This summer I translated “Cultural Demolition in Kashgar,” a French story from the dynamic Paris left-wing newspaper Liberation which attracted a wide number of readers via Danwei.org and ended up on the reading list of a number of overseas Uighur organizations.

Today Le Monde’s China blog releases a large cache of similar photos which, for readers following Xinjiang and China’s West, may be of great interest.

via Le Monde

People's Square, Kashgar, via Le Monde

Id Kuh mosque (Kashgar, Xinjiang, China)

Cargado originalmente por sana banana nana

historic region of EAST TURKISTAN

The Id Kah mosque (Uyghur: Héytgah Meschit, Chinese: 艾提尕尔; pinyin: àitígǎěr) is a mosque located in Kashgar, Xinjiang, in the western People’s Republic of China. It is the largest mosque in China. Every Friday, it houses nearly 10,000 worshippers and may accommodate up to 20,000.[1]

The mosque was built by Saqsiz Mirza in ca. 1442 (although it incorporated older structures dating back to 996) and covers 16,800 square meters.

It was at the center of a sharp rise in tension between the Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang in 2003,[citation needed] when developers razed a rose garden on the mosque site and built an enclosed market nearby.

Du 31 octobre au 3 novembre.
On découvre Kashgar, ville étonnante et attachante. Tout est en deux langues: chinois et ouïgour (caractères arabes). Autant dire que c’est assez opaque. Les Ouïgours représentent 70% de la population du Xinjiang.
Le John’s café à côté de l’hôtel, sensé être le RDV des routards et un point de contact, est fermé à partir d’octobre! Heureusement il y a Abdul, qui gère une petite agence familliale dont les six frères sont repartis dans toute la région! Il parle très bien anglais avec un accent américain. Il s’occupe de nos billets de train jusqu’à Turfan, notre prochaine étape. Dans la foulée, il nous propose une escapade sur la mythique Karakorum Highway que nous ferons lundi.
Kashgar est une ville pleine de contrastes: vieux quartiers en pisé sont encerclés d’immeubles modernes et de gratte-ciel. L’immense place de la ville est dominée par la statue de Mao. Présence militaire bien visible, mais tout est calme.
Beaucoup de charme dans la vieille ville, thé en terrasse dans une “chaïkana” ouïgour traditionelle. Nous visitons la mosquée Id Kah datant du XVeme siècle, puis le mausolée de la concubine parfumée recouvert de céramiques vertes et jaunes.
La première impression de la ville malgré le monde est le peu de bruit de la circulation, en effet en y regardant de plus prêt, tous les scooters sont électriques, ainsi que les triporteurs. La vitesse de croisière doit être d’environ 25-30 km/heure.
Diner dans un petit resto du coin. Après 1 quart d’heure, une serveuse se décide à nous amener un menu partiellement traduit en anglais. On se demandait si on allait réussir à manger quelque chose! Au final, copieux, très bon et pas cher!
Dimanche, jour de marché à ne pas manquer à Kashgar. On commence par le marché aux bestiaux: génial! Moutons, boeufs, taureaux, chèvres, chameaux, chevaux et ânes (sauf erreur). Transactions entre vieux barbichus typiques, galops d’essai, énormément de monde, 98% d’hommes = ambiance unique.
On prend ensuite un triporteur (où visiblement des chèvres sont montées avant nous) pour aller au marché traditionnel du dimanche. Foule encore plus incroyable, c’est fascinant. On ne se croit pas vraiment en Chine, on pourrait être en Asie centrale.
On réitère notre expérience grande roue, à peine plus moderne que celle de Bukhara, mais plus grande. Très bonne occasion de voir toute la ville d’en haut.
Lundi, on fait la Karakorum Highway jusqu’au lac Karakuli à 3′600 mètres. Cette route continue jusqu’au col de Kunjerab à 4′700 mètres avant de redescendre sur le Pakistan. La montée fut un peu rude pour la vieille Renault qui demandait régulièrement plusieurs litres d’eau dans le radiateur. La construction de la route a dû être un vrai défi dans les années soixante et les paysages de gorges de toutes les couleurs sont magnifiques.
Mardi, dernier jour à Kashgar, journée tranquille avant de prendre le train pour Turfan à 1500 km de là. Le trajet dure 22 heures. Nous sommes en classe molle, c’est à dire compartiment à quatre, rose et blanc, cosy comme tout. Une vieille dame selon Yannick (un monsieur selon Francois) s’installe péniblement dans la couchette d’en face, c’est pas elle ou lui qui va faire la Java. Le désert du Taklamakan défile , monotone, sur notre droite. Taklamakan en ouïgour signifie “entre et ne revient jamais”, c’est le plus grand désert de Chine. Sur notre gauche, un peu plus de relief qui doit être les contreforts du Tian Shan.
Le repas local au wagon restaurant était parfait et nous avons très bien dormi.

The intricate details of this mosque and the angle at which the photo was taken from caught my eye. Incredible.

A haphazard-looking mass of old and new buildings made of mud brick, red brick, wood and some cement, the Old City impressed me. It had the same feeling as the souqs in Morocco and the back alleys of Egypt: Old and exotic. Heavy wooden doors blocked us from peering into most homes, but we could get a feel for the way people lived here. Every few turns we came to the thin minarets and complicated brickwork of a community mosque. A man with a donkey cart sold vegetables at the far end of the hill complex, and public-service graffiti in Arabic writing was scratched into some of the walls. China as I’ve never seen it before. – Bethverde

Dropping our dust covered bags after 38 straight hours of bus travel we prepared to sign into the Kashgar Old City hostel. A man dressed in the black uniform of the People’s Republic Police force, flanked by two aviator wearing heavies, followed us in. These three had challenged us at the bus station and it seemed had followed us across town. The leader was swinging a spiked black truncheon menacingly. Before we can grab the long dreamed of beer from the fridge next to us we are ordered to sit down:

“Passports. What job do you do?”
“Advertising”
“[Pause] You can’t stay here. You go Qini Bagh Hotel”
“But we have a reservation here…”
“No you go now. NOW.”
In the most measured tone I could muster having not slept for 2 nights, “Do you mind if I ask why?”
“Your safety. National Day”
“But…”
“GO NOW!”

This was our cordial welcome to Kashgar. We had traveled for thousands of miles to get as far from the grasp of the People’s Republic as we could, but it seemed that the further we went from Beijing the tighter the grip had become.

Kashgar is a legendary oasis settlement where the Silk Road splinters into the mountains of Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrgzstan, and I had dreamed of visiting it for as long as I can remember. As a child there is little that fires an imagination like tales of camel trains being swallowed without trace in shifting sands, murderous bandits lurking hidden in icy mountain passes and people running unimaginable risks across the deserts in pursuit of undreamed of wealth. So it was we laid an ambitious plan to retrace the route from Beijing via Xian, to the far west of China’s troubled Xinjiang (‘New frontier’) province and then do a loop round the southern edge of the Taklamakan desert. The route would take us as far along the silk road as our visas would carry us and would also lead us well off the tourist route and into a rarely seen part of China. 20 days was the plan and when we looked at the distances, potential sandstorms and delays involved we soon began to not only question our own sanity, but we also begun to appreciate the scale of the undertaking of those who had traveled the route over 2,000 years before us.

After a 2 day stop in the smoggy disappointment that was Xi’an we boarded the train to Jiayaguan in the Hexi Corridor. This narrow strip of land running up to the North of China winds between the Tian Shan and Qilian Shan mountains and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. The Chinese refer to the town as the mouth of China. To the East of it lay civilisation and to the West nothing but barbarians, desert demons and the promise of a lingering death. Leaving the town and seeing the Western extremity of the Great Wall crumbling into endless scrubland it was tempting to agree. Wedged in my 5′4” sleeper bus bunk surrounded by an army of smoking, hacking and spitting companions I tried to imagine the trains of camels and their drivers wrapped to withstand dust storms, heat and bitter cold as they plodded at a camel’s pace across the featureless land. It was a struggle.

