The Emperor Far Away

by David Eimer

  Now she had a job which although important by local standards, and one I agreed not to reveal, was a poor match for a woman of her intelligence. She was pinning her hopes on being transferred to Urumqi, which was close enough to home to keep her parents happy but would allow her to enjoy urban life again. More importantly perhaps, it would improve Angelina’s chances of finding a husband.

  ‘Girls who are my age here should be married. My mother says I should be and I want to be, but I don’t have a boyfriend. It’s hard for me to meet someone I can talk to on an equal basis. A lot of the boys here haven’t got much education,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested in looks. I never look at a man because he is handsome. I only want a man with a good heart and someone who has a similar background to me.’

  Smart, pretty but single women are an increasingly common phenomenon in China. Girls do better than boys at school and university, and more and more of them are establishing meaningful careers for themselves. But the Chinese concept of face, where preserving one’s dignity and reputation is more important than anything else, along with the way males are traditionally more valued than females, means it is a rare man who is willing to marry a woman with a better degree and a higher salary than his. To do so would mean losing face in front of not just his family and friends, but his wife’s as well.

  Many women I knew in Beijing bemoaned their single status. Angelina’s predicament was far worse. Few Uighur men in rural Xinjiang graduate from high school, let alone university, and Angelina, despite her bare legs and uncovered head, was still traditional enough only to be interested in marrying a fellow Uighur. I wondered if I should offer to introduce her to Billy, a fellow graduate, but decided against it. I wasn’t sure feckless Billy and the hard-working and serious Angelina would be a great match.

  We walked on in silence; it was hard to know what to say. Angelina deserved to find a decent man and a life outside Yining and I hope she has. Like many Uighur stories I heard, hers was more tragic than anything else. For all her achievements, her time on the east coast had made her as much of an exile as the Uighur in Australia who introduced us, only Angelina was still stuck in her hometown. Now she was regarded as exotic by her own people, yet as a Uighur she remained an outsider in the Han society her education had prepared her for.

  At least Angelina was not living in what is essentially a ghetto, like most of the Uighurs in Urumqi. In the Ili Valley, the Chinese make up less than half the population and are outnumbered by the ethnic Kazakhs and Uighurs in the area. For the first time since my arrival in Xinjiang, I was reminded of Kashgar in 1988 and the way both the Han and western visitors had been the foreigners in town.

  The main market was a genuine central Asian bazaar. Porters transporting goods on trolleys or their backs pushed through the crowds of shoppers crying out ‘Boish boish’, the Uighur equivalent of ‘make way’, while the stalls were a chaotic jumble of gold, carpet and clothes. Some vendors squatted on the floor hawking cheap household items, as well as pirate DVDs from Uzbekistan which were either Bollywood-style musicals or blood-drenched gangster movies.

  Surrounding the market were dark, fly-ridden restaurants. The only dishes on offer were laghman, the thick noodles found all over central Asia, polo and lamb kebabs grilled over glowing coals by young men who fanned the smoke away constantly with pieces of stiff cardboard. Little Mandarin was spoken in those places and I was grateful now for the snippets of Uighur I’d picked up from Jenny in Urumqi.

  Some Han shopped for bargains at the market and I noticed how they avoided eye contact with me. Normally, the Chinese are unrestrained when it comes to staring at foreigners they encounter in remote parts of their country. It was my moustache that caused the unusual reticence. The locals might not have been fooled by the hair that sat above my upper lip, but it was a good enough disguise for the Han to assume I was a Uighur and so I was treated as if I was invisible.

  I was delighted at not being taken for a foreigner, although such is the diversity in appearance of Yining’s different ethnic groups that a moustache isn’t really necessary to pass as a local. Most men did have a black growth of hair curling around the top of their mouths, while many of the women were dark-skinned, brown-eyed beauties in jeans, T-shirts and headscarves who could have been Turkish or even Pakistani. But there were also people with complexions paler than mine and blue or green eyes topped by blond or red hair, testimony to the wild mix of genes the Uighurs have inherited from their many ancestors.

