There's Something About Xinjiang

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The last week of this month-long trip around northern Asia certainly was the most challenging. After three weeks in Mongolia and Siberia, I had anticipated that Xinjiang would be very different from Beijing or Russia, but I hadn’t imagined it would be such a different world. In ways it was amazing, particularly the scenery on the Old Silk Road, but in other ways I found it depressing. My background is in sociology and I find this blending/clash of ethnicities in China, and the role the government plays in promoting it, to be very interesting. I’ll try to explain as I tell you about the week day-by-day.
But first, a little background courtesy of The Rough Guide:
“Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” is one of the most exciting parts of China, an extreme terrain, more than 3,000km from any coast, which, despite all the historical upheavals since the collapse of the Silk Road trade, still comprises the same old oasis settlements strung out along the ancient routes, many still producing the silk and cotton for which they were famed in Roman times. The surrounding sands cover forgotten cities and another buried treasure - oil. Chinese estimates reckon that three times the proven US reserves of oil are under the Taklamakan alone, which is one reason that the government is firmly establishing a Han presence in the region.
Xinjiang occupies an area slightly greater than Western Europe but has a population of only 13 million. With the Han Chinese population comprising more that 50%!,(BADINDEX) it is probably the least “Chinese” of all parts of China.
It hasn’t always been under the rule of China and up to 1949 the area was known as East Turkestan. Before that, back in the 13th century, it was ruled by Genghis Khan and the Monguls, the only time in history when east and west Asia were under a single government. The Qing dynasty tried to assert domination in the 18th Cen. In 1862 there was a full Muslim rebellion, supported by Britain who wanted the area as a buffer zone between Russia and India. The revolt failed and the area went back under Chinese rule again, but really controlled by a succession of independent, brutal warlords.
“The emerging Soviet Union had been encouraged to bring trade to the area by the local warlord. However he changed his view in 1940, drove the Soviets out and began a reign of terror resulting in the deaths of more than 200,000 Communists, intellectuals, students and Muslim Nationalists. There was a continuing Nationalist movement for the Uyghur region but the last Nationalist leader was executed in 1951.
Since 1949, the Chinese government has made strenuous attempts to stabilise the region by settling Han Chinese from the east, into Urumqi in particular. The Uyghur population of Xinjiang, from being 90% of the total in 1949, slipped below 50% in the 1980’s, and is still slipping, in spite of the minorities’ exemption from the One Child Policy.
Today the Chinese government remains nervous about Xinjiang, especially given the economic importance of the area, in terms of coal and now gold mining, oil exploration and tourism, plus its strategic importance as a nuclear test site. There have been outbursts of Uyghur dissent in the region, notable in 1997 when anti-Beijing demonstrations escalated into full-blown riots with many Uyghurs detained and some receiving the death penalty. Two years ago ethnic conflict led to the deaths of some Han Chinese in Urumqi and only a few weeks ago there was violence in Kashgar and a nearby town. There has been an increased presence of Chinese security forces. Since September 11, 2001 the Chinese government has equated Uyghur nationalism with global Islamic terrorism and indulged in its own “war or terror” by monitoring and arresting Uyghurs it claims are involved in separatist activities.”
Back to my arrival in Xinyiang Province: I flew from Moscow sometime after 22:00 and arrived in Urumqi five hours later - 3:00am for me. But because of time changes it was after 7:00am in China. So I had missed a night’s sleep – not a good start. The time of day is not straightforward out there. To explain, Russia changes its local time in zones like Canada. I think there are five time zones across the country. However all train timetables are in “Moscow time” and the confusion takes a bit of getting used to.
Although China is almost as wide geographically, it maintains one time zone for the entire country, “Beijing time.” This would be OK if Beijing were in the centre of the country but it is at the far east, 3,000 – 4,000 from the capital of Xinjiang. This means that in Kashgar in the far west of the region, the sun rises at 9 or 10am and sets around midnight Beijing time. The locals told me that they have an unofficial “Xinjiang time” which is two hours before Beijing. When it is 10:00am in Beijing it is called 8:00am in Xinjiang. Otherwise people would be going to work and school in the dark. That explains why the schools were all full of children at 6:00pm.
I had met an Australian woman on Olkhon Island who had been to Urumqi before coming to Russia so she was able to give me some advice. I booked the Youth Hostel online because it was near the airport and it would be handy for flying out to Kashgar the next day. It wasn’t long before I was viewing people as Chinese or “other”. “That’s China, so aren’t the people all Chinese?” The Uyghur people do NOT see themselves as Chinese. No Way. By Chinese I/they mean Chinese people of the Han ethnicity. There are also smaller ethnic groups like Kazaks. I’ve lost track of how many distinct ethnic groups in China but I’m guessing that the Tibetans and the Uyghurs are the most predominant in their regions. At least they were originally, before the Chinese government started shipping trainloads of Han Chinese to these areas, in an attempt to dilute the local ethnic population. This has been very effective in the capital city of Urumqi where up to 80% of the population is Han Chinese.
The Uyghurs look very different from the Han Chinese, as you will see in the photos I took. They are more like the mountainy men of Kazakstan or any of the “stans”, or perhaps Siberia. They are a Turkic people and their skin in tanned and weather-worn and their eyes are somewhat oriental. They don’t have straight black hair, more likely brown and somewhat curly. It is very easy to distinguish them. I ended up speaking mostly to Uyghurs because they speak English so well. I was told that linguistically English closer to Uyghur and that is why they can speak it more easily than the Chinese do. But part of their fluency may be to distinguish themselves from the Chinese who don’t speak English. It is very annoying at the airports where 99% of the staff are Chinese and unable to speak English, while the nearby population is English-speaking Uyghurs can’t get decent employment.
Of course another major point of distinction is that Uyghurs are Muslims. The men wear the typical Muslim skull cap and so do many of the small girls. Teenaged girls and woman wear scarves of all kinds, less in the big city of Urumqi and more so in the smaller towns. Most women in Kashgar wore scarves, but that’s another story. It doesn’t take long for the Uyghurs to make it quite clear that “We are not Chinese!” A Uyghur woman should marry a Uyghur man, but it is OK if she marries a man from the Middle East or even a Westerner. However she cannot under any circumstances marry a Chinese man or she will be ostracized by her society.
The young Han Chinese businesswoman sitting next to me on the flight from Moscow told me her family story. It was fascinating because it included events from China’s recent history. She said that both her parents are from Shandong, the province where I attended the village wedding, in the east of China, north of Shanghai. Her mother had moved to Xinjiang as a child with her family, during the Great Famine of the 1960’s. That was the famine caused by Mao’s “management” of the country that led to the deaths of millions of Chinese. I said that it must have cost a small fortune for an entire family to move from Shandong to Xinjiang in the 1960’s. She said that her grandmother had some kind of service (grinding rice?) whereby she managed to save the train fares. I asked why the people of Xinjiang were not starving like they were in Shandong. She explained that the population of Xinjiang was far more sparse and that the people of Xinjiang grew corn which was more nutritious.

