Turpan – The Real Silk Road

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Old Uighur Man

Old Uighur Man

Turpan in China

Turpan in China

Turpan in Relation to Urumqi

Turpan in Relation to Urumqi

Xinjiang province is really two totally different places. The north and the south are distinct culturally, geographically and ethnically. The north is dominated by Han Chinese and our trips in the north were mostly snowy mountains and alpine pastures filled with Kazak herders.

The southern half of Xinjiang is desert or areas on the edge of deserts. The largest of these desrts is the Taklimakan Desert, about the size of Texas. Turpan, our first stop in southern Xinjiang, was only one hundred and twenty miles from Urumqi, just under a three hour drive, but the population was mostly Uighur, the Turkic Chinese who dominate southern Xinjiang.

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Turpan had once been a thriving entrepot along the Silk Road. Moving out of China, the Silk Road split into two near Drink Horse One Army. Turpan was once the largest oasis-city along the Silk Road’s northern route and was once the seat of large empires that dominated sections of trade crossing from China into Central Asia, spreading Buddhism into China and silk into Rome.

Uighurs in the Bazaar

Uighurs in the Bazaar

Today, evidence of  the Silk Road is easy to see. Skin tones amongst the city’s Uighurs vary from dark brown Central Asian features, with hints of Persian ancestry, to those with a pastier pallor, who could easily pass as Eastern Europeans.

Selling Naan, a central Asian bread

Selling Naan, a central Asian bread

Unlike Urumqi, which just feels like any other Chinese megalopolis, Turpan feels Central Asian. The town’s center has a large, raucous bazaar filled with a plethora of bread and carpet salesmen, crisscrossed by a labyrinth of narrow alleyways. Lambs hanging from tenterhooks and old men selling ice cream-here Turpan retains its Silk Road nature. Except for the Uighurs chatting into their iPhones, the bazaar feels like it would have looked about the same a thousand years before.

In the hijab shop

In the hijab shop

Most of the people here in Turpan are Muslim, and many women wear some sort of head covering. Some wore the traditional Muslim scarf that wraps around the whole head, leaving only the woman’s face exposed. Others wore a Russian-style babushka, a scarf that wraps only their hair. I wondered, though I was not able to confirm, if this reflected some sort of cultural divide, the more conservative women wearing whole head coverings. Of course, some women wore nothing at all on their heads, preferring little black dresses and heels that screamed Moscow rather than Mecca.

Babushka

Babushka

In the bazaar, I saw several ice-cream refrigerators not used for selling ice cream. Instead, these fridges had been rigged up so that white hose emerged from the refrigerator’s interior and hooked back around, dangling in the air. From the hose’s loose end, a rusty liquid poured down into a red basin which had a mesh bottom and was mostly filled with dates, except for a small hole in the center, where the liquid drained back down into the fridge’s interior. The liquid they were selling was date juice, a traditional sweet Uighur treat.

Fridge rigged to sell Date Juice

Fridge rigged to sell Date Juice

When I came up for a glass, the vendor filled up a cup straight from the hose flow, handing me the cup, icy and fresh.

I took a sip. I loved it, but it was the sugariest thing I had ever drank in my life. It tasted like I had been walloped in the mouth by some sort of sugar thug. After my first sip, I had to step back and take a deep breath. To wash the sweetness out of my mouth, I got a cup of ice cream.

The date juice cycles from the freezer up through the hose and back down into the freezer through a bowl of dates

The date juice cycles from the freezer up through the hose and back down into the freezer through a bowl of dates

Turpan is the first time we have been able to jump into the deep end of the Uighur world, a living example of Silk Road heritage. Dunhuang’s amazing Buddhist caves were a stale, if incredibly beautiful, example of what the Silk Road had once been, but Dunhuang itself had died out and been forgotten a thousand years ago. Today’s town of Dunhuang had been built up over the last twenty years to serve tourists, like a beautiful piece of the Silk Road dead and preserved in amber.

Leaving the Bazaar

Leaving the Bazaar

But Turpan is alive and breathing. This is the real Silk Road.

