Who would have thought? Kashgar, a small town on the very edge of northwest China, a hop skip and jump from the "Stan" countries (Pakistan, Kazakhstan, etc.)...and Siping, a small town on the edge of northeast China just a few hours from North Korea. Together in one place. :)
The other night I ran into my friend Jason going to dinner with some Chinese teachers and I joined them, knowing they were going to a Muslim restaurant. Most Muslim restaurants in China are noodle places run by the Hui people, another minority Muslim group in China. So, this is what I was expecting. Instead they took me to a Xinjiang restaurant! I walked into the restaurant and was overjoyed to see familiar atlas silk (see above) on the walls and familiar replicas of Uighur instruments from Xinjiang. Not only this, but the owner told us that he and his family are from Kashgar!! There is a woman there about my age, maybe a little bit older, along with a little boy, a mother, and a few men. We ordered way too much food and they probably already think that we Westerners eat too much, but that was mostly because I kept messing up the order and rather than taking back the food because I didn't want them "losing face" I kept adding to it. Oh well. It's fun to look at a menu and say to the waiter, "you choose! what's good here?" My favorite plate is called "Da Pan Ji" (translated literally to mean big plate of chicken) and Nan bread. I hope to make this a weekly visit to begin forming relationships and maybe get help with some Uighur language skills.
On the other side of things, while some of us were in Tonghua this weekend (a small town literally 30 miles from North Korea where some of our friends live), we chanced upon a rather large mosque. The men cooking barbecue in front of the mosque were wearing the familiar doppas (caps) and were from Xinjiang. Of course I just had to go talk to them. They were a little hesistant talking to a woman, and I wouldn't have tried if the other American guys weren't there with me. One of my American friends with us was trying to buy this chewy kind of candy from the one of the Xinjiang men. He thought he heard 2.5 kuai (about 30 cents) per jin (half a kilogram), but when he went to pay for the 2 jin he ordered the man told him it was 60 kuai!!! (almost eight dollars!) When my friend tried to explain that he had misunderstood him and couldn't get the man to come down, the man got so mad that he grabbed him by the shirt and looked like he was about to punch him in the face. That was the end of that visit as we all tried to slowly meander out of the situation. The man saw us later that day and was glaring at us. It was an honest misunderstanding on the part of my American friend, but was also deceitful on the part of the man- eight dollars for candy, are you crazy?
So, we get the best of both worlds.
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