We sat staring at the glistening hunks of red-brown meat as they steamed, at once enticing and stomach-churning, from their bed of ivory noodles.“Well?” said our host, his smile wide and unctuous. “Try it. It’s our specialty!”I swallowed and looked around the table at my mother, sister and friend. They stared back at me expectantly. “What is it, Christina?” Their gazes darkened with suspicion in the extended silence. My mind wandered back to the doe-eyed mare we’d been cooing at earlier that day, and I bit my lip, debating whether or not to tell them.
　　This was not exactly what I had in mind when we wandered into what was reputedly the most authentic local restaurant in the city of Yining, a far-flung outpost near China’s western border with Kazakhstan. Two years of eating at Xinjiang restaurants in Beijing had prepared me for more accessible Uyghur classics like dapanji (大盘鸡, big plate chicken) and yangrou chuanr (羊肉串儿, lamb kebabs). But then again, I reasoned, looking at the meat and steeling my will, this trip wasn’t about accessibility—it was about adventure. It was, after all, the “Wild West” mystique that had originally driven me and my compatriots to take a two-week jaunt into the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a land known for its rich history and diverse, hinterland culture. And so, after a few days in the capital of Urumqi, we hoofed it out to Yining, a center of Uyghur culture and an authentic frontier town that (based on the lack of travel literature) I assumed would offer a real taste of Xinjiang’s wild west.
　　Instead, it looked like our plans had gone more or less instantly awry, and our taste buds were in store for a highly unpalatable experience. To be fair, this had all started with a bit of good old-fashioned hospitality.
　　“No need to order—I’ll take care of you!”boomed the restaurant’s owner, a Kazakh man who had swooped in the minute he caught sight of his tentative foreign guests. His robust stature and unwavering tone rendered us dumbstruck, reducing our protests to mumbled asides: “I don’t think he knows what we want.”Before he left to place whatever order he cared to rustle up for us, I tried to tactfully express that, whatever he had in mind, we did not care to eat horse meat. I consider myself to be open-minded in both cultural and gastronomical matters, but having grown up on a diet of My Little Pony, I wasn’t ready to take a bite out of Black Beauty just yet.
　　After taking pains to explain that eating horse meat was not part of our culture and we meant no offense, the Kazakh owner replied jovially, “If Obama came to Kazakhstan, I’d kill a horse for him to eat!” elucidating that horses are a sacred part of Kazakh culture (as evidenced by the majestic paintings of wild stallions that adorned the entryway of the restaurant), just as dragons are a sacred part of Chinese culture. Thinking to myself, “Yeah, but Chinese don’t eat dragons,”I expressed my understanding while quite forcefully reiterating that we truly did not want horse meat.
　　After about 10 minutes of dread-laden anticipation ,we were served a massive platter of naren (纳仁), flat noodles, red onions, and yes, chunks of horse meat and sausage. As the proud restaurant owner set down the dish, he explained that his establishment was the only place in China where you could find this particular strain of horse sausage.
　　As it turned out, Xinjiang is the only place in China where you can find a lot of things.
　　While most regions of China share a kind of cultural and architectural uniformity that speaks to the rapid urbanization and wide reach of the Han majority, Xinjiang is different. A hub for cultural and ethnic mixing, the region has for over a thousand years housed a mixture of ethno-linguistic groups that was churned up even more by successions of nomadic invaders at the beginning of the fourth century. The famous Silk Road, the trade route that first connected China with South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, served to infuse a further layer of exoticism and mystery. It’s this multilayered history (not to mention its long border) that has helped lead to Xinjiang’s extraordinary mix of ethnicities, including Uyghurs, Mongolians, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, Tajiks and more, all of whom have contributed to the region’s rich desert culture.
　　While northern Xinjiang, particularly Urumqi, has plenty of Han inhabitants, the south is so predominately “un-Han” that I wondered whether the Chinese I spent so many years learning would be useful at all. With a large population of Kazakhs in the north and even more Uyghurs in the south, the physical traits of the people, coupled with their corresponding languages, made me wonder whether or not I had left behind China completely. The Chinese characters adorning the street signs and various buildings were practically the only reminder that we were still very much in the Middle Kingdom. Most people traveling to Xinjiang make sure to hit the famous Silk Road city of Kashgar, and from there head to the mountains to take in some or all of the Karakoram Highway, billed as one of the most spectacular in the world. While we too included these places in our itinerary, we wanted to explore beyond the oft-traveled locales and discover the wilder side of the region.