  Yining’s residents were far more religious than Urumqi’s Uighurs, and Ramadan was strictly observed. Outside of the market area, the only restaurants open during the day were Chinese ones. Come sundown and there was a rush of customers to the Uighur places, which made it difficult to find a table. Nor did they serve alcohol, and there are no bars in Yining. Instead, anyone out on a spree heads to the karaoke bars. They are places where one can both croon sentimental love songs and drink, and are staffed by young women who walk a thin line between hostesses and hookers.

  One of them was located on the fourth floor of my hotel. Half-cut men breathing fumes of baijiu, a noxious white spirit that is China’s equivalent of vodka or tequila, would stagger out, arms around the heavily made-up young Chinese ladies in short skirts and garish high heels. Such girls are called xiaojie, literally ‘miss’ but now a China-wide euphemism for a prostitute. At night, some would ride the lifts on their way to make room calls, jabbering into their phones in thick accents from far-off provinces like Henan and Sichuan and spitting the shells of sunflower seeds on to the floor.

  Apart from karaoke, the main entertainment option was to head to the banks of the Ili River, where a sad little funfair overlooked the fast-flowing waters. Its rusting rides piped out snatches of patriotic songs like ‘The East is Red’, and were operated by controls straight out of a 1950s science-fiction movie. Most people just perched by the river chatting, flirting, smoking and watching the foolhardy Uighur teenagers who tried to swim to a sandbank in the middle of the river without being swept downstream by the strong current.

  After a dismal night by the Ili, which ended when a drunk Uighur threw up over my shoes, I was glad to see Angelina again. This time we met on a street called Ahemaitijiang, the Chinese name for Ahmet Jan. He had been one of the leaders of the East Turkestan Republic (ETR), the short-lived result of the last widespread Uighur uprising in Xinjiang and the only democratic regime ever to run the region.

  Founded in Yining in 1944, the ETR existed for five brief years after Uighur anger at the troops loyal to Chiang Kai-shek then occupying Xinjiang turned into a full-scale rebellion. The CCP was overjoyed with the ETR for overthrowing its enemy, and Mao himself wrote to them lauding their achievement. But by 1949, with the nationalists all but defeated, the CCP no longer had any need for allies. In August of that year, Ahmet Jan and most of the ETR government perished in one of the mysterious plane crashes that punctuated the Mao era. Their victims were always potential opponents to the Great Helmsman’s rule.

  Ahmet Jan’s death did mean he avoided the purge of the ETR that followed the CCP takeover of China. He is still officially a revolutionary hero, rather than a separatist, and one of the few Uighurs from any period to be acknowledged publicly by Beijing. Yet, in a supremely cruel historical irony, the street that honours his name was the site in 1997 of one of the most controversial confrontations between the Uighurs and the Han since 1949.

  Ramadan had ended the day before and with typical insensitivity the local authorities had chosen the last day of the most important Muslim religious festival to arrest the leader of Yining’s mashrap. Part social clubs, part local forums and part venues for religious education, mashrap sprang up in large numbers in Uighur communities in the 1990s. Their formation was prompted both by despair over worsening economic prospects and by the fear that Uighur identity was being fatally diluted by the Han presence in Xinjiang.

  They quickly aroused the suspicion of the Chinese, who saw them as an expression of the Uighu
rs’ desire for independence, and the police moved to close them down. In Yining, though, the mashrap movement was especially strong, and most continued to meet in secret. The arrest of its leader was greeted with dismay, as was the detention of two talib, the Uighur term for students of Islam. Next morning, thousands marched down Ahemaitijiang Street calling for their release. The protest soon morphed into a general outpouring of Uighur grievances, according to Angelina who was thirteen at the time.

  ‘There were many people chanting “There is only one God, Allah” and some carried banners. They were protesting about religious freedom and calling for fair treatment and for jobs. They weren’t being violent, or fighting the Han,’ said Angelina. ‘But the soldiers opened fire on them. I remember my father was out on his bike and he came rushing back after he heard the shots. Many men died, no one knows how many. It was very bad what the government did.’

  Worse were the reprisals meted out to those suspected of taking part in the demonstration. Uighurs who subsequently escaped to Kazakhstan revealed a horrifying picture of further instances of the PLA opening fire on unarmed people, as well as of public executions of prisoners whose hands were bound with wire. Some human rights organisations put the number of dead in the hundreds. Many more were imprisoned, while thousands fled across the frontier.

