The Apartment

We walked up a dark stairwell. The walls were bare, cold, undusted by color or personality. It was as austere as a school marm with a shrew’s soul.

My apartment was on the second floor, though it was really the first floor on which anyone actually resided, which I later learned was a sign of respect for my position – traditionally in China, the closer you lived to the ground, the more important you were thought to be, for you could escape the apartment more quickly and easily should it ever become engulfed in flames.

I’m sure it didn’t take long for them to wish I’d been on the top floor.

The apartment was roomy, if spartanly furnished and somewhat dank. The first room was a bright living room area extending to the right, complete with television, coffee table, utilitarian sofa, and several armchairs. Windows on the wall opened to the courtyard and let in plenty of sun.

To the immediate left was a converted computer room. There was a single bed in there, but the presence of a desk and desktop made it a computer room. It, too, was bright due to a large window, which had a direct view to an empty field adjacent the building and of the East Turkestan hills and mountains far to the north.

Through the living room was a large main room that I suppose would have been a dining area for a family. It was foreboding. Dark concrete floor, dark walls, no windows. High ceiling. Through it at the far end on the left was a kitchen, barely big enough for the full-size fridge, oven, stove, and small table within. It, too, had a window view to the open field.

To the immediate left off the main room was the bathroom, which was dominated by a large tub and a large water heater. There was a concrete shower stall and a sink dating back to the time of Genghis Khan. A small window showed the same field as did the kitchen and computer room.

Immediately to the right off the main room, directly across from the bathroom, was the large master bedroom, flanked on both sides by bedside tables with lamps as shaky as a meth-head with withdrawals. Against the far wall was a large armoire, which is too fancy a word for it. But it’s better than saying “poorly-crafted piece of furniture in which clothing is stored.” A chest of drawers of similar craftsmanship was on the closer wall. A queen bed dominated the room, but the best thing about the room was that it led out onto a balcony, about which the best thing was… let me put it this way:

Stroh’s is shit beer, but when it’s free, it’s less shit. Free beer beats beer that isn’t.

The balcony was like a Stroh’s. It was a shit balcony more intended for hanging laundry or for fermenting vegetables – and it smelled suspiciously like fermented feet. But having a shit balcony was better than not having a balcony. It was clean, despite the ghosts of vegetables/clothes/feet past. It had a view of the courtyard, though it’s akin to saying that a Yugo was a car.

The apartment was like a warehouse-partitioned living space. It could have been the cheap, drab furniture. It may have been the exposed ceiling pipes in the kitchen and main room. Or it could have been the unfashionable, seemingly uncleanable floors.

Regardless, it wouldn’t take much time for me to start longing for the warehouse aura, as it would soon give way to one of a Chinese jail cell.

The Complex

We walked into a grand lobby with high ceilings, dark gray walls, and austere furnishings. It had as much personality as a pair of black socks – and with as much fragance as unwashed ones.

The lobby’s décor was simple, foreboding, and duplicitous, as transparent as China had been reputed to be – and what I’d been expecting. The dank, cramped elevator we took up to the third floor only added to the ambience. A cluster of thoughts cascaded through my addled brain.

What kind of school is this going to be?

There was a ding! and the doors opened…

…to a bright, airy lobby with windows from the ceiling nearly to the floor. To the right was open space and doors leading out onto a huge patio. Forged though snow piled as high as the winter was long lay a walking path; the displaced impure snow had been shoveled to to each side of the path, discarded like old washrags after a morning of handwashing floors.

To the left was a front desk before an unornamented but freshly painted wall. (Later I would find irony in its being painted sky blue, the background of an East Turkestan flag). Beyond that were a computer lab, offices, classrooms, and bathrooms. All modern. All newly constructed or in the process of being so.

The juxtaposition of my first impression when I got out of Scott’s car and when I entered the first-floor lobby with the actuality of the school amused me. It was like going apartment hunting and pulling up in front of the most unappealing building imaginable only to find an residence therein complete with remote-controlled privacy shades, marble countertops, and velour carpeting.

I was about to smile to myself, but it turned into a smile for a short woman with bad teeth and a stylish haircut that I came to realize later was unsuitable for her. She introduced herself, in English, as Ellen.

“I am the Assistant School Director,” she said. It didn’t take but a few days to realize it was titular, for she had as much say in how the school was run as did the scrub brush blowing out in the semi-desert wind. And she had about as much backbone, too.

But I digress, for at that moment, I was just happy for the first time in a week to be speaking to an adult whom I understood.

After a quick tour of the still-under-construction school, we headed to my apartment on the northwest side of town, on West Ring Road, located on the western edge of Karamay proper. As we drove, Ellen proudly pointed out city landmarks big and small that I would soon know myself: People’s Square, Xinjiang Karamay People’s Hospital, Karamay Radio and Television University, and more.

Within a quarter of an hour or so, we turned off West Ring Road and into an apartment complex. In Korea, I was used to scores of nondescript apartment buildings comprising a complex, all colored the same beige or white or light gray. And I had seen similar structures and collections of structures in Shanghai and Urumqi. But I had never lived in one.

