Farewell, old friend.

Hello, beautiful.

Wang initially came to office following the 10-year tenure of Song Hanliang (宋汉良 1934-2000, in office 1985-1995), a long-time Party member from Shaoxing, Zhejiang who had worked in Xinjiang’s oil industry since 1954. Song was appointed not only Party Secretary of the XUAR, but also the First Secretary and First Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC). Wang (1944-), himself from Shandong province, arrived in Xinjiang in 1992 after a long career in the Party and government of Shandong. He was appointed Acting Secretary in 1994 before receiving both of Song’s appointments the following year. In 2002, Wang was appointed to the Politburo, reflecting both Hu Jintao’s confidence in him and the increasing importance of the Northwest in the Party’s plans for China.

Zhang Chunxian (1953-), for his part, is portrayed as a good communicator, perhaps what Xinjiang needs after 15 years of tough posturing and insulting propaganda. Vice President Xi Jinping traveled to Urumchi in person on the morning of 24 April to announce Zhang’s new appointment and praise his skills and “liberated” and “creative” ideas. Indeed, as Party leader in Hunan, he succeeded in using the Web to encourage communication between the provincial government and its citizens. The Party established an on-line government forum, and Zhang himself offered New Year’s greetings to web users on a message board. He became known as a Party Secretary who focused on people, both in the administration and in policies that aimed at strengthening Hunan with “culture.”

Like his predecessors, Zhang has a background in engineering, but he also holds a degree in management from the Harbin Institute of Technology. He has also served as the PRC’s Minister of Communications (2002-2005). This, however, is in itself no indicator of his mastery of media, since the Ministry, both then and in its new identity as the Ministry of Transportation, was concerned not with telecommunications, but with shipping, the postal service, and public transport. Zhang’s most obvious credentials in this respect are his smiling, clean visage, which should help him avoid the “Ratzinger effect” that accompanies Wang’s tough, authoritarian, and somewhat toad-like image, and his rumored marriage to CCTV newscaster Li Xiuping, which may bring a rare dash of celebrity to the position. It is uncertain whether Zhang will also take Wang’s place as Commissar of the XPCC.

Some journalists outside of China see Zhang’s apparent focus on the economy as a contrast to Wang’s insistence on stability through strict limitations on non-Han culture and language. There is nothing new, however, about the rhetoric of economic development in Xinjiang. Song Hanliang, back in March 1992, “described economic construction as the Party’s central task for the 1990s,” including developing close ties with newly-independent Central Asian states. (Harris 1993: 123) Only a month beforehand, however, he and other Xinjiang party and government leaders had engaged in the usual rhetoric about ethnic and religious “splittism.” (119) These two policies continued throughout Wang’s time in office, and economic development and trade with Central Asia have been tied with increasing intimacy to security cooperation. (Becquelin 2000: 70) Certainly, Wang Lequan also oversaw the push for strictly Mandarin-medium education for minorities in Xinjiang and supported it with ridiculous statements, most amusingly, “minority languages in Xinjiang contain only limited amounts of information.” (Dwyer 2005: 37) This policy, however, is part of a broader drive for standardization on the national level that has been going since the early 1990s. Certainly, Wang has paired these strict ethnic policies with Strike Hard campaigns. Xinjiang, then, has been on a tight leash, and policies on “culture” and “development” have gone hand-in-hand. So, it is difficult to say whether the appointment of Zhang, photogenic and media-savvy though he may be, will signal a real change in that way Xinjiang is managed.

Some citations:

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Xinjiang in the nineties” in The China Journal No. 44 (July 2000), pp. 65-90.

Becquelin, Nicolas. “Staged development in Xinjiang” in The China Quarterly No. 128 (July 2004), pp. 358-378.

Dwyer, Arienne M. The Xinjiang conflict: Uyghur identity, language policy, and political discourse. (Policy Studies 15). Washington: East-West Center, 2005.

Harris, Lillian Craig. “Xinjiang, Central Asia and the implications for China’s policy in the Islamic world” in The China Quarterly No. 133 (March 1993), pp. 111-129.

On 15 June 2009, around 10:30 AM local time, wrecking crews working on the “renewal” of Kashgar’s Old City demolished the Xanliq Madrasa. Eyewitnesses report that the medieval Islamic college, listed as an Autonomous Region-level protected cultural site, was knocked down without any protest or ceremony. According to speculation, the “royal” madrasa, apparently located in the yard of Kashgar No. 1 Elementary School, may have been torn down to make room for an athletic field.

Mahmud al-Kashgari, the 11^th-century scholar who compiled the Dīwānu l-Luġat al-Turk, is said to have studied at the Xanliq Madrasa in its heyday. In the 1860s, following a lengthy period of decline at the Xanliq Madrasa and in the Islamic scholarly community in East Turkestan in general, a wealthy merchant from Atush named Abdurusulbay funded its renovation. In exchange, the Xanliq Madrasa was to host primary schools funded by local luminaries. In 1883, it became home to the first experimental school in Xinjiang to mix Islamic and “scientific” curricula. This was founded by Abdurusulbay’s grandsons, Bawudunbay and Hüsäyinbay Musabayov. Although that school was short-lived, its successor, Atush’s Hüsäyniyä School, produced generations of students educated using modern methods. It also spawned a broad-reaching network of similar schools that played a major organizing role in pre-1949 social and political movements. Many of today’s Uyghur intelligentsia can trace their philosophical, political, and sometimes family roots back to the educational efforts that began at the Xanliq Madrasa. The ideology that arose from these movements still resonates today, often in opposition to official communism.

Judging from online message boards, reactions to the destruction have been a mix of righteous anger and self-criticism. Having heard that the Xanliq Madrasa was torn down, many Uyghurs have expressed resentment towards the PRC government. Those who have spoken out feel that the destruction is part of a government “plan” to destroy physical vestiges of Uyghur history and “rewrite” it. This is connected closely to a sense that the government favors Han Chinese development over Uyghur industry and Han Chinese historical sites over Uyghur ones. These feelings of ethnic repression and conspiracy are reinforced by the knowledge that the Xanliq Madrasa was recognized as a protected historical and cultural site, a status that, in this case, clearly afforded it no special status or opportunity for preservation. Many have invoked the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, when many such sites were torn down all across the PRC. Some look back even before 1949 to a historical disregard for Xinjiang culture on the part of “those foreigners” – the Han.

Others, while angered by what has happened, have expressed frustration over Uyghurs’ own lack of initiative in protecting what they see as their history. A frequent refrain is, “If only we had held a protest, maybe we could have stopped this.” Such complaints are typical of those gripes found on message boards all over the Web. Others have pointed out that the very lack of a protest shows that Uyghurs, while mourning for the squandered legacy of their “Grandpa Mahmud,” actually possess a very weak sense of history. Certainly, no one seems to have bothered photographing the madrasa before, during, or following its destruction, and no one on the Web seems to know anything about it, save for Mahmud al-Kashgari’s having studied there.

Perhaps the kindest conclusion we can draw is that there is no real institutional mechanism in place for dealing with ethnic and cultural grievances or, for that matter, for reporting problems of interest to a specifically ethnic audience. The Chinese system of regional autonomy does not allow for official organization by or on behalf of ethnic groups per se. While the Xanliq Madrasa, an institution that should resonate with all Xinjiang Muslims, has been claimed both by everyday Uyghurs and by official narratives specifically as an artifact of Uyghur history and culture, there was no clear way for someone who might have seen the demolition order to publicize it to Uyghurs. Even if word got out, there was no obvious way to organize on behalf of the madrasa’s preservation. All the same, any protest or other actions would certainly have been stunted by a pervasive feeling of helplessness where the preservation of non-Chinese historical sites is concerned, as well as a lack of leadership.

