This is an article I wrote for my Alumni Newsletter (Waterford) about a year after returning home from China.

The marketplace was a living collage of sights, sounds and colors. There were bright costumes and silk scarves hung across cords that stretched the width of the market. Toothless men sung in foreign tongues to the music of dutars.  Treasures collected dust in the open air. And then there was the overwhelming scent of spices that inspired wars.

The Uyghur (pronounced wee-gr) market was everything one imagines when thinking of the infamous Silk Road.  It was the largest market in Urumqi, the capital of the XinJiang province in Western China. Marco Polo purportedly visited this city in the heart of Asia—the farthest city in the world from any ocean. While Urumqi stands like a mirage in the Gobi desert, the mountains that shadow over it, Tian Shir, (the heavenly mountains) create a contrast in landscape paralleled only by our own Utah.

The history of XinJiang depends on with whom you are speaking. The land consists mainly of two ethnicities—the native Uyghurs, and the ever increasing migrants of Han Chinese. According to the Uyghurs, the province was an independent nation until approximately 60 years ago. According to the Han, it has been part of China for over a millennium. The debate to whom XinJiang belongs is a political web I cannot attempt to untangle here.

Wyatt (my husband) and I spent 6 months living in Urumqi in the spring of 2002. While there we were fortunate to associate and become friends with both Han and Uyghur alike. I want to talk about the Uyghurs here only because I have found that very few people in the U.S. are even aware of their existence.

I first met Raxida and Akrem Yahaksimisas when I spotted a treasure buried beneath a pile of furs in their small stall in the market: traditional, hand-carved Uyghur dowry chests. They were too big to take home, but too beautiful to leave behind. Negotiations were long, weeks went by, and each time we went to the market we would stop by to barter a little more. One evening my husband and I split up for our own adventures, and when he returned that night, surprising me with the chests, he told me of how he had visited to barter once more. When they settled on a price, and the transaction was complete, he was invited to eat dinner (a chicken of his choosing from their small flock outside the apartment building) with the family. Now they wanted us both to visit their home again.

Visits with the Yahaksimisas became a weekly thing, and then twice weekly, and then almost every day. Often we would eat, either at their home or at traditional Uyghur restaurants in the area. Sometimes we would go to the Mosque (Uyghurs are Muslims, and since I studied Islam extensively in college, and Wyatt lived in the Middle East, we were able to respect and understand their religious culture to an extent that I think they found exciting). Sometimes we would just sit in their shop and shoot the breeze. We spoke no Uyghur, and they spoke no English. We both spoke very little Mandarin but between that and some fine-tuned skills at charades, our communication was adequate for daylong visits.

At some point we began to know others in the market as well. There was Ibram, who ran the dutar shop. He spoke some English, and talked to us about how he had been taught since childhood to make the traditional Uyghur musical instrument, hand carving the decorative birds and dragons at the end, and painting each one by hand. He made them during the winter in his hometown of Kashgar, and then returned to the market each spring to sell them through the fall.

Almost everyone in the market was from a town other than Urumqi. Most came from farmer families, who would send one person to run a shop in the market.  The market meant money to a people who survived mainly on subsistence farming.

Finally it came time to return home to the states. On our last day in the market Akrem wanted to give us something.  We understood his pantomimes but pretended not to, wanting to avoid the situation. Not to be deterred, he pulled Ibram from his shop to translate. “You must walk from shop to shop and choose something, and then we will give it to you.” Everyone in the market followed behind as we went through each shop. We chose a dutar from Ibram with a small bird carved at the top. They determined it wasn’t enough, and also gave us a beautiful silk rug. Then Raxida handed us each a Uyghur hat. “You must promise to wear these on the train to Beijing,” Ibram translated. “Then everyone will know you are friends of the Uyghurs.” I saw in Raxida’s eyes what it meant.

Just one week after we left Urumqi, the government closed the market. They opened a new “Uyghur Market” inside a building, with shop rent almost three times what it was before. Most people couldn’t afford the new cost, and planned to return to their native towns to participate in the markets there.

When I think back on the market as I knew it, the sights and smells overcome me, and I remember my friends, the Uyghurs. I want the world to know of them, and that I am their friend.

Wendy was going to Virginia. She was going to school. She was getting away. She was going to be free. We always talked of the adventures we would have together — sipping hot chocolate in the street side cafes in Paris, riding the gondolas in Italy, riding horses down the green in Kentucky. We were going to do it all and be it all.

