Oh, Xinjiang Cultural Impressions from the Heart of Eurasia

ABDULRAHMAN is perched on a wooden stool with his knees splayed far apart. He draws on the tall, thin Shisha pipe standing at his side. Exhaling, smoke billows out of his mouth before quickly dissipating into the scorching midday sunlight. As I approach his fruit and nut store at the far end of the bazaar, a thick waft of flavored air – oily and sweet, somewhere between cherry and grape – challenges my recently digested kebab to reveal itself.

Slightly queasy, I greet Abdulrahman with what I hope will be a crowd-pleaser: “As-Salamu Alaykum,” “May peace be upon you.” The phrase, used by Muslims the world over, comes with a requisite response: “Wa’alaykumu s-Salam,” “And Peace be to you.”

Abdulrahman completes the salutation, and, looking up from his smoking and seeing my face – European, through and through – switches to the lingua franca around these parts: Chinese.

“Ni shi naguo ren?” (Where are you from?) He enquires in pitch-perfect Mandarin.

“England. And you?”

“Me? I was born here, in Urumqi!”

Urumqi is the capital of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Bordering on India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, Xinjiang is China’s bridgehead into Central Asia.

But China is not monolithic. For sure, Xinjiang is in China, but it is a different region to the one you’ll experience in Beijing, or in Hong Kong. The Han-dominated homogeneity of the country’s eastern regions is fused away here. The result is China’s Central Asia: a heady concoction of color, religion and language.

Ethnic diversity is actually a hallmark of many regions in China. Officially, 56 ethnic groups call the country home. The 55 minority groups constitute almost 10 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people. The remaining 90-odd percent are Han, and when citizens of other countries imagine a “typical” Chinese, it’s inevitably a set of Han facial features that springs to mind.

China officially recognizes 13 peoples indigenous to Xinjiang: Uygur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kyrgyz, Mongolian, Tajik, Xibo, Manchu, Uzbek, Russian, Daur and Tatar. Han make up 40 percent of the population. “Minorities,” as their colloquially known, are in the majority here.

Xinjiang’s ethnic heterogeneity is a product of thousands of years of intermingling Persian, Turkic, Mongol and Han peoples. Migrating populations originally came for the grasslands, and then for the trade. All branches of the ancient “Silk Road,”the interconnecting network of trade routes that connected East China to far-flung Africa and Europe, passed through modern-day Xinjiang, earning it the timeworn epithet, “the Heart of Eurasia.”

The Uygur are by far the largest “minority” in Xinjiang. Region-wide, they number slightly more than Han, and this breakdown is represented in microcosm at Urumqi’s grand bazaar, where I met Abdulrahman.

“I mainly sell nuts. To my right is a Han seller who specializes in fruit, and to my left is a Uygur friend who makes trinkets,” he says. “We’re all here together, chatting and joking, all day every day.”

Abdulrahman knows a few English phrases, which he’s picked up from the odd foreign tourist who finds his or her way to the bazaar. Where do the foreign tourists come from? “A few from Japan, the occasional American; quite a few Germans,” he estimates.

Looking in

Cognizance of Xinjiang as an “exotic”tourist destination has been on the rise in recent years. In the West, this is in large part due to a string of novels and travel narratives that explore the glory of the Silk Road of yore.

A slapdash survey of a dozen Western acquaintances who have traveled in Xinjiang reveals that all but one had read Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia. Published in 1980 by journalist Peter Hopkirk, the book is one in a series of six in which the author recounts the (mis) adventures of European explorers in the Central Asian region in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Nowadays, those in the West who strive for a deeper understanding of Xinjiang can study the region as part of Chinese or Central Asian studies degree programs in many countries around the world. In the U.S., four universities – The University of Kansas, Washington University, the University of Indiana at Bloomington and Harvard University – even offer instruction in the Uygur language, a Turkic tongue closely related to Uzbek, Kazakh and Turkish.

Understandably, Chinese attraction to the “exotic appeal”of this part of their country stretches back further than recent Western interest. One of the most widely quoted historical references to Xinjiang in China today is the 16th century novel Journey to the West. Written by Wu Cheng’en, the story is loosely based on the 6th century adventures of monk Xuanzang as he traveled through Xinjiang on his way to India to seek out sacred Buddhist texts.

Scenes from Journey to the West, recounted ad nauseum in countless Chinese melodramas based on the book, remain vividly alive in popular Chinese imagination.

On a recent trip to Xinjiang, our reporting team was traveling east from Urumqi on route to our next destination when the minibus shuddered to a halt. “Get out!” Hollered a Chinese colleague. A confused glance out the window – no other vehicles in sight, barren desert on both sides – revealed no immediate danger.

“It’s Flaming Mountain,” the colleague responded to my blank stare, motioning to the innocuous ridge to our north.

A little research later in the day revealed Flaming Mountain to have received its name courtesy of Journey to the West. In the fictional account, the Buddhist monk protagonist, led by Sun Wukong, a monkey king, encountered a wall of flames where the mountain stands. The flames were said to be caused by the monkey king’s knocking over a kiln and causing a disturbance in the heavens. Our Chinese colleagues were fascinated to finally see this legendary mountain with their own eyes, while my foreign colleagues and I could only stand by and appreciate the immortal power of literature.

Mummies, and They’re Not Egyptian

Nineteenth and 20th century Western accounts and 16th century Chinese literature is one thing, but for a deeper look into Xinjiang’s long history from the local perspective one can’t go past a visit to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum in Urumqi.

