Going Home

Text written on 11 May 1988

For my father, China had always been home. He never spoke of visiting, but only ‘going home’, to China. This was his first trip to China, in fact his first trip anywhere outside Singapore since he left his poverty stricken village some sixty years ago. Today he is seventy-eight, and had been totally blind for the last thirty years.

My father’s village is Guzhen 古镇 in Zhongshan county 中山县 some eighty kilometres southwest of Guangzhou. The county used to be known as Xiangshan 香山, but had been changed to its present name in honour of Dr Sun Yat Sen, the founder of Republican China. He was born in another village not far from my father’s.

When I first stepped onto Chinese soil I was almost overcome with emotion, something which took me quite by surprise. I was more concerned with putting up with the inconvenience of looking after my father, the standard of hygiene and the acceptability of the food to realise that in a way I have come searching for my deeper roots.

To go to Guzhen we took the hydrofoil from Hong Kong to Zhuhai, one of China’s four Special Economic Zones. This is just next to Macau at the mouth of the Pearl River. From there it was another three-hour jalopy bus ride to our destination. Along the way I saw many signs of economic ‘recovery’. In the little towns we passed, shops were bustling with people and goods, and new factories and roads were being built. Gainful construction-based activity were very much in evidence. I said ‘gainful’ because, according to a relative it had not been like this. During the Great Proletarian Revolution, menial labour was accorded the utmost respect. To accord oneself of this honour one had to do ‘work’ often by transporting, by the ubiquitous bamboo pole, a pile of rocks from one location to another.

My father has an amazing memory. As he could not see, we had to tell him the area we were passing through or in, and he would recall them with crystal clarity. Of course, things don’t change very much in China, rural China at least. And the people – his relatives, neighbours and childhood friends, he remembered them all. My father and I were walking along the street one day when an old man, a year younger than my father I was to find out later, walked up to us and identified himself. Immediately my father was able to place him – they played together as kids.

Being illiterate my father never wrote, and when it was absolutely necessary, through a letter-writer somewhere in Chinatown. When his children grew up they were never quite fluent in Chinese, leave alone writing letters for him to China. It thus seemed all the more amazing to me that he remembered so much.

One burden was to be lifted from his shoulders after all these years. He finally know for sure that his mother did not die of hunger during the Japanese occupation. He had always thought so, and had suffered guilt for it, but according to relatives she died after a bout of fever – malnutrition related, I presumed nevertheless.

Guzhen is not as bad as I had expected. I recalled that during my childhood

days, letters from China invariably include a request for food, money or old clothes, if not all three. Today many consumer goods are readily available. One can go down the street and

buy a can of Coke and a roll of Kodak film. I was warned however not to expect the same in other parts of China.

Because of its proximity to Hong Kong – RTVHK broadcasts can be received clearly twenty-four hours a day – it is in a better position to benefit from its capitalist cousin. Wages are twice the national average, (so is the inflation rate) and menial labour comes from out of state.

We changed our money on the black market. One hundred Singapore dollars fetched two hundred and eighty six yuan renminbi. Official rate was only about half that. A good sumptuous dinner at an upbeat restaurant, with lots of Tsingtao Beer thrown in, cost only S$14 for two – and that too considered expensive by the locals.

During my stay I was shown the river where my father boarded the barge to Macau from whence he transferred onto a steamer to colonial Singapore. The passage cost him a princely 15 Straits Settlement dollars, and since he had no money then, he went on the ‘go first, pay later’ scheme. Perhaps some day I will retrace part of his journey with my wife and daughter.

I also visited some of the most scenic countryside there is. The area is generally low-lying and very prone to floods. Fish-rearing ponds dot the area, and canals are important thoroughfares. Dikes, flanked by swaying palm fronds, doubled as roads.

During my father’s time the principal farming activity was rearing silkworms. Today it is replaced by fish-farming. That’s where the money is. Some of my relatives are involved in it, and they do it now as a private undertaking. Rice fields abound. I was there at the time of spring transplanting and large families were out in full force. Most were bent in knee-deep water but some do it in style – by boat.

On the subject of large families, although the official policy restrict the Chinese to one child per family it is not uncommon to see families with two or more children in Guzhen. Officials are quite forgiving, particularly if the couple have a string of daughters. Quite a few of my relatives have had to flee from the authorities after the birth of their second child, otherwise they would be ‘arrested’ and made to undergo enforced sterilisation. They return only when the heat is off. Many expressed surprise at my stop at one policy – and a daughter at that too!

Greedy relatives are often the bane of many a returning overseas Chinese. I have heard stories of returnees being stripped of everything except the clothes they’re wearing. Fortunately it did not happen to us, partly because the closest relatives we have are my father’s sister’s grandchildren, and they’re doing not too badly.

Two events were to remind me distinctly of my childhood. One morning I was awakened by a very loud ferocious voice. Looking down from my fourth storey hotel window I saw a farmer verbally abusing his ten-year old son in the Guzhen dialect. For a brief moment, I could see myself as a ten-year old standing before my father with his saliva spray all over me, the object of his anger.

The other occasion was when I brought him for his first meeting with our relatives in their home. The environment was so much like thirty years ago when I led him to his friends’ home. There was the inevitable Chinese calendar, the faded photographs of family members which took pride of place, and the family bamboo pipe for smoking. Above all I remembered them conversing in their own dialect which I only half understood.

The most trying time for me had to be mealtimes with my relatives. Although I keep reminding myself that what they had to offer is the best they have, I hardly ate. It is more their table manners, or the lack of it, that puts me off.. Their living room floor deserved a lot more respect. Spitting was commonplace. Chewed bones invariably made their way from mouth to floor. For them it was the most natural thing to do. Honestly, there were times when, heaven forbid if my ancestors were to find out, I actually longed for a hamburger at MacDonald’s!

I was rather relieved when time came for us to leave. I had not eaten nor slept well – the mosquitoes made sure of that. Neither did I exercise my bowels all the five days I was there. The state of the toilets were shocking, even those of the hotel we were in. At the same time I could not help feeling a tinge of sadness in leaving behind relatives who, by our standards, are so deprived of many things. I couldn’t help thinking that I could be one of them if my father hadn’t made the move back then. It involuntarily came forth from my lips when we finally boarded the bus: “Pa, we’re going home!”

