Amir&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. 2026: Xinjiang Province Red Tour. Photos and commentary. The REAL Chinese people you do not know!
Amir&Jeff’s Excellent China Adventure Series. 2025: Hunan, Jiangxi, Fujian and Shaanxi Provinces’ Red Tour. Short videos with transcripts, captioned photos, articles and commentary. The REAL Chinese people you don’t know!
https://radiosinoland.com/2025/07/27/amirjeffs-excellent-china-adventure-series-2025-hunan-jiangxi-fujian-and-shaanxi-provinces-red-tour-short-videos-captioned-photos-articles-and-commentary-the-real-chinese-people-you-don/
Short intro to Xinjiang by Jeff
Xinjiang is huge, 17% of the country’s landmass, 1.66 million square kilometers (China’s total land area = 9.6 million), which is three times the size of France, or bigger than Alaska in North America. It is mostly desert, mountains, basins and high plateaus, with beautiful lakes. Weather is harsh here. When we arrived on 5 August, the temperature was 41 degrees. In the winter, it can drop to minus twenty.
For our one-month Red Tour adventure in Xinjiang, we will get a far west as Aksu and as far south as Korla. It is already starting out as an amazing lunar cycle.
The Uyghur people in China are members of the Turkic language group, of which there are many derivatives, starting in Turkey, of course, and there’s a swath going from there to the east through South Central Asia. They are, at varying degrees, mutually understood, from 0 to maybe 75%, depending on the dialect. For example, Turkish and Uyghur are 30% mutually comprehensible.
So Uyghurs are, in fact, Turkic people.
Xinjiang’s population is 26 million, 58% Muslim. The capital is Urumuqi. It has four million residents. Hami has 670,000 citizens. Shihezi, Karamay, Korla, Yining and Aksu are other cities we are visiting each have about 500,000 souls.
West to east, Xinjiang has common international borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. Internally, it borders the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai and Tibet, north to south. It is now a hugely important nexus in Asia’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), connecting the rest of China with the rest of Mackinder’s Heartland. On that note,
Jeff J. Brown comments on Sputnik News- Putin: China’s Belt and Road Initiative ‘in Sync With Russia’s Ideas on Large Eurasian Space’. China Rising Radio Sinoland 231027
Not only industry and commerce, Xinjiang is a massive producer of high value crops, including a huge variety of fruits, vegetables and cotton. We see lush, green fields and orchards stretching kilometer after kilometer, thanks to one of the biggest water canal and irrigation systems in the world, starting in the Altai Mountains, over 400km away. The BRI has made it possible to ship large quantities of this produce all over Asia.
Amir’s comments
August 23rd is an auspicious date. I found it curious that I was staying in Room 23 on the 23rd day of the month during our first night in Yining. Jeff and I were on the fifth floor (so 523), rather than the eighth floor (which really would have been auspicious). So perhaps staying in 523 was rather inauspicious after all.
In 2026, the 14th solar term ended on August 23rd, marking chushu (处暑), or the end of heat.
Indeed, on our dinner excursus to the Yinchai Roast Lamb restaurant, we distinctly felt the end of heat as we sat outside drinking cold beer. Cold beer has become something of an evening ritual for us to beat the summer heat, while hoping also to beat the plague of second-hand smoke while basking in the sunshine on outdoor patios.
Yet on this day, the temperature had dropped to a brisk 21 degrees, with a breeze strong enough to blow the napkins off our low-rise black wooden camping table. Sitting across from one another in cloth chairs, Jeff and I noticed an auspicious dog politely circling our setup in search of scraps.
A local neighborhood dog, no doubt; nor were we in any sort of locale where throwing scraps to an animal would result in glares from concerned Karens or some overly prudent neighborhood watch. The shop owner, I’m certain, could care less what we did with his food.
Meat skewers in China (chuaners, 串儿s) often alternate between lean and fatty chunks. Again, in any Western hipster locale, the fatty bits would be discarded at the outset. Westerners have long suppressed their own survival instinct that actually craves animal fat. In China, however, fastening beef chunks to a skewer without alternating fatty bits might lead the average patron to ask: “Where’s the fat?”
Nonetheless, as Westerners, Jeff and I routinely forgo the fat. Yet the arrival of this auspicious dog meant that there was no need, on this particular evening, for these bits to go to waste!
The dog was rather small, cute, furry, and of brownish complexion. I did not manage to take a photo. Yet a quick AI image search has me conclude that it was likely a Pekingese–Dachshund mix.
We tossed the dog the fatty bits and waited to watch him gobble up its auspicious treasure.
The dog sniffed a bit, and refused.
Jeff was not impressed. He immediately said to the dog: “FUCK YOU!”
Haha!
Followed by: “That is the pickiest fucking dog I have ever seen!”
Afterwards, we tossed him a peanut or two. He licked off all the salt and oil and spit out the rest.
Safe to say the dog was not so auspicious after all.
Amir’s aerial photos of Xinjiang – notice the extensive agriculture and towns around the hills and mountains = Chinese “desert”
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