Thatsmags, 15 July 2014

With the academic year drawing to a close, 21-year-old Aliya Abdikiram, a second-year student at the Communication University of China [CUC], is again trying to persuade her parents to allow her to stay in Beijing during the summer to work as an intern.

But Aliya’s mom remains unmoved: “Why can’t you understand, Beijing is not for you! Please stop dreaming about finding a job there, or in any inner city,” she says over the phone from their family home, thousands of miles away in the city of Kumul. “Come back to Xinjiang as soon as you can.”

Aliya politely listens to her mom, before vowing – secretly – to continue sending her resume to Beijing-based companies. “I am tired of explaining to my mom that there aren’t any good opportunities for me in Xinjiang,” says Aliya.

“Given that I don’t want a position in government, or at a school, why study for four years, if all I’m going to do is return home to work in the same clothing business as my mom?”

But Aliya – who is ethnically Uighur – is under no illusion that Beijing is a paradise, either. Not a single company she has contacted in search of work has so far replied. “Many of my Uighur friends have told me: ‘Don’t waste your time and be realistic!’ They seem to think that because we are Uighur, most companies will simply weed us out in the first round of applicants,” she explains.

“It is true that discrimination exists in the job market for certain ethnic minorities, but complaining is useless. It’s the same as dealing with gender discrimination. Should women just give up? I think the solution before the environment improves is to work harder.”

Despite being unable to attend university themselves, Aliya’s parents encouraged their daughter to dream big, instilling in her an ambition to attend one of the country’s best colleges.

“I had a special feeling that I would one day study in Beijing, even when I was young,” remembers Aliya. “In Chinese school, the first lecture I had was about Beijing – about Tiananmen. In Kumul, the education resources in Chinese language schools were always much better than in regular Uighur language schools, so my parents chose the former.”

“The older I get, the more Uighur I feel, and the more sorry I begin to feel for myself.”
Aliya was a high achiever and in 2012 she became one of her school’s ten Uighur students to enroll at a leading Beijing university. But it didn’t come without a price. Today, sitting in a café in CUC, Aliya appears near indistinguishable from her Han classmates. Save for her Turkic features, there are no discernable traces of her cultural heritage. Her favorite pop star is Li Yuchun, despite her grandmother’s protests (“How can a Muslim have an idol?”), she wears her hair loose, refusing to tie it up as required by her family, and she can’t speak proper Uighur – something that has led her uncle to ask: “What’s the point of being able to speak a second language perfectly, if you can’t even speak your mother language?”

Knowing how comments such as these can upset his daughter, Aliya’s father frequently reminds her to ignore her family members and focus on her studies instead. Be that as it may, at home, Aliya’s family speak, read and write in Uighur and few of her friends outside of school speak Chinese. “The older I get, the more Uighur I feel, and the more sorry I begin to feel for myself,” says Aliya. “But I made the choice, so I don’t regret anything.”

However, not everyone was given the opportunity to select their own cultural identity. Alip Yakup is a 27-year-old office worker at a state-owned company in Beijing. Yakup’s family moved to Beijing from Xinjiang when he was just 2 years-old. Today, his memories of his hometown are as faded as his understanding of the Uighur language. Growing up in Beijing, Alip never felt any different from other children, aside perhaps, from their difficulty pronouncing his name. However, when Alip was 14, an incident occurred that would forever alter his attitudes towards his Uighur identity.

“One day, a Uighur girl about my age came looking for help at the Representative Office of Xinjiang where my mother works,” says Alip. The girl, Alip believes, had been abducted from Xinjiang by a gang who claimed to be teachers from a Beijing Dance Academy. Without telling her family, the girl, who could not speak Chinese, went to Beijing with the men, only to find herself sold to the owner of a nightclub. She had never visited Beijing before, and was unable to communicate with people around her. Finally, with the help of another Uighur, she escaped and fled to the office.

Alip Yakup.

“It was a big shock to me. It woke me up,” says Alip. “After that, I became aware of other social ills; the children who are sold and trained to be thieves; the ethnic conflicts; the religious extremism; the misunderstanding and discrimination toward Xinjiang people; the poor education environment,” he explains. “The more I know, the stronger my sense of identity becomes.”

Alip now attends nightly Uighur language and culture classes after work. “Before I began attending the classes, my impression of Xinjiang came from a few visits to Urumqi and government programs promoting Xinjiang’s culture, which basically consists of food, dance, landscape and pretty girls.”