But that was going to end. I was finally going to be living in a dank, gray apartment building, a residence with as much personality as frozen mud. We wound through the complex until we got to the far end where, tucked away from most of the other local Han residents, almost in isolation, was a six-story edifice. Along with one adjacent to it and another across from it, it was a buck-toothed rectangle – a three-sided rectangle instead of the normal four-building design with a center courtyard.

It was an apartment complex for foreigners – and the denigrated scourge of Han society forced to share, as punishment, courtyard space with us.

And I say that in the warmest of ways.

The City

Karamay surprised me. No collection of skid row slums. No windowless mud hovels. No goats or pigs running rampant in the road. No mounds of human feces on every corner. No fires in barrels from which people kept warm and/or fed. No signs of backward ass China that I’d just rumbled across for the past five or six hours.

Instead, Karamay appeared quite modern. Working stoplights. Paved streets. 21^st-century buildings. Late-model cars.

But it was an erstwhile East Turkestan in all its modern Silk Road, ahem, glory. All in homage to the Han. Dull, gray, unimaginatively designed buildings were outfitted in metal gleaming in the bright January sunshine. Blocks of shops proudly served Chinese food or sold Chinese-made electronics and fashion. Supermarkets with posters of smiling Han families comprised two full, separate, blocks.

This main street in the bustling business district was littered with businesses and banks, with most billboards, bank signs, and building names in Chinese.

In somewhat stunned silence, I sat and took it all in. There was no evidence of the third world. No hint of the poverty I’d observed barely fifteen minutes earlier. And almost no evidence that anyone other than Han Chinese lived here.

I was bursting with questions (Where was the Uyghur influence? Where were the Uyghur businesses? Where were the Uyghur restaurants?), yet I could do nothing but look around in wonder.

After driving down the main thoroughfare for several blocks, including past a big intersection, we pulled into the front parking lot of a building with banks of dark-paned glass. It looked like the grand entrance to a foreboding hotel.

“School,” Scott managed to enunciate. I nodded.

We smiled and got out.

More China Protestations of East Turkestan and Uyghur Business

Click below for a less objective view of PRC's reactions to Tokyo's allowing the 2012 World Uyghur Congress's meetings, straight from the English-language version of the Communist Party's mouthpiece:

Beijing Discontent with Tokyo

Chinese propaganda in full force and typical spin.

China Trying to Bully Its Neighbors over East Turkestan and Uyghurs

Click the link below for more on PRC's reaction to Japan's allowing the World Uyghur Congress to hold meetings in Tokyo last year:

Japan and China at odds.

The Drive

East Turkestan (called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region by the People’s Republic of China) is as big as France is. But it has the population of greater New York City and includes a large geological depression split in two (the Junggar Basin with the Gurbantuggut Desert to the north and the Tarim Basin with the Taklamakan Desert to the south) by the Tian Shan Mountains.

Known by various names throughout its turbulent history, East Turkestan is a hostile place to live. I’ve seen reports alleging that more than 90% of the region is unfit for human habitation. After the drive from Urumqi to Karamay (about 190 miles, slightly less than the distance between New York and Boston or between Santa Barbara and San Diego), I didn’t find that hard to fathom; it’s easy to see why it’s so sparsely populated.

From Urumqi west was a respectable four-lane interstate-type of road called Lianhuo Expressway. At Hutubi, a nondescript city about 40 minutes out, we got onto a narrow two-lane road that would be comparable to a state highway in the U.S.

Only this was through tundra-type land (more desert-like in summer). Flat, featureless. Think Nevada on the way to Area 51. Or through Nebraska and Kansas toward the Rockies. Only flatter and more nondescript, if that’s possible. And blanketed with more than a foot of snow.

Only at a Ku Klux Klan rally could I imagine more white. And even then, I’m not sure.

The views were expansive. Far to the west, all the way to Kazakhstan, more than a hundred miles away, were unobstructed views of the Dzungarian Alatau Mountains. As the highway wound and turned more northerly, the flatness of the land allowed the Altay Mountains bordering Russia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia to come into unblocked view.

We passed through only several small towns, which were really no more than small gaggles of buildings and houses clustered together, as if huddled to help protect each other from the fierce winds whipping through the basin.

The going was slow, too, both temporally and literally.

Because of the impossibility for communication with Scott, I was left to my own observances of the surroundings and my own thoughts questioning whether or not I’d made the right decision to live in the middle of, apparently, nowhere. Time slowed to a crawl.

Often, our drive would slow to a crawl, too. Not because of snow- or ice-covered roads, mind you (it was, fortunately, a sunny day; speaking of which, rarely have I seen such clear, blue skies), but because of all the non-automobile traffic on the road.

Tractors. Horse-drawn carts. Herds of cattle. Wandering goats. The occasional drunk.

The most common things I saw – aside from snow, flat terrain, and animals – were gas stations. This isn’t too surprising when you remember that East Turkestan lies atop vast reserves of oil.

Ahhaaaa…

Now you see why Beijing has so much interest in the East Turkestan. Well, aside from just plain enjoying oppressing dissenting peoples and suppressing differing cultures.

