Travels in Xinjiang Province, China

by Jayantha Perera

At the Urumqi Airport in Xinjiang Province, China, I did not expect to face any immigration formalities. I had travelled from Guangzhou in southern China to Urumqi on a local flight. I was with an ADB team, on a mission to examine how several projects funded by ADB in Xinjiang Province, particularly those aimed at improving infrastructure and livelihoods, would impact local ethnic minorities. An officer with two stars on his jacket lapel stopped me before I reached the immigration desk. Nandia, the ADB translator, told me that the officer wanted my passport. A few minutes later, he shouted at Nandia when she tried to explain something. The officer led us into an unheated dark room. He sat on the only chair in the room, studied my passport for a few minutes, and walked out of the room with it.

After half an hour, a man in civil attire came with the officer who had taken my passport. They discussed something with Nandia. She told me he was the chief Inspector. He examined my passport page by page while questioning me:

“Why do you live in the Philippines?” Nandia translated.

“Because I work in Manila at the Asian Development Bank,” I replied.

“Why do you come to Urumqi?” the chief queried.

“Asian Development Bank assists several projects in western Xinjiang, and I have come to meet project officials with a team of experts from ADB,” I responded.

“But the infrastructure ministry did not inform us about your coming,” he shouted.

Another 10 minutes passed before the chief Inspector read the official invitation letter in Mandarin and English. He first read the Mandarin letter and then tried to read its English translation. The Inspector opened a fat ledger pulled from a dusty cupboard and flipped through pages looking for something. He shook his head and muttered something. Nandia tried to avoid his gaze, but her unease was apparent.

“The chief can’t find any entry about your arrival,” Nandia whispered in a strained voice.

“But we have official invitation letters,” I told her.

“Could you please stop talking to me? They suspect us when we talk in English.” Nandia sounded angry. I tried to avoid her eyes, too.

A few minutes later, two jovial young security guards came running in their black uniforms with long lances. A lance is a long, black, rod-like weapon with a trigger at one end and a long, sharp blade at the other. The two escorted me to another dark room. They switched on the light and directed me to sit. I waited for the Chief Inspector and the officer who had taken my passport. I knew I was under arrest. I was mentally prepared to spend the night in this dingy room with the two guards. I did not know what happened to my ADB colleague who travelled with me and Nandia. Twenty minutes later, the chief Inspector returned. He said, “Okay, bye,” and returned my passport and the invitation letter. The relief was palpable as I regained my freedom.

A middle-aged man with a short beard and rimmed glasses awaited me with my ADB colleague and Nandia in the ‘Visitors Area.’ I guessed he was the ADB’s contact person in Urumqi. Nandia introduced me to him. He was a shy man and spoke a few words in English. He was a professor of economics at a local university. The two young women with him helped us load our suitcases into a large van. One woman told us the outside temperature was minus 25 Celsius. The professor apologetically informed us he would not join our mission because his mother was ill. He said he was taking us to a hotel. I saw an elegant hotel near the airport and asked the professor whether we would stay there. He told us only foreign journalists were accommodated there and all other visiting foreigners stay at designated hotels in the city for security reasons.

The hotel the professor booked for us was an old building. It looked grandiose but was in a state of disrepair. The van driver directed us to walk through the police barricade in the hotel lobby. Two uniformed policemen checked our bags manually first, then x-rayed them. They used hand-held detectors to search our bodies. One examined me roughly as if he were determined to find suspicious objects on me. He was huge, smelly, and unfriendly. He grabbed my passport after baggage examination and went through its pages. He then disappeared with passports, leaving us at the barrier.

The hotel’s lobby manager was agitated because he was waiting for the local authority’s approval to allocate rooms for us. After 30 minutes, the professor told us we could stay at the hotel that night. Then, the manager told us to wait in the lounge for room keys. A hotel employee led us to our rooms through a narrow, dimly lit corridor. My room was large with huge curtains. The room lights were dim, and I could hardly see my bed.

