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The faces I saw entering the plane were anything but
Korean. They had more a Caucasial flair,
subtle changes in light and shadow took the viewer from one side of the Urals
to the other. Both the men and the women
had hints of the usual beauty of the Eurasian, but the features were arranged
in a way I’d never seen before. It
reminded me of a similar encounter I’d had years asgo in Miyako airport as I
watched deplane a group of islanders to the south. It was an encounter with a new race, and my
eyes couldn't help but trace those new contours.
Little surprise this, for the Kazakh people had always been
the closest to Russia of all the Central Asian republics, and over the weeks to
come I was to find that they were closest to their northern neighbors not only
in looks but in character. Before
sitting my seatmate asked me which of the bags in the overhead bin was mine,
then removed the suitcase beside it, dumping it into the aisle before replacing
it with a multitude of shopping bags.
In those bags I suppose lay the appeal of Seoul to the
Kazakhs, as that city had daily direct connections to the capital, Almaty. Beijing only had four, and Tokyo none at
all. It helped add to the appeal of the
city’s mystique, and why it was our transit point for our journey down the Silk
Road, despite it never truly being a historical part of the old road. (I’d
discover later that Koreans conscripted as slave labor by the Japanese during
the war had been liberated in the Sakhalins by Stalin, who sent them to Almaty
expecting them to die. Their community
instead flourished.)
The Silk Road, singular, is a bit of a misnomer as it was
actually a series of trade routes, which spider-webbed outward across
Asia. The best-known curves northwest
out of Xi’an, and it was this route that was traced by our plane, above wide
dusty expanses of empty space. Every
half and hour or so we’d fly over a cluster of roads and structures, and quick
glimpses at my GPS revealed names of old desert oases that had hidden Buddhist
treasures since antiquity. The last of
these Urumqi was shaded by the heavenly Tien Shan, which from 10,000 meters was
a network of steep crags, horribly scarred by the ravage of glaciers. It looked a foreboding landscape, and it was
little wonder the Taoists believed it to be inhabited by gods.
Onboard I had plenty of entertainment as well. An oxygen mark had been given to one woman a
few rows up, her face pale and covered in sweat. She didn't look to be in any danger, but she
was in obvious discomfort. Across the
aisle, I noticed another woman in tight sportswear who moved with a certain
feline-like grace. He lithe figure was
betrayed by the multiple cans of beer I saw her upend into her mouth. (Tallboys I might add.) As the plane made its
gradual descent, the beers took their expected effect, and she began to sway
and dance in the aisle to whatever was playing through her headphones.
These proved a distraction later while in the immigration
queue. She became entangled while being
questioned by the officer, and the spiraling movements she made as she tried to
remove them was an encore of the dance she’d done high above. I’m not sure what it was she was being asked,
but the belligerent tone she gradually undertook resulted in her being led into
a room by a gentleman in a very smart military uniform. Kazakhstan suffers from the highest rate of
alcoholism in Central Asia, though I doubted she was about to get the AA
treatment.
The country recently did away with visa requirements to most
countries, so LYL and I were processed pretty quickly. Due to the long queues, our bags were no
doubt dizzy with the multiple revolutions they’d done as they waited for us to
retrieve them. They were quickly chucked
into the back of a waiting Landcruiser that cut though the mist toward the city
proper.
Americans of a certain generation grew up under the spectre
of the Soviet Union, and despite Kazahkstan no longer being part of that
confederation, the bleak landscape reminded me of nothing but (as had a
previous winter visit to its satellite state of Poland, whose skies never cleared
over a week’s time). Such it was that
our hotel felt even more like an oasis, its drab grey exterior hiding a
kaleidoscope of color within. The scale
too was immense, startling after the claustrophobic confines of Japan. Pillars rose like redwoods, and our room was
nearly the size of the cabin of the plane.
There was a swimming pool somewhere on the premises, which I imagined to
be Olympic-sized. But we never found out
for the fatigue of travel quickly overtook us and we drifted off in this
cavernous expanse.
We met our group in the morning. Though we’d booked in Singapore, it was
actually a German tour, which provided comfort in presumed precision. As one employed in the tour industry, I found
their approach brilliant, in breaking up our large party of 60 into smaller
groups of 12. Maximizing profit without
sacrificing the intimacy of a smaller tour.
