Dear all,
First, hello.
Second, I spent the last few nights in a tent on the roof of a building in Yining, the capital city of Ili region in Xinjiang. “Hammer,” the owner of the wonderful “hostel” we stayed in, proudly told me about the history of the Sibe (Xibe) ethnic minority over a glass of yogurt. He also showed us his homemade Tibetan Buddhist shrine/exercise facility and warned that, if the police asked, we were to say we were sleeping in a nearby park. Sounds good, Hammer!
The Sibe, one of China's officially recognized 55 minority groups, have been living in the Ili region since 1764, when thousands of soldiers and families were forced to relocate here from northeast China to guard the Qing empire's borders.
According to Stanford historian (and rare-typewriter enthusiast) Thomas Mullaney, the number 55 emerged from the ambitious Ethnic Classification Project of the 1950s, during which government researchers attempted to whittle down the 400-or-so distinct ethnic labels that citizens had provided in the nation's first census that had asked, What are you?
Some of those answers ranged from major ethnic groups like Han
or Manchu
to hyper-localized place names like I am from that river over there.
Consolidating this bewildering diversity of responses into a streamlined system that was legible and therefore manageable was no easy task, and the reusltant taxonomy continues
to shape how the modern Chinese state understands and manages its multicultural population.
Hammer's showers were unfortunately unusable, as somebody had recently cleaned them with a potent combination of bleach and vinegar (NaClO + CH3COOH → Cl2 + H2O + CH3COONa), but the atmosphere at the nearby Liuxingjie shopping district was even more intoxicating than the homemade chlorine gas. Old folks danced, vendors haggled, and onlookers held their breaths as a soccer match being streamed on a big screen went to penalties.
At a nearby Kazakh-style hot pot spot, we accidentally ate horse meat and were again pulled up to dance in front of the entire restaurant.
Celo, Dhruv, Fiona, and I also stumbled into a Russian folk village, where we looked for pastries but instead found some cute little kids who excitedly guided us to a nearby restaurant to meet a local Russian man, Yuri. In fluent Russian and halting Chinese, Yuri explained that his grandfather had moved to Xinjiang as a soldier during the region's Soviet occupation in the 1930s, and his family had stayed.
Like the Sibe, Russians in China constitute an official ethnic minority, with around 15,000 of them in total, mostly living in Xinjiang and Heilongjiang.
If I had to guess, there's probably about ten times that many Russian tourists currently partying in techno clubs and wearing Adidas tracksuits throughout China as well. The other day back in Beijing, I even met a few middle school students from Moscow participating in the RICH Chinese Summer Camp
(though I'm not entirely sure what the program is actually teaching them).
Yili is famous for its lavender fields, and luckily they were in full bloom.
As the sun set outside the small village of Huocheng, we met a kind farmer, Ma, who saw us walking along the side of the road and gave us a ride to a nearby restaurant. We talked for about three hours, and the restaurant owner later insisted on driving us back to the yurt where we spent the night.
We also visited Lake Sayram, known as the last tear of the Atlantic, skipping rocks and inexplicably becoming very wet.
This sign says not to swim, but thankfully, we befriended some local police officers who lent me their jacket for a quick photo.
Some of us got a little sleepy after that...
At Khorgos, Dhruv and I accidentally crossed into Kazakhstan, realizing our error immediately when a driver blew through a crosswalk and almost hit us. My angry Chinese was met with equally furious Russian. The only other highlights were a museum on Chinese history and a delicious Kazakh food court. I wanted to come here because Khorgos serves as one of the world's largest dry ports, a bustling gateway connecting Kazakhstan and China by rail and highway. Strategically positioned at a gauge break where freight must be transloaded between China's standard gauge and Kazakhstan's wider Soviet-era tracks, Khorgos has transformed from a modest transit point into a dynamic industrial cluster offering value-added services, product assembly, e-commerce fulfillment, and Putin-themed ice cream.
That's all for now! I'm back in the pullulating metropolis of Beijing, missing my friends dearly. Special thanks to Dhruv and Fiona for many of these excellent photos!
Until next time,
Michael