Derogatory views toward Uighurs remain common throughout China (“thieves”, “con artists”, “chuan’r sellers”). But according to Alip, Uighurs are actually among China’s most vulnerable groups. “Take the under-age thieves for example, they are abducted or sold, can’t speak Chinese, and are abused and threatened. Their lives are ruined,” he says. “There are thieves in every province. Just because Uighurs are easy to recognize, Xinjiang is now synonymous with thievery. The media aren’t very objective in their reporting.”

A combination of under-employment, low levels of education, and poor Chinese language skills have served to exacerbate the gap between Han and Uighur in many parts of China. Even in Xinjiang, such difficulties are compounded by pressures stemming from the need to balance a largely secular Chinese education with Uighur religious practices.

Each year, a small number of Uighur children from south Xinjiang (an area consisting of over 80 percent Uighur residents) are selected to receive free education in schools in Kumul, Urumqi and other major cities throughout Xinjiang. The local government supplements this schooling with a monthly stipend for the families of each of the selected children, as compensation for losing a potential laborer.

Money though, is rarely an issue. Among many of the families who have strong religious beliefs, free secular schooling is tantamount to forced assimilation, and often results in children suddenly vanishing or running away to live with distant family members in other parts of the country.

Aliya’s aunt is one of the teachers who escorts children from rural south Xinjiang to Kumul. “I often become distressed, when my aunt tells me about the children who run away,” she explains. “Why don’t the kids [who run away] think about what will happen to them? They could easily be abducted by criminal gangs.”

One of Aliya’s uncles recently decided to remove his 12-year-old daughter from school and now plans to send her to a local Koran chanting class. “The girl is so clever, I feel heartbroken for her,” says Aliya.

“I don’t understand, can chanting the Koran bring her a bright future?” But my uncle replies, “At least my daughter will know her own culture and will cover herself with a hijab [partial veil].”

Wearing a hijab has become commonplace in parts of Xinjiang in recent years. Aliya’s mother – who also wears a hijab – often encourages her to do the same (“Aliya, how about covering up your beautiful hair”). Aliya appears, for the moment at least, against the idea. “I will do it one day, when I decide I want to,” she explains.

“I’d like to open my open music bar, but my applications to the related authorities are always rejected. My name is too long, they recognize I am Uighur and are afraid that a bar where Uighurs might gather will be troublesome.”
Aliya is not the only one who has an issue with covering her head. Beijing-based Uighur musician Parhat Korax has just received a call from his sister in Kashgar, in the south of Xinjiang. On the phone, his sister asks his opinion on whether she should buy a burka. “She said that it’s becoming really trendy these days, and her husband wants her to buy one. It’s ridiculous!” says Parhat. “Islam has different branches and that kind of robe, and these types of rules to control women, do not belong to us Uighurs. Why are Uighurs buying into that?”

It’s a view shared by Kurbanjian Samat, a photographer for state broadcaster CCTV. His article, ‘A Uighur Family’s Story’ – detailing the religious and cultural issues surrounding Uighur life, caused widespread discussion online after it was published in the Hong Kong magazine, Phoenix Weekly, in May of this year.

After its publication and subsequent translation into English, Kurbanjian’s phone began to ring constantly. “Many foreign media people called me requesting an interview, so I asked them what they wanted to know. They all wanted my opinion on China’s ethnic policy, but you can guess what my opinion is: I can afford an apartment in Beijing, and a car, and I have a job that values me for my ability. What opinion do you think I have?” he says.

Parhat Korax.

Earlier this year, Kurbanjian attempted to attract funding for a documentary entitled, A Xinjiang Person. The short film was meant to consist of ten parts, each lasting 12 minutes. “I was unable to secure any backers,” he says. “I tried to get help from the government, but the Xinjiang Government could not help. So I came up with another plan, to publish a photo essay of stories of one hundred people from Xinjiang instead.”

But in March of this year, came the Kunming railway attack. “My spirit totally collapsed. I didn’t want to carry on with the project,” explains Kurbanjian. “It’s as if for years you have been carefully protecting something, only for it to be grabbed away from you by others and stamped on.”

Beijing-based musician Parhat doesn’t regularly read the news, but he knows that “something bad” related to Xinjiang has happened when the local police in Dongzhimen – the Beijing area where he lives – call him.

