Go West

Groups of school teenagers smiling ra-diantly under the yellow sandy sky—this is the impression of Xinjiang UygurAutonomous Region that Xue Xianjun, amiddle school teacher from Beijing, will al-ways remember.

Sand storms that hit Beijing every springwere the only extreme weather phenom-enon Xue had experienced before going toHotan, a prefecture in Xinjiang bordering theTaklimakan Desert. But in Hotan, it is just aregular occurrence—such storms batter thelocality for at least 280 days a year.

And if not for a pairing assistance pro-gram between Beijing and Hotan, Xue mighthave never had a lasting connection withXinjiang. The vast region that covers onesixth of China’s total area was just a remote,mysterious world for her.

Hello Hotan

As China’s westernmost region, where morethan half the residents are Muslim, Xinjiang’simage is a combination of marvelous scener-ies, camel caravans, sweet and juicy fruitsand barbecues redolent with cumin.

But Hotan was a stark contrast whenXue came here to teach English. Donkeys,not camels, ran down muddy narrow streetsteeming with pedestrian traffic, and theschool she taught at, the No.2 Middle Schoolin Moyu County, was small and shabby. Somestudents there could not even speak standard Mandarin Chinese, let alone English.

“It was astonishing to see the studentsstudy there under such conditions,” Xue said.“Beijing had already held the Olympic Gameswhen I went there in 2008, and Hotan wasstill one of the least developed places inChina. I felt I was obliged to help.”

To pique the students’ interest in learn-ing English, Xue held various activities andused mini-replicas of the Bird’s Nest andthe Water Cube, the two major venues forthe 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, which shebrought as prizes for English competitions.

Xue returned to Beijing in 2009, butapplied to go to Hotan again in 2013.“Compared to those in Beijing, students inHotan needed me more,” Xue said. This time,she taught at the Hotan No.5 Middle Schoolfor three years.

“I was pleased to see that conditionswere much better,” Xue said. “The schoolwas newly built and equipped with a heatingsystem for the winter.”

But poverty was still a major problemthat hindered some students. Xue, dubbed“Beijing Mom” by her pupils, sponsored eightstudents from poor families to completetheir education through high school, andsome of them even enrolled in college.

“Without her, I might have quit school andworked on a farm or even gotten married early,”said a Uygur student, Rizwangul, who was spon-sored by Xue and enrolled in the University ofKashgar. “She changed my life.”

Xue is not alone in the school. As an as-sistance partner, Beijing has sent more than40 teachers to Hotan every year since 2011.

Wang Hongzhong, who has been work-ing in the Hotan No.5 Middle School for 16years, fi rst came here in 1999, stayed for 13years and returned in 2015.

“Walking in Hotan, I always came across students I used to teach. It feels wonderful tosee students fulfi ll their dreams here,” Wangsaid.

Some of Wang’s students have enrolledin universities in the United States, and somealso became teachers at the Hotan school.“I never regret working in Hotan,” Wangsaid. “My family in Beijing deserves anapology though. I missed many importantmoments of theirs in the past years but Ithink it was worthwhile.”

People going to Xinjiang as part of thisassistance program are from various fi elds.Wang Jie, an expert in DNA testing fromBeijing, went to Hotan in 2014 and stayedfor two years.

“I would hear news about terrorism al-most every day in Hotan,” Wang said. Duringher stay there, she dealt with more than1,200 cases and helped set up a DNA data-base of more than 450,000 samples, whichgreatly helped tracking of criminals.“I realized with this experience how hardpolice offi cers in Xinjiang work to safeguardthe security of our country,” Wang said.

All­round assistance

The Beijing-Hotan partnership is part of a na-tional pairing assistance program for Xinjiang.It was initiated in 1997 with central ministriesand economically developed provinces andmunicipalities supporting Xinjiang in build-ing new infrastructure and boosting localdevelopment.

In early years of the program, only gov-ernment officials were sent to Xinjiang. In2010, the central authorities decided toexpand the assistance to more sectors in-cluding education, healthcare and culture.A renewed pairing assistance program in-volving 19 provinces and municipalities waslaunched in the year, focusing on povertyalleviation and job creation.

In the past 20 years, more than 19,000officials from outside Xinjiang have workedin the region. The program is the largest ofits kind in the country’s history in terms ofgeographical area, the population involvedas well as the investment, and has broughtsubstantial changes for people in Xinjiang.Between 2011 and 2015, 5,161 as-sistance projects were launched in Xinjiangwith a combined investment of over 58 bil-lion yuan ($8.63 billion), according to offi cialstatistics. Most of the money, 74 percent,went to livelihood improvement programs.In the same period, 5 million people sawtheir housing conditions improve, and morethan 200,000 workers secured stable jobs. Inaddition, Xinjiang built 222 new schools anda large number of public service facilities.In 2014, a national conference onXinjiang’s development focused more onsoft power assistance.

“The conference brought up clearer andmore detailed goals,” said Li Guoqiang, aresearcher at the Chinese Academy of SocialSciences. “It is important to cultivate profes-sionals in the fields of management andscience and train entrepreneurs locally.”After the conference, the 19 provincesand municipalities intensifi ed their assistancein creating more jobs and bringing in moreopportunities for Xinjiang.

Zhou Aiwu, an offi cial from Hengshui Cityin north China’s Hebei Province, joined theassistance program in Yuli County, BayingolinMongolian Autonomous Prefecture, inSeptember 2013. Soon after assuming offi cein the local government, he found languagewas a major barrier to his involvement in the local community.

“I felt quite like an outsider at the begin-ning as I couldn’t speak the Uygur language,”Zhou told Xinjiang Daily. “It was a big prob-lem to work with locals without knowingtheir language.”

At a meeting with local residents andoffi cials, Zhou felt awkward that he couldn’tunderstand a word of their conversation anddecided to learn the Uygur language withthe help of a retired teacher.

Learning a new language from scratchwas no easy task for this 44-year-old.Zhou spent four hours on this every day.Six months later he could carry basic conver-sations and a year later, he could speak andwrite the language.

“As an official, it is important to learnthe local language to understand the localculture better and uplift working ability,”Zhou said. “I made many more local friendsand learned information that couldn’t be ob-tained by just relying on interpreters.”

Soon, other officials involved in the as-sistance program followed suit and learnedthe Uygur language and Zhou was invited toshare his learning skills. Twenty-three offi cials from Hengshui paired with local business