City of Dust

Qinghai Province is thought of as the Siberia of China.  A central sprawl of grasslands, mountains, and few people roaming them—a vague and bare region in the Chinese imagination.  Except, since this is China, there is also a city of over a million residents: Xining.  The name means “Western Peaceful,” so perhaps the city has outgrown this meaning.

If you haven't heard of it, that's okay.  I hadn't either until I was booking my flight.

Upon my arrival, my guide, a Tibetan named Wendekhar (and a prospective Dartmouth ’17!), immediately apologized for the weather.  Having frolicked in New Zealand summerland for the past term, I had forgotten that I would be flying into the tail end of China’s winter.  I was wearing both the long-sleeved shirts I had brought, and there was still a chill.  My lips ached for Mistress Chapstick.  The sky was white and low, what I was afraid was perpetual smog, but which cleared up by late morning.  The real shame, though, is that the plantlife has not returned to its usual vim.  Qinghai in the summer, I am told, is spectacular.

The winter town is not the town of summer lost in snow.  It is another thing, a different thing.

The peak months for tourism are May and June, though even then it is no hot spot.  My guidebook assures me “most travelers don’t come to see Xining” as well as “Xining isn’t known for its cuisine.”  I am a foreigner in an off-time for an off-place.  In every gaze from a local I imagine an implicit question: “Why are you here?”  Even “tourist” is a form of legitimacy, but a label I find hard to justify.

Go home, kid.  Go home, you're drunk.

I am determined, though.  I will enjoy this place and what makes it unique, even if it doesn’t have a tourist stamp of approval.  I came here to glimpse Tibetan culture and because I knew I would have a friend of a friend to show me around.  It turns out Xining is bigger than I had guessed and is first and foremost a Chinese city, though it does weave minority culture into the urban fabric.  It’s not what I expected, but that’s the thrill of travel—nothing ever is.  And if it is, why go?

And when it is what you expected, how disappointing that, when you were expecting it to be unexpected, it--contrary to expectations--turned out to be as expected after all.

A blog with vivid pictures and mulled-over prose is a great way to build a persona of fearless traveler, amateur photojournalist.  But I admit, I am not this admirable persona.  My first day here was filled with awe and excitement, but also a gnawing unease in my stomach.  It was as if, in some vague and unpredictable way, the city itself was going to destroy me.

Though swimming here might indeed destroy me in a vague and unpredictable way.

From a Western aesthetic point of view, everything in the city is, well, super sketchy.  Sidewalk tiles are cracked and missing, pieces of characters are missing from signs, paint is peeling off of everything, and glass panes are cracked.  But most of all, the surfaces are covered with some amount of the ubiquitous dust.  Denser, though, like sand, or blown-off dirt.  In the mornings, women in fluorescent vests can be seen dusting off the walkways with big straw brooms.  The air itself is slightly peppered with it, and a scent of smoke. 

Almost every building, including the banks and museums, has either cloth or plastic flaps like this over the doorway.  They took a little getting used to.

A common style of apartment.

This isn’t sketchiness, though.  It’s the city’s take on practicality.  They take “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” one step further, “If it’s broke but it does its job, why bother?”  These aren’t shady characters living in squalor, buying drugs, and revelling in the fact that they are surrounded by ruined things that mirror their ruined souls.  They’re just people who can’t afford, or don’t need to afford, to keep up arbitrary external appearances.  And I really can’t fault Xining for the dust.  It is literally nestled among sandstone cliffs to all sides, during a dry and windy winter at that.  The door flaps which make a store seem dirty from the outside in fact mean that the dust is being kept out, and that the interior is more likely to be tidy.


Though I have no explanation for why the trunks of most trees are painted like this.  So people don't run into them at night?

Old pipes used both decoratively and to discourage cars from entering.

Only one bullet hole in the entrance to my hostel building!  (Okay, I concede, this one is sketchy.)

I feel like I tend to personify large geographic structures.  The mountains around Xining feel like aged guardians.

This long mound of earth acts as a median on Kunlun Road.