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China’s National Parks

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Tianchi Lake

Tianchi Lake

 “Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man con only mar it.”

– Theodore Roosevelt’s advice on the Grand Canyon

 

Our recent trips out into Tianchi National Park and Nanshan have taught us a little about China and its wild spaces. Touristy areas of Tianchi and Nanshan are being destroyed in the maw of “Development,” an all-encompassing concept in China that usually involves bulldozing whatever was there and building something new.

Reflexively, I think, most Americans think of the government as a protector of the wilderness in the National Parks. It was President Grant that established Yellowstone, the world’s first National Park, and the U.S. Army that kept it wild during its infancy and adolescence.

In China, however, the government is the problem, not the solution. It is the government and its drive for development that is the greatest danger to China’s wild spaces.

The Chinese government sees national parks, not as the people’s patrimony to preserve for posterity, but as a resource for making money and drivers for the economic development of local areas around the parks. Instead of putting consideration into how to help visitors understand and appreciate the parks, park administrators only consider how to squeeze more money out of visitors. In Tianchi, they have built buses, trams, ferries and speedboats in their search for more revenue. This drive to make money is what made Tianchi, or the north shore of the lake, feel like an amusement park, not a national park.

More damaging than the amusement park nature that sullies the parks, this drive for development gives rise to a harmful cycle that makes the parks increasingly less natural. The government wants to make money off the National Parks, so it charges more and more money for entrance to the Park. Some of this money enriches local elites and cadres, but some of this money is plowed into developing infrastructure in the park, as a justification for charging more for ticket prices.

To a limited degree, infrastructure is necessary for any national park. A park can have a museum explaining what makes the park special, the geology and ecology that drive the park. Trails in the backcountry can be built, allowing visitors to explore the park. Both of these are the simple kind of infrastructure projects that can help visitors grow more intimate with their Parks, which aids in the park’s protection.

However, building trails or educating visitors is a concept foreign to China’s National Park administrators. Their infrastructure always involves pouring concrete, digging up earth.  As I mentioned in the Tianchi post, we found an extensive sprinkler system installed around the remotest parts of Tianchi Lake, and new concrete was being poured throughout the Park. Fake concrete tree stumps were even added. The government’s obsession with adding new infrastructure is making their parks less natural. The things that once set them apart, their wild beauty, is being eaten away by this infrastructure. They are paving over everything that once made these places special.

The truth is, the last thing Tianchi or Nanshan need is more Chinese-style development. They need to be left as they are. More concrete will only mar these places.

This fake, concrete stump adds what to this sublime scene?

This fake, concrete stump adds what to this sublime scene?

Nanshan

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Nanshan_in_China

This is the part of Nanshan that we went to, near the town of Shihezi

This is the part of Nanshan that we went to, near the town of Shihezi

The mountain valley at Nanshan

The mountain valley at Nanshan

The landscape shifted rapidly from farmland to lifeless desert hills to mountainous foothills speckled with shrubs. Finally, we arrived in the green cocoon of the Tianshan Mountains, at a place called Nanshan.

Near the parking lot of Nanshan

Near the parking lot of Nanshan

Getting out at the parking lot of Nanshan was not all that different from the parking lot at Tianchi, though on a much smaller scale. The dirt road leading up from the nearest village petered out in a muddy parking lot. Above us, the green mountain forests and gray craggy cliffs loomed, uninterrupted except for a gaudy golden Buddha statue constructed into one of the cliff faces in the last decade.

New, gaudy Buddha carved into the mountainside

New, gaudy Buddha carved into the mountainside

But down where we were, in the valley, a backhoe and a bulldozer tore at the earth, looking to expand the road or build a bridge. On one side of the beautiful, white-tongued stream, a rinky-dink restaurant served food. On the other side, fake yurts with concrete foundations functioned as over-priced guesthouses.

Nanshan was beautiful, that was apparent. We needed only to lift our heads to see that. However, that beauty, so easily seen, was hard to reach. We pushed our way towards it, but development of the valley, the bane of wildness in China, seemed inescapable.

