Notes from Xinjiang

Uighur women walk through the old city of Kashgar, in China’s Xinjiang province.

Xinjiang is called the “core zone” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but given how long it takes to get there from India, core connectivity is definitely not a thing yet. From Delhi, one flies six hours east to Shanghai, transits to an airport an hour away, and then flies six hours back west to Urumqi, the capital city. You’re essentially burning up your annual carbon footprint quota, given that as the crow flies, Urumqi is just north of Srinagar. In comparison, Pakistani delegates who are part of the same tour, hosted by the Xinjiang government, reach in two-and-a-half hours from Islamabad.

Home is never too far away, however, and I notice that although I am the only Indian on board the flight to Urumqi, passengers are glued to a Hrithik Roshan film playing on the entertainment system. India’s soft power here is definitely its cinema: the Uzbek journalist with me says he loves “everyone from Madhuri to Kajol”; at the Xinjiang state folk music orchestra, the violinist strikes up the tune of ‘Jimmy Jimmy Aaja’ from the 1982 blockbuster Disco Dancer when I tell her I’m from India; and at a school on the outskirts of Urumqi, pigtailed schoolgirls quiz me about Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan.

The vegetarians

Real soft power between India and China dates back 2,000 years (2 BCE to 2 AD) in Xinjiang. The Silk Road put Xinjiang right at the centre: a criss-cross of trading routes, cultures, languages, religions and people. Turkic tribes brought Islam from the West, travellers like Xuanzang brought Buddhism from the south. As a result, Xinjiang is home to 47 ethnic groups, the majority being Uyghur (45%), and has blended the music and food from seven neighbouring lands — Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India — into its own.

‘Mainland China’, separated by deserts and distance, has also moved in, and over the past few decades, Han Chinese have become the dominant population in most towns, making up about 40% of the population. It is easier to be vegetarian here than in Beijing or Shanghai, and both vegetables and meat are cooked in spices more akin to South and Central Asia than East Asia. Traditional music sounds familiar, with instruments resembling the sitar and sarangi part of the blend that play the ‘12 muqams’ of Uyghur music. The prefecture of Changji, just north of Urumqi, looks like any other modern city with its skyscrapers, malls and traffic. But at the heart of its swish, spanking clean 800-bed Medical University Hospital is a traditional medicine clinic where we see spondylitis patients being administered ‘dragonfire moxibustion’, a treatment that involves laying the patient on their stomach for hours, while layers of garlic, ginger and herbs with heated coal and ash smoulder on their backs. Acupuncture, cupping, and other alternative treatments are carried out alongside allopathic treatments.

Radical thoughts

At Xinjiang’s new opera house, Revisiting the Western Regions is playing, an outstanding extravaganza that looks at the glory of the old silk road, replete with dancers, trapeze artistes, horses, eagles, and even Bactrian camels.

But the big disappointment as I travel from Urumqi toward Tarim Basin and the famed Taklamakan desert is that much of the colour and flavour of local culture has been wiped out from view. Urumqi, Korla, Changji, Yanqi are all modern cities with little heritage. The drive to promote Xinjiang as a BRI destination has meant that the government has spent considerable effort in “mainstreaming” it, and erasing local culture.

A strict security presence and a “crackdown on radicalism”, as an official says, means no beards or veils, and few visible mosques or other places of worship. Wandering out on our own to find a bazaar or eatery results in being firmly redirected to the nearest police station, and thence hotelwards. Instead, there are ‘tourist parks’ with a wide array of bakeries and restaurants, and street musicians and dancers. Entertaining, but not quite the same.

suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in