...while engaging in Great Game shenanigans in the 'stans, which might, at least in part, account for their Uyghur repression.
Did you ever read William Dalrymple's In Xanadu? It's a fun read, in the tradition of English writing about the back of Asia - ie, it's the callow ramblings of a Very Bright Young Thing who's reporting back from places where (English)Man has never trod before, but it has this chilling bit, when Will wanders off the path in midwestern China, that suggests a landscape of nuclear power experiments gone wrong, no reporting and the rule of local gang/warlords. I'm suspicious of Will as a source, but that episode is the only such moment in a book that you might think would be chock full of them. It reminded me forcefully of how little I know about China beyond Beijing.
I'd be curious to know what the life of Hokkien Muslims is like these days, too: whether there's any repression of the as a group in the south, or by the coast.
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Did you ever read William Dalrymple's In Xanadu? It's a fun read, in the tradition of English writing about the back of Asia - ie, it's the callow ramblings of a Very Bright Young Thing who's reporting back from places where (English)Man has never trod before, but it has this chilling bit, when Will wanders off the path in midwestern China, that suggests a landscape of nuclear power experiments gone wrong, no reporting and the rule of local gang/warlords. I'm suspicious of Will as a source, but that episode is the only such moment in a book that you might think would be chock full of them. It reminded me forcefully of how little I know about China beyond Beijing.
I'd be curious to know what the life of Hokkien Muslims is like these days, too: whether there's any repression of the as a group in the south, or by the coast.