Xinjiang: China’S Pre- and from the Editor Post-Modern Crossroad Xinjiang, the Focus of Several Explore the City
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Volume 3 Number 1 June 2005 “The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures” In This Issue • Xinjiang: China’s Pre- and From the Editor Post-Modern Crossroad Xinjiang, the focus of several explore the city. As Bloch tells it, • Uyghur Art Music and Chinese contributions to this issue, hardly when he asked his companion Silk Roadism needs to be introduced to where they should begin, readers of The Silk Road. While Pirenne responded, “If I were an • Polychrome Rock Paintings in the designation Xinjiang is a antiquarian, I would have eyes the Altay Mountains modern one, the territory only for old stuff, but I am a • Viticulture and Viniculture in the occupied by today’s Xinjiang- historian. Therefore, I love life.” Turfan Region Uighur Autonomous Region in Bloch then adds, “This faculty of China embraces the earliest understanding the living is, in • Annotated Bibliography of history of exchange in and across very truth, the master quality of Xinjiang and Adjoining Inner Asia. That framing of the the historian.” [The Historian’s Regions region as an administrative unit Craft, 1953 ed., p. 43] • has to be considered rather Bactrian Camels and Bactrian- It is appropriate then that the Dromedary Hybrids artificial though in view of its vast size and its geographic and first of our contributions to this • The Khataynameh of Ali Akbar ethnic diversity. Whatever the issue is Dru Gladney’s impressive modern political myths and overview of a broad span of Next Issue realities, Xinjiang was never Xinjiang’s history, bringing the really a unified territory story down to the “post-modern” • Connie Chin on Buddhist sites historically. In the longue durée present. Gladney is one of the along the Silk Road Chinese control of the region leading authorities on the ethnic • Susan Whitfield on the occupies a relatively small part of diversity of the region and is International Dunhuang its history. It was even more singularly well informed about Project the challenges of the present and • rarely the center of an Terence Clark on hunting the region’s future. Whether hounds in Eurasia indepedent state with any modernizing policies of promoting • Ralph Kauz on trade across longevity. The history is often Eurasia one of attempting to control some cultural integration will ultimately • and contributions by Jonathan portion of the region from its suppress the historic divisions Bloom, Sheila Blair and periphery — from just beyond its within the region remains to be others eastern edge at Dunhuang, or seen. It is clear that Chinese north of the mountains in Urumqi, perceptions of Xinjiang’s stra- or at its far western end at tegic and economic importance About Kashgar. Not infrequently the today will ensure a continuing political and cultural centers of focus on the region Yet it is The Silk Road is a semi-annual useful to remember that while publication of the Silkroad Founda- importance for the region were this latest phase of Chinese rule tion. The Silk Road can also be beyond the Kunlun and viewed on-line at <http://www. Karakorum Mountains or over in Xinjiang is now about two-and- silkroadfoundation.org>. the passes in Ferghana. a-half centuries old, during that period large sections of the Please feel free to contact us with When studying the Silk Road region were often quite inde- any questions or contributions. (or any other history which pendent of the central Govern- Guidelines for contributors may be begins in centuries so far ment. The present lives in the found in Vol. 2, No. 1 (June 2004) removed from our own), we shadow of the experience of the on the website. need continually to ask to what Han and T’ang dynasties, which degree we should begin in the ultimately had to abandon any The Silkroad Foundation present. The famous Belgian P.O. Box 2275 pretense of control in the region. Saratoga, CA. 95070 medievalist Henri Pirenne, on arriving in Stockholm for a Our second contributor, James Editor: Daniel C. Waugh conference, set out with another Millward, has written the best [email protected] famous medievalist Marc Bloch to study of the Qing Dynasty’s © 2005 Silkroad Foundation implementation of its rule there. basis for tantalizing hypotheses Lee, the head of the Silkroad In his essay here he turns to a about pre-historic culture. We Foundation and Wang Binghua, different topic: how music has expect to feature a recent I will have a chance to visit been used politically in interview with him in an upcoming Urumqi, see the famous Tarim constructing and interpreting issue. Xinru Liu is known to all mummies and explore in the identities. As students of the Silk students of the Silk Road for her Kazakh and Mongol areas north Road know, the popularity of books integrating the study of of the Tien Shan. musicians and other entertainers religion and material culture. from the oases of the Tarim Basin