by David Eimer
Jiayuguan remains a place where China is still seeking to expand its frontiers further. Near by is Jiuquan, China’s space city, from where an increasing number of rockets carrying satellites and the country’s taikonauts blast off. In Jiayuguan, you can watch the Long March rockets blazing across the clear desert sky towards the stars, as wondrous a sight for the locals as the camel caravans with their cargoes of unknown treasures that passed through in the days of the Silk Road must have been.
Late one afternoon, I boarded a train moving slowly west to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and China’s far west, following the route of the Silk Road through the Hexi Corridor. Once known as the ‘throat’ of China, the Corridor is a bleak, 1,000-kilometre-long sand and pebble plain which the locals call huang liang, a phrase that translates as ‘desolate’. A few small towns, former oases on the Silk Road, are dotted across it, but there are hardly any villages. Most of the land is too barren to be cultivated. It is scarred and fissured, as if it has been hacked at by an irritated giant wielding a monster hoe.
During the Silk Road’s heyday, the Hexi Corridor was the conduit for the caravans headed via Xinjiang to far-off India and the Middle East with exotic new inventions like paper and gunpowder. Coming in the opposite direction, the spice merchants and monks and Muslims spreading the new religions of Buddhism and Islam knew that the Corridor was the final hurdle to be navigated before reaching the safe haven of Jiayuguan.
Centuries later, Emperor Qianlong’s armies travelled through the Corridor on their way to claim Xinjiang for China. Now, it is ordinary Chinese who cross it. The train I was on had originated in Shandong Province, a thirty-one-hour ride away in eastern China, and few of the passengers were Uighurs, the people native to Xinjiang. Instead, Han men with bare chests and pyjama-clad women occupied every bunk, sat on the fold-down seats in the corridor or just stood staring out of the windows, while their children ran around playing.
Chatting, and sometimes singing, at all hours, they played cards, drank tea out of plastic containers which they topped up with hot water from thermos flasks and munched Chinese train food – instant noodles, processed sausages and sunflower seeds. Ignoring the no-smoking signs, they scratched, yawned and fingered their mobile phones constantly. They were the Han masses, heading west.
Part I
XINJIANG – THE NEW FRONTIER
We say China is a country vast in territory, rich in resources and large in population; as a matter of fact it is the Han nationality whose population is large and the minority nationalities whose territory is vast and whose resources are rich . . .
Mao Zedong speech, 25 April 1956, subsequently published
in the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. V (1977)
1
‘Uighurs Are Like Pandas’
My friend Billy was always happy to explain why the Uighurs regard the Han as interlopers in Xinjiang. ‘We don’t have any connection with the Chinese,’ he would tell me. ‘We don’t look Chinese, we don’t speak the same language and we don’t eat the same food. And we are Muslims, we believe in Allah. The Chinese believe only in money.’ It was hard to disagree with him. With their thick hair, big eyes and prominent noses, no one would pick the Uighurs as citizens of the same country as the Han.
Soon after I arrived in Urumqi, I stood waiting for Billy outside a popular department store near the city centre. As usual, he was late. Meeting a Uighur often involves hanging around, because they run on different clocks to the Han. Billy set his watch to unofficial Xinjiang time, which is two hours behind Beijing. It isn’t just a case of the Uighurs thumbing their noses at the Chinese, but practical too. Beijing insists on one time zone for all China, another attempt at asserting its mastery over the borderlands. In Urumqi, a 3,000-kilometre journey by car from China’s capital, it means it is still light at nine at night and dark at eight in the morning.
The department store’s workers were lined up outside the entrance like soldiers, while their managers barked instructions at them. Such parades are a common sight in China, whether in factories or outside hairdressers and restaurants. The daily drills are not so much about improving performance or customer service, which remains a vague concept outside of Beijing and Shanghai. Instead, they reaffirm the Chinese devotion to the Confucian order, where everyone has their place.
Teenage and twentysomething Han women made up the vast majority of the store’s staff, confirmation perhaps that the Uighurs sit right at the bottom of Urumqi’s hierarchy. Here in the capital of Xinjiang, where the 9.6 million Uighurs are the largest single ethnic group, the influx of Chinese immigrants in recent years has been such that the Uighurs now account for only 10 per cent of Urumqi’s population.