　　


　　


　　Our Kazakh restaurant adventure was proof of the equine excitement that could be found by stepping off the beaten track, though our next encounter thankfully involved live horses rather than cooked ones. Sailimu Lake (赛里木湖) lies just two-hours’ drive north of Yining and is a renowned center of Kazakh horse culture. The isolated mountain lake turned out to be huge—around 90 kilometers in circumference—with a vast glassy surface that shifted colors in the sun. We saw hues of silvery blue, deep purple and sapphire azure shuffle and converge on the water’s surface as we began to circumnavigate the lake with our faithful driver, Master Dong. Stopping multiple times to get up-close views of the cows and calves reveling in the fields of wild flowers, we only made it about 20 kilometers around the lake before the bumpy road and hunger pangs forced us back the way we had come.
　　It was on our return journey that I fell in love with the most beautiful colt I had ever seen. We cried out in unison for our driver to stop and went to meet this lakeside celebrity, which was already being fawned over by a handful of other tourists. Meanwhile, the colt’s savvy Kazakh owners were standing guard, making sure that every member of the crowd had paid for the privilege of spending time with the six-day-old foal. Though the owners said they would sell us the colt for RMB5,000, I think they would have been loath to part with it, as horses are such an essential part of their nomadic culture.
　　Inspired by the newborn (and knowing that a horse ride would be inevitable), we decided Sailimu Lake was the perfect setting to play cowboy: beautiful scenery, few tourists and plenty of Kazakh yurts—portable tent-like abodes suited perfectly to the nomadic lifestyle. After lunch and an afternoon rest, we ventured back to the lake to find the men on horseback we had seen earlier, confident that they would be able to point us in the right direction. Little did we know how dire the consequences of such an inquiry would be.
　　Barely had the word “horses” escaped our lips, when the two riders to whom we had been talking morphed into a horde of Kazakh cowboys running at us on horseback.“Aggressive” is far too tame a word to describe these men, who swarmed around us like a hive of angry bees. Rather than sting, however, they would try to drape their riding crops over our arms, claiming us as their own. The sky darkened as we were further engulfed by horses, some bearing riders, others being led by their owners. A boy of no more than seven appeared in the crowd, confidently guiding his steed through the herd around him. As I tried my best to stay afloat while at the same time negotiating the price for a 30-minute ride, I saw my friend Joy being swept away in the fray. My mom and sister were mortified, not knowing whether to laugh or run, but put on their bravest faces as I told the group I was haggling with, “I have to go save my friend.”In unison they heartily agreed, “Go save your friend, go save your friend!”
　　After I brought Joy back to the “safety” of our group, I braved the surrounding chaos, yelling over the ruckus, “Twenty kuai for half an hour!”naively thinking this would limit the number of interested parties. My cry was followed by a slight pause while the entire group sucked in a breath of air before yelling excitedly, “OK! Twenty kuai for half an hour!” I looked around, bewildered—we only needed four horses and they had enough for a small army. I switched tactic, “Can we see your horses?” Another brief silence followed by a sudden chorus of, “Hao!” And before we could even react, another six or seven horses were being run at us, their riders pulling them up just short of the assembled mounts.
