Day 5: The Big Bazaar

This was my first day of real work. I'm doing transcriptions of interviews that Dr. Z has recorded, and I have to be extremely thorough about writing down everything. Every pause, every "uh", "um", "hmm", every throat clearing, facial expression, hand gesture, laugh, etc. I've been working on one 17 minute interview for 8 hours(not consecutively, that would be torture). It's exhausting, but invaluable in terms of practical experience.

We went down to the Big Bazaar and checked out the fabric stalls, since that's where I'll be doing my own research for my project. My topic is how social relationships between Chinese women established through the exchange of handmade clothing changed with market reform, if they have changed. The Bazaar was more crowded than any other area of Urumqi I've seen yet, but not as crowded as parts of Beijing, I'm told. The fabric area we went to consisted of a long hallway lined with small stalls full of fabric. It was amazingly colorful, and I may end up coming back with a suitcase full of cloth, especially the atlas fabric I've become very taken with. It's a traditionally woven silk fabric that has been mass produced as printed cloth. The pattern is very distinctive. We managed to strike up a conversation with one Han Chinese woman who was making a bedspread for a close friend. When I asked her if she made things like that for people other than close friends, she explained that you wouldn't give something as simple as a bedspread to someone you're not close to, which I thought was interesting.

Outside at Da Bazaar.

The Hallway.

Printed Atlas fabric.

The Hallway

Interior of a stall

Another stall...you have no idea how difficult it

is to be around this much pretty fabric for me...

Another stall.

Men socializing.

Karalygash is taking her entrance exams for grad school over the next couple of days. They're intense, she's there at 6:30 a.m. and stays all day taking tests that each last 3 hours. It's very much still in the Confucian style of entrance exams that have been required since very early in the imperial period. Her mother comes over to help with Ziya, and there's a nanny about my age living in the third bedroom now, which is a huge help to all of us. It's difficult to get work done when Ziya is banging on the office door screaming. Ziya has been instructed to call me big sister in Chinese and the nanny big sister in Kazakh to avoid confusion, but he mostly calls us both Jie Jie. Once Karalygash is finished with her exams, she's agreed to help me with my research, since the people at the Big Bazaar speak Uighur and Kazahk almost exclusively, and even if they speak Chinese my vocabulary isn't good enough to conduct interviews.

The Big Bazaar is crowded and loud and very busy. I took some pictures which I'll upload eventually. I'm in the process of making a special webpage just for this trip where I'll post my photos and video and the like. The picture on my myspace page right now is of Urumqi, and you can see the fog-like pollution. I've developed the cough that everyone seems to have here. People use scarves to cover their faces as well as keep warm, so I've taken to covering my face with mine when I'm out.
We have about nine days left in the city before we head out to the country for a few weeks to work with the scientists on the reserve. I'll be unable to communicate while I'm there, but I'll have plenty of pictures and stories when I get back into Urumqi, I'm sure. We'll be going out there a couple of times while I'm in China.