Ethnic Unity

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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 violence spreads, as it is in Xinjiang at this moment.

So I found this painting telling:

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The Chinese originally said “Ethnic Unity,” but, as the wall has been partially destroyed, the word “Unity” is falling apart.

And I’ll leave it at that.

If the Cops Ask, You’re Not Staying Here

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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 things were. When we lighted in downtown, I went through the usual battery of checking to see which hotels would not bar foreigners. Each time I went into a hotel, they said that it was not possible for them to take foreigners. I was not surprised by this, but this no-rooms-for-foreigners attitude was exasperating after a twenty-six hour long bus ride. All we wanted was a bed and a bathroom.

 

Finally, I found a hotel that would take us. Check in was easy, too easy. The young woman took my passport and scribbled a little of my information into a notebook. When I came back with Galen, she did not even bother to take his information.

 

When hotels authorized to accept foreigners register us, they have to record the details of our visa and passport carefully. With the way the woman at the front desk casually registered us, I knew that this hotel was not authorized to take foreigners. The young woman at the front desk either did not know or did not care that she was not supposed to accept foreigners.

 

The next day, I went to the front desk to pay for another night’s stay. Behind the desk, a middle aged woman with short hair had replaced the younger woman from the previous night. I handed the money for another night’s stay to the woman, about $20USD. “We’d like to stay another night.”

 

She took my money and began to fiddle with some paperwork, as though preparing cut me a receipt. Then, she turned to me and asked, “You’re not going to do anything that will get us checked out by the police, right?”

 

I was surprised by the question. I had never had anyone ask me that. “No.” I responded immediately, though I had no way of knowing what the police would do.

 

After this, we continued the transaction as normal. She cut me a receipt and handed my change back to me. I picked up the money and headed to the elevator, but, as I walked away, she called out to me. “If the police do ask you where you are staying, do not tell them you are staying here.”

 

I was pretty clear on what had happened. This hotel was not supposed to accept foreigners, but the young girl behind the desk when we checked in did not know that. The middle-aged woman was more of a manager, more responsible, and she did know that we were not allowed to stay there. Perhaps she might even be held responsible if we were discovered.

 

But whether she let us stay or kicked us out, the hotel had already violated the rules. So, why not just roll the dice, take the risk and make a little bit more money. The hotel was almost empty. As far as I could tell, no one was staying on our floor, the top floor. By staying there, we were making them money, so why not take on that little bit of extra risk?

 

Later on, the middle aged woman asked me if we had any American money. Normally, I just say no. “But, why don’t you have any American money?” they always ask, shocked.

 

“What good would it do me here in China?” I always respond, avoiding having to give them greenbacks.

 

But on this occasion, I thought it was best to break the pattern. I went up and asked Galen if he had any one-dollar bills and then took one down to her, where she was waiting in the lobby. She was elated, and she handed me the rough equivalent of a dollar in Chinese money, also showing off the Singapore Dollar and the Kazakh Tenge she had collected from guests. This dollar bill seemed to mollify her to the risks that we were bringing to her hotel. I was happy that she was happy and not worried that we were going to bring the cops down on them.

Kashgar – An End of the World

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Kashgar.

Something about that name rings of the end of the earth. Like Kathmandu or Patagonia, the city’s name is redolent of a wild and ancient greatness that leaves me wondering why it has not yet been appropriated as the name of a clothing company, as the other two names have.

Kashgar is the epitome of the Silk Road. It is on the way to nowhere, yet in between everywhere. Kashgar has been a trading entrepot from time immemorial. The economic importance of Kashgar begins with its location. Coming from the interior of China, the Silk Road splits into two branches near Dunhuang, slipping around the Taklimakan Desert which, for the most, part is impassible. We had taken the northern route of the Silk Road, along the southern edge of the Tianshan Mountains and the northern rim of the Taklimakan, passing through Turpan and, with a short side trip, Urumqi.

