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 narrative of their journeys through China’s minority ethnic communities. This informative but entertaining and accessible book recounts their journeys in 2006 and 2007 while providing valuable and accurate background information to the lay reader and remaining sensitive to the realities of life for the people they met along the way. The book consists primarily of a series of mini-ethnographies, eleven in all covering fourteen contemporary minority groups, plus two narratives of visits to peculiar sites of ethnic tourism. Legerton and Rawson spent more time than most travel writers among their communities of interest, but they have distilled their visits into short and easily digestible snapshots of minority life accompanied by insightful commentary on wisely-chosen topics. Here, as this is The New Dominion, I will focus on their pieces on China’s Northwest, including their two chapters on Xinjiang.

The book opens with a scene familiar to almost anyone who has lived in China since the 1980s: On a busy street corner under a hazy night sky, as a swirling mass of superficial human sameness throngs in and out of Mr. Li’s and KFC, a lone Xinjiang Uyghur man, doppa and all, tends his kebabs as they sizzle on a smoky and jerry-rigged grill. Here, the authors make an awful fuss about the man’s skin color and that of the Han Chinese around him. At first blush, this seems almost racist, as the authors use the man’s physical differences to emphasize the invisible cultural wall between him and his customers. In fact, this is an honest depiction of a moment shared by many Westerners who venture beyond the Green Zones in Beijing and Shanghai: This is the instant when, in some smoky and anonymous town, you meet someone who looks different, whose Chinese is almost as bad as yours, and who feels isolated and homesick – just like you! The outside Other and the inside Other share a secret wink, and sometimes a career is born. Kudos to the authors for communicating this sense of alienation, achieved elsewhere in the movie “Lost in Translation,” and of the discovery of an imagined new chosen people. This self-consciousness, perhaps the mark of a new generation of writers on Asia, pervades the book and lends it both a measured sensitivity to the voices of the “natives” and a self-reflective honesty about the author’s own perspective. Appropriately for a book about people who inhabit a nationalizing state and who only find a political voice through a system of regional autonomy, Legerton and Rawson set the tone by bringing into focus the truth of the awkward and the disjointed.

Legerton and Rawson’s work, as a travelogue, is a work of journalism. They achieve, however, much that most journalists writing in English do not or cannot when reporting on China by informing their assertions and observations with their educated understanding of the country and of the issues at hand and sensitivity born of experience. Before beginning their journeys, both authors spoke good Chinese, as well as Uyghur and Korean, and both boast backgrounds in China studies. As such, they are far more qualified commentators than most journalists or even diplomatic staff. They have also done their homework, as is apparent from the very accessible potted histories of each region they visit and group they encounter. These gloss over messy details, but do not oversimplify or misrepresent. Each chapter is careful and deliberate and avoids factual error, which shows both respect for the subject and a disciplined approach to research and writing.

This preparation allows them to better protect the identities of their informants and also to tell effective stories. Most journalists, turning a brief visit and a half-dozen conversations into a lengthy piece, depict the story of today’s Xinjiang simply as one of conflict between ethnic monoliths, one backed by the new Evil Empire. It is relatively easy to identify their few informants, who are naturally depicted as angry young separatists or unquestioning tools of the state. In contrast, the characters who appear in Invisible China are rarely caricatures, certainly no more so than some very real people. Legerton and Rawson may too readily project onto the people they met their desire to find the individuals in the machine. They describe one old and loquacious man as someone with “individual” opinions all his own (a social and psychological impossibility) in a country with claims to homogeneity.

Invisible China‘s chapters, although bite-sized, are each based on at least several days of intensive interaction in a given community. The chapters are divided roughly into two parts: The first hooks the reader in, while the second seeks to make a more nuanced polemical point about minority life through a narrative of encounters and conversations. The authors cram nothing down the reader’s throat, but instead try to stay out of the way of their interviewees’ stories, editorializing sparingly and appropriately.

Take, for example, Legerton and Rawson’s lengthy interactions with a pair of Tajik restaurateurs in Chapter 11. Here, the authors build up an honest and sympathetic depiction of their newfound friends, then draw on their own understanding to relate these individuals’ lives to questions of place, culture, and language in a believable and uncaricatured way. When interviewees are quoted in relation to more sensitive political problems, as in Chapter 10 on Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the authors wisely obscure their personal information and focus more on what those people say than how they can be classified or which side they are on. In Invisible China, people may be members of minority groups, but they do not simply represent them. This, and the authors’ clear concern for their interlocutors, as expressed in the afterword, demonstrate that Invisible China is informed by more than a thirst for adventure or profit or a well-intentioned Western concern for the rights of the oppressed Other.

