Armed personnel patrol the streets of Urumqi diligently.
Instead of taking me to a restaurant that served Xinjiang signature dishes like roasted whole lamb, grill meat or pulou rice, a few acquaintances in Urumqi treated me to Sichuan hot pot yesterday.
Initially I thought they were trying to please my Malaysian taste bud that preferred the hot and spicy southern Chinese cuisine, but later I was startled to learn of the real reason.
“We are not treating you to typical Xinjiang food, because after last year’s incident, we have quit going to Uygur restaurant or eating Uygur food,” said Wang, a Han ethnic who is born and bred in Urumqi.
I have arrived in the provincial capital of Xinjiang Uygur Minority Autonomous Region, Urumqi, just ahead of the anniversary of last year’s July 5 bloody ethnic riots, which left 197 dead and some 1,700 injured, according to official figure.
Last year, what started as a street protest demanding investigations into a Uygur-Han brawl at a factory in southern China, had instead turned violent in Urumqi. The Turkic-speaking Muslim Uygur attacked and killed the Han, who is the biggest ethnic group in China, and eventually led to a bloody crackdown.
Since then, like Wang, many Han locals in Urumqi have boycotted Uygur businesses – from restaurants, grocery shops to department stores. The deadly riots have further strained the already difficult race relations in Xinjiang.
“They (Uygur) have hurt our feelings deeply. How could they blame us (the Han) for exploitation and unfair practices to justify the brutal killings in the streets?
“I used to have Uygur friends, whom I thought we cared for each other; but after the incident, none of them give me a call to ask if I’m fine, the years of friendships ended overnight,” she said with bitterness a year on.
I prompted the possibility of her not hearing from her Uygur friends was due to the shutting down of telecommunication system right after the incident – mobile phone signal, short messaging system (SMS), and internet access were blocked. In fact, full internet access was only restored in late May this year.
But Wang didn’t buy the argument; she insisted that the dynamics of things had changed ever since. She used to be an adventure tour leader, taking groups to some of the remotest parts of Xinjiang, forging ties and co-operations with the Uygur minority all over the province.
“What I loved most about those tours was coming into close contacts with the minority. I loved their hospitality and frankness. We used to work together developing new adventure routes, discussing the reasonable rate to charge the tourists, but nowadays, things become very business-like, we have lost that human touch,” she said, adding she had quit the profession last year.
A group of security personnel standing by at the entrance of a Uygur residential area.
As the anniversary of the ethnic riots approaching, the mood in Urumqi is a little tense but calm.
Armed personnel travel in trucks – which very often bearing red banners with huge white letters delivering strong messages like “Stay away from the manipulation of separatist movement”, or “Racial unity for a harmonious society” – patrol the streets all day long.
The locals go about their daily life quietly and hardly discuss what happened last July 5 openly, though I notice in public buses, some locals would stare hard and long at those passing trucks with water cannon fixed on the front.
“During the height of the riots, I thought I should buy some traditional costume of the Mongolian ethic group to disguise my family as a different race to stay safe, but I dared not step out of the house,” recalled Liu as he took me in his car touring a Uygur-dominant district of Urumqi.
In this area named the Unity Road, ironically, the Han ethnic group hardly ventured into after last year’s deadly riots, locals said bodies littered the street after the violence. Nearby, it’s the city main bazaar, another hot spot during the riots, which today many Han warned me (as I look like a Han and speak Chinese too fluently) against going there “alone”.
A Uygur, on the other hand, after hearing that I’m a Malaysian and that I’m not “afraid” of traveling alone in Xinjiang, sighed and said: “Those who fear simply because they knew what they had done here.”
He didn’t elaborate, but during the lengthy conversation we shared, he spoke with a tinge of resentment against the mass migration of Han in the past decades into a land long-resided by the Uygur, and of the jobs, land and wealth being unevenly distributed.
It’s more difficult to broach on the topic of what exactly happened here last year and how it impacted the race relations with the Uygur, who appear to be very cautious with their words.
The cheerful Aishah whom I met while strolling in a Uygur neighborhood invited me home for tea, we had a candid conversation, ranging from her once-in-a-lifetime Haj trip to her grand daughter’s favorite food.
But when I pretended to be naïve and asked why there were so many security forces in the streets, she gave a smart and evasive answer: “Don’t you feel safe having so many policemen around? It’s good for the security.” That kind of put an end to further discussion on the topic.
A 16-year-old Uygur student, Illiad, told me that misunderstanding among Uygur and Han students in his school sometimes occurred due to language differences. He said the younger generation of Uygur attended bi-lingual school, unlike their parents who mainly use the Turkic-branch of Uygur language with Arabic script and speak little Chinese.
The Uygur students would learn both their mother tongue and Chinese, while the Han and Hui students learn only Chinese. Sometimes, when students of different ethnic groups gather among themselves and speak in their own languages, the other group would grow suspicion.
“Once a fight broke out because a group of Han students accused the Uygur group speaking ill of them but the Uygur denied, then a shouting match ensued in each other’s languages, and it ended in a fight,” Illiad recalled.
In a Uygur neighborhood of Urumqi.
It also doesn’t help to forge mutual understanding and interactions when some residential areas appear to be divided along racial line. In some neighborhoods, there’re Uygur only; sometimes, the Hui ethic group (Chinese-speaking Muslim) living at the fringes of these neighborhoods acts like a buffer or transition zone before the next slightly mixed neighborhood appears.
“I have been living in a neighborhood bordering the Uygur since young, unlike the Han, who are more apprehensive of venturing into Uygur areas,” one local who belongs to the Hui ethnic group told me. But the Hui, who looks and speaks like the Han, was also targeted during last year’s riots.
“Last year’s incident has marred the race relations. It will leave its marks, mainly distrust and resentment, on at least two generations,” said a local pessimistically.
July 3, 2010
Here and There 