Zhangye: a Web of Choices
*Caroline Knowles
Colin Thebron’s (2006) In the Shadow of the Silk Road is my train companion from Xi’an as I continue my Belt-Road journey northwest towards China’s border with Kazakhstan. I love his insights and beautiful prose especially as my seat companion, a young woman I hoped to have conversation with, plugged in her earphones and promptly went to sleep. I imagine that her twenties generation experience lives and levels of prosperity her parents and grandparents could not have dreamed of, and I wonder how this shapes family conversations and silences — what can and cannot be said — between generations. Thebron describes the silk road from Xi’an as a less a route than a ‘web of choices’. And so it turns out. I would have some hard choices to make.
From the train window I watch the tower blocks and cranes of the restless China construction site. As the mountains begin, so do the tunnels, giving me occasional flashes of light and snapshots of rolling hills in the distance. Around Tianshuinan I notice more agriculture and fewer tower blocks. I tuck into the mung bean cakes and walnuts I bought last night on the Hui (Moslem) night market near the Drum and Bell Towers in Xi’an as I mingled with the crowds on the street. Thubron says the silk road has always been travelled by foreigners — the human fabric of trade and connection — and I begin to feel just a bit less self-conscious about being on this train.
We stop at Lanzhou, an industrial city on the Yellow River full of oil refineries, textiles and chemical plants, no doubt in the process of reinventing itself in higher tech and less industrial terms. We pass low brown and green hills and polytunnels growing crops. Xining is obviously a big transit station: many passengers get off the train and others get on. They are weighed down with boxes and packages. The guard regularly checks that I’m alright. I’m his only foreign passenger and he know where I am going even if I’m not sure. As we draw closer to Zhangye it feels as if we have left urban China behind. The Qilian Mountains are spectacular — snow-capped and jagged — and at one point they are set against a field of bright yellow rapeseed. I am on the train that goes to Urumqi and I’d really like to stay on it as it would take me close to the Kazakh border.
Instead of carrying on to Urumqi I leave the train in Zhangye. Zhangye is the birthplace of Mongol Statesman and General Kublai Khan, born in 1215, and a patron of the Venetian adventurer Marco Polo — travel aristocracy. I can’t resist. Zhangye is also close to the UNESCO World Heritage Geological Park which has stunning layered coloured mountains — sometimes called the painted mountains. As I’m a sucker for travel, travellers, and unusual scenery, I stop in Zhangye to catch up on writing and beautiful scenery. A pause on a long trip is a useful breathing and reflection space.
But I also have a more pressing matter to think about. Should I travel on to Urumqi and cross the border between China and Kazakhstan — a place of frenetic Belt-Road activity? Or should I fly to Almaty and Khorgos — the China border station — in Kazakhstan? A web of choices. What to do?
To travel across the border by train, I have to cross the Xinjian Uyghur Autonomous Region. While it is hard to parse accurate information about the current political situation in Xinjian, it is convincingly associated in global media and the reports of human rights organisations with detention and retraining camps and genocide of the Uyghur people, reason enough to swerve round it. To bring this closer to home, the Uyghur situation has recently become a live issue in a neighbourhood close to where I live in London. The Chinese Government bought the crumbling historic Royal Mint — which is close to the Tower of London — proposing to make it their new embassy. This sparked protest among the local Muslim population and their supporters in the Borough of Tower Hamlets, the local authority responsible for the Royal Mint. In challenging planning permission protesters argue that the genocide of the Uyghurs is not only an affront to human rights, it would also draw protests to the Chinese Embassy, compromising the safety of local residents. Planning permission was refused and the site sits crumbling to the fury of the Chinese Government, which is struggling to understand why a local council wields such authority over the built environment.
Is it right — is it ethical — for me to travel in this region given its widely publicised human rights violations? I think not. There is also a more practical consideration. Are independent travellers and tourists allowed to visit Xinjian? The answer to this question as far as I can determine is yes and no. There are travel restrictions and special permits are needed for some areas. What kinds of scrutiny would I attract from the authorities and how might this work out, not just for me but for anyone local who is helping me? I decide to stop at Zhangye and fly over Xinjian Province. I will pick up the Belt-Road on the China-Kazakhstan border.
*Caroline Knowles is an urban sociologist and the author of Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London, published by Penguin (2022) https://seriousmoneybook.com and a Global Professorial Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.
