High on the northern Tibetan Plateau, an ancient slab of land that eventually rises up into the attic of the planet, you can get winded just pulling on your socks in the morning. I had traveled to Xining in the Qinghai Province, doormat to the Himalayas with an average elevation of 10,000 feet, a gaping, empty wilderness whose entire population is only five and a half million—most Chinese cities considered small have at least that, yet at 721,000 square kilometers it’s bigger than France and Belgium combined, has been fought over for centuries, lured pioneers and prospectors, and, because of its isolation, became the eventual dumping ground for criminals and political prisoners when the communists set up reeducation camps here. It has the smallest economy, the second largest salt-water lake in the world, its mountain ranges give birth to the Yellow, the Yangtze, and the Mekong rivers, it grows over 100 medicinal herbs used in Chinese traditional medicine, including the prized caterpillar fungus, as well as walnuts, wheat, barley, potatoes, peaches, apricots, pears, apples and the unfortunately named rapeseed . Xining was a strategic settlement on a branch of the Silk Road that led to Lhasa and anyone who was anyone in the history of conquest in western China had a tenuous toehold on the place. Feuding Tibetan warlords from the 12 small states held it against outside influence until Genghis Khan (his name means ocean or powerful king) seized it and incorporated it into his empire in 1227. After which the Yuan Dynasty collapsed and the Mings and the Qings and the Hans and the Muslims all duked it out for control until the establishment of the People’s Republic. I dragged all this history with me on the train to Xining. I looked for crumbling watchtowers on ridgelines, felt the lonely expanse, remembered that when criminals and the opponents of the regime were sent to reeducation camps, after their sentence was up, they couldn’t return to their hometowns. I wondered what the ghost of that dislocation looked like in the faces of the locals and what, if any, effect it had on the modern population. As I was pondering this and other ancient thoughts, a man who had been watching me summoned up his entire limited arsenal of English vocabulary, gathered his courage and made the leap across the divide, asking—which to me sounded more like a demand, “You have iPhone?” In China I am used to these stereotypical assumptions: all laowai (foreigners) have iPhones; all laowei are rich and therefore can afford iPhones. As such, iPhones are status symbols here. It doesn’t matter that iPhones are actually no better than half a dozen phones made in China, and are actually inferior to others, what matters is surface and surface accessories really go far in China. I took it as an opportunity to educate and pulled out my Nexus phone, which I bought because it was way cheaper and I believe superior to an iPhone. The man took one look at it and visibly shrank. Puzzled, I probed in my really bad Chinese. He pulled out his new Xiaomi phone and I finally understood he wanted to compare his phone to the iPhone, convinced in a nationalistic way that his Chinese-made phone would come out on top. And here I had deprived him of the opportunity. It was useless to try to show him that a rooted Android phone was better than both of them, so I sighed and pretended to throw my phone out the window. This went over big, as in my experience I have found that Chinese really love fatalistic humor. He was my buddy now and we passed the time miming and conversing in EngChin. All too soon were in the gleaming Xining railway station, and with firm politeness he ushered me through the maze and led me outside where I felt the ghosts of pickpockets and scam artists who were banished here pass through me in the late afternoon light. As a gesture of good will and appreciation, I pointed to his phone and bowed, hand on my heart, trying to reassure him that it was way better than an iPhone. He shrugged in that Chinese way that said—who knows? Then he shook my hand, smiled, and disappeared, back into . . . . . . . . . life . . . . . . . . . . . Part 2 of Late winter, Xining, Qinghai Province, China will follow.
1 Comment
Mary
4/28/2015 07:18:40 am
You always have such interesting reading about ancient times and real life as it is now. I have an iphone but they keep coming out with new ones you can't keep up it is crazy! lol Looking forward to Part 2 of Late Winter.
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