Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson. Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2009. 256 pp.
I am pleased to have my very own copy of Invisible China, a remarkable travelogue just recently published. The authors, Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson, both current postgraduate students, have produced a worthwhile and very readable [...]
Just yesterday, I was flipping through an old photocopy of Dr. Jay Dautcher’s Berkeley PhD dissertation in Anthropology, “Folklore and identity in a Uighur community in Xinjiang China”. It’s an excellent read, and it’s based on, I would say, by far the most extensive and perceptive ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Xinjiang by a [...]
Some of you may have noticed about a week ago an article in the New York Times by correspondent Edward Wong titled, “The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To,” about the famous preserved corpse uncovered in the Tarim Basin and dubbed the “Loulan Beauty.” So the Loulan Beauty looks European and [...]
Nathan Light. Intimate heritage: creating Uyghur muqam song in Xinjiang. Berlin: LIT Verlag. 2008. Pp. 352. 34.90 EUR. (Part of the series Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia)
A new book is to be published on the history of and discourse surrounding the muqam, a Turkic musical form with Arabic roots, in Xinjiang. The Uyghur [...]
Äsät Sulayman. Özlük wä Kimlik – Yawropa Qirghaqliridin Märkiziy Asiya Chongqurluqlirigha Qarap. Ürümchi: Shinjang Uniwersiteti Näshriyati. 2006. Pp. 443. 47.00 RMB. (English title: Ego & Identity – Cultural Dialogue between Inner Asia and Scandinavia)
I should begin this review of Dr. Äsät Sulayman’s recent work, Özlük wä Kimlik, with a note on the translation of the [...]
James A. Millward. Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang. New York: Columbia University Press. 2007. Pp. xix, 440. $40.00
James Millward has done the Xinjiang studies community a great service by authoring the first comprehensive historical survey that takes this region as its primary focus without adopting any explicit political thesis. This contribution is a significant [...]