This plan to demolish 85% of the area of the Old City of Kashgar and to relocate its population, a project with “unusually strong backing” from the upper echelons of the central government, has actually been in motion for quite some time. The incentives mentioned in the NYT – which, frankly, are a pretty paltry sum even in Kashgar – have been offered before to Old City families whose houses have collapsed, sometimes as a result of the occasional earthquakes that do affect the region. (See last week’s quake in Qarghiliq.) To my knowledge, not many had taken up the government’s offer of a new apartment on the outskirts of town, and the city even helped some build new houses in the Old City. Back then, the city was making money charging admission to parts of the Old City, which I suspect comprises the 15% to be left behind or “rebuilt” as a sort of theme park or minority zoo.

Now, no more. The bulldozers have begun to roll. Like the rest of China’s loveliest old places, such as UNESCO World Heritage Site Pingyao, whatever is left of Old Kashgar will fall to excessive and thoughtless commercialization, a trend mourned today, ironically, on Xinhua’s Xinjiang front page. At least they have left Pingyao intact, with the addition of plumbing, which officials apparently consider an impossibility for Kashgar.

Before I say anything else, please note that there is some effort within the PRC to save what may be saved of Old Kashgar under the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, though they are more concerned with projects elsewhere.  See their appeal here.

There is little to be said that Josh at Far West China has not already said. Yes, it is silly to think that Uyghur heritage is made of mud and straw, and we know that the people of Xinjiang are stronger than any construction project. This is not the end.

This is, however, a crude and transparent attempt to forcefully remake a social order by altering the place that its members live in. The government of the PRC is overtly concerned with the spaces that people inhabit, both symbolic and physical, as tools of statecraft and social engineering. The crackdown on mäshräp in Ghulja in 1997 demonstrated the PRC’s fear of unauthorized social movements, of varieties of organization and association that it cannot read or understand. The state’s insistence on maintaining an institution of both administrative and spatial ethnic segregation in the educational system even while working to culturally and linguistically assimilate minorities into mainstream Chinese society demonstrates that it has trouble understanding social orders that it has not itself brought into being, social orders that it could perhaps otherwise co-opt for political purposes.

The Old City of Kashgar is not just a warren of beautiful architecture expressive of a certain culture of building, as the Western media emphasizes, but a malleable concrete manifestation of a tightly-woven and long-standing social order undergoing constant evolution. Its alleys and courtyards mark memories, both personal and collective, that build community in an internally coherent way. I do not think that this is necessarily a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism, as the Chinese state is likely to claim. Indeed, terrorism may spring more readily from the impersonal apartment blocks brought about by the same modernism that inspires fundamentalism. Rather, I think that this is a place where a separate community and perhaps even a burgeoning civil society to rival the influence of PRC officialdom persist. This is a place where old families with old connections carry memories reflected in the streetcorner mosques, places they pass every morning and evening. Old Kashgar is not full of culture – it is full of lives.

Over time, after these families move into their new apartments, with just enough room for two parents and one child, with water in the toilet, with no private family courtyard where a woman may go unveiled, they will rework the space to their own purposes. Anyone who has visited a non-Chinese family in Ürümchi has seen an example of this reconfiguration. Although the urban landscape of Ürümchi has seen the hand of state planning since as early as the 1890s, and urban planning in the 1930s largely determined the boundaries of today’s ethnic neighborhoods, the city’s residents continue to remake even the most carefully planned spaces. Old work units have become high- or low-class neighborhoods, and merchants at the Grand Bazaar build little tearooms in the back of their stalls. Perhaps because of the social atomization that apartment life brings, even when the built environment is meant to create a particular kind of community, no set of uniform apartment blocks remains as planned for long – see the city of New York, where asymmetrical neighborhoods have arisen from a perfectly “logical” grid. Inhabitation brings its own social order. This, too, shall pass.

As someone who loves old things, I am comforted by the knowledge that, even as the state and the corporations that support it impose a new and uniform geography, unexpected things that people find important tend to stay standing. Even where jungles are clear-cut in favor of pastures or coffee plantations, a scattering of old and sacred trees remains. In fact, right beside my own apartment block where I once lived in Ürümchi, in a complex razed and recreated by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, where everything was evenly paved and smelled of paint and plaster, there stood an old and wizened poplar tree. What once happened there, I wonder? Will this, then be the fate of Old Kashgar?

Suggested further reading:

Scott, James C. Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Bovingdon, Gardner. “The history of the history of Xinjiang” in Twentieth Century China 26, No. 2 (2001),

Bovingdon, Gardner and Näbijan Tursun. “Contested histories” in S. Frederick Starr, ed. Xinjiang: China’s Muslim borderland. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2004, pp. 353-374.

Dautcher, Jay. Down a narrow road: identity and masculinity in a Uyghur community in Xinjiang China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. See especially Part I on “space and place.”

Here is my translation, doubtless below par, of a recent interview with Rabiyä Qadir (Rebiya Kadeer, رابىيە قادىر) published on 6 May 2009 in the Italian Communist daily Il Manifesto.  Commentary follows.

Independence is impossible, we will struggle for autonomy

Rebiya Kadeer has lived her sixty years as though on a rollercoaster. The leader-in-exile of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang (a region of northwestern China, with a Muslim majority) has experienced long years of poverty and a brief, enormous wealth as a result of her trade throughout China; the honor of a seat in the National People’s Congress and the suffering of five years in police detention. These and other chapters of Kadeer’s life – three times a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize – are recounted in her biography, The Gentle Warrior [Die Himmelsstürmerin], just published by Corbaccio. A member of the Transnational Radical Party, on Monday and Tuesday, the “Mother of the Uyghurs,” as she likes to call herself, was in Rome, where she yesterday took part in a meeting of the Committee for Human Rights of the Chamber of Deputies. Over the next few days, she will address the assembly of the World Uyghur Congress, where her reconfirmation as President appears decided. We have discussed with Kadeer the strategies of the movement and the situation in Xinjiang, where the Uyghurs (about 8 million) complain of an attempt to assimilate them on the part of Beijing.

In the most recent stage of your life, you lead the World Uyghur Congress (WUC). What mark have you left while at the top of the umbrella of this Uyghur diaspora organization?

At the end of 2006, my objective had been to unite all of the Uyghurs dispersed across the four corners of the world, creating various associations that would be recognized in the World Uyghur Congress. These groups are making the world aware of the problems of our people and are busy promoting our language, history, and culture among the new generation forced to live far from East Turkestan (the name by which the Uyghurs call Xinjiang –ed.). And in the last three years, for the first time, our petitions were brought to the attention of the Parliament of the European Union, United States, and Germany, where I had the opportunity to speak.

Have you managed to maintain contacts with Xinjiang, despite the strict security measures enacted by the authorities in Beijing?

Since we have been branded a “terrorist organization” by China, it has been particularly difficult. Nevertheless, we have our ways. This is despite the fact that anyone who tries to access an internet page that talks about me or our organization will be treated as a “terrorist.”

Do you not believe that China’s economic development – which has brought construction and infrastructure to Xinjiang – is also to the benefit of the Uyghurs?

The only advantage in the development of East Turkestan is Beijing’s. While our natural resources – natural gas, petroleum, uranium, and others – are transferred to the Interior, we Uyghurs are excluded from the labor market and, through the prohibition of instruction in the Uyghur language, our culture will be wiped out. The economic marginalization of the Uyghurs has been achieved through the bingtuan [Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps – trans.], an enormous organization for military production – distributed mainly along the border with Central Asia – is intended to provide homes and work for millions of Han immigrants.

In your book, you recount the spontaneous protests staged during the 80s and 90s by the Uyghur population against the presence of Han colonizers. What about today?

Now, the only expressions of dissent that are allowed are those abroad. Since the opening up of the 80s and 90s, we have returned to a situation similar to that of the Cultural Revolution.

How are their relations with the Han, the ethnic majority in China?

They can have excellent relations with the Han, of understanding and of mutual respect. But the situation changed with the immigration to East Turkestan. Here we have made life impossible: The very fact of discussing politics, the problems of our people, brings the Uyghurs to be labeled as “separatists,” “Islamic fundamentalists,” “terrorists.”

