of it. That first day I felt rode hard and beaten. The room even with all it's quirks and misgivings felt very cosy and warm. I laid down and just as my head hit the pillow, the phone rang.