Gene A Bunin has spent the past 18 months talking to Uighur restaurant workers all over China. These conversations reveal how this Muslim minority feel the daily threat of arrest, detention and `re-education´It was about a year ago that I first walked into Karim´s restaurant, intending to write about it as part of the food guide I was putting together about ethnic Uighur restaurants in the traditionally Chinese `inner China` of the country´s east and south. Having already spent a decade researching the Uighurs - a largely Muslim ethnic minority group based mainly in the westernmost Xinjiang region, outside inner China - this food-guide project was intended as a fun spin-off from my usual linguistic studies. Or even a `treasure hunt`, you might say, given the rarity of Uighur restaurants in such major inner-China cities as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, where the Uighurs are migrants and where the Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group that account for more than 90% of China´s population, are the great majority.While my travels for the guide would involve visiting almost 200 restaurants in more than 50 cities, Karim´s was particularly memorable. I found the usual pilau rice and hand-pulled laghmen noodles - central-Asian dishes that are staples of Uighur cuisine, and which Karim´s kitchen did very well. More important, though, were the sense of warmth and feeling of community, which made sitting there for an additional hour or two a real pleasure. Karim was a great host, and his diners would often chat with each other across the tables, touching upon serious issues while maintaining a certain levity and humour. Related: The great firewall of China: Xi Jinping´s internet shutdown Continue reading...
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