Of course, a travel writer has the freedom to create composite characters or even fashion them out of whole cloth. As such, travelogues have a problem of credibility, and there is really no telling the degree to which Legerton and Rawson’s characters, who are in any case depicted very believably, actually exist. This is not academic work, and so the authors were not fettered in their research by those constraints placed upon scholars. This gave them the freedom to pursue, however superficially, topics otherwise unavailable to research, such as Arabic literacy and the central role of Mosque culture (and even the Old and New Teachings!) among the Dongxiang in Chapter 8. This piece acts as an interesting commentary on Chinese measures of literacy. In my opinion, Legerton and Rawson’s insistence on inserting parenthetical facts at appropriate moments in their narratives gives their work a certain credibility, as well as a scope beyond the strictly nominalist, and I look forward to the results of both authors’ current postgraduate work.

Invisible China is not free from tired tropes of the exotic. As with any old piece of Xinjiang travel writing, for example, exotic smells and colors abound, and cute little kids feature prominently. They compare Tashkurghan and its inhabitants to Europe and the Europeans. Mostly, however, the authors concentrate on lampooning or deflating the depictions of minorities found in Chinese media, as in Chapter 3, which focuses on the Mongols, and Chapter 6, on the Naxi. To their credit, they seem consciously to try to avoid making use of those same representations. Indeed, when a group exhibits some peculiarity, they usually leave it up to the members of that group to explain or comment upon it. Actually, the authors try very hard to avoid adopting anything like “flexible positional superiority,” with regard to anything but the PRC government and its representatives.

Invisible China closes with a thoughtful afterword, composed after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Legerton and Rawson’s journeys in 2006 and 2007 had shown them China, and especially Xinjiang and Tibet, before the riots of 2008 and before the attacks in Xinjiang. I agree with their final conclusion that, for all of the talk of ethnic unity and the image of far-reaching state control, Beijing has yet to really approach its minority problems in a well-informed and constructive way, and that they might even lack the understanding and wherewithal to begin to do so. Throughout the book, the reader sees China in its odd little pockets, where the foreigner’s feeling of oppressive sameness begins to seem trivial and new old worlds flourish. Legerton and Rawson have chosen to focus on something that could easily be facilely political. They could have written a screed about minority oppression. They could have depicted the billboards and the propaganda as the ubiquitous signs of the omnipotent and malevolent state, but, in the villages on China’s borderlands, they seem like the laughable gestures of a distant power no longer interested in its neediest subjects. Of course, this is not the whole story – one need only look at Eric Mueggler’s The Age of Wild Ghosts, for one example, to see the hand of the state in borderland life – but the authors’ moderate and considered point is well-taken. There is more to minorities than ethnic conflict, and the state is often more blundering than it is malicious.

This situation, of course, is not from neglect or lack of trying – journalists and academics come to Xinjiang frequently with the express purpose of ferreting out elusive Uyghur commentary on various subjects – the Olympics, the Uyghur way of life, terrorism, inter-ethnic relations, etc.  Naturally, there is no one Uyghur voice on these topics, and we can hold as axiomatic the fact that across the millions of Uyghurs in Xinjiang there are a wide range of stances, from one extreme to the other and everything in between. However, a robust network of rules,(some written, some not), surveillance, and punishments works quite efficiently in curtailing access to Uyghur opinions on a significant scale. Thus we are left with isolated, anonymous, and often furtive voices that crop up in media reports and academic treatises, to stand alongside the very vocal and hardly unchecked accusations of diasporic Uyghur activist groups. Furthermore, those voices are mediated – delivered to us through a writer who despite even the best efforts to be objective nonetheless has an agenda in writing the report or thesis, one that may differ from the objectives of the Uyghur source referenced.

