After 3 hours of passing through impoverished villages and empty stretches of the Taklamakan Desert -- local language for "you go in but you don't come out" -- the Toyota Land Cruiser veered off the dirt road and into a dry riverbed. Another hour, then the 4x4 stopped to allow everybody out to continue by foot down the ever deepening and widening canyon. Thirty minutes of walking followed, with occasional delays as everybody halted and turned away from the swirling dust blown down the ravine. Finally arriving at a small camp, the driver grinned and pointed up into the cloudless, dazzling blue Xinjiang sky. It almost never rains in this corner of China.
Unsure of exactly what it was I should be looking at, I smiled and said, "Yahkshi," the all-purpose Turkic word for good, nice, okay, and beautiful.
He frowned and pointed to one side of the canyon, where just barely visible was the tiny figure of a man, seemingly suspended in mid-air about 400 yards up.
"Dawaz," he said.
It was a tight-rope walker, a master of the national sport of the Uyghurs (pronounced wee-gers), the Turkic people of Xinjiang, the far northwestern province of China. A Dawaz life is spent walking a fine line (a mile-long, seventy-ton steel line with a 4-inch diameter in the case of the rope over the canyon). It's precarious, dangerous, and symbolic of Uyghur life in general -- especially after the attacks on New York and Washington. Although a primarily peaceful people, in their desire to gain greater self-determination -- whether independence or real autonomy -- some Uyghurs have resorted to violence. Now they have been branded as terrorists.
On September 21, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan to discuss intelligence sharing between U.S. and Chinese counter-terrorism experts. Powell said China could help as "it has influence in that region. It has knowledge and information. It has intelligence that might be of help to us."
Since then, the government has stepped up rhetoric and action in the region. On October 12, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry appealed for international help with their "terrorists" from "East Turkestan" -- a Turkic name for the region the Chinese only use when linking its inhabitants to terrorism. The Ministry also suggested there was evidence of Uyghur links to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization. Echoing global press coverage, the state-controlled Chinese press has been telling its population that there is a war on terrorism in Xinjiang.
In courting and accepting Chinese support for military action in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush has sent conflicting messages that the Chinese government has been quick to make use of. The U.S. government insists that the struggle against terrorism is a battle for the inalienable rights of freedom worldwide.
Just this week, President Bush met with Chinese President Jiang Zemin, and reported afterward that he had discouraged China from persecuting minorities in the name of the war on terrorism -- a comment that was interpreted as a reference to the Uyghur situation. Meanwhile, Chinese statements have linked illegitimate violence to the wider Uyghur desire for basic rights of self-determination, and the country is cracking down as a result. Executions for "splitist activities" were already commonplace and are thought by experts to be on the rise.
The human-rights organisation Amnesty International quickly issued a statement after the most-recent Chinese pronouncement. The fear is that China is using the international attention focused on combating terrorism as a smokescreen behind which they will be able to hide their human-rights profile, further fuelling Uyghur resentment of Chinese domination.
Relations are already extremely poor. There is a joke the Uyghurs tell:
Two men are having a discussion. One says to the other, "There are Chinese everywhere: in Xinjiang, in America, in Canada, in England. Is there anywhere in the world there are no Chinese?"
"I know of someplace," says his friend.
"Really? Where?"
"My house."
I first heard this while waiting for a bus during a recent trip to Xinjiang. It was to take me to the oasis town of Hotan on the southern tip of the Taklamakan Desert. The station was the main terminal in Kashgar, a city steeped in legend as a key Silk Road way station and as a center of intrigue during the Great Game, the 19th century Cold War struggle of territory and influence played out between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia. Kashgar is also famous for its sprawling Saturday market, which draws in villagers from all over the surrounding area for a cavalcade of colors, spices and endless heaps of Chinese-made junk.
The market itself is less impressive than billed -- most Middle Eastern souks easily outstrip it on a daily basis -- but the resonating memory is the variety of faces on display. Rough skinned Tajiks mingle with the local Uyghur population. Kyrgyz shepherds bargain with Kazakhs from nearby villages and German tourists alike. Spread throughout are occasional Pakistani, Arab and Russian traders.
The Uyghurs are a Turkic people occupying the basins surrounding the Taklamakan Desert, closely related ethnically and linguistically to the Uzbeks (some say the only thing separating the two groups are a border), as well as to the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Turks. The Uyghur language is likewise Turkic, related to Finnish, Estonian, likely Hungarian and, distantly, Korean. Yet try as they may to differentiate themselves from the Chinese, for those that receive passports, there is no mention of their ethnic identity. Many have difficulty understanding why embassies are unable to accept they are not Chinese, despite what their passports say.