We walked higher into the valley and found a concrete bridge over the stream. The bridge had been painted to look as though it had been constructed from logs, an amateurish attempt at idyllicness. Why try so hard to look so fake? I thought. What does the fake log bridge add to this place?

Cows in the trash

Cows in the trash

Further along our path, we encountered a clutch local tourists, Kazakhs from further down the valley, I believe. As they finished their picnic, they dumped their trash onto the ground, abandoning their watermelon rinds, plastic bags and beer bottles by the roadside. Within a few minutes, cows from settlers grazed their way through the trash, munching on the rinds and plastic bags and dancing carefully around the glass bottles. It hurt to watch a place so beautiful be desecrated so impetuously.

No need to mar this beauty

No need to mar this beauty

We wanted to go farther, but thunder began to crackle above us, rumpled sheets of dark gray clouds rolling in.

We laid our packs down by a flat along the creekside, a little ways up from the commotion of the backhoe, but, before we could start unpacking, a gang of Kazakh guys began to chat with us.

Kazakh Gang

Kazakh Gang

“Do you guys know where any cheap yurts we could stay at are?” I asked.

Two of them stayed with us, while the other descended back into the valley to ask around. In a few minutes, he rejoined his friends saying, “Those down here are really expensive. I think you should look for some of these higher up.”

Yurts rented to tourists

Yurts rented to tourists

Soon, they helped us find a local Kazakh family a ways up the mountain that had an extra yurt they rented out to tourists.

We were only a few hundred feet above the rinky-dink restaurant and concrete yurts, but we felt like we were a world away. Goats and sheep whipped past our yurt’s entrance, occasionally stopping to peak in. The sounds of the backhoe and bulldozer had been replaced by barking and neighing and the laughter of children.

View from our yurt

View from our yurt

Relatives of our yurts owners had come to visit grandparents in one of Nanshan’s distant meadows, and their children would not stop playing with us. Their appetite of questions was unsatiable: where were we from? How long do you have to spend on a plane to get to America? Do they have places like Nanshan in America?

The Kids

The Kids

The three kids interrogated us nonstop, all the while showing off their relative’s cat, playfully punching a young goat and taking us to pick strawberries.

The Kids

The Kids

The son of the yurts owner talked to us too. At first, he was shy, but, as he watched us play with his three yabbering younger cousins, he warmed up to us. He had learned a little English in school, and he regurgitated every bit of it in three to four short sentences.

Playing around

Playing around

We plucked him for answers about what was happening to the valley below. Local Kazakhs, he said, were not allowed to use the tourist area down in the valley. That was being developed by Han Chinese from somewhere else. A barb-wire fence had been constructed around the designated tourist area. If the animals of the local Kazakhs went past the fence down into the tourist area, they were chased away, he said.

Kidding Around

Kidding Around

Soon, we separated, the kids going back to their yurt and us going back to ours. We noshed on dates and other food while the Kazakh family ate and the rain rolled in.

Final Thought

Final Thought

 

 

Night – Tianchi Part II

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Tianchi's_position_in_China

Tianchi in Relation to Urumqi

Tianchi in Relation to Urumqi

Make sure you check out the previous post before reading this one.

Moving into the wilder parts of Tianchi National Park

Moving into the wilder parts of Tianchi National Park

The temperature cooled as we moved deeper into the valley behind the lake. We had abandoned the lake, the Tianchi National Park’s main tourist draw, looking for something wild.

Bubbling Mountain Creek

Bubbling Mountain Creek

We followed the concrete spillway up the creek as the sun dropped below the encircling mountains. The sprinkler system gave way to a wall of Pines along the valley floor. A dirt road running parallel to the spillway, wound up a hill and crossed over a large dam controlling the water draining into Tianchi. In China, nothing goes undammed.

Beyond the dam, the dirt road slimmed down. The spillway ended. The creek was free, bound only by the hand-made engineering efforts of the Kazakh herders who had once occupied this valley.

The Valley

The Valley

Wild green peaks leaped forward from the valley. Beyond them, we could see the snow-clad Bogda Peak, an almost 18,000 foot monster peeking out from behind. We were only two miles from the sprinkler system of the southern shore and six miles from the speedboats of the northern shore, but we were moving into something that felt wild. We saw no one and felt few signs of human presence.