Small-scale Han migration to Xinjiang began even before the formal incorporation of the region as a full province of China in 1884, prompted by the acute shortage of land in China’s interior as the population multiplied. Parts of the territory were occasionally subject to Chinese rule during the previous 2,500 years. But only Emperor Qianlong had been able to control both the Dzungaria and Tarim basins that make up most of what is Xinjiang.
About the size of western Europe, it is a massive area which borders eight countries and accounts for over one-sixth of China’s total landmass. Much of it is uninhabitable. The Tian Shan Mountains run along the northern frontiers with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, and divide the dry steppe of the Dzungaria Basin from the Taklamakan Desert which covers most of the Tarim Basin in the south. In the far north the Altai Mountains separate Russia and Mongolia from China. To the west and south, the Pamir, Karakoram and Kunlun ranges mark the frontiers with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, India and Tibet.
Until the Qing dubbed it Xinjiang, it had gone by a variety of names. The Han referred to it first as Xiyu, literally ‘western region’, and later as Huijiang, or ‘Muslim territory’. To the West, it was Chinese Turkestan, a nod to the indigenous population whose roots lie far away in what are now Turkey and the former Russian Caucasus. The sand of the Taklamakan has preserved the bodies of a few of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, who arrived during the Bronze Age. Those mummies have European features, red or brown hair and light-coloured eyes.
Their descendants are the Uighurs, who went on to intermarry with Persians as well as their central Asian neighbours. Xinjiang is home to at least fourteen different ethnic minorities, including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Mongols, Russians, Tajiks, Tatars and Uzbeks, but only the Uighurs regard it as their country. For them, Xinjiang is a Chinese-imposed name. The unknown numbers who want independence call it East Turkestan.
When he finally showed up, Billy looked much the same as before. Still quick to smile and slight with a narrow face, topped by messy black hair, and a scratchy goatee, he was in one of his collection of fake Chelsea shirts, a team he supported with a passion. His love of English football was one of the reasons we became friends, even though I supported a rival London club.
His preference for western clothes meant that Billy didn’t wear a doppa, the distinctive square-cornered hat many Uighur males sport. Taking an English name was another expression of his fondness for the West. Many Han, especially those in the big cities who work or come into contact with foreigners regularly, have alternative English names, but few Uighurs do. It suited me that he did. His real name, like those of many Uighurs, had far too many ‘x’s in it for me to pronounce properly. It was much easier, and safer, to call him Billy.
We caught a taxi to Yan’an Lu, the main street of Urumqi’s biggest Uighur neighbourhood. I thought it ridiculous that so many Uighurs were concentrated in just one area of the capital of their homeland. But Han and Uighurs do their very best to avoid living side by side, and the sheer number of new Chinese arrivals has forced the Uighurs to cede much of Urumqi to them. Around People’s Square, the heart of the city, the only concession to Urumqi’s heritage is that the names of the shops are displayed in both Chinese characters and the Arabic script the Uighur language is written in.
Ramadan had just sta
rted, but at the open-air restaurant we had lunch in the Uighur diners were tucking into their food heartily. ‘Out in the country people take it more seriously, they’re more religious there,’ said Billy, as he ordered polo, the rice and lamb dish that is a staple all over central Asia, kebabs, the freshly baked naan bread the Uighurs eat with every meal, and yoghurt sweetened with sugar.
Uighurs are traditionally more relaxed about their faith than their Pakistani and Afghan neighbours. In part, that’s because Islam was a relatively late arrival in Xinjiang, taking hold only in the tenth century. Until then, the locals were mostly Buddhist and it took centuries for all to become Muslims. But even in Urumqi, most Uighur women wear headscarves and long skirts or trousers, while the city’s mosques are always busy.
Religion is at the heart of why Beijing has always regarded the Uighurs, along with the Tibetans, as the most recalcitrant of China’s minorities. As well as periodically rebelling against Chinese rule, the Uighurs steadfastly refuse to integrate with the Han. They scorn Chinese culture and Mandarin in favour of their own language, which is very close to Uzbeki and similar to Kazakh and Kyrgyz, while their music and folklore also have their roots in central Asia.
