In westernmost part of China, the locals look more like my long lost relatives with blue eyes, brown hair and scruffy beards, than Emily (who is Chinese), and most people prefer not to speak Chinese at all if possible. It’s very odd being in China, while feeling like we were somewhere in the Middle East instead.
Thanks to the government’s efforts to assimilate everyone to one culture within the legal boundaries of China, and their deftness at covering up any news about defiance, we had inadvertently arrived in the middle of a quiet war - a war between the Han Chinese government and the native Xinjiang population. The bulk of Xinjiang (pronounced “shin-jong”) province is filled with ethnic Uiger, Tajik, Kyrgz, Kazik and Uzbek minorities, along with some Han Chinese who have moved westward over the last century. Everywhere we travelled, we encountered the Chinese military patrolling with tanks, riot gear and machine guns. They marched in big showy processions and made routine displays of intimidating the locals over small offenses like traffic violations (while in the rest of China, nobody seems to be bothered by any kind of traffic offense, no matter how ridiculous).
In the small town of Yarkand while walking through the old city, we met a man who wanted to practice his English. After a lengthy conversation, it was apparent he wanted to do more than just practice English… he wanted to tell us something. He told us how the government was literally murdering the Uigers in order to intimidate them, and then covering all traces of these “incidents” in the news. He had learned that just two days before, a Uiger man was lynched and hung from a tree before being assassinated by an army brigade in front of his family. And apparently, this type of thing happens all of the time. Because of the risk to anyone who publicly spoke out, news like this could only be transmitted by word of mouth. The government also regularly shut down internet and phone services in towns like his for up to a month after major incidents to prevent news from spreading. If the police ever found out what he was telling us, he would mysteriously disappear forever, he told us. Even being seen speaking to foreigners could send him to jail.
Little news seems to leave the Xinjiang region, but if you look hard (we’ve since left China), you can find evidence that there are scores killed every month in “conflicts” with the government. Although we came to Xinjiang to discover what seemed like an undiscovered culture, we left feeling like we had looked in upon a dark secret we weren’t supposed to see.
Shortly after leaving China, we read an article about the town of Kashgar. There, on the last day of Eid (a Muslim holiday with significance akin to Christmas), the military shot 3 people as they came to worship at the Grand Mosque because they were creating a “disturbance”. Only ten days prior, we had slept in a hostel facing the entrance to that very same mosque for a week. Every night when the locals visited the mosque en mass for prayers, we walked down to watch. People waited in patience, silence and peacefulness for the sun to set before they would break their fast and celebrate together. In fact, as we waited to take pictures, they came to us and asked us joyfully if we would share melon and dates with them to break their fast (even though we weren’t Muslim). With smiles and joy they embraced us, regardless of our faith or our reason for being there. To imagine that it was necessary to shoot and kill families at that same place less than a week later, is a stretch of the imagination and something I wish I didn’t have to imagine.
The Chinese government scares me. They are powerful, smart, determined and wealthy beyond any doubt, but at the same time, they have no wisdom. They can do anything they want, but they don’t want to run a just country. Any threat to their power, economic system or their citizens starting to speak and learn freely is swiftly and efficiently destroyed. Especially in the west, there are CCTV cameras perched at every intersection, street light, public park and bus stop. When reading the US government’s travel advisories, they mention that unless you’re ok with the Chinese government having the ability to read all your emails, listen to your phone calls, tap your hotel room and follow you around, you shouldn’t visit (we even had emails mysteriously disappear from our account and our internet access shut off multiple times while there).
Since traveling the entire way across Xinjiang, China to the border of Pakistan, we found a life that is just not a part of the media in the rest of the world – it barely exists. If I had not travelled there, I would be skeptical of anything I heard regarding human rights issues, persecution, or government corruption in this area. After visiting, I wouldn’t doubt any of it.
Unfortunately, we felt it was only right to talk about the injustice and persecution that occurred here, but at the same time, there was a wonderful and hidden culture that was just as shocking to see and discover. It wasn’t Chinese, it wasn’t Middle Eastern, it wasn’t Russian, it wasn’t Pakistani or Indian, it was somewhere in between all of those places, and hopefully the pictures can give a small glimpse into that
