Eliot Weinberger in China

Greetings from the Takla Makan desert and the Pamir Poets' Journey, one of the more bizarre literary junkets. There are about thirty of us here in the far west of China on the Kyrgyzstan border, mainly Chinese poets with a few foreigners, including Americans CD Wright and Forrest Gander. The whole shebang is sponsored by an exuberant poet turned zillionaire- not an uncommon phenomenon in the New China- who is building hotels and office buildings in this corner of the world and apparently was in the mood for a two-week party with fellow poets. The local government officials are more than happy to oblige: he's the 26th richest man in China.

So everywhere we go we are met with huge banners reading WARMLY WELCOME PAMIR POETRY JOURNEY, parallel lines of young women in native costume applauding, television crews, and saluting policemen. Yesterday, when we crossed into Kyrgyz Autonomous Prefecture, we were greeted at the border by the governor, who escorted us through the miles of forlorn and spectacular mountain landscape to yet another of the endless banquets. A horse had been slaughtered in our honor, and as distinguished guests we were given the choicest morsels, the stomach and intestines, and the governor himself personally sliced off pieces of a sheep's ear for CD. There were so many toasts of fermented mare's milk and a local rotgut that our Iranian poet had to be carried out and the Scotsman was waving his hands without saying anything. This was followed by a long outdoor reenactment of scenes from the Kyrgyz epic, the Manas, with choreography copied from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," and the ceremonial presentation to each of us of a whip with a sheep's hoof handle. Then on to a demonstration of horseback wrestling and the proto-polo that is played with a dead lamb, abruptly ended by a sandstorm. At the border again, the governor bade us farewell with another round of drinks, and we arrived here in Artux just in time for a boiled yak banquet with high party officials, army generals, and assorted poobahs, all of them prone to excessive toasts.

In a country that still bans poets and books of poetry, the generals had such a good time that they spontaneously invited us for a breakfast banquet this morning at army headquarters, which was less merry. Afterwards, I was told that I had been selected to give a short speech at a "meeting," and fifteen minutes later found myself in a plaza addressing ten thousand people, organized by color-coded baseball caps, who were celebrating the anniversary of Artuz's incorporation as a municipality. I praised the local melons.

-- Eliot Weinberger

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