The scale of the journey they did needs some kind of context. It is 2,700 miles just from Xian to Kashgar; roughly the half way point along the Silk Road that stretched all the way to Rome. This is about 3 times Lands End to John O’Groats or the length of our whole ride from Mexico to Canada on the tandem. But the difference is that there is nothing there… The Taklamakan translates as ‘the desert that people enter and do not leave’ and it was hard to disagree watching the scorched scenery slip endlessly by. Swirling dust devils are the only things to break the vista of stone and sand that stretches to the horizon. Dried gulleys and sections of washed away road hint at occasional flash flooding, but to our untrained eye there is simply nothing for 38 hours of constant bus travel. To try and comprehend what it must have been like for these early traders makes your head implode and it seems anything we undertake ourselves is a cotton wool wrapped walk in the park in comparison.

But we did finally make it to Kashgar after 14 hours by train, and 49 hours on various buses. We disembarked warily as the region had a recent history of unrest and our arrival coincided with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. In Beijing and for the dominant ethnic Han Chinese this meant mass celebrations and a no expenses spared showcasing of China’s industrial, economic and military might. In Xinjiang it meant a flexing of the already significant military muscle in place to keep the area ’safe’.

In Xinjiang the population is primarily Muslim and tensions between the Han and the native Uighurs have run high since the 1950’s. This has been due to the ruling Communist party flooding the region with Han Chinese. The Taklamakan sits atop large reserves of oil and natural gas and the control of this is seen as a vital foundation for China’s rapid development. The Communist Party claim they have invested in the region’s infrastructure, the Uighurs claim all the opportunities are reserved for Han immigrants and their ancient culture is being bulldozed to make way for identikit Chinese concrete towers. In April this year there were uprisings in the province’s capital Urumqi. Quickly put down by the military, Beijing puts the death toll at just over 200. Other sources claim closer to 2,000. The multiple police checkpoints along the roads in the province and our welcome to Kashgar were just the tip of the iceberg, but on exploring the streets we uncovered a fuller and sadder story.

The traditional main square in Kashgar is the Id Kah mosque. Prayer time on Friday and the thousands of people swarming into the mosque are watched over by around 750 heavily armed troops. They are hunkered down in machine gun nests, formed in lines behind riot shields with taser-tipped batons and sat in a line of trucks surrounding the square. We are gob-smacked. The local population seems to have a weary resignation. I surreptitiously snap some photos from a couple of streets back and then wait while Hol goes to investigate a fetching orange Adidas bumbag. I notice the two armed men approaching from across the street. My mind flicks to the photos on the camera and I wonder about sliding out the memory card, but the suspicion of a blank camera seems even more risky. I pretend to not notice them, but they weave their way towards me. I notice the fixed bayonet on the end of his rifle:

‘You. You are taking photos. Show me camera now.’
‘Oh, ok fine. I was just taking photos of the mosque’

The first 3 photos show the mosque neatly framed by heavily armed men, but luckily the mosque remains central. I offer to delete them swiftly and soon it is photos of donkeys, kebab sellers and Hol grinning on the Great Wall.

‘OK, no photos though. No photos of military or trouble for you.’

Jeez. Luckily, we still have a camera and they didn’t even find the ones of the machine gun nests in front of the giant Mao statue from earlier in the day. Ha ha! Fools. It was pretty scary though and we were careful to be well clear of the square before whipping out the camera again.

Walking the city was a bizarre experience. The population speaks an Arabic toned Uighur dialect totally different from the guttural Mandarin of the East. Beautifully embroidered skull caps adorn the men whilst silk head scarves, long skirts and heavy eye makeup make the women look like fairytale Romany gypsies compared to the garish synthetic materials of Beijing’s population. Flat breads and mutton kebabs replace fried rice and impaled scorpions and there are children playing in narrow crumbling adobe back streets peopled with wood-turners, blacksmiths, cobblers and bakers. Individual characters, smiling faces and a sense of history stirs in all the back streets in a way we hadn’t felt since landing in China. However, rounding a corner the future loomed ahead of us. A huge swathe of old town was laid flat and hunkering in the middle of the destruction was a wrecking ball wielding rusty crane. There was a large sign next to the site in Uighur, Mandarin and English. It proceeded to explain how the local government had consulted with UNESCO and locals to ensure a sympathetic reconstruction of the area, but we then saw the first swathe of new buildings.

Narrow streets had been widened into 4 lane traffic choked boulevards. Small workshops had been replaced by concrete and glass shop fronts lit with the ubiquitous hospital glare of energy saving light-bulbs. Original wood-worked banisters and intricate detailing had been replaced with crap Chinese reproductions all in concrete. The delicacy, history and character had been replaced by cheap imitations devoid of any local craft or soul. Colourful billboards were posted round town showing the plans for the old town and seeing wrinkled old men bent double, eyes straining to see what would happen to their homes made you want to cry out. Maybe we see the crumbling streets as a romantic piece of history, but for the inhabitants the renovation promises better conditions and quality of life. However, the uprisings in the region and seeing what pains the government takes to justify their changes you sense this may not be the case. We returned to the hotel to catch on TV parades of ballistic missiles file past Tiannamen Square and legions of Chinese waving plastic flowers in celebration of ‘China on the Move’, but in Kashgar Friday prayers continue as they have for hundreds of years while their city is swept from beneath them.

Glad to have seen Kashgar at this stage in it’s history, we left to skirt the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert back to Xining. A journey again of a couple of thousand miles and a total of 62 hours on local buses, jeeps and sleeper coaches. The China we saw here was one of medieval oasis villages with women bent double picking cotton, ruined towns reclaimed by shifting sand dunes, expanses of barren deserts, distant snow capped mountains and solitary factories pouring smoke into frozen skies. In Hotan we were once again moved hotels by police while the local garrison did bayonet training in the main town square. In Charklik we waited for hours in the freezing pre-dawn before 12 of us squeezed into a jeep for a cross desert slog through a martian landscape of dunes, cliffs and liquid dust. Then in Shimiankuang we found the most god-forsaken place on earth. After traveling for 7 hours through uninhabited desert we see clouds of smoke rising from the horizon. Approaching we find a town with everything coated in a choking layer of white dust. The town is built around China’s largest asbestos mine. The landscape for miles in every direction had been ripped up into piles of white rock and dust while machines crushed the earth and jetted plumes of fine white powder into the air. Our bus plucked people from amongst this alien landscape totally devoid of colour and clean air. They appeared as specks of blackness as they waited for the bus by their crumbling houses. Abandoned shells of vehicles and factories only added to the apocalyptic feel and to know the deadly effects of the asbestos laden air gave us a terrifying insight into China’s working practices. To live and work in the middle of a high altitude plateau in a town of several thousand, hundreds of miles from the next habitation mining asbestos for a living? Any complaint I have ever had of cramped commutes or long working hours evaporated as I wondered what twists of fate had led these people to this place.

The southern leg of the route took us into the least populated areas of our whole trip so far. Places you think no human should ever need to work. But where there is money to be made, there will be people there to do so. Nodding donkey oil wells littered the landscape as we crossed the plain between the Altun and Kunlun mountains, and sure enough the town of weather beaten and grimy faces was sure to follow. The scale and scenery of this area where so few people travel, the attractions are admittedly few, is stunning. You travel for mile upon mile seeing nothing but a ribbon of dirt or tarmac road stretching away in front of you, but for some people this is their whole world. You wonder what their impression would be of our lives if they passed through it?

