The Emperor Far Away by David Eimer

Xinjiang.
    Gazing at the seemingly impenetrable crags which shielded the new road from view was the closest I got to Afghanistan. We carried on towards the mountains in front of us, which mark the beginning of the Karakoram Range. Somewhere over 4,000 metres, we reached the snowline and my ears started to pop. From then on, Lao Yu negotiated a series of switchback curves as we ascended the last few hundred metres to the Khunjerab Pass.
    Another checkpoint and then we were at the frontier. A double line of barbed wire rose above the snow lying knee-deep on either side of the road, and there was a giant arch which hadn’t been there in 1988. On the far side of it were two Chinese, one PLA officer and a Wu Jing soldier, and a bearded Pakistani in mirrored sunglasses and camouflage. I strolled up and asked if I was in Pakistan now. They nodded in assent.
    We shared cigarettes and I fielded the inevitable questions about where I was from and what I was doing. The officer told me the soldiers did one month at the pass and then one back in Tashkurgan, even when the border closed for winter. He was the chattiest PLA man I have ever encountered, at least while on duty, and spoke good English. ‘I have to – that’s how we communicate with the Pakistanis,’ he said. But I didn’t envy him his posting. It was frigid, even in the midday sun, and I was shivering in three layers of summer clothes.
    On the way back, Lao Yu gave me the benefit of his thoughts on the Uighurs. Five years of working in Tashkurgan had enriched his pocket, while leaving him severely prejudiced against the natives. He had no problem with the ethnic Tajiks. ‘They’re fine, they don’t cause trouble.’ Instead, it was the Uighurs he disliked. For Lao Yu, they were jiade , or fake, Chinese people. I thought most Uighurs would agree with that, except they would qualify it by saying they were also unwilling Chinese citizens.
    Lao Yu was just getting started. Meiyou wenhua was the phrase he repeated over and over again in connection with the Uighurs. It literally translates as ‘having no education’, but has a wider meaning implying that the person, or people, lacks civilisation and culture. ‘They think they can be like the Kuomintang and have their own state like Taiwan, that’s how stupid the Uighurs are,’ he said with a nasty sneer.
    ‘You know why they’re so stupid? You know the person we call an uncle? For a Uighur, that’s their elder brother not their uncle. They all marry their brothers, sisters and cousins and that’s why they are so stupid.’ I didn’t know how to respond. During my time in China, I’d listened to many Han complaints about the Uighurs. How they are lazy, prone to petty crime, unwilling or unable to learn Mandarin, ate too much lamb and are overly religious. But Lao Yu’s theory that the Uighurs are incestuous was new to me.
    In the evening I played pool with Majid, a Uighur art student from Kashgar who was in Tashkurgan to sketch the Pamirs, and wondered if I should broach the subject with him. I decided against it. Majid was sparky and inquisitive and didn’t look or sound inbred to me. We were in one of Tashkurgan’s pool halls, essentially a shop holding a few tables with rock-hard cushions and patched baize. In all small towns in rural Xinjiang, as in many other parts of country China, pool is the only entertainment option outside of drinking beer in a restaurant.
    I have lost at pool all across China. Once, I shot a few frames in Beijing with a giggly sixteen-year-old farmer’s daughter from Henan Province who had just been crowned the World Nine-Ball Pool Champion. She was barely taller than her cue, but thrashed me off the table. Majid wasn’t in her league, but he still beat me while a crowd of young Tajik and Uighur lads looked on smiling and offering advice.
    Majid wanted to be an art teacher, preferably abroad. ‘I’d like to go to London,’ he said with a cheeky grin. I told him he should try.