Chapter 163: Ethnic Integration

The cooperative's public canteen opened after the start of spring, situated right in the center of the third settlement in the Hetao irrigation area. The building was a brick-and-wood structure, larger than ordinary dwellings, with six large windows fitted with glass that made the whole room bright whenever the sun shone. Inside there were no individual tables, only three long benches; the bench tops were planed from elm wood produced locally in Hetao, left unpainted so the wood grain remained clean and clear. The kitchen was open-style, with the stove built at the very back of the room; two large iron woks were set into the stove openings, and beside them stood a hand-cranked air blower, modified by the blacksmith shop from scrapped steam engine parts.

On the day the canteen opened, almost everyone in the settlement came. It wasn't because of any ceremony, but because the canteen's food was subsidized by the cooperative; with a member card, one meal cost only half a labor voucher of the lowest denomination, and it was enough to fill you up. The menu wasn't varied—stewed mutton with potatoes, oatmeal porridge, and pickled sand onions; the staple was white flour buns. Regarding the status of white flour buns on the grassland, the old herdsmen had a saying to describe it: "In the past, they only steamed a whole tray for a noyan's birthday."

The Han technician Xiao Chen, who had come from the Jiangnan region, sat at the far left of the long bench, with a bowl of stewed mutton and potatoes in front of him. He had been sent to the border from Jiangnan to work in hydraulic surveying at the Hetao Agricultural Office; he had been on the grassland for half a year, could understand half of the Mongolian language, and could speak three phrases of Tangut—hello, thank you, and eat. He wasn't used to mutton and found it gamey. Having grown up eating fish and shrimp in Jiangnan, mutton was not a staple to him but rather a distant and rugged legend in the mouths of northerners. He lifted his bowl, hesitated for a moment, picked up a piece of mutton with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth, chewed twice, and his eyebrows furrowed.

Sitting opposite him was a Tangut woman, the same woman who had lost her child at the Guihua reception station years ago; now the young wives in the settlement all called her "Auntie." Her Tangut name was very long; the cooperative registration book listed it as "Wei Ming Shi," but since the Han comrades couldn't pronounce it smoothly, they simply called her Auntie. Seeing Xiao Chen's furrowed brow, Auntie laughed. She didn't use chopsticks—there was a wooden spoon and a pair of chopsticks in front of her, but she was used to using the wooden spoon for soup and her hands to tear the buns. She picked up a pinch of pickled sand onions from her own bowl and put it into Xiao Chen's bowl, saying in broken Chinese, "Just eat this, it's not gamey." Xiao Chen, half-skeptical, picked up a chopstick-full of sand onions, chewed them together with the mutton, and after two chews, his eyebrows suddenly relaxed. "Delicious!" he said in Chinese, then added a sentence in the Tangut he had just learned, "Delicious."

Sitting next to Auntie was a Mongolian female technician from the Agricultural Office, who was teaching the cooperative's Han accountant how to drink milk tea. Milk tea was standard at the canteen, kept in a large copper pot; whoever wanted to drink poured it themselves. The accountant took one sip and put it down, whispering, "It's salty." The female technician wasn't angry; she picked up a piece of dried milk curd from her own bowl and put it into the accountant's tea bowl, stirred it, and said, "Try it again." The accountant took a sip, thought for a moment, took another sip, then held the tea bowl in silence for a while. Later, he wrote a sentence in his notebook—the notebook was issued by the cooperative, with a kraft paper cover printed with the four characters "Work Notes" in both Han and Mongolian scripts—"Milk tea tastes good only when dried milk curd is added. No one ever taught me this."

In the canteen's kitchen, the head chef was also conducting an experiment. The head chef was a Mongolian from the Kereit tribe; he had roasted sheep backs for Wang Han and had also cooked large-pot meals for the militia at the base area. He had an iron wok in his hands, a wok produced locally at the base area, with a bottom of uniform thickness that conducted heat faster than any wok he had ever used before. He was stir-frying a dish he couldn't even name himself—using pickled sour vegetables prepared by the Tangut people, stir-fried with dough knots made from the newly harvested wheat flour of Hetao, seasoned with green salt from Hexi and chili powder produced at the base area, and finally topped with a spoonful of soybean paste sent from Jiangnan. After he finished stir-frying, he tasted a bite himself and froze. Then he handed the ladle to the Han assistant cook beside him; the assistant tasted a bite and froze too. The two stared at each other with wide eyes, and finally the assistant spoke first: "What kind of dish is this?" The head chef thought for a long time, slapped the spatula onto the stove, and said one sentence: "It's a dish of the base area."

Outside the canteen, at the cooperative's entrance, a Mongolian blacksmith and a Han carpenter were collaborating on a task. They were repairing a hand-cranked sewing machine. The core components of the sewing machine were produced in Jiangnan, the wooden tabletop was made by the Han carpenter, and the treadle linkage was forged by the Mongolian blacksmith. The blacksmith squatted on the ground, using a file to smooth the joint of the linkage, while the carpenter stood beside him, holding a measuring ruler and a pencil, re-marking the screw hole positions on the wooden tabletop. The two couldn't communicate in language—the blacksmith's Chinese was limited to "screw," "wrench," and "is it done yet," while the carpenter's Mongolian was limited to "drink tea," "eat," and "come again tomorrow." But when they worked, they hardly spoke: the blacksmith would hand over the repaired linkage, the carpenter would take it and align it with the screw hole; if it was off by half an inch, he would shake his head, and the blacksmith would take it back to file again; the next time he handed it over, it fit perfectly, the carpenter would nod, and the blacksmith would tighten the screw with his calloused fingers. The entire process was as quiet as a pantomime rehearsed countless times.

