Ryan Pyle Blog: The Unpredictable Xinjiang Winter

Hello.

A few weeks back I was heading to Kashgar for a very special event in the Muslim religious calendar. It was a moment that I felt would compliment my continued documentation of Chinese Turkistan, or the region of Xinjiang, China.

So I planned my trip and decided that even though the festival lasted only one day, I would arrive about 3 days early and shoot the build up and stay a day or two afterwards to continue documenting the rebuilding of Kashgar’s old town, a topic which I’ve blogged about several times.

Everything started off well enough. I packed my bags, organized all my black and white Kodak TriX film and arrived at the airport on time, so far so good. The flight from Shanghai to Urumqi left on time and the first five hours of the trip went swimmingly. At just around the time we were supposed to descend to the Urumqi airport a stewardess approached me and said that the Urumqi airport was covered in heavy fog and that our flight would landing in Korle, an oil town about 700 km to the south. An interesting detour, but safety first.

Upon landing in Korle the flight attendants couldn’t really tell us if we were going to get off the plane or stay on the plane. The natives were getting restless. When we finally got off the plane we were ushered in to the main terminal building, which was a vast glass, and steel structure that personifies Chinese development in Xinjiang province. The terminal building was attractive, and seemingly well built; and it stood out like a sore thumb amongst the farming fields surrounding the air stripe. Much to my surprise the military was sharing the airport and continued with their regular flights even though their terminal building was filled with around 800 people, as other flights from various parts of China were now stranded in Korle as well. So as military jets screamed off in the background, angered Chinese and Uygurs peppered questions to ground staff about when we would be departing for Urumqi and what the weather condidtions were at the Urumqi airport. The ground staff had little information to convey but were quick to provide instant noodles and bottles of water as the dry winter air had us all feeling a bit parched.

As the hours wore on I had finished my book “Mr. China” by Tim Clissold and my Economist magazine. With all of Xinjiang still cut off from the outside world because of international phone call bans and no Internet access, my options for entertainment were getting bleaker by the moment. I had another book in my check-in luggage but it didn’t seem like I was going to get a hold of that anytime soon. And so I sat.

After sitting on the ground in an airport terminal on the edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert for about six hours the passengers were all told that our flight was officially cancelled. We would have to spend the night in Korle. My trip was becoming in jeopardy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. We were shipped out by bus to a local hotel in the city of Korle were we spent the night on the airlines dime. We were told to be ready to go back to the airport at 1130am the next morning. Why so late I asked one of the airport staff? If I could leave at 7am I would much prefer getting out earlier, as I could still make it to Kashgar and have an afternoon worth of work. But the reason was so that they could maintain their same landing slot from the previous day, fair enough. I asked the same woman again if this happened often. She replied in the winter it happens several times a month.

The essential problem is that Urumqi is basically a horrible place to have an airport. Mountains to the south and west cause a buildup of fog and cloud that surrounds the harsh provincial capital. The geographic conditions cause incredible wind speeds in the summer and often-intense fog and cloud in the dark and depressing winter. This wasn’t entirely a surprise to me. I’d been to Xinjiang in the winter before and noticed the fog and the harsh weather conditions, but it had never impeded travel before; I was less lucky this time. I was mid-way through a bit of a nightmare journey.

So after a night in Korle’s finest 1-star hotel we all loaded back up on the airport bus and headed back to the airport where we sat for another three hours. Then finally there was action and movement. We boarded our plane and headed for Urumqi. We were all saved. I’d make it Kashgar only one day late and still get a chance to shoot. But things got significantly stickier upon landing in Urumqi.

The flight from Korle to Urumqi is one of my all time favorite flights in China as the one-hour flight takes you straight over a fairly meaty section of the Tian Shan mountain range. Glued to the window for the entire flight I was memorized, as I often am, by the jagged peaks and harsh landscapes. In 2001 I had traveled by bus from Urumqi to Korle on the old mountain road that was cut straight through the Tian Shan range. As we winded our way to Korle on that fourteen-hour journey the stunning landscape and the un-believable amount of switchbacks along the route enchanted me; it was truly one of China’s great road journeys. I promised myself if I ever owned a motorcycle I would revisit that route. Nowadays the government has since built a suave new four-lane expressway that goes around the mountains and south to Korle cutting the travel time to about 7-8hrs. Sadly the mountain road is rarely used anymore.