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hollyandtups/sets/72157622638386878/

Slideshow:

La répression se poursuit en Chine contre les Ouighours (video)

 Cliquer sur le lien ci-dessous pour voir la vidéo par TF1

http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/monde/0,,4847289,00-la-repression-se-poursuit-en-chine-contre-les-ouighours-.html

  Comme au Tibet, Pékin veut mettre au pas la région autonome du Xinjiang.

 Première étape : la destruction de la vieille ville de Kashgar, berceau de la culture ouighoure..

Par TF1

The city of Kashgar is currently undergoing a remodeling of sorts, under the initiative of the Chinese government in an effort to modernize it.  At least 900 families  have been moved out of their ancestral homes to public housing.   Below is an excellent clip which includes a photo slideshow with Michael Wines discussing the issue.

Audio Slide Show

I know that this is a very sensitive subject, but any thoughts?

This is sort of a catch-up post. The first two bits were written while I was in Xinjiang province, where I had zero internet access. The last part was written here in Xian. Not my best post ever, but whatever.

————-
9/18

Greetings from Urumqi, city of Chinese race riots.

Actually, this post can’t possibly be from Urumqi, as the internet here is completely blocked by the government. So are international calls and (potentially) local mobile phone/texting services. This has been the case since July, when a peaceful march by the minority Uighur population, which is Muslim, turned into a large-scale riot in which more than a hundred (and possibly hundreds) of people died – mostly Han Chinese, according to reports.

More recently, in early September, it was the Han Chinese turn to demonstrate. Evidently a few Uighurs attacked some Han with hypodermic needles. A few reports of these attacks turned into hundreds – most of them, even the Chinese government admits, are fake. But still, at least a hundred (if I remember correctly) did happen. And the Han are angry that the government hasn’t done enough to protect them.

So here we sit, in a city decorated with phalanxes of young riot soldiers on every corner. Their hairless faces peek out from under helmets, above tall riot shields they wield like teenage gladiators.

Despite all this, I like the feel of Urumqi. It’s friendly somehow – hard to put my finger on it. Can you imagine? The friendliest Chinese city has riot police on every corner.

——–

9/22
Kashgar

This morning Karly left me in Kashgar to try to extend my visa while she and another Aussie take a three-day trip to Tashkargan (a Tajik village in China, near the border) and Karakul Lake. But like everything in China, it’s not that simple. The PSB (the police), which deals with visa issues, “is not working for two weeks,” according to the friendly woman at the office. No explanation for this, erm, holiday. She assured me that it’d be no problem to extend the visa in Hotan, which is along the road I intended to take. But I don’t believe her, and neither does the manager of the Old Town Hostel, where I’m staying.

After much consideration of my options, I’ve decided to just fly to Xi’an, where there’s Internet and sites to see. The other options (saving money by taking a 3-day train journey instead, extending my visa in Urumqi, etc.) were too complicated and expensive; I don’t want to travel the southern silk route *that* much.

Or maybe I do. It’s so confusing, because most sights I’ve seen in China have been neatly packaged and Disney-fied (that’ll be 100 yuan entrance fee, please) and competely sanitized of soul. I’ve come to expect the worst, delighting in the occasional pleasant surprises where the government hasn’t wrung all reality from a place – the Mogao Caves outside Turpan, for instance.

Indeed, I’m so glad I made it here to Kashgar, which feels more like one of the ’stans (Kazakstan et al) than China. It’s similar to my feeling when I visited the Tuvan Replublic in Russia – it’s like I left the country. Of course, the Chinese government is quickly implementing plans to rip the soul out of the Uighur Muslim population by tearing down the old town (“for safety’s sake”) and moving everyone from their ancenstral homes to bland concrete high-rises. (Google “destruction Kasghar” for more – China won’t let me get to any websites that explain.) So yeah, I’m glad I made it here before that happened.

But what will the rest of the “South Silk Route” be like? Has China destroyed the other towns yet? I’m not sure, and I’m not willing to run the gamut of Chinese visa-renewal bullshit to find out. It’s crazy to have come this far, this deep into China, only to be turned back by bureaucratic nonsense. Normally I would do it – I’d dance the required dance in order to see what I want to see. But in this case, I doubt the payoff will be worth it. My pile of Chinese Disappointments is high enough already.

So I’m leaving Karly to complete our itinerary alone while I make a beeline for the border. I’ll be gone by the time she returns from her trip.

As last year, knowing I’m traveling alone again is a relief. I couldn’t concentrate on anything – writing, traveling, reading, learning – during the month I was traveling with Karly. Was she an unsuitable travel companion for me, or is the problem my own pathological comfort with being alone? I’m not sure. (I imagine DrC might have something to say about my issues with life-sharing!) All I know is that I feel that a burden has been lifted, that my mind is free again.

(To be clear, I did very much enjoy my time traveling with Karly. We had plenty of laughs (especially in the Gobi), saw some interesting and uninteresting stuff, ate good food and bad, complained about China, got ripped off, met lovely people, etc. etc. It’s just that I seem to be better at traveling alone. I don’t understand!)

————-
9/29

Xi’an

OK, now I’m actually writing this today. I’ve been in Xian for 5 days, and I’m staying until October 2. I’ll write *about* Kashgar later.

I’m sticking around Xian for a week for a few reasons: First, my visa extension won’t be ready until the 30th. Second, October 1 is the 60th anniversary of communism (such as it is) in China. This means the entire country is shut down that day, so I postponed travel to the 2nd. Third, Xian is a fairly pleasant place, as polluted an crowded Chinese cities go.

And finally, I’m getting pants (erm, that’s “trousers” for all you thinking “undies”) made. It’s terribly exciting, as this is the first time I’ve done this.

Explanation, aka “The Pants Digression”: In Urumqi I received a box of clothes mailed from Boston by my dear, dear sister. What a relief to put on something other than the 2 pants and 4 shirts I had been wearing since April 22! But also, both pants were literally falling apart, despite my best hand-sewing efforts. The washing machines in Russia and Mongolia are not kind. Anyway, threw out one pair of pants, but the other was my absolute favorite. So I went to a local tailor, handed them the pants to use as a pattern, chose fabric, got measured (they marveled at the size of my inseam and hips), and shelled out a mere $25 – probably still overpaying. Fingers crossed for good results.

OK, enough pants. What of Xian? I’ve met some lovely people at the Shuyuan Hostel, where I’m staying thanks to a recommendation from a lovely Belgian guy I had met in Kashgar. Tourism-wise, the highlights have been the Terracotta Warriors – Xian’s main tourist attraction and one that is actually worthy of its billing. The other highlight – one that surpasses the Warriors in my estimation – was the excavated tomb of a Han Emperor called Jingdi. Both sites are tombs, and remarkably well-preserved examples of ancient Chinese burial rituals. Rather than burying the emperor with *live* servants, horses, pigs, and other food, or with *real* weapons, gold, household items, and so on, the Chinese sculpted *thousands* of replicas of these items. The burial areas are *kilometers* square. It’s mind-boggling. Check out my pix on Flickr once I upload them (I have a HUGE backlog).

Entertainment wise, the highlights have besen two delicious meals with large groups from the hostel – one night there were 8 and the next 9 people. We ordered about 10 different dishes and shared. Delish. The first night especially, when we went to “First Noodle Under the Sun” restaurant, there was not enough room on the table for all the food. We each had two beers as well. The bill? 30 yuan each, or about $4.50. Good times.

RED SEX, ANYONE?

The good times continued when a smaller group went to the great bar attached to the hostel to carry on drinking. I got my traditional one-blue-drink-per-country (Drea stay tuned for an emailed pic), and then Jemma, one of the women I was with, ordered me a “Red Sex” cocktail. And she had no idea I’m a Red Sox fan (she’s a Brit – from Brighton in fact – and wouldn’t even know they exist). In any event, the cocktail (which in the end is just grenadine and Baily’s, I think) was *presented* rather than served, including being lit on fire. I made a wish and blew it out. No, I won’t tell you my wish.

