Tourist Pictures

These are pictures I've taken over the last few days that I neglected to put up anywhere else.

Another view from the living room.

Ice carvers outside of a park.

Yesterday when Karalygash and I were walking back to the apartment, a teenage boy in front of us was throwing firecrackers on the sidewalk behind him, which would scream and spin off in random directions. It was a tad frightening, and I think he was amused that we were frightened. It's almost New Year's, and firecrackers are used to scare away evil spirits, which I suppose makes me an evil spirit.

Fieldwork 2: Electric Boogaloo

This was easier on my nerves than last time. I've already been to the bazaar and the market, so neither place was new. Going with Karalygash I found women were much more likely to talk to us and answer questions. Karalygash had me asking some of the questions myself in Chinese, which was both excellent practice and nerve-wracking. I got some interesting answers this time around, with some themes emerging. That's encouraging. We'll be leaving for the country sometime between Friday and Monday is it stands now. That gives me a few more days to do informal interviews and observation.
I keep forgetting to wear my Eastern shirt and Dr. Z keeps forgetting to take pictures of me out and about in these exotic locations. I'm trying to be dilligent about organization and typing up my fieldnotes every night. Nothing really completely prepares you for the experience of being in such an alien environment for the first time.
Dr. Z has been giving me "5-minute Chinese" lessons daily, where we go over useful words and phrases, then build on them. Today we focused on things around the house, so we can speak less English at home. Immersion is the way to learn a language. Even when you don't know the word, it forces you to talk around it to make your meaning known, which is a component of fluency.

30 seconds along Da Bazaar

Fieldwork

It is amazingly awkward being a fledgling anthropologist doing her first real fieldwork in a foreign country where she doesn't really speak the language and looks phenotypically very different from everyone else. I'm trying to get over that, but I'm still shy about using my camera or asking questions, which is bad. I'll never learn anything if I can't ask! Dr. Z described it as "being the village idiot" which is a good way of putting it. We went to a large fabric market in the clothing district yesterday. The building we went in is largely a minority building where a lot of wholesale distribution is going on, though there is certainly retail exchange taking place. There was a courtyard behind the building, and it had five floors, the uppermost of which was empty. Each floor had stairs at either end and about thirty or forty rooms off the main hallway. I spent about two hours doing direct observation, taking notes and drawing maps. Some vendors sold bedding material exclusively, others sold fabric for skirts or men's suits. We saw a couple of young Han Chinese women buying about 10 meters of curtain fabric, which they said was for every window in an apartment. We encountered one vendor who was extremely rude and unhelpful, and Dr. Z explained that about a third of the people you encounter will be like that, with another third being indifferent and the last third being helpful. Two of the vendors we talked to were helpful, particularly an old woman who was careful to speak clearly and slowly when answering questions. I think it helped that Dr. Z purchased a floor covering from her.

Locally produced cotton bedding. The growing of cotton is devastating the local ecosystem.

Sewing machine outside near the loading dock. Some vendors have machines just to finish raw edges.

Across the street was another building that was mostly Han Chinese and obviously wholesale. One of the vendors there explained that purchasers came mostly from outlying areas to buy blankets and things like that for the smaller towns and villages. Today Karalygash and I are going either back there or to the Big Bazaar again to do more interviews, which makes me nervous. I feel like I won't ask enough questions and miss something crucial. But I suppose that's all part of the learning process. I like to think all anthropologists struggle at the beginning with these issues.

This was taken by the vendor of this stall. He was amused that I wanted to take pictures of his fabric.

The front of the first building.

One hallway in the Han Chinese building. You can see the hall is lined with shipments.

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.

Urumqi: Day 3

Yesterday we went to the regional museum, which was very interesting. There was an exhibit on the mummies found in the southern part of the province, as well as an extensive exhibit on the textiles. Jet lag finally caught up with me and I had to take a long nap in the afternoon when we returned to the apartment. My Chinese is still horrible, but I'm recognizing more words and characters everyday. It helps that Dr. Zukosky and his wife speak Chinese at home, sometimes I can pick up on topics of conversation.We talked a bit about my individual project, and today we are going to Da Bazaar(The Big Bazaar) to check some things out.It is really cold here, but the apartment is very warm(and has heated floors, which is awesome!).

Dr. Z is consistently exposing me to new foods. Yesterday we went to a Kazakh place that had fermented camel's milk, which was very unusual but not entirely unpleasant. Since a lot of people have asked; fermented camel's milk has the same consistency as the milk you're used to, it has a much higher fat content so it's much richer, and it had a slightly tangy taste to it. I would compare it to a very runny yoghurt.The food we eat at the apartment is delicious. For breakfast we have bowls of tea that we add milk and butter to. The butter is unlike any butter you've ever had. It comes from the mountains and it's quite rich. It makes the tea a little like soup, which we dip naan bread into. Very yummy, and good to help you warm up. The apartment is heated, and it's quite cozy in here, but it's good to warm up before heading out. We have the sweetest little mandarin oranges(real mandarin oranges!), so good!

Karalygash's mother is concerned about my health, because vegetarianism is unthinkable in a climate where you have to subsist on a diet with a high fat content to survive and there isn't much agriculture. She thinks I'm going to die and is always putting more food in front of me. I don't eat very much anyway, and that coupled with being a vegetarian makes her think I'm really on my way out. Maybe that's why she's so nice to me, maybe she's thinking "Oh, that poor girl! She's not long for this earth."

Dinner, and Dr. Z in the background.

The living room.

The view from the living room. Note the "fog".

China!

My flight was very long, but uneventful, which is good. Unfortunately I forgot to arrange for special vegetarian meals on the long flight(I haven't actually flown since becoming a vegetarian, it slipped my mind) so I ate around the meat. Just before landing they served what appeared to be the same kind of bread roll that came with one of our meals, so I bit into it, and it was full of pork. That was an unpleasant surprise, but it taught me a valuable lesson about checking the contents of buns before eating them.

I only spent one night in Beijing, so I didn't see much, though I did see the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube, both lit up at night. It was beautiful. Yang Liangliang met me at the airport(Beijing International is HUGE! I took a train from my terminal to baggage claim!) and showed me around Beijing Forestry University, which he says has a student body of about 30,000 people. One of the girl's dormitories is twenty-two stories tall! We had dinner at a place next to the hotel, where I ate lotus root for the first time. It was sweet and a little tangy, like a radish that isn't hot, and it looked like lace. The beds here are very hard, like sleeping on the floor.

These are shots of my hotel room in Beijing.

I'm in Urumqi now, and the apartment has wireless internet sometimes. My room is great, and my professor's two-year-old, Ziya, has taken to calling me Jie Jie, which is Chinese for Big Sister. He's adorable.Today's a relaxing day while I get acclimated, mostly sightseeing and resting now that I've unpacked. Urumqi is interesting, it looks like it's constantly foggy, but it's actually pollution. There's barely any snow on the ground(which makes me feel silly walking around in my snowboots). I'm remembering some of my Chinese, which makes talking to Ziya easier. I'll keep you posted about further developments.

My work table.

My super-girly bed.

My awesome closet system and sunny walls.