After a dangerously bumpy landing in Urumqi, the fog was no joke; I collected my checked baggage and ran upstairs to check on my flight to Kashgar. The woman at the China Southern desk looked at my hopelessly. My flight was delayed but more importantly that there were about 8 planes worth of people that needed to get to Kashgar before me. So even if the weather were perfectly clear, I wouldn’t get a chance to fly until the following day. But the weather was horrible and after my flight landed from Korle they cancelled the rest of the flights for the day. Fuck!

The Urumqi airport was a complete mess. At the entrance to the airport and the surrounding check in areas there were people sitting, sleeping and camping out. Instant noodle containers were adrift everywhere. I was in the middle of what was a sea of stranded people. I couldn’t manage to stay there much longer and needed some space to think. I hailed a cab and headed in to town where I knew some people who might be able to help. Not knowing how long the fog would last I talked to a train ticket agent I knew from a previous trip. I asked if he had a and sleeper births available to Kashgar, he laughed so hard on his end of the phone I had to pull the phone away from my hear in much the same way you do when you accidentally dial someone’s fax number. Clearly the 24hr train journey from Urumqi to Kashgar wouldn’t be an option, tickets had disappeared. My next call was to a driver that I’d used a few times in the past, was he available and how long was the drive to Kashgar? He turned out to be in Korle, a few Chinese oil men had hired him to drive them from Urumqi to Korle the day before and he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow, and he said the drive to Kashgar in this weather would take about 18-20 hours. Fuck! Fuck!

So I checked in to a hotel in Urumqi and found a bit to eat. By this time my nerves were shattered. I’d been traveling for two days straight. I hadn’t eaten well and it was looking more and more like I wasn’t going to make it to Kashgar. My mood was bitter. With no Internet in the region I was bored out of my skull. I tried to write but my mind was too frayed. I tried to read but I couldn’t focus. Instead I watched six straight hours of Entourage, the entire season 6, that I had on disk with me. A savior. It was exactly what I needed, a few cheap laughs and a good nights rest.

I was up at 630am the next morning. I had rebooked a flight that was supposed to be leaving at 9am and I called the airport and they told me that flights were leaving, but not on time. Okay, we had small progress. After a breakfast of Congee and fried bread sticks I was back at the airport. It was clear after passing through the airport doors at 730am that several hundred people had spent the night there on the floor. People were still passed out all over the cheap marble floor and the chaos from the previous day had seemed to intensify. Now there were flights leaving but who would be allowed to go first, the masses made their claims via several shooting matches. Made me thank god I wasn’t an airline staffer, I’d have lost my nerve and slapped someone.

Since I had canceled my flight from the previous day I was able to re-book and check in rather smoothly. My flight was delayed 4 hours but flights were leaving. It appeared that all I required was a bit of patience. And my patience paid off. Sure enough my flight left 4 hours late and I was in the air, bound for Kashgar. A small dose of victory in an ocean of chaos, but I had lost 48 hours of shooting time.

My fixer picked me up at the airport and got me over to my hotel. Within 10 minutes of checking in I was out in the town shooting. I needed to make up for lost time. It was the day before the big festival and everyone was selling sheep, which would be slaughtered the following day, in the streets. The scenes were fantastic. It was as though the famous Sunday animal market had moved right in to the city center. Tradesmen who bargain for a living pushed each other back and forth, shaking of the hands seals the deal. I managed to get close to several sheep sellers and watch them ply their trade; echoing mannerisms and skill of their forefathers, the generations of Silk Road traders and herdsmen who had come before. The atmosphere was electric.

My first half-day on the ground was positive. The TriX was moving fast and furious and that night I was giddy with anticipation of what might transpire the following day for the festival. My first good nights sleep in days yielded some quality rest. The next day would be long and intense.

Being up and out of the hotel before 930am, before the sun had risen, was not too big a problem, less the bitter cold. It was winter and while Kashgar is an oasis and at a lower altitude than Urumqi, it was still chilly; and the smell of burnt coal hung in the air from a night of staying warm in the mud brick homes of the old town and the surrounding farming communities. But fighting the bitter cold would be well worth it. For at 930am the action started has hundreds of people began filling in to the Id Kah Square, in front of the main mosque, for Morning Prayer. The scene was set alight by a rising sun from 10am to 1030am. Needless to say it was a Kodak moment.
Following Morning Prayer I headed in to the old town to watch the traditional process of slaughtering sheep in the small laneways of the old town, a majestic scene by any account. The rest of the day was followed by bouncing back and forth between the old town for the slaughtering of the sheep and the Id Kah Square for traditional music and singing and dancing. The morning cold had passed giving way to clear blue skies and a glaring sun that left this photographer fairy sunburned. Day two and day three were much the same as the festival tapered off and I focused back on speaking with old town residents and shooting portraits and architecture.