  Rebiya Kadeer, then the most prominent Uighur in China, publicly criticised the brutal crushing of the Yining protests. It was the beginning of her downfall; she was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of leaking state secrets two years later. Other Uighurs decided on a more militant response. A subsequent spate of bomb attacks was attributed to a shadowy separatist organisation called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). Now Beijing delights in comparing the ETIM with Al-Qaeda, and uses its existence as a justification for all its punitive efforts in Xinjiang.

  Following the events of February 1997, it took years for relations between the Uighurs and Han in Yining to stabilise. They deteriorated again after the 2009 Urumqi riots. Angelina categorised them now as ‘so-so’, although she socialised occasionally with her Chinese work colleagues. But she was not optimistic about the future, and believed the authorities thought the same. ‘There are a lot more police and soldiers in Ili now. They’re worried there will be more trouble here.’

  Our walk had begun on a beautiful, sunny summer afternoon. Soon, though, a vicious, howling wind arrived, turning Ahemaitijiang Street into a dustbowl. The sky grew dark and the air murky as people scurried for cover with their heads down, or covered their faces with newspapers or bags, to avoid being stung by the dirt being propelled through the air. It was apocalyptic weather signalling impending rain, and our cue to leave.

  As we drove off down the street where so much blood had been spilled, I struggled to comprehend what had happened here in 1997. I had the same problem whenever I cycled past the intersection on the Beijing street where large numbers of people were killed by the PLA during the Tiananmen Square protests. There was nothing to remind you of the deaths of so many innocent people and they are never referred to by the authorities; what took place has simply been omitted from the official record.

  Ignoring the history they don’t like, or manipulating the facts of it, has long been party policy. Mao was fond of claiming inspiration from Qin Shi Huang who, in 221 BC, became the first emperor to unite China. But he is also remembered for burying 460 Confucian scholars alive – a demonstration of his contempt for the study of what he regarded as obsolete and irrelevant facts from previous eras.

  Just like Emperor Qin, Mao sought to submerge the past, and the present CCP carries on his work. That has had a devastating effect on minority identities, one almost as harmful as the slow death of many of their languages as the study of Mandarin only is enforced in schools across the frontier regions. As long as the CCP continues to censor all books published in China, the Uighurs have no way of recording their version of what has happened to them. All they can do is pass on the gruesome memories of events such as the Yining slaughter to their children, like a hereditary disease that taints generation after generation.

  Early the next morning I went to the bus station looking for transport to Korgas, the border town with Kazakhstan. One minivan was going. The driver and I sat and smoked, while he waited for more passengers. After an hour he gave in and started the engine and we took off down a bumpy two-lane highway flanked by tall pine trees, which we shared with overloaded trucks and lines of sheep being cajoled along by ethnic Kazakh farmers.

  Korgas was a madhouse. Kazakhs and Russians who had arrived on overnight coaches from Urumqi were loaded down with TVs, microwaves and large bags full to bursting with clothes. We all fought to squeeze through the narrow steel barriers that led to passport control. Around us, local Kazakhs offered to change yuan or US dollars into tenge, the Kazakh currency, acted as porters or simply hung around looking shifty, while the Wu Jing on duty did their best to ignore our presence.

  Things were more relaxed on the Kazakh side of the frontier. An ethnic Russian in the high-peaked hats that are one of the most obvious legacies of Soviet rule in central Asia – along with decrepit Lada cars, vodka and statues of Lenin – stamped my passport and sent me on my way with a cheery ‘Good luck’. I found a ride to Almaty with a Chinese woman and a Kazakh returning from a business trip to Yining. It took just over four hours through a landscape of largely uninhabited barren, brown hills, the driver hammering his battered Audi down unsealed roads at a speed of 130 kilometres an hour.

  Almaty is the unofficial capital of central Asia – by some distance the most international and prosperous city in the region. Running uphill from north to south along steep streets, Almaty has one magnificent, wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral, a couple of pleasant parks and several monolithic buildings in the Socialist-Realist style. Dominating the suburbs are endless lines of uninspired Soviet-era apartment blocks.