"I went to Turkey, and they didn't want to let me in," Talgat, a student said. "But somebody from the back of the line said, 'No, he is a Uyghur. He is like us.' So they let me in." From Istanbul he attempted to travel to Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
"At first, they thought I was Turkish, and they were wary," he said. "But then they saw my passport and said, 'You are Chinese! You have no money! No chance! Go back to China and apply!' I told them: I am not Chinese; I am Uyghur. They said, 'But your passport is Chinese: You are Chinese.'"
While calling one of the most forbidding regions in the world home, the Uyghurs are sitting on one of the China's lifelines. While it is still far from being fully exploited, the desert is expected to yield vast amounts of oil and gas, most all of it to be shipped to the east coast of China.
"At first all we ask is for one percent of the proceeds," said one Uyghur shopkeeper. "But they won't even give us that. We can't even get jobs on the oil fields. This is our oil on our land. I am positive that if we were able to do the work, we would turn Xinjiang into a great country."
This isn't the first time the area has been used for its treasures. Early in the 20th century, British-Hungarian explorer and archaeologist Aural Stein, later followed by his Swedish, German and Japanese counterparts, rambled around Xinjiang (Sinkiang to old British cartographers) collecting as many ancient pre-Muslim manuscripts and artefacts as possible. A tiny fraction of these are on display in museums worldwide, although much of what was taken, especially Stein's massive haul, is languishing in storage in London. Many of the locals were very welcoming to the foreigners. Some see their generosity as their downfall as a people, going back even further in history.
"When the Chinese first came here, so the story goes," a Uyghur businessman told me, "The Uyghurs gave them food and water. They thanked us, and then they stayed. Soon we were being told we were Chinese and always had been Chinese. We Uyghurs lost our land because we were too hospitable."
They are not alone in their efforts. The Dalai Lama's beaming grin and shiny baldness are instantly recognisable globally, symbols of 20th century non-violent resistance alongside Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Darling of human rights activists, the Tibetan leader long ago came to symbolise a cause celebre, immortalized on countless bumper stickers and rock concerts: Free Tibet. Life is difficult for these reluctant Chinese, with religious rights curtailed and economic opportunities trampled.
The political and cultural situation is similar, if not worse, for the Uyghurs. And their struggle is virtually unknown to the outside world. Unlike the peaceful Tibetans, there have been incidences of Uyghurs blowing things up, such as Chinese policemen. They live in and around the Taklamakan, the second largest shifting-sand desert in the world, not the spectacular Himalayas. Overseas organization is still developing, and perhaps worst of all, there's a serious public relations deficit: they don't have anybody like the Dalai Lama to smile for cameras, and they don't have the Beastie Boys or Richard Gere doing their fundraising.
But it is not from a lack of trying. The Uyghur are remarkably open with their feelings about the Chinese regime. Those that speak English will approach foreigners with little hesitation. Within minutes, after the usual "Where are you from?" and "What's your name?" the discussion turns to their lives as citizens of China.
The next question, inevitably, is "How much did you know about the Uyghurs before you came to Xinjiang?" This is followed with: "You do understand that the Uyghurs and the Chinese are two different people, right? This is us, the Uyghurs." A fist held in front of the body. "And this is the Chinese." A cupped hand over top of the fist.
Resistance has at times become violent but is generally repudiated by Uyghur leaders -- especially overseas figures -- who insist that it involves a few individuals, acting out of frustration. In the last 15 years there have been sporadic violent episodes, including riots in the provincial towns of Hotan and Yining and bus bombings in Urumqi and Kashgar.
While most Uyghurs I spoke to in Xinjiang agreed that killing is wrong, many did not see the deaths of Chinese civilians that way. A popular souvenir from the region is a Yengisar dagger, worn by many Uyghur men. During a discussion of regional folk-craft, I asked one why he wore his. He answered without hesitation so that when he "saw a pregnant Chinese woman, I can stab her and kill two Chinese at once." Had he ever done it?
"Not yet."
The Uyghurs do sympathise with some of the other minority peoples in China, primarily the Tibetans, Tajiks, Mongolians and their fellow Turkic Kyrgyz and Kazakhs. They're ambivalent about the Dungans, the ethnic Chinese Muslims also known as the Hui. Everybody else in the country is, as one Uyghur put it, "fucking Chinese."
"If I was UN man Kofi Annan," a Uyghur journalist told me, "I'd give him 100 Nobel Peace Prizes to Dalai Lama. Most Uyghur people like him. It is 90 percent if [Tibet] get[s] independence, we get independence."