Wendy was that girl everyone wanted to be — I wanted to be. Outgoing, friendly, wild. Always ready for an adventure. And now her time had come. Graduating from high school, she chose a school back east, ready to start living her life as soon as possible.

I went to see her off on this last adventure. I borrowed my mothers car and made the five hour drive to St. George. From there we all piled into Aunt Draza’s old Ford Taurus. Between my aunt and uncle, Wendy, her boyfriend, me and Shelly, things were a little tight. We set out at eleven o’clock Utah time for Las Vegas. We were half way there before we realized Vegas was an hour behind us, not ahead. That meant we would have four hours to wait instead of two. Oops.

We pulled into Vegas at about eleven Nevada time. After driving up the strip a dizzying twice, we decided to hit the airport thinking maybe there would be some excitement there.

Not so much.

So we sat at the gage with nothing to do. Wendy and her boyfriend sat in the corner saying their goodbyes. Uncle Terry and Aunt Draza sat in the front window watching the blinking of the lights out in the darkness.

And I sat alone in a chair near the corridor. I sat watching the people come and go. Not really bored, nnot really entertained, just in a state of indifference. In an amount of time, the woman sitting behind me came into my awareness. She had dark leathery skin — a result of too many hours in the oven no doubt. This only seemed ot emphasize the hard wrinkles etched into her not-young-looking face. Her clothes were wrinkled and reeked of cigarettes. Her makeup was heavy, her hair limp and crusty with layers of aerosol hair spray. And her fingers were heavy with the metal of rings–three or four per finger.

“Wow! I like your rings!” I lied. I hated rings. I’m not a jewelry wearer. Even as the words came out of my mouth I tried to figure out why I had said them. Why would I strike up a conversation with this lady? She and I could have nothing in common, I was certain. Wat’s more, if I was talking to anyone, it should have been my own family, just a few rows away.

A smile pulled the leather of her skin — it looked painful. “Thank you.”

“Where’d you get them?” I asked, and then “Shut up!” I scolded myself inwardly.

“Oh, all sorts of places.” She started to pull at a ring on her finger. “This one I got from my son. He lives in Florida.”

“Really” I did my best to not be interested.

“Yeah, he as three kids and one on the way. Course the first two are from a different mother. She never was good news anyway. She’s in prison in Colorado, so he has the kids. The oldest is headed in the same direction as his mother though.”

“Hmm” more disinterest.

“And this one is from my grand-daughter. She’s not the dauther of the son in Florida. She’s my dauther’s daughter. She’s 23. She’s a flight attendant in Georgia. She and her boyfriend have two kids. Can you believe it? I’m a great-grandmother!”

“No way!” I tried to sound shocked.

One by one she went through the rings on her hand, telling me the story of each, and how she came into the possession of them. I was right. Her stories certainly didn’t resemble my life in any way. Yet with each story I felt a sort of kindredness growing between us. We didn’t have much on the outside in common. Yet on the inside we both were creatures who loved and had friends and family who loved us. She had treasures on her hand to remind her of each.

Two hours passed, and she sat and told me the stories of her life. At last the call at the gate came, and it was time for her to board her plane.

“Oh, I’ve got to go” she said in a rush as she reached to gather her bags. “here, let me give you this” she pulled from her finger one small silver band. “I want you to have this.”

I looked at the treasure in my hand. Before I could even look up to thank her, she was gone. I watched her board her plane, then turned to my family, still sitting at the window.

I do wear rings now. But not just any rings. Rings with stories. Rings that remind me of people and places and things that I love. And every time I get a new ring, I remember her and my treasure.

Today my sister, Leslee got her call to serve as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was called to serve in Rancagua, Chile for 18 months. She will learn & speak Spanish. She goes in to the MTC in April.

She had her mission call sent to my house in case she was out of town when it came. But she wasn’t out of town, so instead of getting to open it right away, I had to wait for her to come over! That was really hard for me. Wyatt and I teased her as she came in because she wasn’t running and flailing her arms in the excitement we thought she should be displaying. But she was plenty excited. We had to get everyone (family in St. George) on speaker phone before Leslee would open and read her call. But when she finally did, it was pretty neat.

I am so excited for her. She is going to be such an awesome missionary. She will be the companion everyone loves to serve with because she is so easy going, and really lifts up people around her. She has such a strong testimony of the gospel, and people will be able to feel that testimony not only by the words she says, but the love that exudes from her soul. I am going to miss her terribly though. With both Leslee and Carrie gone on missions, I’m going to be one lonely Rica Consuela. But it will be fun when Leslee comes home cause she and I will be able to speak spanish together!