After several days of driving (okay, it was really just several hours), there it was, literally appearing out of nowhere: a restaurant. There was nothing else but tundra, snow, and mountains in the far distance. Imagine driving across the face of the moon in a big Buick and then, suddenly, a restaurant appeared in the midst of barren nothingness.

Well that’s what it was like.

So, we stopped for lunch, which wasn’t as memorable as the bathroom was. That’s not to suggest that lunch wasn’t good – it was – but it is to suggest that I had never frequented a bathroom like that one, nor have I since.

The bathroom was apart from the building where we ate, which in and of itself isn’t so memorable. That the “toilet seat” was actually a wooden plank and that the “toilet” was actually a large hole in the ground about twenty feet deep and maybe fifty feet across made it unforgettable.

Oh, and the stench from the mountain of crap from the countless number of people who had done their business over the course of a just-as-immeasurable period of time made a slight impression, too.

Suddenly, my lunch didn’t seem as tasty as it had been.

As we continued the drive, I wondered – again – what I had gotten myself into. This time, though, I was contemplating not politics or lack of basic freedoms but instead my soon-to-be-living conditions. Nothing I had seen from Urumqi to Karamay had given me any impression that I was in anything but a third-world country.

But I wasn’t necessarily turned off by it. Quite the contrary, actually, as I was mentally preparing myself to deal with those type of conditions.

Several years earlier, I had lived in the slums of Singapore. I had traveled through the rundown Baltic states of Europe – Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia – in the dead of winter. I had spent time in the simple countrysides of Slovakia and Hungary. I had walked and gotten drunk amidst the skid rows of Nepal. Through it all, I had seen poverty unlike anything I’d seen in the worst parts of Los Angeles, Chicago, or New Orleans.

But this seemed like it would be worse.

Three questions rotated in my mind like an iTunes playlist stuck on repeat: How was I going to recruit teachers to teach here? How was I going to find students who could afford tuition? Was I really going to invite my relatively new girlfriend to come and live with me here?

I tried to tell myself that there was no way a large, successful English-language franchise was going to open a school in a remote area of the world (Urumqi has the distinction, if I’ve not mentioned this before, of being the farthest city in the world from an ocean or sea).

I had succeeded in believing that things were only superficially squalid. And then we reached the outskirts of Karamay, and what I saw made the Jordan Downs housing projects in Watts seem palatial and pristine: crumbling mud homes with no windows or doors; too-thin children wandering aimlessly between the huts, and hobbled older people gathered around large barrels that sent thick black smoke into the sky.

What struck me most about the people I saw were their thin coats, ratty sweaters, and lack of shoes – nothing that offered much protection from the bitter wind and cold.

With no one capable of discouraging me from expecting a city of anything other than a gaggle of grimy ghettos, we drove up Yingbin Road, one of the main roads leading over a bridge and into Karamay.

2012 London Book...Fair? Not So Much

It happened last year, but the link below is just another show of how substantial is the PRC’s reach and how strong their will to repress dissent. Shame on the London Book Fair for allowing itself to be strong-armed.

Not So Fair After All

The Week

Because Urumqi is as far from Shanghai as New York is from Los Angeles, I had to take a flight – on China Southern Airlines, one of China’s domestic carriers.

It was not a pleasant flight. Though it’s been nearly ten years since that flight, I can still remember the flight as if it were yesterday. Especially the smoke permeating the cabin.

No, not engine smoke. Cigarette smoke.

Seems China hadn’t gotten the memo that smoking on flights was not a good idea. Don’t know if they still think that way; if you’ve flown on China Southern, or another domestic Chinese airline, please let me know if it’s still true or not.

Anyway, I can’t recall ever being happier that a plane landed. I don’t think I’d have cared if the flight had crash-landed. I was just glad it landed.

But the fun wasn’t relegated to the flight.

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my new boss, the school owner, didn’t speak English. As a result, he met me at the airport with his family, including his 13-year-old daughter, who did speak a modicum of English. She was my translator for the next week.

Honestly, it wasn’t that bad. She was a nice enough girl and the family a nice enough one. But I couldn’t help thinking a familiar refrain that I’d thought in Korea, too: the owner of a steel company usually knows steel and the business of steel very well – why in Korea and China (and elsewhere) do people who have no knowledge of English think they can run an English school? I know some people would argue that business is business, but I repeat: how often have you run across a steel magnate who doesn’t know steel? A bank CEO who doesn’t know banking?

Anyway, Scott (he was able to introduce himself in English) was in the computer parts and service business. He apparently was a very wealthy man, but it’s all relative.

He and his family showed me Han Chinese culture amidst the week-long Lunar New Year celebrations. Elaborate dinners at sumptuous restaurants. Our own fireworks celebration in a local park. Skiing, snowboarding, and tobagganing at a local resort. Hitting tourist spots for what I realized later were Han Chinese spins of East Turkestan traditions.

