Those Kids in Turpan [If You Travel at the End of the 20th Century #22]

Early summer, 1987, Turpan

Uyghur boys from nearly 40 years ago who snatched my hat, took turns wearing it, and posed for photos.
A gang that would mug me while screaming in a group whenever we met on the road.
And this smile.

Uyghur girls jumping into the Karez (irrigation channels) in their clothes.
When I was talking to them, I was finally dragged into the water and was soaked from head to toe.
Once it came to this, I would go along with it as far as it went.
Seeing even adults playing in the water mixed in with the children, Western tourists were amused and kept snapping photos.
So, my own photo might be tucked away in an album somewhere in the world.

Those innocent kids must be in their late 40s by now.
If they are safe.
They were annoying and pushy, and would do things like hat-snatching or pushing people into water channels, but they were incredibly friendly, childlike, and cute.

When I arrived in Turpan, an oasis city located in a basin between the Gobi Desert and the Taklamakan Desert, it was immediately obvious that although it is considered Chinese territory, it is a completely different ethnic sphere.

Turpan is a Uyghur city.
The Uyghur language is spoken with a rolled tongue that is difficult to imitate.
Unlike Kanji, it is written from left to right in Arabic script.

The main public transportation in the city is the shared donkey cart.

Their appearance falls somewhere on a gradient from blonde hair and blue eyes to Mongoloid features.
I realized that the young man with different features who approached me in Shanghai asking to exchange Foreign Exchange Certificates with a rolled tongue was a Uyghur.

Exotic decorations of Islamic mosques and other buildings.

Since they are Muslim, men often wore decorated Uyghur caps or hunting caps, and women wore scarves.

Long coats for the elderly, and colorful ikat dresses for the women.

On Fridays, men in formal attire crowd into the mosque, so the bazaar afterwards is full of super-cool old men with a Middle Eastern vibe.

Hot-blooded men sometimes get into arguments and pull out the knives at their waists.

Thin, street trees like almond-crush Pocky (I was surprised to learn later that those were poplars, which are common in Hokkaido; they are completely different in thickness).

Super smelly mutton dishes.

In the Han Chinese areas under the one-child policy, there were few children and there was always a distance, but the Uyghurs (it was said they could have up to 3 children, but the regulations were famous for being nominal at the time) were full of children. I don't know if they were going to school or if it was a two-shift system, but there were always many of them in the city. And they were playing, causing mischief, and getting scolded.

I found that kind of thing fun and interesting, and I was just happy.

It was a little early for the famous grapes and Hami melons, so it was still just apricots and watermelons. But as the weeks went by in Urumqi, Kuqa, and Kashgar, they became sweeter and more delicious.

I encountered a sandstorm.
Probably when I was walking towards theEmin Minaretabout 2km away.
On the road where the distance between houses started to open up a bit, the wind whipped up sand from everywhere like a ground blizzard, and the visibility turned yellow. It was more painful not being able to breathe than the visibility. If you inhaled, sand would get in.
I huddled in the shade of a thin poplar and buried my face in my clothes. People who were outside immediately went into their houses, and an old man on a bicycle also called out to me as he evacuated to a passing house. I was scared and had him let me join, and I waited inside the wall until it subsided.

I remember the fear of not being able to breathe.
I understood the meaning of the thin poplars planted as street trees that were outside. They are necessary as windbreaks. They are necessary as trees that can grow even in the desert.
A woman who was outside quickly lowered her headscarf over her face when the sandstorm came, covering her head completely like a burqa.
Islamic precepts are suited to the climate of desert regions.
The thin cloth allows you to see ahead through the fabric while also blocking the sand.
Chadors and burqas are sometimes called oppression of Muslim women, but they have climatic practicality.
There are things you only understand by experiencing them.

Only the memory of the sandstorm remains, and I have almost no memory of the Emin Minaret.

I went to the Jiaohe Ruins, about 10km away, with a Japanese photographer by donkey cart.
I don't remember that famous place well either, and I have no photos.
However, I remember being told by that Japanese person that I 'looked like a Uyghur.'
This was the beginning of being mistaken for a Uyghur.

After that, I was scouted by four incredibly energetic Hong Kong girls, and we spent the day together visiting the Flaming Mountains, the Thousand Buddha Caves, and the Gaochang Ruins.
When I left the price negotiations to them, they haggled so well it became legendary.
We rode in the back of a beat-up light truck, about the size of a tuk-tuk, driving across the desert—or rather, the dirt desert.

This was the first time I had spent time with a group of Hong Kongers—who were traveling energetically all over the mainland at the time—doing more than just talking.

The floor of our dormitory at the Turpan Hotel was covered with a carpet, a specialty of the Uyghur region.
I had been suffering from a persistent cough due to my constitution after a mild cold.
T-kun and the other Japanese travelers also said they felt a strange sensation in their throats, likely because it was so dry.
One night, T-kun brought a basin of water and sprinkled it on the floor. It evaporated from the carpet fibers, raising the humidity and making us feel much better. By morning, it was completely dry, which made us realize how intense the dryness of the desert region was, and it became our nightly routine.
After a few days, the room started to smell. Why? Where was it coming from?
On the night before we left Turpan, I looked for the source of the smell and lifted the carpet; it had turned black. It had molded.
I am sorry we left without saying anything. I am truly sorry for that.

After this, I traveled from Turpan to Urumqi, Kuqa, Aksu, Kashgar, and Korla.
In '91, I came down with Hepatitis A in Kashgar after entering from Pakistan, and after recovering, I traveled through Yarkand and Hotan before entering Tibet, so this visit in '87 was the only time I visited Turpan.

I just enjoyed it. I hear that the Uyghur streets and people, which were wild yet charming, have changed—or rather, have been remade. Officially, it is said that they have developed.
However, even the foreigners who only brushed against it back then all said the same thing:
"This doesn't look like China at all."
That impression was correct. There are many countries with people of different ethnicities, different logic, and different cultures, and everywhere there are constant problems and strife, but trying to correct (though 'correct' is not the right word) something so different creates significant distortion.
They strip away the essence of religion and culture, repaint the harmless surface, and tidy it up for tourism. Even if it remains in a traveler's camera, these episodic memories are what remain etched in the mind.

My biggest memory of Turpan is the children.
I wonder how those children grew up and if they are safe.