Valuing Culture Over Money in an Ancient Chinese City
The New York Times, 10 August 2016
By James Estrin — For more than two millennia, Kashgar, in far western China, has served as an oasis along the Northern Silk Road, connecting the eastern empires to central Asia, Persia and beyond. Surrounded by a harsh, dry desert, the city has been ruled alternately by Chinese, Mongol, Turkic and Tibetan powers.
In the 21st century, the region’s mostly-Muslim Uighur population has chafed under Chinese control, leading to violent protests and government crackdowns on ethnic and religious expression. After Uighur uprisings in 2009, the Chinese government tried to quell unrest through economic revitalization.
Yuyang Liu, a young photographer, arrived in Kashgar in Xinjiang province in 2015 to see how those efforts were working out. While the Chinese officials had accelerated local investment, and major building and developments were underway, Mr. Liu found that the planning seemed haphazard. A new trade center, shopping malls, theaters and a theme park that he photographed were nearly empty and provided few jobs for the local population. At the same time, he saw a growing gap between rich and poor. Tensions remained as the government pushed assimilation through education policies and making religious observance more difficult.
“It’s undeniable that the programs have developed the level of modernization in Xinjiang, such as infrastructure construction, hospitals and schools, Mr. Liu said. “But there are not many opportunities for local Uighurs.”
Kashgar, at first, seemed like a foreign country to Mr. Liu — with its vastly different language, customs, religion and even weather. But familiar propaganda slogans on buildings and a giant statue of Mao Zedong in the center of the city made it seem like his home province of Sichuan. He found the people he met to be quite welcoming, to a point.
“The Uighurs are friendly and less defensive than the Han,” he said. “But they hesitated to talk deeply about religious and political issues at first.”
Eventually he befriended some younger Uighurs who, he found, rarely went to mosque. Most of the people he met felt a strong Uighur identity.
As part of the government’s regional development plan, young Uighurs were encouraged to work in factories in eastern China. Besides boosting industrial production, the aim, Mr. Liu said, was to expose them to the broader Chinese society. For the Uighurs, it offered a welcome economic opportunity.
Mr. Liu had previously documented young Uighurs working through government programs in a factory in the city of Guangzhou in southeastern China. He decided to follow a new group as they embarked from Kashgar on a journey of more than 3,700 miles to Guangzhou.
Many of the young workers grew homesick and sang Uighur songs in the company-provided dormitories. Others saw the year-long experience as an adventure, he said. Over the course of many visits, he photographed them at work and at play, although they tended to keep to themselves outside of the factory.
Many have returned home with money saved. One couple he followed parlayed their nest-egg into a mobile fruit store they opened in Kashgar, but there does not seem to be much economic opportunity for Uighurs despite the government development push. Nor have these programs led to more satisfaction among the Uighur population, Mr. Liu said.
After more than a year of working on stories about the Uighurs, Mr. Liu said, he realized that he still sees no clear solution to their predicament.
“The Chinese government is trying to solve this problem by economic ways,” he said. “But the Uighur people care much more about their culture, their lifestyle and their religion than money.”
Mr. Liu’s project was supported by the Abigail Cohen Fellowship in Documentary Photography in collaboration with ChinaFile and the Magnum Foundation.