In the fall of 2007, on a bus from Turpan, an oasis town on the old Silk Road, to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, I met a young Uighur kid named Musitafa. He was impossibly bright; he spoke three languages and had won scholarships to study in Shanghai and England. He was excited to hear about Canada and other places my travel companion and I had visited, and he especially loved England. His mood shifted when we asked what he thought about Xinjiang, a majority Muslim territory in China’s remote northwest, “England is paradise,” he said, pounding a fist in his hand for emphasis. “Xinjiang is just dirty. A bad place to live.”
Xinjiang, where ethnic rioting this week claimed the lives of some 156 people, both Uighur and Han, is a world away from Beijing. In Urumqi, which has been designated a port city by the government so that it can enjoy the economic benefits of such a status — even though it’s one of the farthest cities from the sea on earth — Uighurs have become a minority after years of Han migration, encouraged by the government. (See Edward Wong’s story about a migrant family in the New York Times). But the roots of the recent violence are historic.
Later, I visited Kashgar, China’s westernmost city. In Kashgar, a marvel of a town, which, sadly, is losing its charming Old City, the Chinese population lived entirely separate from the Muslims. The Han neighbourhoods looked like any other Chinese city — KTV joints, cookie-cutter restaurants, gaudy nightclubs. The Old City looked like it belonged to another time, another place, entirely.
Kashgar is predominately Uighur, peppered with Kyrgyz, Kazak and other minority groups, and frequented by traders from throughout central Asia. Commerce in Kashgar seemed medieval. People owned little shops where they made and sold rolling pins, copper pots, musical instruments, clothing and much more. Barbers offered straight-blade shaves; old men sat in front of the central mosque with their weathered faces, chatting. Throughout, I kept thinking, “This is China?”
It is China, of course. Outside peoples’ homes in the Old City were red signs with white Chinese characters. The characters came in two sets. Later, a Han Chinese who ran a tour company at our hotel told us they meant ‘Safe family’ or ‘Civilized family,’ designations made by the government. I didn’t really understand what each one meant, but I wondered what life was like for families that didn’t fit those categories.
The situation in Xinjiang is hugely complicated, just like it is in Tibet, which was home to similar rioting in March 2008. The province is oil rich and strategically importantc— calling for Xinjiang independence is, like Tibet, is a moot point. It won’t happen. The situation has been further complicated by decades of Han migration to the region: Han now make up 40% of the population of Xinjiang, compared with just 6% in 1949. The migration accelerated in 1999 with Jiang Zemin’s “Go West” campaign, and the economic and cultural gap between the two groups has grown wider ever since.
Last August, in the days leading up to the Olympics, Kashgar was home to what officials described as the worst terrorist attack in China’s recent history (NYT slideshow here). Sixteen police officers were killed and another 16 wounded. Other small attacks followed, but they were largely ignored in the West, overshadowed by the landmark Olympics. Xinjiang may not be as sexy to the Western media as Tibet, but the tensions there are very real. They’ve been festering for a long time, and as the recent riots in Urumqi show, they’re not likely to dissipate anytime soon.
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