The festivities ended at 2:30 am – the bar was closing and we needed sleep, despite our spirited discussion about the merits and morality of drugs.

%$& CHINA, I’M LEAVING

Today, with a little yelp of glee, I bought my AirAsia e-ticket out of this damned country. On October 10 at 11:10 local time I’ll be on a plane to Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia! The beach! Sure, it’s monsoon season. But I don’t care! I’m gunna find me a spot, become a divemaster, and be ready in time to work when the monsoons are over. I need some salty surf, seafood and my swmsuit.

In the meantime, this Friday I head south by train, arriving in Guilin a mere 27 hours later. The area is known for mystical scenery – limestone peaks, terraced rice fields, and so on. I’m hoping for the best – some *unspoiled* and un”improved” nature, please China! – though expecting chair lifts and ticket offices decorated with white bathroom tiles. Chinese architecture. [shudder]

French Vigilance to Beijing’s October 1 Preparations

Robert Neville reports in the French newsweekly L’Express about heightened security measures in Beijing in the leadup to the October 1 commemoration of the 60th birthday party of the PRC.  Entitled with a type of pun, the article “Beijing Tightens the Net [Pékin serre la Toile]” is, of course, accompanied by the obligatory photo of soldiers marching in lockstep [en défilé].  It describes slogans in Beijing about the government’s transcendent desire for stability, and reflects back upon Deng Xiaoping’s fateful decision in 1989 to send troops to crack down on the student demonstrators.  (On June 3, 2009, Neville published an interview with dissident Ma Jian, whose statement served as the article title: “In China, every day is June 4, 1989.”  As I have argued in these [1] other [2] essays [3] on the durability of the Tiananmen incident in the German press, Ma’s statement might indeed be said to sum up many European views of China.)

Neville then delves into Beijing’s crackdown on certain NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations / organisation non gouvernementale). On 29 July, Xu Zhiyong, the lawyer and founder of Gongmeng, an NGO which helps “victims of injustice” (e.g., petitioners), was arrested at his home.  His “fault,” Neville writes ironically, was to take on a case about melanin-contaminated milk in 2008.

Gongmeng has also defended Tibetans detained by the government and conducted inquiries into the “black prisons” in the capital.  A few days later, the authorities shut them down on the pretext of tax evasion, and revoked the law licenses of 53 of the Gongmeng lawyers.  After Xu’s arrest, his blog was shut down and his name was erased from the internet in China, including on Google.  “It is as if,” Neville concludes, “that Gongmeng itself never existed.”

Moreover, Beijing has shut down micro-blogging sites like Twitter and censored the blog of Ai Weiwei.  (Although Neville does not mention it, Gongmeng is up on Twitter but, perhaps a bit ominously, has no “tweets,” a reminder that the Beijing government doesn’t kill birds, just the ones that sing.)  At present, a propaganda department circular (tongxun) recommends that media outlets “do not approach regrettable subjects” during the celebrations (ne pas aborder les suject fâcheux pendant les fêtes).  Neville concludes his destructively compact paragraphs by asking: “Is this tightening merely conjectural?  Or does it represent a logical evolution for the CCP which seeks to reinforce its ascendency [empris]?”  A harmonious society indeed!

Neville’s article is only available on newsstands and on this friendly blog, but the L’Express website has a few other articles which are worth checking out.  On internet censorship in China, “Green Dam Youth Escort” has lots of good French links, including to the French tech site ZDNet.fr, which carries an article on Western and Japanese corporate complicity with the censorship and an eye-catching title “Porno: Google Blocks Certain Google Services.”

French Press Retrospectives on Tibet, Xinjiang, the Olympics, and Internet Censorship in China

Naturally Le Figaro and Liberation have some fantastic new articles this week as well, and I’m hoping to stew on these for a bit before posting again on the French analysis of the PRC commemoration in particular.   I’m surprised at how little press the October 1 preparations are getting in the United States, but then again, we’ve got health care legislation to crucify, cars to repair, and school loans to sign in September, so perhaps it shouldn’t be too shocking.

A June 29 L’Express article, “Uighur Dissidents Accuse Peking,” is a nice takedown of the Ribiya Khadeer issue which reminded me that the phrase “turkophone” should always be employed when discussing the still-majority ethnicity in Xinjiang. And the several hundred Danwei readers who enjoyed my earlier translation of an article from Liberation about the Chinese destruction of Kashgar might also enjoy, or prompt a translation of, Neville’s dispatches (here and here) from Kashgar in late June, 2009.

Cache-cache à Kashgar, via L'Express/Reuters

And although it’s a bit of a blast from the past, this French blog post regarding the CCP blocking YouTube from the mainland (where it is still blocked) during the March 2008 Tibetan uprising is fascinating, mainly for the extended comments section.  Some typical back and forth involved statements like this: “Boycotter les JO est la chose la plus humaine et digne a faire ! [Boycotting the Olympic Games is the most humane and dignified thing to do!]“

Which was followed by statements like this:

Ah oui ? Donnez-moi un seul exemple d’un boycott ayant radicalement changé la polique d’un régime totalitaire. Vous n’en trouverez aucun. Je ne vois aucune humanité et encore moins de dignité dans le fait de boycotter un évènement sportif sous prétexte que l’on est pas d’accord avec la politique du pays organisateur. C’est avant qu’il fallait manifesté pour que les jeux aient lieu ailleurs. Heureusement que la très grande majorité des gens sauront faire la différence et ne pénaliseront pas des sportifs qui sont par définition apolitiques, car une telle attitude est incompatible avec l’esprit des jeux tel que l’a voulu Pierre de Coubertin. La Chine s’ouvre à une économie de marché planétaire et elle besoin de ces marchés, sa politique s’adaptera petit a petit car sa survie va dépendre en grande partie. C’est l’économie de marché qui viendra à bout du régime totalitaire chinoi et non des boycotts dérisoires et improvisés. Mais Paris ne s’est pas fait en un jour et changer les mentalités chinoise est une chinoiserie qui prendra du temps et beaucoup de patience.

Oh really? Give me a single example of a boycott having radically changed the politics of a totalitarian regime.  Not one can you find!…Fortunately, a great majority of people will know how to differentiate [between the games themselves and the host state] and will not penalize sportsmen who are by definition apolitical, because such an attitude is incompatible with the spirit of the games such as desired by [Olympic founder, Frenchman, and star of many a patriotic-internationalist CCTV documentary] Pierre de Coubertin.  As China is open to a global market economy [une économie de marché planétaire!], it is in need of these markets, and its politcs will adapt little by little due largely to its need for economic survival. It is the market economy which will bring about the end of the totalitarian Chinese regime, not derisory and improvised boycotts. But Paris [e.g., Rome] was not built in a day and changing the Chinese mentality will take time and plenty of patience.

This brings back such wonderful memories of that heady spring!  So many great debates were springing up, sort of like a hundred flowers taking bloom…It’s hard to imagine a May 4th-era intellectual taking the statement seriously, but when China blocked YouTube, the world seemed to shift somehow.

John Bolton’s French Lament

And finally, at least for this afternoon, and because I know there are Koreanists out there who may be wondering when I am going to return from the Chinese “dark side” and back into the happy and shining fold of DPRK analysis, there is this precious article from L’Express about the Clinton visit to North Korea.  Apart from some gossipy French-style suspicions of factionalism (e.g. Hillary Clinton was in Africa!  Did she even approve of the mission?), there isn’t much new information.

The greatest thing about this article is, instead, its extended quotations from Mr. Rollback himself, John Bolton.  Bolton is the Fox News go-to guy on North Korea, because he was and remains so reliably opposed to any form of engagement with North Korea.  And Bolton has got great neoconservative credentials, too — Bush 43 appointed him as Ambassador to the United Nations in spite of the fact that Bolton opposes the very existence of the UN.  And I will admit that I rapidly tire of seeing his face and hearing his voice in outlets like the New York Times, especially when more informed people (like the reliably skeptical Bruce Cumings and even the reliably moderate but always-in-the-know Sig Harrison) would have more intelligent things to say.