At the hotel in Urumqi where I was staying, I even got the obligatory call from a prosititute, which I’d read would be coming. It’s common in big Chinese cities for hookers to become aware that a foreigner is staying at a hotel, particularly a nice one. Sometimes, the hotels have relationships with these women and will call them. Other times, the ladies will call up or visit the hotel and get the room numbers of the names that are obviously foreign.

Regardless of the method, a call is made, in broken English, to the room where the foreigner is staying. If you’re unaware of this practice, it’s easy to get yourself in trouble because any misunderstanding of what is being said that results in a “yes” response from you constitutes an agreement to whatever has been proposed. A visit to your room, whether or not there is sex or even fondling, even if it’s opening the door to answer a knock before quickly realizing what’s going on and rejecting any advances, can result in your being charged a fee. Refusal to pay this fee often ends up in beatings and/or worse. Many hotels, complicit as they are in this practice because they receive a cut, will not side with the foreigner – and neither will the local police. Of course, you’ll never get anyone to admit that this actually happens.

Though I knew it was coming, the call still nearly fooled me. The woman on the other end said my name, albeit in garbled fashion, and offered to help me during my time in Urumqi. Her English was more than passable enough, and her offer not so transparent, that I nearly acquiesced. Being alone in a strange place and being awoken from sleep early in the a.m. both contributed to my nearly being weak enough to say “yes”. Fortunately, I saw through the scheme before I crossed the point of no return.

As for any interaction with Uyghurs, it was limited to getting kebabs at street vendor stalls or at small restaurants and taking them to go. At the Urumqi hotel, as nearly all tourist hotels, there were only Han working. And no Uyghur food. Outside of Urumqi, at some of the tourist spots, however, there was more Uyghur presence in hotels and restaurants, but we didn’t frequent those places as much.

But I saw Uyghurs everywhere. Eating at and running Uyghur restaurants. Riding bikes through neighborhoods. Operating mom and pop convenience stores. Walking to school. Sitting on curbs. Pushing carts. Selling their wares. Playing hauntingly beautiful and often quite rhythmic traditional songs.

Because of the language barrier, I was unable to ask questions. But I watched and observed, marveling at how marginalized economically a majority population could be in its own land.

After a week being in and around Urumqi, and of wondering when I would head north, we finally left for the nearly 200-mile trip to Karamay.

“We” being Scott (no English) and me (no Mandarin). Scott’s family lived in Urumqi and didn’t make the trip with us.

And for such an uneventful trip where the communication was possible only through hand gestures and monosyllabic stabs at each other’s language, it was unforgettable.

The Meeting

Training in Shanghai was boring. I think the only excitement was how the other Academic Director trainees and I compared where we each were going; I was regarded as an anomaly because I was the one going out to Karamay in the wild, wild west. I would be closer to Moscow than I would be to Beijing.

The first two days of training were at the main office – only twice did we go out to observe, and on both occasions, we only went to the closest EF school, which was about a fifteen-minute drive.

To that point, I’d eaten nothing but Chinese food and interacted with either native English-speaking foreigners or with Han Chinese. I’d not yet met a Uyghur, but I had looked up where a sizable population of them lived in Shanghai.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t close to where I was staying in Pudong, and with training starting early every morning, I hadn’t yet ventured out into the labyrinth that is Shanghai.

A chance meeting on the third day of training changed all that; in retrospect, it changed the course of my entire time in China.

On that third day, Wednesday, we trainees visited a branch school in another part of Shanghai, further away, and this is where I met Yoldash. I don’t really remember his name, but I would give him a fake name here even if I did know it.

He taught English, but it wasn’t until later that I realized how unusual this was, even in Shanghai. Uyghurs don't often work at such established franchises in the rather nice positions of English teacher. That Yoldash was able to speak such good English was then, though not later, another surprising revelation to me.

He and I talked for as much time as we could. He was pleasantly surprised at my knowledge of and interest in Uyghurs and particularly amazed when I told him I was going to Karamay, for he had dozens of friends from there.

I didn’t hesitate when he invited me to a party/celebration at a restaurant in his neighborhood the next night. Where it was and how’d I get there or back to Pudong were of no concern to me. I had to meet him and his friends.

The next night, my stomach flipped in excitement as the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. My fellow trainees were with me, and we beheld this restaurant together: neon Chinese characters and Arabic-eque script. My companions were skeptical, but the Uyghur writing convinced me were at the right place – well, at least at a Uyghur restaurant.

The front door opened into a lobby area where Yoldash greeted us in typical Uyghur fashion: right arm across his torso so his hand, in a fist, rested on his heart.

“Assamau-alaikum,” he greeted us.

“Vei-alaikum-assalam,” I answered tentatively, not sure I said it correctly.

But Yoldash smiled broadly. “Nice to see all of you. Follow me.”

We followed him into this large ballroom-style room where, in the middle, was a large, empty wood floor with two huge chandeliers hanging above. Surrounding this empty area, camped on thick carpet, were dozens of round tables, each with a white tablecloth blanketing it like snow blankets a meadow and illuminated by smaller chandeliers. Intricately patterned rugs hung on the walls next to ornate lamps and portraits of people with Central Asian features.

