By Lisa Carducci

The tightrope walker I was going to meet, Aiskar, was out of his village for a performance tour in the country. However, Yengisar ("Yingjisha" in Chinese), 70 km from Kashgar, doesn't lack for acrobats. So I was accompanied to Yasen Dawaz place instead. Dawaz means "to walk on a wire" in Uyghur language. The 76-year-old man might be the tightrope walker's father, I thought, upon seeing his fit physique. I was wrong. He was the popular Dawaz!

From the road to his modest home made of yellow earthen blocks stacked without mortar, one must walk 600 m on a dusty path, lined on both sides with high poplars. I had never seen so many poplars except in south Xinjiang where the water is scarce and where the desert threatens to encroach further.

Outside the house, under the greenery in the courtyard, two kangs offered a pleasant space for our conversation. When Yasen's wife, 55, came back home a little later, she immediately spread out a golden silk brocade on the kang for the "honorable guest," me. Throughout my travels among the ethnic minorities villages, I noticed the same hospitality, the same kindness.

Yasen has three sons between 16 and 28 years old. The older two work in commerce in the autonomous region while the youngest, illiterate, lives at home. With his mother, he leaves early in the morning for the township, where both are street cleaners. The family income comes from the pair, and the family live on the few chickens and goats they raise. Yasen also had a daughter who died 15 years ago. In the daytime, the man remains at home, and he trains a six-year-old girl as an acrobat. From what I could understand, the girl is not a family member; her father's whereabouts is unknown and her mother died. Yasen was very proud of her. "She is my follower now."

But I couldn't see any exercise equipment. When I asked about it, Yasen walked into a shed in the courtyard and brought back rolls of cable, steel pegs, and the hammer that served to anchor them. How often do they work out? How strenuous is it? And what was the young tightrope walker’s level of skill? I couldn't estimate it with my own eyes. According to Yasen, the youths he trained started between four and seven years old. Training starts at two metres above the ground.

Yasen began at the age of eight, following the example of his grandfather, who died at 120, if one was to believe him. I tried to have him confirm the respectable age of the late man, to which Yasen added that his father died at the age of 125. Enough of the family legends!

If this interview is so short and contains so many uncertainties, it is because I had no interpreter; it was assumed that I spoke Uyghur. …