“Your Mandarin is very good. Where did you learn to speak Chinese,” asked the man behind the hotel desk.

“Thank you, I learned Chinese here, at this school, about 15 years ago.” 15 years! Somehow a small lifetime passed since I last walked the unassuming tree-lined paths of Xin Jiang Institute of Finance, (now Xin Jiang Finance University) where I taught English to the school’s first class of MBA students in exchange for a small stipend and enough free time to learn Mandarin. It was only one semester, but it was the time of my life. Some people have high school, others college, and others back-packing trips. For me, the golden years of youth crescendoed with the extraordinary six months that I spent in Xin Jiang, China’s northwest most province, a territory that comprises one-sixth of mainland China’s landmass, and at least at the time of my first excursion there, was its least populated province. (For more about my first visit to Xin Jiang, see passing: xin jiang circa 2003.)

My initial entry-point into Xin Jiang was at that very hotel. Most Chinese universities have small hotels or hostels on their grounds. I saved many-a-dime staying in such places; they are inexpensive, well serviced by public transportation, and always have tasty, cheap street food inside and around the outskirts of the campus. Now in my 40s, I no longer am on a tight travel budget, but I wanted to stay in this hotel the way one would want to sentimentally return to an old college dormitory. When I arrived in Xin Jiang as a twenty-five year old English teacher, my campus apartment was still being renovated to accommodate foreign comforts, and I was put up in the campus hotel for a few nights. It was February, just after Chinese New Year, and the Uyghurs were celebrating their own festival, Korban Jie, in commemoration of Abraham’s sacrifice of a lamb instead of his own son. Lamb skins lined the snow-covered streets, and skull-capped men and head-scarfed women bustled through the markets, buying meat and fruit. The buzz and excitement of the holiday was infectious. It was as though I had stepped out of China and into another country, another continent, another time, and I immediately fell for the culture, the people, and their genuine and intoxicating smiles. From day one, I was in love.

And now my return after all of these years: the stifling dry desert heat of summer, the students in T-shirts and jeans; few wore headscarves, and even fewer seemed to be excited or abuzz with the energy that I remembered. Perhaps it was the heat. They moved slowly, quietly, texting instead of talking. Were they trying to conserve energy under the sun’s unrelenting gaze, or did the Uyghurs have their own version of Millennials, who, like my younger colleagues, I would feel confused by and disconnected from as they pecked at their phones in synthetic communication?

Still, I knew that I was not going to find the university exactly as I had left it. I knew that coeds would be using their phones to pay for lunches and that my old haunts such as Abdullah’s kebab stand and Muhammad’s fruit stand, would likely have changed ownership and be inhabited by strangers. Still, I relished in the slim possibility that I would find Muhammad stirring a vat of zhua fan (literally grab rice in Mandarin, meant to be eaten with the right hand) as he flipped kebab skewers. Or maybe he would be sitting down, strumming his favorite Turkish tunes on his battered guitar. Although now middle-aged, his boyish smile would make his current customers feel welcomed and make his kebabs even more enticing. And if he was not there, maybe Abdullah the fruit man would be, tall and cheerful, his slim lanky frame aged into a rotund beer belly. Would he still be fun but self-conscious? Would he have a son or a daughter who would surreptitiously sneak slices of watermelon when he was not looking? I had no doubt that they would remember me. Muhammad often came to my parties with his guitar, and Abdullah once made an awkward pass at me, a pass to which I reflexively and regrettably responded by meeting his smiling and unsuspecting face with my fist. After that incident, blackened eye and all, we were even better friends than before. Yes, they both would certainly remember me. And if they were not there, surely the older couple who ran the Si Chuan restaurant would be. They were fixtures on the campus, and I passed countless hours with friends sitting at their tables and tasting whatever they surprised me with. One time a friend of mine went to the market and bought what she thought was a packaged chicken to cook at home. Only later did she realize that she had actually purchased a rabbit. Not knowing what to do with a shrink-wrapped rabbit, and not wanting to waste it, we brought it to the Si Chuan couple, and they happily stewed it for us, made several other dishes while it slowly simmered, and we called all of our friends over to join the feast. They were good people. How old would they be now? I started thinking about it and realized they were probably retired, and I began to wonder about their health, whether they had relatives who cared for them, and whether they were even still alive. I knew that I could not walk back into the past, yet a small but insuppressible part of me really seemed to think that at least one part, one person, one feeling would be frozen in time and waiting for me to return. Someone would be just around the corner to greet me. If not the older Han couple, then surely a middle-aged Abdullah or Muhammad. Or someone who would at least remember them. Perhaps the person they sold their businesses to. Or someone who at least knows of the old days, someone to sit down and swap a story or two with. Because stories are not like people. They do not go away.