Before the Olympics in August 2008, Beijing had distributed news of attacks in Xinjiang. What information do you have about these events?

They were staged. What we must stress is that[?], before the Games, 15 000 Uyghurs were arrested and locked up under accusations of “terrorism.” Thanks to the platform offered by the more important sports events, the Beijing authorities had manufactured a belief around the world that there were thousands of terrorists in East Turkestan, thus legitimizing further oppressive constraints on our people.

Last February, the United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while visiting Beijing, said: We will pressure for human rights, but, in these economic times, other things come first. Have you lost your chief ally?

Unfortunately, at this time, the economic crisis is at the top of the agenda for the great powers. But our pressure on the State Department has continued, and I trust that we can continue to receive the support that we need from Washington.

You protested because Islamabad has recently extradited to Beijing nine Uyghurs who trained in Pakistan to attack China. Doesn’t Beijing have the right to defend itself?

In recent years, Pakistan extradited 21 Uyghurs captured in Afghanistan to the United States. These people were then declared innocent by Washington: Some of them found asylum in Albania, and the others still await freedom.

Let us leave the alleged terrorists aside. Are you not afraid that, in the condition of isolation in which Xinjiang has been constrained, there may have prevailed among its people a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam?

Traditionally, the Uyghurs have had nothing to do with fundamentalism. Every day, however, in East Turkestan, some Uyghurs are arrested because they have been accused of being Islamic fundamentalists. For Beijing, a “terrorist” and an “integralist” [one who adheres to an extreme or traditionalist interpretation of Islam, rather pejorative; some prefer "active Islam" or "political Islam" – trans.] are the same thing. These are labels that are applied to hide their policies towards us: prohibition on the distribution of Uyghur literature, the forced transportation of Uyghur girls into the Chinese interior, birth control, limitations on Islamic practice, immigration of millions of Han and the lack of work for us, execution of political prisoners. Xinjiang is the only region of China where they still condone death sentence for political prisoners.

If China grants real autonomy, will you renounce the dream of an independent East Turkestan?

We demand freedom. Today, only a minority of our people hope for independence. We fight for a true autonomy, such as that demanded by the Dalai Lama for Tibet. And this autonomy can only be obtained within a more general process: that of the democratization of China, one that benefits the whole population, not only the Uyghurs. If they give us liberty, we would be prepared to live with the millions of Han settlers who have been sent to our homeland.

Some thoughts:

Rabiyä Qadir is a politician. Just as the Dalai Lama, Barack Obama, Wen Jiabao, Tarja Halonen, Abdullah Öcalan or anyone else in a position of leadership must satisfy the demands and play to the sentiments of a diverse community, so must she. Previously, it has been easier to dismiss her as a figurehead, an actor in political theater, prone to yelling and ranting and riling up her base of angry Uyghurs, pan-Turkists, sympathetic Westerners, etc. In this interview, Rabiyä Qadir comes across as a much savvier player. The talking points are broadly the same, but she makes some key concessions.

The most surprising is when she declares that the goal of her movement is not independence, but human rights and autonomy, not only for Uyghurs, but for all of China. This is not just an imitation of the policies of the Dalai Lama, who is an obvious point of comparison; that, I think, is a useful conceit for helping a European audience understand her movement and the situation in her homeland. Rather, this broader humanitarian goal has been a theme of Rabiyä Qadir’s for some time, albeit one not usually shared or emphasized by the broader Uyghur or East Turkestan movement. Early on, she framed herself not only as the “Mother of the Uyghurs,” taking a page from the early modern nationalist playbook digested fully by her cohorts abroad, but also as someone fighting for the rights of everyone in Xinjiang, even Han Chinese. The Uyghur independence movement, as I know it, is a fractious organization staffed by elites whose navel-gazing obsessions with self-definition prevent it from being taken seriously or achieving much internationally. If Rabiyä Qadir can successfully get them to become a much more broadly inclusive organization, then she may prove to be the leader the movement needs to gain real political traction. This pragmatic and less overtly hostile or racist stance gives the Uyghur rights/independence movement a much more mature face.

Rabiyä Qadir also dodges a sensitive question about the PRC’s right to defend itself. What would happen if she conceded that point? It would be of no help to Beijing, which has no interest in presenting her as an authority figure. It would certainly upset a certain section of her base, particularly actual supporters of Islamic fundamentalist and/or terrorist groups operating in or on behalf of East Turkestan. These are people who, I think, are not yet in the company of the broader, more ethno-nationalistic movement, but who could be drawn into it and away from violent action. This may account for her admonishment of the PRC for conflating terrorists and Islamic activists. I think, rather, that she did not want to say “No.” If Rabiyä Qadir claimed that the PRC has no right to defend itself, she would lose credibility as a mature leader and certainly provide fodder for PRC propagandists who, as she frequently reminds us, label her a “terrorist.”

Overall, I think we are seeing Rabiyä Qadir come into her own as a leader. At the very least, she is getting better advice on statesmanship. It is somewhat sad, I think, to see the Uyghur/East Turkestani movement give up on its central hope of a free and independent state, one that has always been imagined with lofty ideals in mind. This new vision, however, demonstrates that the movement is not entirely mired in the pre-1949 past, but that certain influential segments of it are willing to engage with present-day political realities.

In the autumn of 2004, upon the implementation of this program, which required all teachers to have attained a certain level of proficiency in Mandarin, many minority teachers lost their jobs. At the time, Xinjiang already had a shortage of teachers, and there have never been enough qualified teachers of Mandarin. These are problems reported in Chinese academic journals and books and the Xinjiang Daily. Late in 2005, and especially since 2006, the Xinjiang and national governments have made efforts to train non-Chinese teachers in Mandarin, usually by sending teachers selected by local ministries of education to major universities for 18-month courses and teaching practica. In light of this, the report on Xinhua’s site announcing plans to train 16,000 more “bilingual” teachers
over the next six years seems slightly disingenuous, since it emphasizes the preservation of “culture” along with the promotion of Mandarin as a national standard. However, the acknowledgement that this policy has a long way to go before it can be implemented properly is refreshing and shows a certain realism. The government is clearly interested in establishing Mandarin proficiency among the next generation of non-Han Xinjiang people, and the renewed investment in this program demonstrates that they are dedicated to a more permanent implementation to what was basically a poorly-considered, political policy.

Xinhua further report plans for 1,237 new bilingual kindergartens in accordance with the “National ethnic minority ‘bilingual’ kindergarten construction project”. Under this project, the government has also raised rural bilingual kindergarten teachers’ salaries to 800 RMB/month. The PRC has dedicated 3.8 billion RMB to this project, with 1.7 billion RMB going to bilingual kindergarten teacher training. The goal is to have 80% of Xinjiang kindergarten-age children in bilingual schools by 2012.

The bilingual education program will make a special effort in southern Xinjiang, where 1,111 pre-school teachers and 575 students are already in two-year programs, as part of the “Xinjiang Poor Areas Pre-School ‘Bilingual’ Teacher Cultivation and Training Plan”. It is estimated that 5,600 teachers will be trained under this plan over the next three years.

Late in January, Tianshan.net also published a lengthy article concerning a visit to a bilingual school in a village near Kashgar. The author’s observations, although strongly colored by clear political leanings and a sickly-sweet adulation for bilingual education, make for interesting reading. Among points of interest: Teachers of Mandarin include local teachers who have studied the language themselves, graduates of Mandarin courses, and students sent from universities for practica. In bilingual kindergarten classes for children with the least Mandarin language, there are two teachers, one who speaks in Mandarin, and another who translates. The article pays special attention to the opportunity some Xinjiang students have to study in high schools in the interior of the country, an experience that many find more alienating than enlightening. (For more on Xinjiang students in the Interior, see a recent book by a Chinese author… the title escapes me.)

Recently, the following post, once found at this address, was passed on to me by a friend. It seems to have circulated on the Web since perhaps early November. It is a lengthy and impassioned plea for, at the very least, some respect and hope for the people of Xinjiang of all stripes, who, the author argues, have endured countless hardships for the benefit of their fellow citizens in the East. The author expresses despair at the dashed hopes of the Opening Up of the West and anger at the cancer left by atomic bomb tests in Lop Nor.