From third grade to ninth grade, I had taken ballroom dancing at my parents' behest. This room reminded me of that ballroom, except where the stuffy reluctance of pre-teens doing something their parents had forced them to do infiltrated that room, the mouthwatering aromas of lamb, fish, and chicken permeated this one.

Whereas those ballrooms of yore were full of the youthful nervousness and innocence, this room was filled with celebration, not of anything in particular, but of life, of being with good friends and new ones.

And where that old ballroom boomed with classical ballroom music, this one reverberated with laughter and the gutteral beauty that is the Uyghur language.

The images of this restaurant, new to me on that night, would become familiar to me in the coming months.

But on this night, it was all new. Exciting. Educational. Illuminating. Yoldash introduced our group to scores of people. With every introduction of me, there accompanied exclamations, smiles, and warm hugs or hearty handshakes.

I was the one going to Karamay. I was the one who knew who Uyghurs were and what was going on in the west. A surprising number knew English and I was able to learn a lot more than I already knew. I was given lists of phone numbers to call, restaurants to visit, and people to talk to. One man gave me a particular name, that of his cousin, and she would become my best friend in Karamay, my Uyghur “sister”, if you will.

I left the restaurant that night with confirmation that I had made the right decision and was headed to the right place.

But it would be a week or more before I was able to hit up the contacts I’d made in Shanghai. Lunar New Year was on the horizon and my first week in East Turkestan would be spent in Urumqi with the owner of the school, my boss.

And he didn’t speak a word of English.

Uyghurnomics: Loyal Supporters? Soccer and the Modern Uyghur Identity (working paper)

Uyghurnomics: Loyal Supporters? Soccer and the Modern Uyghur Identity (working paper)

I'm still working on my next entry "A Week in Shanghai", but I came across this post this morning, so I thought I'd share the link. Quite an interesting read and very illuminating.

Till my next update...

The Move

In the fall of 2002, I’d been in Korea for over two and a half years straight (it was my 2nd stint in Korea, having spent 1998 there, as well), and I was ready for a new challenge.

I wanted to tackle China. Discover her secrets. Take in her sights, sounds, and smells. I’d lived in Singapore and then Seoul, but I was considering a city I’d always wanted to live in: Shanghai, the “Paris of the East.” But I also had a strong urge to live in the north (such as in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, or Inner Mongolia) or in the west (Qinghai or Xinjiang).

I researched jobs in China. Most were teaching jobs at universities. Those were okay, but I was hoping for more money and maybe a step up to an administrative job. Further research uncovered job opportunities at a franchise called English First, or EF, where there were plenty of admin jobs (mainly Academic Director), suitable for someone of my experience and education. There were three such positions in cities/places where I was very interested in living: Harbin (Heilongjiang), Chengdu (Sichuan), and Karamay.

I researched the locales more than I did the actual jobs, though the job in Karamay was a brand-new one, and that appealed to me just on general principle; the school wouldn’t open until March 2003 (and I was researching in October 2002). And while I really liked what I read about Chengdu and Dalian (and their respective provinces, Sichuan and Heilongjiang), choosing Karamay was a no-brainer.

I’d read about the vast array of minority cultures in the Far West and I knew all about the Silk Road. That I was at that time also interested in Islam and Central and West Asian cultures and languages made my choosing Karamay all the easier.

In the days leading up to my interview with the main office in Shanghai, I studied and researched as much as I could on East Turkestan (Xinjiang) and those who lived there. I read about Kazakhs, Tatars, Russians, Tajiks, and Turkmens, all of whom were represented in varying degrees within the multicultural mix that is Central Asia.

Of course, I learned a lot about the most numerous of all the ethnicities there – the Uyghurs. Their history fascinated me. Their culture attracted me. Their language drew me (I’d been studying Arabic at the time). Additionally, their food, their physical characteristics, and their spirit, as described in all that I read, conspired to lure me like old clothes and dark closets entice a moth.

When I finally interviewed, the interviewer was taken aback at my knowledge of Xinjiang. Though I was qualified for the position, my passion for the place and the people there, as well as my zeal to work there regardless of its remoteness, sealed it for me. I’m sure she had expected to have to sell me on Karamay, not the other way around.

Next: A week in Shanghai...

Modern History, Part 2

As one might surmise, the Uyghur reaction to the Chinese insipience has not been amiable. The Chinese regard the Uyghurs in the same manner they regard most of the rest of the world: inferior culturally, substandard intellectually, and impure ethnically. Uyghurs, on the other hand, regard the Chinese in the same way any other culture would view an occupying people: with suspicion, mistrust, and barely concealed rage.

Uyghurs in many towns and small cities all over East Turkestan have, over the past five decades, expressed in a variety of ways their displeasure to what they see as the Chinese infiltration of their land, culture, and life. Most of these ways have been and are peaceful and without violence, such as protests, demonstrations, and local gatherings. There have been at least half a dozen incidences of violence, however, in the form of bus bombings, in the past ten years—in fact, these bus bombings are really the only forms of violent protest in the last couple of decades.