But the exposé linked in the last post is notable because it includes surprisingly frank, critical, and penetrating commentary by Uyghur members of the Uighur Biz online community. This, of course, is not “unmediated” Uyghur opinion nor can we call it representative. Searching for opinions on the internet unleashes a whole separate type of skepticism – who can own a computer, who navigates online BBS’, who is willing to put forward their ideas, what does anonymity do to peoples’ self-expression. Nonetheless, it is, I believe, an untapped source for ascertaining Uyghur thoughts on these issues and it is far more direct and open than what comes out of an encounter with a journalist in a Kashgar alleyway. And so what is said in the commentary accompanying the notice is a lot more substantial and eye-opening than the usual one-liner delivered in a press release. And this is what I’d like to share with our readers today.

An important disclaimer – my Mandarin has lots of limitations. I welcome corrections.

Son of the West (西域的子) tells us how these policies personally effect people by describing the arrival of two PhD holding Uyghurs from Germany to watch the Olympics.

I had two friends from Germany come over, originally to watch the Olympics, they arrived at Beijing at noon on August the 6th, I went to pick them up, they received extra scrutiny when they passed through security, I had to sit around and wait at the airport for two hours until they came out, furthermore, I received a call from the police, and they made me report their travel arrangements, and they called me every two hours to ask about their every action, I brought them to an office run by Xinjiang folks to arrange lodging, but mysteriously the charge per night was 980RMB (usually it doesn’t approach 200RMB), but they thought that was too expensive, so they started looking for a place to stay, they went to several hotels but were rejected by all of them, and by the time it started getting dark they still hadn’t found a place to stay, originally they were planning on calling 110, but that was too much trouble and they didn’t call, and they had no choice but to buy a ticket for that day to go back home to Urumqi. These two got their doctorates in Germany, they both got scholarships, and have participated in important research projects. They’ve lived in Germany for four years now, and when I met them the first words they said were, “It’s great to be back home, and it’s really exciting to hear again the sounds we were used to hearing.” But they were very disappointed in Beijing, even in their own country they weren’t able to find a place to stay.

The notice posted on the wall in Beijing required inn owners to report Tibetan and Uyghur lodgers to the police, but we may speculate from the story above, and from other stories on Uyghurs being refused lodging, that hotel owners may have decided to circumvent the inconvenience simply by refusing Uyghur and Tibetan guests or charging unreasonable prices.

Several commentators observed the legal significance of this situation. This is first indicated by the rhetorically challenging title of the article itself, “Netizen Takes Picture of Notice Below, Reminding Us of Former Times in South Africa.” While the reference to apartheid obviously is meant to draw attention to the inherent racism of the police policy, one assumes that it also is a reference to the gradual and peaceful legal evolution which ultimately resulted in a fairer South Africa. Even more vexing to some commentators is the fact that technically the legal framework that renders these kinds of policy illegal already exist, and simply are just being flouted by the police. One solution, according to Gulzar, is making public knowledge of the law more widespread and available.

Even the police are issuing these kinds of emergency notices, so who’s left to protect our legal rights? With this kind of police notice, what kind of inn would be willing to take in Uyghurs or Tibetans? Whatever happened to the essence of the State Council’s document no. 33?

Actually these so-called “national regulations” are simply excuses certain departments have found for their local policies. National lawmakers should make the law publicly available to the masses, ensure that all people are aware of it, and resolve what it stands for and what it doesn’t stand for. So obviously, this statement of “national regulations” is absolutely an excuse, a strategic decision ejected from the ass of some public servant. It simply doesn’t have any legal foundation.

Of particular interest in Gulzar’s words is the insistence that these civil rights incidents are the work of corrupt and evil local officials who are ignoring and flouting a national legal framework and the edicts flowing forth from the centralized government. This is actually a growing theme in China that extends far beyond the Uyghurs – even in cases like the Sanlu Milk scandal and shoddy architecture in Wenchuan, “evil local despots” are decried by the people in contrast to the wiser rules at the center.

Other commentators pointed out that an entire ethnicity should not be punished for the actions of a small, violent minority – a rather poignant point since official documents regarding terrorism in Xinjiang always insist that the discontent is confined to an extreme and isolated group of people (极少数). Should this be the case, two different users named Azamat ask, why should all be punished?

Government measures have a direct influence on society. In any given country, inter-ethnic relations are a very sensitive and complicated issue. Criminal elements and terrorist extremists when all is said and done are an extremely small minority, if you can’t distinguish between these individuals and everyone else, you’re only going to proliferate the negative sentiments among the people. If a terrorist really wants to wreak havoc, he’s not going to check into a hotel and do business as usual. And as for these panicky prevention measures being carried out by the police, I’m afraid the only thing that’s being harmed are the sentiments of minorities. The police can ask hotels to strengthen safety measures in general but shouldn’t draw attention to ethnicity.