Here she explores a topic On my return I hope to finish and places further west is one of connected with the fame of work on precisely the kind of the striking proofs of the Turpan as a center of viniculture. modern topic which proves to be transnational cultural exchange Dan Potts’ essay on the Bactrian enlightening about the earlier in T’ang times. Even then camel comes from a lecture he history of the Silk Roads. The though, their foreignness raised gave at Stanford for the Silkroad focus is the writings of C. P. the hackles of those who saw a Foundation’s series. He clarifies Skrine, the British consul in threat to Chinese values. The issues regarding the evidence Kashgar in 1922-24, whose book issues today involving music are concerning Bactrian camels in on Chinese Central Asia is still a somewhat different, since there areas of the Middle East which very valuable source of infor- are political dangers in promoting were not part of the animal’s mation. Skrine’s unpublished national cultures simultaneously indigenous range. Ralph Kauz writings and his official reports with artificially denying the will be lecturing at Columbia this supplement what the book transnational nature of that autumn in a new series reveals about the transnational musical heritage. Those familiar sponsored by the Foundation. connectedness of Xinjiang and with the substantial literature on His research report on his the continuation of historic trade Soviet nationality policies are well translation of a little known patterns. In Skrine’s time the aware of how the government’s Persian source for Inner Asian camel caravans of the Silk Road “affirmative action” policies history reminds us, as does era were still the transport of backfired in creating the Wang Binghua’s piece, that just choice, even if then they might conditions for the emergence of when we thought we were be loaded with oil from Baku on independent states. beginning to gain control over the Caspian Sea. the primary sources, others are We continue here our practice being brought to our attention. of providing bibliographic Daniel Waugh History Department resources for further study. This issue of The Silk Road University of Washington Nathan Light’s magnificent comes at an important moment Seattle bibliography will help con- in my personal acquaintance [email protected] siderably those who wish to read with Xinjiang, since for the first more in the latest literature on time this summer, thanks to Xinjiang. I can also recommend arrangements made by Adela his website as one of the richest collections of materials and links on the region and in particular on the Uyghurs and their culture. Our other contri- butions cover a diversity of material. Wang Binghua is one of the most dis- tinguished contributors to the continuing archaeological investigation of Xin- jiang. His essay on the little known rock paintings in northern Xinjiang provides the adapted from:http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/china_rel96.jpg The location of Xinjiang (for details from satellite images, see pp. 16 and 27. 2 national census of China, the Xinjiang: China’s Pre- and total Muslim population is 20.3 million, including: Hui (9,816,805); Post-Modern Crossroad Uyghur (8,399,393); Kazakh (1,250,458); Dongxiang (513,805); Kyrgyz (160,823); Dru Gladney Salar (104,503); Tajik (41,028); Uzbek (14,502); Bonan (16,505); University of Hawaii, Manoa Tatar (4,890). This represents about a forty percent population increase over 1990 census In all of China, there are only contributed Arab, Persian, and figures. The Hui speak mainly three public statues left of later Turkic civilizations to the Sino-Tibetan languages; Turkic- Chairman Mao. Of the three, the region. The new “Trans-Eurasia” language speakers include the one in Xinjiang is perhaps the railroad between Europe and Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, most incongruous. It is in China that passes through Salar and Tatar; combined Turkic- Kashgar, the farthest city in China Urumqi, completed in 1991, links Mongolian speakers include the from Beijing, and in a place never China as never before with Dongxiang and Bonan, con- visited by the Chairman. With Europe; in addition, there is an centrated in Gansu’s moun- arm upraised, gazing across the increasing number of air and road tainous Hexi corridor; and the People’s Square toward the routes to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakh- Tajik speak a variety of Indo- southern end of the city (and stan, Tajikistan, Mongolia, Persian dialects. It is important India/Pakistan), Chairman Mao’s Afghanistan, and Pakistan. to note, however, that the statue signals that though it is Bordered by some of the highest Chinese census registered one of the most remote cities mountains in the world, in the people by nationality, not from Beijing, since 1949 it has north, east, south and south- religious affiliation, so the actual been firmly under Chinese west by the great Altai, number of Muslims is still control.