帕蒂古丽《蕴情的土地》

Keqiao District, Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province. Several Xinjiang Uygur restaurants and stalls sell naan bread and roasted meat at the city entrance by the Hangzhou-Ningbo Grand Canal. Melodies of Yueju and Shaoju operas intertwine with Xinjiang Uygur music and folk songs, echoing through the streets. The busy people on the roads rarely notice this most exciting sound in the city.

Canal water flooded with a faint fishy smell. Turquoise water hyacinth covers a small half of the river and the canal’s ancient towpath in a short distance winding. A young Uygur couple sat on the long wooden chairs of the Kedong Corridor Bridge that emitted a damp wooden smell. They whispered about how much naan bread they had sold today, while the playing children called ‘Ana’ (mom) in Uygur from the side. A dream-like echo of the heavily accented Shaoxing dialect flows at the other end of the bridge corridor.

The ‘Belt and Road’ in Keqiao, this commerce hotbed, is grounded in its history and reality. It is based on domestic development and spreads worldwide, transforming the concept into action and the vision into reality. The China Textile City has made Keqiao, such a small city, famous worldwide for its reputation as the ‘World City of Cloth’. With the construction of the ‘Belt and Road’, the ancient ‘Silk Road’, here extended to a modern version of the ‘international chorus’.

Yossef’s newly rented apartment is above the Keqiao Wanda Mall. Yossef has his way of opening up the folded part for himself. Last year, he was selected to represent Xinjiang Uygur entrepreneurs and participate in the ‘Creators’ Dreams’ speech in Keqiao District. He shared his entrepreneurial story in the Chinese Han language. The title of his speech is fascinating: ‘Wishing to be a Camel on the Silk Road’. This young man from Kashgar always associates himself with the images of the ‘Silk Road’ and a ‘Load-bearing Camel’. This speech contest made him realise that he felt he could be a Chinese broadcaster compared to those old Uygur folks who could not speak the Chinese Han language. After thirteen years of working at the mall in Keqiao, dealing with more and more local people, his Chinese Han language has improved significantly, even though he feels that communication with his family members in the Uygur dialect seems rusty. In order not to degrade the function of his local dialect, he now also consciously communicates with his Uygur friends so that he can take the opportunity to open up the channels of Uygur dialect usage and exercise his local dialect. When he was the class monitor of the Journalism Department at Xinjiang University, he would express his thoughts in the Uygur dialect at weekly class meetings. He could speak for half an hour in one breath. He went to college and chose to major in journalism because he wanted to be a journalist in the future and be able to see more of the outside world. Soon after graduation as a journalist intern, his relatives in the cloth business between Kashgar and Keqiao made him curious about this strange ‘amphibious’ life like a ‘camel flying between the north and the south’. He came to Keqiao with his relatives like a camel ‘carrying cloth on the Silk Road’. He was attracted by the intense business atmosphere of Keqiao and found that it was an excellent window to see the world.

The eventual focus of the Xinjiang TV reporter was naturally on Yossef’s relationship with the locals. Yossef specifically found a local business partner he had worked with for years. In her company, he sat in front of the camera and spoke eloquently in the Uygur dialect, with several executives in the company curiously participating in parts of the conversation. Yossef feels that words like trust, honesty, communication, and cooperation make him happy. He believes that it brings the same happiness to everyone. Yossef has established close partnerships with several people in an international trade hub. He and the local bosses, foreign traders, and foreign business people collaborate regarding economic and trade relations. Different regions, different ethnic groups, and different nationalities are all aiming for a common goal. This is how they come together to build a community. Everyone works together to do one thing. The focus is on cooperation and a win-win mechanism. The relationship no longer carries too many other overtones, and no disturbing tension exists. In addition to a business relationship, Yossef courteously interacts with the locals. Taking business as the link and with cooperation over time, emotional exchanges will naturally develop and unfold.