At times, it appears that the only thing the Uyghurs and Chinese have in common, besides sharing a home, is their utter contempt for each other. It is not unusual for a member of either group to say something like, "They are little more than animals." Most Uyghurs won't eat Chinese-prepared food; they see the communist Chinese as "godless people." Inter-marriage is taboo. Some had stories of Uyghur women marrying Chinese men (of course, always emphasized for "economic reasons"), but these women are basically considered dead by their families.
The Chinese in Xinjiang do likewise.
Sunny, a tall, slender Han Chinese girl of seventeen wearing a Beijing Ballet t-shirt --a gift from a relative -- asked if I had tried any Xinjiang food while I'd been in the province. Like many Chinese students learning English, she had adopted an English name not because it resembled her Chinese name but because she felt it represented her personality. And it did: throughout the 48-hour trip from Urumqi, Xinjiang's provincial capital, to Beijing, she stopped smiling or singing (or both) only to sleep.
I told her I'd had a great deal of suomen and lagaman, noodle dishes native to the region, but she puzzled at the names. I figured I had mispronounced them, so I wrote them out. Still no recognition. Then she offered some bread, the ubiquitous round flatbread on offer throughout the region.
"I don't think this has an English name," she said. "Only a Chinese name. Nan."
Of course, nan is not a Chinese word but the Turkic word for bread, used throughout Central Asia and even India. I took from my bag the Uyghur-language Koran I had purchased in Hotan, at the southern tip of the Taklamakan. The Uyghurs use a modified version of Arabic script, and it took a bit of passing around before somebody on the car was able to recognise the writing, despite the billboards and shop signs in the language throughout the region, albeit primarily in the Uyghur district. Other Chinese I encountered were mystified by the Uyghur-language pronunciation of the region's cities, despite many cases where there is very little variation from the Chinese (they were unable to differentiate the Uyghur name Hotan from the Chinese Hetian). They did not even know the Uyghur word for the Uyghur people, knowing only the Chinese word Weiwuer.
Since 1944, in accordance with government policy, Han population of Xinjiang has grown from 5 percent to 52 percent, representing slightly more than 12 million of the province's 23 million. More Chinese continue to pour into the region -- experts estimate as many as 250,000 to 300,000 a year. A doctor of Uyghur naturopathic medicine living and studying in Beijing complained that when he visited his home, all the trains from Urumqi to Kashgar were full but the return trips were nearly always empty.
Few are happy with this influx. Most Uyghurs view anything good for the Chinese as being bad for them. Part of the international debate over Beijing receiving the 2008 Summer Olympic Games was whether or not the award would force Chinese to improve its human rights treatment. But most Uyghurs I asked were utterly opposed to the awarding of the Games.
"It will just give them legitimacy," said one. "We don't want better treatment. We want independence."
Speakers at a recent East Turkestan National Congress, an umbrella group of overseas Uyghurs, spoke more of first gaining a level of self-determination. Given the oil and gas in the Taklamakan, Chinese fears of pan-Turkism and the need for a buffer with Russia, coupled with low-levels of literacy and education among regular Uyghurs, gaining independence will be difficult. In private, this subject dominates most discussions. I found myself in the home of a wealthy Uyghur businessman, a Communist Party member who sat on the local city council. He spoke openly, incautiously I thought, of freedom and armed resistance, using the forbidden word Turkestan, and, worse yet, Uyghurstan in place of Xinjiang. In Kashgar in June, army troops scattered a Dawaz exhibition out of fears that the crowd watching could turn into a "patriotic demonstration," as one Uyghur put it. Some said later that they had hoped it would.
The Chinese government, for its part, for many years seemed to have attempted to mildly indulge many of their minorities, including the Uyghurs. They were given limited access to power but little right of self-determination. Islamic worship was tolerated, and the use of the Uyghur language was re-introduced. But their autonomy was temporary, and in name only. From their statements, it would appear the Chinese have given up on this and are returning to a harsher approach. In August this year, The Washington Post reported increased military activity in and around Kashgar, with experts comparing China's new approach toward the Uyghurs to the United States' attitude to Native Americans in the 19th century. Rights to observe Islam have been rolled back, with state employees generally denied permission to worship. They often hear: "God doesn't pay your salary; China does."
The Uyghurs act as one would expect of any group on the defensive: They cling to religion; they attempt to insure the continuation of their language; they balk at contact with those they see as their colonizers; they occasionally use violence to make their point. And now, by exploiting worldwide developments, the Chinese government may be receiving justification for pursuing a scorched-earth policy in their own backyard -- a justification they already feel they don't need.
