Mingmei Yip - Song of the Silk Road

During the next few days in Urumqi, all I did was sleep, eat, and take walks. For meals, I did not bother to find restaurants but just ordered room service. Even though I was not staying at the Welcome Guest Hotel this time, just being in Urumqi brought back bittersweet memories of Alex. I could not help wondering how he was. Was he sorry about our quarrel? Were his parents bad-mouthing me?

Then, as I was drifting off to sleep one night, a thought emerged. What I really needed was a more complete break—I could go back to New York to see Alex, and maybe even Chris. But this idea brought new worries: What if Alex had already forgotten about me and was dating someone his age—or even younger? As for Chris, I was sure he’d be happy to see me, at least for the free bed-warming—if he hadn’t yet seduced another student. Appealing as the thought of returning to New York to relax, eat some good food, and see a few good movies was, I decided I should visit the blind fortune-teller first, then return to China to finish whatever I was destined to finish.

My last day in Urumqi, I set out for the city’s famous bazaar to shop, take pictures, and enjoy myself. The weather was pleasant, with a slight breeze to dissipate the heat and a clear sky to clear my befuddled mind. The market was crowded as usual with Chinese, European tourists, Uyghurs, Turks, Mongols, and Tibetans. Many of the “foreign” men possessed robust physiques, brown skin, deep-set eyes, and high-bridged noses. I found myself gawking at these exotic faces like a teenage girl transfixed by pictures of her favorite male movie stars.

Some men stared back at me with expressionless faces, others smiled, yet others cast me curious glances and muttered in languages I didn’t understand. The non-Chinese women, also with big eyes, high noses, and honey-colored complexions, mostly ignored me and went on with their business of haggling with vendors or scolding their overactive sons and whining daughters. By the roadside, groups of children in colorful outfits played their own invented games with plastic toys—cars, soldiers, animals, dinosaurs.

I was delighted to see vendors everywhere selling crafts and food. Bright-colored hand-sewn carpets and bolts of silk had been laid on the ground for people to haggle over. Pottery and porcelain wares of varied sizes and shapes kept beckoning me to caress their silk-smooth glaze and take them back to a cozy home. A tall, dark orange vase with bold streaks of turquoise suggested to me a dark-skinned woman with sensuous, elongated fingers picking berries under the turquoise sky.

The owner lifted up the vase and yelled to me, “Ten, ten. Take home!”

Though I was tempted to adopt the vase, I knew I couldn’t possibly carry such a weighty and fragile object in my backpack and then in my luggage back to the U.S.

Hurrying away, I inhaled the delicious smell of food—seven-ingredient soup, grilled meat, kebabs, huge flat nang bread , fresh fruits. I stopped to appreciate green and mauve grapes hugging each other in huge clusters, like blossoms napping in spring. Metal basins overflowed with a huge variety of nuts and dried fruits—walnuts, almonds, raisins, currants, bananas, plums—all piled up high like camels’ humps.

I wandered aimlessly, bumping into people and listening to strange syllables emitting from their maroon, sensuous lips.

One little girl dressed in red pulled my jeans and said in disjointed English, “Come, come, buy nang! nang! ” while pointing to a huge, round, crusty pancake—the size of a twelve-slice pizza—on a table in front of a young woman, no doubt her mother.

I had learned that nang , like rice for the Chinese, is a staple for the Uyghur people, especially during long-distance travel, since the bread can stay edible for months.

“How much?”

She lifted three of her dirty fingers. “Tree.”

I took one nang from the young woman and handed the little girl “tree” bills.

Then I stooped down so my face was at the same level as hers. “Little friend, how did you learn English?”

She giggled. “Ghosts, white.”

“You like white ghosts?”

She nodded her pretty head, then stuck out her tongue and rolled her eyes, imitating a ghost, I supposed. After that, she giggled uncontrollably while dashing to hide behind the young woman.

I waved to them and walked away, strolling and munching on my Uyghur “pizza.” A harsh-looking male vendor pushed a piece of meat almost into my mouth with his blackened, calloused hand.

I pointed to my huge nang, gave him a dismissive wave, then continued to walk. Unlike the little girl, he was far from being cute as could be imagined and so failed to get my business.

A small, boisterous gathering caught my attention, so I squeezed through to the front of the little throng where a man in a deep blue apron was performing gymnastics with noodles as long as the Great Wall and as tangled as the plot of a soap opera. To my amazement, like a circus animal trainer, he made the noodles execute a complex ballet in the air. But I didn’t get any noodle soup from him. Though he was cute, his portion was not little, and I reminded myself that my “pizza” was huge.

I left the loud applause behind and resumed walking. Amidst the hustle and bustle of the market, I imagined myself traveling through time to this same place centuries ago. Under the scorching sun, caravans loaded with silk, embroidery, tea leaves, jade, gold jewelry, porcelain, lacquer, bronze, and peacocks lumbered forward, their owners salivating over the soon-to-be-made fortunes. Bells fastened around the camels’ ankles emitted crisp, tinkling sounds, breaking the eerie silence of the empty desert. Back from the West, richly attired merchants squatted on the humped beasts, happily surveying their exchanged goods—glass, gems, medicines, spices, wine, rugs, fragrant woods, rich fabrics, ostriches, even heavenly horses tethered behind the camels.

In my reverie, I was the richest merchant’s beautiful daughter who, while riding from east to west and then back, would meet and fall dangerously in love with one of the tall, exotic, dark-skinned men. Except for my eyes, my face was veiled—from the wind, heat, dust, and especially the eyes of these handsome strangers. But the veil’s job was only half done. Bewitched by my eyes—big, long-lashed, greenish brown, haunting—they would project amorous messages straight back to my soul’s windows.

“Alas!” my richly dressed, elegantly mannered father would exclaim, “although my daughter’s face is veiled from the world, secrets keep spilling from her loquacious eyes!”

Then, one day, a prince saw my fleeting, half-veiled visage from the reflection of a brass bell decorating my father’s luxurious carriage. Instantly he was transfixed as if struck by lightning. Like a longing from a past life, my half-veiled, half-revealed face became an unattainable dream. Until one day our caravan was stopped by a bandit, and the prince, leading his cavalrymen on horseback, dashed to my rescue. He chopped off the bandit’s head, caught me as I fell from the bandit’s dying arms, then wrapped me tightly in his manly ones. All this happened on one sultry night when the wind wailed like a rootless ghost, the horses neighed like tortured souls in hell, and the sand spun like a Sufi’s whirling robe….

In the midst of these wild imaginings, Alex’s face suddenly emerged, followed by a great sadness rising inside me. As I waved my hand in front of my eyes to sweep away this alluring yet disturbing image, I spotted a young meat vendor smiling sweetly at me. He looked to be in his early twenties, the same age as Alex. I sighed. If Alex were here, together we could be shopping for silly little things, snacking on the pungent, grimy meat, telling jokes and laughing together….