In Defense of Self-Righteousness
by Brian Hioe
A few weeks ago, I was in Kazakhstan for about as close to a vacation as I may ever get. I enjoyed the days of walking around broad avenues, with lots of greenery and temperate weather, and drinking kumis, a fermented milk beverage, from streetside stalls. Even so, at some point I started to crave the milk beverages of home. While exploring a crowded bazaar selling produce and tourist curios I came across a bubble tea vendor and ordered one, curious to see how it would taste in Kazakhstan. As the servers prepared my order I overheard them speaking Mandarin.
“You’re Mandarin speakers,” I said. They seemed very surprised to see that I was also a Mandarin speaker, and even more surprised when I said I was from Taiwan. Ironic, Taiwan is the home of bubble tea.
(The Kazakh bubble tea was only okay.)
“Taiwan, it’s a good place,” the older of the two women said. This was a noncommital stock reply, something you might say when you’re not sure what else to say. The two seemed never to have encountered a Taiwanese person before.
“It’s a nice place for a vacation,” I commented. I asked where they were from. Xinjiang, it turned out.
At dinner that night in a nearby restaurant, I told my companion the story. “My Yandex driver was also Uyghur,” she said.
The restaurant served Xinjiang food, which I hadn’t had in several years. When we walked in, we found a man seated at a round table with his family staring at us. We all sized each other up in an awkward silence.
Keep us breathing fire!
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