Taklimakan Desert

Taklimakan Desert

Another route passed south of the Taklimakan, tracing along the southern rim of the Taklimakan and the northern edge of the Kunlun Mountains. Here, the desert Uighurs are only a handful of miles from the Tibetan world, but the towering mountains make communications difficult.

Kashgar is at the western end of the Taklimakan, where the two routes of the Silk Road meet back up. Northeast of the city are the Tianshan Mountains, southeast are the Kunluns, and the Pamirs loom off to the West, along with the Stans: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan. South of Kashgar, along the Karakorum Highway, the world’s highest highway, are Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In part, trade and the bazaar culture have defined Kashgar because for hundreds of miles on most sides of the city, there is nowhere else to build a city. Mountains wrap two-thirds of the way around the city and desert takes the other third. So, for thousands of years, anyone who wanted to buy anything in that part of Central Asia had to go to Kashgar.

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Kashgar’s Bazaar

Kashgar is also a fount of Uighur civilization. In Urumqi, many Uighur restaurants and shops advertise that they are of the Kashgar style.  Many ancient Uighur leaders in arts and religion have come out of Kashgar and, unlike Urumqi or even Turpan, Kashgar is the only major city in China dominated by Uighurs.

Just looking at the map, it is easy to see why; Kashgar is just so far away from China. Even today, with travel relatively convenient and safe, few Han Chinese want to move out that far away from their families in the interior of China, so it is hard for the government to encourage migration.

With so many invaders, the gene pool is very heterogeneous.

With so many invaders, the gene pool is very heterogeneous.

Kashgar has fallen under the control of so many different groups that it is hard to place historically. The city was captured and recaptured several times by Chinese dynasties, the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty. The Mongols took control of it (though, not the Mongols who ruled China). The conquering Arab armies even marched this far east as they were swarming out of the sands of Arabia, though they only briefly passed through the area. More recently, Kashgar was one of the hottest spots for the Great Game, the shadow battle fought between the Russian and British Empires for dominance of the Asian continent.

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Beyond government, religious trends have pulsed and convulsed the city throughout the millennia. It was during the Mongol period that the Uighurs living there today began their conversion to Islam, and today, almost every Uighur is a Sunni Muslim. However, that has not always been the case. Before Islam came to dominate Kashgar in the fourteenth century, Buddhism was the city’s major religion, passing from here onto Turpan and the rest of China. Nestorian Christianity also had a presence in the ancient city.

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Kashgar has been fought over for a long time. That is still true today. No one questions that it is a part of the People’s Republic of China, but few believe it is Chinese. Walking through its bazaar, you feel more like you are in Baghdad than Beijing. Often, it was difficult for me to find people who could speak Chinese, particularly among cab drivers. Han Chinese, when they do appear, look like, and often are tourists, sticking out just as much as Galen and I do amidst the sea of Uighur faces.

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In some ways, China’s grip on the region is strong, stronger than it has ever been at any time in history. China maintains a heavy security presence in Kashgar, and any military challenge to Beijing’s authority would be suicidal.

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Yet, politically, China is losing the battle for hearts and minds. Uighurs see themselves less and less as a part of China. Though they have long been Muslims, they have never been particularly conservative, drinking, smoking and generally carousing. However, there is now a movement to define themselves as Islamic, partially as a response to Beijing’s heavy-handed tactics, as a way to distinguish themselves politically from Beijing. As an American, visiting Kashgar left me hearing echoes of Boston in the 1760’s.

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Uighur Economist Jailed for Life

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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 for his moderate activism. This is likely to encourage Uighurs to behave more violently. I am very concerned.

Voice of a Mongol

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Time shifts all things, leaving no stone unturned.

In an earlier post, I documented how the Uighurs, though now persecuted by central authorities in Beijing, were once the allies of Beijing, assisting them in the genocide of millions of Dzungarian Mongols, nearly wiping out the entirety of the people.

