It's 3:00am in the morning. My ass is so sore...(mind out the gutter) It's only been six hours on this train. Another 42 to go. Non-stop. Urumqi to Shenzhen. The moon is out and the window, glazed with dust. I sit near the toilet on a hard seat, no bed and all because I wanted to be a stingy Indian and not pay extra for a bed. Strangely enough, I'm satisfied with my decision to take the seat, eventhough the air is thick with cigarette smoke and the toilet laden with human feaces. The communist concoction of human waste with wasted humans creeps up into my nostrils as the constant buzz of tik tok and everybody not using earphones as per usual in China, drums my ears.
The man next to me has offered me some dried chick peas after he, just minutes ago, farted silently, but firmly against my leg. It's almost as hard as rocks, but still I chew away. The people next to me, a mixture of Han, Hui and Uyghur are gambling, which is illegal in China. The man opposite me can't take his eyes off my beard and keeps commenting on it. The reality is, I have absolutely no clue what he is saying. It strikes me that perhaps he might be Uyghur and is so intrigued because it has become illegal for him to grow one as China cracks down on them and their religious freedoms. I'm reminded of the Uyghur girl I met in Turpan who gave me cakes (actual sponge cakes, no other type of cake) the moment she met me. We had a brief conversation about our origins and then parted ways. The following day, I was heading to a mosque, which wasn't there because it had been destroyed and low and behold, I passed the same girl cleaning a home. She called me in and introduced me to her dad. There it was, I was going to get married. Nah, the man was quite chilled and was more intrigued in the repairs he was making to his toilet than the hairy Indian at his door. After a small tour of her home, I asked her why the mosque had been demolished. She replied by saying, "Xinjiang is very strict." I didn't know what to think. As a South African, freedom is one of our founding principles, but to her, it seemed, the freedom of her religion was just a case of symantics.
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| The gamblers. |
Back on the train, I try and use Google translate to communicate with the locals, but the direct translation doesn't always seem to make sense. In that moment I can't help but feel a sense of justification for China's stance towards the, 'lowai' or, 'foreigner'. You see, this country treats foreigners very differently to SA. What would be called racial profiling in SA, is just a case of procedure here. To stay at a hotel, they have to be certified to handle the foreigner. When you you travel somewhere, they sometimes expect the foreigner to travel separately from the locals. I always think of some Chinese politician high up in the CPC producing a documentary on the foreigner and narrating it like David Attenborough does then teaching it to all the ministers and faculties that are certified to handle foreigners in this country. The reality is that I am strange to these folk. I'm so different. I sit here eating Oreos whilst they eat Chicken feet and bread. I mean where in SA would I see people eating Chicken feet on the train and regularly at that? They take their shoes off and dig their toes and it's normal here whereas in SA, I wouldn't wait a second before someone gave a look of disgust or a comment of barbarity. Perhaps when you are 1 person in 1.6billion, there is case for David Attenborough narration.
It's amazing how we look at disability as being a physical or mental condition. We forget that even the environment around us can be an enabler or disabler. Something as simple as language or in my case, a lack of mandarin has reduced the foreigner to nothing more than a baby making strange sounds to Chinese. As they continue to ask me questions that I don't understand after I have repeatedly told them, "Timbadong Jongwen" which means, "I don't understand Chinese." they seem to thing that slowing it down and yelling it at me will somehow make me understand it. Nevertheless, in this time of hear no evil, see no evil, a Uyghur man next to me offers to teach me to play a simple card game. I decline, saying it will be impossible as I don't understand the language, but he insists and with no speaking at all, just a simple laying of cards on top of one another and tossing the odd card every now and then, he pulls it off and teaches me the game. It's so strange how much we learn from the things that aren't said. It almost feels like the time I spent at school, University and teacher training has taught me something so different about the simple transferring of knowledge that a mere pigeon racer seated beside me has. Perhaps the words unsaid, say they most.
The train keeps going... Long into the starless night. The seats are extremely small and hard - made to suit the Chinese physiology, not the stiff foreigner. Many people laugh as I continuously riggle around trying to get into a comfortable position. Suddenly I hear a voice from behind me. It's a standing passenger. (On Chinese trains, there are 4 types of tickets sold: first class, sleeper, hard seat and standing) An old, wrinkled, soot-nailed man and his little wife had been sleeping on an opened, flattened, cardboard box just a little way behind me. They too, were making the journey from Urumqi to Shenzhen and had taken an even cheaper, but less convenient option than I had. Over the entire trip, the only thing I saw this man and wife eat, were sunflower seeds and the odd piece of bread. He called me with a mere lifting of his palm toward his wrinkly face. It was so wrinkled, it reminded me of the pages of an old book. He rose of the cardboard and tapped on it, offering me his bed - the only spot on the train that I could actually fully stretch horizontally without pressing on my tender glutes. I was, for the second time in China, struck by the pure willingness to share when one has so little, yet so much to give. With tear-filled eyes, I lay upon his tattered, brown bed and slept for the night.
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| The man, his wife and bed I didn't know of yet. |
