Selected Translations from Li Juan's "Winter Pasture" and "Altay's Corner," Poster 6

In July 2009, a series of violent riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the northwestern part of the People’s Republic of China. The bloody riots began as a protest but... [ view full abstract ]

In July 2009, a series of violent riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in the northwestern part of the People’s Republic of China. The bloody riots began as a protest but escalated into violent attacks that mainly targeted Han Chinese people. The ethnic conflict lasted for several days and resulted in the death of 197 people and injury of approximately 1700. Just a year after the riots in the winter of 2010, Li Juan, a Han Chinese author from the Altay region, journeyed into the desert wilderness of Xinjiang province’s Southern Altay to stay with a semi-nomadic Kazakh family for more than three months during their seasonal migrations. Li Juan’s journey is chronicled in her 2012 book, Winter Pasture, and it features her many days of travelling along with descriptions of the lifestyle of Xinjiang ethnic minorities she encountered during those bitterly cold months of winter. Amidst the ongoing racial tension between the Han Chinese and local ethnic population in Xinjiang, Li Juan’s collections of essays center on two prominent relationships: that between herself and the various Xinjiang ethnic groups, but also between humanity and nature.