There’s a flow to the way people move, especially in regards to traffic.  My favorite thing (besides eating) is crossing the street.  People just inch their way across, lane by lane, whenever they have enough room before the next car comes.  I say lane, though, as if the drivers care about them.  It’s just a vague swarm of vehicles that usually contains itself between the curbs.  Honking means not so much “You’re doing something wrong” as “I’m here, so be aware I’m coming through.”  People can feel decently safe waiting between lanes of traffic because they know drivers are watching for this.  Drivers can eschew lanes and blast perpendicularly across traffic to turn because they know everyone else is expecting antics like this.  So crossing the street, I feel like I’ve gotten a knack for this particular piece of culture, like I belong to the way people naturally move.

These are the green taxicabs that are everywhere.  Some of them batshit.

This isn’t to say, though, that the system is foolproof.  On my second day, I got into a green taxicab and we immediately passed the scene of a traffic accident.  The entire front end of the car was crumpled.  It was a green taxicab.  Still, in every taxi, the back seat belts are wedged in behind the seat so you couldn’t use them if you wanted.  When I sat in the front and buckled up, the driver told me, “You don’t have to use that if you don’t want to.  Or is it just a habit?”  I said it was a habit, and not the truer answer: “I would like to go through my day and not a windshield.”  Though a different driver talked about how frantic Chinese traffic is and that he always drives moderately.

I was also put off at first by the constant construction.  One problem with construction is that it looks like a type of disrepair.  (This was a lingering impression in Christchurch, too.)  And it’s inconvenient.  Many construction sites have signs saying, “Help Xining Develop” or “Toward Our Future.”  This gives me the sense that the local people need a little push not to be frustrated.

"Speed up the old city's pace of transformation, establish the central district as a modernized core commerce district with a modern developed service industry, enriched and prosperous trade, fair allocation of space, improved urban functions, and a beautiful environment and ecology, suitable for industry and for living."

Skyscrapers like this, I assume, will become residential units.

Oh hey there, rubble.

Pretty much the entirety of Qilian Road and the eastern part of Fuzhu Road are torn up behind that blue barrier.  This became a problem when I was trying to schedule a bus tour organized by the Station Hotel, via guidebook recommendation, only to find out its physical location is now a pile of concrete.

This is part of a mural called "A Spring Story," which seems to depict Xining's development.  In this panel, construction becomes almost a sacred process.

It wasn’t until I ate the food, though, that I felt at ease here.  Perhaps the tremor in my stomach was just hunger?  In any case, food can represent the physical internalizing of a place, of processing it and therefore belonging in it.  This sounds meta-analytical, but I think our bodies often do function on a symbolic level.

Yang chang mian, meaning "mutton sausage noodles."  The Muslim population is very fond of mutton.  This dish had a unique spice, with that special sheep flavor.  I felt not only full but filled with warmth in a way I haven't with other spices.

The wonderfully hole-in-the-wall place where I got the yang chang mian.

Surprisingly, this may be a step up from the first noodle place I ate at.  It had a health inspection rating posted.  It got a C.  Probably typical.  But this wasn't any old C.  That had it turned 180 degrees by accident, like Ɔ.  Ling people, that's right.  I ate at a restaurant with a hygiene rating of open-o.

Shou zhua yangrou, meaning "hand-grab mutton," with a side of homemade yogurt.

Mutton on the bone like this is a Tibetan herder favorite.  A little pricey, but worth it.  The meat is chewy, tender, savory, and flavorful.  And see the whitish-yellowish stuff?  That is fat, but either because it’s naturally tasty or because they cook it a certain way, it doesn’t taste bland like you would expect pure fat to.  So when my mom tells me I don’t get enough calories, I will show her this and say, “Look, I’m eating pure sheep fat.  And it was fucking delicious.”

Niang pi, made from flour and baking soda.  Soft, chewy, not super flavorful itself, but it soaks up the spicy broth.

Tian pei, or "sweet grains," a simple sweet soup with barley. 