And in the blink of an eye I was back in Urumqi, fogged in waiting for my flight to Shanghai. I’d eaten something funky during the festival and was feeling most uncomfortable. My flight was delayed and I had come full circle. My six-day trip, only three days of shooing, and three days of being stranded and traveling, had taken their toll. I curled up on a few seats at the Urumqi Airport trying not to wretch.

Some trips take more out of you than others. After being stranded, delayed, knee deep in sheep blood and then delayed again I was a broken man. The food poisonings was a bonus. When I finally strolled in to my home in Shanghai at 2am my wife looked at me with the classic “WTF look”. Is it worth all this trouble she asks? Absolutely, I just prayed my pictures did the festival justice. But that wasn’t the right time for professional reflection; it was the moment for stomach medicine and a good 16 hours in bed. I would live to fight another day; hell, I was leaving for Lhasa in just five days. I needed to sort this out in a hurry. The journey continues.

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Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Tibet vs Xinjiang

Hello.

Well, i don't mind eating my words from time to time; and it looks like that is exactly what I'll be doing during this blog. Two days ago I blogged about the violence in Urumqi and how things seemed to be shaping up. I made a reference to Lhasa last March and how journalists watched from afar, and how chasing this kind of public rioting and conflict in China is akin to chasing ghosts.

It seems I have made a misjudgment; and for that I need to make a correction.

Urumqi is a large metropolis of about 2 million or so people, and Xinjiang is effectively "open", where as Tibet is "closed". This fact means that basically foreigners can travel freely to Xinjiang without having to apply for permits through travel agents. This fact is central to the quick response, and success, of the foreign media is reporting on the riots. There are also about 5 flights a day from Shanghai to Urumqi, equal to that of Beijing, and those flights are direct; unlike to Lhasa where you need to change plans in Chengdu. Beyond logistics I'm amazed, after reading the news and seeing the news clips, that there is some much coming out of Urumqi and how the major news sources are putting together strong stories. Whereas almost nothing came out of Lhasa in the first 72 hours.

I expected the riots to last only one day; followed by a brutal clamp down. But that hasn't really happened. The big round up of arrests has caused further sparks, including a group of elderly women and children acting out in front of foreign journalists. After that journalists seem to have open access to hospitals, where both Uygur and Chinese are recovering. I was really surprised when a group of Han Chinese, packing bats and knives, went out looking for trouble in Uygur neighborhoods. There will be more of this in the coming days I reckon. The feelings are boiling over from years of distrust and frustration between the two dominant ethnic groups in Xinjiang. And I am sure people will keep acting out in front of the foreign media.

It seems that there is a lot to report on and that, for now, the government is at least tolerating the media presence; and that might change at anytime. I'm very sad I'm not actually there at the moment. I'm stuck in Canada watching from the sidelines, but I've never been very good at being a breaking news photographer. I'll be visiting Xinjiang, and Urumqi specifically, in August and I'm sure there will be an opportunity to document, in some way, the clashes we've been witnessing.

I've lived in China for eight years now, and I've been documenting Xinjiang for about four years; making 4-5 trips a year to various parts of the province. It really pains me to see the fringes of the country tearing itself apart like this. First Tibet, now Xinjiang. Years and years of misrule and inequality have led to a boiling over of frustrations. I hope the loss of life ends quickly and the situation comes back under control, but not mass execution kind of control. Chinese leaders need to start thinking about long term solutions for both Tibet and Xinjiang; and there is no excuse for them to have not already figured out some sort of path. It's not like they need to worry about elections every four years.

More messiness to follow.

--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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Ryan Pyle Blog: Violence in Urumqi

Hello.

First off, I want to say the picture above is from Kashgar, my archive has nothing from Urumqi at the moment. On to the blog. See below.

Today I awoke in Shanghai to reports of civil unrest in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province in North West China. I was taken aback to be honest. There are reports of 140 dead and several hundred injured in what seems like a virtual repeat of what occurred in Tibet last March, prior to the Olympics.