But now, thanks to L’Express and Clinton’s visit to North Korea, I have had a personal conversion, a John Bolton renaissance!  When his Anglophone splutterings are rendered into French (that is, when they translate “I think that the North Koreans completely won”), he somehow becomes a Left Bank imperialist, a reactionary pied noir, a Legion veteran who votes de Gaulle every time!    Can’t you just see him getting really animated in a little café, an espresso on a dirty table in front of him, waving smoke wreathing around his face as he gesticulates, raises his eyebrows and his mustache in mock woe and says “Je pense que la Corée du Nord est totalement gagnante” in a deep Calais accent?

In my perfect world, Bolton shows up from Paris on Fox next week to tear down the UN and bilateral talks with the North Koreans.  Let’s hope Bill O’Reilly switches into Francophone territory (and drags us all back to the best debates of the 1950s) by serving up a fat softball where Bolton can denounce Sartre’s turnabout on the Algerian War.

French "musketeers" at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, Oct. 10, 2004. (via Xinhua) -- click photo for more cross-cultural fechten

The good news is that I’m back in the world of the Internet – I flew out of Xinjiang province and into Xi’an this morning.

The bad news is that I’m back in the world of the Internet – about two weeks ahead of schedule.

The problem is my visa, which expires on September 30. I had intended to extend the visa in Kashgar – no problem! – before embarking on the south Silk Route adventure, which would have taken at least until realy October.

However, for a reason no one can explain, the Kashgar PSB (the police bureau that handles visas and such) is “not working” for two weeks. The receptionist suggested I go back to Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and about 1000 km (24 hours on the train) in the wrong direction. The application process takes a week – meaning I would have had to hang around Urumqi alone, and then take a train *back* west to meet up with Karly.

$#&*%ing China.

Instead, I left Karly to do the SSR alone and shelled out the cash to fly to Xi’an. I still need to extend my visa, for various reasons, but at least here there are sights to see, and the Internet works as well as it can in China.

I have more to say about China, but I’ll post it later. At the moment I’m sleep-deprived, thanks to: a sudden and mysterious increased air ticket price, necessitating an itinerary change, which included a 7-hour overnight layover, which involved a lying shuttle bus operator, getting lost at 2 am, riot police sleeping in the lounge of my hostel, and very VERY noisy Chinese tourists who took 45 long, loud minutes to leave our shared dorm room at 6 am (3.5 hours after I had gone to sleep). Oh yeah – and on arrival here, I spent the afternoon running up and down stairs at the Xi’an PSB, fetching what the official requested, one item at a time: photo, photocopies of various documents, visa-extension payment receipt, etc. etc.

Meh. I’m going to celebrate when I leave this country, and I vow to never, ever come back. I’ve come to despise it that much.

And yes, I see the irony of having to pay to extend my stay in a country I’m desperate to leave. I’d laugh about it, but I’m too cranky at the moment

Instead I’ll just say: $#&*%ing China

oil on board

Two girls in Kashgar.

From the standpoint of the newspaper addict, Paris is a glorious city.  Although it leans further toward the (French) center of the political spectrum than Jean-Paul Sartre’s leftist daily of choice L’Humanite, the journal quotidienne of choice for this reader is Liberation. The paper covers Asia sporadically but with great insight, including provocative articles about Beijing artist/architect Ai Weiwei (see “Fuck Pekin,” 17 June 2009), European outsourcing of aerospace to Tianjin, internet censorship in June 4 commemoration, and art art art.  Freshly remodeled since 7 September, Liberation continues to pour it on.

(As does one other experienced traveller to Xinjiang, Chuck Kraus, whose photojournal from Kashgar can be viewed by clicking on the image below.)

Kashgar, 2009 -- photo by Chuck Kraus, U.S. Department of State/Hiram College

On 12 September, Liberation ignored the burning tears of the patriotic Americans who still want to bomb someone because of 11 September 2001, focusing instead on the ongoing CCP destruction of historic Kashgar in 2009.   This is first-rate reportage.  [I translate about two-thirds of the article below.] Photographs by Gilles Sabrié adorn these four gorgeous pages.

Gilles Sabrie, photographer

[According to the photojournalist networking website Lightstalkers, photographer Gilles Sabrie moved to Beijing from New York in 2006; a portfolio of his work can be viewed here.  His homepage is rather remarkable as well.

Sabrie's photos for the following story can be viewed here, courtesy Photoshelter.]

Here’s the citation and my translation:

Pascale Nivelle,  “Chinese Kashgar: Cultural Demolition [Chine. Kashgar, la démolition culturelle],” Liberation, 12 Sept. 2009, “Le Mag: Reportage” section, pp. 8-11.

Decreed a  seismic zone by Beijing, the Uighur metropolis is invaded by promoters who destroy traditional homes and profit from the soulless city.  A normal scene which poorly hides the pace of change.

[Full article text in French available here.]

“What would you say if I blew up the Eiffel Tower on the pretext that it might be struck by lightning?”  In one gesture, Mahmut (pseudonym), the young Uighur guide, embraces the ocher roofs and the labyrinthine alleyways of Kashgar: “All of this will disappear within three years.  They will destroy everything, and they say it is for our security.”

They?  The government, the colonizing Han Chinese, and the people who “collaborate” with them.

“It is a cultural war in this neighborhood,” says Mahmut, “and the Uighurs have already lost.”

Cultural war and and completely short war [Guerre culturelle et guerre tout court].  Hans and Uighurs, which have coexisted for approximately 60 years in Xinjiang, are now ready to kill each other at any moment [sont prêts à s’entretuer à tout moment].

It happened on 5 July in Urumqi, the provincial capitol.  That bloody tuesday, 197 people were killed, decapitated or beat up, mostly on [by?] the Chinese side [la plupart du côté chinois].  It is a purely ethnic conflict which Beijing disguised as an “uprising of hooligans [voyous/ 流氓],” exactly like in Tibet sixteen months earlier.

In Urumqi or Kashgar, the final slogans of the Party cover the walls and resonate through the high parlors: “Protect Unity!”

People's Square, Kashgar -- photo by Chuck Kraus

Until now, Kashgar has escaped this “unity,” synonym for uniformisation.  An oasis city lost at the end of the Far West of China, it is also nearer to Istanbul than to Beijing.  The capital is a journey [one must take] by flight, and Afghanistan is a few hours away by car behind the glacial summits of the Pamirs.  Mahmut, 20, asks the name of the German who saved Paris from the Nazi destruction in 1944.  A Chinese Dietrich von Choltitz, viola!  That is what is needed in Kashgar.

“]

Dietrich von Choltitz, unlikely protector of Paris; image via Europa en Guerre

On the street porches in the historical center city, one can again find the guides who boast of “the pearl of the Silk Road.”  Everywhere, Kashgar is becoming “Kashi,” rebaptised and remodeled by the communist Chinese since the “liberation” from the old eastern Turkestan [l'ancien Turkestan oriental] to become the province of “Xinjiang” in the early 1950s.  In Kashgar-Kashi, one speaks Uighur, a cousin language of Turkic, but one must awake before the sun comes up in order to be in accord with Beijing time.

“In Rome, one must do as the Romans do,” says Mahmut, who learned the phrase by watching English-language DVDs.  “Our culture is against it, yet we have to do as the Chinese do.”  And soon, live like them.

The trembling of the earth in Sichuan on 12 May 2008 gave a signal of destruction.  The ancient city, the earthen houses and the interlocking alleyways — all of which impede surveillance — were suddenly declared “dangerous.”

