Way back when we were in Urumqi, I did a post on the awkward problem of timezones in China. Despite being the size of the U.S., including Alaska, China has only a single official timezone: Beijing Time. Beijing is in the east of the country. If you were to compare China’s geography to America’s, Beijing …
As many of the rest of the following posts will be on ethnic unity, I wanted to post these photos that I took in Xinjiang. Ethnic unity is the heavily propagandized virtue, and I often came across walls painted with propaganda messages. This propaganda is becoming increasingly important as ethnic unity breaks down, and interethnic …
We realized that Kashgar was a very sensitive area, though that realization would become very real for us when, as we were leaving the city a few days later, there was an assassination and the city was almost completely shut down. But on our arrival, we were still only moderately aware of how sensitive …
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Recently, the Uighur economist professor at Ethnic University in Beijing was known as a moderate promoting Uighur rights in Xinjiang. When talking to the Uighur on the bus, my friend mentioned this economist in this post a few days ago: http://www.silkroadhitchhikers.com/?p=1667 I wanted to let yall know that he was recently given a life sentence …
We were leaving Turpan on a sleeper bus, the bad road bumping along. The landscape was that of a brush desert, low, green-gray bushes the only plants that could hang on to life in this environment of extremes. The wind had picked up that day, rocking our bus from side to side and tossing tumbleweed …
Our bus was late. We waited in the bus station. Trying to stay cool, I walked back towards some large fans while nervously glancing from our bags to the man who was supposed to tell us when our bus finally showed up. Suddently, I heard the sound of a pop off somewhere by the ticket …
Galen was down sick again, so I took the camera out by myself to see the ruins of Gaochang. The bus dropped me off where I had expected, at an intersection in Second Fort Village. I began walking in the direction of the ruins of Gaochang. Interested in all aspects of village life, I tend …
In a post in Xian, way back at the beginning of our journey, I discussed some of the propaganda that the Communist Party was placing in subway tunnels and at bus stops. This propaganda in Xian was subdued, very much promoting this idea of Chineseness, but not all that in-your-face. Xinjiang is different. The Party sees the …
In Urumqi, the sun rises a little after seven and sets a little after nine. according to the official, Beijing Time. Solar noon happens a little after two p.m., according to Beijing Time. In Kashgar, our last destination in China, several hundred miles further to the west, it rises around eight and sets at ten. …
Today’s post is a little pedantic, but the background is necessary so that you can understand the posts following this one. Xinjiang, the region we had just entered, is a vast territory, almost as large as Alaska. Though China has had an on-again, off-again presence for the past two millennia, the name, Xinjiang, is Chinese …