A Week in Chinese Turkestan During the Uigher Uprising
Tuesday, July 14th, 2009We sure picked a bad week to be in Xinjiang province, right in the middle of the protests last Monday in Urumqi that resulted in 156 deaths. Though in its own strange way, it was a pretty intruiging experience as well. Here’s how it went down, day by day.
Monday – “Hey look, there are two army tanks over there…”
We awoke in Turpan after an enjoyable couple of days’ sightseeing and took an early bus to Urumqi, arriving in the provincial capital at about 11:45am official (Beijing) time, or about 9:45am unofficial local time (this government directive for the entire country to be on Beijing time is a ‘feature’ of Xinjiang travel). We needed to get from the bus station to the train station for the 12:57pm train to Kashgar (for which we already had tickets) but it was hard to get a taxi – several empty ones waved us off and in the end we took a three-wheeler. En route to the train station we saw two military tanks blocking a street, but didn’t imagine that by far the worst violence in the history of the Uigher-Chinese struggle for control of Xinjiang was taking place in the city right then and there.
The train left without incident and at 4:30pm I received a text message from a Chinese friend alerting me to 140 deaths in Urumqi (later increased to 156). We were lucky not to have been caught in the middle of it, as our original plan had been to be in Urumqi the night before but I had to fly to Beijing on Friday to retrieve expense money from a bank account there (a long story), so we had to change our itinerary accordingly.
Without knowing any real details, we were glad to be on a train to Kashgar, still in Xinjiang but 1200km from Urumqi and, basically, the end of China. Kygryzstan visas in hand, we had planned to leave China the following Monday.
Tuesday – “Why are all the streets blocked off?”
We arrived in Kashgar at about noon and all seemed normal at first. We took a bus from the train station into the centre and began to walk towards our old city hostel. But all the shops were closed with shutters down, some streets were blocked off, there was a large police presence and we saw a military truck, so we decided to reverse directions and find a hotel in the new city while we figured out what was going on. At this point, texting internationally hadn’t been blocked yet, so I found out from my brother that a non-violent protest of about 200 people had also taken place in Kashgar the previous day. We found a hotel, were lucky to get some supplies from the one store in the area that was open, and basically bunkered down for the rest of the day, eating two-minute noodles for lunch and dinner.
Sometime after 3:30pm all texting – to Chinese and international numbers – was blocked. Fortunately we could still make mobile phone calls within China which would come in handy tomorrow. The internet was also blocked by the time we checked into the hotel and would remain blocked for the rest of our time in China.
We did manage to see a Chinese news report on the Urumqi protests – though it depicted only Han Chinese as the wounded. (We of course assumed that some or most of the deaths were a result of Chinese military firing on protesters, but being completely cut off from any information other than that produced by the Chinese government, we really had no idea what had happened in Urumqi. Though it did make us realise how easy it is for a government to completely shut down the flow of information – no wonder most Chinese don’t know what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or even in Tibet in March of last year.)
A few days later, we were told by a foreigner who was still in Urumqi on Tuesday night that there were more clashes and deaths – unreported by the Chinese media – and that she was forced to stay in her hotel room throughout the afternoon and evening. She said she saw all the shops close en masse and the Uighers preparing to defend themselves with poles and sticks…
Wednesday – “We cannot take foreigners…”
Getting out of Xinjiang seemed like a pretty decent idea at this point, but our options for leaving Kashgar were limited.
All routes out of western China go to countries for which we need a visa (and none of these could be obtained in Kashgar), and the only one we already had – Kyrgyzstan – didn’t start until next Monday. Almost all overland routes out of Kashgar but within China go through Urumqi except those through Tibet and Qinghai (all or parts of which are currently closed to foreigners not on a tour). Flights only go to Urumqi and Islamabad. Besides, with no internet and no travel agencies open, we couldn’t even buy a plane ticket without going to the airport.
Basically: we were stuck in southern Xinjiang.
Our plan was to take the daily morning bus south towards the mountains, and lay low at a mountain lake for a few days while the situation in the cities settled down. But at the bus station they said there wouldn’t be a bus for three days. Further, a sign scribbled in English said foreigners needed a permit to visit the lake, the first we had heard of that.