The whole document has a feeling of the old Yip Harburg song, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” “Once I built a railroad…”

My English translation is a little hurried. Comments are welcome.

Also, does anyone else think that the author must be from Korla?

今天的十大头条： 新疆人，对不起，谢谢你

Today’s Top Ten Leading Stories: Xinjiang People, I’m Sorry, Thank You

对不起，谢谢你
新疆的石油运走了，
新疆的天然气运走了，
新疆的棉花运走了，
新疆的钾盐运走了，
新疆的黄金运走了，
新疆的和田玉运走了
……

I’m sorry, thank you

Xinjiang’s oil was transported away,

Xinjiang’s natural gas was transported away,

Xinjiang’s cotton was transported away,

Xinjiang’s leopoldite was transported away,

Xinjiang’s gold was transported away,

Xinjiang’s Khotan jade was transported away

…

原子弹却降临在新疆了
……

The atomic bomb was indeed tested in Xinjiang

…

新疆，一百六十万平方公里的土地，一千九百万各族人民.我们世世代代生活在那片土地
上.我们骄傲，我们自豪.没有理由，就因为那片土地叫新疆.

Xinjiang, an area of 1 600 000 square kilometers, 19 000 000 people of every ethnic group. We have lived on that patch of earth for generations. We are proud, we feel proud. There is no reason, just that that patch of earth is called Xinjiang.

这片占祖国六分之一版图的土地，承载着什么，又蕴藏着什么.这里有四十七个民族的儿
女，或耕耘，或牧羊，或买卖，或采矿.千年的腥风血雨，早已被坎儿井的清清流水洗得
干干净净；千年的历史沧桑，早已被天山上的雪莲花薰陶得浓郁幽香.新疆人，无论什么
民族什么宗教信仰，都渴望自己的家乡能够拥有平等的发展机会与空间.

This patch of earth that occupies one-sixth of the area of our ancestral country, what does it contain, and what does it hide. Here there are the sons and daughters of forty-seven minzu, working the fields, or shepherding sheep, or buying and selling, or mining. One thousand years of bloody history have long since been washed clean by the clear flowing waters of the karez; one thousand years of great historical changed have long since been purged by the snow lotuses and Coumarouna odorata of the Tianshan until they are sweetly fragrant. Xinjiang people, no matter what their minzu or religious beliefs, all hope that their home can have the opportunity and time to develop fairly.

西部大开发，一个曾经让我们振奋不已的口号.一时间，就连塔克拉玛干边缘的万年荒山
上，也用白色的石头拼出了大字：西部大开发，新疆是重点，巴州要大干！

The Great Opening Up of the West, a slogan that once endlessly inspired us. At one time, even upon the mountains around the edge of the Täklimakan, uncultivated for untold ages, we used white stones to spell out big characters: The Great Opening Up of the West, Xinjiang is the focus, Bazhou will make a big effort!

曾经告诉过我们，创世未有的发展机遇降临在了我们的头上；曾经告诉过我们，克服与忍
受暂时的损失与困难，因为长远的幸福是属于我们的；曾经告诉过我们，资源埋在地下永
远变不了金钱；曾经告诉过我们，大型基础设施建设会带动新疆人的就业；曾经告诉过我
们，长长的管子把石油天然气送到了内地，长长的管子还会将大把大把的税收送到新疆人
的手中……

Once they told us, an opportunity for development the likes of which the world had never seen had fallen on our heads; once they told us, endure and withstand temporary loss and hardship, because long-term fortune belonged to us; once they told us, resources buried underground would never become money; once they told us, the construction of large-scale basic-level facilities would spur the employment of Xinjiang people; once they told us, long pipes would take oil and natural gas to the Interior, long pipes might still bring piles of tax revenues to Xinjiang people’s hands…

曾经……

Once…

新疆是一个什么样的地方？涓涓细流会将天山与昆仑山的雪水送到牧区农场，一眼望不到
边的大草原，遍布着牛羊……新疆，就是这样一个地方，绿洲农业，咱不靠天吃饭，旱涝
保收；高山草甸牧业，咱不愁一个月不下雨草场就会旱死.新疆没有发生过饥荒，三年自
然灾害时期，内地人就是扒在火车车厢底下也要来新疆，就算是在星星峡被当作盲流拦住
遣返回原籍，也要在半道上跳下火车徒步进新疆.新疆，就是这样，那里有土地，那里有
雪水，那里，有希望.

What kind of place is Xinjiang? Brooks and streams may carry the meltwaters of the Tianshan and Kunlun Mountains to pastures and fields, a grassland the edge of which the naked eye cannot see, covered in cows and sheep… Xinjiang, it’s just this kind of place. Oasis agriculture, we don’t depend on Heaven to eat, the harvest is protected through draught and flood. Animal husbandry in the mountain grasslands, we don’t worry if the ranges dry out after a month without rain. Xinjiang has never had a famine, a three-year period of natural disasters. People from the Interior even want to cling to the bottoms of train cars to come to Xinjiang. Even treated in the Starry Gorge [a gorge in the Hexi Corridor] as aimless migrants, barred, and made to return to their place of origin, they want to jump out of the train on the way and walk into Xinjiang. Xinjiang, it’s like this. There is land there, there is meltwater, there is hope.

我们觉得自己生活得很幸福.

We felt that we lived happily.

可是，突然有一天，人家告诉我们，人家来帮咱们了，咱们的生活会更好更好了！这个时
候，我们心存感激，我们同样被从那种平静的生活中唤起而后振奋，因为我们被告知
，会有更大的希望！

But, suddenly one day, someone told us, there’s someone coming to help us, our life is going to be better, better! At this time, we felt appreciative. We, too, were stirred up and excited out of that peaceful and tranquil kind of life of ours, because we were signaled, we may have even more hope!

……

…

一晃八年了.

All of a sudden, eight years passed.

当初为我们憧憬过美好蓝图的人啊，你们在哪儿呢？

Those of you who looked forward to a beautiful blueprint for us, where are you?

请来看看我们的新疆.

Please come and look at our Xinjiang.

西部大开发，究竟是什么？

The Great Opening Up of the West, what is it really?

资源，包括那些具有战略意义的能源，被那条长长的管子送到了沿海地区.这，我们不计
较.可是我们又得到了什么？就业机会吗？看看那些从事新疆能源开发的企业，不都是内
地的大型企业吗？咱们新疆人的孩子，又何曾享受过这样的就业机会.西安石油学院毕业
的新疆孩子，想要进新疆的石油单位工作那是难上加难.因为这些待遇优厚的工作岗位，
全部都被这些内地企业自身的员工所占据.你可以随便去一家石油石化单位听听，遍地北
京口音、东北口音、山东口音，就是没有新疆口音.那咱们新疆的孩子能在石油单位找到
工作吗？不是不可以，而且还基本专业对口：加油站给汽车加油.带动相关产业的发展吗
？要知道，西气东输的管道，是在宝鸡生产的.高水准的生活吗？你知道在上海一方天然
气是多少钱吗？一块二；你知道在新疆一方天然气是多少钱吗？一块二毛五.而你知道新
疆人的工资水准是多少吗？一个教龄三十年的中教高级教师，月薪不过两千五，这还是
06年加薪后的工资；一个五十岁的正厅级干部，月薪加补贴不过三千块.那么普通老百姓
呢？工人、农民、一般公务员呢？我们在消化着巨大的剪刀差，我们在默默无闻得为东部
的大发展埋单.

