Xinjiang Glacier Redux

March 25, 2008 | Category: China

Pointing out the problemFrom the Ch-infamous.com Shameless Self-Promotion Department, a new article on China Dialogue (based on the trip Zachary Slobig and I took to Xinjiang last year, co-written by myself and Mr. Slobig):

On a hazy afternoon in the city of Urumqi, northwest China, Song Yujiang steps into the cramped outdoor equipment shop he runs on South Youhao Road, and gently wrests control of the store’s computer from his two-year-old son. He clicks through a folder of photos from his trips leading moneyed weekend warriors into western China’s rugged mountains, and stops at a photo of several hikers standing on a field of grey mountain shale, dwarfed by dozens of eerily beautiful towers of white ice.

“This is an ice pagoda forest,” the guide explains, his face sliding from reverent to grim as he aims his finger at one of the obelisks. “These are formed when the bigger glaciers melt.”

A search for the typical Urumqi resident would not start with Song. He is too quietly thoughtful, and too hopelessly in love with nature, to fit in with the hard-bitten natives and industrialist migrants who otherwise populate the polluted capital of the Xinjiang autonomous region. But the mountain enthusiast shares at least one thing with others in the city: he stands to benefit from the region’s fast rising temperatures; even if the increased heat means his future grandchildren — or even his son — may eventually have to find somewhere else to live.

Read the full piece here (English) 或这里 (中文).

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.