It appears that local Uygur's targeted Han Chinese stores and business as well as innocent passers by. A group of about a 1000 Uygurs (as Xinhua reported) gathered in the main market area near the Grand Mosque in Urumqi and began causing the chaos. Urumqi has, for many years, been void of much interest. I've been dozens of times and can honestly say that it is often best avoided. It's market's are quiet, it's architecture is Chinese and the Uygur's are a minority. As an example of how stable Urumqi has been: Starwood Hotels even put their Sheraton brand on a local hotel there thinking that it was a safe and reliable place for business. Today that might have been turned on its head.

There is always more than meets the eye to these types of situations and this incident is no different. A few weeks ago there was a brawl at a toy factory in China's southern Guangdong province between Uygur migrant workers and Han migrant workers and two Uygurs were killed. Reports of this circled around within Uygur groups for weeks and that may have fanned the flames of violence witnessed in the last few hours.

The Chinese government, however, is suggesting that outside influences, such as pro Xinjiang independence groups that are based outside of China, are meddling in their internal affairs and helping to organize the riots. While that may be true, the people of Xinjiang, in my mind, don't need any outside influence to rise up at what has been a brutal authoritarian regime in Xinjiang; which has essentially destroyed an enter way of life and replaced it with one that is secular and alien to the region.

With that being said, Urumqi has often been a place of quiet peace, with incidents occurring in more far flung towns like Khotan and Kashgar. But this new wave of violence has occurred in the capital of the province; and from the looks of the video footage on BBC and CNN looks incredibly brutal.

The New York Times filed this peace earlier in the day from Beijing. My guess is that a lot of foreign journalists are making plans to get to Xinjiang as quickly as possible, but it will all be over by the time they arrive. Much like chasing any dissidents and protesters in China, it's akin to chasing ghosts. By the time the journalists arrive the streets are already repaved, the paint is already dry, and life is back to normal; minus the thousands thrown in jail without trial, representation or a legal leg to stand on. And so the cycle continues. it's happened again and again with both minorities people, such as Tibetans and Uygurs, and as well to the Han majority; both often feed up of favoritism and corruption that is tearing this country apart.

This is bound to get a lot of play in the Chinese media, as the propanda department seems to think that the government has a lot to gain by projecting the image that minority terrorist groups are trying to break apart the country and a strong hand is needed, not just in Xinjiang but throughout the entire Middle Kingdom.

My guess is that most of the dead were innocent Han Chinese bystanders or shop keepers, hence the Chinese media coverage, much like the riots in Lhasa. If that is true, it begs the question: "To what end?" What gains can be achieved by killing innocent Han Chinese shop keepers and bus drivers? Does that send the right message? While their anger and frustration may be justified, in a democratic and free Western civilization, their end results are far from potent. Having the majority of the country, that being the Han, think that the Uygurs hate them and want to kill everyone at first glance sends entirely the wrong message; and in many ways this plays in to the hands on the government who are looking for excuses to clamp down harder. In Lhasa last March three young Han Chinese girls died when Tibetan's set fire to their clothing store in Lhasa; a death penalty for selling clothes is hardly forwarding the cause of Tibetan independence, and it won't help at all for the Uygurs either. If these types of events are organized abroad then they are poorly though out and executed; my guess is that the events we have been witnessing over the last day and a half were organic and nothing more than a bit of mob rule.

If the Uygurs, and the Tibetans alike, want more autonomy and more independence I don't think they'll further their cause by killing Han Chinese shop keepers and taxi drivers. As I mentioned above they are playing in to the hands of their masters. But perhaps things have become so desperate and hopeless that this is all that is left, mob rule and random lethal force, and if that is true we are in for a brutal cycle of violence. Below is Ed Wong's story from earlier today. My guess is that the NYT will have someone on the ground in the coming hours.

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Copy write: New York Times
Ethnic Clashes in Western China Are Said to Kill Scores

By EDWARD WONG

BEIJING — The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that at least 140 people were killed and 816 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese.

The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.

The rioting broke out Sunday afternoon in a large market area of Urumqi, the capital of the vast, restive desert region of Xinjiang, and lasted for several hours before riot police officers and paramilitary or military troops locked down the Uighur quarter of the city, according to witnesses and photographs of the riot.