Tent and View

Tent and View

We laid our packs down in an almost untouched valley a ways up from the dam. Thirty feet below, a glacier-fed creek roared past the site. We laid out our tent and prepared to make camp.

Thinking on the Gravel

Thinking on the Gravel

We laid the tent onto a thick carpet of mountain meadow grass. Nearby, we found a pile of gravel dumped for some unknown purpose and used it as a base for our cook fire, boiling water and cooking ramen. That day was Galen’s birthday, so we shared a pack of birthday cake-flavored Oreos, sitting quietly and thinking. The night sky emerged, and the temperature dropped into the forties.

Night time fire

Night time fire

 

PBR by the fire

PBR by the fire

The next morning, we left our tent for an hour to climb on some of the ridges lingering above the valley, hoping to get a better view of Bogda Peak. Galen and I tried to reach the ridge via two different routes. Galen struggled straight up, while I went for the longer but easier way around the side. By the time I got to the ridge, Galen was nowhere to be seen.

Climbing the Ridgeline

Climbing the Ridgeline

I stayed calm at first, calling out Galen’s name several times. No response. He must be here somewhere, I thought. He could not have passed above me; I would have seen him. I shouted his name several more times, pacing the ridge. Still no sign of him. Now I began to worry. Had he fallen somewhere where I could not see him? Was he unconscious? Fear crept into me.

The grassy valley and fir-clung hillsides spread out beneath me. Beneath me, I could see our tent, a speck almost half a mile away. Wind was the only response I received each time I shouted, “Galen.” Otherwise, the world was silent.

It was then that I realized how alone I was. There was no one there. Not far off, crowds pulsed against the lakeside, but here, there was no one. I felt abandoned.

 

Creek Valley

Creek Valley

Several minutes passed, and, after shouting more, I heard the hint of a whistle. Galen soon came into sight, traipsing down beneath me. Somehow, he had passed me as I had climbed up onto the ridge.

Yet the moment stuck with me. In China, it feels difficult to escape the almost smothering feeling of humanity. In fact, in China’s west, that feeling of solitude is not all that far off, I realized.

Taking down the tent

Taking down the tent

We returned to our site, packed up our tent and left the silence of this wild space.

Night Sky above Tianchi

Night Sky above Tianchi

Night Sky above Tianchi

Night Sky above Tianchi

Night Sky above Tianchi

Night Sky above Tianchi

 

 

 

Day – Tianchi Part I

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Entrance to Tianchi Lake

Entrance to Tianchi Lake

Tianchi National Parks is one of the most famous in China. The word, “Tianchi,” means “Heavenly Lake” in Chinese, and, staring out over the lake, it is easy to see why, long ago, it was given that name. The alpine lake is nestled among steep mountain walls on either side, some of the walls lush with green firs, others a craggy, brown cliff face.

Tianchi's_position_in_China

However, that day as we began our trek around the lake, the beauty of the place was eclipsed by the thing that had overgrown all things in China: development. Tianchi National Park was not a quiet respite from civilization but an amusement park in a setting that had once been wild and beautiful.

This fake, concrete stump adds what to this sublime scene?

This fake, concrete stump adds what to this sublime scene?

 Our arrival set the tone. Ticket prices are about $30USD per person. To put that in perspective, entrance to Tianchi for a day for a family of four would cost $120USD. To stay a week in the Grand Canyon, it would only cost that same family $25USD. The reason it is expensive is because, Tianchi is not, in the American sense, a National Park, a place of unique beauty preserved for the people to commune with nature. Instead, the main goal of the people who run China’s National Parks is to make money.

There are all sorts of gimmicks to try to get you to pay a little bit extra. You are required to pay for a bus that takes you the twenty miles from the Park’s new entrance to the lake, but, just to squeeze a little extra from you, the bus stops half a mile before the lake, at which point you have the option to pay an additional $1.50USD to ride a tram up to the lake.