　　


　　At this rate I thought we’d never survive the encounter, let alone have a chance to actually ride, so I made four snap decisions: that one, that brown one, that black one and yours, directing my comments to the guy who had stuck to me like glue throughout the encounter. Once the decisions about our mounts had been made, all the other horses dispersed with their owners as quickly as they had arrived, and we were left in relative calm to enjoy our time astride the horses. As I walked my horse past three little girls, who were probably between five and seven years old, I called out to them, “Hello, little friends.” It took them a minute to respond, but the girl in the middle finally asked innocently, “What’s wrong with your hair?” (你的头发怎么了？N@ de t5ufa z0nme le?) Trying to suppress my surprise and laughter, I responded, “Nothing, this is just the color of my hair.” (没怎么,我的头发就是这个颜色。M9i z0nme, w6 de t5ufa ji& sh# zh-ge y1ns-.) To this, the girl confidently responded, “Everyone has black hair!” (每个人的头发都是黑色的。M0i g- r9n de t5ufa d5u sh# h8is- de.) This left me wondering if I was really the first blond these girls had seen, ever, let alone in person. Did they lead such an isolated life that modern conveniences such as television had not given them a glimpse beyond their immediate world? How far off the beaten path had we come?
　　Our quest to discover Xinjiang had led us from one adventure to the next in the mountainous Kazakh regions in the north. As we left for the arid desert lands of southern Xinjiang, we eagerly anticipated our final escapade. This parting adventure was an overnight camel trip with our Uyghur guide, Abdul, into the Taklamakan Desert. The name in Uyghur literally means “You can get in, but you can never get out.” While we are living proof that modernity has helped travelers escape that morbid prediction, the experience comes highly recommended as a means of sampling a taste of the travails endured by the intrepid traders who first navigated the Silk Road.
　　As we mounted our two-humped camels and prepared to depart into the desert, my sister exclaimed, “This was so worth it!”The sky was slightly overcast and there was no wind as our camel train plodded into the dunes. Our camel man, as Abdul called him, sat side-saddle and directed his lead camel by hitting it on the side of the head as lightly or firmly as necessary to get it moving up and down the rippled sand hills. We enjoyed about an hour’s ride over the sand, which due to the greater than usual rainfall that year was sparsely spotted with grasses and reeds.
　　Having rear ends unaccustomed to the demands of sitting on camels, we were grateful when we pulled up at camp, a relatively flat patch of sand probably not more than a few kilometers from where we had left the van. We unloaded the sleeping gear and the kabob fixings Abdul had prepared, and gingerly placed the honeydew melon we had hauled into the desert on the ground. Then we sat down to take in the dunes at dusk.
　　Things were going well until the wind started to pick up, which aside from blowing our tents around like kites and making it a challenge merely getting the fire started for dinner, seemed perfectly suited for taking the top layer of sand off the desert floor and aiming the fine grains directly into our eyes, ears, noses and mouths. We were momentarily thrilled with the prospect of getting a mini-taste of the epic sandstorms endured by the original desert traders.
　　The thrill wore off long before dinner was finally ready, which was right about the time it was too dark to actually see what we were eating. Judging by the taste, I think it was sand-seasoned kabobs, some formerly fresh nang bread and the saving grace that was our honeydew. We were left less than satiated, but were more concerned with the near continuous wind, which teased us only with the briefest of lulls. We abandoned any thought of games or idle chatter and all scurried to the promised safety of our one-and-a-half person tents.
　　Unfortunately, the Taklamakan does not get cold in the summer nights, so our tents quickly turned into sticky greenhouses, to the point where we yearned to strip down to practically nothing. But with the windows in the tent open to keep us alive and preserve our sanity, and the mesh screens no match for the fine-grained sand that flew about as if on wings, disrobing would have been an invitation for a full-body exfoliation session. Yet, somehow, despite the heat, the rock-hard sleeping surface and the ever-present “shh… shh…” from waves of sand hitting the tent walls, we managed to sleep, only daring to dream that the wind would cease its steady attack by morning.
　　The gusts kept up ceaselessly throughout the night, causing our group, including our guides, to be of one mind when we awoke: get up and get out! Our gleeful excitement from the previous day had dissipated into complete silence, as we rode with scarves pulled over our faces, each of us silently hoping that our van would emerge from behind the next dune, freeing us from this disaster amidst the dunes.
　　It took less than two days for us to discover that our romantic notions of the Silk Road were exactly that, but the rest of the journey opened our eyes to the diversity that defines Xinjiang. We discovered that the region’s people and their traditions are as varied as the ethnic groups that make up its population—and that contrary to our initial impressions, perhaps our guidebook was right about the Kazakh restaurant serving authentic Xinjiang food after all.