A few minutes later, I left the room to find my way to the lounge, where I hoped to have dinner. There was no dinner, so I headed back to my room. I realised it was a mistake to roam in the hotel without a local colleague. The policeman at the hotel entrance raised his head and saw me in the lounge. He recognised me and waved me back to my room. I was hungry. I had tea bags and a few cookies. There was no kettle in the room. I ate the cookies and drank cold water from the tap, feeling the stark loneliness of the unfamiliar surroundings.

The following day, I bundled up in all my warm clothes and headed to the hotel restaurant. The large, dimly lit banquet room was a stark contrast to the breakfast spread, which consisted of a simple meal of thick rice soup, boiled eggs, and black tea, with no coffee in sight.

The professor came to see us off to Alashankou City. He advised Nandia what she should tell guards at checkpoints. He introduced the vehicle driver as a senior project official who would safely take us to our destination. The driver did not speak English, but his assistant, who sat beside him, tried talking to us in English. He was a civil servant.

We could see only the snow for many hours, and the road ahead was barely visible. We travelled for about six hours, and the civil servant told us we would soon reach a critical checkpoint. Before we arrived there, we saw a large concrete display board that stated, “Border Area.” We could see high barbed-wire fences and low buildings on both sides of the road, partially covered with snow. After collecting our passports and official invitation letters, the civil servant told us to stay in the van and ran to a small office about 25 metres from the road in a heavy snowstorm. He returned within a few minutes, distributed our passports, and asked us to follow him, leaving our bags behind in the van.

We stood in an open area outside the building and waited for the civil servant to accompany us. There were several police officers, and sliding steel barricades blocked the entrance. I could hardly breathe and felt dizzy. The civil servant talked to a policeman and told us to follow him through an electrical gate. He disappeared again. A young Chinese policeman shouted at us, showed us the entrance, and waved us to go through the gate. A policewoman beckoned me to the gate and indicated I should leave my wallet and reading glasses beside the gate counter. Someone else directed me to empty my pockets and remove my trouser belt.

After that, I went through a box-like structure without knowing it was an X-ray machine. Before I collected my belongings, including the passport, from the gate, I was told to enter a tunnel-like concrete structure. I did not know what had happened to my passport, reading glasses, and the wallet. When I resurfaced from the tunnel, a young policewoman gave them to me. She then directed me into another building, where several locals waited for security clearance. I soon realised they were bus passengers from the border area between Xinjiang Province and Kazakhstan. Several buses were waiting for them on the road under heavy security and snowfall.

I tried to find a corner in the foyer to avoid the cold wind. I was curious to watch what the young, enthusiastic policemen and women in dark uniforms were doing inside the glass cubicle. The cubicle had three front windows. Several computers were below the windows, and the young policemen sat before them. Behind them, there were several rooms. And I guessed some were to detain those who could not prove their bona fide travel purposes. The young police officers were more enthusiastic about checking those locals who had arrived from the border area than clearing us for travel. Our driver, the project officer or the civil servant who travelled with us could not do anything to rescue us.

Local travellers handed their cell phones to police officers. Two officers checked each cell phone’s telephone messages, photos, and internet downloads under the scrutiny of a senior officer. Checking each cell phone for suspicious material took about 15 minutes. Out of about 20 persons, the police detained three. They pleaded in their languages, but the officers ignored them.

An officer with several stars on his coat lapel arrived and checked with his colleagues what we, foreigners, were doing in the lobby. He entered the cubicle, chased two young police officers away from a computer and occupied it. Our driver forced himself into the front and handed our passports to the officer. The driver told us to give the officer our invitation letters and pose our faces to a mirror-like gadget on the wall. The officer carefully observed what he had seen on the computer and matched our facial images with our passport photographs. He handed over our passports and talked to the driver. The driver saluted him and took us to our vehicle.

The saga of security clearance took about 90 minutes. I could not feel my legs when I walked to the van because of the nasty cold wind. The driver gave us hot tea from his large flask. The unexpected delay at the border checkpoint made our journey difficult and precarious. The sun had set about an hour before, and fresh snow covered the unlit, slippery road. The driver drove fast as if he knew each nook and corner of the road. We reached Alashankou City at 8.30 pm.