Covering 7,800 square meters and featuring a collection of 50,000 items, the museum is a literal treasure trove. Historical relics include iron tools, bronze wares, pottery, weapons and coins, some of which date back thousands of years.

But unquestionably the highlight of the museum is its collection of mummies, discovered in and around Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin. Numbering 21 in total, the mummies are remarkably well preserved thanks to the basin’s arid climate.

The “Loulan Beauty,” who is estimated to have died as an attractive young woman around 4,00 years ago, is one of the oldest mummies on display. While her skin is tinged an unnatural reddish brown, the rest of her remains are eerily intact. Her long, matted brown hair, tall nose and intact finger and toenails make for evocative – if a little gruesome – viewing.

The “Loulan Beauty” is also testament to Xinjiang’s history at the crossroads of Eurasia. Studies of her mummified remains reveal she was Europoid, and hence the genetic kin of modern Europeans. This also suggests she spoke an Indo-European language, most likely Tocharian, a scarcely documented, nowextinct cousin of Armenian, Hindi, Russian, English and all other languages in our broad language family.

The Birth of Culture and Its Legacy

In the first millennium BC, the nomadic ancestors of the modern Uygur people settled in the oases around the Tarim Basin, displacing and absorbing non-Turkic speakers such as the Loulan Beauty and her Tocharian brethren. As an agrarian society developed, a vibrant culture took root that absorbed influences from China’s Central Plains, India, Tibet, Iran, and even Greece and the Roman Empire. In the 9th century Islam found its way to Xinjiang; Islamic influence and indigenous culture inexorably intertwined to form a rich heritage that continues to this day.

One particularly beautiful facet of Xinjiang’s cultural heritage is music and performance. A cliché often heard in East China with regards to this heritage is that“Uygur love to sing and dance.” It’s easy to dismiss such a comment as a kind of “reverse orientalism” – exoticising the other“other” – but on actually visiting Xinjiang, it turns out that, for once, the cliché seems to hold true.

Most Uygur social gatherings are held to the accompaniment of live music. Weddings ceremonies, or Toi, are the liveliest of occasions, resembling more a carnival than the dour “exchange of vows” of the Western tradition.

True to the diverse influences on local culture in general, Uygur music is a quixotic cocktail of Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, Mongolian and native elements.

In any one musical performance, dozens of musical instruments may be used, chief among which are usually a large tambourine-like drum and the dutar, a long-necked two-stringed lute. Dutar virtuosos can tackle music written for the fourstringed violin and come away smiling.

Standing paramount in the Uygur musical tradition is the Muqam. Developed over one and a half millennia, the Muqam finds its genesis in the Arabic ‘Maqam’ melody system. Nowadays the Muqam has been thoroughly indigenized and is highly regionalized, though all variants are based on the “Twelve Muqam,” an epic narrative whose performance includes classical and folkloric song, music and dance.

“The Uygur Muqam Art of Xinjiang, China”has been designated by UNESCO as part of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Domestically, the Muqam and 13 other intangible cultural heritages in Xinjiang were included in the first batch of China’s officially recognized intangible cultural heritages in 2006. This should ensure Muqam traditions and performance skills are passed down to younger generations.

On our reporting trip to Xinjiang, we were lucky enough to attend a traditional Muqam performance and see the work being done to ensure the younger generations take up the unique performance art.

The Muqam Inheritance Center in Hami, East Xinjiang, is a shining example of China’s efforts to keep its traditional culture alive. Opened in 2009, the center itself was built in line with local Uygur architectural traditions –round, with a wide stairway set at the center of a large, open reception hall. The first floor is a museum-cumshop, while the second floor features a Muqam theater.

After enjoying a particularly entertaining fragment of the Hami Muqam – which locals assure us is one of Xinjiang’s most authentic – we chatted with some of the center’s regular performers.

Alif, as he introduces himself, started coming here soon after retiring from a teaching post at the Hami Prefecture Normal University. He began learning the local Muqam at a young age, and while he continues to perform on occasion, these days he’s more concerned with ensuring his cultural knowledge is passed on.

“I’ve been coming here to perform and instruct for four years,” he says. “My two sons – 19 and 23 – have been learning our Muqam traditions, and I’d say they’re pretty competent performers these days.”

One young Uygur performer, Nursunay, has more pragmatic view of his participation in the center. “Of course I get great pleasure from performing the Muqam. It’s our heritage. But it’s also quite good money – about RMB 2000 a month – just for doing what I love,” Nursunay says, referring to the government subsided wage for performers at the center.

As They Say...

The Chinese have a saying: “If you haven’t been to Xinjiang, you don’t know how big China really is.” Certainly, after making a round trip of 2,000 kilometers through the autonomous region by minibus and only covering a smidgen of distance on a Xinjiang map, anecdotally I can attest to the verity of the expression.

But personally, I would add another saying to the lexicon:“If you haven’t been to Xinjiang, you don’t know the depth of China’s culture.” The country’s cultural legacy is broad and heterogeneous, and the contributions of its ethic minorities like the Uygur are invaluable.

Having conversed with locals, gazed at 4,000-year-old mummies, gorged on the region’s sumptuous delicacies (a topic I haven’t even had room to write about here) and marveled at the grand Muqam musical tradition, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of this beautiful, historical – and yes, exotic – place.