Zasui tang, or "entrail soup," with lamb innards and a filling broth often used to warm up on a cold morning.  The other people eating it didn't let go of the bread with their left hand as they sipped from the rim of the bowl.

Inside the straightforwardly named "Mutton Sausage Noodle Mutton Entrail Soup."

Kun guo, which you can find at little bakery stands for about twenty cents.  Not too flavorful, but it has a chewy, bready (I know, right) texture.

A little bread stand near my hostel.  The characters say mo mo pu, "bread bread shop."

If I can find it, Gou Jiao Niao, or Dog Poured Piss, a type of baked good which, if I read the Chinese description correctly, used to be made with dog piss.  With Wendekhar, I also had Tsampa, the Tibetan staple food, consisting of butter melted with milk tea, then mixed with barley flour by the left hand to form a doughy substance.  Eaten either plain or with sugar, yogurt, or pepper spice.

Even outside the realm of food, the city is not without its charms.  At a few big intersections, where you can’t cross the road, you go underground instead. 

The space has been turned into an extensive, plus-shaped underground mall.

The open public spaces are, one might say, bustling centers of leisure.  In the morning there are women doing exercises together, people playing games at tables with interested onlookers, and generally just people walking around all over the place.  Sometimes even backward, though I haven’t figured that one out yet.

A colorful display at the intersection of Xida Road and Changjiang Road.

Banners, pennants, and flowers along an upper-scale commercial road.  Not the monks shopping.

A public square where people were dancing and flying kites.

Descending a bridge going over a major road.  Along the bridge people were selling things from mats.

Games at the park.

Snazzy exercise equipment along Kunlun Road.

These things, everywhere.  They must be too cool for America.

 

One of the English-learning places you see around.  "Crazy English" is actually an apt translation of the Chinese, though I don't know who would want to speak Crazy English.

A stand at a local market.

What a pleasant euphemism.  This "Husband and Wife Products" store, as I predicted, is a sex toy shop.

Xining’s population is not just the usual Han Chinese that dominate the country.  Tibetan (Zang), Mongol (Menggu), Hui, and Tu minorities make up large proportions of the demographics.  A museum I visited noted how they live in harmony in Qinghai.  I don’t know how much that is actually the case, but you do see all of these people walking around and sometimes eating one another’s food.  Minority status seems very touchy in the US, but in China it can be a matter of pride, or simply a casual piece of information.  The situation differs also in that all the minorities are endemic to the area, whereas American minorities besides Native Americans are as much immigrants as the white majority.  The minorities here can also be harder to tell apart.

I eavesdropped this conversation with a taxi driver:

Driver: “I can tell you’re a minority.  Which one are you?”

Wendekhar: “Tibetan.”

Driver: “I knew it!”

Wendekhar: “What about you, then?”

Driver: “Oh, I’m Hui.”

Wendekhar: “Hm, I wouldn't guess without the hat.” 

The Hui people are Muslim.  The men usually wear a white hat, like these men in the foreground are.

Hui women wear a head scarf over the hair.  Typically black, though potentially any color, including pink with rhinestones.  Or, in one case, a makeshift scarf out of plastic bags...

Capitalism seems to play itself out differently here from in the US.  Or maybe it’s like this in all big cities.  I notice multiple shops in a row with the same service.  I would usually assume that they would be in fierce competition, but when prices aren’t explicitly marked and there are enough people to support them all, I guess this model makes sense.  If you’re in the market for flowers and fresh fruit, head to the corner where there are ten shops selling.  Need your car washed?  Drive to the street in town that has, no kidding, over two dozen cleaning garages in a row.  There’s a window cluster, a lighting cluster, even a hospital cluster in town.

Three Muslim butcheries with identical signage.

These are my impressions as I travel from one other side of the world to another.  I hope I can bring texture, a faint flavor, to a void in your picture of the world, just as I am doing the same for myself.  I hope to add two more entries on Xining: one on the monasteries I've visited and one either on Othering (yay anthropology buzzwords) or on how I almost got myself stranded six hours from the city to die of exposure beside a frozen lake.  Details to follow.