But it is their adherence to Islam which especially frustrates the Han. As far back as the eighteenth century, the Qing railed against the hold Islam had on the people of Xinjiang. Officials petitioned Emperor Qianlong to ban what they described as a ‘perverse doctrine’. The CCP, which regards all organised religions as a threat, because of their potential to focus opposition to its rule, adopted a more rigorous approach. In the 1950s, it created the China Islamic Association which appoints all imams. It means that the party is able to monitor what is being said in the mosques, as well as who is attending them.
Beijing has progressively tightened restrictions on the Uighurs’ right to worship since then; anyone under the age of eighteen is now banned from attending a mosque. Billy wasn’t religious, but like most Uighurs he was upset about the rule. ‘When I was young, we all went to the mosque with our fathers. Now the children can’t do that. They can’t study the Koran in school and they can’t study it in the mosque. Their parents have to teach them about it. The Chinese say we have the freedom to practise our religion, but they are stopping young people from learning about it.’
While we ate, I asked Billy about his family. I still felt guilty over what had happened to them when we first met in July 2009, in the immediate aftermath of some of the worst ethnic violence in China for twenty-five years. Almost 200 people, mostly Han, died and around 1,700 were injured after an initially peaceful protest by Uighurs in Urumqi turned into a vicious race riot with Uighurs indiscriminately attacking Chinese across the city. Han mobs took to the streets on the following two days to exact revenge. Billy had introduced himself to me by showing off the wounds he had received fighting them.
Talking to a foreign journalist was risky then for a Uighur. The next day, we were spotted by one of the low-level Han officials who oversaw Billy’s neighbourhood. A shrill woman in her mid-thirties, she approached us demanding to know what we were doing. When we walked away without answering, she tried to rip my press card from around my neck, saying I might be a spy. That night, Billy’s parents received a visit from the police who told them he shouldn’t be talking to westerners. It had frightened them.
Now, we were much more cautious. I bought a local SIM card for my phone, rather than using my Beijing number which was known to the authorities, and we established a cover story. I was an old friend from Shanghai, where Billy had studied, in town as a tourist. And in an effort not to stick out so much, I was also growing a moustache. I didn’t want to attract the attention of the police, who might wonder what a westerner was doing in a Uighur neighbourhood.
My dark hair, along with my skin quickly turning brown under the desert sun, made a moustache seem like good camouflage, especially as nearly every adult Uighur male sports one. Beards are frowned upon by the CCP, which associates them with religious zealotry, and Uighurs working for the government are prohibited from growing them. So a moustache, like the doppa so many of them wear, is a compromise, a way to express both their faith and identity. Billy approved of the fledgling growth above my top lip, even if I found it off-putting each time I looked in a mirror.
Billy’s family were originally from Kashgar, the Uighurs’ spiritual capital. His parents had come to Urumqi in search of better jobs, and his father was a cook in a restaurant. Billy was the middle of three sons. Uighurs, like all minorities, are exempt from the one-child policy that was introduced in 1980. It is a huge cause of resentment among the Han, along with the fact that the minorities need to score fewer points on the gaokao, the national university entrance exam, to go on to higher education.
One Han shopkeeper in Urumqi expressed that bitterness after the 2009 riots by saying ‘Uighurs are like pandas.’ It was a sly comparison with the dwindling numbers of China’s iconic national animal and the way they are cosseted by the authorities. Many Chinese can’t understand why the minorities aren’t more grateful for such apparently preferential treatment. But it is only in the last thirty-odd years that the Han have been restricted to having one child, and they still vastly outnumber the other ethnic groups. The questions on the gaokao, too, are in Mandarin, which most of the minorities don’t speak as their first language, let alone write.
Billy, though, was one of the Uighurs who had benefited from the special policies for minorities. He spent two years at Xinjiang University, before transferring to a college in Shanghai. After graduating, he worked briefly for a property company in the north-east of China, but soon returned to Urumqi. ‘You can’t get good Uighur food there,’ he said of the east. At twenty-seven, Billy had never held down a job for very long and was still looking for the main chance he was convinced was out there for him. His latest scheme was operating an ad hoc airline ticket agency with a friend.
