The Bicycle Diaries: Xinjiang's capitalist revolution

Douglas Whitehead finally reaches China, and is shocked at what he observes in the troubled Xinjiang province.

The Bicycle Diaries: Xinjiang's capitalist revolution
A young ethnic Uighur sells prayer mats for Friday prayers Credit: Photo: AFP/GETTY

You're never quite as entirely and bewilderingly lost as when you lose your bearings in a big Chinese city.

Night had fallen and Kashgar was humming: a vibrant haze of scooters, donkey carts, horses, taxis, trucks, buses, neon lights, petrol fumes, cooking smells and noise. Ornately inscribed Chinese signs everywhere, but all totally indecipherable. There are people all around, but nobody is able to understand my pitiful attempts to ask them for information.

A fruitless hour was spent cycling around in search of the city's youth hostel, before coming across a tiny notice in a restaurant window. "Tourists welcome", it said.

Taking one last look in my Mandarin/English phrasebook, I braced myself for seemingly inevitable confusion, then slunk inside. No need to worry, however.

"Good evening, sir. How may I be of assistance?" a smiling waiter greeted me in perfect 1940s-style English.

He introduced himself as Mon and volunteered to escort me to a hotel, just as soon as he'd finished serving a large table of Han Chinese businessmen.

"Xie xie (thank you)," I gratefully babbled.

"No, sir. Please do not say that to me," Mon replied with a passing hint of irritation. "I am an Uyghur, not Chinese."

Kashgar is an urban oasis within the vast deserts of Xinjiang, China's most westerly province. Its largest ethnic group were always the Muslim Uyghurs, who in many ways - not least their language and their looks - have much more in common with the people of the 'Stan' countries in Central Asia.

However in recent years the province's demographics have been totally altered by the arrival of large numbers of Han Chinese settlers from thousands of miles to the east.

In the hotel's lobby was a tourist agency. Mon used to work here but the agency had been closed since July, when tensions between Xinjiang's two largest ethnic groups broke out in murderous violence, leaving hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.

The Chinese government reacted with customary ruthlessness, arresting and executing scores of Uyghurs, and closing down all internet and mobile connections. Visitor numbers to the province subsequently plummeted, and since then Xinjiang has remained effectively isolated from the outside world.

The following morning I set off again in search of Kashgar's youth hostel. I'd been told that it was situated somewhere in the city's old town. All I had to do was find the old town. How hard could that be?

I passed by an alley where a team of bulldozers were busy at work. No, it couldn't be that way. I mean the old town was really old. Two thousand years in parts. It was an important staging post on the famous Silk Route. It was where East had met West; where goods and ideas had been exchanged. It was historic. You slap preservation orders on things like that, don't you? You don't bulldoze them, do you? And then a sudden thought made me stop and turn around. Two minutes later, close to a rubble-strewn wasteland, I found the hostel.

Forty years ago during the insanity of the Cultural Revolution, China managed to destroy much of its ancient past.

Now, amid the throes of a capitalist revolution, the authorities in Kashgar seem intent on completely finishing the job. No wonder the old town had been so hard to find the previous evening. With every passing month its higgledy-piggledy sprawl of streets is disappearing. Vanishing with it are a labyrinth of blacksmith shops, kebab stalls, jewellers, carpenters, teashops and carpet dealers. In their place the Han are erecting straight-lined office blocks, shopping centres, banks, and high-rise apartments. Meanwhile, propaganda slogans are daubed everywhere. "Separatism hurts everybody," said one example, translated for me by a fellow traveller who spoke Chinese.

And while the building boom has undoubtedly brought investment, the manner of much of it is tantamount to cultural vandalism. This fact is well illustrated than by the Hans' laughable efforts to construct some of the new replacement buildings in the original Uyghur architectural style. The new mosque, in particular, looks like it has been built out of Lego.

That's Kashgar: If you want to see it before it's turned into a simulacrum of every other Chinese city, be quick.