At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets, throwing stones at the police and setting vehicles on fire. Plumes of smoke billowed into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat back rioters and detained Uighurs who appeared to be leading the protest, witnesses said.

The casualty numbers appeared to be murky and shifting on Monday. Xinhua, the state news agency, said the toll so far was 140 dead and 828 wounded, citing regional police officials. Earlier, Xinhua had reported that three civilians and one police officer were killed.

One regional official reached by telephone put the death toll at 105 and said at least 800 people had been injured. One American who watched the rioting at its height said he did not see people being killed or corpses in the streets, though he said he did see Uighurs shoving or kicking a few Han Chinese. Images of the rioting on state television showed some bloody people lying in the streets and cars burning.

Dozens of Uighur men were led into police stations on Sunday evening with their hands behind their backs and shirts pulled over their heads, one witness said. Early Monday, the local government announced a curfew banning all traffic in the city until 8 p.m.

The riot was the largest ethnic clash in China since the Tibetan uprising of March 2008, and perhaps the biggest protest in Xinjiang in years. Like the Tibetan unrest, it highlighted the deep-seated frustrations felt by some ethnic minorities in western China over the policies of the Communist Party, and how that can quickly turn into ethnic violence. Last year, in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, at least 19 people were killed, most of them Han civilians, according to government statistics.

Many Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim group, resent rule by the Han Chinese, and Chinese security forces have tried to keep oil-rich Xinjiang under tight control since the 1990s, when cities there were struck by waves of protests, riots and bombings. Last summer, attacks on security forces took place in several cities in Xinjiang; the Chinese government blamed separatist groups.

Early Monday, Chinese officials said the latest riots were started by Rebiya Kadeer, a Uighur human rights advocate who had been imprisoned in China and now lives in Washington, Xinhua reported. As with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, Chinese officials often blame Ms. Kadeer for ethnic unrest; she denies the charges.

The clashes on Sunday began when the police confronted a protest march held by Uighurs to demand a full government investigation of a brawl between Uighur and Han workers that erupted in Guangdong Province overnight on June 25 and June 26. The brawl took place in a toy factory and left 2 Uighurs dead and 118 people injured. The police later arrested a bitter ex-employee of the factory who had ignited the fight by starting a rumor that six Uighur men had raped two Han women at the work site, Xinhua reported.

There was also a rumor circulating on Sunday in Urumqi that a Han man had killed a Uighur in the city earlier in the day, said Adam Grode, an English teacher living in the neighborhood where the rioting took place.

“This is just crazy,” Mr. Grode said by telephone Sunday night. “There was a lot of tear gas in the streets, and I almost couldn’t get back to my apartment. There’s a huge police presence.”

Mr. Grode said he saw a few Han civilians being harassed by Uighurs. Rumors of Uighurs attacking Han Chinese spread quickly through parts of Urumqi, adding to the panic. A worker at the Texas Restaurant, a few hundred yards from the site of the rioting, said her manager had urged the restaurant workers to stay inside. Xinhua reported few details of the riot on Sunday night. It said that “an unknown number of people gathered Sunday afternoon” in Urumqi, “attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles.”

Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang but are a minority in Urumqi, where Han Chinese make up more than 70 percent of the population of two million or so. The Chinese government has encouraged Han migration to the city and other parts of Xinjiang, fueling resentment among the Uighurs. Urumqi is a deeply segregated city, with Han Chinese there rarely venturing into the Uighur quarter.

The Uighur neighborhood is centered in a warren of narrow alleyways, food markets and a large shopping area called the Grand Bazaar or the Erdaoqiao Market, where the rioting reached its peak on Sunday.

Mr. Grode, who lives in an apartment there, said he went outside when he first heard commotion around 6 p.m. He saw hundreds of Uighurs in the streets; that quickly swelled to more than 1,000, he said.

Police officers soon arrived. Around 7 p.m., protesters began hurling rocks and vegetables from the market at the police, Mr. Grode said. Traffic ground to a halt. An hour later, as the riot surged toward the center of the market, troops in green uniforms and full riot gear showed up, as did armored vehicles. Chinese government officials often deploy the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force, to quell riots.

By midnight, Mr. Grode said, some of the armored vehicles had begun to leave, but bursts of gunfire could still be heard.
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--
Ryan Pyle
Photographer
ryan@ryanpyle.com
Website: www.ryanpyle.com
Archive: http://archive.ryanpyle.com
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