Shanghai'd

Xinjiang Time.

Xinjiang feels thousands of miles from the rest of China in so many ways. Geographically at least, it literally is. After a 4 1/2 hr flight west from Shanghai, we touched down in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. One of the many "oddities" of China is that despite its size, the entire country is on the same time zone, officially Beijing shi jian. Unofficially, Xinjiang operates on its own local Xinjiang shi jian, 2 hrs later than Beijing, which somewhat, but not completely compensates for the huge span in longitude. This provided a nice change from Shanghai. Instead of the sun rising around 5am and setting around 5pm, in Xinjiang it was more like 8am/8pm (or 6am/6pm depending on which time you happened to be using). Can you prophesy any potential confusion caused by two different time systems? Any time communicated is immediately followed by the obvious inquiry Beijing shi jian haishi Xinjiang shi jian? I've found this type of clarification common place in a country where you often don't know:

1) what language you're fellow countryman is speaking (is that Mandarin / Cantonese / Shanghainese / etc)
2) what season it is (Fall officially begins on a different date each year determined by the first 5 consecutive days after summer where the high temperature is below 22C)
3) rice or noodles
3) and of course, what time it is!

In Xinjiang, all of these differences are amplified. The local Uighur dialect is phonetically written using the Arabic alphabet and has much more in common with Turkish and Uzbek than Mandarin. Why they chose Arabic as opposed to say ... the Latin/Roman alphabet to represent sounds is beyond me, as the Uighur and Arabic languages themselves have no similarities. One theory we read was that the Uighurs actually did use the Latin alphabet in the past, but the Chinese government forced the change because they feared the Uighurs were getting an advantage in learning English over the Chinese. Far fetched, but irrational enough to be possible.

There is no denying the tension between the local Uighur people and the majority Han Chinese. Sparing the long history lesson, the Uighurs basically want autonomy and the Chinese government basically wants Xinjiang for it's strategic geopolitical location and natural resources, particularly the vast oil and gas reserves under the Takalamakan desert. Beijing has employed the strategy of flooding the province with Han Chinese to breed out the Uighurs. They will even offer a 20,000 RMB bonus for any Chinese who marries a Uighurs. It's working too. Urumqi, by far the largest city with about 3 million people, is now majority Han and minority Uighur. About 70%/30% from what we could tell. Farther west, in places like Kashgar, the ratio was reversed. Overall, more than half of the 20 million total population in Xinjiang is now Han Chinese. This policy has obviously created some bad blood and prejudice. The common stereotype of Uighurs (even shared by many of my Chinese colleagues in Shanghai), is that they are "dangerous people". In return, one Uighur man we met in Urumqi said he didn't like working with the Chinese because "Chinese are dirty".

The province is essentially segregated along ethnic lines. Most towns have a Chinese and a Uighur area, the children attend different schools, and in almost 2 weeks of traveling, we never saw a Uighur adult or child hanging out with a Chinese.

For our part, both cultures were very interesting. One microcosm that reflected the differences for us was the experience of taking buses in Urumqi (Chinese) vs. Kashgar (Uighur). In Kashgar, the run-down, rotten-cabbage smelling, yet completely full bus leaves the station 30 minutes late then proceeds to pick up anyone along the side of the dusty road who sticks out there hand. There is no concept of a bus stop, and I think we were the only people who actually bought a ticket instead of just slipping the guy in the front seat 10 RMB. In Urumqi, the large, new tour buses were orderly lined up at the station. Everyone bought their ticket in advance and sat in their assigned seats. Passengers were counted and government chops assigned when the bus rolled out of the station, not to stop until the ultimate destination was reached. The one thing both buses had in common was the unfortunate choice of Bollywood song and dance VCDs that blared for the entire trip.

To be continued, with less heavy, more lighthearted travel stories now that the stage has been set ...