The lake was out, then, and so was everything else; it seemed as though no buses or trains were currently leaving Kashgar. We saw Chinese people with train tickets to Urumqi apparently trying to get them switched to bus tickets, but with no apparent success, so it seemed as though everyone was stuck, not just foreigners.
With no other choice, we headed back to our hotel – only to find that they would not check us in, giving us the 1980s-era ‘foreigners need to stay in a four-star hotel’ spiel and saying that they didn’t have a permit to register us. When we reminded them that they had let us stay the night before, they said a new staff member had not understood the rules and had made a mistake. But since multiple people were involved in checking us in, we didn’t believe that for a second. China was going into permit roadblock mode.
Eventually we found a four-star hotel with rooms for about €30, got some more supplies and bunkered down for the second straight day. Since we figured we had five more days in Kashgar until we could leave for Kyrgyzstan, we thought it best just to stay close to the hotel in the new town. Shops were still closed all day, and in the afternoon we saw five military conveys consisting of between 7-10 trucks pass the roundabout that our window overlooks, so the feeling in the city was still pretty tense.
One of the day’s highlights/lowlights was seeing an ‘I love China’ ad on TV that we had never seen before – no doubt being screened around the clock now as the CCP goes into damage control mode. The depictions are China uniting in the face of adversity (such as earthquake relief in Sichuan last May or during the huge snow storms that affected spring festival travel last February), celebrating itself and its achievements (the Olympic Games, the Great Wall), and showing cultural images from minorities across the country (though the Uighers of Xinjiang were noticeably absent from the montage) – in all, probably the most outrageous piece of propaganda I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been to Burma and Cuba). The Han Chinese are already fiercely patriotic (perhaps as a result of such ads), but surely the persecuted minorities see right through this whole charade.
Later, we were told that two Uighers were shot by Chinese military today in front of the Id-Kah Mosque in the old city of Kashgar, and 8-20 more were arrested.
Thursday – “The Uighers will keep fighting!”
The Uigher side of the story, as told to us by a local, goes like this:
About two weeks ago, 62 Uighers from a village near Kashgar who were working in a toy factory in Guangdong province in eastern China were thrown from their fourth-floor dormitory and killed. The incident apparently came about because a Han Chinese who had previously held one of the jobs wanted it back, and stirred up resentment towards the Uighers. The government only admitted to two deaths, and brought two bodies back to Xinjiang for burial. But they did not tell the parents of the deceased, and since burying the bodies (contained within plastic bags to hide the mutilation, we were told), the Chinese police have guarded the tombs around the clock to prevent the villagers from digging them up and accessing the bodies.
On Monday, as a way to mourn those dead, Uighers in Urumqi gathered together peacefully for several hours. Chinese police tried to break it up, but the Uighers maintained that it was a mourning ritual and not a protest. Then, some younger Uighers turned it into a protest against Chinese rule, and that’s when all hell broke loose. Uighers and Chinese then began clashing, leading to the 156 deaths.
Meanwhile, we finally ventured into the old city today, encouraged by hotel staff telling us that everything was “normal.” And if normal means dozens of marching soldiers, a huge military blockade around the Id-Kah Mosque and an atmosphere to rival Cold War era Berlin, then normal it was. Heightened security aside, the old city was a hub of Muslim activity: fruit, meat and bread sellers sold their produce on the streets to veiled women while donkey carts passed by. It is hard to imagine that somewhere could be more different from China while still being within its borders if it tried. Needless to say, it was a nice change from being stuck in a hotel room.
Finally, today’s security news/rumour update from the Uigher side: a passenger bus from Kashgar to Korla, carrying mostly Uighers, was torched by Han Chinese civilians.
Friday – “You don’t have a permit.”
Needing to get out of Kashgar for our own sanity as much as security, and with the public transport situation still uncertain, we hired a car and driver to take us south from Kashgar on a familiar road – the Karakoram Highway, which rises to the Khunjerab Pass at 4800m above sea level, crosses into Pakistan and then winds down through the mountains all the way to Islamabad – to Lake Karakul. It was a fabulous trip, past Silk Road ruins, the glacier at Oystag, and barren, deep-red mountains to the gorgeous lake, ringed by 7000m snow-capped peaks. At least on this day, it was virtually deserted, easily one of the most beautiful places we saw in China and the highlight of Xinjiang.
