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Speeding down a remote desert highway, Yusup reflects on life as one of China’s eight million ethnic Muslim Uighurs and his tone turns as bleak as the sun-fried landscape.
“It’s tough to be a Uighur. It’s not a matter of politics or religion. We just want to be able to get by,” said the 36-year-old resident of Aksu, a small desert city in China’s remote Xinjiang province that borders central Asia.
To many outsiders, the region conjures exotic images, where the whiff of simmering Muslim rebellion mingles with the ever-present scent of roasting lamb skewers.
That image has been stoked by China’s assertions of a Muslim separatist terrorism threat to the Beijing Games, heightened by reports in the Chinese press of a terrorist attack in Xinjiang on Monday that left 16 policemen dead.
But for the majority of Uighurs like Yusup, a central Asian people with vast linguistic, religious and cultural differences from China’s majority Han people, separatism and politics take a back seat to more mundane concerns like inflation and employment.
For Yusup, who asked that his full name be withheld due to the sensitivity of discussing politics in Xinjiang, his focus is on economic survival for himself, wife and 10-year-old son.
Dressed neatly in a golf shirt and eschewing the Muslim skullcap worn by most Uighur men, Yusup is not a devout Muslim. Unlike many Uighurs, he speaks flawless Mandarin.
He dabbles in produce trading, some cotton production, and occasionally drives a friend’s cab for extra money. All told, he makes only about 1,000 yuan ($A155) each month.
“East Turkestan will never happen,” said Yusup, referring to the Islamic homeland that some Uighurs dream of.
“China won’t allow it.”
His realistic outlook is indicative of many Uighurs, said James Millward, a Xinjiang expert at Georgetown University who expresses impatience with the world’s image — fuelled by China’s terrorism claims — of a rebellious Xinjiang.
“Xinjiang has not been ‘restive,'” he said.
“The history of the period since 1997 has been of double-digit economic growth and unprecedented development. Uighur middle classes are enjoying the same benefits of a consumerist lifestyle as are Han Chinese.”
For some Uighurs, life is undoubtedly better than it once was.
Abdulkerim runs a Xinjiang travel business. His income has tripled in five years thanks to a growing influx of Chinese tourists drawn to the region’s majestic mountains and colourful Islamic culture.
“The economy is better today than ever. I could not have done this 10 years ago,” he said.
But more often than not, Uighurs express fears about getting by.
The Olympic fever gripping much of China is largely absent in Xinjiang, where many blame the Beijing Games for fuelling skyrocketing inflation, despite the fact that prices worldwide are rising.
Vast segments of the population lead subsistence lives little changed from 100 years ago, growing fruit or raising sheep or cattle.
Meanwhile, creeping Han Chinese cultural domination is widely seen as a threat to traditional Uighur ways. Many Uighurs complain of discrimination in jobs and education.
“If we go to a bank, the Chinese people working there will be very rude to you and act suspicious,” said a young Aksu woman who asked that her name not be used.
Some Uighurs quietly profess support for the aims of small Uighur militant groups whom experts say operate in Xinjiang and neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan, seeking an independent East Turkestan.
But many understand it only triggers more Chinese repression, further delaying Uighurs from becoming anything more than second-class citizens in their own land.
“Many people support those groups in their hearts. But what good will it do?” said the young Uighur woman.