Rian Thum For 250 years, the Turkic Muslims of Altishahr—the vast desert region to the northwest of Tibet—have led an uneasy existence under Chinese rule. Today they call themselves Uyghurs, and they have cultivated a sense of history and identity that challenges Beijing’s official national narrative. Rian Thum argues that the roots of this history…
Jay Dautcher The Uyghurs, a Turkic group, account for half the population of the Xinjiang region in northwestern China. This ethnography presents a thick description of life in the Uyghur suburbs of Yining, a city near the border with Kazakhstan, and situates that account in a broader examination of Uyghur culture. Its four sections explore…
Stuart Stevens The first account of travel in Chinese Turkistan, closed to foreigners since 1949, shows a world where bureaucratic hazards often loom larger than geographical ones. “Stevens, a freelance journalist, filmmaker and political consultant, retraces explorer and author Peter Fleming’s legendary 1935 journey through Chinese Turkistan from capital Beijing to remote, unpopulated Kashgar. Stevens…
David Eimer In 1949, Mao Zedong announced the birth of the People’s Republic of China, a proclamation to the world that, after centuries of war and social conflict, China had emerged as one nation. Since then, this idea has been propagated by broadcasts of marches and mass demonstrations of unity, designed for the benefit of…
Nick Holdstock ‘There is still much that is unclear about what actually happened during that violent week in July 2009. But however terrible its cost whether it was a massacre of peaceful protestors, an orchestrated episode of violence, or something in between it was not without precedent.’ NICK HOLDSTOCK In 1997 a small town in…
Christian Tyler Known by the Chinese as a barbarian land, its rich past conjures up sand-buried cities and painted caves, while its present is punctuated by violence and warfare. And now it is returning to the light. The picture it presents is both fascinating and disturbing. The Uighurs, still farm the tranquil oases that ring…
Gardner Bovingdon For more than half a century many Uyghurs, members of a Muslim minority in northwestern China, have sought to achieve greater autonomy or outright independence. Yet the Chinese government has consistently resisted these efforts, countering with repression and a sophisticated strategy of state-sanctioned propaganda emphasizing interethnic harmony and Chinese nationalism. After decades of…
Eric Enno Tamm On July 6, 1906, Baron Gustaf Mannerheim boarded the midnight train from St. Petersburg, charged by Czar Nicholas II to secretly collect intelligence on the Qing Dynasty’s sweeping reforms that were radically transforming China. The last czarist agent in the so-called Great Game, Mannerheim chronicled almost every facet of China’s modernization, from…
Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China Rebiya Kadeer, Alexandra Cavelius, His Holiness The Dalai Lama Along the Silk Road, where Europe, Asia and Russia converge, stands the four thousand-year-old land of a peaceful people, the Uyghurs. Their culture is filled with music, dance, family and love of tradition passed down by…
Josanne La Valley The Vine Basket tells of a Uyghur girl’s struggle in a land dominated by the Chinese communist regime. When fourteen-year-old Mehrigul’s brother leaves home she must give up school to help on the family farm. That makes her a prime candidate to be sent to work in a Chinese factory. She alone knows…
