Xinjiang cotton in the eyes of a Xinjiang Han Chinese

I am a native of Xinjiang, Han Chinese, born in the mainland provinces, as a child with my parents went to Xinjiang to beg for a living, the family rural farming, and then went to university on the mainland, and now in Germany. Tell us about your own family.

A worker picking cotton in Xinjiang

1, 2018, our side of the rural scattered living, every family to install cameras in front of their homes, at their own expense, requiring the content of the video to be saved for 90 days, not installed the police station will give you a seal on the door of your home, when the family spent more than two thousand. Do not know who is monitoring, where there are thieves, 90 days, which is longer than the five-star hotel monitoring retention time.

2, then to play on the chopper on the QR code steel, information and ID card binding, the chopper to be on the chain with the kitchen somewhere fixed. To buy tanked liquefied gas to register ID cards. Go to the gas station to refuel, buy oil needs to be registered by the village committee to open a certificate. I just think, why not all with an edge are locked with chains (all farm tools), and car tractors, that thing is more powerful.

3, that time will also raid the so-called explosives, not to say that your home inside and outside a rummage. The family planted fruit trees, there is a kind of medicine called stone sulfur compound used to prevent the bark of fruit trees by insect bites, that medicine is lime and sulfur boiled and made. At that time, there were still a few kilograms of finished medicine from previous years left in the yard and the parents were found and questioned for a long time. It seems that everyone is a terrorist.

4, 2019 onwards the village organized weekly flag-raising, Han people take turns to stand guard at the entrance of the village, encountering strangers to register. (I do not know who to prevent, do not know for whom the post stands). The Uyghur male compatriots are even worse, are farmers, but from April to July, they are arranged to focus on training every day during the day to kick in step, walk in formation and other similar military training activities, no one cares if your fields are deserted, no one cares about your income. (They are farmers?)

5, the town’s major traffic roads are set up, Han Chinese people can pass at will, ethnic minorities under 70 years old to receive ID registration and cross-examination checks (required to open the phone for police, auxiliary police to look through at will).

6, the second half of 2018 to early 2019, there is a so-called “two jobs”, I do not know what exactly represents, anyway, we saw the content is that our local men and women, regardless of ethnicity were collected blood DNA, all 10 fingerprints, iris scan, this thing is wearing a uniformed doctor in the registration and sorting samples. Many farmers work fingerprints are worn off, and were reprimanded.

7, the center of the town was originally a kindergarten elementary school residential area (all bungalows) around the government building, and then to engage in new rural bungalows are all pushed out to build buildings, but the back cover all the buildings are more than 500 meters away from the authorities, the authorities around the building is extremely empty, are green space.

8, New Year’s holidays when the town center several main roads a hundred meters a post, a post of three people, (one is with a rifle, three people with a police motorcycle), another patrol car patrol. (Our town less than 20,000 people, did not expect to need a team of more than a hundred people this personnel costs, this equipment, money spent on education is not good)

9, Xinjiang cotton is very hot, 10 years ago, from the third grade to the second year of high school, every year, the school has organized students to pick up cotton 20 days to a month. Each person has a daily task, the excess to give labor costs. We there are now really mechanized cotton picking, because we can not find people picking cotton, labor costs are too expensive. Machine picked cotton is dirty as hell, the rating has dropped, and the price has dropped. Ten years ago, hand-picked cotton can be sold for 10 yuan a kilogram, picking labor costs 1 to 1.5 a kilogram, a powerful day can pick 150 kg of cotton, pick 90 kg or more a little effort to reach. I was also able to pick 100 kg of cotton a day. Now the machine picking cotton can sell 6 yuan a kilogram is good. Individual manual picking to spend 2.5 yuan a kilogram of labor costs. 10 years ago there was a cotton picking army to Xinjiang in the fall, hard-working couple of the past three months to earn a 50,000 yuan and then go home for the New Year, the cotton farmers can also earn more than 100,000 a year. Now farmers also have no money to earn, and no one goes to Xinjiang as seasonal workers picking cotton. After this year’s cotton incident, the price of cotton is expected to be even worse, to see if the final bill for patriotism is still those farmers.

Forced labor, I do not know if there is a specific, I only know that Xinjiang is now really very short of agricultural labor. Cotton this kind of can also be mechanized, my family’s fruit will not work at all.

