Day 3: Uyghurlicious Times

We started out day 3 strolling down a lane of shops run by Uighurs. There were lots of shops with scarves and knives and little mirrors and local instruments, which would turn out to be the ubiquitous souvenir goods in Xinjiang. It was also a great place for street food. They tell you not to eat street food in China because it could be dirty, but if you never eat any street food, you're totally missing out, because it is an experience. We got these roasted lamb baozi that they cook in a special oven (clay or something, I really don't know) by sticking the baozi to the walls of the oven, where they just cling like barnacles because the oven is so hot. Nang, the traditional bread of Uighur cuisine, is also made like this. It's super cool. This street was also the place where, to my great surprise, we encountered bagels. I didn't think there were any bagels in China, but if you think about it, bagels came from the Middle East, and Uyghurs are of Turkish descent...I've never been to the Middle East, but Xinjiang is approximately how I imagine it to be. Anyway, Uyghur food was awesome. Beijing food really can't compare.

Also in that alley of shops we spotted a lot of things that we didn't know what they were exactly. The first were things that looked like pipes, but the daoyou said no, they definitely weren't for smoking; in fact, they were intended for babies to go to the bathroom in. Lovely. Later, we saw baby cradles with holes cut in them, and now wiser, immediately guessed that they were pee holes, which, of course, they were. Oh China.

Later that morning we went to Idkah Mosque. It was pretty, and there were trees and gardens and a tower where they ring the bell to call everybody to prayers, and most interestingly, a clock set to *Xinjiang time,* 2 hours before Beijing time, and technically illegal. Rock. Also, and I forget what time of day this happened, but we went to a Buddhist something-or-other with the tomb of the Fragrant Concubine, apparently a famous person in Chinese history who worked her way up in the ranks of the emperor's concubines by having an exceptional personal scent. That's a pretty super claim to fame, if you ask me. Besides the story, though, it was a generally boring place to visit. It doesn't help that the tour guides are always speaking in Chinese and I usually have no idea what they're talking about when they ramble about various cultural sites.

At lunch we tried more local food, including pigeon chuanr (kebabs, if I've never mentioned this vocab word before), which were okay if rather lacking in actual meat, and super-sour yogurt, without even a touch of sugar. I mustered up all of my stoicism and ate it plain. Yeahhhh.

The coolest place we went all day (and maybe the coolest place we went on our whole trip), however, was the Uyghur market. This wasn't some artificial bazaar constructed to tap into tourists' desire for local, cultural-looking souvenirs, it was the real thing, the place where the real Uyghurs go to buy stuff and not just to shake tourists down for their money. We were almost disappointed at first because so much of the stuff was just normal, everyday goods, and we wanted that unique cultural souvenir-type stuff. The cool cultural stuff was still there, though...we found some really good shops after a while. The interesting thing was that, since it was a market by Uyghurs for Uyghurs, the salespeople didn't necessarily speak very good Chinese, or in some cases, any Chinese at all. This made things interesting, because as you might guess, I don't speak any Uyghur. I bought some dried melons from a man who knew no Chinese, and we bargained on a calculator and using his 2 English phrases, "one kilo" and "one-half kilo." He was asking for 13 kuai and I was holding out for 12, so I just gave him 12. When he gestured that I was still missing 1 kuai, I just shrugged and acted like "so what?" and the man was so amused that he didn't even bother hassling me any further for that last kuai. It was super fun.

We had some really excellent times talking with the Uyghur salespeople in the market...I like talking to Uyghurs in Chinese because their Chinese isn't usually a whole lot better than mine, so they almost never used words I didn't understand. Richard and Casey amused themselves by practicing their haofu/huaifu act on the vendors. Haofu/huaifu is a phrase we invented to describe what is essentially the Chinese bargaining version of good cop/bad cop (ours literally means good husband/bad wife). In Casey and Richard's case, Casey was the sympathetic figure, the good wife who just wanted to buy some pretty mirrors, while Richard was the mean husband who got so into the act that he started actually yelling at Casey in front of the vendor about how she was always wasting their money, and the vendor started sympathizing with Casey about how her husband didn't really appreciate how nice the mirrors were, and they ended up getting a pretty respectable price for them. Super fun.

While Richard and Casey were buying mirrors, I was off getting knives. Little knives (and big ones, for that matter, but I wasn't about to buy any big scary knives) were all over in Kashgar, so I felt like I should get some, even though I hadn't originally intended to. I went to a couple shops, but ended up buying knives from the most fun little knife man ever. His knives were really good (he demonstrated slicing things for me, and they were some sharp little knives), but when I protested the price he wanted for them, he pulled a typical vendor move and brought out a cheaper, lower quality product, saying "if you want it cheaper, you can just get this cheaper product," knowing that of course nobody wants the cheap, low-quality one. It's one of the oldest ones in the book. Anyway, he showed me a poorly made little knife to contrast with his, and said "if you want a cheaper knife, you can get this kind, but it's not as good. My knives I make myself, here in Xinjiang, very high quality. That other knife? You don't want that knife. It's made in China." This was basically the highlight of my bargaining experience. You don't want that knife; it's made in China. That comment really sealed the deal...after that, how could I not buy his knives? I was so happy and so ready to get my bargain on buying other Uyghurlicious stuff, but then Casey called to say that everyone was waiting for me at the entrance because we had to leave. Whoops. I got lost on my way back, and when I arrived the daoyou totally guilt-tripped me about making everyone else wait. Nice.

After the market we went to the Old City where the Uyghurs live. Sadly, the Chinese are busy tearing down the old city and building some kind of new subdivision to house the displaced Uyghurs. All in the name of progress. Anyway, our little tour group stopped in a few houses in the old city, where I'm sure our daoyou had some kind of deal with the owners to get a cut of the profits from any touristy things they could manage to sell us. Sometimes it was bizarre, as in the case of the house where a girl fed us (strangely enough) madeleines that by their taste and texture were apparently made of foam rubber while trying to convince us to buy beaded tissue-box covers. Silliness! We also met some really adorable kids, though, and Richard and I bought fezzes. We were always trying, on the course of our trip, to seek out the actual local culture more than the touristy stuff they fed our tour groups, and in the case of our fezzes, I felt that we were very successful. All of the fezzes they sold in tourist places were completely over-the-top, with sequins galore, but I never saw many actual Uyghurs wear them. However, almost as soon as we had bought our fezzes, we were out in the street, and I saw two men in a row wearing the exact same fez Richard and I had just bought. It was a fabulous moment for me, a moment of triumph over the inescapable touristy-ness we encountered all over.

After that we had dinner, featuring the best food I had on the whole trip, nang bao rou. It's a big ol' nang topped with a pile of tender lamb, plus carrots and other good stuff, in the most amazing sauce ever, and it was beautiful, to boot. If I ever get Casey's pictures, you can see nang bao rou in all its glory.

Post-dinner we hopped on a plane back to Urumqi, where our original daoyou met us at the airport and took us to our hotel. It was a really shiny modern hotel, but the shower was still just a showerhead in the tiny tub-less bathroom, so when you showered the toilet was in the shower. I thought this was weird, but it turned out that all our hotels on the trip were that way, so whatever, I guess it's just an Asian thing. Hen hao!