There’s an extract from my forthcoming book China’s Forgotten People on the Highlight Arts blog – you should spend some time on their site to learn about the diverse and important work they do.
The Edge of the Bazaar, A Documentary About Uyghur Rural Life
One of the emerging trends among young Uyghur film directors is a new attention to documentary filmmaking. This approach has long been a part of Uyghur cinema, but previously it was often part of a larger public relations presentation sponsored by the Chinese Culture Ministry. These new documentary short films are independently produced on limited budgets by young filmmakers who have an intimate knowledge of their subjects.
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Reading on Culture Laser
My novel isn’t out until August next year, but I thought I’d start the book tour early…. You can hear an excerpt from it on the Culture Laser podcast. It starts at around 10m 11 secs in….
‘Utterly Vile’
Inherent Vice film trailer
Yep, and it seems just right.
Why are Uyghurs so Good at English?
Another really insightful piece from this excellent blog.
Ever since Kasim Abdurehim, the founder of the private English school Atlan, took third place in the national English speaking contest in 2004, Uyghurs have found their way into the final rounds of almost every major English speaking competition in the nation. This year was no exception. The main difference is that now Uyghurs are learning how to be confident in their English ability at a younger age. It is because of people like Kasim and dozens of other award winning role models that kids like 14 year-old Tughluk Tursunjan feel confident on a national stage. Although Uyghurs represent less than one percent of China’s population, they still consistently beat Han contestants from the best schools in the country.
Tughluk, who was this year’s winner of the Junior High School division of the “Outlook of Hope” contest on CCTV was taught by an English instructor named Nemo…
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Islamic State piece on Vice News
Iraqi sources claim to have caught a Chinese citizen fighting for the Islamic State militant group.
My piece on China’s recent claims that fighters from Xinjiang are training with IS is up at Vice News.
Blind Dating in Bishkek
The autumn issue of The Dublin Review has a long tale of the joys and sorrows (more of those) of trying to do internet dating in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Suffice to say, no weddings are currently planned.
It begins thus:
September is the perfect month for dating in Bishkek. The intense heat of the Kyrgyz summer has passed, but the days are still bright and warm. In the evening you can eat outside, then stroll through the park, without feeling the slightest chill.
Before I travelled to Bishkek, I’d been living in London for six months, and despite the many possibilities of the place I was in a dating rut. We went to the British Film Institute or the Hackney Picturehouse. We spoke sometimes of Mad Men, sometimes of Breaking Bad, always of Game of Thrones. We were witty and cutting and sometimes we kissed but even after three drinks, with our eyes shut, our tongues entwined, we remained urbane. We were youngish, smart professionals. We were polished stones.
My initial reasons for visiting Kyrgyzstan’s capital had nothing to do with dating. I wanted to do a report on a clinic that treated drug addiction by putting its patients into comas. I had nothing else planned, and knew no one in Bishkek. Three days before I was due to leave, I was checking OkCupid – not with any real conviction, more out of pathetic habit – and saw I had a message from a fifty-six-year-old woman in Uzbekistan. ‘Good face!’ she wrote, which was nice of her, but alas I had no plans to visit Tashkent. It did, however, make me wonder if OkCupid had any English-speaking women in Bishkek on its site.
First contact
The Age of Ambition
The August issue of Literary Review has my piece on Evan Osnos’ impressive book on the last decade in China (and scorn for another book). Print only! Well, and on some tablets too…
‘Virtual water’
An interview I did for china dialogue on China’s water scarcity and agriculture is now online.
Australia scraps its carbon tax because the weather isn’t getting hotter there or something
More here. By me.
external exile
The Story of the Production and Construction Corps
A rifle and sword tied together with a red flag over a meter of Gobi sand welcomes visitors to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps Museum in the city of Shihezi – 136 kilometers northwest of Ürümchi. This museum, filled with patched and dented artifacts and hundreds of large scale historical photos, is the premiere monument to the Han experience of the recent past in Xinjiang. It shows us the narrative of experience necessary to understand the history of the people who self-identify as “constructors” (jianshezhe) of Xinjiang.
The Bingtuan, as the Corps is referred to by locals, is a state-sponsored farm system that is spread across the territory of Xinjiang – an area as large as California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico combined. Hundreds of regiments are still in operation 60 years after their founding. Out of this population of around 3 million military farmers…
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What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘the Uyghurs’
Back street in Urumqi, September 2013
Firstly, apologies to Raymond Carver for being yet another desecrator of his great title.
Secondly- this is the title of my latest piece on Xinjiang, which is in the Summer issue of Dissent mag.