Like all Uighurs his age, Billy attended an all-Uighur junior school, before going to a mixed high school. Now the government has banned Uighur-only education and insists that all of Xinjiang’s ethnic groups attend the same schools as the Han. It is another source of resentment for the Uighurs. ‘At Chinese school, you only learn Chinese history, no Uighur history,’ Billy explained. ‘And it’s very hard to find a book in China on Uighur history. We have to hear it from our parents and grandparents.’
Along with many other locals, Billy was convinced that making Uighur kids attend Han schools was a deliberate attempt by the authorities to dilute Uighur identity. ‘I’ve been walking down the street and heard two Uighur kids speaking Chinese to each other. Chinese! What do you think of that? It makes me really sad. It’s the result of making them go to Chinese school. If our language dies out, then so will the Uighur nation,’ said Billy.
During the twilight days of the Qing dynasty, the Chinese also tried to make Uighur children learn Mandarin, going so far as to keep the reluctant pupils in school by chaining them to their desks. It was part of an attempt to sinicise the Uighurs which has never really stopped. In what has been described as the Confucian Man’s Burden, the Han felt it was their duty to civilise their conquered subjects. Essentially, that meant making them more like the Han. In the parlance of the time, the barbarian minorities were either shufan, cooked and therefore tame, or shengfan, raw and savage.
Defiantly uncooked, the Uighurs needed to be grilled. Han officials flooded into the region and demanded an allegiance and respect that was enforced by the sword. Intermarriage with Chinese immigrants was encouraged, but the matches made were few and far between. The Qing’s time was almost past, though, by the time Xinjiang became a full province of China, and the locals never took to Confucius. When the Han finally rejected thousands of years of imperial rule in 1912 and the Qing dynasty collapsed, Xinjiang split once more into the fiefdoms which were its natural state whenever the Chinese weren’t around.
Even today, few Uighurs speak and write fluent Mandarin. I thought it woul
d surely help future generations if they knew the language properly. Billy dismissed that with a wry smile. ‘I speak and write good Chinese,’ he pointed out. Indeed, Billy was one of the Uighurs who, if the CCP’s propaganda is to be believed, should be reaping the benefits of government investment in Xinjiang. Huge amounts of money have been pumped into the region in an effort to quell Uighur unrest by raising their living standards.
Who benefits from that largesse is a different matter, because it is the Han who control the local economy. Chinese companies claim they cannot employ Uighurs because so few of them speak Mandarin, or else they insist the Uighurs prefer to work with each other. Either way, the result is economic apartheid. Just 1 per cent of the work force of the booming oil and natural gas industries, which account for over half of Xinjiang’s GDP, are Uighurs.
That disparity between the prospects of the locals and those of the Chinese migrants fuels the conflict between them. There are now eight million-plus Han in Xinjiang, or over 40 per cent of the population, up from just 220,000 in 1947. For the Uighurs, it is the equivalent of 25 million Poles arriving in the UK, or 120 million Mexicans migrating to the USA, and taking charge of the economy, while refusing to employ the natives and demanding they learn to speak Polish or Spanish.
‘The government has sent more money to Xinjiang, but they’ve also sent more Han and they’re taking all the work. Their lives are getting better and ours are getting worse and worse. It’s the same in all cities in Xinjiang. Of course we feel angry about it,’ said Billy. Nor is there any sign of that hatred diminishing. While I was in Urumqi, a Uighur man drove an electric cart into a crowd in the city of Aksu in western Xinjiang, and detonated a bomb that killed seven people.
With little chance of being employed by a Han company, most well-qualified Uighurs like Billy look for work with the Xinjiang government. Local authorities are huge employers all over China. But jobs with them are especially prized at the edges of the country where state-owned companies, which in Xinjiang means Chinese-staffed ones, are far more prevalent than the private enterprises found in the eastern cities. The fact that Billy didn’t attend the mosque was another point in his favour. Under Chinese law, no government worker can practise a religion of any kind.