“Kashgar is one of the six Chinese cities which is especially menaced by earthquakes.  This peril weighs upon the people, and it is decided to renovate [Kashgar],” hammers Xinjiang TV for months.   The State Council has set aside 3 billion yuan (300 million Euros) for the project of “renovation,” a task which concerns 220,000 persons and 62,000 homes.

Since February, the scraping of shovels has muffled the call to prayer.  The traditional homes of one story, each with a fig tree planted in the walled courtyard, disappear after centuries and along with them, the carpenters, bakeries, iron workers, and merchants of tapestries which do their business on the ground floor [rez-de-chausée].

Forty mosques and houses more than two thousand years old are vowed to be destroyed.  “The earthquake menace is a pretext,” affirms Abdil, a businessman in his forties.  “Truthfully, it is because they want to crush our culture, like in Tibet.”

The turning point came in 2003, just after the arrival of the railroad and the first great wave of Han colonialists.  “They had theaters, cinemas, everything,” recalls Abdil.  “These were the first things which were suppressed.”

Bonuses or Penalties

In front of the Id Kah mosque, everything is newly renovated, and Chinese “soap operas” are broadcast during the hour of prayer.  In the People’s Square, at the foot of a colossal Mao, constructed ten years after his death, a giant screen diffuses the good news of the government every night, in Mandarin.  Floods, eathquakes, fires….”We cannot wait any longer,” states the commentator in the enthusiastic tone of a pioneer.  “No other state, no other political party can achieve such a project; the entire world will admire us.”

The Uighurs dance in traditional costumes while the Han sit in their big black cars.  The relations [entente] between “ethnic minorities” and the Chinese is “marvellous.”  Everyone must contribute to “the construction of a magnificent fatherland.”  Bonuses are proposed for the first to leave the old city, while the tardy will be penalized.

On this night at the end of June, five people follow the video show, emerging onto a deserted plaza.  Two are Uighurs who do not speak Mandarin, like more than two thirds of the local population; the other three are Chinese laborers, migrants from Henan province, tools hanging from their belts, as if drawn by Jean Charlot.  These are the “colonists” encouraged by the government to put down roots in this Chinese El Dorado.   These peasants, who left their village in the center of the province, are also lost in Kashgar rather than Beijing or Guangzhou…

Bulldozers often embark upon improvisations.  Xanliq, the very famous madrassa (Koranic school) of Kashgar, founded in 1442, was razed on one night in June.  The neighborhood discovered the pile of ruins with the light of dawn.  “It was a grand center of study for the imams,” explains a vendor of flour, “we thought it could be made into a museum.”

In Beijing, Hu Xinyu, director of the Center for Cultural Protection, one of the rare Chinese organizations that spoke out against the project, raises his hands in a sign of impatience: “Kashgar is not an isolated case; all Chinese cities suffer the same way.  But we don’t have this credo in China: the power of two.”

For Nicholas Becquelin, researcher for Human Rights Watch and specialist of Xinjiang, the Beijing offensive toward Kashgar has a double meaning: “This demonstrates a habitual attitude of the Chinese government: whether Tibetan nomadism, Uighur architecture, or indigenous patrimony, none of it has value in the face of modernizing Chinese civilization [civilisatrice chinoise].  And it is much easier to control the population in a modern city.”

…

Coda 1: Time magazine reports on Kashgar’s destruction here in a report dating from June 2009.  However,in part since the French have more experience as colonizers and seem somehow more sensitized to the associated issues of Han colonization, I prefer the Liberation story.  汉族 as the new pied-noir?

Coda 2: This translation of a Le Figaro dispatch from Istanbul analyzes the Xinjiang problem through the eyes of Uighur exiles in Turkey. My own poetic reflections on the destruction of Beijing’s Qianmen quarter, “The Foreigner’s Lament,” can be visited here.

I’d love to write a thoughtful note about China, Take II. But I’m too distracted – the cats, yes, but also there are other people about, and we’re going into town in a few minutes for lunch. In the afternoon we’re catching a bus to Liuluang (sp?), then tomorrow morning a train to Turpan, near Urumqi in Xinjiang province.

After the demonstrations by Uigurs in Urumqi this July, and recent demonstrations by ethnic Han, and the fact that on October 1 it’s the 60th anniversary of communism in China…well, we’re assuming that there will be no internet access or international telephone connectivity in Xinjiang province. Reports travel message boards are sketchy, so we’ll just have to go and see the situation ourselves.

This means you won’t hear from me for a while. To assuage any anxieties, here is our *very rough* itinerary:

9/14: train to Turpan
stay 3ish days

9/18 ish: Urumqi

maybe go north to the lakes near Altay, or else head to Kashgar

9/24 ish: Kashgar

stay a few days

Then buses along southern edge of Taklamakan Desert (Yarkland, Hotan, Niya, Charklik), and finally across to Golmud in Quinghai province. From there we’ll catch a train to Xi’an – probably by the first week in October.

This means I will probably lack internet for three weeks. I’ll ping (via a post or mass email) as soon as I can.

Not that I don’t love you all, but the thing I’m most distressed about in RE lack of internet is that I won’t know who makes the baseball postseason until the playoffs have started. GO SOX.,

Well I’m back. On August 31, I crossed the border from Mongolia back into China. And…Mongolia worked like a charm. Its big sky, pure nature and hospitality cured me of the China Blues.

This time around, China isn’t trying to rip me off. It’s not 100 degrees and oppressively humid. The people are helpful and friendly and curious.

Of course, the Internet is still unpredictable. Getting around the Chinese restrictions only seems to work sometimes, and never for Facebook. But I guess there’s no easy cure for the Chinese government. At least not in Mongolia.

Anyway, what of the Gobi? In the end, the so-called sights were a disappointment. The exception was Khongoryn Els, 300-meter-high sand dunes that sprout from out of nowhere. We got caught in a sand storm, made an unscheduled stop in a dusty provincial town to see a concert by Haranga (“Mongolia’s greatest rock band!” according to our tattooed interpreter), ate a ridiculous amount of mutton, and drove a *lot*.

I need to write more, but at the moment I’m, trying to type quietly while the other three people in my dorm try to sleep.

So, where am I, who am I with and where am I going?

At the moment I’m in Hohhot, the provincial capital of Inner Mongolia. I’m here with Karly, the Austrialian I met in Russia and happened to run into again in Ulaan Baatar. We did the Gobi trip together, and in a few hours we catch a train west.

Today we’ll go to Xiahe, a town with a Tibetan monastery. Then we’ll continue west go to Turpan, a leafy grape-growing city. It’s nearly harvest time, so it should be lovely. Then it’s Urumqi, the provincial capital, and finally Kashgar, the farthest west you can get in China, and a famous Silk Road town. Then we head back east, following the so-called “southern Silk Road” along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, skirting Tibet. We’ll end in Xi’an, see the Terracotta Warriors, and then make our way to Vietnam. We imagine all this will take about 6 weeks, depending on the number of bus breakdowns.

I’ll try to write more on the train an post from Xiahe. Happy September, everyone!

Hello friends!

In a few hours I am at long last leaving for the Gobi. Karly, the Aussie I met in Russia, and I have hired a van and driver to take us to the Flaming Cliffs (where archaeologists keep finding dinosaur bones, eggs, etc) and the great sand dunes. Then he’ll take us to the Chinese border.

I don’t want to leave Mongolia, but Karly’s visa is up on the 31st. and since we’re going to travel to western China together (Urumqi, Kashgar, then loop back to Sichuan province) I gotta go.

This means that, assuming my previous experience with shitty internet in China still holds, I won’t be posting extremely often.

The general plan is to go to western China, try to get to Xian, and then head for Vietnam, probably near the end of September.

I wish I could write more, but there’s no time. Sometime soon, however, I’ll need to find a place to sit for a few weeks and just write and think and write. I am, as they say, all backed up.