Unlike in Urumqi, in Alashankou, checking into the hotel was easy. It was a modern four-star hotel. Its furniture and internal décor were artistic and minimalist. The staff at the counter spoke English. Two policemen appeared from nowhere and beckoned us back to the security gate at the hotel entrance. They were polite and wanted to X-ray our handbags.

My room was large and had modern furniture and amenities. There was a TV on the wall facing the cosy double bed. When I removed my shoes and socks, my feet felt warm, and I was elated to walk barefoot in my room. Hot water was flowing under the room floor, warming the room. We had dinner in the hotel dining room. A hot vegetable soup and spicy meat dishes were tasty and lifted my spirit.

I could not sleep because of some loud shouting outside the hotel. A group of people shouted slogans as if they were in an army regiment. I suspected the regimented roar came from a police training centre or a workers’ camp. I did not ask Nandia about the uproar because I did not want to embarrass her by asking about things she might not want to discuss with me.

Several Project Management Office (PMO) officials picked us up from the hotel lobby the following morning. They took us to their office, and we walked through several barriers without any hindrance. After a brief, cordial conversation on ethnic minority issues in project areas, the PMO chief told us there were no ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province!

After lunch at our hotel, I watched the main public road from my room’s balcony. It was a four-lane road with a concrete partition in the middle. I saw several small white police cars of the same make crawling on the road at a human pace. The vehicles had tinted dark windows. It would be eerie to walk on the road if such a car accompanied me at my speed. My strange feeling graduated to a sense of fear. I counted

three such cars moving north and three cars south all the time on the road. Although it was a working day, the road was largely empty. Two armoured vehicles parked at a street corner were waiting for trouble to break out on the road. A compact police station with deep blue walls on a slightly elevated platform was at each street corner. It had small windows and bright blinking blue lights hanging from the roof.

On our second day in Alashankou, we lunched at a family-run Muslim restaurant. A middle-aged man served grilled lamb chunks on long skewers, unleavened bread as big as a standard pizza, and boiled vegetables. The soup came in a separate bowl. The food was tasty and was enough for three or four people. Several police officers were also having lunch at the restaurant. They were jovial but curiously observed us from their table.

On the following day, when we were at the restaurant for breakfast, we saw a platoon of young police officers in their black uniforms and with lances. They secured each floor’s hotel entrances, exits, elevators, and staircases. They opened room doors as if they knew the layout of the building. Two came to us, smiled, and went away.

Twenty policemen came down with a local young couple. The bearded man was wearing ethnic attire. The woman looked like a young teenager draped in a Muslim wedding dress. They talked with a middle-aged police officer and shook hands. Soon, the police platoon disappeared from the hotel. I checked the road and saw several young officers joking with each other while crossing the street. I wanted to ask the hotel manager what had happened. But the golden rule in Xinjiang – not publicly discussing government activities – stopped me from talking to him.

At Horgos City, we were mesmerised by distant snow-capped mountains and frozen lakes. The road was winding, and we drove slowly, absorbing the breathtaking beauty. The bright sun gave us a sense of warmth as the heating device of the van quit working. We saw several skiing kiosks where local people gathered. We stopped at a kiosk to use the toilet. An old woman managed the toilet and gave a piece of paper for a few cents. The bathroom was clean and modern. Its floor was dry. We talked to a few people at the resort through our driver and the translator. The locals came to ski on the lake and stayed at local hotels.

The civil servant took us to a restaurant where foreigners could have Chinese, Uyghur, and halal meals and consume liquor. Halfway to the restaurant, there was a large police station. Several police officers were smoking and chatting on the side road. I could see stone plates of the pavement under a layer of fresh snow. When I reached the officers, they did not move for me to pass, and I had to wade through fresh snow by the path to continue my walk.

When we returned to the hotel from the restaurant, I saw many police officers on the side walk in front of the police Station. They were smoking and joking with each other. Snow piled up to about two feet on both sides of the side walk. When I reached them, they ignored me. They expected me to circumvent them and continue through the snow. I told them, “Excuse me.” They moved away from the side walk and stared at me. I walked a few yards and waited for my colleagues. I watched how they walked without disturbing the police officers.

