Expat Eyes | Xinjiang through My Eyes: Diversity, Reality, and a Shared Story

If I had to choose a single moment to start filming immediately, I would not point to any landmark. It was at the Grand Bazaar in Urumqi that I saw Uygur merchants bargaining fluently in Mandarin, Kazak girls dancing spontaneously in the square, and Han Chinese tourists capturing the moments on their phones—three ethnic groups sharing the same rhythm of life. In that moment I realised that the true narrative core of Xinjiang is not its geography but its people.

As a media professional, I am always searching for the "emotional centre" of a story, and here that centre lies in the most ordinary scenes: families sharing lunch in the marketplace, young people proudly wearing their traditional costumes, elders sitting in a circle playing the muqam. These images need no commentary; they speak for themselves about a society where people feel safe and at home.

Kushairi Bin Abang in Tacheng Prefecture, northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A Parallel World: Why Xinjiang Feels Familiar to a Sarawakian

Before I delve deeper, I should explain why a media executive from Borneo finds Xinjiang so instinctively resonant. Sarawak, my home, is Malaysia's largest state—spanning 124,450 square kilometres—just as Xinjiang is China's largest province-level region, covering 1.66 million square kilometres. Both are geographic giants that shape their nations' resource endowments, border dynamics, and regional development strategies.

Culturally, both are powerhouses. Xinjiang is famed for its Muqam music, vibrant dances, Silk Road heritage, traditional medicine, and bustling bazaars. Sarawak is equally known for its indigenous longhouses, the haunting melodies of the sape, rainforest traditions, and the internationally acclaimed Rainforest World Music Festival. In both, culture is not locked in museums—it breathes in everyday life: in the spices of a soup, the weave of a textile, the rhythm of a harvest dance.

Strategically, both are gateway regions—Xinjiang borders eight countries and has been a historic artery of trade and ideas along the Silk Road; Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, borders Brunei and Indonesia's Kalimantan, serving as a vital gateway within ASEAN.

These parallels explain why I did not feel like a distant observer in Xinjiang. I felt I was looking at a mirror, albeit one with a different climate and landscape—a place where diversity, resource wealth, and cultural pride are intertwined with the need for stability and inclusive development.

Kushairi Bin Abang at the Ancient City of Jiaohe in Turpan,northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Assessing Xinjiang as a Tourism Destination

From a tourism-brand perspective, Xinjiang's greatest competitive edge is "unity within diversity." In five days, I experienced the modern urban tempo of Urumqi, the millennia-old civilisational layers of Turpan, and the cross-border vitality of Tacheng—a density rarely found anywhere else. For Southeast Asian travellers, particularly from Malaysia's multi-ethnic society, Xinjiang's cultural richness and culinary variety hold natural appeal.

Urumqi: Where Culture Lives, Not Just Lingers

Among the sites in Urumqi, the International Grand Bazaar impressed me most because it defied the "museum-style" presentation of culture. In Sarawak, markets like those in Kuching or Sibu are also the glue of social life; but the Grand Bazaar takes this to another level—handicrafts sit next to livestreaming booths run by young entrepreneurs, and traditional medicinal tea stalls face shops selling imported chocolates. Culture here is not a preserved relic but a living, tradeable, experiential reality. As a media professional, I see natural programme material in every corner: each stall tells a web of human relationships, and every product carries a cross-regional story. This is exactly the kind of authentic, people-centric content that resonates with audiences back home, who understand that commerce and culture are inseparable.

Turpan: The Depth of Civilisation

Turpan fundamentally changed my perception of Xinjiang as a place defined solely by geography. The earthen ruins of Jiaohe Ancient City made me feel the layered civilisations dating back to the Han dynasty, while the Karez water system revealed the wisdom of ancient peoples in adapting to an arid environment. This philosophy of "living with the land rather than against it" resonates strikingly with the way Sarawak's indigenous communities relate to the rainforest—using knowledge passed down through generations to sustainably manage resources. If I were to convey one core message to Malaysian audiences, it would be this: Xinjiang is not merely a landscape of spectacular scenery; it is a living textbook of human adaptation, much like the longhouse communities of Borneo have adapted to their riverine world.

Confronting Narrative Bias

Regarding the bias in some Western narratives, I found a powerful counter-example in a small incident at the Grand Bazaar. When a stallholder proactively introduced her lavender soaps to foreign tourists in fluent English, her ease and warmth simply did not fit the picture of a "repressed" society often painted in certain reports. I do not claim that one visit offers a complete picture, but as a journalist I uphold a basic principle: no report should filter out the everyday faces of ordinary people. Xinjiang's story has been over-politicised; what needs to be restored is precisely the unfiltered texture of daily life.

Seeing Is Believing

My deepest takeaway from this trip can be summed up in one sentence: Xinjiang can never be fully understood from a distance. As media professionals, we owe it to our audiences to see with our own eyes, listen with our own ears, and tell the story with fairness, context, and humanity. When our journalists learn to capture the clamour of the bazaar with their microphones, to frame the afternoon nap under the grapevines with their cameras, and to record the stories of cross-border marriages at the port, Xinjiang's narrative will finally break free from the cycle of stereotypes.

This principle holds true anywhere: no civilisation's richness can be reduced to a headline. And I am grateful that, this time, we chose to measure it with our own steps—just as we measure our own Sarawak, not by simplified images of "jungle" or "remote Borneo," but by the living, breathing diversity of its people.

Kushairi Bin Abang is the Chief Executive Officer of the Sarawak Media Group.

Producer: Xiao Chunfei

Supervisors: Ding Tao and Jie Wenjin

Planners: Jie Wenjin and Cheng Li

Reviewers: Wang Xiabing and Hou Weili

Editors: Gvlzar Mijit and Song Duer