Of course, returning to a place after 15 years will inevitably resurface memories and lamentations over what has changed or no longer exists. This is even more exaggerated in China, where GDP growth averaged almost nine percent in the years since I left Xin Jiang. And Xin Jiang had its own, special shroud of change that differed from other provinces. 15 years ago, no American I talked to ever heard of the province, much less its native Uyghur population, a Turkish-Central Asian peoples who call Xin Jiang (or as they put it, East Turkistan) their home. However, after the 2009 riots, when I mention that I lived in Xin Jiang, a bell of recognition started going off in the heads of some, “Oh, I heard about that place. What are those people called? How do you pronounce that, Wee-gers?”

So, yes, the plight of the Uyghurs is finally known, if only to the New York Times reading set, and Xin Jiang is finally on the map of our social consciousness, just as the people here always wanted: for their plight to be known and for Western sympathies to hear their struggles and to equate them with those of Tibetans. But Tibetans are Buddhist. Peace-loving, meditating, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly Buddhists whose representative is the round-cheeked Dali Llama, a man with smiles and speeches and books that have captivated the world and the Nobel Prize Committee. The Uyghurs, however, have the misfortune of being Muslim in an age of anti-Islamic sentiment, and they lack a charismatic leader who connects well with the West. Having arrived in Xin Jiang shortly after 9/11, I saw that the Chinese used the event to crack down on the local population’s autonomous spirit. (I use the word autonomous tongue and cheek here. As a matter of ironic fact, Xin Jiang is officially named the Xin Jiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Yet with seemingly all official “autonomous” regions in China, the word serves as a reminder that the area has indeed relinquished its actual—as well as its dream of—self-governance.) The government exaggerated, at best, and made-up at worst, an East Turkistan independence movement in order to conjure an excuse to quash the local customs and spirits. It was slow going in 2002, but now makeshift police stations are even more ubiquitous in Xin Jiang’s capitol, Urumqi, than are Starbucks in New York City. There is one on every corner, and often two right across from each other. Restaurants, even tiny slipshod stalls, have metal detectors and police guards who pat customers down and rifle through bags and pockets. The city where I once felt the immense freedom to be myself and total safety to explore as a single woman, was now a police state. No change could be sadder and more startling than this, I thought.

I walked up and down the campus streets, looking for the familiar, or at least the feeling of the familiar. After all, was it not a feeling, more than anything, that I was after? When I approached the corner of Muhammad’s fruit stand, I saw not an older, perhaps wiser, Muhammad slicing watermelons into single portions. Nor did I see a Muhammad replacement, a Millennial version of my former fruit-seller, with a QR code on his table, and some cold trendy-labeled beers in his cooler. There was no one. Did I have the wrong corner? Abdullah’s kebab stand should have been to the left and the older Han couple’s restaurant should have been to the right, just adjacent to the side gate. Yes, I was sure I was in the right place but there was nothing in sight. Could anything have been more anti-climactic? Ah, another sad, perhaps more startling change.

I kept walking, and I did eventually stumble upon a kebab stand a few streets down. It was not a restaurant, had no indoor seating, but it was run by another young, charming Uyghur man.

“Kebab?” He asked in Mandarin. He saw me eyeing the stuffed bread. “It’s stuffed with lamb.”

“Do you have any for vegetarians?”

He grimaced. “Vegetarian?” No words could be fouler to a Uyghur kebab man.

I blushed. I felt lame, old, apologetic. Not eating the culture’s staple food seemed insulting and it distanced me from the locals. “If you cannot break bread with a people, you cannot have peace,” I used to say when I lived here, referring to the separate Han and Uyghur dining halls.

And now, instead of feeling greeted and welcomed as an old friend, I was a weird stranger. Had I come to the school for the first time to work now, as a middle-aged vegetarian, would I even hang out with Millennial kebab sellers? That would have colored my entire experience here with a shade of separation.

“Are you American, he asked?” I remember when people first took me for a local, for a Uyghur, one of their own. But now, maybe it was my age, maybe it was my eyes darting around unfamiliar territory, or maybe—and most likely—it was my very tall, very white, very American-looking companion. Whatever, the case, it was clear that I did not belong here any longer.

“Yes, I am American.”

He smiled with his entire face. (What is it about these Uyghur kebab sellers, such charmers!) “Do you teach here?”

“No.” I was going to leave it at that, but instead I added, “I taught here 15 years ago, and now I have come back to just have a look.”

“Is it different or is it the same as it was then?”