Unfortunately, there are two things to understand:

First, the peaceful demonstrations have often been described by the government-controlled Chinese press as being or becoming violent. What the Chinese media fail to report is that IF the demonstrations DID become violent, they usually did so because of the provocations of the Chinese police trying to "control" the demonstrations. You see, the authorities in China do not like to witness any form of protestation toward them or the government. But the world would not look too kindly upon a heavy-handed approach to dealing with peaceful protests.

Second, the infrequent acts of violence that do inevitably occur have been spun by the Chinese authorities to seem as if they occur frequently. Beijing has used the acts of violence, no matter how rare, to tighten the already vise-like grip the they have on the region. A further result has been the Chinese media’s international portrayal of all Uyghur shows of discontent or separatism as “terrorist” insurrections when, for the most part, these shows of displeasure with the Chinese status quo have been nothing more than mere calls for basic treatment as human beings, or against discrimination, or for the same rights to education and raising a family as the Han Chinese are afforded.

In many of the towns and cities that were once majority Uyghur, but are now minority Chinese, traditional buildings, houses, places of worship, and restaurants have been razed to make way for varicose shopping plazas, fast-food joints, car dealerships, high-rise apartment buildings, and karaoke clubs. Monuments to past local (read, Uyghur) heroes have been extirpated and enormous statues reflecting admiration for Mao and other Chinese Communist heroes of the past half-century have been erected in their places. An overwhelming majority of the best jobs in fields such as banking, oil, engineering, teaching, tourism, and business are being taken not by what once were the more educated Uyghurs, but by the government-favored, newly-migrated Han.

In the past two decades, the situation has worsened for the Uyghurs, as well, for their rights to things such as education have been diminished or taken away completely. The chances for equal education between Uyghurs and Chinese are becoming less and less. There was a time when Uyghurs were allowed to learn their own language in school; in fact, all of their lessons were taught in Uyghur, and they were allowed to learn Uyghur history. 

These days, if Uyghur parents want their children to learn Uyghur, they have to teach them at home; if they want their children to have a chance to a decent future, they send them to integrated schools, schools for both Chinese and Uyghur children—they feel that their children will have little chance for future success without this. A culture that was as highly advanced as the Uyghurs were just a century ago is losing not only its identity but also its high level of education.

The job market is not much better. The Han Chinese are the recipients of more job promotions. There is rampant discrimination against Uyghurs (and other minorities, as well, such as ethnic Kazakhs). Jobless rates for the Uyghurs in East Turkestan run at least double what it is for the Han, and in some places it’s four or five times the rate of the Han. The Chinese government is pouring the equivalent of hundreds of millions of American dollars into East Turkestan to improve its infrastructure and take advantage of her many resources, yet the Uyghurs, as a whole, see about as much of it as do the Bantus of Kenya.

And why is there so much Chinese and international investment in East Turketan?

It’s very simple: oil, oil, and more oil. 

Unfortunately, as much as the Chinese authorities try to say otherwise, the wealth distribution is decidedly one-sided.

Thus, to say that the last seven decades have merely been contentious between the Uyghurs and Chinese is to say that Israel is a passive observer in all American Middle East political misadventures. 

Not much of the world knows about the East Turkestan situation either because of the Chinese government's ability to keep such things hidden from the world or because of their expert spinning of propaganda. This situation is akin, though yet neither as continuously violent nor as widely known, to the situation in Palestine and Israel.

The intent of this blog is to illuminate the reader with the iniquities of what is happening to the Uyghurs in East Turkestan. The objective also is to try and portray as even-handed a view of the situation as is possible because, for the most part, any news the world receives regarding the issue heretofore has been and is decidedly biased in favor of the Chinese or is under-reported by international media because of the pressure applied by the Chinese government. Because it, too, hides behind the cover of September 11, 2001, the Chinese government has been given carte blanche approval by a complicit United States to wage its own “war on terrorism”, as bogus a war as is the American one.

Once the world has a more even-handed viewpoint of the abominations transpiring inside East Turkestan, then it will be a boost to the Uyghurs and their goal of achieving what it is that most, if not all, readers of this blog already have:

Freedom.

Modern History, Part 1

Because of its location, East Turkestan has been the subject of invasion and/or occupation by China and/or Russia for centuries, though until the last century and a quarter, none of the occupations had lasted for very long. The first invasion was in 104 B.C. and lasted less than two decades. For the next 850 years or so, China invaded the East Turkestan region several more times, but only managed to sustain control for less than a total of 160 years. This last rule ended in 751 A.D. and Uyghurstan enjoyed over a thousand years of progress and self-autonomy, save for a voluntary span of two centuries when it was part of the Mongol empire; even during these two hundred years, East Turkestan retained its sovereignty.

It was not until 1876 that the Manchu empire invaded and forcibly, brutally, annexed East Turkestan, killing around a million Uyghurs in the process. When East Turkestan was officially introduced into the empire, its name was changed to Xinjiang, which means “new territory’ in Chinese. East Turkestan was under nearly constant Manchu rule until 1949; however, during this period of nearly 75 years, East Turkestan inhabitants staged constant revolts and even successfully managed to regain their independence twice: once in 1933, for three years, when the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Republic was formed, and then again in 1944, for five years, when the second Eastern Turkestan Republic was formed.