Text written on 11 May 1988

My Father : Twenty Years On

My father was born in 1911, the year of the Pig. It was also the year of the Chinese Revolution that swept away centuries of dynastic rule. China became a Republic, but for the next few decades she suffered utter chaos. Born to a poor peasant family my father left his poverty stricken village in Guzhen 古镇, in Southern China for Nanyang 南洋, the South Seas, of which colonial Singapore was a part. He was nineteen, jobless and hungry. Almost sixty years later, gray and blind, he took his one and only journey back to his birthplace. It was in 1988, just ten years after the liberalising market reforms by Deng Xiaoping. He had not expected to return to his home village again in his life time.

I was a Flight Engineer at the time. One day I flew with a certain Barry Newman, a British expatriate whom I have only just met. Captain Newman related how much he and his wife enjoyed their vacation in China a week earlier. I told him my father was born in China, and that he would dearly love to visit his birthplace, but due to his handicap it would be difficult. Captain Newman looked at me askance. I could almost read his reproachful mind. "What kind of son are you? Can’t you see there is not much time left?” He encouraged me to do the right thing. We went. My father died on October 16, a few months after he accomplished his heart’s desire.

At the time of that first visit, economic conditions in my father’s village were slowly getting better. Our relatives were doing relatively well. At least they didn’t go hungry, like the lean years of the recent past. Fast forward to the present, November 2008, twenty years later. I paid a return visit with my wife Madeline, and two other interested friends. I took them to see my father’s old dwelling, which still exist in the old part of town. We stayed at a luxurious hotel in the new quarter, where most foreigners stayed when visiting. In the last twenty years Guzhen had become the lighting capital of China. The Chinese within the country and foreign buyers from all over the world come here to negotiate and order lights in bulk of any type, grade and design. Entire streets are lined with nothing but lighting shops, and in the surrounding communities assembly lines churn out these orders. All these, together with numerous other industries in the region, have exacted a heavy toll on the environment. Acute air pollution is now a grave problem.

My relatives are doing well. The next generation has taken over, better educated and more attuned to the outside world. Most are involved in the lighting industry, some in domestic and foreign sales, and others in production. One is a director of a large lighting firm and another owns a couple of production houses. It is all

very different from when my father and I last visited.

I have kept a copy of the travel narrative Going Home I wrote twenty years ago. I will post it next, in toto, unedited from its original. This is my way of preserving the memory of my father. My daughter Joy, and my nephews and nieces can at least have some idea of their roots, if they care enough to want to find out, especially when they get older.

A Trip to Yinchuan, Ningxia China Part 3

10 Oct 2008

I used up the last coffee sachet this morning. I should have packed the equivalent number of coffee sachets as I have the number of trip days.
But there’s always KFC to fall back on, and they are open for breakfast at seven. I checked it out last night when having dinner there. For those who thumb their noses at KFC, let me say that I have always enjoyed their much more tender and juicy chicken compared to those back home in Singapore. They do their chicken right, as their much vaunted slogan goes.

I signed up for a local tour which will take me to the Sand Dunes Lake 沙湖, the Helan Rock Carvings 贺兰山岩画 and the Xixia Royal Mausoleum 西夏皇陵. It is going to take the entire day and cost 378 yuan without meals.

Promptly at seven I received a text message on my mobile, from my guide for today, that she will meet me at the hotel lobby in fifteen minutes. Ms Rong is her name, the ideogram 戎 belonging in the ranks of the tiny minority as far as surnames are concerned. Ironically it meant barbarian. Ms Rong is no barbarian. She’s twentyish, has average looks, dress simply and possess a temperament ideally suited for her chosen vocation.

Two other persons joined the tour from my hotel. I thought they were a couple, but later found, to my relief for the young man, that they merely work for the same danwei, work unit. The use of that term usually meant that the enterprise is state owned. The pushy young woman was from Chongqing Municipality, a mega city of 32 million on the Yangtze, created during the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. I don’t like her very much. She behaved in a rather haughty manner, once deeming it fit to openly correct this Southerner’s less than perfect Putonghua. The young man, a local university graduate who spoke impeccable Putonghua, was merely showing her around. His home is in Dawukou 大吴口, a provincial town to the north. It owes its existence to coal power. His parents migrated here from the central plains in 1965 when the coal industry first fired up.

Next to be picked up is a well heeled young couple from Qinghai, with their adorable four-year old daughter. That makes a total of six of us, excluding the guide and driver, in a seven-seater minibus. It does seem off season for tourists.

First stop for the day - Shahu, or the Sand Dunes Lake. From the brochures it offers much the same desert recreational activities as Shapotou, with one major addition. Bird watching. Every spring thousands of migratory cranes, swans and various avian types roost and breed here among the tall and thick rushes.

Before the sand dunes, our little four-year old has to go.
“马上就到了”, “We’ll be there in no time”, says the driver, trying to avoid an unscheduled stop.
I have always been wary of that term 马上, literally meaning ‘on horseback’. The catch here is that it may not necessarily be a fast horse, which means our little girl may have to wait for just a little while longer or a lot longer. She’s got to go, and we had better stop, and we did stop. Poor girl. I know exactly how she must have felt.
There is another expression I am similarly wary about.
几步路.
“How far away is it?” one might ask.
“几步路”, a few steps away, which can literally mean what is said, or a long long way to go. I have been taken in by those words before.

There are plenty of visitors to the Sand Dunes Lake despite being off-season. As the Chinese idiom goes: 人山人海, people mountain people sea. They come from all parts of China, the wealthier from Shanghai and Guangzhou, their poorer cousins from Shanxi and Henan. We piled onto a huge open sided flat bottom ferry and set off leisurely among the rushes of the lake. Many tall structures can be found serving as hides among the slender reeds, but there was not a single bird of the feathered variety to be seen. However we were repeatedly assured by our guide that there will indeed be huge flocks of them in the spring. For now, we will just have to rely on our imagination.

On the other side of the massive lake are the sand dunes. Here is what the tourists have come for. Fun in the desert. There are rides on the twin-hump Bactrian camels, slides down the steep inclines, or a spin on motorised dune buggies, which in my opinion does great damage to the harsh but yet delicate desert environment. For 100 yuan I took a 7 minute ride on a motorised glider, 100 metres above the lake’s surface. I must confess that by doing so I have been equally guilty of contributing to the deteriorating desert environment. I am sorry. For those less inclined there are photo opportunities with massive sand replicas of the Great Wall and the Eight Fairies as backdrop.

Lunch in the outlying areas always poses a problem for me. To eat or not to eat. The Shahu fish head banquet is a supposed must-have delicacy here, so says our guide. Not for me though. The colour of the lake did little to allay my suspicions about the level of pollution. The young family, being Muslims chose to eat at a halal restaurant. I settled at a fast food outlet, careful to order from the menu a simple bowl of vegetarian noodles with tofu.

