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AFP Features
 Ancient
Silk Road now a migratory route for Chinese
Sun Sep 5, 4:21 AM ET
KASHGAR, China (AFP) - Kashgar, once a far-flung
outpost at the heart of the ancient Silk Road and home
to the Turkic speaking Muslim Uighurs, is no longer
quite so remote.
AFP Photo
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After 55 years of Chinese communist domination, it
can no more claim to be an isolated trading oasis
that fortifies travellers before they tackle the
snowy Pamirs and Tianshan mountain passes that
give onto modern day Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Pakistan.
The effect of a newly constructed railway and
roads as well as increased air travel has
quickened the pace of change to such an extent
that modern Kashgar bears little resemblance to
the city that for the last 2,000 years welcomed
Taklamakan desert caravans. |
Five years ago China opened a
railroad connecting the outpost with the sprawling
provincial capital Urumqi, nearly 1,500 kilometres
(930 miles) to the east, which has resulted in growing
numbers of Chinese migrants threatening to swamp the
indigenous Uighur.
Kashgar, which lies inside the presently
Chinese-controlled Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region,
sees its train station disgorge hundreds of passengers
from the capital Urumqi twice a day, while 20 daily
flights now ply the route.
Although official government statistics say Uighurs,
the dominant ethnic minority in the region, make up 90
percent of Kasghar's nearly 200,000 residents, one
look around indicates a much greater proportion are
Chinese.
"These days there are more and more Han (Chinese),
more and more Chinese goods," said a streetside noodle
vendor, who gave his Chinese name as Yang.
"Ten years ago there were very few Chinese," said the
copper-skinned Uighur, before adding that at least it
has been good for business.
Stanley Toops, an expert on the region at Miami
University in Ohio, said there has been a concerted
effort by the Chinese to develop Xinjiang and the
economic development had not taken ethnic issues into
consideration.
"In Kashgar, things began to change a few years ago
for the local people with the advent of the railroad
and roads, but it's not like they can stop a migration
flow," he said.
The migration has led to soulless blocks of concrete
buildings being erected to house Chinese, emblematic
of so much of modern China where the Communist Party
vanquished traditional concepts of aestheticism when
it took power in 1949.
They now ring the old heart of Kashgar, taking up
about half of the city whose main avenues are a sprawl
of white-tiled low rises, housing karaoke lounges,
garishly lit restaurants and small shops full of cheap
goods found in any small- to medium-sized mainland
China city.
Just beyond the towering statue of Mao Zedong that
watches over the People's Square, simple, traditional
mud-brick houses border the alleys of the old quarter
that lead to stacked adobe-like homes, many only
accessible by tilt ladders.
At the ancient city's food bazaars, men donning
traditional Kufi skull caps chatter away while tucking
into bowls of thick greasy yellow noodles, topped with
green peppers, tomatoes and hunks of meat.
Women in hijab, traditional Islamic head scarves,
smile, beckoning passerby's to sit and eat amid the
pungency of Central Asian spices and gamy mutton
exposed to the hot, dusty sun.
Reflecting the Uighurs traditionally less strict
adherence to Islam, many women however do not wear
hijab and only a handful use the burqa, the
head-to-toe garb that veils them entirely.
Most telling though is that there are few Chinese
faces in the old city, a fact that underscores the
simmering tensions between the two ethnic groups that
has on occasion erupted into violent street battles.
One young Uighur local taxi driver summed up relations
between the two.
"Chinese and Uighurs do not go to the same places.
They go to their own separate places," he said.
"Uighurs are not allowed into Chinese places or discos,"
he added, as he waited for Chinese customers outside
the packed One Hundred Fortunes KTV club.
At the Cowboy Bar across town young Uighurs danced to
jazzed up versions of traditional ethnic tunes with no
Chinese in sight.
Xinjiang has at one time or another come under the
rule of various ethnic tribes including the Uighur,
Mongol, Kazhak, Tibetan and the Chinese.
Even Britain and czarist Russia penetrated the
region's desert at the height of 19th century Western
colonialism, playing out a series of political
maneuvers commonly referred to as the "Great Game".
Since Xinjiang last came under Chinese domination in
the 1870s, it has twice declared independence as East
Turkestan in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hopes for self-determination were rekindled with the
collapse of the Soviet Union that gave neighbours
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan independence,
and the push for sovereignty continues to stew as the
Chinese continue their push into ancient Silk road
trading towns such as Yarkand, Hotan and Niya.
Throughout the 1990s Uighur groups campaigned often
violently for a separate state, prompting the Chinese
to brutally crack down and a police presence remains
heavy throughout the city and the province.
Amnesty International said in July that China was
using the global war on terror to justify repression
of its Uighur community..
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