It’s the job of the government to combat criminal elements, but this absolutely must not come at the price of violating the rights of the people, and you simply can’t make an entire people the target of one’s suspicions, by doing it this way you’ll just strengthen the mistrust among certain sectors of society, create an even deeper chasm between peoples, to go from combating individual criminals to fomenting the mistrust of an entire people, this actually shows the incompetence of local governments and various departments.

Not only is the policy a type of collective punishment, the two Azamats observe, but it also has a very high chance of backfiring and simply increasing resentment among Uyghurs and Tibetans.

A user named Unique (唯一) points out that these types of policies are completely missing their target and are failing to address the fundamental problems behind the unrest in Xinjiang, interestingly invoking the Yang Jia, a 28-year old who walked into a Shanghai police station and killed 6 police officers. Interestingly, Yang Jia has become somewhat of an internet phenomena, receiving an outpouring of sympathy as a victim of circumstance, and later, of police shenanigans, despite his gruesome crime. Yang Jia expectedly got the death sentence, but Unique asks if the reasons compelling him to the crime in the first place were addressed.

The problem simply is not addressed by these kinds of methods.

It’s just like the Yang Jia incident. You kill someone, you pay with your own life. Otherwise the law is nothing but words. But the key here is why he resorted to murder.

And so the crux of the matter remains unresolved. You can’t keep on covering it up. The tension brought about by suppression will accumulate day by day, society itself will feel its effects, the feeling among the people will become more and more widespread until it spills over. And when the time comes the problem won’t be that of “a tiny cabal” or a few “unenlightened groups.”

Lastly, I’d like to end with the words of Yilihamu (伊力哈木), whose insightful analysis of history, various vested interests in Xinjiang, the “minzu” system, and the rise of a Uyghur ethnic consciousness is rendered even more powerful in that it is an authentic Uyghur voice. Yilihamu’s eloquent language for me evokes the powerful ideas explored by Ralph Waldo Ellison in The Invisible Man, a literary masterpiece on what it means to be a racially and ethnically marginalized stranger.

Both history and the present cycle of unpleasant disputes make it very difficult to resolve the complications that exist among Han Chinese and Uyghurs. During the times of authoritarian rule, the Uyghurs had the highest population and also the status of “autonomous ethnicity,” but because the resources they were able to take advantage of were relatively few, they continued to play the role of the “invisible people,” to retreat behind their own bodies. Further vexed by the so-called “East Turkestan” movement, Uyghurs wouldn’t dare come forward and hold their heads high, and gradually, they became the “unseen masses” and because of this the spirit of the Uyghur people faltered.  With further democratization, pluralization, and a growing feeling that their culture was gradually seeping away, Uyghurs started to acknowledge with ever-increasing awareness the presence of a crisis, and greatly inspired by the rise of the “human rights defense” movement, formed an ethnic Uyghur group consciousness. This, for the Uyghurs, is actually ethnic dignity and this self-awareness is actually a form of self-defense.  Society in modern Xinjiang is a fragmented society, and the antagonism among ethnic groups has caused a widespread crisis of confidence among the people of Xinjiang, on one hand everyone is a “person of Xinjiang” but each ethnic group has various, conflicting interests, each group disdains and quarrels with the other. Let’s think about this – Xinjiang has over 20 million people and it has been divided into several antagonistic ethnic categories, and at the same time within each ethnicity there are different groups, in this kind of situation anyone can be taken advantage of, oppressed, or sold out by someone else, in this kind of situation who else can someone from Xinjiang trust? On top of that in today’s Xinjiang various groups with vested interests are jostling with each other, the different administrative regions, the XPCC, centralized industries, the common people, these groups often clash for the sake of their own interest and often are antagonistic towards one another, in this type of situation both among ethnic groups and among groups with vested interests there is absolutely no trust, and there is a universal lack of confidence among the people.

I express my admiration to these individuals, not only for the insights they have put forward, but also for the courage to publish them on a website based in the PRC when similar sites have been closed before.