After lunch our bus takes us on an arduous ride to the Art Gallery amidst the Helan Mountains. The road passes through many grimy and soot laden towns and villages. This here is coal country. The road itself is in urgent need for repair, and I am not the least surprised that funds for such have already been disbursed. One can only speculate on the whereabouts of all that coal money.

The ancient rock carvings of the Helan Mountains have been dated to 1000 years through 10000 years. They have been recognised by Unesco’s World Heritage Foundation, no less, as a veritable treasure trove of ancient art works. Close to the foot of the mountain range and higher up on the sheer cliff faces are thousands of carved motifs depicting various aspects of life and death. Scenes of hunting, copulation, warfare and veneration rituals are plentiful. Other symbols include reproductive organs, palm prints and various animals, both wild and domesticated. Most prominent among these is the symbol of the Sun God, 30 metres above ground level, on the vertical face of a cliff. It is oval in shape, with linear spokes radiating from huge bulging eyes. The most recent carvings will have to be at least a thousand years old. That can easily be dated by the accompanying Xixia script which is decipherable to experts, though we were warned that the picture carvings are not necessarily contemporaneous with the script. Other than the rock carvings we were occasionally entreated to an appearance of the rare Helan mountain goat, a species close to extinction. This whole area reminds me of the ravines of Alice Springs in Australia. Instead of wallabies we have the mountain goats here. And aside from the guide’s commentary, the silence is similarly deafening.

No self respecting tour in China is complete without a visit to some commercial concern. Thus despite the relative late hour, and a major attraction left to visit, our bus pulled into a wolfberry farm. It is more a place selling all sorts of wolfberry products than a farm. It did have a tiny patch of the fruit bearing shrub located at the rear, providing the tourist a live sample of both fruit and tree.

The Chinese name for the wolfberry is gouqi 枸杞, and the Ningxia gouqi is reputed to be the best in the country. Buyers from all over China descend here to purchase the best of the best. This tiny red berry is touted in Chinese herbal medicine as having many health enhancing properties, top of which is 明眼 ‘brightening the eyes’, followed by养颜 ‘retaining one’s youthful looks’. My wife has been cooking with gouqi for ages and still we need glasses, and soon, a facelift. The entire gouqi plant has great medicinal value it was claimed. Besides the berry, the leaves, the roots and the bark all have their uses in Chinese medicinal folklore. The Qinghai couple bought something, if only some preserved fruit mixed with gouqi, which they passed around. I took one and thought it tasted a little bitter at first bite.

The last stop is the highlight of the day for me. This is what I have come to Ningxia for! We arrived late at the gates of the fifty square kilometre Mausoleum. It was already four in the afternoon. On either side of the entrance run majestic red painted walls of more recent vintage. Four gigantic Xixia ideograms, two on each side, stood out in bright gold. They look like Chinese, but they are not. They belong to the only other mono-syllabic ideographic script that mankind has ever devised. Translated, they read ‘大白高国’ literally, ‘Great White Tall Country’.

First we were ushered to the Museum and taken on a trip back into Xixia history. The account of their existence was painstakingly pieced together only in recent years by dedicated scholars of the Xixia from all over the world, including many academics from the West, chiefly the Russians.

The Xixia people were a race called the Tanguts, distant cousins of the present day Tibetans. At the end of the 10th century they managed to secure large tracts of land on both sides of the Helan Mountains and established their little kingdom which they called externally as Xixia Guo and internally as Da Bai Gao Guo. Their system of governance was highly Sinicised, and eventually a new form of writing was evolved from the Chinese written script. One of their major cities was the afore-mentioned Karakhoto northwest of the Helan, and their Imperial Mausoleum on the eastern foothills.

The site of their Mausoleum is said to possess excellent fengshui. Behind it is the formidable Helan, and in front of it the mighty life sustaining Yellow River. To this venerated location was attributed the continued prosperity of their tiny kingdom for 190 years amidst such strident powers as the Khitan Liao, Tungus Jin and Han Song. But it could not withstand the mighty onslaught of the Mongols, led by the greatest conqueror of all times, Genghis Khan.

Genghis himself was said to have harboured intense hatred for the Tanguts. They had time and again broken pledges made to him. They deliberately fail to provide flanking attacks on his enemies, promised to him on his campaigns west. On five occasions Genghis mounted punitive action against the Tanguts but failed. On the last but one he was thrown off his horse, which had stepped on one of those notoriously lethal tiny metal spikes sown by the defenders for this very purpose. Genghis was mortally wounded. On his deathbed, in the summer of 1227AD, he ordered the beheading of the surrendering Xixia king, the systematic extermination of its population, and most importantly, the surgical destruction of the Mausoleum complex divine spirit, lingqi 灵气 by severing the dragon pulse 龙脉 of each of its nine tombs. That, according to Mongol belief, will ensure that the Xixia people never rise again, leave alone prosper. No wonder the burial place of Genghis Khan was kept a secret at the time of his death, and is still a mystery to this day!

I stood in silent contemplation, in front of the number three earth mound. It is the largest in the complex of nine, collectively dubbed the pyramids of China. It was said to belong to the founder of the kingdom, Emperor Li Yuanhao 李元昊, the numbers one and two tombs belonging to his grandfather and father respectively. The wind has died down, and the sun dipped below the Helan Ranges in front of me. This thirty-something metre high denuded mound of earth, with a ground diameter even wider, was once adorned with ornate royal carvings which counted in the ranks of the finest. It was pillaged and burnt to the ground by the rampaging Mongols, and through the ages, its secret entrance found, and its invaluable contents robbed.

The destruction of Xixia is so complete that erstwhile little is known of its history. On Koslov’s mission to Karakhoto he had managed to excavate, apart from that double headed Bodhisattva, crates of historical documents in the Xixia script. Now the plight of these heroic peoples have come to light. This genocide is yet another sad chapter in the sorry history of humankind.


11 Oct 2008

It continues to be a fine cool day today, as indeed my entire stay in Ningxia has so far turned out. Ms Rong the tour guide has tipped me off regarding the two yuan bus service. It depots at the doorstep of my day’s destination, the Islamic Cultural Centre in Yongning 永宁 a town about 15 kilometres away. But first, I must have my morning fix. My walk to the Nanmen station KFC takes me through a bustling morning street market, which puts our own Tekka much to shame.

