Demolition and Eviction: Part 1

Here is the story of one Uyghur family and how they experienced demolition of their neighborhood and eviction from the city. The events told in this story are eye-witness accounts from the field during 2017, though identifiable demographic information has been changed to protect the participants.

Three-year-old Guzelnur was playing in the street with the neighborhood kids. Her face and hands were black with soot from the coal dust that coated every surface. She burst into a giggly smile with her arms outstretched for a hug when she saw me. I dropped my grocery bags and lifted her up into my arms as she squealed and gave me a kiss on each cheek.

With her legs wrapped around me, I carried Guzelnur to her mother’s shop. I greeted her mother, Aygul, by touching both of my cheeks to hers with light kisses. When I picked up some fruit, Aygul tried to refuse my money. I insisted, putting it into her fanny pack since she would not take it. She finally acquiesced and invited me to join her inside for a chat.

Aygul quickly swept the carpet with a hand broom, pulled out their guest mat with gold trim, folded it over double for me, and urged me to sit.

A picture of a typical Uyghur living room with carpet, decorated mat with gold trim, and a tablecloth for eating while a child sleeps in the corner. Fruit is commonly brought out for guests. Source: Photo by author.

Flustered, she apologized profusely for not having any tea on hand: “We just don’t have the conditions for luxuries like tea right now.” She then brought in naan bread, hot water, and tiny clementine oranges from the shop for us to share.

Pixar’s Ice Age dubbed in Uyghur played on a TV in the background. A sheet serving as a curtain covered the window, and ropes laced across the room held wet clothes hung to dry. The tiny room was heated by a coal stove in a corner that glowed red with burning embers. I tasted the coal in the air that made me cough and my throat tighten. The fumes made it difficult to breathe, but at least it was warm. She apologized for the mess and the mildew smell.

“I did laundry yesterday. I just don’t have the conditions where I can afford something like a washing machine,” she explained, shaking her head and shrugging.  

Guzelnur squatted and peed in a bucket on the floor. There was no toilet in their house, only a public one across the street that they have to pay one yuan each time to use.

Aygul then clapped her hands excitedly as she started to make noodles for lunch. I stood next to her as she cooked and refused my help. We chatted about our lives.

“I’m so tired and worn out. I’m a mother of two young kids, so there’s no such thing as rest for me,” she said, sighing.

Aygul had a round face that was almost always smiling, despite the fact that one of her favorite activities was complaining. She vented to me about her poor home conditions, her husband and kids, and the Chinese government. Aygul spoke fast, so fast that sometimes I couldn’t catch all the words as they jumbled together and piled on top of one another. But even when she was angry or upset, she usually still managed to slip in jokes, even if it was at the expense of her husband.

“He is so skinny and weak, ugly and poor, he was the worst of the lot that was pursuing me back in my younger days,” she told me laughing.

Her jolly chortles made her large belly shake and her chubby cheeks stick out. When she was tired—as she so often was—she put her head in her hands and her eyelids drooped, and she talked a bit slower, telling me about the pressures of trying to run the shop and raise two young children at the same time without the resources, such as a washing machine, that she envied and desired.

Her husband took a break from baking naan. He wore a white apron dirty with soot and dust, and his face shined with sweat. He sat cross-legged, leaning against the wall with a cigarette burning red between his fingers. When his cigarette was finished, he filled up a bucket of water from the spigot on the side of the room. When he returned to the tonur oven where he was making naan bread, he leaned over the cutting board, using his whole body to knead the dough. A fast Uyghur tune blasted its electronic harmony.

“He plays this song at least a hundred times a day,” Aygul explained. “It helps him get energy when he is bored or tired and he needs to get motivated to lean over the broiling tonur oven.”

Photo of a typical tonur oven with bread stuck to the sides as it bakes over coals. Source: https://allinnet.info/culture/the-armenian-tonir-oven/

Her husband then placed the moist, onioned and kneaded dough onto the sides of the fiery coal oven, sticking them on the sides with his hands and then pulling out the cooked ones with a metal pincher.

After lunch, I said my goodbyes and we continued our routine of talking every day when I stopped by to get fruit and naan. They renovated the naan shop in early spring of 2017 and life was good, they told me.