Lang Chen: The more learned or knowledgeable a person is, the less likely he or she would focus on your ethnic or religious background and the more likely he or she would judge you by your works, capability, and character.

My favorite movie director is Jean-Luc Godard of France. I like and share his way of thinking, and he’s had a huge influence on me. Many issues he is concerned with relate to human nature, human survival, and human love and hate. Although his movies are hard to understand, they can easily touch people of my background and experience.

I was born in February 1969 at Xishan Coal Mine, 14 kilometers from Urumqi, and lived there 11 years. I was the fourth of five siblings. My eldest sister began to teach me to read when I was three years old. By the time I started school, I already had a large vocabulary and was capable of reading some children’s books.

I saw the movie Red Lantern at age four. The movie was projected onto a curtain hung between two trees on the playground. I began to sing right after seeing the movie. My parents divorced when I was five and my younger brother was one month old –That’s probably why I became an inactive child.

Families at the coal mine were all Han people, except my family and another Uyghur family. I'm most grateful to my dad for allowing me to complete basic education instead of making me drop out to help him with farm work, as many other Uyghur families did in those days.

My dad is an honest, but atypical, Uyghur. He is not arrogant, not sociable, and not an alcoholic. The only time I saw him drunk was after the death of Premier Zhou Enlai in 1976. His bitter weeping for the man he respected most left a deep impression on my young mind. That day, my dad made me and my elder sister get up at 5:00 a.m., as it was snowing heavily. Still quite sleepy, I unsteadily walked along a trodden path to the canteen of the coal mine. Since no memorial service in Zhou’s honor was allowed, my dad asked us to kowtow to the premier’s portrait. I didn’t like it because, as a child, I didn’t know whose portrait it was. Nor could I possibly know it was a portrait of a dead person. Consequently, my elder sister slapped me twice in the face, causing me so much pain and sadness that I immediately burst out crying. Those were times when anybody could be labeled a “counterrevolutionary” and be paraded through the streets. My dad had been denounced in open meetings as well, even by my eldest sister. People in those days were indoctrinated to think in simple extremes of good and bad. I was no exception. I seriously believed my dad was a bad man of whom I should be ashamed. By the time I grew up, nearly everyone forgot that experience. Neither my dad, my elder sister, nor I mentioned it again.

My dad sent me to school at the proper time and I looked forward to it. I was a top student from first to fourth grade and remained a class leader all the way through. When I was in fifth grade, my dad moved from the coal mine to Urumqi after getting a new job. So, I was transferred from the coal mine school to a bigger school in the city. At the new school, I started moving up into the top 10 of my class, but my teacher wasn’t impressed with my performance. Long before the emergence of terms such as “Xinjiang thieves,” “cut nut candy gangs,” “terrorist acts,” etc., ethnic minority groups grew up and lived under stereotypes of some form, even in a multiethnic region like Xinjiang. Rumors about Uyghurs in those days focused on drunkenness, domestic violence, divorce, perverseness, and so on.

I was the only Uyghur student in my class. Mr. Hou Naiwen, my head teacher, was a kind, grey-haired senior, but he seated me at the worst desk in the last row of the classroom, with no desk mate. The wood chips in the desk stabbed my fingertips, or got stuck beneath my fingernails, every time I wasn’t careful when putting my schoolbag in the drawer. Why would he make such a seating arrangement? Was he concerned I may misbehave and get into fights or other mischief? I wondered. However, Mr. Hou immediately changed his attitude toward me after the mid-term exam because I had the best overall score and scored 100 percent in geography. He began to give me extracurricular reading, appointed me to the class committee, seated me at a better desk with a desk mate, and involved me in various school activities. My parents’ divorce, and the defects of a broken family, had a negative psychological impact on me. I studied hard because I badly wanted to please my teacher so I would be appreciated and better protected. Grace and praise from a teacher were some of the best things a student could wish for back then. I believed in the power of knowledge to change one’s fate and wished to attend college one day.

I observed people to figure out whether they liked me or not. In fact, I had a sort of split personality that lasted until I was about 20 years old. I was warm and easygoing on one hand, but aloof and self-preserved on the other. I was also sensitive, often balking at communicating or dealing with people.

