SILK ROAD NOT SO SMOOTH AS TEMPERS FLARE IN CHINA HEAT WAVE

Enraged road-workers attacked a passenger bus between Dunhuang and Jiayuguan, two of the main scenic spots on China’s Silk Road. They dragged the conductor from the bus and beat him senseless after a dispute about the right of way on a half built highway that follows the old trade route to the west.

The new highway runs through north China’s Gansu province across an arid plain dotted with the remains of Buddhist stupas. China’s government hopes the road will spread prosperity to China’s far west.

Those building the road, though, might be forgiven for wondering how they will share in the wealth. They are mainly local peasants supplementing their meagre farm incomes by working long hours in searing temperatures on the new road. Wages are low and payment is uncertain.

There is no traffic management system to protect the road workers. Work goes on in the midst of speeding vehicles and workers risk being killed or injured by reckless drivers. With no road signs or traffic lights available, the work teams improvise diversions using stones, concrete slabs and bulldozers to block the road. Inevitably disputes occur.

Bus drivers are China’s least patient road-users. As soon as a bus leaves the station, the crew is on the lookout to add passengers who pay them cash in hand. Willing to subject ticket holders to almost any detour and inconvenience to boost their private business, they refuse to tolerate any delay not of their own making.

This incident was sparked when the bus driver refused to stop when requested and edged forward aggressively, causing one of the road-workers to fall in front of the bus. For another worker it turned out to be his unlucky day when he was later arrested by a passenger who happened to be an off-duty policeman.

The passengers reaction was mixed, with some resigned, some expressing sympathy for the workers while others condemned them as naturally violent.

“We never used to have this sort of thing, but now it happens more and more”

“The workers real problem is with their bosses, their wages are too low and they are very angry”.

“Peasants are like that; they get angry and want to beat people up”.

No-one, including the off-duty policeman, intervened when the bus-driver carried out a cowardly revenge beating on the arrested worker. The worker was taken to a local police station where, after the bus had continued on its way, a small group of his family and friends remained to protest his arrest.

KASHGAR CONVERSATIONS

It is Friday prayers in Kashgar’s rambling, rickety old town of mud, brick and wood; men of all ages are carrying their prayer mats towards the packed mosque. Loudspeakers relay the sermon to the overspill crowd in the adjoining streets; traders simply lay their mats next to their stalls. A little way down from the mosque, toddlers play happily in the aptly named Hope Nursery that optimistically offers to teach them English.

Kashgar is China’s most westerly city, close to borders with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kyrghizstan. It is the second city of the resource-rich Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which covers one sixth of China’s land area, but has a population of only 20 million, of which around 40% are Uyghurs, a Turkic people with a history of resistance to Chinese rule. Few of the Muslim Uyghurs speak good Chinese; perhaps more than half either cannot, or will not speak it at all. “They take pride in not speaking Chinese”, a Uyghur medical student told me.

On the road out of town to a beautiful Islamic building that the Han Chinese call the tomb of the Fragrant Concubine, and the Uyghurs call the Abakh Hoja tomb, is a new housing estate. The estate is low rise, of good quality, modern but built in a pastiche Turkic style. At first sight it seems a sympathetic development, designed to fit in with its surroundings. But two years after completion, the estate is still largely empty.

As we passed the estate, my taxi driver gestured to the old town. “People would rather live there than in new apartments”. She regards the old houses as slums and those who cling on to them as perverse. Like the Uyghurs she is a Muslim, but a member of the Hui national minority. Unlike the Turkic Uyghurs, Huis speak Chinese and physically resemble China’s Han majority.

Sitting in his brother’s elegant restaurant, a Uyghur schoolteacher says guardedly that the reasons for not moving into the estate “may be political”.

The medical student says the area used to be part of the old town. The old buildings were demolished and the previous householders moved out with inadequate compensation. Unable to afford the new houses, they moved to cheaper areas. In any case, he says, people prefer the old style houses. “They are practical, warm in winter and cool in summer. People like them and don’t want to move to modern flats”.

Since the railway arrived in Kashgar in 2000, the number of Han Chinese residents has jumped sharply in the previously overwhelmingly Uyghur city. Today, perhaps 40% of the city’s 600,000 people are Han Chinese and many of Kashgar’s Uyghurs feel that their way of life is under threat.

One Uyghur who speaks Chinese is the middle-aged owner of a makeshift roadside bar. “There are just too many Chinese here” he says straightforwardly. His young Han Chinese assistant grins as he half-heartedly argues while trying not to upset his boss. The exchange is good humoured but there is no doubt they are talking about a real issue.

“To tell you the truth, relations between the Chinese and the Uyghurs are not good” says a Han Chinese taxi driver. “It’s OK for Uyghur boys to date Chinese girls but if a Chinese boy dates a Uyghur girl there’s trouble”. In a town where men routinely carry knives it is easy to see where trouble may lead.

A elderly man from the Kyrghiz national minority shook his head and said ” Every day there is trouble between the Chinese and the Uyghurs”, not indicating whose side, if any, he was on.

China has big plans for Kashgar. The local government plans a free trade area, new factories, roads, and airports, with the aim of turning Kashgar into the hub of the Central Asian economy. Such developments may threaten the traditional way of life of Xinjiang’s Uyghur majority, but the authorities hope that increasing prosperity will help ensure most will at least acquiesce in Beijing rule. There are some signs that this strategy may be working, at least among the middle class.

The medical student also told me “Although In my heart I am a Muslim, I don’t often attend the mosque as our university does not allow it. Actually, many people who go to the mosque are hypocrites who drink and do other bad things. I am nearly in the Communist Party. In China if you want to get on, you have to join”.