China's Inland Empire

It's obvious enough from a glance at the map that China is an exceptionally large nation, stretching from the Pacific to the mountainous ramparts of the Pamirs. But to truly appreciate just how damn big it is, there's nothing like crossing the country by train. Only when you've spent an entire day and night sitting on a bench in a packed rail car full of rural Chinese, with many people standing in the aisles or slumped on their luggage, does all that colored map space really sink in. It took us the better part of a week to make our way from Beijing to Kazakhstan, traversing Xinjiang's deserts in the hoof-prints of the old silk road camel caravans. Along the way, we discovered one of the world's most overlooked Islamic communities, the Uigurs.

In some important ways, a very large amount of that colored map space representing China isn't very Chinese at all. A massive percentage of China's land mass is found in its two westernmost provinces, Tibet and Xinjiang. In our travels through both places, we found the majority of people speaking non-Chinese languages, following non-Chinese religions, eating non-Chinese food, wearing non-Chinese clothes and generally going about their lives in a very non-Chinese way. (All of this, it goes without saying, happens under the attentive supervision of some very Chinese officials and police). There are some pretty obvious complications that result from this arrangement, and we discussed them at some length here and here during our travels in Tibet and in the Tibetan exile community in India.



While Xinjiang's Uigur Muslim majority hasn't found itself in the spotlight (or under the gun) to the extent their southern neighbors have, they do face a similar situation in many respects. Separatist movements have arrisen here on a number of occasions, only to be crushed. Still, despite the political tension and riot police patrolling the streets, life in Xinjiang's villages adheres to a rhythm much older than the town clocks chiming on Beijing time. Mao's face still appears occasionally, but the heart and soul of Xinjiang is the call to prayer echoing in the early morning, and the afternoon light filtering through grape trellises to illuminate the mud-walled alleys.