Ferry Dock

Ferry Dock

Along the lake shore, a ferry took visitors across the lake to a fakish-looking temple built into the side of the mountain. For those with more money, you can pay to be slung around the Lake in a speedboat. All of these rides generate revenue for the park, detracting from any wildness and defecating on the lake’s pristine beauty.

How many couples can you count?

How many couples can you count?

Around the western shore, administrators have set up another cash machine. A road was recently extended around the western end of the lake about a mile,  so that the park can cash in on wedding photography. Before Chinese weddings, couples usually spend half a fortune on getting a special set of photos taken of them. Tianchi National Park built a small beach area and a parking lot which appeared to be designed for the vans of wedding photography teams. When we hiked through, the beach and the area around it had a gaggle of twenty couples taking photos, trying to do their best not to get other soon-to-be-weds in their shots.

Not the View I was expecting

Not the view I was expecting

Beyond the wedding photography section of the lake, we passed the money-making zone of the Park, but we were not in the wild. In this transition zone, most people had come to make their best effort at circumambulating the Lake, a decent, four-hour hiking trip. Still, the trail was a long series of stairs, and we encountered a sprinkling of fake, concrete trees and groundskeeping Han Chinese, employed at trimming fir trees off the pathway.

Road to Wedding Photo Site

Road to Wedding Photo Site

Cheese

Cheese

Getting Ready

Getting Ready

The hand of man mars even the far end of the Lake’s south. Few tourists make it this far. There are no facilities here, other than, for some inexplicable reason, a sprinkler system, chattering away, watering brown patches of dirt. The creek that fed Tianchi was contained in a wide, concrete spillway. Why could they not just leave it alone, I thought. Why did they need to mar this place with their improvements?

Spillway, looking out towards the Lake

Spillway, looking out towards the Lake

We surveyed the spillway, the sound of sprinklers chattering away. Beyond here was where things should get wild, we hoped. We looked back at the lake and then ascended into the wilderness.

Into the Wild

Into the Wild

A Walk through Uighur Urumqi

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The Alleyway

The Alleyway

A line divides Urumqi city. Most Chinese will not pass south of that line, at Nanmen, the South Gate. Instead, the Han Chinese stick to Urumqi’s northern suburbs, the conurbation stretching miles and miles north, most of which was built in the past decade as Beijing encouraged Han Chinese to settle the province.

Entering south Urumqi
Entering south Urumqi

 We had been sticking to the northern part of the city, as this was the only place we could easily find hotels that would accept foreigners. Led by a friend, Josh, the author of Far West China, we crossed the line at Nanmen. Passing into the city’s southern half, we, without realizing it, had crossed a continent in a few steps. We were no longer in East Asia. We were somewhere in the Middle East. We were in Uighur Urumqi.

Mosque against the skyline

Mosque against the skyline

Josh led us along a mile-long walk through an alleyway stretching from Erdaoqiao Bazaar to Nanmen. During our walk, I did not see a single Han Chinese person. Normally, even in the southern part of the city, we would see some Han Chinese. Most Uighur sections of the city were covered with a heavy security presence, militarized police in SWAT gear, inevitably Han Chinese. But, in this mile-long alleyway with a bazaar-like atmosphere, I did not see a single SWAT cop or Han police.

Through the Bazaar-like street

Through the Bazaar-like street

Ice cream was being served in the alleyway, the sort of homemade ice cream that reminded me of late summer afternoons on a Georgia lake. The ice cream man scooped it out of the churn with a wooden ladle several feet long, piling it into a bowl and serving us from there. I was deceived by the half dollar cup, struggling to finish that creamy goodness in ten minutes.

 

Boy selling yogurty drink beside fruit vender

Boy selling yogurty drink beside fruit vender

Streetside tables were brimming full of sliced melon and watermelon laid out to eat. People strolling by would stop and begin to eat at the melons, without paying. I was confused. Was this some sort of charity? I tried to buy a slice, but the man would not take my money.

Watching the locals more closely, I realized that everyone was paying for their slices, but only after they had finished eating. It was a system designed to seem friendly but maximize consumption. Paying at the beginning, I would have just grabbed a single slice and walked away. But in this system, I found myself thinking, “Why not one more slice?” Soon, I had eaten four slices more than I had originally wanted. Ingenious.

