Oh, Xinjiang
Cultural Impressions from the Heart of Eurasia

By staff reporter VAUGHAN WINTERBOTTOM

Locals of Qiemo County in southern Xinjiang hold a Meshrep, a traditional male gathering that includes dance, music, poetry and debate.

ABDULRAHMAN is perched on a wooden stool with his knees splayed far apart. He draws on the tall, thin Shisha pipe standing at his side. Exhaling, smoke billows out of his mouth before quickly dissipating into the scorching midday sunlight. As I approach his fruit and nut store at the far end of the bazaar, a thick waft of flavored air – oily and sweet, somewhere between cherry and grape – challenges my recently digested kebab to reveal itself.

Slightly queasy, I greet Abdulrahman with what I hope will be a crowd-pleaser: “As-Salamu Alaykum,” “May peace be upon you.” The phrase, used by Muslims the world over, comes with a requisite response: “Wa’alaykumu s-Salam,” “And Peace be to you.”

Abdulrahman completes the salutation, and, looking up from his smoking and seeing my face – European, through and through – switches to the lingua franca around these parts: Chinese.

“Ni shi naguo ren?” (Where are you from?) He enquires in pitch-perfect Mandarin.

“England. And you?”

“Me? I was born here, in Urumqi!”

Urumqi is the capital of China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Bordering on India, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, Xinjiang is China’s bridgehead into Central Asia.