Varnėnė rūke

The blog post I wrote about yesterday refreshed my memories of those few encounters I had with the Uyghurs in China. We were in Shanghai, first day of the new year according the Chinese calendar.  We'd just completed our walk along the Bund. There were several of those cake-selling Uyghur vendors on the completely empty bridge over the Suzhou Creek. We didn't know what to do next, Shanghai was pretty boring. The non-existance of traffic (in the Chinese sense this means only a few cars) across the river didn't look promising, but still, we thought we'd cross the bridge. And buy some of that delicious cake. I'd always wanted to taste it, you have to see it to understand why - it's huge, all nuts, fruit and caramel... So we tried the first vendor, and they were all standing only a few paces apart. We asked for the price. "10 kuai" - he said. "10 kuai for what?" - we inquired. "10 kuai 1 liang". 1 liang? Wtf? We discussed this in Lithuanian for a bit. In China, everything is sold in jin, which is approximately half of a kilo. "Liang" could be either a specific Uyghur unit, or simpy mean "unit of measure". So? We asked him again. He almost started laughing, very impolitely, showing that it was very stupid not to known what "liang" was. He didn't bother to explain. We walked down a bit to another vendor, he repeated the same: 10 kuai 1 liang. "How much is liang?" We asked again. He was firm: "10 kuai 1 liang". We walked away. I never tasted that cake, pity. The last time I saw it, was just a few days after the Shanghai bridge thing, in Suzhou. There were many Uyghurs standing in the chaotic street right next to the bus station, viewing foreigners with such an expression that it was impossible not to believe all those stories that Uyghur means "thief". There was no cake in Xinjiang. Strange.

Now I switch to Lithuanian for a boring account of a nice day.

Here's an interesting blog post on China's minorities and the han-attitude towards the non-han: http://www.daliandalian.com/photos/so_im_not_chinese_huh

Read the second text (comment?) as well. It reveals so much as to what a foreigner experiences in China... At the same time, when the writer is talking about the Uyghurs, I can't help thinking about gypsies here, in Lithuania.