It’s with a heavy heart that I read a report by Time’s correspondents that Chinese authorities have nearly completed bulldozing the ancient quarter of Kashgar, an oasis on the Silk Road in the far western province of Xinjiang.  Old Kashgar and its famed Sunday market (which I’ve heard has also been shut down) was one of those places where you felt like you had stepped back into history, or perhaps a tale from 1,001 Arabian Nights.  Perhaps its destruction was inevitable, not only because of the massive inflow of Han settlers, but also the ever-expanding reach of modern life and its undeniable conveniences.  But I’ll take this opportunity to finally write down my memories of my first trip to Kashgar in 1992, before it changed forever.

At that time, the Chinese railroad had not yet reached Kashgar (it only arrived in 1999, bringing with it the Han immigrants).  Wealthy tour groups could take the weekly flight, but for most people the only way to get there was a 3-day bus ride from Urumqi, along the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, stopping to sleep at dusty oasis towns each night.  There was a 10am and an 11am bus, which are both quite early because Xinjiang operates on Beijing time, even though it is almost three hours time difference to the west.  I distinctly remember this because I overslept and missed the 10am bus, and when the 11am bus was about 1/2 hour out of Urumqi, we passed the 10am bus completed gutted in flames at the side of the road.  No one offered an explanation.

The lucky bus that I was on became the scene of a 3-day running argument between the Han bus driver and a Uighur family over whether they had bought the right ticket or not.  For hours, he would scream at them “Get off the bus!” and they would yell back “No we won’t!”  The fracas would die down for a while and then inexplicably start back up again.  The driver never actually tried to remove them from the bus, and they never paid the additional fare.

The other thing I remember about that trip was a short, red-haired Uighur man who spoke English and looked exactly like my red-haired Irish gym teacher in high school, who in turn–my classmates can attest–looked exactly like a leprechaun.  This leprechaun was also wearing a track suit, so I assumed he was a foreigner and asked where he was from.  “I’m a Uighur!” he exclaimed, but I apparently wasn’t the first to wonder, because all the fellow Uighurs we encountered along the way also doubted him until he spoke to them in fluent Uighur.  Sometimes in western China you will encounter people with green or blue eyes or unusually Caucasian features, genetic carryovers from the ancient Tocharians who lived along the Silk Road, though the Uighur leprechaun was an extreme case.  Some people have speculated, though, that the Alans, who rode into France and Spain alongside the Vandals (and gave their name to Catalonia), were originally Tocharians.  The Alans were known for their red hair.

Kashgar itself was a maze of twisting alleys and mud-brick buildings.   The main public transport was by donkey cart “taxi”–you just jumped on the back with your gear.  As my vehicle was clip-clopping its way across town to my hotel, I noticed a dentist’s office–or rather, a squat mud hut with a jar of false teeth sitting in its dark window.  My impression was that the services provided relied more on good old-fashioned pliers than newfangled techniques like sterilization and Novocain.

I stayed at the Chini Bagh Hotel, on the grounds of the old 19th Century British consulate that played a key role in the “Great Game” for imperial control of Central Asia.  It was packed with small-time Pakistani traders.  Most Western travelers stayed at the leafier and more relaxed grounds of the old Russian consulate, who had been the main rivals to the British.  It served the only pizza west of Xi’an, and a decent apple pie.  Vendors in the street outside–most of them toothless, wearing embroidered skullcaps–sold piles of bagels, a Kashgar specialty, and offered to shave your head bald with big bowie knives.

The Kashgar Sunday Market was one of those spectacles that defy words.  It covered several acres, with whole sections devoted to buying and selling camels, horses, and goats.  The customers were expert hagglers and usually test-drove their prospective mounts before buying, which sent the crowd scurrying in every direction.  Booths devoted to beautiful flowing silks stood next to peddlers whose unrolled sheets on the ground displayed every kind of used mechanical or electronics part you could imagine.

But as charming as Kashgar might seem, it was glaringly obvious that the Han Chinese authorities barely had the lid on the place.  Earlier that year there had been a big riot near the main mosque, with several people killed, and the Chinese had put the city under martial law.  I really wasn’t sure I’d be permitted to go there until I showed up.

The old people smiled toothless grins, but groups of unsmiling youths gathered on street corners looking sullen.  They wore knives on their belts, and their newsboy caps, suit vests over shirtsleeves, and olive skins made them look like Sicilian toughs from “The Godfather.”  They shot billiards on outdoor pool tables and got in angry brawls and smashed bottles when they lost.  Their simmering resentment was directed not just at the Han Chinese, but at all foreign faces.

My own encounter took place over lunch, just after the Sunday Market, in an open-air taverna on a side street near the main mosque–the heart of the old city.  A British companion and I had eaten several skewers of lamb shish-kebab, which normally cost a few mao (1/10th of a yuan) each.  When the bill came, it was ten times the expected cost.  Outraged, we refused to pay the inflated amount.  I figured we would haggle a bit and, having demonstrated we were not fools, be offered a fairer price.  Instead, the waiters surrounded and started shoving us.  I held up my hands as if to say “wait, wait, cool down” and calmly repeated our objection.  They closed in again, this time the kitchen door opening to reveal the cook, built like a wrestler and holding several skewers in his hands.  This gang was not in a negotiating mood.

I held up my hands in surrender and, between my broken Mandarin and theirs, explained that we did not have enough money on us (untrue) and that my companion, the Brit, would run to get more, with me staying behind as a hostage.  I told him, “Go get the police.”  By the time he took off, we had somehow spilled out onto the alley, where an old Uighur woman was beseeching me to just let it go and pay the man.  (Why didn’t I?  Simple explanation:  when traveling for many months at a time, in a world before ATMs, you had to watch every dime.  Getting cheated once might seem easily affordable, but if you let it happen every day–and it would happen–you’d soon run out of money.)  She had a point, though.  There was nowhere to run, and no way I could win a fight.

The Brit came back (kudos to him, he could have just fled), but without the police.  He later told me that he found two Han policemen, but they waved him off and refused to get involved.  We learned that one of their comrades had been stabbed to death on that street the day before, and they weren’t going to stick their necks out for some crazy foreigners.  So, bitterly, we forked over the entire exorbitant sum–maybe a few dollars, total. 

As I handed over the cash, my frustration got the better of me and I spit on the ground in front of them to show my disgust at being cheated.  The moment I did this, I realized it was pretty stupid and maybe the last thing I’d do.  But they just nodded, took the money, and went back inside.  I later found out that spitting is actually the traditional Uighur manner of sealing a deal.  A couple days afterwards, I bought a snakeskin tambourine (another Uighur tradition) and before I could say “what the?” the salesman took a big swig of water and blew it all over the instrument, before stuffing it into a plastic bag.  Holding my soggy purchase, I realized that I hadn’t insulted those shish-kebab hooligans, I had congratulated them–which goes a long way towards explaining why they didn’t beat me to a sorry pulp (or impale me on their skewers).

After this incident, I went back to the Chini Bagh and strapped a big khukri (a curved Nepali knife used by the Gurkhas, which I had bought as a souvenir) to my belt.  I mean, everybody else had a knife.  At the same time, I wondered if I might be over-reacting and inviting more trouble.  In fact, it was just the right thing to do.  Instead of sullen, contemptuous stares, I received nods of newfound approval for this large and exotic weapon at my hip.  Tough-looking Uighur men would approach and respectfully tell me, “That’s a really nice knife.” 

In China’s wild west, a knife signified you were a man, not a victim.  It could make friends and win over enemies.  I began to realize what cowboys in the American West must have felt, swaggering through town with a six-shooter at their hip.  Of course, a lot of them ended up getting shot.  As for myself, I put my knife away when I crossed the border into Pakistan, where everyone was toting guns (thus honoring the eternally wise dictum, never bring a knife to a gun fight).