Resources, including those power sources which hold a military significance, have been taken away by those long, long tubes to the coastal regions. This, we don’t bicker about. But what have we then received? Employment opportunities? Look at those enterprises that handle the exploitation of Xinjiang’s resources, aren’t they all big companies from the Interior? The children of we Xinjiang people, how then have they enjoyed these kinds of employment opportunities[?] Xinjiang kids who graduate from Xi’an Oil Institute, if they want to enter a Xinjiang oil work unit, that’s harder than hard. Because these generously-paying work positions, all of them have been taken by those big companies from the Interior’s own employees. You can go to any oil work unit and have a listen, it’s all Beijing accents, North-Eastern accents, Shandong accents, but there are no Xinjiang accents. So can kids from our Xinjiang find work in an oil work unit? It’s not that they may not, and what’s more they are proficient in the most basic profession: putting gas in cars at gas stations. Does this spur the growth of related industries? You have to know, the pipe that take Western gas to the East, this was built in Baoji [a city in Shaanxi with an amusing name]. And a high standard of living? Do you know how much a cubic meter of natural gas costs in Shanghai? 1.2 RMB. Do you know how much a cubic meter of natural gas costs in Xinjiang? 1.25 RMB. And do you know how much the standard salary of a Xinjiang person is? A high-level middle-school teacher with thirty years’ experience, his or her monthly salary is not above 2500, and this is after the pay raise in ’06. A fifty-year-old main-office-level [正厅级?] cadre, his or her monthly salary is not above 3000 RMB. So what about regular everyday people? Workers, peasants, normal service personnel? We are digesting an enormous disparity. Unknown to the public, we are paying the bill for the great development of the East.

乌鲁木齐与库尔勒，一北一南，南北疆的领头城市.让我们来听听这两个城市老百姓的故
事.

Ürümchi and Korla, one in the South, one in the North, the leading cities of North and South Xinjiang. Let us listen to the stories of the everyday people of these two cities.

乌鲁木齐，一个人口二百万的大城市，却拥有着一个长期困扰老百姓生活的难题：打车难
.上下班的高峰期，老百姓往往站在零下二十多度的严寒里，半个小时打不上一辆车.你要
问出租车都到哪儿去了？问一百位司机九十九个都会告诉你：加气站排队加气呢！乌鲁木
齐的出租车烧液化气，新疆是产油的地方，怎么会缺液化气呢？独山子石化的同志们会耐
心的告诉你：新疆同胞们，咱们忍忍吧，新疆的石油和天然气得保证西气东输和内地大城
市用油的需要……当北京的出租车换上了大排量的伊兰特时，当上海居民的厨房里冒出了
纯蓝的灶火时，请想想，生产石油与天然气的新疆人民，还在寒风里站着；新疆的司机，
还排在一眼望不到头的长队里焦急的等待，而这些司机，也得吃饭也得买房也得供孩子上
学，他们本来可以拉活的时间，白白的耗在了等待上……

Ürümchi, a city with a population of 2 000 000 [actually around 3 500 000, now], indeed has a difficult long-term problem for the lives of everyday people: it’s hard to get a cab. At rush hour when people get on and off work, everyday people often stand in the more-than-negative-twenty-degrees bitter cold. Even after half an hour, they cannot get a cab. Want to ask where the cabs have gone? Ask one hundred drivers and ninety-nine will tell you: they’re in line at the gas station to get gas! The cabs of Ürümchi have been converted to run on natural gas, but Xinjiang is a place that produces oil, so why convert them to run on natural gas? The comrades at Dushanzi Petroleum will patiently tell you: Xinjiang siblings, let’s sit tight, eh? Xinjiang’s oil and natural gas have to guarantee the transportation of Western gas to the East and the oil-use needs of the big cities in the Interior… When the taxis of Beijing are traded for great lines of Elantras, when in the kitchens of Shanghai a pure blue stove-flame is lit, please think, the people of Xinjiang who manufacture oil and natural gas are still standing in the bitter wind. Xinjiang’s drivers are still waiting impatiently in a line, the end of which cannot be seen, and these drivers, they also have to eat and give their children schooling. When they could be making a living, they are wasting their time pointlessly waiting…

库尔勒，一个新兴的石油城市，南疆经济的桥头堡，塔里木油田指挥部所在地.石油人来
了，我们端着哈达欢迎您！指挥部建设需要用地，可以！您知道现在塔里木油田指挥部的
所在地过去是什么吗？是上千亩的良田，是库尔勒的各族人民世世代代耕作的良田.祖国
需要，石油人需要，我们无怨无悔，献出了这片沃土.可是，时至今日，塔指的一栋栋高
楼大厦建起来了，五星级公寓建起来了，塔里木油田的一口口油井喷油了，塔里木大气田
的天然气送到东方了，有谁想过那些失去土地的农民现在在干什么？那么请到库尔勒的街
头看看吧.扫大街的环卫工人，清一色的少数民族职工，问问他们原来是干什么的？他们
会遥望一片繁华的塔里木油田指挥部，告诉你，那里曾是我的家.这还是解决了就业的，
那些数以千计的失去土地的农民呢？他们没有技术没有知识，库尔勒的环卫战线也不可能
安排那么多的人.请到库尔勒河的葵花桥头看看吧.每天早晨，都有黑压压一片的壮劳
力，集中在这里，被需要临时工的老板们挑来挑去，幸运的，被挑中，干一天临时工，挣
些前，第二天早晨继续到这里来撞运气；不幸的，过了中午还没有被挑走，就只好回家饿
肚子，祈祷真主明天能赐给他一个临时工的机会……

Korla, an up-and-coming oil city, the bridgehead of the Southern Xinjiang economy, the place of the headquarters of Tarim Oilfields. The oil men came, we welcomed you with qadaqs! [a blue scarf given by Mongols to guests] The Headquarters needed land to be constructed, sure! Do you know what the current location of the Headquarters used to be? It was thousands of mu of good farmland, the good farmland worked by generations of the people of Korla of all kinds. The ancestral countries needs, the oil men need. We didn’t complain or regret. We gave up this patch of fertile land. But, up until the present day, the big buildings and towers of the Tarim Oilfields Headquarters were built, five-star apartments were built, the oil wells of the Tarim oilfields spurted oil, and the natural gas of the Tarim natural gas fields was sent to the East. Has anyone thought of what those people who lost their land are doing now? Then please go to the streets of Korla and have a look. The sanitation workers who sweep the streets, all of them minority workers, ask them, what did they used to do? They may look at the glorious Tarim Oilfields Headquarters in the distance and tell you, that was once my home. Is this solving the employment problem, those thousands of workers who lost their land? They have neither craft nor knowledge, nor can Korla’s Sanitation Front arrange so many people. Please go to the head of the Kuihua Bridge over the Korla River and have a look. Every day in the early morning, there are endless and dense mobs of strong laborers. They concentrate there, picked out by bosses in need of temporary labor. The lucky ones, picked out, do a day of temporary work, earn some money, and, on the next day, return here to try their luck. The unlucky ones, who have not been picked out by after noon, have to go home hungry and pray that, tomorrow, they will be granted a temporary work opportunity.

这还只是能源.其他资源呢？黄金呢？钾盐呢？玉石呢？

This is all still just energy. What about other resources? Gold? Leopoldite? Jade?

大规模的开发，富起来的到底是谁？

Large-scale exploitation, who’s really getting rich?

西部大开发，过了八年了，我们为什么只看到一个个资源项目上马，却很少看到科教文化
卫生人才方面的扶持与投资？要开发一个地区，资源是一条路；可是资源开采完了呢？我
们还能拥有什么？没有科教与人才的积累，到底还有多大的发展空间？

The Great Opening Up of the West, it’s been eight years. Why have we only seen a few resource projects get going, but not seen any assistance or investment in terms of popular science, culture, sanitation, or training? In order to open up a region, resources are one road, but what about when the resources are all exploited up? What can we have? Without an accumulation of popular science and talented people, how much room is there then for development?