But after the genocide, there still remained a scattering of Dzungarian Mongols, those who either surrendered immediately or hid until the slaughter had ceased. The descendants of these survivors still live in the northern portion of Xinjiang today.

On our way to Kashgar, I met one of these Mongolians. He said he was from the area near Sayram Lake, the area on the border with Kazakhstan. He told me that his family lived in a small village not far from the lake, eking out an existence herding. His description made the area sound beautifully bucolic. Just listening to him, I could sense that he was a lover of the land, his land.

I asked him if he was traveling on business, he refused to give me a clear response, only telling me that his journey was “something like a business trip.” I assumed that he was traveling as government work, meaning that he was probably a communist cadre.

He asked me what I did, so I told him I was studying Chinese Literature, and this set us off on a discussion of Chinese literature. I asked him if he had ever read the Chinese classic, Journey to the West. He responded, “Of course.”

I pressed him. “I did not know if you found that interesting, since it is Han Chinese literature. I did not know if you were more interested in Mongolian literature?”

“I’ll read anything that is good. I have to read a lot of Chinese. There is very little Mongolian literature.” He told me.

“No wonder you speak Chinese very well.” I complimented him.

“We have no choice. There are just so few Mongolians. We have to speak Chinese. Since the Han are the main ethnic group in our country, the language of the Han Chinese functions as our country’s main language.”

As our conversation died down a little, he turned and looked me over, deciding whether or not to say what he was thinking. “Can I ask you something and you won’t get mad at me?”

“Sure,” I told him, interested in hearing what he had to say.

“You know you are losing your hair? You are not very old. You and I are about the same age.” He was very sincere. He reached out and brushed my hair.

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” I chuckled.

“You know, there are shampoos that we sell for helping that,” he told me.

I laughed, tickled that he was very concerned that I would get offended by his observation of facts. “I know, I know,” I assured him, “but I just stopped caring.”

Later on, as I perused our conversation in those mental archives, something struck me about this whole encounter. Unlike the Uighur I had spoken with in the last post, who complained of mistreatment at the hands of Chinese authorities, this Mongolian, whose people had almost been completely extirpated by forces in Beijing, seemed accepting of Chinese authority. He almost acknowledged his race’s inferiority to the Chinese and was likely a member of the government which considered itself the inheritor of this genocide. He read Chinese literature and spoke Chinese since there were so few people who spoke or wrote in Mongolian.

As I said at the beginning of this post, time leaves no stone unturned. Those who once fought against Beijing now work with Beijing, while those who once helped slaughter for Beijing are now slaughtered by Beijing.

Voice of a Uighur

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On a Sleeper Bus

On a Sleeper Bus

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 across our paths. To the north, the Tianshan Mountains rose in the distance, but to the south we could see nothing but the horizon and the never-ending desert bowing before it.

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On the bed across from mine, a Uighur sat spooning yoghurt out of a bowl, trying his best to keep from spilling it onto his pillow each time we crossed a pothole. He was my age, but he seemed older. Perhaps, that is the inevitable maturity that comes with having a wife and two kids and having them depend on you for support. He was fairly typical of a Uighur. He had availed himself of the policy allowing minority groups to have two kids instead of just one, and, like most Uighurs, he had not attended college.

 

As we got to talking more, he began to complain of all the troubles he and the other Uighurs have. He opened up freely, easily. I did not need to ask. He wanted to tell me about the Uighur’s situation. He spoke of Rebiya, a Uighur woman who leads a group in Washington D.C., promoting Uighur causes in the U.S. and the Berlin-based World Uyghur Congress. Both groups are hated by the Chinese government as supposed Uighur separatist groups, and talking about either could land him in serious trouble.

 

He told me that in Hotan, where he was going, the Chinese government had cut off any access to the 3G wireless system, meaning residents had no way of accessing the internet from their smartphones on the street.  I later found he was probably right; in Kashgar, the city that we were heading to, we were never able to pick up 3G service in the handful of days we spent there, and Hotan was probably under a similar regime.