Urgent Notice

To all inns and bathhouses of the administrative district:

In compliance with a request from the local PSB substation, starting today, investigations will be carried out on the lodging circumstances of all individuals of  “Tibetan” and “Uyghur” ethnicity residing at inns and bathhouses of the Haidian District. Reinforce inspection and verification of any lodger matching the description above and report all cases to the local dispatch station.

Furthermore: every inn and bathhouse, when registering travelers, must double-check and accurately fill out the registration form.

All who receive Tibetan or Uyghur individuals for lodging must immediately report to the local dispatch station.

Officer to Contact: Wu Hu Cell Phone: 13801093916

Huayuan Dispatch Station On-Call Phone Numbers: 62014692 62032656

Minority individuals from “sensitive” regions being monitored in hotels is not something new – as far back as July, before the Olympics, there was a news report by Globe and Mail about how the unfortunate parties to a forced, mass Uyghur exodus from Beijing were invariably denied access to an inn or hotel after pulling out their ID cards identifying them as Uyghurs. And while the link above with the photograph of the notice was published on the 3rd of October, it’s unclear whether or not the picture itself was taken recently or long ago. Nonetheless, standing on its own the picture does at least constitute a form of evidence for this type of ethnic discrimination a tad more concrete than word of mouth.

But the notice does remind us that one often overlooked aspect of “being a Uyghur in the PRC” is the civil rights component. I identify this in contrast to aspects that gain greater coverage on media outlets, things like terrorism and separatism, or, the “humanitarian crisis” which I feel overlaps with civil rights issues but are usually more egregious yet more targeted violations of minority rights – for example, religious restrictions during Ramadan, or forced deportation of young Uyghur girls to Eastern industrial areas for labor. While these crises are absolutely worth knowing and analyzing, it’s also worth recalling that sometimes its the smaller troubles with a wider range that trigger greater consequences – the uncalled for nuisances that are capable of affecting all Uyghurs, regardless of whether or not they are man or woman, religious or secular, rich or poor, young or old. Something inexplicably, illogically, and absolutely tied to something as inconsequential as the way you look or a character on your ID card. Like these hotel restrictions.

I can’t help but consider the a similar situation that I became familiar with as a child of the US – namely, the American Civil Rights movement. Just for all you internet critics out there, I underline similar and do not say analagous, because they are not. But I think that on a generalized level there are some comparisons that can be made. For example, while during that time there were frequent and brazen acts of terrorism perpetuated against blacks in the South, most notably and gruesomely vigilante lynching, it was an act of resistance against a far more mundane yet more ubiquitous injustice that today represents the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement – Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus.

Rosa Parks also reminds us that offenses against an individual’s civil rights does not a  Civil Rights Movement make. It takes two other things: one, an understanding by the minority community of what these violations are, how they operate, and where they come from, and, two, a willingness to speak and act out against those violations.

And so I was a little surprised and intrigued that in the link posted above, the one publishing the photograph of the police notice, there also were some reactions and commentary written in Mandarin by other Uyghur members of the Uighur Biz online community. I say surprised because Uighur Biz is a site based in China, written in Mandarin, and, like all sites in China, has registered an ICP license with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Despite this, community members have voiced some insightful, penetrating, and surprisingly frank comments on the discriminatory hotel policy, its implications, and its origins, to which I turn to in an article that will be posted shortly.

Most of the placemarks on this map are bars and restaurants — I don’t, personally, know much about Urumchi’s hotels, and I haven’t got the personal capital to investigate. There should be more hotels marked in the future. I have also endeavored to mark points of interest to both tourists and residents, though several sites from recent history are still missing. Currently, of city services, only the main police station is marked, but I will get down to adding a couple of reliable hospitals in the near future. Several main traffic arteries are also marked off using yellow lines; if you click on them, you will get the pinyin for the Chinese name of the road. Markets, including night markets, are blue squares, as are some other pleasant places to sit around outside. As always, I welcome reader input on the content of this map! If there is anything that should be added, please don’t hesitate to mention.

I have used GoogleDitu, by the way, because GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth just don’t have Chinese roads, yet. If you try to port this map to either, it won’t line up properly with the satellite data. Oh, and I’m sorry this is so small — we’re working on it.