你可曾知道，堂堂新疆大学历史系的学生们在校图书馆里竟然找不到《万历十五年》这样
非常普遍的书籍？你可曾知道，堂堂华夏第一州–巴音郭楞蒙古自治州，竟然没有一所
正规的图书馆、博物馆？大城市如此，小城市与农村又是怎样？西部大开发，为什么我们
很少见到这样的项目与投资？

Are you aware that the students of the great Xinjiang University’s History Department cannot find extremely common books like Wanli Shiwu Nian in their library? Are you aware that the great First Prefecture in China, Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture, still has not a single regular library or museum? Big cities are like this, so what can small cities and villages be like? The Great Opening Up of the West, why do we so rarely see projects and investment like this?

新疆人，老实巴交的新疆人，被内地人动不动就称作野蛮人的新疆人……就这样默默无闻
的承受着一切……换个角度思考，如果北京的出租车司机成天排队加不上油，会是怎么样
？如果山东的农民成批成批的失去土地，就像库尔勒的农民那样，还会不会如此沉默的承
受一切？

Xinjiang people, honest Xinjiang people, Xinjiang people who cannot move for the Interior people are who are called barbarous… Unbeknownst, they have borne all of this… Thinking about it from another perspective, if Beijing’s taxi drivers were in line all day and could not get gas, what would it be like? If the peasants of Shandong lost their land bit by bit, just like the peasants of Korla, would they still quietly bear all of this?

前两天，把原子弹空投到日本领土的美军飞行员去世了.又一次引发出关于核武器的大规
模讨论.在一次次的讨论中，你们可曾想过，在遥远的罗布泊，曾经露天爆炸过原子弹？
在美丽的孔雀河－塔里木河流域，曾经无数次的进行过地下核试验？当看到新疆刮起沙尘
暴的新闻后，你们第一个想到的肯定是：新疆那个荒凉的地方……有谁想过，从罗布泊刮
来的沙尘暴，会给世世代代居住在那里的老百姓吹来什么？

Two days ago, the American pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb on Japanese soil passed away. [The pilot, Paul Tibbets, died on 1 November 2007, dating this document to perhaps 3 November.] This once again attracted a large-scale discussion of atomic weapons. In the course of one such discussion, did you perhaps think how, in distant Lop Nor, an atomic bomb was once tested in the open? How, in the beautiful Kongque River – Tarim River Basin, there were once conducted countless underground nuclear tests? After seeing the news of the sand storms in Xinjiang, what you first thought was certainly: Xinjiang, that desolate place… Who thought, the sands that storm from Lop Nor, what will they blow to generations of people who live in that place?

一个个身边的亲友倒下了……问问原因，不是肺癌就是食道癌.新疆是著名的长寿之乡，
祖祖辈辈生活在辽阔农村的百姓，呼吸着新鲜空气，吃着五谷杂粮，周围没有任何现代工
业的痕迹，怎么会一个又一个的患上癌症呢？你们可曾知道，就在罗布泊地区的巴音郭楞
蒙古自治州，进入八九十年代以来，已经成为癌症重灾区.胡总去探望艾滋病人了，温总
去河南艾滋病村了，这是时代的进步，这是party和go-vern-ment的关怀.可是，一个因为
长期受到核辐射而成为癌症重灾区的地区，却为何从来没有被报道过，从来没有人正面回
答这个问题？

Some close friend or relative has fallen… You ask the reason, and, if it’s not lung cancer, it’s esophageal cancer. Xinjiang is a place of famed longevity, and the generations of everyday people that live in the expansive villages, breathing fresh air, eating fresh grain, with no traces of modern industry around them, how does one after another get cancer? As you may know, in Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture in the area of Lop Nor, since the beginning of the eighties or nineties, it has already become a cancer disaster area. President Hu always goes to visit AIDS patients, Premier Wen goes to AIDS Village in Henan. This is a generational improvement, this is the party and go-vern-ment showing they care. But, a place that has long received nuclear radiation and become a cancer disaster area, but why has it never been reported, why can no one ever answer this question directly?

一次核试验，中国人民从此站起来了，不用受纸老虎的威胁了；可是千千万万个无辜又无
知的新疆人却倒下了，可悲的是，就连他们自己，也并不知道这究竟是为了什么，更何况
他人？

One atomic test. The people of China from this point on stood up. They no longer had to accept the menace of the paper tiger. But countless poor and ignorant Xinjiang people fell. What is lamentable is that, even they themselves did not know why this was, much less anyone else?

新疆的石油运走了，
新疆的天然气运走了，
新疆的棉花运走了，
新疆的钾盐运走了，
新疆的黄金运走了，
新疆的和田玉运走了
……

Xinjiang’s oil was transported away,

Xinjiang’s natural gas was transported away,

Xinjiang’s cotton was transported away,

Xinjiang’s leopoldite was transported away,

Xinjiang’s gold was transported away,

Xinjiang’s Khotan jade was transported away

…

原子弹却降临在新疆了
……

The atomic bomb was indeed dropped in Xinjiang

…

新疆，是祖国版图不可分割的一部分；新疆人，是十三亿中国人的一部分.我们渴望祖国
的富强，我们祝福兄弟省市人民的富足，但，我们也是人，我们也有不高的要求：新疆与
新疆人，能够得到公正与公平的发展机遇，能够从这片土地所赐予我们的宝藏中得到实惠
的利益，能够有一个更为美好的明天，和祖国人民一样，在资源枯竭之后，仍然留有希望
.

Xinjiang, it is an inseparable part of the map of the ancestral country; Xinjiang people, they are part of the 1.3 billion Chinese people. We hope for the fortune and strength of the ancestral country. We congratulate the people of our brother provinces and cities on their wealth. However, we are also people. We also have requirements that are not high: Xinjiang and Xinjiang people, if they are able to receive an equitable and fair opportunity for development, if they can receive some practical benefit from the treasures of ours that are taken from this patch of land, if they can have a better tomorrow, as the people of the ancestral country, and after the resources are exhausted, yet leave behind a little hope.

朋友们，无论你在祖国的何处，当你享受这阳光下的和平的时候，请你想想那些为祖国的
和平而无知的承受着原子辐射的新疆人，对他们说一声：对不起……

Friends, no matter where you are in the ancestral country, when you share in this peace in the sunlight, please think of those Xinjiang people who, unbeknownst, for the peace of the ancestral country received radiation from the atomic bomb, and say to them, I’m sorry…

朋友们，无论你在祖国的何处，当你享受充足的能源供应与高速经济发展带来的实惠的时
候，请想想那些为另一部分人先富起来而默默承受着所有阵痛的新疆人，收起曾经对新疆
人的种种歧视与不屑，收起那些”援助新疆，支援边疆”得了便宜还卖乖的”豪言壮语”，对
他们说一句：谢谢你！

Friends, no matter where you are in the ancestral country, when you share in the practical benefit that comes from the sufficient provision of resources and the high speed of economic development, please think of those Xinjiang people who, unbeknownst, endure pains for another group of people to become wealthy first. To those who have received all kinds of discrimination and disdain against Xinjiang, who have been cheated and bamboozled by the “grandiloquence” of phrases like “assist Xinjiang, support Xinjiang”, say to them, thank you!

我们的要求并不高，一千九百万新疆人民，在无力改变现状与全局时，在仍然需要长时间
为东部的发展做出牺牲时，只需要得到别人真诚的尊重，只想听到一句诚心的：

Our requirements are not very high. 19 000 000 people, at a time when they are powerless to change the present and overall situation, at a time when they still need to sacrifice for a long time for the development of the East, only need to receive others’ sincere respect. They only need to hear one sincere:

新疆人，对不起，谢谢你.

Xinjiang people, I’m sorry, thank you.

Nayonggang – Untitled (无题)

So, I was pleasantly surprised when I stopped by the Xinjiang Museum on Beijing Bei Lu in Ürümchi on the first day of “融” róng, a new exhibition of paintings and sculptures by twenty-eight current Xinjiang artists at the Xinjiang Museum’s newly-opened Artist Base (艺术家基地), a free exhibition space funded and maintained by the Xinjiang Culture Office. The exhibition was put together by Zhuoya (卓娅), one of the more interesting artists showing her work, as a way to bring more recognition to local artists with unique ideas and styles. The exhibition is meant as an open rejection of the reproduction of particular styles in a formal way (as well as of “false uniqueness”) and of the competition and meritocracy that has grown up around art. Indeed, many of the artists are either untrained or incompletely formally trained or come from the edges of society; they include several self-employed individuals, one nomad, and many artists who, despite years of production, have never before shown their work. Those with the shortest résumés had the most interesting pieces. Interestingly, I was told at the exhibition that the Head of the Culture Office is especially forward-thinking and interesting in promoting unique and edgy artwork. Perhaps we will see more of this in the near future?