We, the red group (no pun), were led to a waiting coach where we met our
guide, a local Kazakh woman in a purple tutu and heeled shoes whose loft mocked
that of the mountains behind. We were
whisked around the usual monuments to Soviet grandeur, figures in heroic poses
held steadfast in the solidity of marble and stone. The most audacious was the Golden Man, whose
glittering glory towered high above the broad and ceremonial Independence
Square.
We’d see a more accurate replica of the Golden Man not
longer after, in a display case at the Central State Museum. There has been some dispute over the gender
of the person who had worn this 5th Century, costume, as the
skeleton within was too badly decomposed to determine accurately. Yet it was the costume itself that dazzled,
made up of 4000 separate gold pieces. The
superhero quality to the whole thing seemed fitting, in a city whose former
name of Ala-amaty conjured up images of the mythically remote, where the Tien
Shan rose dramatically from the seemingly endless Steppe. And the leaders in this part of the world
continued with the myth making. The
current leader had been in power since the dawn of independence from the Soviet
Union, 26 years and counting, and monuments to his rule could be found in a
room filled with awards and accolades from across the globe. You could almost believe that he actually had received 98% of the votes in the last election.
(Though to his credit, his recent reforms have proven much more democratic.)
The day was clearing bright and blue as we were driven around
the city streets, where I was pleased to see some late sakura that I’d expected
to miss in Japan this spring. This
delight turned to glee at the sight of a sign for Nomad Insurance, but the
highlight was the faux Apple Store, here in the city mere miles away from the
hills from which sprouted the genetic ancestor to every apple tree in the
world.
Our eventual stop was Panfilov Parkat whose centerpiece was the
magnificent Zenkov Cathedral whose angles and spires had the beauty of the most
perfect wedding cake. Indoors all was
dark and peaceful, as candles lit up the framed faces of Jesus and Russian
saints, beneath which babushkas quietly swept the inner sanctum. (This peace was similarly echoed at Central
Mosque later on. Kazakhstan was founded
as a secular state, yet unlike during the Soviet years, open worship was
encouraged.) The nearby Folk Museum was
an equally marvelous structure, yet one in more subdued hues. A funny reverse parallel then, as what was
celebrated within was a music bright and upbeat, guaranteed to get the fingers
tapping rather than entwined in prayer.
We’d hear this music firsthand at our next stop,
Kok-Tobe. A cable car had taken us
there, moving slowly over a neighborhood more weathered than the more orderly
Soviet boulevards of the city center.
Our restaurant was shaped like a massive yurt, capable of seating a
hundred or more. Two young musicians
sung and strummed, as behind them ran a video presentation of some of the
country’s beauty spots. As we waited for
our inevitable first meal of horsemeat, I slipped outside in order to find the
rumored statues of the Beatles (continuing the Apple motif). There they were the Fab Four, framing a bench
upon which tourists sat and posed. I
looked past the goofy grinning faces cast in bronze to the nearby peaks,
towering and jagged and snow capped in early spring. It wouldn't be long now before we left them
behind.
Our train was powering up at the Almaty’s Central Station,
our guards waiting on the platform for us.
(These men and women would prove to serve a far more important function
in fetching us tea and coffee at all hours over the next ten days.) Our cabin was homey and comfortable for the
two of us, despite the confined space.
But it was easy to forget this latter aspect in losing yourself in the
endless breadth of the landscape. The
Tien Shan, who had dazzled us with her multi-textural hues of blue, white and
grey, began to recede, and what followed dazzled in the opposite manner with
its absence of notable features. Gazing
at the emptiness of the Steppe, is much like looking at the sea; it has a
meditative quality, where the mind, tiring eventually of grasping for details,
begins to slow and settle into quiet, allowing deeper thoughts to arise. It was
the landscape of dreamers.
Yet this supposed absence was deceiving. Herds of livestock appeared now and again, in
massive numbers spread across the earth like waypoints. Cattle, sheep, and goats lowered their heads
to graze. Horses held theirs high as
they raced along. Two-humped Bactrian
camels bobbed theirs in time to our rattling train, their humps the highest
things in sight. There were sometimes
men with these herds, walking along with a stick in their hand, occupying their
minds with who knows what. This was the
rate at which time had passed for centuries, moving no faster than the movement
of a single foot. Yet my own train, and
its precise schedules, was the physical manifestation of industrialized time,
quite arbitrary really as it moved toward the greatest pacesetter of all
falling in the west.
On the turntable: Devo, "Devo Live"
On the nighttable: Jung Chang, "Empress Dowager Cixi"
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