Hotan

The hotel (or hostel or guesthouse or whatever other moniker you like - just not "luxury") was somewhat...disappointing. I had been as month without "conveniences", and had been looking forward to something a little easy. This place was a continuation of the conditions I had lived in for the previous 25 days. Water was pooled on the cement in front of the (squat, of course) toilets, it was full of folks chain smoking, the room resembled a prison cell, though without bars. I took the room; Jiao Yun was smiling expectantly, as was his friend, the hotel's operator. What the heck: how bad could it be? There was, in its defense, a shower - a hot one even - which I was quickly shown to and urged to clean up. I did so, dumped the sand out of my bags, and went for some dinner.

The proprietor showed me the local favorite restaurant, a place specializing in la mian (but doesn't every place in Xinjiang specialize in noodles?). He ordered me a plate of laghman for 6Y, and then retired to his hotel. The food arrived on a stainless steel platter: it was a mountain of food, easily enough for two. I set to work on it. Several Uyghurs walked by checking me out, all filing back to one of the private rooms. One of them, a pudgy-faced guy with intense eyes, bloodshot from some kind of hooch, approached me, shaking my hand and then going on and on loudly in Uyghur, none of which I could understand. The gist of it, from what I could make out through repetitions and sign language, was that there was a party happening in the back room, complete with dancing, and my presence was requested. I figured it couldn't hurt, I waggled my head in response, and the guy (his name was Ghayser) took up my plate of noodles and clutched my hand, crying out some happy sentence, along with "Amin, Allah ho Akbar" and pulled me to the room.

The door was pushed open, and I was greeted by a dozen pairs of eyes, a red ambient light, and blaring music. Ghayser began a long speech about me - I hope it was nice - and then kicked one of his friends out of a chair and sat me down. There were a few women, who looked on a bit stunned by my presence, while the men carried on toasting each other with whisky (this was Ramadan, but there is a lot of wiggle room for Islamic principles in Central Asia). The table was heaped with food, which began arriving on my plate in short order, everyone piling on something. Couples wandered onto and off of the dance floor, sometimes slow dancing, sometimes dancing more traditionally. Before I could get a piece of food in my mouth, Ghayser grabbed me, kissed my forehead and pulled me onto the dance floor. I made an attempt (pathetic) to dance Uyghur style, which involves lots of hand gestures, twirling arms, spinning, hunching down low to the ground and some sort of foot stomping, snapping fingers all the while: Ghayser, in his heavily intoxicated state, was not much better. I was asked where I was from. "Amrika?" then a thumbs up. There were cries of "Arapat...Allah ho Akbar" (Arafat was dead, I gathered - was this a party in his honor?). I tried to have a conversation with one of the more sober men, to ascertain what the party was about, and met with little success. I was able to communicate I came from San Francisco, and thought that Xinjiang was nice, Uyghurs were friendly, and that the weather in Hotan was much warmer than in Tibet.

Things got confusing when Ghayser, all the time kissing me on the forehead and the cheek, began giving Osama Bin Laden a thumbs up, then Washington and New York a thumbs up, and then pantomiming war in Iraq, and giving that a thumbs up. I looked for an exit, which came when Ghayser took a cell-phone call. I waited that out, then said I had to go, politely as possible. I gave him a big hug (playing the part, you know) and then thanked he and everyone else with a handshake. I left, chuckling, and the restaurant workers looked at me smiling. I jerked a thumb back at the room and said it was quite a party. We all had a laugh, I paid for the food and wandered into the street.

Hotan is a city of small businesses: stalls and street hawkers line the old lanes. I went from one to the other gorging myself on large slices of fresh melon (which go for about 5 cents each), naan (same price for a round flatbread), halva (a sesame seed-based sweet, same as in the Middle East), dates, figs, you name it. In the end I felt ill and overfull, but I needed to win back some of the 7kg I had lost in the last 3 months. I walked slowly back to the hotel, noting where the internet cafe was, and went to sleep, ignoring the shouts and tempers flaring at the mahjong game across the narrow hallway.

In the morning I was able to better assess my residence. I had a roommate, a Han Chinese, who wore a cheap blue suit and a ridiculously loud patterned tie which made him look like a game show host. His face was sunken and craggy, and he wore Mafiosi-style sunglasses indoors. I liked him immediately. The rest of the clientele were a mix of Uighur and Han, day laborers and the like: the place was basically some sort of SRO, except there was more than one person to a room. Three women appeared to work there, hard-drinking and smoking types with gravelly voices that climbed to a shriek any number of times during the day. Mahjongg for the unemployed or lazy began at about noon, and was endless, going on well past 2am every night. My roommate didn't play the game, but seemed content to park himself on the ratty couch, still covered in shredded plastic from the day it was new, and watch TV for several hours after work.

I washed and mended clothes, wandered around the town, read the news on the internet, catching up on the last month's events, and, of course, the US election. The bazaar bustled noisily during the day, the food was cheap and plentiful, and I wandered mostly aimlessly for a few days, napping in the middle of the day just because I could. I often ate 1Y bowls of noodles from a street cart next to a dirt lot, where some sort of motor driven swing set for children squeaked around carrying alternately frightened or joyful cargo while an old man beat out some sort of rhythm on a sheepskin tambourine. A sad looking park had a miniature train for kids to ride on, and the shaking cars you see out in front of discount retailers in the US, the children jostling about looking like they don't know what its all for, and the parents waiting for the smile to emerge to justify the change they just wasted on the contraption. Old men with beards and knee high leather boots competed with stylish young ladies in fashionable fur-trimmed coats for my attention: which one to stare at? I browsed the cake stores (there were no fewer than four large ones by the new (Chinese) town square, all named in English "Cake World"), and settled on a bag of chocolate chip cookies. Essentially, I had myself a good time.

I had to get a visa extension, and hoped for a 2 month extension, but the PSB were apologetically only able to give me one month. Ah well, I had been shooting for the moon, so I took it (at least the price was cheaper than I had been expecting). While I waited for my visa, I read the "Notice to Foreign Visitors" sign: I found out that I should not "threaten state safety or security in any way", nor should I be a "disturbance to public order". The text wrapped from one line to the next without any attention paid to word or syllabic endings: this too, I liked, something of the "old (ie more than 4 years ago) China" in it.

The plan was to get to Lhasa, back up on the plateau, taking a bus to Qiemo to save some time on the visa, and then cycling to Golmud and down the good highway there to the capital and cultural center of Tibet.