Zhuoya – Seasons of Love (爱之季节)

Although the original theme (and title) of the show is “fusion”, specifically that of the “crossroads” that is Xinjiang, I think “icons” would fall rather closer to the mark. All of the really interesting artists (most of whom happen to be Mongols) focus, in some way, on almost deific representations of humans or animals. Take, for example, the overtly feminine spirits of Zhuoya’s own work, women who peer, content, from their rightful place in the pantheon. In a region where any artistic depictions of women are necessarily constrained by the inevitable “ethnic dress”, I was happy to see that even the “Mongol goddess” was transcendent. And what are we to make of the two young women we see through a keyhole-like portrait, whispering to each other’s confidence? You can see, at right, one of a series of “Seasons of Love” (爱之季节) – I wonder what the other three are like? (The photo, by the way, does not do it justice.)

One of Mengkebayier’s (孟克巴依尔) paintings, “Red’s Melody” (红色的旋律), seems to be in harmony with Zhuoya’s work. It depicts, to my mind, a standard restaurant-wall scene of a mäshräp, but one infused with the spirit, not of national history and long-dead poets, but of a young woman unthinkingly lighting the men around her on fire, transforming them with her dance. As she twirls, carelessly open-mouthed, and as the men around her are twisted and blinded, a single young woman falls gently through her spirit trail.

Zhu Dong – Delicious (美味)

I was momentarily turned off by the work of Zhu Dong (朱东) until I saw it for what it was. The artist has painted himself into “Delicious” (美味), a triptych of Uyghur stereotypes, each sitting on a sack of thorns. I cannot help but read it as social commentary.

Caiwugejiafu (才吾格加甫) produced some interesting bronze reworkings of classic Mongol images – the head of a warrior, a running horse. Particularly eye-catching was a horse on lame, unbending pencil legs.

The work of Zhang Pengfei (张鹏飞), a Xinjiang artist currently resident in Guangzhou, was very eye-catching. His folk-arty animal sculptures (“Cow Head” (牛头)) are playful and fun, which makes a wonderful contrast to the stultifying formality and seriousness of even experimental art.

Zhang Pengfei – Cow Head (牛头)

Nayonggang’s (那永刚) “Untitled” (pictured at top) forms the centerpiece of the show. This sculpture of a caged and angry head, carved from a single piece of wood and a carefully-honed collection of rough branches, seems to depict an individual struggling against self-imposed constraints. It sits on a pedestal that would otherwise be unobtrusive, daring you to look at it. This was the focus on discussion among attendees.

Although the show intrigued me more than any art exhibition I have seen in China in some time, this is not to say that it is without its weak points. The inclusion of twenty-eight artists in a small exhibition space means that no one has much room to show off their range, nor are most of the works presented especially impressive. The majority consist of the usual sweeping pastoral scenes, done in a blandly realist style, that dominate Xinjiang art. There are some forays into cubism, pop art, and hyperrealism, as well as some experimental work with calligraphy, but none of it seems especially unique. (I should give a nod, at least, to Dong Jian’s (董建) impression of an angry Georgia O’Keeffe.) I do believe that this may have been a result of the over-inclusive scope of the show, which, by limiting display space, forced artists to present not their best work, but their most “representative”. This crowdedness is a common problem, it seems, at art exhibitions in China. There were paintings on display by Dabuxilite, for example, whose earlier exhibition we reviewed here back in March. However, none of the paintings most favored as his (quite successful) previous exhibition were shown at Artist Base.

The majority of contemporary Chinese art, as I see it, still looks more like illustration than art, something you would see in a book or an advertisement. It is often blatant. I am attracted to the more iconic images at this exhibition because they seem transcendent, as though they are not just depictions of a standardized form, but representations of eternal forms in a different kind of group psychology, a different vision of an understandable and fluid world. To paraphrase some of the artists presenting their work, this sort of art is more a process of discovery than of depiction, a slow journey through one’s own unique world, incidentally making it communicable. I like that.

(All photographs of paintings were originally published in the freely-available exhibition program. They are used with permission. They are also scanned very poorly.)

I should begin this review of Dr. Äsät Sulayman’s recent work, Özlük wä Kimlik, with a note on the translation of the title. Both özlük and kimlik can be translated, in a sense, as “identity”, which is the focus of the book: the experiences and formation of group and individual identity. Özlük, translatable as “selfhood” or “individuality”, carries a strong sense of self-reflection – it indicates an individual’s concept of his or herself. Kimlik, a term used for one’s public identity, including his or her official identity card, could be translated literally as “who-ness” – it is the identity of a person in reference to his or her surroundings and community. The subtitle, in Uyghur, translates as “looking at the depths of Central Asia from Europe’s shores”.

We can consider the book in these terms. Özlük wä Kimlik is, first of all, a personal memoir of the year Dr. Äsät (Eset) Sulayman, a professor at Xinjiang University and an influential intellectual voice, spent at Stockholm University in Sweden, where he studied, taught, and worked. While living there as an immigrant, away from his family and native land, he spent several months in the Royal Archives of Sweden and the archives of Stockholm University, cataloging the records of Swedish missionaries who operated in Xinjiang from 1892 through the late 1930′s, records previously left nearly untouched by researchers. This forms the other half of the book, detailing the lives of these missionaries and discussing the ways in which their activities, especially in the fields of printing and education, altered the evolution of Uyghur society.

With evidence from these archive materials, Äsät Sulayman essentially argues that the introduction of printing technology to Xinjiang, coupled with the missionaries’ focus on primary education, aided the formation of a Uyghur intellectual class, as well as providing a foreign, Christian foil for an evolving local Turkic Muslim identity. He has since returned to this argument in a more focused academic work (also in Uyghur)¹. Apart from proselytizing largely unreceptive natives, many of whom received a “modern” or “scientific” education in their schools, the missionaries operated the only press in the region until 1938, producing texts beyond their own evangelical purposes, including some of the earliest printed works in Turki. Perhaps more importantly to the formation, codification, and promotion of a modern Uyghur language, the press produced early textbooks (including alphabet books) and grammars of “Altä Shähär Turki”. The story of Swedish or Scandinavian involvement in Xinjiang, dating back to the eighteenth century, forms the nominal backbone of the book, though it hardly makes its presence known in the text. True, Dr. Sulayman presents information about Swedish people in Xinjiang and analyzes the effects of their presence and activities, but, in terms of the book’s composition, the “cultural dialogue between Inner Asia and Scandinavia” is more of a general theme, incidental to the narrative, than it is a force to order that narrative or any argument.

Äsät Sulayman viewed the history he rediscovered through the eyes of an outsider in a strange land. It is his memories of life in Sweden that form the bulk of the book and that bring him to his final conclusions. His descriptions of the deepening Swedish winter and the people he encountered among the “fluttering” snowflakes become somewhat repetitive, but they are effective in framing the commonality he felt with other immigrants, even strangers, as well as with the Swedish, whose “national character” he spends a very long chapter describing and reassessing. He recounts, for example, his repeated need to explain where he is from, an experience common to Uyghurs who go abroad. How does one account for a Uyghur face and a Chinese passport? This constant defense of his own identity, as for many people who have lived abroad, causes him to reevaluate and reflect on it outside of the ever-present Chinese system of ethnic classification.