There are many varieties of fruits and vegetables on sale. I’m not so sure about the fish and meats as I usually shun that section because of the smell. Everything here goes by the jin, one jin being equivalent to 500 gm, slightly heavier than the pound. I don’t think anyone here needs to go hungry. Food seems so plentiful and so affordable by comparison. I really envy the range of choices afforded the local people. The bright colours of the sugar beet, wolfberry, cherry tomatoes, mandarins, eggplant, chillies and many others all make for an interesting portrait. I snapped away happily at the displayed goods and nobody seemed to mind, as long as their faces are not directly photographed.

I should sooner get used to the idea of others giving up their seats for me. It happened again this morning. I was on the packed local bus heading for the Ningxia Hui Cultural Village when this forty-ish man tapped me on the shoulder. I wasn’t sure if it was his seat that he gave up, but he did indicate to me that there was a seat available just behind me, and I could see that he was preventing others from taking it. It kind of makes you feel old, but to reject would make him lose face, so what the heck!

The Cultural Village complex occupies a large area, about five times the size of own Sultan Mosque. It has a huge forecourt, Tiananmen style, where the faithful gather on holy days, and a museum inside tracing the origins of Islam in China. The buildings are constructed in the modern Arab style, quite unlike the typical older mosques in China, which are generally modelled after Chinese temples. This one has, among others, four grand gold plated onion domes topping each corner pillar of the complex, much like those found in the Middle East.

After paying the entrance fee of 30 yuan I was greeted at the grand entrance by a guide dressed conservatively, complete with headscarf and sleeves up to her wrists.
“A-salam aleikhem!” she greeted. Peace be upon you.
“Aleikhem salam!” I returned the greeting. She was taken aback, not expecting an answer.

Just past the grand entrance there was an exhibition hall showcasing, of all things, the Kuwaiti Royal Palace and a scale replica of a Kuwaiti dhow. That instantly led me to speculate on the likelihood of the Kingdom’s sponsorship of the complex. The Arabs’ coffers are full these days and what would a fistful of yuan be to them. However the Chinese government itself is extremely wary of money from the Arabs, fearful that these may be channelled to fund extremist causes among their Muslim minority.

Together with a small group of other visitors we were led through the museum exhibits. We were shown that the Islamic faith primarily entered China from the two Silk Routes, the older land route via the Tarim Basin oases in the 8th century, and the later sea route via the port of Zaiton, or modern day Quanzhou 泉州 in Fujian Province, in the 14th century. Today, out of the 55 minority groups, ten embrace the muslim faith. Almost all live exclusively in the far northwestern provinces of Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia, and a sizable population in Yunnan, from whose ranks emerged the famous Ming navigator Admiral Cheng Ho. Their total head count in China range from 30 million to 90 million, 2.3% to 6.9% of the Chinese population, depending on whose figures you believe.

One interesting piece of information gleaned from the museum led me to refer to my Chinese history texts. In the year 751AD the mighty Tang army which until then had considerable influence in Central Asia was defeated by the Arabs on the banks of the Talas River in modern day Kazakhstan. From then on, to this day Central Asia fell under the influence of the Arabs, and by extension, Islam, instead of the Chinese. A check on the date revealed that it was during the reign of Tang Xuanzong 唐玄宗 the emperor who was infamously recorded in history as being so infatuated by his favourite concubine Yang Guifei 杨贵妃, to the neglect of running his empire. He was thirty six years older than her, and she, fashionally plump I might add, was initially bethrothed to his son.

At the Museum I met a friendly middle aged local surnamed Zhang who kindly attended to my some of my queries. He was there to accompany his colleague from another part of China and could tell that I was a foreigner. This same Mr Zhang who cared to admit to drinking alchohol despite his Islamic faith was so helpful as to arrange my next visit, which was to the remnants of the Great Wall. He made a quick telephone call to the local tourist board and spoke to its chief, checking for the best and nearest location for me to visit. Obviously this man is well connected. He even offered me his driver, to take me to the wall, but I declined. He subsequently negotiated with a taxi driver to take me there and back for 100 yuan.

I arrived at the Ming Wall at Shuidongkou 水洞沟 in the late afternoon. Again as at the Mausoleum, the wind has died down and the temperature rapidly falling. Everyone else had left. I could just about feel the sense of desolation often expressed by those posted to frontier garrisons. There were many. Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 of the Northern Song came to mind. He wrote a poem when commanding a garrison very near here. It count as one of my favourites:

塞下秋来风景异，衡阳雁去无留意。
四面边声连角起。
千嶂里，长烟落日孤城闭。

浊酒一杯家万里，燕然未勒归无计。
羌管悠悠霜满地。
人不寐，将军白发征夫泪。

I have often contended that the best of English translation could not possibly do justice to the worst of Chinese poems. I can only say that while recalling the poem I empathise deeply with the writer. It brings a chill to my heart and tears to my eyes.


12 Oct 2008

The bus from Yinchuan to Lanzhou takes a little under six hours.
When I reached Lanzhou I made a beeline for my favourite eatery Master Huang 黄师傅. Here I must introduce briefly Lanzhou’s internationally famous snack Lanzhou la mian 兰州拉面. You buy a ticket at the cashier, take it to the noodle chef and tell him the kind of noodles you want. He will then hand-pull the dough right before you. According to local folklore you can tell the social status of a person by the kind of noodles he or she prefers. The women like theirs extra slim, the scholars thin, soldiers like theirs flat and broad, and labourers prefer theirs thick and so on. There are various terms for it, er xi, mao xi or jiuyezi, 二细, 毛细, 韭叶子, a whole culture to eating lamian, or as the Japanese say, ramen.

My favourite is the extra slim ones, never mind if that undermines my gender. I asked them not to add the often fatty cubes of beef, but to heap lots of chilli oil, coriander leaves and spring onions on my noodles. I thought the crunchy translucent slices were cucumbers at first, but they were actually fresh radish. It cost only 3 yuan 50 fen for a large bowl of noodles. Gluttony got the better of me. I had two, plus a boiled egg. I never saw an egg with a bigger yolk. In retrospect I wonder if it was a real egg.

The other Lanzhou dish I wish to describe is mian pian 面片. It consists of tiny pasta squares cooked in a casserole of minced mutton, lots of tangy tomatoes, capsicum, spring onions, chillies and coriander leaves, with rice vinegar as an optional yet necessary condiment. You eat it with a spoon, and it tasted superb!

There is also shui jiao, at Daniang’s 大娘水饺 a chain restaurant serving all manner of boiled dumplings with meat or vegetables or combined, eaten with minced garlic, chilli oil and rice vinegar. It is not a typical food of the northwest region, but like the KFCs and McDonalds it had spread inland from the east. The restaurant is mostly packed with out of state tourists or workers. I saw some of the most vain women here; preening themselves before their hand held mirrors in between mouthfuls of their shui jiao, and lording over their poorer fuwuyuan cousins. Here are the real McCoys, the xiaojies , transplanted city girls working in the nearby karaoke bars and dance halls.