 

Image Credit: Andy Wong, A.P.

Image Credit: Andy Wong, A.P.

He claimed he was friends Ilham Tohti, an economics professor at Beijing’s Ethnic University, who had been arrested on trumped up charges of separatism earlier in the year. He showed me the man’s photo in his phone.

 

I had no way of confirming whether or not he knew Professor Tohti, but I was able to confirm something else he said about Beijing’s Ethnic University. My bus mate told me how, the Chinese government had instituted an unspoken policy not allowing Uighurs to go to Beijing at all, for the most part. If you say you are going to Beijing, he claimed the police, or, as he called them in his bad Chinese, The Safety, will take you away.

 

This ban includes Uighurs who want to go to Beijing’s Ethnic University, China’s premier institution for ethnic minorities. Later on, I talked to a professor of English at one of the other Ethnic Universities in Manchuria (there are several Ethnic Universities scattered across China, but Beijing’s is the best), and he confirmed that many of his Uighur students had come to his school because this new policy banned them from Beijing Ethnic University.

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He also told me of a new government policy issuing a secondary I.D. Card for those who live in Xinjiang. The card, he claimed, targeted Uighurs, hoping to better control them. The card is similar to a permanent record, containing records of any slight problem that a person has had with the law, anything they have said against the government. Each time you pass through a checkpoint (in Xinjiang you have to pass through militarized checkpoints to enter and exit most towns), you have to swipe your card. If you have a long record, the police can harass you or take you in for interrogation. Because of this, Uighurs are now talking of living in a prison without walls.

 

He also complained that most Uighurs were now not allowed to travel outside the country. I heard many complaints about this from Uighurs, and also from Tibetans, though I traveled into Kyrgyzstan with two Uighurs, so I am not sure how true this is.

 

In the end, he said something that really struck me. “The Han are Chinese,” he said. “And the Uighurs are Chinese. So why aren’t we the same?” After that he solemnly trailed off into thought.

Fight in the Bus Station

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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 counter but, at first, I did not realize what the sound was. Galen turned to me and said calmly, “Someone just got tackled.”

Initially, I thought he was joking, but I turned around saw a man being pulled up from the ground. There was a crowd of men all struggling in the tangled ruckus. It was hard to make sense of what was going on.

I was not sure whether to run closer to see what was happening or run farther away. I was afraid it might have been some sort of terrorist trying to blow himself up, but soon, my instinct for danger overcame my good sense. I moved in closer to watch the fight, to try to make sense of what was happening.

Several security guards at the bus station surrounded the man on the ground, a Uighur, trying to subdue him. On the edge of the circle of guards, there was a Han Chinese man.

The Uighur man was alone in the fight, but he was wiry, and he had more to fight for, so he fought harder. The three security guards tried to subdue him, shoving him up against a wall and trying to take his photo for identification purposes. But, with a single quick wiggle, the Uighur wriggled his way out of their hold each time the guards got the camera into position, and they were neither able to subdue him nor take his picture.

During this scramble, the Han Chinese man on the edge said something to the Uighur and then reached over the security guards, trying to land a punch on the Uighur’s face. His punch did not land. One of the security guards turned from the Uighur to the Han Chinese man. Lifting his arm horizontally, the guard pressed on the Han’s windpipe and shoved him back from the fight twenty feet.

The struggle went on for three or four minutes, a long time for a fight, especially considering it was three to one. Despite their superior numbers, the Uighur man was able to slip the guards and sprint out of the bus station. The guards called the police, but the Uighur appeared to have escaped.

After the fight was over, I was able to gather that the Uighur was driving a black cab (someone with a car not approved for taxi service, very common throughout China), and the Han Chinese man was his passenger. Their dispute had arisen from a disagreement over payment, though I was never able to ascertain who was in the wrong. One Uighur passenger did point out, however, it was the Uighur, not the Han, who they tried to arrest.