MetaFilter posts tagged with xinjiang

The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs

homunculus — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:00:22 -0800

The World’s Oldest Pornography. The Kangjiashimenji Petroglyphs in the Tien Shan Mountains: A Fertility Ritual Tableau.

"...do you really want a couple million eagles circling overhead?"

zarq — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 18:28:04 -0800

In 2003, the BBC reported that a population explosion of Great Gerbils had destroyed more than 4 million hectares of grasslands in China's north-western Xinjiang region -- an area about the size of Switzerland. By 2005 the damage covered 5 million hectares, and the Xinjuang Regional Headquarters for Controlling Locusts and Rodents were reported to be breeding and attracting pairs of golden eagles to curb the gerbil population. So McSweeney's Joshuah Bearman was assigned to the story. His report: An Investigation Into Xinjiang's Growing Swarm of Great Gerbils, Which May or May Not be Locked in a Death-Struggle With the Golden Eagle, With Important Parallels and/or Implications Regarding Koala Bears, The Pied Piper, Spongmonkeys, Cane Toads, Black Death, [and] Text-Messaging..

Wild frontier

Abiezer — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:55:01 -0800

China’s partnership of stability in Xinjiang As news breaks that Wang Lequan has been replaced as Party secretary in Xinjiang (a fall for the long-serving hard man some expected last last year, though only last month Wang was bullish in interviews about major new central investment in the western border region), Tom Cliff has a timely and informative short background piece up at the East Asia Forum that gives some of the context behind the move.

Choosing Central Asia for a bride

Abiezer — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:45:19 -0800

Fascinated by the Orient An exhibition of the letters, photographs and maps bequeathed to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences by the great explorer, archaeologist, geographer and Sanskritist Sir Marc Aurel Stein. Journeyer in the footsteps of Alexander, explorer of Central Asia and West China, surveyor of the antiquities of India and Iran; after a long life of journeying through and studying central Asia, Aurel Stein found his final rest in Kabul. He is also remembered for rediscovering the oldest dated printed book still in existence, a copy of the Diamond Sutra in the caves at Mogao. That the latter and many thousands of other manuscripts collected by Stein now reside in the British Library is of course, like his other 'treasure hunting', not without controversy.

New Dominion

Abiezer — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:28:33 -0800

China’s wild west Considered journalism on the historical and political background to the recent inter-ethnic violence in Xinjiang.

Ethnic conflict in China

Kirth Gerson — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 05:14:35 -0800

"On the evening of July 5th, several hundred Uighur youths went on a bloody rampage [in Urumqi, Xinjiang] following a peaceful demonstration over a separate incident of ethnic violence at a Guangdong toy factory. . . . In the days that followed, bands of roving Han vigilantes armed with kitchen knives, hammers, metal pipes and other improvised weapons sought to mete out revenge in the Uighur suburbs of the city. . . . Caught in-between these increasingly polarized and agitated ethnic communities is the Chinese state, which, rather than orchestrating the brutal oppression of the non-Han minorities, finds itself increasingly powerless to stop the spiralling circle of ethnic hatred which its policies helped to foster in the first place." Here is a news report on the Guangdong toy factory violence that preceded the Xinjiang rioting. Here is a translation of the Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative) study of China's Tibet policy referred to in the linked China Beat article, with an introduction by the Campaign for Tibet. The report is carefully critical of the government's approach to Tibet: "Ordinary Tibetans have a far keener and evident sense of deprivation than any sense of government help, and like many people living in provinces in the interior, are deeply discontented with the local power-brokers."

Bulldozed Away

Pollomacho — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:50:40 -0800

In the 1860’s, while the US was busy crushing its agrarian revolution, the Russians were busy expanding their empire towards Afghanistan and cleansing the Caucuses of those pesky Circassians, Chechens, and Tartars (to name a few) in a little known places like Abkhazia, the British were busy expanding their empire towards Afghanistan and extinguishing the last outposts of “mutineers,” and the Qing Dynasty of China was losing its grip on its Empire due to a cult of longhaired Christians lead by Jesus’s Chinese little brother. Alimkul, the de facto Khan of Khotan took advantage of the chaos by sending his greatest general, Yakub Beg, to Kashgar... The indigenous population there was overthrowing and slaughtering their Chinese overlords. Yakub Beg quickly seized Kashgar and Yarkand and established Kashgaria for the Khanate. He sent a caravan full of riches for his warlord, but alas, it arrived too late; Alimkul was killed trying in vain to fend the Russians off in Tashkent. Now independent of his master, Yakub Beg declared himself Amir of Eastern Turkestan set about liberating the cities surrounding the barren Tarim basin. Eventually Eastern Turkestan would encompass most of what is now Xinjiang. Yakub Beg would become a brief lived but major player in the Great Game, positioning the British and Russians off of each other in order to hold off the inevitable reconquest by the Qing. He held out for over ten years before the Chinese conspired with a local hakim and he was poisoned. Considered a great ruler of the Uyghur people (though he was ethnically Uzbek, or was he Tajik?) Yakub Beg was buried near the great mausoleum of Afak Khoja, the Afaki, and the empty tomb of the Fragrant Concubine. That is until 1978, when the People’s Republic of China began an extensive tourist renovation of the site of the Afaki tombs and bulldozed Yakub Beg’s grave (and record of it) into the Taklimakan dust. Today in the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region”, Han Chinese make up nearly the same percentage of the population as Uyghur. Hanzu make up the majority in nearly all prefectures except for in the extreme West and North. Fearing renewed Uyghur nationalism despite the decades of displacement by Hanzu migrants, the Chinese have commenced a “modernization” effort in the old city of Kashgar.

China's Wild West

Surfin' Bird — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:30:34 -0800

Documentary about China's Wild West: an area on the west frontier of China's Gobi Desert named Xinjiang (New Land) by the Chinese, but populated by a Muslim minority known as Uighurs who believe they should be an independent Uighur nation.

Jumping Through Hoops

adamvasco — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:37:13 -0800

Is Xinjiang Province The Islamic Jihad Battlefront in China? China detains 82 'terrorists' targeting Olympics and police have shot Uighurs dead. Meanwhile people from the Uighur minority call on the international community to boycott the Beijing Olympic games. What side of the Jihad is China on? Previously there was The Al Qaeda - China Tie. The oil and petrochemical sector account for 60% of Xinjiang's local economy.

Sorry no sea shanties

Abiezer — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:07:19 -0800

Uyghur goes pop! Fully downloadable album (with samples to try before you don't have to buy) of pop music from Xinjiang, aka East Turkestan, home to the Uyghur.

Kalmykia and Takla Makan migrations

homunculus — Sun, 29 Dec 2002 15:04:01 -0800

The republic of Kalmykia is a unique place. A member of the Russian Federation, it was settled in 1608 by Mongols from what is now the Chinese province of Xinjiang. It is the only state in Europe where Buddhism is the dominant religion, and probably the only state in the world whose president claims to have created an "extra-sensory field" around it. Kalmykia's spiritual leader, Telo Rinpoche, is an American from Philadelphia who was appointed by the Dalai Lama. There has been a long history of migrations between Europe and Asia. In one really intriguing case, 3000-year-old mummies with reddish-blond hair, Caucasian features and wearing tartans similar in design to Celtic ones, were discovered in the Takla Makan Desert in Xinjiang. If these ancient Caucasians were absorbed by the population of Xinjiang, then perhaps the Kalmyk migration might have unknowingly been a return to their ancestral lands. [First link via plep].