As I grow older, I am disposed to recall past memories. When I flip through my journal and read poems I’ve written, I realize how much fear I’ve had and how much I’ve tried to please people by studying hard, getting good grades, and behaving well. Those were my only ways of gaining favor, playmates, and kindness. Although my dad later remarried, and I thus had a stepmom, I still envied other kids for having a healthy, sound family.

Prior to moving to Urumqi, I had no concept of ethnicity. There was another Uyghur family in my neighborhood, but I seldom played with the kids because I thought they did too poorly in school. None of the Han pals I played with would ever see me as someone different. The broken desk did make me feel excluded, but I later thought the head teacher probably did it without his knowing it. He became my benefactor after a change in attitude. Those who claim Uyghurs teach their kids to hate Han people are just nuts.

In junior high, I took part in a history competition for Urumqi middle school students and won an award. The prize was a type of binder teachers often used to prepare lessons. I used the paper sheets for writing my first movie script, modeled after one published in a movie journal. It looks silly today, but it took me a year to write that patriotic story about the Mongolian Torghut tribe making their way back to China from Russia in 1773. I put the manuscript under my bed to keep it safe and in good condition, but my step brother found it and cut it up. I was so mad I slapped his face on the spot. Before I knew it, my dad hit me in the face with a fire hook usually used to stoke a coal-burning stove. My face hurt badly and instantly swelled.

That was not the end of my ordeal. Two days later, on July 1, 1984, a Muslim holiday, I had another clash with my dad. He wanted me to go to the mosque, but I didn’t want to. So, he whipped me again and pressed my face to the floor with a pickaxe. I could hear my bones clatter and I believed he was going to kill me. Just then, several people closed in on us and held him in check. As soon as he loosened his grip on me, I rose to my feet, punched him, and left with a hand over my bleeding face. “Where are you going? Come back!” He yelled. I slowly turned and took a faint look at him through blurred eyes before taking took off immediately. I went to my mom, but she didn’t dare keep me in her house because she didn’t have custody of me and feared my dad would make trouble once he found out. She gave me two yuan and let me go.

Next, I got on a bus to go see my elder sister. Fellow passengers stood as far away as possible because blood was all over me. Even today, I have no idea how I actually made it to my elder sister’s house. She gave me another five yuan, and since she was on bad terms with my dad for marrying a Han against his will, I didn’t want to add to her trouble, so I went to stay in a classmate’s house. It was friends like him who helped me pull through those bad times. I’m thankful I could live, dine, and spend time with them as part of their families. None of them saw me as a burden or nuisance.

I began looking for temp work soon after graduating from junior high school. I worked two months at the Great Hall of Xinjiang People as a construction worker, making five yuan per day, or 150 yuan per month. I had never made so much money. I was planning to spend 36 yuan to buy a guitar when my dad got sick and needed surgery. So, I gave some to him and kept over 20 yuan for myself, which I spent on a quyi class. Quyi is a Chinese performance art involving narrative storytelling using staged monologues and dialogues.

July 1, 1984, the holiday on which my dad fell out with me, marked the first time he ever went to a mosque. He would not become a Muslim until he was 60. He turned to Islam not because he wanted a spiritual home, but because he needed to adapt to the changed environment as more and more people around him believed in Islam. Our family had no diet taboos. My dad’s vehement opposition to my eldest sister’s marriage to a Han people was mainly the result of societal pressure. They would ask: “How could you allow your daughter to do that?” I couldn’t answer that question either, as I too was an atheist back then.

I lived in a dilapidated rental house during my three years of senior high school, but I didn’t let those terrible living conditions affect my school work. I remained one of the top students in my class. I knew I was attractive to girls because I received love letters from some of them.

In 1987, I was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy after taking the national college entrance exam. I was probably the only Uyghur student in my major to be admitted this way throughout China. I had never thought about going to school at a movie academy. I just happened to pick up a discarded newspaper and saw a recruitment ad for the Beijing Film Academy. The specialty exam was to be given in Xi’an, but I had no money to get there. What could I do? Eventually, childhood friends chipped in with over 300 yuan. Out of concern that I may get a sore throat during a long train ride that could affect my exam performance, they even bought me a plane ticket so I could get there faster.

