Sex and the Desert

A Karaoke joint in Tazhong that provides extra services.

“Conquering the Sea of Death” – a slogan on the archway that welcomed me into Tazhong announced.  

After traveling for hundreds of kilometers through a barren desert highway and arriving in Tazhong at two o’clock in the morning, I was surprised by its liveliness.

Though the tiny settlement in the heart of the Taklamakan Desert only has one street, with one row of shop houses lasting for less than a kilometer, it looks like a sleepless town.

Neon lights adorned all the shops, barbecue stalls lined the street, girls in bare-back tops and short skirts scattered all over the places, and loud music from the karaoke rooms floating through the still air.

I soon find out that over 80% of the businesses in Tazhong are related to the flesh trade, be it the barber shops without a single scissor or hairdryer in them, the massage parlors that offer foot massage and more, the karaoke joints, the “recreation” centers, or the only hotel in town.

It was no surprise that when I failed to secure a room in the only hotel in Tazhong, I ended up in a brothel, the only place I could have a soft bed and a roof over my head, and the luxury of getting a bath in the middle of the desert.

My tiny rented room in a brothel in Tazhong.

My tiny rented room for 30 yuan a night was illuminated by a dim red light bulb, a huge poster of a half-naked couple in intimate position decorated the wall, and on the bedside table, a table fan was spinning slowly and two tubes of lubricant lying by its side.

The room’s wooden sliding door muffled the sound of karaoke singing from the rooms opposite, and the occasional moaning from the adjacent rooms.

The true occupant of my rented room was taking time off from her job; she needed to escape the desert for a while in a civilized world some 500 kilometers away. Her co-worker, Ding, took pity on me for not having a place to rest after a long day of hitch-hiking, so she cleaned up the room and boiled some hot water for me to wash up.

Ding is a chatty and cheerful 35-year-old from Sichuan province. The mother of two has come to Tazhong for about a year, telling her family that she had come to Xinjiang to help a friend in running an apparel store.

“I suspect my husband probably has an inkling of what I am doing here. He knows I have no other skill except driving, but I manage to send home thousands of yuan each month,” Ding told me one day, when we were in her “hair salon” watching a drama series to kill the quiet afternoon.

Tazhong looks like an abandoned settlement in the day time.

Tazhong is a place that only comes alive at night. In the day, the heat wave sweeping in from the surrounding desert is unbearable, only some restaurants, grocery shops and car repair shops are opened.

Tazhong means the middle part of the Taklamakan Desert Highway, it is located at the 335th km along the highway that runs for some 600 km. During the Silk Road era, the camel caravan wouldn’t risk venturing this deep into the Taklamakan Desert, known as the sea of death.

Tazhong acts like a modern caravanserai in the heart of the Taklamakan Desert.

Tazhong was nothingness two decades ago, not until plentiful of oil reserves were discovered, and a Chinese state-owned oil giant funded the construction of the highway in the mid-1990s. Today, Tazhong acts like a modern caravanserai, a resting point for truck drivers and the entertainment center for oil workers in the surrounding desert.

“Only males work at the oil fields. They remain at their bases for weeks or months on end, Tazhong is the only nearby place where they can get some fun and relief from the boredom of the desert.

“Prostitution is illegal in China, but here, it is a service for humanity. The police know about our activities and kind of protecting us,” said Ding, who has entered the trade after the transport business she jointly operated with her husband collapsed and burdened with debts.

Knowing that her current job could bring shame to her family, Ding has traveled thousands of miles away from Sichuan to avoid running into acquaintances. She plans to work hard for two years to pay off the debts and go home next year.

“I still feel repulsed whenever a customer requested for overnight stay. When there’s a person lying next to me, I can’t sleep the whole night, I feel disgusted,” said Ding, but overnight service could earn 260 yuan while one-off service cost half the price.

Apart from the thick make-up, Ding hardly looks like one in the trade. She never wear a skirt or dress or high heels, she is always in T-shirt and jeans, and sporting a pair of sneaker. When business is slow, she likes to sit in her “hair salon” watching the Chinese discovery channel on TV.

Sometimes, girls from the nearby salons or karaoke joints would visit each other to chit-chat, I didn’t sense rivalry among the girls, “When one is far and away from home, one needs to depend on friends, we help each other,” said one of the girls.

Tazhong seems like a place that nobody would stay for life. It is a place that everyone has a past that nobody would care to judge, and a place for people who brace the hardships might earn a future.

All the girls I have spoken to harbor the dreams of starting a new life somewhere far and away once they saved up some funds. “The best thing about working here is that you have no place to spend the money earned,” Ding said.

The ownerships of many restaurants and shops in Tazhong also change hand every several years, some would leave satisfied while others disillusioned, but there would always be more new comers flooding the tiny settlement that provides “downstream services” for the oil industry in the desert.

As for me, I have come as an innocent traveler to admire the beauty of the desert, which the residents in Tazhong see only boredom and can’t wait to escape.

July 16, 2010

Girls waiting for customers.

The Taklamakan Desert Highway.