Linxia
Linxia is a Muslim town, surrounded by dry hills and cornfields, where Tibetans shop wholesale. It is not a tourist destination. Everyone stared at me—oh, how they did stare at me—with squinting, quizzical expressions ranging from mild dismay to mild glee. Children liked to say “he-lo!” and liked it when I answered them. The old men have skullcaps, fantastic beards and equally fantastic giant brown sunglasses. If I could get my camera to talk to the computers in this internet cafe, I could show y’all my artist’s rendition. Anyway, I was in Linxia for two days. I couldn’t use the internet for lack of a small blue card of some sort. I ate a lot of bread—dense round things sometimes with curry in them—and got over my food poisoning. Three Tibetan monks were staying in the hotel room next to me—kind of a metaphor, given that I was just one, thin bureaucratic wall away from the Xiahe. I climbed the hill behind town—mesas and canyons and cornfields and haystacks and old women who grunted when I said Ni hao. It reminded me of eastern Washington and Colorado, with some obvious differences. When I arrived, the one white guy who lives in Linxia (he runs a leather baby shoe factory—is from Vancouver, was off to play hockey with his kids) happened to be passing by and drew me a map of town. Many mosques, with green domes and soaring old-timey Chinesey gates. Anyway, tomorrow, with any luck, I will be in Jiayuguan watching a solar eclipse, and in the desert proper for the next couple of weeks.
