July 23, 2023

Heading West.

At half-past eight in the evening, the scene in Hami is still that of the afternoon sun, casting slanted rays on the ground. Outside the train are deserts, slopes, blowing sand, scattered halophytes, and patches of green grapevines.

I woke up from the sleeper bed at six in the afternoon, groggily looking out of the window at the changing scenery. Sun, heat, dryness were my expectations for Xinjiang. Touching the aged window, the golden light showed its traces through the diffraction effect, feeling the scorching, boiling, dry heat outside: scorching. The train moving on the tracks feels as if it’s been baked with salt… The rails are laid on concrete, and the vehicles move smoothly forward. The ear pressure makes it hard to hear the noise of the steel machinery, moving forward like riding a slide.

In the meantime, I stare at the outside world. There’s always a melody that passes through Beijing, passes through Xi’an, passes through Gansu, spanning over three thousand kilometers to reach my ears. That sound has the sound of Dutar, the sound of hand drums, the sound of Koubuz: the sound of Aijek is melodious and lingering, with Xinjiang girls and boys in decorative costumes dancing gracefully…

In the lower bunk adjacent to us, there lies a Pakistani mother and daughter: the little girl has deep eye sockets and big eyes, curling up in the quilt with red-rimmed eyes blinking, unlike the other noisy children on the train who laugh and play loudly, she quietly cries, quietly smiles, speaks softly: elegant, sensible, polite.

When traveling with a destination in mind, it seems easier to overlook the scenery along the way. Dragging along a tired itinerary, the air is filled with various smells of snacks, instant noodles, “peanuts and melon seeds eight treasures porridge,” “cigarettes, beer, mineral water,” also drowned in various noisy chatter, laughter, and crying, mingling in the crowd, with people holding instant noodles bustling around.

A journey of over forty hours is still too long, and the travel across latitudes and longitudes makes me feel deeply uncomfortable.

In fact, since entering Xinjiang, or starting from boarding this train to Xinjiang, I’ve had a latent sense of insecurity in my heart. The source of this insecurity comes from the distance, the language of Xinjiang, and the markedly different appearances of Uighurs, Pakistanis, and other Central Asians from mainlanders.

On the train to Kashgar.