  It reminded me of cities I had been to in the Russian Far East, and not just because Russian is still the local language and, like Russia, the price of everything is three times as expensive as it is across the border in Xinjiang. Almaty is isolated and seemingly down at heel and that comes as a shock after China, where even the centre of a remote city like Urumqi has an increasing number of gleaming high-rise shrines to steel, concrete and glass.

  Yet Kazakhstan is far more developed than its neighbour in less showy ways. Home to a bewildering number of minorities, some 131 in total, Kazakhstan is a genuine multi-ethnic society. In sharp contrast to Xinjiang, there is no segregation of the races in Almaty. Dark, oval-eyed Kazakhs and blond ethnic Russians are the most numerous people, but there are also Uighurs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Turks, Chechens, Ukrainians and even Koreans. And while Kazakhstan isn’t a paradise of equality, the different minorities all work together, live side by side and sometimes date and marry each other.

  Kazakhstan’s Uighur community is around 300,000 strong. They are the country’s fifth-largest minority and one of them, Karim Massimov, is the second-most powerful politician in the country. A former prime minister, Massimov is now chief of staff of the Presidential Office, a role created just for him and one which makes him Kazakhstan’s administrative head.

  Admittedly, Massimov doesn’t advertise his ethnicity and, as a Mandarin-speaking former KGB officer, he makes a rather unlikely Uighur. Yet he is still one, and I enjoyed seeing photos of him with his broad face and impressive ’tache standing next to senior Chinese politicians at official talks. His presence acts as a rebuke to China, because the chances of a Uighur, or any member of an ethnic minority, attaining such a powerful position is so inconceivable as to be fantasy.

  My Uighur contact in Almaty was equally improbable. Kakharman Khozhamberdi was a tall, sturdy man with an upright bearing and swept-back black hair that belied his sixty-plus years. He looked like a military man and had been a tank commander in the old Soviet army. But he is also a vice-president of the World Uighur Congress, the Rebiya Kadeer-led organisation the Chinese claim is responsib
le for inciting all unrest in Xinjiang.

  True to the Uighurs’ reputation for disunity, Khozhamberdi was no fan of Mr Massimov. ‘I don’t really like him,’ he told me when we met in a park in the west of Almaty. ‘He’s too close to China and doesn’t stand up for the Uighurs.’ We sat side by side on a bench in the afternoon sun. Opposite us, small children jumped around on a bouncy castle while their parents gossiped.

  Khozhamberdi was a fourth-generation Kazakh Uighur, whose family were originally from Yining. They left in 1883 after the city had been returned to the Chinese, part of the first wave of Uighur migration to what was then Russia. Many more Uighurs followed, along with ethnic Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tajiks and Uzbeks. Large numbers crossed the frontier in 1962, after losing their land to Han migrants. Others left to escape religious persecution during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and, traditionally, there is always a spike in Uighur refugees after major protests.

  But it is increasingly difficult to flee Xinjiang. ‘The border is much better guarded now and only a few hundred make it out each year,’ said Khozhamberdi. ‘They’re allowed to stay for a year or two, unless they have relatives here, then they go on to other countries like Turkey, Norway or Germany. I think they should be allowed to stay permanently, like they used to be able to do. But the government doesn’t want to do anything to offend China. You know, politics is complicated and China is so powerful. That makes it very difficult for the Uighurs in central Asia.’

  Completely integrated into Kazakh and Soviet society, Khozham­berdi traced his conversion to the Uighur cause back to a day out in Moscow in the late 1970s. ‘I met a friend in Izmailovsky Park. He asked me if I wanted to buy some different books to the ones on sale in official shops. I thought he was talking about dirty books – you know, pornography. But it was a samizdat copy of The Gulag Archipelago.’

  Reading Solzhenitsyn’s account of life in the chain of prison camps that stretched across the Soviet empire made Khozhamberdi start to doubt communism, even as he continued his army career and rose to be a colonel. Like Solzhenitsyn, who served part of his sentence in a labour camp in Kazakhstan, Khozhamberdi discovered religion relatively late, in his case the Muslim faith of his ancestors. Now he believed it is the fundamental cause of the tension between the Uighurs and the Chinese. ‘Islam is the reason why the Han and the Uighurs will always be separate,’ he told me.