Whenever in Lanzhou I never fail to take a stroll along the Yellow River Esplanade. This is the city’s largest green lung, providing its residents at best, a limited respite from the air and noise pollution synonymous with all Chinese cities. Pockets of citizenry do their own thing here. There’s one of chess enthusiasts, another of cards, and even one of mahjong players. My favourite area is the performance corner near the pavillion. During the day there is always a troupe here staging the local Gansu and Shaanxi variety of opera called qinqiang 秦腔. It usually attract large crowds, mostly the retired elderly and the peasantry from the outlying districts. Qinqiang is one of the more robust forms of Chinese opera, the martial style of singing and the accompanying music rousing the audience’s spirit. The story line often revolves around past military triumph and defeat, heroes and villians, glory and shame.

Another crowd pleaser are the singers of Qinghai folk songs 青海民歌. It is usually performed as a duet, by members of the opposite sex. There is no accompanying music, but the singing follows a repetative score. After a while I find myself humming along to it. The lyrics are in the Qinghai dialect and the singers are ever so good, projecting their clear voices as if over the plateaus and plains of cloudless Qinghai itself. Most are love songs, with plenty of romantic, even salacious, banter and the audiences loved it, erupting with laughter from time to time. I didn’t understand a single word, but I enjoyed every single moment of it.

Tomorrow I shall be leaving for Guangzhou. As the flight leaves early in the morning I have checked in at a hotel close to the airport bus terminus. This big hotel, just outside Lanzhou University, is nothing to write home about, to say the least. In fact I have already forgotten its name.


13 Oct 2008

Just my luck. It rained again here in Guangzhou when I arrived in the early afternoon. It is still raining, and getting heavier it seemed, though not as heavy as last week.

This morning I left the hotel at 0530, and caught the first airport bus. The flight from Lanzhou to Guangzhou, again via Xian, was all quite uneventful, except that I had the luck to sit next to a guy and his brother, who are obvious ethnic minorities. They are Dongxiangs 东乡族, one of the ten minority groups I mentioned earlier that embraced Islam. Their language is similar to Mongolian and they can trace their ancestors to Genghis Khan’s hordes. They live in Linxia 临夏, near Lanzhou, and are on their way to Guangzhou for business. I wasted no time in showing them my July 1980 National Geograhic map of Chinese minorities. He studied it with great interest and offered me additional information on the other ethnic groups in the area.

On the same flight was a small group of about twenty elderly German tourists. In all likelihood they have come from Dunhuang, a town on the Silk Road or Seidenstrasse, the original German term coined by Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen. Lanzhou is often the starting point for those Dunhuang Caves which house the world’s largest collection of ancient Buddhist wall art.

Here in the rainy city I paid a visit to Peoples’ Park. Despite the light rain it was full of people, as the name suggests. The park occupies an entire block, very near to Beijing Road, the centre for Guangzhou shopping. The park grounds are well maintained despite the masses. Mature trees provide lots of shade, affording some respite to sojourners like me in this often hot and humid city. As in the Lanzhou park there are people doing their own thingy. Al fresco ballroom dancing is extremely popular. Others indulge in light activity like badminton, or simply forming a circle and kicking a shuttle around 踢毽子, what older Singaporeans remember as chapteh. At another corner a young man strums on his guitar, singing familiar Cantonese ballads to willing listeners. Attracting quite a crowd was the Cantonese opera section.. The singers are amateurs, ordinary folk enjoying themselves. They were really good. Regretfully we don’t see much of these spontaneity on our own shores.

I had planned to go to the Esplanade along the Pearl River, but cancelled it because of the rain which was getting heavier. Perhaps on my next visit with my wife. It was getting very uncomfortable out there, the first time I feel the humidity after so many days in the dry and cool northwest. Tomorrow I leave for home.



PS: For the benefit of the non-Chinese reader I will try to convey the gist of, and the emotions embodied in, Fan Zhongyan’s poem. It is a pleasure to point out the perfectly balanced form as presented in the number of words in each stanza. When read in Chinese, there is a rythmatic cadence to its structure. I readily conceed that my amateurish translation does little justice to its beauty and stature.

塞下秋来风景异，衡阳雁去无留意。
四面边声连角起。
千嶂里，长烟落日孤城闭。

The frontier scene changes with the arrival of autumn, the migrating geese overhead has no intention of staying
On all sides rose the sound of the enemies’ horn
Amongst these hills, a lonely garrison stands, gates shut as the sun sets.

浊酒一杯家万里，燕然未勒归无计。
羌管悠悠霜满地。
人不寐，将军白发征夫泪。

Downing a cup of crude wine I long for home far away, there are no plans to return as victory is not yet at hand
The barbarians’ flute fills the air, the ground laden with frost
No one sleeps, the Generals worried sick, the conscipts weep with yearning.

A Trip To Yinchuan, Ningxia China Part 2

08 Oct 2008

I am an early riser. At home I’m usually in bed by nine, and up by five. Today I arose early to a dry and cold morning. Thankful for my supply of two-in-one coffee sachets, I set myself to making a morning cuppa with their water boiler. The coffee never tasted better under the circumstances. There was no hot water from the taps, which is not a problem for brushing, but poses one for shaving and showering. The faucets leak, the flush weak and the toilet smell. Just as I had expected from a state run enterprise. Pathetic. I looked out the window. The place is already bustling with people going on with their business. I plan to check out of the hotel near noontime so I have the entire morning to explore the place and get on some of those rides.

The Chinese are early risers too. An army of cleaners and attendants are already out there, getting the place ready for the day’s visitors. There are scores of boatmen by the river, checking life jackets, inflating sagging sheepskins and carrying out maintenance tasks on their motors. I approached a kiosk offering rafting on the river.
“You’re too early. We need at least three people to push off. Please wait” says a female attendant.
Instead of waiting I decide to ride the ski lift up the dunes for a panoramic view of the area, and when up there to slide down the dunes on a sled, all for a fee of course.

The morning air crisp, the sky clear and the scenery magnificent. Below me the mustard coloured waters of the Yellow River slows to a lazy crawl as the gradient of the land is comparatively gentle in these parts. It is yet too early for any activity on the River. The pedestrian bridge across the River can be seen clearly to lead to a hamlet on the opposite shore. A green belt of vegetation stretched back from either side of the River, and beyond that, the vast expanse of desert. Behind me, on a slight ridge, runs the Lanzhou-Baotou-Beijing railway line. I can hear the constant chugging of trains but could not see them from where I stood.

