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| Muslims: Chinese Uighurs leave a mosque in Kashgar, in Xinjiang Province. The Chinese do not let Uighurs attend mosque until
age 18. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images |
Uighurs struggle in a world reshaped by Chinese influx
In China's far west, the Muslim ethnic group finds itself relegated to menial jobs. Chinese officials also restrict religious practice and use of their language in schools.
from the April 28, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 4
"The government wants the Uighurs to be their slaves, they want our race to vanish," says a clothes trader in the bazaar in Urumqi who calls himself Qutub. "They are destroying the demographic balance by bringing in Chinese people," he adds. "They are drying out our roots."
Though Han and Uighur people share the land, they have little in common, little to do with each other, and little desire to change that state of affairs.
Uighurs are resentful at the way Han Chinese monopolize the best jobs and the top political posts, even though Xinjiang is theoretically an autonomous province. Han residents routinely complain that Uighurs are dirty, lazy, and dishonest.
"I don't have any Uighur friends. I don't deal with them," says Mr. Mi, an old man waiting in line for a therapeutic massage in Urumqi who says he has lived in Xinjiang for 50 years. "They are rude and brutal."
That attitude has marked even Hadji, a wealthy young Uighur entrepreneur who drives a pearl gray Chevrolet and says that he personally has always got on well with his Han neighbors in Urumqi.
"They look down on us," he says of the Han immigrants. "When I take a bus, I hang on to the straps with both hands so nobody even thinks I might be trying to steal their bag."
Often, Chinese people seem insensitive to Uighur fears that their distinctive Muslim culture, derived from their Turkic origins, is being stifled by the flood of Han immigration.
"We all belong to the same country, so the two cultures should assimilate," says one Chinese student as he eats a plate of stir-fried pork and vegetables in the Xinjiang University canteen in Urumqi. "There is a universal law: survival of the fittest."
Others are more sympathetic. "We can understand that they feel their culture is being diluted" says Zhu Lijuan, another student. "But without Han people, how would they have cellphones or computers?"
The Chinese government has indeed brought economic development to Xinjiang, acknowledges Qutub, picking at a rice pilaf studded with raisins and pieces of lamb in a bazaar restaurant. But he is not impressed. "They give us bread," he says. "But they take away our hearts."
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