Next to appear were the Turks. They started moving from their presumed homeland in Siberia and Mongolia during the great nomad migrations of the fifth century. The empire they built was to dominate not only central Asia (west and east Turkestan) but also the Caucasus and Anatolia, and was to penetrate Europe. Cousins of the Mongols, they were sky-worshippers who used a runic script, and their early exploits can be read on stone stelae found on the Orkhon river near Ulan Bator. For most of the next thousand years, apart from a span of about 100 years during the Tang dynasty (618–907) when it was wrested from them, the Turks had control of Xinjiang. Among them was a tribe known as the Uighurs (pronounced We-gors or the more Turkic Ooey-gurze), who by the middle of the eighth century had settled down and built a city on the Orkhon. Regarding themselves in every respect as the equal of the Chinese – their khans even insisted on the custom of touching the forehead to the ground as a sign of deference, the ‘kow-tow’ – they several times helped the Chinese emperor recover his own capital. Their leaders converted to Manichaeism, the ‘religion of light’, and took up vegetarianism. Before long (and perhaps as a result) they were pushed out by their more warlike neighbours, the Kyrgyz, then living in the Altai Mountains. Driven south, they built a new capital, Kocho (now Astana) in Turfan, whose vast remains can still be seen. The Uighur kingdom lasted into the twentieth century. The people today known as Uighurs are not all descended from this tribe, however. The name ‘Uighur’ was revived in 1921 as a generic description for the oasis-dwellers of Xinjiang. Until then they identified themselves – as some still do – by their oasis, as ‘Keriyanese’, ‘Khotanese’, or ‘Kashgari’. Islam came late to the Tarim basin, in the second millennium. The conversion of eastern Turkestan was interrupted, however, by the Mongol conquest. Far from resisting the invaders, the Uighurs were content to do their book-keeping and teach them their alphabet so that laws could be codified. As Mongol power waned, the western Tarim came under the sway of khojas – religious nobles from central Asia – and the eastern Tarim reverted to rule by Buddhist Uighurs. China’s imperial expansion under the great Manchu emperor Qianlong saw Xinjiang annexed in 1759. (The name means ‘new frontier’.) Among the emperor’s trophies was a beautiful Kashgari girl named Iparhan, whose body was said to give off a wonderful scent. Installed in the imperial harem, the Fragrant Concubine, as she was called, was to become ever more famous down the centuries. Contradictory stories grew up around her. To the Chinese she symbolised the amicable inclusion of Xinjiang into the motherland. The Uighurs saw her as a victim, cruelly snatched away by a foreign aggressor. By the early nineteenth century, the Manchu soldiers garrisoning the west had grown soft. A series of revolts stimulated by envious khojas in central Asia culminated in a full-scale secession under Yakub Beg, an emissary of the Emir of Kokand (modern Uzbekistan). From 1862 to 1877, Xinjiang found itself an independent kingdom courted by both the Russian and British superpowers during the cold war known as the ‘Great Game’. The ailing Qing court was in two minds whether to attempt the recapture of its lost territory. It succeeded thanks to the meticulous planning of General Zuo Zongtang, who is said to have had trees planted across Asia to help his army find its way home. Despite making Xinjiang a full province of China in 1884, Beijing could not maintain control. The Qing dynasty fell in 1911, and a succession of corrupt freelance mandarins ran the province, eventually provoking a great Muslim rebellion from 1931 to 1934 which was suppressed only with the help of Soviet bombers and tanks. In the south a Muslim breakaway government briefly emerged under the Emir of Khotan. A decade later another anti-Chinese uprising, in the Ili valley, led to the creation of the secular, independent republic of Eastern Turkestan. Under Mao Zedong, the Uighurs suffered a frontal assault on their social structure, their property and their religion – indeed, on their whole way of life. After Mao’s death in 1976, more tolerance was shown and Uighurs began to voice their grievances – the abuse, as they saw it, of their faith, and the denial of their history. The migration of Han Chinese was becoming a flood, Uighurs were denied jobs, and by the end of the century a programme of Sinicisation was in full swing. Today the Chinese are physically stamping their vision of the future on Xinjiang’s ancient desert communities, with American-style skyscrapers, boulevards, shopping centres, flyovers and motorways for a traffic that does not yet exist. Two societies are growing up, as incompatible as ice and sand, but fighting for the same space. Although urbanisation has thrown Uighurs and Han Chinese together, there is little intermarriage. For the most part the two races eat in separate restaurants, dance in separate halls and listen to different music. They even live according to different clocks: the Chinese on Beijing time, the Uighurs on local time. Most Uighurs remain village farmers who gain little or nothing from modernisation. The ancient way of life can still be seen along the southern desert road, and a few primitive communities survive in desert deltas deep in the Taklamakan, where seasonal rivers dry up in the sand. Some town-dwellers, employing their traditional skill as traders, have exploited the new market freedoms to become rich. Many more have been driven into poverty and unemployment, or to alcohol, drugs and prostitution. More Uighurs are trying to join those who fled abroad before and after the Communist victory in 1949. Most of the earlier refugees went to neighbouring Kazakhstan, or to Pakistan and thence to Turkey, where they found a welcome. Some have moved on to Germany and other parts of Western Europe. Now the diaspora has spread to the UK, the United States and Australia. Emigration seems bound to increase as opportunities grow fewer and opponents of the regime are hunted down as ‘Islamic terrorists’ accused of trying to ‘split the motherland’. If present policies continue, it seems only a matter of time before Turki culture is eradicated in China, except in the most remote areas. Yet there are hopeful signs, too. Some of China’s new leadership know that hectic development could undermine Xinjiang’s fragile environment. Others are afraid that racial and religious tensions could turn the province into another Kosovo or Kashmir. But probably the best hope for the Turks of China lies in the fact that the world is once more alive to their existence. Christian Tyler’s book, Wild West China, is published by John Murray For the full 36-page feature with photographs by Ashley Gilbertson and Christian Tyler - add Issue 31 to the basket | 
