renming xi lu, kashgar

I have fallen in love with this young Uighur woman who is assiduously mopping the second floor of this restaurant. Her hair is tucked into a flopping blue toque and her brows are knotted in concentration. So few people have come into this space in the two hours I’ve been sitting here, yet she draws her mop over the tiles, around the stools, under the benches. She can’t be paid more than pennies an hour. An American R&B song on the speakers is playing my heart: “Can I get closer? Can I get closer?”

I’m sitting at the window on the second floor of an antiseptic fast food restaurant in Kashgar, typing on my laptop, headphones plugged in, looking out over the roundabout where Renming West Road, Youmulakexia Road, and Kezigeduwei Road meet. It’s dusk, meaning 8 p.m. in the far west of China. Pleasant, warm, low pollution, Thursday, October, 2011.

The roundabout itself is a baseball field-sized manicured lawn with a topiary panel in red and yellow flowers in the shape of China, with adjacent panels spelling out surely a patriotic slogan in commemoration of Chinese Independence Day. The surrounding buildings are six to ten stories, office buildings, shopping malls, hotels. The building one across from me has faded into a lusterless blue but has a grandiose cupola up top and a 20’ by 20’ LED screen playing flashy, silent advertisements.

A line of lime-and-white cabs had clogged up the road for a spell, but now the road is clear for grannies on mopeds, workers steering moto-tricycles with one hand and holding up cell phones with the other, a woman with her feet up on the stepthrough to avoid the spinning pedals on her electric bike, minibuses, SUVs, sedans, and pedestrians to go in all directions on the X-Y plain. Every second is fifteen narrowly-avoided traffic calamities. There is an underground walkway lined with shoe and bag vendors, but just as many people opt to walk deliberately, carefully, across the crowded street.

On the wide sidewalk, lined with parked cars and mopeds, are policemen on bicycles with flashing blue and red lights, a young man of not more than 25 indifferently rocking swaddling in his arms, a dromedary of a schoolboy hauling his humpbag and twirling his identity card on a lanyard, six soldiers in camouflage walking in formation carrying riot shields and batons, a young woman in a black shirt with a white shawl buttoned at the neck hooking two fingers through a shopping bag and tossing it over her right shoulder. A shaggy young man in green sneakers smoking a cigarette while thumbing his phone. A six year old telling a four year old to hurry with a push. Two men, carrying identical blenders. Bottle Blondie with a teal sweater. Black Volkswagen reversing skillfully into a parking spot. Man crumpling a cigarette box and dropping it to the sidewalk. Old people, young people, in between people with that splay-footed, pot-bellied, proud way of walking. Mother in high heels holding baby who holds a plastic bag full of dates. Middle-aged woman walking slowly between cars, tracing a circle, and then standing with hip cocked, weight on one foot, hands clasped behind her back. Most people move much faster.

Two youngish women are wearing uniforms: blue collared button ups, black jackets, black pants. I’m focusing on the taller, larger one, who wears her hair down to mid-back and walks with a heavy gait. I’m wondering if with shorn hair she would be read as a man for the indelicate movements of her body and the breadth of her back. I’m wondering if she reads novels in bed, late at night, hugging a pillow. I’m wondering if they’re going to catch the number 10 bus going east. I’m wondering how many times people watching life on a busy street have watched me and then wondered how many times other people watching life on a busy street have watched them.