This, I believe, is Äsät Sulayman’s main point: Uyghur identity and history can be considered outside of the Chinese context. His points of cultural and historical comparison are located in Sweden and Xinjiang, respectively. When he speaks of his “homeland”, he clearly means “Xinjiang”, hardly making mention of China. Indeed, it seems that his natural place in Sweden’s international community is among Uzbeks and other Central Asians. He places Uyghur history and identity on the same level of importance as those of any other ethnic group or nation. His discussion of relative population size favorably compares the Uyghur population to that of most European countries, as does his contrast of the size of different language communities. The Uyghur community, in this narrative, does not simply generate or form within its test tube autonomous region. Rather, it is acted upon by and acts upon non-Chinese outsiders. This is, if not a direct challenge to or rejection of officially-approved accounts of Uyghur history and identity, a major paradigm shift in the more popular literature on ethnicity in China. In this mode, however, it remains very modernist in its outlook, never casting doubt on the naturalness or reality of ethnonational communities, no matter how they may be constructed. This is, I think, part of the book’s appeal to its target audience of at least moderately educated Uyghurs: it changes their ethnic world view in a way still seems logical and natural.

Özlük wä Kimlik, given its wide readership and popularity in the Uyghur intellectual world, has already changed and will continue to affect at least some of its readers’ attitudes towards the question of Uyghur ethnic identity. Äsät Sulayman, himself an historian of literature, recognizes and thinks in terms of intellectual, idealist history. This leads him, it seems, to begin to reassess accepted ethnonational narratives in China, which are overwhelmingly Marxist-materialist. The ideas of identity that he puts forth in this work, as well as its derivative papers, remind me a great deal of the theories of Frederick Barth, while his emphasis on print culture hints of Benedict Anderson, although he does not reference them – nor has he, to my knowledge, read them. This may be the book’s greatest contribution: a diversification of the popular discourse of Uyghur identity, a discourse that is currently primarily concerned, even among independence-minded Uyghurs, with elaborating the concrete trans-historical characteristics of a putative ethnonational group as defined by a state ethnological apparatus. It is, in a sense, a sign of a natural post-modern shift in thought arising from an awareness of and interest in history and literature, which are gaining more acceptance and intellectual freedom, along with anthropology, as fields of inquiry. Furthermore, this is a perspective that comes from (or appears to come from) within a group that regards itself as marginal, though the rejection of this marginal status seems to be a goal of Sulayman’s writing.

This perspective seems to be reinforced by the couching of intellectual inquiry within the structure of a personal narrative. This is reminiscent of a very common strategy for Uyghur writers who want to communicate about history – history is novelized (as in Iz, Oyghanghan Zemin, Ana Yurt, and other books) and, thus, protected from certain kinds of censorship. Äsät Sulayman is doing the same here, I think, with experimental ideas about history and identity that are not otherwise ready for academia.

Özlük wä Kimlik: Yawropa Qirghaqliridin Märkiziy Asiya Chongqurluqlirigha Qarap is an interesting piece of writing by any measure, as well as a possibly very important and influential work in the Uyghur intellectual work. Indeed, its place as a classic is assured, and not just by Dr. Äsät Sulayman’s well-established reputation – the book’s first and second printings, totaling several thousand copies, both sold out quickly, and the book is now a hard-sought favorite in Ürümchi used-book stores.

¹Äsät Sulayman. “‘Qäshqär basma buyumliri’ wä ötkünchi däwrdiki Uyghur tili mädäniyiti – Chaghatay tilidin hazirqi zaman Uyghur tiligha mäzgilidiki ‘ötkünchi däwr Uyghur tili’ wä uning tarixiy, ijtima’iy, mädäniyät arqa körünüshi” in Shinjang Pedagogika Uniwersiteti Aliy Zhurnali (Pälsäpä – Ijtima’iy Pän Qismi), No. 4, 2007, pp. 1-11.

Timothy B. Weston at The China Beat has conducted a fascinating interview that sheds some light on an all-too neglected aspect of modern-day Xinjiang: the self-reported perspective of the Han Chinese that were born and grew up in Xinjiang and consider it their home. Weston’s interviewee, Leong, is now a student at the University of Colorado (adding “overseas Chinese” to his already colorful set of identities) but grew up in an ethnically diverse part of Urumqi. Equally worth viewing and pondering are the comments, which have elicited responses from all sorts of quarters.

After reading up on a localized Han Xinjiang-ren’s thoughts on Xinjiang, head on over to being/becoming, a personal blog whose latest post offers some concise reflections on why certain aspects of American pop-culture – specifically Arnold Schwarzenegger – appeal to Uyghurs in Xinjiang. Once you start peeling off the layers (and read this article) you’ll start to see how there’s more to this apparently arbitrary movie-star preference than meets the eye.

After browsing through being/becoming’s other intriguing posts on Uyghurs and Xinjiang you’ll inevitably stumble upon the web page for The Organization for the Advancement of Studies of Inner Eurasian Societies, or “OASIES” (clever, clever, clever!), a brand new Central Asia academic community based at Columbia University. I’m happy to see more concrete evidence of a growing interest in Central Asia and Xinjiang.

The Christian Science Monitor reporter Peter Ford has published an article of the usual journalistic tint called Uyghurs Struggle in a World Reshaped by Chinese Influx. Of particular interest is the journalist’s encounter with the last living monarch on Chinese territory, King Daoud Mehsut of Kucha, whose palace is now a triple-A tourist attraction. Of his from riches-to-photo-opps story, King Daoud merely says, “I get a cut”… of the 200RMB per ticket admission fee.

And finally, Michael from The Opposite End of China discovered a government published “backgrounder” praising the past year’s progress on the implementation of local autonomy in China – another statistics-fest courtesy of the CCP. Michael uses his trusty newspaper archive spelunking skills to bring to light some interesting Los Angeles Times articles on Chinese language policy in the 1950s and 60s, creating a context that questions the accuracy of the backgrounder.

Now go to Urumqi and eat some Xibo food!

If you live in Ürümchi, you’ll have noticed that North Youhao Lu (友好北路) is being torn to pieces. The street, lined with two to three rows of trees (inconveniently placed both to the sides of and in the middle of the bus lanes), is being deforested, the trees ripped apart and uprooted. Chaos rules in the bus lanes, which are now great gashes in the ground. Cyclopean concrete pipes await internment. This road work, which actually began ahead of schedule, is meant to continue until 20 May, according to Xinhua. It is in preparation for an unnamed event of great magnitude to be held at the international exhibition center in June. The pipes will also provide better drainage, preventing North Youhao Lu from becoming a “waterway” when it rains. Admittedly, traffic on Youhao Lu is pretty rough during Ürümchi’s seven hours of rush hour (7-10 AM, 3-7 PM Xinjiang Time), but I am myself very fond of the trees, and would wish to see them preserved. This is one of the charms of Ürümchi: its persistently wooded sidewalks. Now, it seems, Youhao Lu will look just like its parallel neighbor, Xibei Lu (西北路).

I am in no way joking, by the way, when I report that Ürümchi’s rush “hour” lasts from 7-10 AM and 3-7 PM Xinjiang Time. I have been told as much by several locals. Luckily, the Ürümchi bus system is remarkably accessible.

A recent famine among wild animals in Tashkurgan has been eased by an influx of donations. Early snowfall, which normally only occurs in March and April, has put wildlife populations there in danger. Over 40 000 RMB of donations from Xinjiang and elsewhere have provided 20 metric tons of food for the animals, who seem to be taking to it.

In contrast, we can see how swiftly the government acts on environmental protection. The Agricultural and Rural Working Committee of the XUAR Standing Committee will request that the Standing Committee discuss a law on the protection of natural woodlands. Various local laws on agricultural practices are already in place, though they are mostly concerned with “development” and consumer protection more than environmental protection for its own sake.

Finally, for the first time, Ürümchiliks have engaged in the worship of the Daoist god Wenchang, protectors of women and students. On 10 March (Lunar 二月初三), Wenchang’s “birthday”, worshipers gathered at his infrequently-visited shrine in Beimen, which was erected last year. The celebration is being touted as a celebration of “Zhonghua” culture.