Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road (review)

256 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 Heidegger's habit ofdisclaiming a Western "forgetfulness of Being," Röllicke deplores a similar amnesia concerning ziran in contemporary reflections on the Chinese philosophical tradition (pp. 48-49). 28. He assigns the process to a crucial time span ofaround sixty years (202-140 b.c.), prior to the redaction ofthe Huainanzi, the Wenzi, and the Laozi zhigui 3??fgIf, by Zhuang Zun Jt M (83 B.C.-A.D. 6). iii Justin Jon Rudelson. Oasis Identities: Uyghur Nationalism along China's Silk Road. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. 175 pp. Hardcover $42.50, ISBN 0-231-10786-2. Paperback $16.50, isbn 0-231-10787-0. Oasis Identities, by Justin Jon Rudelson, a social anthropologist and currently an assistant professor at Tulane University, breaks ground with the first English-language book written specifically about the Uyghurs. The Uyghurs are a Turkic Muslim minority nationality most ofwhom live within the borders of the People's Republic of China (PRC), in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (hereafter referred to as Xinjiang) on the PRCs far northwestern border. They speak a Turkic language not related to Chinese. Unlike those oftheir Turkic Muslim neighbors who established their own nations following the fall of the former Soviet Union, the Uyghurs do not have their own country. Their population in the PRC is over eight million people. They have been gaining world recognition in the 1990s with news reaching the West ofrioting, bombings, and dissatisfaction with rule from Beijing. Rudelson's informative book consists of eight chapters plus an introduction, totaling 175 pages, which are sufficiendy supplemented by twenty photographs, twenty-two figures, and twelve tables. Every chapter begins with a quote from a nationalist scholar, Uygur. Also included are nine pages ofnotes, a twelve-page bibliography, and an eleven-page index. Ofthe figures, nine are maps consisting ofthe following: Bordering Countries and Regions Influencing Uyghur Ethnic Identity (p. 5) The Physiography ofXinjiang (p. 18) Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang (p. 23)© 1999 by University The Three Regional Divisions Used by the Local Population—East, North, South ofHawaii Press(p. 25) Geographic Reorientation and Incorporation ofXinjiang into China Proper (p. 36) The Four Geographic Template Divisions ofXinjiang (p. 41) Xinjiang Temporal Distance Before Motorized Transport (p. 43) Reviews 257 Turpan in 1989-1990 (p. 99) Map ofTurpan, c. 1907, Showing the Sart (New) and Chinese (Old) Towns (p. 100) Rudelson's Introduction provides an overview ofhow he first became interested in the Uyghurs after seeing the desiccated bodies ofEuropean-looking people in present-day Xinjiang. He also tells ofthe hardships ofpoor living conditions and government restrictions that he encountered while involved in a project to introduce irrigation technology in the PRC from 1984 to 1985. Anticipating the next chapter, he points out the confusion caused by the ethnonym "Uyghur": the first ethnic group to be so called were a "Turkic, steppe, nomadic, shamanistic, and Manichean society in Mongolia" in the period 744-840 c.e. (p. 4). He then mentions 844-932 and 932-1450 as two other periods when the name appears in the historical record. The reemergence ofthe ethnonym during the Sheng Shicai era created a unifying bond for the sedentary people of the various oases in Xinjiang. Rudelson discusses his return to Xinjiangin 1989 to conduct the research connected with this book He had full access to the villages in the Turpan oasis, his primary focus being a village called Subeshi. He interviewed officials, merchants, mullas, healers, doctors» people at celebrations and ceremonies, hotel employees, scholars, pool players, and passersby. The objective ofhis research was to analyze Uyghurs' concepts oftheir own identity, and he asked his subjects to rank how they saw themselves in relation to the following categories ofpeople: Muslim, Turpan, Uyghur, Turk, and Chinese. From the answers he received, he found a distinct difference in Uyghur identity between peasants, merchants, and intellectuals. He left Xinjiang about seven months after his arrival, due to government restrictions on his activities after the fall of the Berlin Wall and increased tensions in the region in which he was conducting his research. Rudelson begins chapter 1 by addressing the important first question that appears in the...