At the hotel, I talked to Nandia about the episode. She said she saw how I had walked through the police officers’ circle. She was scared as the police officers would have harassed me for disturbing their conversation. She told me never to anger a police officer in Xinjiang: they were powerful, arrogant, and quick-tempered, although they pretended to be cheerful and helpful. They probably did not stop me because I was a foreigner, and they did not know any English to accost me. Or perhaps they did not want to spoil their relaxing evening over a minor incident.

The inter-country dry port at the border of Kazakhstan and Xinjiang Province is a thriving business centre. I saw hundreds of Kazaks in colourful clothes and with large empty suitcases, coming to shop at warehouses and shopping malls across the border. The central bus stand displayed a list of bus numbers for different Kazakhstani cities. Some went to large, covered markets to buy Russian goods. They brought clothes, leather hats, dried fruits such as dates, pistachios, and sliced dry bananas. The dry port area looked like a heavily guarded fort, and surveillance cameras observed the movements and transactions of visitors.

The PMO officer invited us to visit the free trade zone. We went through several security searches; the final was verifying our identities. The officer could not tally the information on the computer with my passport information. An alarm bell went off, and two smiling policemen appeared from nowhere. They escorted me to a room. They asked me to sit on a bench and studied me. Suddenly, one guard spoke to me in English. “Hi, what is your name? American? We like to talk English.” I smiled; they smiled. I said “Jayantha, a Sri Lankan.” But they could not go further, so they repeated ‘Jantha,’ ‘Jantha.’ Again, they smiled; I smiled. After 20 minutes, two senior officials interviewed me in the room and returned my passport.

The following day, we visited Yining City. We checked into a palace-like hotel where we were the only guests. The rooms were enormous and well-appointed. The professor had arranged with three friends in Yining to take us sightseeing. A woman and two men in their forties met us at the hotel. They took us to the Xibo Ethnic Minority Exhibition Village. Zibo was a civilisation in medieval times, but with the arrival of marauding bands, the Zibo state collapsed and became a collection of ethnic communities spread over a vast area.

When we returned to the exit gate, some officers showed us two policemen in black with a white strip glued to their chest, “SWAT.” The SWAT officers directed us to follow their vehicle and sped away. Our friends followed the police vehicle with us. After travelling for 15 minutes, the police officers signalled us to get out of the car. The two policemen went through several barriers and waited for us to follow them. Nandia joined my ADB colleague and me. Our friends stayed in their vehicle. As we passed through each barrier, its gate closed with a loud bang behind us. After going through the three barriers, we found ourselves in the compound of the large building, where puppies were playing with several young men.

Nandia introduced us to a man in jeans who was the chief of the police station. A few minutes later, he asked me, and Nandia translated: “You are a Sri Lankan. Why do you live in Manila”?

“I have been in Manila because I work for the Asian Development Bank,” I replied.

“Show me your invitation letter from Beijing,” he demanded.

He read the Mandarin portion of the letter and phoned someone. Then he said, “Bye”.

The three friends took us for dinner. They ordered a roasted baby lamb with boiled potatoes and vegetables. In addition, they selected a local steamed fish dish. Our hosts were a very close group of buddies from their school days. They travelled together and often met for drinks and dinner without their spouses. They were a cheerful group; one man tried to sing a song, and the other two politely stopped him.

At the dinner, I commented that the lamb roast was excellent. That triggered a discussion among our hosts. The woman sent the lamb’s head to the kitchen. Before the dessert, a plate arrived with cut pieces of the lamb head. The host invited me to eat the cooked brain in the skull and said that it would be a great honour for them if I ate a piece of the brain. I told them that I could not eat lamb brain. My ADB colleague came to my rescue and ate the baked brain on my behalf. She told me later that it would have insulted them if we had refused to eat the brain. The hosts were sad to leave us. Before leaving, they called a taxi to send us back to our hotel so we could catch the earliest flight to Urumqi the following day.