Her father came to Xinjiang a decade later as a soldier. Because of the huge population of Shandong, many of the young men from there become soldiers or construction workers. She explained that in the early 1970’s the Chinese government were sending many soldiers to Xinjiang. I asked her why and she said, “Because they feared there would be serious trouble….sort of like what happened with Taiwan.” I gather that she meant there was a serious threat of a separatist movement. I must check that out.
The anticipated violent uprising did not happen so many of the soldiers were demobilised and sent home. Her father, being from Shandong, had no intention of going back to where there was little food and no work. He refused and the army gave him a job in a munitions factory. She explained that at that time, for security reasons, all factories that supplied the Chinese army had to be built in secluded areas like mountain valleys. Even if they were only making army uniforms they had to be hidden away. This meant that whole towns were built around the rural factories to house the workers.
When she was eight years old (1985) the government changed that rule and the factory where her father worked was moved to a large town. She remembers all of their household belongings being piled on a large truck that had to be driven over the icey mountain passes in January. That journey made quite an impression on her. She grew up near enough to Urumqi to be able to access third level education in English. She now works for an agricultural company as a liaison person with international experts and funders. She married a few years ago and has one child. The One-Child policy suits her fine because she has a career to follow. Usually the husband’s mother rears the child for the first four years, but she explained that her husband’s parents recently bought a car and are enjoying travelling around the country and do not want to be tied to rearing their grandchild. Her mother is happy to take on the responsibility and the young mother is happy with this arrangement too.
Now this is revolutionary – for Chinese grandparents to have a choice as to whether they want to assume their traditional roles after retirement. AND for grandparents to decline the job because they have better things to do! This is an indication of huge changes taking place in Chinese society today. I found it fascinating to hear about the lives of not only this young woman but also her family past and present. Because she was Han I didn’t ask her much about the Uyghur people and she seemed to know very little about them anyway. I gather that they don’t impact much on her life in Urumqi anyway.

I’d better stop there because I have lots to tell you about my daytrip to the Uyghur town of Turpan. I'll be back soon to continue.
Cheers, Sheila

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Photos

oil derrick
the oil and mineral riches of this area are incredible