Twenty-Five Years Ago
Image by Stuart Franklin (Magnum)
My piece on the Tiananmen Square 25th anniversary is the top story on Vice News today.
How to fix China’s gridlock problem
When I was in Guangzhou recently I had an interesting conversation with Walter Hook, CEO of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, who try to promote green transport solutions for cities. He had a lot of useful things to say about how China’s fast expanding cities might reduce car use so as to make decent urban spaces. For more, see my piece at china dialogue.
New story in The Southern Review
‘Octet’ is the title of my new story in the spring issue of The Southern Review. It’s an odd one, for sure. I don’t have much memory of writing it. I know I was listening to a track from ‘The Tree of Life’ soundtrack on repeat when I was working on it. I also remember walking up and down Montgomery Street, in Edinburgh, Scotland, when I saw something that made me briefly question the physical laws of our universe. But only for a moment, of course.
It starts like this:
The procedure is always the same. He fills in forms. He waits. After twenty or thirty minutes the first of the books arrives. Usually singly, sometimes on a trolley, until they form a tower. All morning his eyes pull in their words like a stove feeding itself. At one o’clock he goes to the canteen; by quarter past he’s back. He remains in his chair until he hears the voice of a man who is never tired, does not age, who may already be dead. It is a voice he hates. The library will be closing in fifteen minutes, says the man. Please return your books to the desk. With this the tower is destroyed. He must return to the present.
He leaves the library and walks down the hill until he reaches his street. At home he eats then tries to read but usually his eyes hurt. All he can do is walk the several blocks of the street, slowly back and forth. He goes over the day’s reading. He waits for the Thought.
Winner!
I’m amazed and delighted to have won this year’s Willesden Herald Short Story Prize.
My story, ‘Ward’, is about a young girl who gets very ill and how it changes her.
You can read it and the other nominated stories by buying the anthology which is a bargain at £5.99 (incl. postage)- the best place to buy it is here.
An extract:
She’d never had so many presents. Flowers, magazines, teddy bears and balloons, a poster of two puppies wedged in a boot. Sandra was the only visitor who didn’t bring a gift. Her presence was confusing, because she and Emily weren’t friends. Emily wondered if Sandra liked her the way she liked her classmate Maxine: quietly, from an awed distance, content to sit two rows behind. After ten minutes she noticed the way Sandra’s eyes returned to the needle in her arm, the IV line, the slowly shrinking bag. She asked if Emily was in pain, if she was going to have an operation. She wanted to tell everyone about her dying classmate.
Talk on Xinjiang in Chinese and Western Media
I’ll be talking at Westminster University, London, on March 19th about how Western and Chinese media tends to represent the Xinjiang issue in different yet equally distorting ways – details here.
Background to Kunming attacks
Sean Roberts, an associate professor at Georgetown University, offers a careful, considered response to the attacks, and provides excellent context for what has happened.
After Kunming
I attempt to make sense of the horrible killings in Kunming on the LRB Blog
Free Ilham Tohti
Ilham Tohti, the respected Uyghur economist, has been charged with separatism and faces ten years to life in prison in China. It’s the kind of thing that’s a reminder of how China’s judicial and political system hasn’t made the same kind of progress as its economy. I wrote about the case on the LRB Blog.
Heroin, comas and mindcrafting in Kyrgyzstan
My piece on a drug addiction clinic near Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan is now up at VICE.
Junkyard Planet
If you think that people collect your recycling because they care about the environment, you may find my interview with Adam Minter about his new book Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Global Recycling Trade a bit surprising. Sorry about that.
The Death of Old Kashgar
I went back to Kashgar, in southern Xinjiang, in September last year for the first time in 13 years. In 2000 it was a place that I was sorry to leave; I didn’t feel the same this time. More words and pictures about that can be found at Unmapped, a new travel magazine that’s publishing the kinds of pieces that are in short supply: well-written, insightful reports from places that the news agenda doesn’t seem concerned about.
2024 Update: Unmapped has, alas, ceased publication, but the text of the piece can be found here: https://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/the-death-of-old-kashgar/
Behind the Dunes
My piece on Lisa Ross’ exhibition in London of photos from Xinjiang is up on the London Review of Books Blog.
My interview with her earlier this year is at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Smog in Shanghai
A blog I wrote with my other hat on…
‘Terrorism’ in Tiananmen Square
There was an explosion in Tiananmen Square last week. On the LRB Blog I write about why it wasn’t terrorism.
To tweet or not to tweet?
My piece on being a politically engaged writer (or not) is now up at CITSEE.eu
Nick Holdstock 