After indulging my senses atop the dunes I approached a station where I climbed onto a sled, more a square plastic platform, for my slide down the sandy slopes. The tourist brochure touted the pleasurable sounds of singing sand as one slides down the dunes. To be honest I didn’t hear any. Before I can even finish saying Jack Robinson, I’m already at the foot of the dunes, a thin layer of fine dust around my neck and behind the ears. That ride up and down cost 50 yuan, quite a sum for the average Chinese.

Down by the river I met an elderly couple in their seventies.
“Ni hao! Are you from here?” I ventured.
“We live in Yinchuan, and we’re here to check out the place. Its much prettier now compared to a few years ago” says Old Mrs Ma in clear standard Putonghua.
“But the admission charges are too high” I protested.
“We got in for free. We’re retired you know” Old Mr Ma chipped in, his heavily accented Putonghua making him hard to understand.
“Are you from南方?” the South, meaning south of the Yangtze River. My own Cantonese accented Putonghua a dead giveaway.
“No, I’m from Singapore”
“Ah Singapore! Very clean and beautiful”. A standard compliment from almost everyone I met and talked to in China.
“But it’s a small place,” I said, self effacingly. “Have you been there?” knowing full well the answer.
“No. What brings you here to Ningxia?”
“I’m very interested in the history and culture of Ningxia, especially the ancient Xixia Kingdom”.
“Mr Zhang Xianliang is an expert in the history of Ningxia. He gives public lectures at the Ningxia Film Studios outside Yinchuan. Have you heard of him?”
“No.”
I was sorely mistaken. I have indeed heard of Zhang Xianliang 张贤亮. I have even read one of his books, albeit in a translated version by Penguin. He had written about his quest for a wife in his banished days during the Cultural Revolution, spent in the Chinese Gulag, right here in Ningxia. Half a Man is a Woman. How could I not have known!

As more day trippers arrived, we finally got the numbers for the river raft ride. Sharing a raft with me was a middle aged couple from Anhui Province. whom I believe are mid-to-low level party cadres. I can tell from the way they are dressed. Together with their six year old son and sixty year old mother they must have paid a fortune for the ride, unless of course, being party cadres they paid nothing. It cost me 60 yuan for a half hour ‘drift’ downstream. Besides us thrill seekers there is a raft attendant on board, constantly steering the raft with his paddle. I asked if he could stop paddling and allow us just to drift along, 漂 as advertised. He said we’ll never reach our destination if he did that. Our little cadre appeared a little nervous on the raft ride, but was all excited when we switched onto a motorised boat on our return leg.

So, having been there and done that, I checked out of the resort inn and caught the two yuan bus back to town. Due to concerns for their hygiene standards I usually refrain from eating in small towns. Skipping lunch, I continued doggedly on my journey to Yinchuan. The bus to Yinchuan is luxurious by comparison. The stewardess welcomed us aboard with a short announcement and proceeded to distribute bottles of mineral water to the passengers. Herein lies the trap. Being hungry and thirsty I drank two bottles in quick succession. I was to regret this later.

Despite having travelled in China many times there are some things that continue to irk me. Take for instance riding on the long distance buses. From the time you get on the bus your fellow travellers, indeed practically every one of them, will be yelling into their cellphones. I often wonder the need for one, considering the magnitude of yelling. Then there’s the myriad of ring tones, some downright jarring to the ears. The answering parties seem to delight in setting their ringers to the maximum, and then letting them ring for an incredible length of time before even going “Wei”! And nobody cares if anyone listens in on their conversation. So what if everybody in the bus gets to know who owed what sums of money, or who had just had a tiff with her mother-in-law, or who had left his lover behind. I can only imagine the racket they create on board if cellphones are to be allowed inflight. It is already happening inside Chinese airplanes, albeit usage restricted only on the ground, before take-off and after landing.

Next, there’s the bus operators’ fascination with Hong Kong made kungfu and gangster movies. On practically every trip I had to endure these trash, starring no less than Messrs Jackie Chan and Jet Li. I often speculated their collusion in paying these bus operators, in return for exposure to the vast Chinese market. However it is to be different on this bus to Yinchuan.

Before the start of our journey the driver put on “The Gods Must Be Crazy”, and instantly a man seated towards the rear shouted
“看过了，再换一套, 有动作片吗?”
”Seen it already, change to another, do you have action movies?”
The driver shot back
“只有这一套，看过就睡觉去!”
“This is the only movie on board. If you’ve seen it go to sleep!”
Here is my kind of driver.

Having related the negative aspects, I must report thankfully, that the disgusting habit of smoking and spitting in the bus has effectively stopped. Just a few years ago smoking in the bus is rampant, and the sound of hawking from someone’s throat was enough to send me into a mental bracing position. I’m inclined to think that it must be the result of pre-Olympics public education and rigorous enforcement. But then again, even now I feel somewhat queasy putting my backpack on the floor of the bus.

The effects of two bottles of water in quick succession soon manifest itself. I got to go. In fact I had just emptied my bladder at the last stop, the mid-way point, but my waste tank seemed to top up rather swiftly, close to overflowing. It became quite unbearable. I find myself calculating the time to the destination by estimating the speed of the bus and the remaining distance to go, and hoping for light traffic when we reach Yinchuan.
“Are we there yet? Are we *%#@! there yet?” Just like Shrek’s donkey, appropriately personified by Eddie Foulmouth Murphy.
I also thought tenderly of my father. On our only trip together back to his home village in China we had to transit via Hong Kong. For some reason there was a lengthy holdup in the queue. And he got to go, badly. My poor father. He’s not sighted, and he needed assistance to go to the toilet. Anyway, all those thoughts took my mind off having to go. I have learnt my lesson. Confucius said “Drink little before go on long ride.”

I arrived at Yinchuan Nanmen (South Gate) bus station in the late afternoon and took a cab to a Home Inn hotel right in the middle of town. I must say that the facilities they provide are really good value for money. This hotel chain, Rujia 如家连锁酒店 is one of several such enterprise, proving to be a boon for the budget traveller in China. It wins, hands down, compared to those overpriced star graded, often musty and downright lousy, government-run rest houses 迎宾馆. A Home Inn hotel can be found in all Chinese Provinces and Municipalities except Tibet. It cost only about 190 yuan per room per night for two, excluding breakfast. The rooms are clean and fresh, with purified hot and cold drinking water and free broadband. Thanks to that I am current with all the latest emails and news of the outside world. The Home Inn hotel room décor is exactly the same anywhere, right down to the colour and number of drinking mugs, bath towels and clothes hangers. The floor tiles and walls are similarly coloured white, yellow and blue. It looks and feels familiar, no matter which city you wake up in.