在较大的地图中查看Urumchi Tourism Map

Located on a side street just off of Nanhu Nan Lu (南湖南路), slightly south of the Ürümchi Museum and Library and near Carrefour, Ani Muqin Cai Sibe Restaurant provides a good selection of well-prepared, tasty, and overall spicy dishes made in the style of the Sibe (Sive, Xibo, Xibe) people of western Xinjiang. The setting is attractive, on the second floor, with a large outdoor porch area and a clean interior with views of Nanhu Park. The staff are very friendly, and the atmosphere is warm and fairly inviting.

The Sibe are descendants of a Manchu garrison sent to what is now the Chapchal Sibe Autonomous County, near Ghulja (Yining), in the eighteenth century. As such, their food somewhat resembles the Manchu dishes found in some specialty restaurants in Beijing (like Shaguoju 砂锅居) and Dongbei 东北 Han Chinese dishes from Manchuria. Several dishes feature suāncài “sour pickled vegetables”, including the very Dongbei suāncài fēntiáo ròu (pork with pickled vegetables and rice noodles, 22 RMB) and a cold dish, xībō huāhuācài (Sibe-style chopped vegetables, 8 RMB).

The house specialty, however, is dòujī “fighting chicken”, a dish similar to dàpán jī or jiāomá jī. Dòujī, however, is much meatier than either of these dishes, apparently made with the strongest and most competitive of chickens. I am not kidding – read the posters on the walls. Half of a dòujī (70 RMB) would have been a meal for two or three on its own. I shudder to think how many people a whole one (122 RMB) would have fed. One of the unique byproducts of dòujī is a 65-proof alcohol infused with the juice of the chicken itself. A small glass (a little more than a shot) of the yellow liquid costs 5 RMB; a larger glass costs 10 RMB. It tastes like chicken soup, but with a baijiu kick. I recommend it as an after-dinner drink.

We also tried and approved of lăocù huāshēng (vinegar peanuts, 8 RMB), gānguō cháshùgū (long mushrooms in a hot iron pot, 18 RMB), and básī hóngshŭ (candied sweet potatoes, 12 RMB). No Sibe meal is complete, however, without Sibe bĭng (pancakes, 2 RMB/cake) with a delicious hot sauce (làjiàng, 2 RMB/bowl).

The menu is extensive and features a wide range of essentially Dongbei Chinese dishes, house specials, and even a selection of hot vegetarian dishes. Spice levels are adjustable by request. This is a branch of a main restaurant located way to the north in Ürümchi on Kàshí Xīlù.

Food: 8/10

Service: 7/10

Environment: 4/10

Price range: 8-25 RMB for most mains, 70+ RMB for house specials

Directions: From the Ürümchi Museum and Library, walk south a short distance. (Facing away from the museum towards Nanhu Park, make a right.) At your first street, make a right. It is the second building on your right.

View Larger Map

Chinese Words used in this Review

dòujī 斗鸡, dàpán jī 大盘鸡, jiāomá jī 椒麻鸡, suāncài fēntiáo ròu 酸菜粉条肉, xībō huāhuācài 锡伯花花菜, lăocù huāshēng 老醋花生, gānguō cháshùgū 干锅茶树菇, básī hóngshŭ 拔丝红薯, bĭng 饼, làjiàng 辣酱

This winter’s uncommonly cold temperatures have affected rural production all over Northern Xinjiang. According to the XUAR Forestry Office, the XUAR will have to collect at least 30 million RMB to make up for losses in fruit production and provide for better protection from low temperatures in the future. Losses from the worst winter storms in fifty years, which have affected 54% of Xinjiang’s fruit-growing land, are estimated at 293.6 million RMB. Luckily, the Forestry Office’s goal seems to have been exceeded by 2 million RMB. Fruits and nuts are not the only agricultural products affected by the weather, however. The death of 41.8% of the bees in the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture’s apiaries has caused a financial loss of 1.14 million RMB.

So, why is Ürümchi unseasonably warm? Word on the street is, the short-sleeve weather that fell upon the city earlier this month, blamed on global warming, has been contributing to the outbreak of measles, which we have
reported on previously. On the other hand, people have turned off their coal stoves, making Ürümchi’s skies clear and the air positively pleasant. (But don’t leave your windows open all day, or you’ll come home to a dust-encrusted apartment.)