Now that world doesn’t exist anymore.  It’s being torn down as I write.  There are plans to turn the streets around Kashgar’s mosque into an Epcot-like tourist attraction, “with a staff of actors enacting traditional Uighur culture.”  And our world will be a bit less colorful, and just a little sadder, than before.

SAFE has posted a link to a new article from The Guardian about the ongoing bulldozing of Kashgar’s Oldtown.

Check it out HERE

On August 1st, Ana Escobedo, the magnificent high schooler from california that has been spearheading the SAVE Kashgar Facebook initiative and petition (Petition and Cause Page both linked on the RIGHT —–>) published an article on SAFECORNER about how she got involved in the Kashgar initiative, and what protecting worthwhile cultural heritage sites means to her. Check out her well-written article HERE.

I have selected and reproduced here a few choice excerpts from her essay in order to tantalize your reader tastebuds:

To raise awareness for the cause and to rally supporters behind SAFE’s message I created a Facebook Cause page which I named “Save Kashgar ”. I loaded it with whatever information I had available to me at the time, which was only a few articles and the information I had gained from the SAFECORNER editorial. Later I was able to set up a Flickr group to create a photo documentation of the Old City. I also set up a petition appealing to the Chinese Cultural Minister to save what remained of the cultural heritage of this city. However, it quickly became apparent to me that this was so much more than a demolition of a city. It was the destruction of the Uyghur culture. A culture that had existed for hundreds of years in this location was being wiped out.

In an effort to find recruits to my newly formed cause page I reached out to the Uyghur and Archaeology related groups on Facebook. It was at this moment when I discovered I was not alone in this fight. I went to every group I could think of to let them know about what I was doing, but everywhere I went I found links to other Kashgar related Facebook pages. Groups such as “Save Kashgar, Xinjiang, China from Demolition!” and “Saving Kashgar” encouraged followers to raise their voices against the destruction. The creator of “Save Kashgar, Xinjiang, China from Demolition!,” Nikhat Rasheed, is responsible for aYouTube video further demonstrating the importance of Kashgar to the Uyghurs and the world. Her group has also sponsored an event in Toronto, Canada to show solidarity with the Uyghur people. On July 1, 2009, a group of Uyghurs performed a traditional dance in celebration of Canada Day. Members of this Facebook group attended, furthering the public display of unity with the Uyghur cause. Ms. Rasheed has also written a wildly popular petition that has raised almost 7,000 signatures in a short period of time. Another Facebook Cause page “Save Kashgar!,” created by dedicated advocate Miriam J. Woods, has generated a petition that has already received over 1,000 signatures. This petition asks President Obama and Congress to appeal to the Chinese government to cease the demolition. Her cause page is raising money for the Uyghur American Association/Uyghur Human Rights Project.

Before I saw the issue from my point of view as an archaeologist, but after these varied and passionate communications I saw that this was a human crisis. What has amazed me most over these past two months has been the number of people reaching out to me, telling me their story, letting me know that Kashgar was important to them too.

People like Marc Forster, the filmmaker responsible for films such as “Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland” and “Quantum of Solace” are rallying behind the cause.

Kashgar has evoked an impassioned and ever-growing response, in me and many others. More and more people from around the world are reaching out and speaking out against this demolition and the destruction of a culture.

As for me, my heart goes out the Uyghurs who are losing the heart of their civilization. I will continue to support in the best way I can. My cause page is closing in on 700 members and it is my hope that I can continue to reach these people and keep them united in this work against this cultural and human crime.

Thanks Ana, for sharing with us not only your experience working on this important project, but also helping to organize and unite all the different interest groups so that we may have a common goal.

- Chiarch

Ana Escobedo, founder of the Facebook Cause Save Kashgar, has written a blog article for Saving Antiquities. It can be found at http://safecorner.savingantiquities.org/2009/08/saving-kashgar.html. I like Ana’s article very much, and I have great respect for her dedication. As Ana suggests, it is apparent that a lack of awareness for cultural heritage is directly connected to the social problems behind the July 5 incident. There is a lack of respect for culture that goes back to the Cultural Revolution and earlier. Tianjin is being destroyed, too, like many, many culturally rich places in China. There is no “rational” progress behind much of the demolition, but it’s always a great step forward for the developing companies and the party secretaries in their pay. Yes, many old streets and houses in many cities were in a sorry condition due to decades of neglect. It’s not easy to renovate them. Beijing has finally begun to rebuild some courtyard houses. At the same time they tore down the whole Qianmen area at the south of Tian’anmen Square and replaced it with a sort of Disneyland. Protests and suicides because of the demolitions in various cities have been in the news for years. In China, Southern Weekend (Nanfang Zhoumo) and other media have often reported on housing and cultural heritage problems. Most of the time they are allowed to do that. They cannot report on the arrest of dissidents such as Prof. Ilham Tohti of Central Nationalities University in Beijing. He has been detained since August 8. Amnesty International has issued an appeal for writing petitions in English and Chinese to the Chinese Prime Minister and other figures, because Prof Tohti has not been heard of since his arrest, raising fears for his health. Cases of torture and death in police custody are not unheard of in many parts of China (and other countries, of course). See http://www.chinafreepress.org/publish/Othernews/Petition_for_Ilham_Tohti_under_detention_presented_by_Wang_Lixiong.shtml, or http://bit.ly/q3BX4.
Yes, I think that Ana is right, raising awareness is crucial. One thing that has been lacking on the Uyghur support groups side is an outspoken condemnation of the massive looting and killing on July 5th in Urumqi. Yes, the demonstrations may have been peaceful in the beginning, just like in Lhasa last year, and maybe the police could have prevented them from turning violent, or maybe they could have at least contained them. And yes, thousands of Uyghurs have been arrested, some have been killed, and no one knows how many of them didn’t have any connection to the violence at all. But still: Both the Dalai Lama and Mrs. Rebiya Kadeer should have condemned the looting and killing in Lhasa and in Urumqi. The Dalai Lama said he prayed for victims on all sides, but that’s not enough. And the Uighur support groups such as Save Kashgar should have swiftly and loudly condemned the massive looting and killing by Uyghurs. Instead, Ana told us on Facebook that many Uyghurs may have died in Urumqi. Just that, as far as I have noticed. It was the same lack of awareness that was apparent after the Lhasa riot last year. So maybe there is a lack of awareness on both sides. Anyway, let us try to help in any way we can think of. Unfortunately, social websites such as Facebook and Twitter and their Chinese equivalents have been widely blocked and closed in China. The blocking of Facebook was said to be in response of aggressive Uighur support groups. They were mostly not aggressive at all, but they did fail to condemn the Uyghur looting and killing. As I have mentioned, Chinese media and intellectuals are sometimes able to speak out against social and cultural problems. Sometimes Chinese intellectuals in China can speak out in the international media and get noticed. See Asia Times (7/8/09): http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KG08Ad02.html, Ghost of Marx haunts China’s riots, By Jian Junbo. We concerned individuals and groups outside of China should support these efforts, and at the same time help to show the connection to Human Rights cases. And we should have condemned the Uyghur looting and killing first, and/or more loudly. The more we show our awareness on this side, the more we are credible on all sides. I never understood why Abu Ghraib was not raised as a central question by the Democrats in the 2004 US election. Where is the connection, you might ask. At least we have Obama now. Well, I think we have to look at and work on the most painful questions on our side first, whoever we are. Yes, I am on the side of Kashgar Old City. And on the side of minorities in my home country Austria. Maybe I should have cited a painful problem in Austria’s contemporary history. We certainly don’t have a shortage there. Anyway, I like Ana’s article very much, and I have great respect for her work. Let us continue writing and signing petitions, and most importantly, like Ana says, raising awareness. Peace!