Tasty
Tasty

Freshly slaughtered lamb hung from tenterhooks on the sidewalk, families paused to allow Galen to take their portraits. A man on a motorscooter waved Galen onto the back of his ride, inviting him on a hitchhiking trip he had not even wanted.

Unexpected Hitching

Unexpected Hitching

The Uighur sense of fashion is different, much less square. Bold slacks were being sold from carts in the alleyway, and women walked with a vavoom unseen in eastern China.

A food and a beverage being sold here also hinted at the civilizations competing for influence here amongst the Uighurs. Elsewhere in China, it is hard to find any hint of the influence of another civilization, unless you count the thin patina of the West that glazes everything but affects nothing, the Coca-cola factor.

Freedom to bear arms

Freedom to bear arms

But here, you can see the influences of Russia and Turkey pushing past the Chinese influence. Kvass is a non-alcoholic fermented beverage that originated in Eastern Europe during Medieval times. Kvass, sold in the alleyway, came to the Uighurs via Russia’s influence in the area, when the Soviets considered allowing the Uighurs to become independent, like the Mongolians. Now, as Uighurs become increasingly conservative, Kvass has become a way for them to drink without violating their Islamic principles.

Kvass - a fermented drink from medieval Eastern Europe that has become an important part of Uighur culture.

Kvass – a fermented drink from medieval Eastern Europe that has become an important part of Uighur culture.

Scooped from giant woks, Polo is a rice dish with mixed vegetables, usually topped with a hunk of lamb, that is the staple of Uighur restaurants. Polo is essentially the Uighur version of Pilaf, a Turkish dish. It’s ubiquity here demonstrates the relationship that the Uighurs have with the Turkic peoples stretching across the Stans, all the way to the Aegean Sea.

Polo, aka Pilaf

Polo, aka Pilaf

By the end of the walk, we circled around, back to Nanmen, back into China, back into East Asia.

Family Portrait

Family Portrait

For those in Urumqi interested in seeing this alleyway, check out Josh’s blog post on it on his Far West China blog.

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Timezones

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Time_Zones_of_the_World_Large

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. Solar noon occurs at three p.m., Beijing Time.

China is a big country. It is the size of the United States, including Alaska. It should stretch across five timezones. However, if you look at map of the world’s time zones, something strange comes into view; China is a giant monochromatic blob, having only one official timezone: Beijing Time.

Long ago, China had timezones. I have found old maps that show a handful of different colored stripes laid across China. But in 1949, the Communists came to power. Their desire for ultra-centralization, a rejection of any sort of federalism, they did away with time zones. In New China, Beijing was to be the center of, not only politics and culture, but it was also the center of time. All clocks were to be set to the sun in Beijing.

A map of China's old timezones from Wikipedia, with the old province names.

A map of China’s old timezones from Wikipedia, with the old province names.

Imagine if all clocks in the United States were set to Washington D.C.’s time, and people in California had to operate on Eastern Standard Time. This is essentially the time regime that the people in Xinjiang live under.

This timezone issue is troubling, but there is a logic to Beijing’s decision. Ninety percent of China’s population lives in the eastern half of the country. Is it not fairer, in a Utilitarian sense, to avoid the troublesomeness of timezones for most people in China by adding this additional burden to the ten percent of the population that lives in China’s far west? The greatest good for the greatest number of people?

However, this timezone plays out in the ethnic conflicts I mentioned in this post. The Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, see Beijing time as another example of the center’s heavy-handed policies being foisted upon them by the distant capital, another reason to resent Han Chinese rule. We saw this every time we entered a hotel; if it was run by Han Chinese, the clocks behind the counter had Beijing time at the center, then to its sides, it would have Moscow time, New York time, London time and Tokyo time, but never Xinjiang time. In Uighur hotels, Xinjiang time was at the center, and Beijing time was just one among a series of timezones on display.

Mostly, this is a trivial matter. It means you know that midnight is not all that late, and noon is well before you eat lunch.