When the People's Republic of China was formally founded in 1949 by Mao, East Turkestan—now, of course, known in China as Xinjiang—was promised self-autonomy while still being part of the Republic—hence Xinjiang’s present formal name of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Of course, such a promise was never honored, for reasons that would soon become as clear as a star-encrusted East Turkestan night sky: the mid-1950s discovery of oil under Karamay, a city in the northern part of the province.

Any notions that the Chinese authority may have entertained at that time of allowing East Turkestan to be free were scattered like desert sand in a windstorm.

East Turkestan is quite an inhospitable place to live for the most part, much different from the majority of the vastly agrarian remainder of China. Han Chinese historically hadn’t lived in East Turkestan because the topography and climate were too hostile. Uyghurs were and are accustomed to living in this climactically and topographically hostile region, but it’s not a place to which a farmer from Sichuan, a businessman from chic Shanghai, a vendor from steamy Guangzhou, a pencil-pusher from Beijing, or a fisherman from Qingdao wanted to migrate.

Uyghurstan sees more extreme winter and summer temperatures than any other place in China, as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) in summer and as low as minus 22 Fahrenheit (–30 Celsius) in winter are common. The south of East Turkestan is home to the Taklamakan desert, the world’s second largest, (and maybe more difficult to traverse than is the Sahara because of its constant shifting sands; countless stories abound about cities and towns having disappeared in Taklamakan’s sadistic embraces over the centuries). East Turkestan also sits on the western fringes of the Gobi desert, known as the Junggar Basin, in the north, and three vast mountain ranges border East Turkestan to the north (the Altay), west (the Tian Shan and the Karakoram), and south (the Himalayas).

At the time of oil discovery, the population of East Turkestan was 90 percent Uyghur. After the discovery, though, the Chinese government started forcefully mass-populating East Turkestan with Han Chinese. The majority of Han live today in Urumqi, the provincial capital, but there are Han majorities inhabiting most of the area north of Urumqi. South of Urumqi, however, still sees Uyghurs as the majority, though even in the once-thriving major Silk Road stop of Kashgar the Han population is catching up with that of the Uyghurs.

Indeed, though the Han might still be in the minority in Kashgar, it is with burgeoning Chinese flavor that one now sees the surface of this once lovely city: the largest Mao statue in all of China, broad streets in the flavor of many large eastern China cities, Chinese names for these streets, and large buildings erected where there used to be Uyghur markets.

To be continued...

The Flag

This is an image of the East Turkestan flag, as mentioned in the first post below.

The East Turkestan Quandary

This blog will deal with the quandary of the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic minority living in western China. The Uyghurs (pronunciation in English: wee-gher) make up about half of the population of Xinjiang, China’s most western and expansive province. Xinjiang province is about three times the size of France—consuming one-sixth of China’s overall geography—yet it has an overall population of less than 19 million people, slightly more than that of metropolitan Shanghai.

Historically, the natives of this region have referred to it as East Turkestan, East Turkistan, or Uyghurstan. For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to Xinjiang province as East Turkestan.

It even has its own flag—though it is illegal to behold in China—nearly identical to that of Turkey’s red banner with a white star and crescent moon in the upper left corner; instead of red, however, the Uyghur flag has a sky blue background. I will post that flag in the next week or so.

This particular blog will not go into too much depth on any issues, but will instead briefly introduce the Uyghur people and their culture. Also spelled Uighur, Uygur, and Uigur; for the purposes of this article, the spelling will be U-Y-G-H-U-R because this is what the author learned was the closest transliteral spelling from studying the language and from consulting with those familiar with both languages.

In the posts that follow, much more will be explored in depth, much more insight will be given, and many examples, either witnessed firsthand or related from reliable sources and told secondhand, will be conveyed.

The People’s Republic of China is a country of nearly one and a half billion people, and around 93% of the population is made up of Han Chinese. The remaining seven percent is divided up amongst 55 ethnic minorities; this includes the Uyghurs, who themselves only make up roughly one-tenth of one percent of the total population of the People’s Republic of China.

The Han are descendants of the Han Dynasty, which lasted from about 206 BC- 220 AD. It is because of the considerable influence that the dynasty exerted over what is considered “Chinese” culture that the Chinese people are known as Han Chinese. In fact, in denoting a person who is Chinese, the Chinese characters for this mean, literally, “a man of Han.”

Traditionally, the Uyghurs have been semi-nomadic, living for countless generations under their own auspices, as it were. They trace their origins to Altay, a fairly mountainous region that today encompasses parts of central-southern Russia, western Mongolia, extreme northeast Kazakstan, and the north of Xinjiang; it is from this region that the Altaic languages are believed to have arisen—such languages include Korean, Finnish, Hungarian, and, of course, Uyghur.

