Xinjiang
What to read to understand Xinjiang
Books and a documentary that consider Uyghur culture and repression by China
The Id Kah mosque (Uyghur: HŽytgah Meschit, Chinese: Ait’g__r) 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. 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. In 1933, on August 9, the Chinese Muslim General Ma Zhancang killed and beheaded the Uighur leader Timur Beg, displaying his head on a spike at Id Kah mosque. In March 1934, it was reported that the uighur emir Abdullah Bughra was also beheaded, the head being displayed at Id Kah mosque. In April 1934, the Chinese Muslim general Ma Zhongying gave a speech at Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar, telling the Uighurs to be loyal to the Republic of China Kuomintang government at Nanjing. (Photo by: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Oct 7th 2022
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IN RECENT years Xinjiang, a region in far west China, has become a byword for the worst human rights abuses in China. Over 1m Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities have been detained in concentration camps in the region; many of their children have been removed to state-run boarding schools. Chinese Communist Party cadres have moved into Uyghur households to monitor residents for signs of religiosity. Mosques and graves have been razed. China justifies its actions as a campaign against Islamic extremism. But it is clear that the Uyghur identity itself is the target of the Communist Party’s campaign. Uyghurs speak their own language and have a distinct culture. To understand what is under attack in Xinjiang, we recommend these books and articles, one documentary and a collection of poetry.
In the Camps: China’s High-Tech Penal Colony. By Darren Byler. Columbia Global Reports; 159 pages; $15.99. Atlantic Books; £12.99
This slim volume is an authoritative account of how China implemented the largest internment of a religious minority since the second world war. Darren Byler, an anthropologist, draws on interviews with people who were locked up to illuminate life in the gulags. The picture is grim. In at least two camps, he writes, inmates were forced to sit straight and unmoving for several days until their intestines “fell down”. One woman killed herself by leaping, headfirst, from the top of a bunk bed. Overcrowded cells had no plumbing; clothing was infested with lice. Mr Byler’s interviewees are scarred, both mentally and physically, by their ill-treatment. His book also zooms out from the camps and examines the forces that built them. He shows how China’s surveillance technology was made possible by Silicon Valley and how 9/11 supercharged China’s campaign against those it accused of being terrorists. “The dehumanisation,” he writes, “was created at least in part in computer labs from Seattle to Beijing”.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang (Revised and Updated). By James Millward. Columbia University Press; 520 pages; $35. Hurst; £16.99
The Sacred Routes of Uyghur History. By Rian Thum. Harvard University Press; 316 pages; $46.00 and £36.95
These two histories of the Uyghur region take different approaches. James Millward offers a survey of the region now called Xinjiang from prehistoric times to the present day. Its importance lay in its position as the meeting point of many trade routes across Asia and Europe. Reading Xinjiang’s history thus requires understanding texts written in the now-extinct Tokharian tongue, in Soghdian, an ancient Iranian language that was once the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and in many other languages. Readers learn that Xinjiang is far more than merely China’s western borderland, and that earlier Chinese leaders found that Uyghurs were best governed when they were allowed some autonomy. Rian Thum is more interested in how Xinjiang’s residents understand themselves and their past. The people who call themselves Uyghurs have not used that name for long: in 1911 “Uyghur” was first used as an ethnonym, derived from words in pre-Islamic kingdoms that were historically based in the region. Rather than “Xinjiang”, Mr Thum prefers “Altishahr”, meaning “six cities” in the Uyghur tongue. The people of Altishahr, Mr Thum notes, have long fashioned their own historical and religious identities independently of the forces that sought to control them.
The Backstreets. By Perhat Tursun, translated by Darren Byler and Anonymous. Columbia University Press; 168 pages; $20 and £17.63
A nameless Uyghur man arrives in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, as a diversity hire for an office job. Scorned by his Han Chinese superiors and ignored by strangers, the protagonist wanders the city streets in search of a place to live. So unfolds “The Backstreets”, the first Uyghur novel ever translated into English, and a haunting portrait of what Chinese domination felt like in the Uyghur homeland. Chinese rule in Xinjiang involved clear racial hierarchies, where Han Chinese migrants accessed benefits and amassed wealth at native Uyghurs’ expense. Its author, Perhat Tursun, was considered the leading modernist writer in the Uyghur world before he disappeared. Today Mr Tursun is thought to be serving a 16-year prison sentence. The book’s Uyghur co-translator, credited only as Anonymous, has also been detained. (We reviewed the book here in September 2022.)
On a Tightrope. Directed by Petr Lom. Lom Films; 60 minutes; rent online for $5.12 and £4.43
Yengisar county, in southwest Xinjiang, has a long tradition of tightrope walking. Petr Lom’s documentary, released in 2006, follows a group of young Uyghurs who live in a state-run orphanage and learn the art. The youth train and tussle with one another in a courtyard whose walls are decorated with slogans such as “The Communist Party is our mother and father”. In school, they are taught to recite a list of rules: “Young people can’t take part in religious activities. If they do, they will be responsible for the consequences.” Only the student, their teacher asks? “No, their parents are responsible too.” “On a Tightrope” captures the tensions of life in Xinjiang, as the orphan acrobats grapple with loneliness, poverty and personal ambition. The documentary excels by bringing viewers into places that outsiders usually are unable to access.
The Uyghur Chronicles. By Tahir Hamut Izgil, translated by Joshua Freeman. The Atlantic.
Tahir Hamut Izgil, a poet and a filmmaker, is one of few Uyghur intellectuals who fled China before the crackdown began. His harrowing account of that narrow escape, translated by Joshua Freeman, was published by the Atlantic magazine in 2021. “The Uyghur Chronicles” (online called “One by One My Friends Were Sent to the Camps”) is powerfully told and chillingly precise. Mr Izgil details the complicated route to securing passports for his family; how, fearing a night arrest, he slept in winter clothes so that prison would at least be warm; and how one by one, friends and relatives stopped replying to his messages, either because they feared disappearing, or because they already had. Mr Izgil’s account demonstrates that no one is safe from the crackdown: respected academics, for example, have been treated like violent terrorists. First person accounts of life in modern Xinjiang are rare. Mr Izgil’s is the most powerful that is available in English.
The Contest of the Fruits. Edited by Guangtian Ha and Slavs and Tatars. MIT Press; 126 pages; $29.95 and £25.93.
Guangtian Ha, a professor at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, and “Slavs and Tatars”, an art collective, together edited this anthology of essays of Uyghur history, culture and politics. It takes its title from a poem of the same name which celebrates “the rambunctious pluralism” of Uyghur culture. One author writes about Uyghur rap, another about Uyghur comedy. A history of the evolution of the Uyghur script is followed by a chronicle of how repression has changed the sounds of Xinjiang. Sprinkled throughout are Uyghur poems, their translations laid next to the originals, and lively, clever illustrations. “The Uyghur region”, the editors write, “has a strong tradition of mixing satire and the sacred.” It can be difficult for English-language readers to find original accounts of Uyghur culture, but this is an informative and entertaining start.
Also consider:
Our coverage of Xinjiang includes: an article on a UN report condemning China’s actions in the region; a review of how China’s authorities use technology and other means to repress people in Xinjiang; and an editorial on the need to dismantle China’s modern-day gulag.