However, there are small things. Whenever I would call a national hotel chain to make a reservation, their policy is to only hold the room until seven p.m., at the latest. In Beijing, this makes sense, but, in Urumqi, where seven p.m. is actually five p.m., this is way too early to expect someone to arrive at a hotel.

More troubling is the fact that the Han Chinese and the Uighurs seem to operate in two different timezones. It was my impression that Han Chinese not only referred to Beijing time more often than Uighurs, but they also seemed to live in it more.

What I mean is that they seemed to wake up and go to sleep earlier than the Uighurs do. In the Chinese part of town, shops were beginning to open up, even though it was only nine thirty Beijing time (seven thirty Xinjiang time). Yet, when I turned into the Uighur part of town, the streets were dead. No shops were open. Few people were out in the street.

Somehow, thinking in Beijing time, the Han Chinese could not escape living in Beijing time.

This is the problem of empire. The center must hold and the periphery must accommodate that as best as it can. But this connection seems to be breaking apart. I think one of the reasons that violence is breaking out in Xinjiang now is because, as more Han Chinese move out to Xinjiang, more business is being done in Beijing time. More and more, Uighurs have to face the fact that they are being ruled by a distant people who, though they live next door, reside in a distant time zone.

On War Footing

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Before reading over this post, make sure you check out the previous post, which briefly introduced the situation in Xinjiang.

They are watching you. Camera's are everywhere.

They are watching you. Cameras are everywhere.

I have a policy. If I am traveling somewhere dangerous, I do not explain the danger to my mother. Mothers worry too much. I would recommend this policy to all of my readers.

We were entering Xinjiang, a province in the far west of China with an on-going, low-level insurgency. Signs of the insurgency were apparent as soon as we entered Xinjiang.

Our first morning, after the Long Ride, I awoke to get breakfast. Along the main street, every few hundred yards there would be a unit of paramilitary guards, three men with shields and truncheons and two men with high-powered automatic rifles that resembled M-16’s. The guards were not guarding anything particular. They were only stationed there as a show of force, bodies and guns along that main street. The guards were only separated from pedestrians by a thin strip of tape wrapped around four traffic cones. The guards stood silently and looked on while I passed.

In a lively alleyway, several mom-and-pop restaurants were open, steam pouring out of their kitchen windows. The entrance to this alleyway was blocked off by two-foot high concrete barriers. The barriers had been installed to stop suicide bombers from driving cars into crowded areas, something that had happened a few months before.

Police at Night

Police at Night

At the end of this market alley was another guard contingent, three shields, two rifles. Unlike the ones along the main street, this group appeared to be guarding something specific. The five men stood alone behind another concrete barrier beside a gate, distinctly divided off from pedestrians. The building they guarded was three stories tall and surrounded by a nine-foot tall barb-wire fence.

From the opposite side of the street, I peaked into the gate, making sure not to get too close or draw the attention of the guards. What could they be guarding, I wondered. A military installation? Some sort of high-level government office?

Through the gate, I heard the shouts of children; they were playing on a seesaw. On the side of the building, I was able to read the name: Bowangtetouli Elementary School. I was shocked. What did it say about the state of this town that the government had paramilitary officers guarding elementary schools?

Security at Gas Station

Security at Gas Station

On the way back from breakfast, I passed a gas station. The gas station was surrounded by more metal fencing and barb wire. Outside of one entrance, a guard stood behind concrete barriers. Access into the station was limited to a handful of cards, the guard determining when you went in. If you looked suspicious, the guard could search your car. Only the driver was allowed into the station; all passengers had to get out and stand under a tent while the car was filled up inside the station. All the gas stations in Urumqi operated like this. In the morning rush hour, I counted thirty cars waiting to enter the gas station.

Another Shot of the Gas Station

Another shot of the gas station

Urumqi operated under a constant pall of war-footing, with police cars and urban pacification vehicles squawking along the street at all hours of the night. Unlike when I was in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, this state of constant vigilance felt normal to the residents. Old men ambling to the doctor, mothers walking their children to school, they all seemed inured to the heavy police presence as just the way things are.