“Hi Parhat, how have you been recently?”

“I am fine. Nothing special.”

“Are you hosting people from Xinjiang?”

“No, I only host girls I date,” Parhat says, half-jokingly.

Over the years, a kind of tacit cooperation between Parhat and the local police has developed. “We are good buddies,” he says. “Sometimes, after they call me, we go out and have a drink together.”

But not everyone finds such incidents easy to bear. “It is and will always be a nightmare,” says Beijing student Aliya. “I was still living in Xinjiang in 2009, when the riots broke out,” she explains, referring to the outbreak of ethnic tension that left 156 dead.

“That day, my mom was in Urumqi, and we were frightened to death,” she recalls. For the rest of the month, Aliya remained too frightened to leave her house. “I was afraid of being hurt by mobs on both sides, and I was especially afraid of Han people out for revenge.”

Aliya recalls one particular day at school, “Our teacher was collecting donations for a sick Uighur classmate, when a Han boy sat ahead of me said: ‘Why are we donating, they killed so many of…’ The boy stopped, when he realized I was a Uighur.”

Ethnic and religious extremism affects all Xinjiang residents, irrespective of ethnicity, explains Beijing photographer Kurbanjian. “When it comes to ethnicity, things can get very sensitive, very quickly. A fight is called a civil case when it’s between two Uighur, or two Han, but an ethnic issue when the two sides are involved,” he says.

When traveling, Kurbanjian routinely encounters “sudden hotel room checks” by local police, often in the middle of the night, and is always the only one of his television crew to be asked to remove his shoes during airport security checks.

“At first, I felt uncomfortable, but now I choose to take it easy,” says Kurbanjian. “Maybe one day, everyone will do the same. After all, discrimination generates conflict.”

Kurbanjian Samat.

When Parhat graduated from medical School in Urumqi in 1998, he could not find a job, and so instead returned to Kashgar where he was hired by a local hospital, on the condition that, as one of the hospital’s limited number of Uighur doctors, he would work in a village for several years. “Although I understand, remote villages need doctors who can communicate with locals, it was a big sacrifice. Other Han students don’t have to do it.”

His mom told him: “Son, you must go, otherwise your years of study will be wasted.” Parhat took his mom’s advice, but a month later, he quit. With just RMB4,000 to his name, he boarded a train to Beijing, where he now earns his living as a musician.

“I’d like to open my open music bar but my applications to the related authorities are always rejected. My name is too long, they recognize I am Uighur and are afraid that a bar where Uighurs might gather will be troublesome.” Still, Parhat prefers life in Beijing compared to other parts of the country. “I don’t like to travel back too often,” he says of his home town of Kashgar. “Last time I traveled back was to collect a new passport, but when I arrived at the office, I was told by a female member of staff: ‘You are Uighur, at the moment, we are unable to issue a passport for you.’ This was despite having everything required, including a non-criminal record certificate.”.

“It’s ironic, the woman was also a Uighur, but educated in Chinese,” Parhat recalls. “I could see her arrogance. When I told her I had a stable job, she raised her eyes, and asked whether I work in a restaurant or roast lamb chuan’r in the street?”

Parhat was eventually forced to call his police friends back in Beijing, who helped him to solve the problem. Office worker Alip rarely has to deal with such inconveniences, thanks in part to his ID card. “My ID card starts with ‘110’, which means I am a Beijinger,” he says. “I think a lot of discrimination is not ethnic but regional. I know a Han guy who comes from Xinjiang who is routinely refused at hotels.”

A similar logic is at work when hunting for a job, explains Beijing student Aliya. “Before the Reform and Opening Up, all the enterprises in Xinjiang were state-owned, and under regulations that meant they must hire a certain percentage of Uighur. But now, as most enterprises are private, they have no such responsibility,” she says.

“It’s simple, just think about which is easier, hiring all Han, or hiring both and having to provide a special Muslim restaurant, and being ready to solve any conflicts that could turn into a serous issue?”

On the last day of this semester, Aliya receives another call from her mom. “I know that my family are really worried about me – about me finding a Han boyfriend. My grandma told me, that this would be the end of the world.” Aliya has never been in a relationship. “I’ve had crushes on Han boys before, but I suppressed them. Our relationship would have no future.”

http://online.thatsmags.com/post/pride-and-prejudice-young-uighur-and-in-beijing