I looked around, and really, honestly, it must have been the same. The buildings were all in the same place, students were all walking around carrying books, basketballs, and bags of take-out food. Everyone was smiling and happy. Yet, the answer to his question was clear. “It is a different place,” I said.”

“How so?” His smile somehow grew even wider.

“My friends aren’t here.”

He nodded knowingly. But he didn’t know. He was too young to understand. And I am at an age when I say things like, “he was too young to understand.”

“You know,” he added, “There is another American here now. She’s been here 10 years, and she has three kids.”

“Yes, I heard,” I said. Everyone I met told me about her. I tried to imagine what she looked like — I assume at least a little bit like me because more than one person asked me where my three kids were — and I tried to imagine what her life was like. Did she have a favorite kebab shop where she liked to hang out? Did she eat in the Uyghur or the Han dining hall? Was she mistaken for a local?

I looked around once more. The campus was certainly pretty. It was friendly. But it seemed disturbingly quiet. Where were the foreign students who came to learn Chinese? The Ghana boys, who were always keen to wash down their kebabs with cold beers? Where was the Turkish man, a toy manufacturer who was learning Mandarin for business but who seemed to only practice his language skills on local girls? And the Japanese girl? What was her name? She was my good friend who enjoyed turning my apartment into Friday night hot-pot parties. I thought back affectionately to the afternoons when I lazed around with lamb-soaked nan (flatbread) and cold beer with this fun, curious, and interesting international crowd, and I wondered: Would I, if I was that American woman living here now, be happy? Or if I were walking around this campus, contemplating taking a job here, what would I think? Would I feel that I could be content living in a place like this?

As someone who moves often, it is odd to think that a place itself has nothing to do with one’s actual happiness. As a literature teacher, I used to discuss the concept of “setting as character.” Think Seinfeld. Set outside of New York, that show would lose its best character. Certainly, setting, placement, is important. Yet, with all the moving that I do, I know that happiness is not contingent upon something outside of myself. Sure, 15 years ago, I had what happiness experts (yes, those exist) would say are the keys to happiness: community, good friends, engaged in personally meaningful work, and free time to enjoy personally meaningful non-work. Yet, there is something about youth that I want to add to that list. It is not youth itself (there are plenty of miserable 20-somethings); rather it is an ingredient that is often found in abundance in the young. It is the idea that it is all in front of you and that it is all possible.

When I was studying Chinese at the university all those years ago, a local once asked me, “Why are you doing that?”

“I don’t know,” was my honest response, “I think it’s fun, and I like talking to people in Chinese.”

“No, really,” he said. “You are studying hard. You must have a goal. You must want to go into business or something.”

“Business? I hadn’t thought about that.”

He laughed as though I was covering up my real intention. I remember that encounter because it prompted me to wonder, “What is wrong with me? Why am I doing this? Aren’t there easier ways to have fun?” I thought of all the time that I spent looking up words in a paper-dictionary. How does one look up Chinese characters in a paper dictionary, you may ask? Curiously, systematically, tediously. You are sure to remember the characters because the laborious chore of looking them up a second time is disheartening. Much of this word-checking was done during the many hours that I lulled away in Abdullah’s kebab stand and Muhammad’s fruit stand, eating lamb and fruit, drinking wine and beer, discussing the ways of the world, our conversations becoming deeper and more complex as my Chinese skills progressed. Really, it was fun, and maybe it was fun because I had the rest of my life laid out before me, the rest of my life to be practical or at least to wonder why I should or should not be spending my time on this particular thing or that. For the time being, I could study Chinese and not care if I ever made a dime using it in the future. That is what was currently missing from the campus. What was missing was not something external. It was not an older, perhaps more sophisticated Muhammad; rather, it was a younger, arguably wiser, ingredient in myself. And of all the changes I witnessed on this visit, this was, if not the saddest, certainly the most startling.

So, if I was contemplating taking a job at that university, and I walked the streets as I found them now, what would I think? Could I be happy here? I am not sure. But I can tell you what I should think: that if I am open to it, I can be happy anywhere. It is not that youth is wasted on the young. It is that we often forget to take youth’s ingredients with us as we age.

And which ingredients did this autonomous region take with it as it aged? A naïve, adolescent anger that festered into something unimaginable. The years were far kinder to me than they had been to my old friend, Xin Jiang. I have the fortune of returning, visiting, learning, groping for a mid-life revelation to make sense of it all, while my lao peng you (old friend) cannot return to its pre-riot days when the anger was raw but pubescent and the blood that stained the streets was from an animal sacrifice whose sole purpose was to commemorate the absence of human bloodshed.

And with that, I finally have an answer to my hypothetical question: If I were walking around campus contemplating whether to take the fictitious university job, I would think it would be fun to learn the Uyghur language.

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