10、The real impact on us is

We are also considered seasonal labor, some years ago to the fruit harvest, every year the family hired 20 to 30 people to pick fruit, at that time to find people convenient, because there will be next door to the Uyghur compatriots living in the county specifically to find work to do, they often know each other in pairs to pick fruit, work for a fair price, sometimes the language communication will be a bit problematic, but by and large, the work is not bad. But after 16 years, the Uyghur compatriots were not allowed to come to our town where the Han Chinese live to look for work, severing the connection. (Officially, you can come, but you need a guarantor, proof of blah, blah, blah, registration)

Now the price of fruit harvesting is very high and it is impossible to find people to work. For example, in 15 years, a kilogram of fruit was picked for 50 cents, last year a kilogram of fruit for 1.2 yuan, and we had to wait in line for the only few Han Chinese workers in the area to finish their work in other families. And the fruit to the ripening season is not picked to fall, not pick the quality will decline. So the high price of work can not be helped, only to bear. Friends who do not know the situation may not know what kind of price level, which means that you have to pay 350-500 yuan a day to hire a worker to complete the last process, while the fruit is sold at only 3 yuan a kilogram. My parents have been in tears these past few years, and the orchard that they had single-handedly cultivated could not be dried up. Yes, especially last year our family also contributed 200,000 yuan (loss) to the victory against the epidemic, a hundred tons of fruit almost rotting in the ground and subsequently sold at a low price. There will be no shadow of such contribution from us in the recognition meeting of the anti-epidemic. In addition, when the community was closed during the fight against the epidemic, and the province was accompanied by an epidemic in a city in Xinjiang for two months, farmers could not leave the land and their hearts were filled with the crops in the ground, and many people carried rice and flour to live in the nest in the ground. When the quarantine was notified, everyone scattered and fled (fled to live in the fields so as not to delay the farming work), and all kinds of necessities were not brought in full, living like wild people, without water to drink flooded dam water (back to the 1980s).

I want to say too much, inevitably verbose.

11, I used to be not very red little pink, once felt that politics is far away from me, that is a matter of high level. Life gave me lessons. Thanks to Mr. Wen Zhao (Editor’s note: Wen Zhao is a commentator on Chinese issues, and has a Youtube channel called “Wen Zhao Talks about the Past and the Present”).

12: Anyone who has been to Switzerland knows how beautiful it is. I think Xinjiang is as beautiful as Switzerland, but someone just ruined it. The ambiguity of the authorities and the propaganda problems have made a lot of friends in the country (being shaped) to look at Xinjiang people in a different light. They don’t agree with the so-called Xinjiang independence (neither do I), but they agree with the strong control of Xinjiang, saying that it should be properly controlled, and that there is no peace on the mainland if it is not controlled more severely. This seems very divisive to me. You don’t allow her to be independent, and you don’t treat the people there as compatriots, considering them second-class citizens. So do you see them as a family in your heart? Anyway, I was blushing when I took a car to the city and the police asked all my fellow Uyghurs to get out of the car to be inspected when I crossed the checkpoint. (I have such a split good friends, I think this split, the domestic public opinion to take the blame, their own do not think to take the blame) (domestic before there is clean Xinjiang Uyghur compatriots repatriated back to Xinjiang action, I also because the ID card Xinjiang live in a hotel by a different care)

13, in Xinjiang, you can actually see countless times a day people’s privacy is so tangibly violated at will. Anyone in uniform, even security guards can search you at will without administrative documents, search your home. There are so many other stupid things that waste society’s resources right there, right under your nose and repeated every day. I don’t know if Xinjiang is a prison or not, but the people there do live like prisoners. The people can endure anything, as long as they can live and have a mouth to feed. Simply leaving is only a choice a few people can make. The deeper issues that I didn’t see are not written about. All the attention to Xinjiang makes me happy, and I hope that when the spotlight hits, that’s when things start to slowly get better. Although the situation didn’t feel as good as it did on the mainland when Hu was there, now that I think about it, it was the best time for Xinjiang. The people of Xinjiang could cooperate and communicate with each other spontaneously, and their economic activities were less disturbed than they are now, when the people are forcibly divided, defending each other, creating a gap, and posting national unity everywhere. I just want to say that if our party really loves the country and the border, it will not make things like the above.

I hope my experience can help my friends to be a little more understanding and tolerant of their friends in Xinjiang, and pay attention to Xinjiang issues, attention is a strength.

It is really a sad when self-censorship becomes a subconscious. Would like to say more, or even help the family sell the fruit this year to find the boss, but, just …… hope this speech will not bring trouble to themselves and their families. Little pink fifty cent sprayers please stay away.