After the sewing machine was repaired, the blacksmith stood up, brushed the iron filings off his knees, and suddenly pulled a piece of leather from his tool bag, handing it to the carpenter. The leather was sheepskin tanned by a Tangut tanner using a new process, soft as cotton cloth, with snow-white fur. He said a sentence in Mongolian, and someone nearby translated it for the carpenter: "He says, make a pair of gloves for your wife. Winters in Hetao are cold; your Han cotton gloves don't block the wind." The carpenter took the leather, looked down at it for a long time, then raised his head and said two words in the Mongolian he had just learned. He had practiced these two words for over a month in the cooperative's night school, specifically preparing for this day. He said: "Thanks."

After winter truly arrived, the settlement welcomed its first heavy snow. The snow fell for three days, covering the entire Hetao region in a vast white expanse. On the fourth day, the sky cleared, and a snowman was built in the square at the cooperative's entrance. The snowman wasn't built by one person, but by a group of children together—Mongolian children taught Tangut children how to pack the snow tight, Han children stole a carrot from the canteen's back kitchen to make a nose, and picked up two scraps of red cloth from the cooperative's scrap fabric basket to make a hat and a scarf. The snowman's hat was worn askew, its nose was slightly crooked, and its scarf fluttered in the wind; it didn't look like a snowman, but rather like a drunk sentry. The children gathered around it, laughing and jumping, giving it names in three languages—the Mongolian children called it "White Old Man," the Tangut children called it "Snow Grandpa," and the Han children called it "Old Snow Head." Finally, no one could convince the others, so the Mongolian girl who led them made the decision: "Calling it by all three names is fine. Anyway, we built it together."

When the heavy snow blocked the roads, the young people in the settlement were not idle. The base area's winter military uniform replacement plan happened to be implemented at this time. The new winter military uniforms were the first batch produced this year by the cooperative's garment factory; the design blueprints had been personally reviewed by Zhang Chu'an. The style was the traditional Tangut sheepskin coat—long down to the knees, with the fur facing inward and the leather facing outward, the collar turned up to reveal a ring of snow-white wool. But the cut was no longer the old Tangut straight-tube wide-sleeve style; instead, it followed the three-dimensional cutting of Han military uniforms, with the waist and cuffs tapered, a belt buckle added at the waist, and shoulder strap loops sewn onto the shoulders. When the old Tangut leatherworker first saw the blueprint, he was stunned for a long time; he had made sheepskin coats all his life and had never seen anything like this—he felt it didn't look like Tangut clothing, but it didn't look like Han clothing either. After thinking for a long time, he said one sentence to the factory director of the garment factory: "This is new clothing."

On the day of the uniform changeover, the settlement's militia platoon lined up in the square wearing the new winter uniforms. The wind blew from the direction of the Helan Mountains, carrying snowflakes that stung the face, but the militia stood straight. Among the ranks was a young Han man who had come from Jiangnan, formerly an apprentice at a textile factory; and there was also a young Tangut man who had fled from Western Xia the previous year, formerly a horse herder for nobles. They wore the same sheepskin coats, tied the same belts, with the same snow-white wool turned up at the collars, standing under the same red flag. No one asked who they had been before, nor which tribe they had belonged to before.

In the cooperative's night school, Instructor Xiaolin was preparing tonight's literacy class. She opened the third edition of the newly compiled "Grassland Literacy Textbook" and looked at the revision notes printed on the title page. The revision notes listed a long string of newly added vocabulary, half of which were transliterated terms from Mongolian and Tangut—cooperative, Naadam, highland barley wine, butter, winter pasture, and Anda. These words had never appeared in any Han-language textbooks three years ago; now they were officially included in the base area's official literacy textbook, with each word annotated in Mongolian, Tangut, and Han scripts. A Han student pointed to a new word in the textbook and asked Instructor Xiaolin; she looked at those three characters and suddenly smiled. This was a word she had learned only after coming to the grassland; she had spent a long time understanding its meaning—not understanding its definition, but understanding its weight. The word was "Anda." She said it once in Mongolian, then once in Chinese: "It means brother. A brother without blood ties."

The winter of this year was very cold, but every canteen in the Hetao settlement kept its doors open, every night school kept its lights on, and every sewing machine hummed along. The technician from Jiangnan learned to drink milk tea; the Mongolian blacksmith, grown on the grassland, learned to read blueprints; the Tangut leatherworker who had crossed mountains and valleys from Western Xia was sewing a sheepskin coat he had never seen before. They still spoke different languages, cooked different dishes, and observed different New Year customs. But they ate the same stewed mutton and potatoes from the same pot, wore the same new winter uniforms, and recognized the first three characters in the same literacy textbook. No one knew what this place would become a hundred years later. But that old Han tailor hung a couplet in the workshop of the garment factory; the characters on the couplet were written by a Tangut student who had the best handwriting in the cooperative's night school. The upper scroll read: "Jiangnan steel and grassland charcoal are smelted into new iron." The lower scroll read: "Tangut leather and Han cutting produce new clothes." The horizontal scroll had only four characters, not large, but each character was as big as a palm, written on the workshop's door beam. Later, he said to the militia platoon leader who came to pick up the goods: "I have made clothes for forty years; before, I only measured people's sizes. Now, I measure the size of something I have never seen."