URUMQI, China — Urumqi, the capital of northwest Xinjiang Province, is a city that operates on two clocks. Trains, planes and business hours tend to correspond to “Beijing time,” while many locals instead set their schedules according to “Xinjiang time,” two hours behind official clocks but closer to the natural rhythms of the landscape.
Time zones aren’t the only thing that separates this remote province from the rest of China. As the home of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority and a mashup of other central Asian groups, Xinjiang is a world apart culturally from the rest of the country. Most Uyghurs practice Islam and speak a Turkic language indecipherable to members of the dominant Han ethnic group. Those religious and cultural divides are just one aspect of the increasingly fraught relationship between Uyghurs and Han in Urumqi, where tensions have exploded in deadly riots and terrorist attacks.
Even without the violence, the communities inhabit largely parallel universes, and rarely is this clearer than during Chinese New Year. While Han Chinese drop everything and journey to their hometowns for once-a-year reunions, most Uyghurs ignore the holiday entirely. The photos below portray Uyghurs and Han in Urumqi on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
–
Military police guard People’s Square on New Year’s morning.
A massive firecracker explosion marks the New Year at an Urumqi mall.
Workers clean up the aftermath of the massive firecracker display.