The Uyghurs are not related to the Chinese in any way: not in language, culture, religion, looks, personality, food, business acumen, hospitality, or train of thought—in fact, Uyghurs are more closely related to Europeans, Caucasians, Koreans, and Mongolians than they are to the Han. Many a Uyghur have blue or green eyes, red or light brown hair, and body types that are less stereotypical Asian and more like that of Europeans or Middle Easterners—prominent noses, shapely body features, a proclivity for body hair, and more. Too, there are several distinguishing body marks that Uyghurs share with Koreans, the most particular of which is a purplish mark resembling a bruise near the base of the spine.

The Uyghurs have a history that is approximately four millennia old. They have lived in the East Turkestan area for about half of those four millennia. Being at the crossroads of the old Silk Road that served as the connection between the East and West, the Uyghurs developed themselves into a highly civilized culture. Though Uyghur culture is largely unknown to so many people in today’s world, Uyghur treasures and artifacts, which highlight their high level of civilization and sophistication, fill up vast parts of museums in all parts of the world, including some of the world’s most renowned museums in London, Paris, Tokyo, New Delhi, and St. Petersburg, among others.

Such aspects of the Uyghurs’ highly civilized world include the following:

• the written script of the Uyghur language was so revered by Genghis Khan that he adopted it into Mongol culture (until then, the Mongols had no written script for their language);
• the Uyghurs' knowledge of medicine was extensive, too, and many scholars now believe that acupuncture was not, in fact, a Chinese invention, but, instead, an invention of Central Asia that was perfected by the Uyghurs;
• the Uyghurs are believed to have been printing books, poetry, legal contracts, and other such documents long before Guttenburg invented his press;
• though living in a generally dry climate where much rain doesn’t fall, the Uyghurs invented an irrigation system—called “kariz”—that takes advantage of melting snowfall and can ferry water underground for many kilometers to fields and farms that need water. Farmers and agriculturists from places all over the world with similar topography and climate have come to East Turkestan to learn this method of irrigation, and it is still used East Turkestan today.

As you can tell, Uyghur culture shouldn't be as obscure as it is in today's world. But the Chinese government has been quite successful not only in oppressing the Uyghurs and their culture, but it's also been successful in repressing the spread of Uyghur contributions to the world.

I hope in some way to combat that.

Thanks for your time today. I will continue with another update soon.

Until then...

Why Am I Doing This?

It's been ten years since I lived in China. The excuses why I've not written about this are just that - excuses.

Besides, it'd take me nearly eight more years to explain.

Bottom line is this: life happened and I prioritized incorrectly.

But something happened yesterday that ripped off the lid that had been keeping everything within. Something that I hope isn't a one-time thing. Something I hope will lead to more consistent posting. And more consistent sharing of information about the Uyghurs and Xinjiang Autonomous Region, which I will continue to refer to as East Turkestan (as mentioned in my long ago first post below).

Since I left China in October of 2003, I've thought many times about my Uyghur friends, many of whom I became so close to that I consider family. I worry about them. I fear for their safety. I hope that their dreams haven't been shattered.

I wish I could see them.

My hope is that one day I can afford to somehow find a way for them to come join my wife and me here in Los Angeles and that they can be far away from the oppressive madness.

I should let you know that I will never refer to my Uyghur "family" by their given name, only by aliases I've created for them. Some of what I will write here will disparage China, its people, its culture, and (most especially) its government.

However you feel about my criticism is your choice. However you feel about me for making them is your problem.

But I lived there. This is not hearsay.

I saw. I partook. I felt. I know firsthand.

My hope when I started this blog is the same as it is today as I resume updating it: inform the world of what is happening to the Uyghur people in the East Turkestan.

Many Americans - perhaps many other people from around the world, as well - seem to disregard the Uyghurs and their protests (sometimes admittedly violent) in the same way they disregard anything Muslim: with venomous discrimination, uninformed malice, and a mob-like mentality.

In recent years, when I've read Internet news reports of East Turkestan clashes between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, the Comments section overflows with ridiculous and misaimed vitriol. Some of it at the Chinese, but most of it at the Uyghurs - simply for being Muslim.

It is with humility that I state my goal: make Uyghurstan as much a relevant topic as Tibet is.

When I began, I originally had planned to update this blog in a news-type style. However, I've decided that I'm going to update it in serialized fashion. Instead of making it bland, much as a newspaper or magazine article might be - just spitting out facts, as I did in the first post - I'm going to serialize it into a story of sorts.

It will not be fiction. What I'm going to write will be based directly on notes I wrote in a journal when i lived there in 2003. I will certainly share my opinions, and much will be based on my own point of view, but nothing will be embellished in order to entertain. If you are entertained, then it's because my writing is good enough to do so, or because some of what we did there was entertaining, or a combination of both.

However, my intent is to inform. And my aim is to do that in the best way possible.

Please feel free to pass this site on to others who might be interested. 

If it so happens to fall into the hands of my Uyghur brothers and sisters - and, with the power and scope of the Internet and social media these days, it's entirely possible - I will be elated. 

If it so happens to fall into the hands of Chinese sympathizers, so be it.

And if it falls into the hands of Chinese authorities, and it makes them upset to the point of wanting a piece of me, well, bring 'em on.

Thanks for reading. Until next time....