But even here, four hours drive south of Kashgar, which is itself virtually the end of China, the security paranoia continued. In the afternoon, Uigher and Kyrgz men who inhabit the village on the lakeshore were prohibited from attending Friday prayers at the local mosque by the Chinese police, as though 200 villagers in the middle of nowhere attending a religious service could actually threaten the world’s largest standing army.
Then, at 1am Beijing time (11pm local time), Chinese police tried to kick us out of the Kyrgz yurt we were staying in while we slept and move us to a Chinese-run yurt. The concrete Kyrgz yurts were actually built by the Chinese so the Kyrgz herders could house tourists (for which the Chinese government, naturally, extracts taxes), so the whole thing is perfectly above board, but all of a sudden the police pulled out the old Chinese trump card and said the Kyrgz didn’t have the right permits. Of course, the Kyrgz can’t actually obtain the permits, which are just the Chinese Orwellian way of retaining veto control over everything.
In the end, our guide resisted and we didn’t have to move (and in fact slept through the whole thing), but two other foreigners were forced from their yurt in the middle of the night. What the Chinese police hoped to gain by preventing Kyrgz herders (who aren’t even Uighers) from making €4 per person for full room and board for a day is anyone’s guess.
Saturday – “Stay inside your hotel.”
Returning to Kashgar, we passed by a couple of temporary military checkpoints and were told by the soldiers there not to leave our hotel once we got back into the city. They also said that Karakul would be closed for the next three days, so we were extremely fortunate to have been able to go when we did.
Once we arrived in Kashgar, everything seemed open and OK, but the Han Chinese manager of our new lodging – an old city hostel – said things were too quiet, that something would erupt in 3-4 days. Internet and text messaging / international calling were still blocked, and the military presence in the old city remained enormous, even bigger than before.
Sunday – “There will be police there…”
The biggest attraction in the entire province – the famed Kashgar Sunday market, which we had wanted to visit for at least five years and for which all our Xinjiang planning was done to accommodate – was, of course, cancelled. Given how the Chinese police had blocked 200 villagers from going to a mosque in a village in the middle of nowhere two days earlier, it was a no-brainer that they would prevent 100,000 Uighers from attending their weekly market in the province’s second-biggest city. Despite this, we were told that it would be open, so we went to one of the two sites only to find that 95% of stalls were closed and hundreds of soldiers were stationed nearby. There, we met travelers who had just come from the Livestock Market, where they saw a few sheep and nothing else – it was also almost completely deserted.
But at least we didn’t have the experience of a couple of other travellers, who drove for hours to begin their overnight camel trek in the desert only to be turned back by the Chinese authorities “for your safety” once they got there. So from the dangerous desert, where there are no people, they were returned with a police escort to a hostel in Kashgar 400m from the Id-Kah Mosque, where two Uighers were shot four days earlier and where hundreds of Chinese soldiers are stationed round the clock, pointing guns at you as you walk past…
Monday – China in the rear-view mirror
With our Kyrgz visas beginning today, we could finally leave China, insha’allah.
The weekly bus from Kashgar to Osh was an hour late in departing but I was so ecstatic that it wasn’t cancelled that nothing could have dampened my spirits. Foreigners taking buses from Kashgar to Urumqi this week have reported at least 20 temporary military checkpoints along the way, so we expected more of the same heading to the Irkeshtam Pass. But in fact there were none at all, and when we surveyed the rest of the bus it made sense; the Chinese government makes it extremely difficult for Uighers to obtain passports, so there were none on this bus – only Uzbeks, Pakistanis, Kyrgz and five Westerners.
The bus took about six hours to reach the border, and all the while I had it in the back of my head that we could still be turned back at the last moment as had happened to the desert travellers. I somehow escaped the bag search at the border, where the Chinese guard went through the photos on Wendy’s camera, and ripped the map page out of someone else’s guidebook because it didn’t depict Taiwan as part of China. The formalities on both sides were arduous and the whole process took about three hours, but eventually we made it through. It was almost hard to believe, but the proof was there in our passports: A Chinese exit stamp.
We had been so consumed all week with getting out of China in one piece that it was a complete afterthought to realise, once the bus got going again, that we were, for the first time in our lives, inside the former Soviet Union.
Nick