At the hotel lobby I chanced upon a billboard advertising local tours. There are four itineraries. After settling in I called the tour company.
“Sorry. There are no tours to the Xixia Tombs tomorrow. It is off-season, and we are alternating our tour destinations. Would you be interested in Shapotou? The Xixia Tombs would be on the day after tomorrow” says a sweet and professional voice over the telephone. That always seems to be so before you pay them.
“No, thank you. I’ve just come from Shapotou this morning. I’ll make my own way to the Tombs then”
This alternate plan was based on information gleaned from the same billboard which says that for 88 yuan a bus leaving from the Beimen (North Gate) station will take one to the Tombs for the entire day. I shall do just that tomorrow.

First, I needed a shower. Fine particles of Shapotou sand found its way into my every nook, corner and orifice. Well, just about every. Next, I crave for a beer and some food. There is a noodle shop, fast food style, a la MacDonalds just next to my hotel. Why, its even painted brightly in red, yellow and white.
红元帅, 清真食品 Red General, Halal Food, the sign exhorts. The restaurant looks well patronised, but the real clincher for me here is the cleanliness of the premises.
“I’d like a bottle of ice cold beer, a plate of ham and egg fried rice and a bowl of spicy wild mushroom mutton noodles.”
“Fifteen yuan fifty please.” An astoundingly cheap price.
Unlike at MacDonalds you get served at your table. Incidentally MacDonalds do not have a presence here, nor Starbucks. Their market survey shows that they are not likely to amass a huge following of hamburger chompers or sippers of expensive coffee in this neck of the woods. Fried chicken is a different story. KFC, and its Taiwanese clone Dicos already have a visible presence here.

My dinner arrived promptly, served by a bevy of young waitresses fresh out of school. They are to be addressed as fuwuyuan 服务员, service attendants. Heaven forbid that you address one as xiaojie 小姐, which we do commonly in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. In China xiaojies are those found in places of questionable repute.

As often said, the first gulp of beer tasted the best. I took a long gulp. It was simply refreshing after a long day. The fact that I can get beer in this halal restaurant didn’t quite surprise me. For being the capital of the only Muslim Autonomous Region in China this city looked decidedly unIslamic. Two ancient structures, one a Taoist temple and the other a drum tower 鼓楼 dominated the city’s busy crossroads. The people on the streets also exhibit less of their religious affiliation as compared to those in neighbouring Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. In those places you can see young and old men wearing long beards and white skull caps and the women wearing long sleeves up to the wrists and covering their hair with a length of black linen. Not here in Yinchuan. For the next few days I was hard pressed to spot more than a handful of the Prophet’s followers, not counting my visit to the Islamic Cultural Centre outside the city. But scratch the surface and you will find one. The young waitresses at the Red General are all Muslims, as is the well heeled young couple whom I were to meet two days later on the local tour; and middle aged Mr Zhang whom I spoke to while touring the Cultural Centre. They all looked no different from the average Han, only that they profess the Islamic faith. Mr Zhang even admitted that he drinks occasionally, if not only to prove, in his own strange way, that he is not a backward Muslim.

That bowl of noodles was simply delicious. The texture of the noodles smooth, yet firm and the taste wholesome. Take it from someone who grew up making noodles. With the noodles came a generous amount of lean mutton cubes swimming in a spicy broth, topped with plenty of chopped coriander leaves, spring onions and genuine wild mushrooms. I presume the authenticity of the wild mushrooms can be proven by the fact that one of them still had a few grains of fine sand in it. But that didn’t dampen my appetite. Perhaps I was hungry. The ham and egg fried rice had a tad too much oil. In any case rice is not the Northerners’ forte. Here I was assured that their ham is actually cured from beef, not that I cared.

After dinner I took a stroll along walking street nearby. There is the usual gamut of branded fashion and shoe retail shops, and the more upmarket eateries, which most of the local citizenry can ill afford. Earlier, on the wall of the Red General I saw an ad looking for managers and chefs, paying a relatively grand (or paltry) monthly salary of 3000 to 4000 yuan (S$600-S$800). There are not many shoppers here on walking street, as most have gravitated to the next street parallel to this. Here, the goods sold are more affordable. Most of the wares are on pushcarts, hawked by illegal itinerant vendors, ever vigilant on the lookout for their nemesis, the health inspector. Outside Nanmen bus station there is a crowded night market which sells mainly inferior goods. I am quite surprised to see the bus terminus closed for the evening. It appears that long distance buses do not depart from here at night.


09 Oct 2008

Early this morning I set off for Beimen station, eager to be an early visitor to the Tombs. I should have known. I sometimes marvel at my own gullibility. There are to be no public buses to the Tombs from Beimen. The tourist season is over. There are two ways by which I can visit the Tombs, 30 kilometres to the south west of the city. One is by joining a tour group, and the other by taxi, which will cost me dearly. Since I am not in any such hurry as I can join a group tour the next day I switched to plan B. By now I realised I should be more wary of what I read and what I am told. Too many times I have taken what they tell me at face value.

Plan B is to make a return day trip by bus to Inner Mongolia. Ever since reading Jiang Rong’s The Wolf Totem 姜戎:狼图腾 I have been fascinated by Mongolia, both Inner and Outer. The book traced his life as a student sent to the border region of Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution, and provide an insight into the settler’s wanton destruction of the delicate steppe environment.

First, let me attempt to describe the general topography of the area. The Yellow River generally flows from west to east, but here in Ningxia it makes a dramatic turn to the north, then back to west-east and after an appreciable distance, turns sharply south before resuming its west-east flow. Somebody (Confucius?) once said: “A picture is worth a thousand words” , so the Chinese have always described this part of the river as “just like the Chinese ideogram ji 几”. Ningxia, carved out from a good part of Inner Mongolia exactly fifty years ago, occupies the entire left upward stroke of the ideogram. Running south-north for 250 kilometres on the outside, parallel to the River is a range of mountains, with peaks reaching more than 3000 metres. This is the Helan mountain range, 贺兰山. Every Chinese child have heard of these mountains, immortalised by Southern Song’s General Yue Fei's rousing patriotic poem Man Jiang Hong 满江红.