The City of Ürümchi is taking steps to control the rise of prices. Note that, in Xinjiang, a consistent rise in commodity prices over time is not inflation, but a natural effect of market forces. Well, anyway, those market forces are clearly getting out of line, as food commodity prices increased 5.4% in 2007 alone, about as much as they had in the previous three years. That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s affected a clear increase in everyday foodstuffs, one bemoaned by Ürümchiliks of all stripes. Example: restaurant menus have been changing all over the city since December. One plate of polo was 5-7 RMB not long ago; now it’s 8-12 RMB. (Suyuq ash prices have increased from 3-4 RMB to a typical 5 RMB. I love suyuq ash.) The city has set aside 20 million RMB, double last year’s amount, for agricultural development, including the building of greenhouses. The city will provide loans to agriculture businesses to increase production. Businesses providing foodstuffs will be temporarily prohibited from altering their prices without first applying to the government for approval. Aid to school cafeterias and low-income families has also been increased. (That’s right, fight those “natural market forces” with cold, hard socialism!) The XUAR’s grain reserves are also meant to be sufficient for the task of maintaining the stability of market prices. The XUAR has also achieved a goal, set in 2003, of storing up 20 000 metric tons of beet sugar in China’s only white crystal sugar storage area. Where is this place, and may I bring a spoon? The stores are meant to help control sugar prices, which have likewise increased and are predicted to rise further.

There is news for domestic and international trade and travel. First, the PRC’s only land port with Tajikistan, Qarasuw, has been approved for use during all weather conditions. Starting this year, it will be open constantly from 1 May to 30 November. Last year, 12 500 tourists, 56 300 metric tons of goods, and 250 million USD of trade passed through the port. Over the past five years, Chinese and foreign financial organizations, including the Asia Development Bank and Development Bank of China, have lent Xinjiang a total of 24.6 billion RMB for road construction and maintenance. This has contributed to the construction of over 60 000 kilometers of new roads, including Southern Xinjiang’s second express highway, Route 314 from Korla to Kucha, currently under construction. Australia’s Arrow Energy has signed a contract with the XUAR Geology and Ore Office to develop coal seams in the South Jungharia and East Jungharia coal fields.

The economic news has also paid some service to an Ürümchi landmark, the Shuangxing Old Goods Market, where I got my bookshelves. Trade at the market has already hit a high point, as at other used goods markets, with sales volume up 30-40% from this time last year. About 20% of customers are students, 20% are unmarried workers living on their own, 10% are families in poor financial circumstances, and 40% are migrant workers. The jump in sales probably has something to do with the natural increase in prices caused by market forces.

Xinjiang, like the rest of China, just never stops building. In the next year, over 20 000 earthquake-resistant housing buildings are planned for construction in Ürümchi. In addition, 9000 current structures are planned for quake-proofing. This may have something to do with the recent earthquakes on the Xinjiang/Tibet border. If you have recently been to Ürümchi, you may have noticed a gigantic pit between Hongshan Park and the Bogeda Hotel, near Edo no Sakura Japanese Restaurant, where the city government used to be until 2004. This is one of two areas adjacent to Hongshan Park slated for redevelopment, and work is finally beginning. High-class apartments on the site are already being sold for 8300-8800 RMB/m². (A typical nice, new apartment in the city goes for around 3500 RMB/ m².) These will be located right next to a greener Hongshan, part of a larger project to connect People’s Park and Hongshan via a “Hetan Green Corridor” along the current Hetan Express Highway. Property values in the area are already rising. It is hoped that filling in the pit will bring some life back to the area, which has been quiet since the government moved. (The Bingtuan headquarters just down the road doesn’t really have the same “community” feeling.) However, it is hoped even more that a great deal of business will go on just outside the gates of the new Hongshan Park.

The series has opened with the usual: an atmospheric, grungy, high-mountain journey over the border through the “back door” of a China we don’t really recognize as “China”. The rest of the article is mostly “welcome to Xinjiang” boilerplate about the great, monolithic forces of ethnic conflict wrestling for control of this dusty, remote, and surprisingly modern region.

But that’s me being cynical. I like the author’s details: I know exactly the poster he’s talking about, and the advertisement for harmony is spot-on. This could be a very rich, personal introduction to Xinjiang from a rare sort of travel writer, one with experience posting all across Asia, from Iraq to the Caucasus to Beijing, just the sort of thing that could be good for general awareness of Xinjiang. (See his personal site for more details.) We shall see.