I am now thoroughly sick of talking about my health, so I have spent the day doing some research on Xining.
Xining has been a trade hub on the Northern Silk Road to Tibet for 2000 years. While Xining means ‘peace in the west’, as a frontier (and it still very much feels like this) it was a place of conflict, with incursions from Muslim warlords and from Tibet. In the seventh century, Princess Wencheng of the Tang Dynasty travelled through Xining on the Silk Road to marry King Songtsan Gampo of Tibet in a union that introduced Chinese culture to Tibet and opened up the Silk Road to centuries of flourishing trade.
During the 7th and early 8th centuries the area was a centre of constant warfare. \ In 763, it was overrun by the Tibetans until China recovered it in the 12th century by the Song dynasty.
Xining became an important religious centre for Gelug Buddhism, and the city has numerous temples.
During the Republican era (1912-1949), after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, the Ma clique, a powerful family of Hui Muslim generals, ruled Northwest China including Xining. They swore nominal allegiance to the central Republic of China (ROC) government while maintaining absolute autonomous control over the region. [During this period, Xining transitioned from a remote frontier outpost into a major geopolitical stronghold and was established as the official capital of the newly formed Qinghai Province in 1928.
Ma Bufang (1938–1949) was he most famous, progressive, and ruthless of the rulers, ruling with an iron fist. He transformed Xining through aggressive modernization, implemented large-scale construction projects, introducing paved roads, modern buildings, and Xining’s first piped water and sewage system (purchased from the United States in 1947, promoted secular and military education, enforcing strict public sanitation and hygiene laws and introduced textile manufacturing, wool spinning, and fur tanning.
On September 5, 1949, the Communist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) captured Xining. Ma Bufang fled the country, the Ma Clique was dismantled, and the city was integrated into the newly declared People’s Republic of China.
During WWII Xining was bombed by the Japanese. Liberation occurred in 1949 when the PLA, having scored a major victory in Lanzhou, captured the city from Ma Bufang – the ruling Muslim warlord at the time. He fled the country.
Because of its unique spot on the Tibetan plateau it became a crucial military and administrative site for the ‘peaceful liberation’ of Tibet, which marked the integration of Qinghai province into the new China.
Xining then transformed into an industrialised city dominated by hydroelectric power. It is also one of the most polluted cities in China (more than Beijing).
Xining is one of the more ethnically diverse cites in China. Han Chinese residents represent 74.04% of the total population, while Hui (16.26%) and Tibetans (5.51%) (ref?). The city has been influenced considerably by Hui and Tibetan cultures. While Hui people speak Chinese as their primary language, they are Muslims and there are approximately 50 mosques in the urban area of Xining.
However, Xining shows evidence of poverty and neglect which we haven’t seen so far on this tour. These are issues associated with ethnic disadvantage and segregation, where spaces are segregated and ethnic minorities experience considerable social disadvantage. Grant (2017) argues that in multicultural cities like Xining the state (as it does elsewhere in the world) becomes nervous about ethnic minority bodies and places which can morph into an overbearing security state. The strongest evidence of this I have seen this trip was in Chendu, where our tour van drove through the Tibetan area which was crawling with cops. When I asked Hank the guide what was happening, he was very evasive.
Grant also argues that Tibetans also sense discrimination in Xining during periods of police crackdowns on unregistered ethnic minority migrants. More positively, he argues that despite restrictive laws, Tibetans across Xining perceive many urban Tibetan places and inhabit them as a Tibetan Xining. This was certainly true in terms of the area around the Tibetan temple we went to the other day.
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