Oh, Xinjiang
Cultural Impressions from the Heart of Eurasia
On a recent trip to Xinjiang, our reporting team was traveling east from Urumqi on route to our next destination when the minibus shuddered to a halt. “Get out!” Hollered a Chinese colleague. A confused glance out the window – no other vehicles in sight, barren desert on both sides – revealed no immediate danger.
“It’s Flaming Mountain,” the colleague responded to my blank stare, motioning to the innocuous ridge to our north.
A little research later in the day revealed Flaming Mountain to have received its name courtesy of Journey to the West. In the fictional account, the Buddhist monk protagonist, led by Sun Wukong, a monkey king, encountered a wall of flames where the mountain stands. The flames were said to be caused by the monkey king’s knocking over a kiln and causing a disturbance in the heavens. Our Chinese colleagues were fascinated to finally see this legendary mountain with their own eyes, while my foreign colleagues and I could only stand by and appreciate the immortal power of literature.
Mummies, and They’re Not Egyptian
Nineteenth and 20th century Western accounts and 16th century Chinese literature is one thing, but for a deeper look into Xinjiang’s long history from the local perspective one can’t go past a visit to the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum in Urumqi.
Covering 7,800 square meters and featuring a collection of 50,000 items, the museum is a literal treasure trove. Historical relics include iron tools, bronze wares, pottery, weapons and coins, some of which date back thousands of years.
But unquestionably the highlight of the museum is its collection of mummies, discovered in and around Xinjiang’s Tarim Basin. Numbering 21 in total, the mummies are remarkably well preserved thanks to the basin’s arid climate.
The “Loulan Beauty,” who is estimated to have died as an attractive young woman around 4,00 years ago, is one of the oldest mummies on display. While her skin is tinged an unnatural reddish brown, the rest of her remains are eerily intact. Her long, matted brown hair, tall nose and intact finger and toenails make for evocative – if a little gruesome – viewing.
The “Loulan Beauty” is also testament to Xinjiang’s history at the crossroads of Eurasia. Studies of her mummified remains reveal she was Europoid, and hence the genetic kin of modern Europeans. This also suggests she spoke an Indo-European language, most likely Tocharian, a scarcely documented, now-extinct cousin of Armenian, Hindi, Russian, English and all other languages in our broad language family.
The Birth of Culture and Its Legacy
In the first millennium BC, the nomadic ancestors of the modern Uygur people settled in the oases around the Tarim Basin, displacing and absorbing non-Turkic speakers such as the Loulan Beauty and her Tocharian brethren. As an agrarian society developed, a vibrant culture took root that absorbed influences from China’s Central Plains, India, Tibet, Iran, and even Greece and the Roman Empire. In the 9th century Islam found its way to Xinjiang; Islamic influence and indigenous culture inexorably intertwined to form a rich heritage that continues to this day.
One particularly beautiful facet of Xinjiang’s cultural heritage is music and performance. A cliché often heard in East China with regards to this heritage is that “Uygur love to sing and dance.” It’s easy to dismiss such a comment as a kind of “reverse orientalism” – exoticising the other “other” – but on actually visiting Xinjiang, it turns out that, for once, the cliché seems to hold true.
Most Uygur social gatherings are held to the accompaniment of live music. Weddings ceremonies, or Toi, are the liveliest of occasions, resembling more a carnival than the dour “exchange of vows” of the Western tradition.
