Searching for My Father’s Past in Xinjiang
The crisp Altay air, thin and biting, cut through me like a dull knife. It was — a far cry from the smoggy chaos of Beijing, my usual haunt as bureau chief for The New York Times. But here I was, thousands of miles west, in a town perched on the edges of China, where Russia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan whispered greetings to each other across the mountains. This wasn’t just another assignment, another story to chase down. This was… personal.
The Weight of History, the Urgency of Time
Six decades. That’s how long the ghost of my father’s past had lingered in these parts. , he was a young soldier – my dad, Yook Kearn Wong – stationed in Altay. A Han Chinese man in a predominantly Kazakh cavalry unit, imagine that. He didn’t talk much about those days, and now, with him gone, these fragmented memories were all I had left.
Finding any records of his time here felt like searching for a snowflake in a blizzard. Especially now, with the ever-present gaze of the Chinese government tightening its grip on Xinjiang. The clock was ticking, each minute feeling like a grain of sand slipping through my fingers.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Xinjiang. Even the name held a weight, a sense of unease. The year marked a grim turning point for the region. That’s when President Xi Jinping, well, let’s just say he doubled down on the whole “control through repression” thing. Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims – they bore the brunt of it.
But you see, Xinjiang has always been this… jewel, coveted by Chinese rulers for centuries. A strategic crossroads, a melting pot of cultures, religions, languages. A place where the ghosts of empires past still seemed to linger, whispering on the wind.
For me, finding traces of my father in this tumultuous landscape felt like a shot in the dark. But something – some primal urge, some yearning deep within – drove me forward. I needed to know. Needed to understand this missing piece of him, this missing piece of me.
A Glimmer in the Dust
The Altay Civil Affairs Bureau. A drab, concrete building that seemed to suck the light right out of the sky. Not exactly the kind of place that inspired hope. But hey, when you’re on a quest for long-lost military records, you gotta start somewhere, right?
Fate, or Just Plain Luck?
The woman behind the desk, Wei Yangxuan, couldn’t have been older than my niece. A no-nonsense type, all sharp angles and a gaze that could curdle milk. Turns out, she wasn’t just another cog in the bureaucratic machine. Wei was an army vet herself – organized events for retired soldiers. Talk about a stroke of luck.
Bridging the Divide
I took a deep breath, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. This was it. I told her everything – about my father, his time in Altay, my desperate search for any sliver of his past. Her eyes, initially guarded, softened just a fraction. Maybe, just maybe, there was a flicker of understanding there.
“The old army base,” I asked, my voice rough with emotion. “Do you… do you know anything about it?”
Following the Trail
Wei pursed her lips, tapping a meticulously manicured nail against the worn desktop. “The old base,” she echoed, her voice carefully neutral. “It’s been gone a long time. Decades. Turned into a… well, let’s just say it’s different now.”
Hope, that fickle beast, reared its head again. “Different how?” I pressed, trying to keep the eagerness out of my voice. “What’s there now? Maybe there are still some old records, someone who remembers…”
She hesitated, then sighed, a quiet sound that seemed to carry the weight of the world. “Look,” she said, her gaze meeting mine with a directness that was both unnerving and strangely comforting. “Things are… complicated here. You know that. Digging into the past, especially anything military, it’s…” she trailed off, shaking her head. “Let’s just say it’s not exactly encouraged.”
Walls of Silence, Whispers of the Past
The following days were a blur of dead ends and bureaucratic runarounds. The city archives – a treasure trove of dusty documents and faded photographs – yielded nothing. The few elderly locals who remembered the old army base were tight-lipped, their eyes filled with a mixture of fear and resignation.
Evenings, I’d find solace in the local teahouse, sipping yak butter tea and trying to decipher the stories etched on the faces around me. Old men with weathered skin and calloused hands, their eyes holding the vastness of the steppe. Women wrapped in brightly colored scarves, their laughter as vibrant as the intricate patterns woven into their clothing.
One evening, an old Kazakh man, his face a roadmap of time, beckoned me closer. “You seek the past,” he rasped, his voice barely audible above the clatter of dominoes. “But the past is a dangerous place, especially here.” He pointed a gnarled finger at his chest. “I remember,” he whispered, his eyes filled with a distant sorrow. “But some stories are best left untold.”
Pieces of a Puzzle
Back in my sparsely furnished hotel room, the silence felt deafening. Was I chasing a ghost, a figment of my own imagination? Just as I was about to succumb to despair, a knock on the door sent a jolt of adrenaline through me. It was Wei, her face unreadable in the dim hallway light.
“I made some inquiries,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “There’s a… retired archivist. Lives on the outskirts of town. He might be able to help, but…”
“But?”
“He’s… reluctant to talk. Especially to outsiders. And he’s wary of the authorities. But I told him about you, about your father.” She met my gaze, her expression a mixture of sympathy and warning. “Don’t get your hopes up. But it’s a start.”
As I followed Wei through the labyrinthine alleys of the old town, the setting sun casting long shadows that danced like phantoms, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on the verge of uncovering something significant. Something that would not only shed light on my father’s past but also illuminate the hidden truths of this complex and troubled land.