“驾长车，踏破贺兰山缺”

I too have memorised these lines when I was an adult student of Chinese Literature. Throughout Chinese history these mountains have acted as a natural barrier between the marauding tribes on horseback and the sedentary populations of the fertile plains. However at various times, the entire area including the territories to the west and east of the mountains, have been ruled by nomadic tribes, or erstwhile nomadic tribes that have settled down to a sedentary lifestyle. The Xixia people of the 10th to 13th century is an example.

Today, Plan B entails taking the bus to the Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe, 阿拉善左旗 on the western foot of the mountain range. That is the convoluted way the Mongolians name their places of abode, bearing in mind that in the days of olde, there is no such thing as a fixed place of abode for them. They are what the settled Han called 逐水草而居的民族 the people who chase the water and the grass. The Left Flag of the Alashan Tribe is now known by the more mundane name of Bayin 巴音. The town of Bayin is actually not more than thirty kilometres on a migrating goose flight path from Yinchuan, but the bus route would have to skirt the mountain ranges by going round it from the south. That will make it a distance of about 110 kilometres or two hours bus ride away. To go to Bayin I had to take a bus leaving from the Nanmen bus station, the other end of town.

Outside the station I stopped at Dicos the Taiwanese KFC clone for a breakfast of chicken sandwich and coffee. Here I met a solitary Ang Moh having his breakfast, and decided to have some fun at his expense.

I asked if I could speak to him as I was learning English.
“Are you English?” I asked, trying hard to sound struggling with the language.
“I’m American” he answered guardedly at first.
“From where?”
“Florida”.
I almost blurted out ‘I’ve been there’. “I thought only old people live in Florida”
“Actually my parents live there,” he clarified.
“Are you a peace corp volunteer?” A lot of them in these remote areas are.
“No, but I teach English at a school here,” he warmed.
“Ah, are you going to write a book about China then?” noticing that he had a notepad on the table.
“No. I’m not. You speak very good English” he complimented.
I very nearly returned the compliment when I caught my tongue. This is all really my cheeky vicarious revenge on travel writers like Singapore-basher Paul Theroux who often writes condescendingly of the natives.

It is a beautiful day, the air crisp and the sky clear (like Snoopy's opening line : it was a dark and stormy night). The bus initially headed south on the well maintained highway, running parallel to the mountains. On both sides of the highway are fenced-in ranches, and occasionally I caught a glimpse of horses, cows, goats and sheep grazing on sparse grassland. Perhaps the grass would be taller and greener during the summer months. In the hazy distance at the foot of the Helan stands the vast Mausoleum complex, silent sentinels from the past. The road then takes a westerly course, and at a manageable break in the range, began a slow gradual ascent across to the other side. Just before the climb I spotted remnants of an ancient wall stretching perpendicularly down the left side of the road, the right side presumably being deemed too high for the invaders to overcome. My map indicates this portion of wall as belonging to the Ming era, circa 14th to 17th century. Having cleared the pass, the road then runs northerly along the western foothills towards Bayin.

Bayin is a typical town on the fringes of the Tengri Gobi of Inner Mongolia. Its main economic existence is due to mining, both coal and salt, black and white, a curious combination. There are also mines prospecting for aluminium and some other metal ore whose Chinese term I am not familiar with.

Outside the bus station I hailed a taxi.
“Can you drive me to see the sights around here?” I asked the young driver.
“I can take you to a famous Lamasery near here” he offered. Tibetan Buddhism is predominant here in Inner Mongolia.
“No thanks” having been to quite a few famous ones in Qinghai last year. “How about somewhere scenic?”
“There is a vantage point near here where you can have a good view of the surroundings”.
“Alright, how much for an hour’s hire?”
“Twenty five yuan”
“Twenty five yuan”. Sounds reasonable to me. Five Singapore dollars.

The taxi took me to the top of a hillock near the town centre. Here one can see for miles around. To the east is the highest peak of the Helan, at 3556 metres, already snowcapped at this time of the year. To the west, the vast expanse of the arid grassland. Further out there to the northwest, a few hundred kilometres away and not within sight, is the ruins of Karakhoto, 黑水城 one of the larger cities of the Xixia Kingdom. At the turn of the twentieth century, when China's attention was diverted by the Revolution, many ‘explorers’ from the West arrived here in search of their proverbial pot of gold. The likes of Aurel Stein, Sven Hedin, Albert von la Coq, Peter Koslov and many others came, and made off with invaluable treasure rightfully belonging to the Chinese people. In particular an exquisite statue of a double headed female bodhittsava was excavated by the Koslov mission here in Karakhoto, and can now be found in a museum in St Petersburg. Karakhoto is now known by its Mongolian name Erqina, its meaning, Black Water City, unchanged.

Back to Bayin. Here below me in the near distance, I can see both the grubby, grimy part of the old town and its none too appealing new section. Atop this hillock there is a well manicured park with a cenotaph as its centrepiece attraction. On closer inspection it is actually a memorial to the founding fathers of the Mongol Alashan tribe. They have led their people here, finding refuge from their more aggressive Mongol cousins the Dzungars, an erstwhile dominant tribe during the time of the Qing dynasty. The memorial details in both Han and Mongol script the brief history of the eastward movement of these people under the patronage of Kangxi, the 17th century Qing monarch. Eventually the Dzungars were defeated by the Qing and the whole of the Dzungarian Basin near the present Kazakhstan border became part of today’s troubled province of Xinjiang.

I got back to Yinchuan about five in the evening. As I got on the
packed city bus to the hotel I stood next to two Uighur lads who
were already seated. They looked about eighteen and are obviously students. Perhaps I stared a little too hard. The one seated on the aisle seat stood up and offered this grand old man his seat. This affords me the opportunity to speak to the one seated by the window. I asked him about his Uighur head gear. Patiently he explained, in his toneless Putonghua typical of Uighurs and Westerners in general, that his grandmother had just passed away; thus the special kind, and colour of hat. Uighurs have always been suspicious of the Hans and to a lesser extent their co-religionists the Huis, and I was therefore quite surprised at his willingness to speak to me, if only to explain his cultural practices to the ignoramus Han. I told him where I was from and that I empathised with the plight of Rebiya Kadeer, an incarcerated Uighur nationalist. He instantly brightened up and shook my hand warmly. On that short bus ride I got to know that his name is Abdul Salam, 阿布都萨拉姆 is the awkward manner by which his name is rendered in official Chinese documents; and he is from Aksu on the northern rim of the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, and that both of them are students here at the Northwestern University for Minorities. In my heart I wish them well. I should have invited them both for dinner. It was a wasted opportunity to make friends, and to find out more about these unfortunate people, whom history had put in a radically alien cultural and religious environment of the Han Chinese.