We arrived at the airport at 9:30 p.m. We found it strange that it was very dark with few people around. After asking around, we realized the fight was supposed to depart at 9:30 a.m. We failed to notice the difference between 9:30 and 21:30! The plane had been gone for 12 hours and we all freaked out. A teacher then went to a CAAC ticket office to explain my situation, providing details of my personal information, family background, and the purpose of my trip. They issued me a new ticket without charging additional fees. “It is 9:00 a.m.!” He reminded me before leaving.

After passing through security and walking a few steps across the tarmac, I turned to wave goodbye to the two classmates were there to see me off. Suddenly, I caught sight of my chubby mom. Though I showed a poker face, I felt my scalp creep. I quickly waved to her before tears streamed down my face.

I entered the Performance Institute of Beijing Film Academy with top national scores on both the general and specialty tests. By the fourth month in college, I started learning screenwriting and directing, which explains why I can be a director now. Nevertheless, my original ambition was to be a lawyer. As a child, I was influenced by the movie Shaolin Temple and became fascinated with the idea of upholding justice. Another movie that motivated me to become a lawyer was the Pakistani film The Vagabond, in which a lawyer chose to exclusively serve the poor. Had I not been admitted to the movie academy; I would have gone to law school or a law-related school.

During college, I served four years as academic commissioner of my class. I was known as an “A Student” among my classmates because I received A’s in all my classes. Living on a monthly stipend of 25 yuan, which all students were entitled to, I paid my own tuition fee for the four years. Though I could have applied for a student loan, I didn’t want to owe people money. I took various jobs, including advertising model, making from 5 to 20 yuan per day, and even 800 yuan per day at times. This was a stance of subsistence. All my efforts were directed at reducing various obstacles on my way forward. After graduating from the academy in 1991, I returned to Xinjiang to work at the Tianshan Movie Studio in hopes of revitalizing Xinjiang’s movie industry, only to leave again five years later.

So much happened during those five years! I lost my dear second eldest sister and got married. I had four siblings. When my parents got divorced, my eldest sister and I lived with my dad, while my second eldest sister and two brothers lived with my mom. My eldest sister and elder brother both married Han people, but my eldest sister had to divorce her husband due to social pressure.

My second eldest sister who married a Uyghur was five years older than me and the least educated child in the family. Because she was in poor health and was poor at schoolwork, she had to repeat her classes again and again. Consequently, she became my classmate in elementary school. She would sit dumbly in the classroom, not understanding anything the teacher was trying to teach. I frequently helped her with homework. For her, I had my fiercest fight ever with a classmate who said insulting words to her. I beat him up, venting all my well-coordinated, explosive body power on him until he ran like a rat. Dumb as she was, second eldest sister was an extremely kindhearted girl who never bore enmity against anyone. Though homely-looking, she was always happy and had no complaints at all. She worked harder, and more, than anyone in the family and my parents habitually ordered her around like a slave. She readily responded and smiled brightly whenever she was called. I never tolerated anyone who insulted her.

Sadly, second eldest sister eventually died from domestic violence. Her husband was an ill-educated, alcoholic, and abusive Uyghur. He beat her every time he got drunk. I was at a loss as to what to do every time I saw bruises on her face. My parents were both unwilling and unable to take care of her. Autopsy results showed she died of asphyxiation from accumulated pus in her lungs. The wound in her lungs originated from an incident of domestic violence where her husband stabbed a saw blade into her clavicle, opening a small hole in her lungs that became infected. No wonder she kept coughing those days. The final incident of domestic abuse that killed my sister occurred in front of my 7-year-old niece. My sister was thrown to the floor and trampled hard on the chest. She foamed at the mouth before taking her last breath.

The police didn’t press charges against the abusing husband on the ground that my sister died of natural cause. The abuser was let off the hook with help from relatives and through guanxi. On seeing me at the police station, he acted as if nothing had happened and was about to smile at me when I picked up a stool and went straight at him. “I want to kill you!” I yelled.

The autopsy was completed at my insistence and the true results proving my sister died of domestic violence were not obtained until years later. I was happy the man was finally judged and jailed. In the eyes of some, women were nothing but private property who didn’t deserve to be loved. It’s sad she fell into the hands of an evil man and had to live with him for the rest of her life.

During our final conversation, second eldest sister wondered when she could watch my first movie. Regrettably, she died before the release of The Will of the People, the first movie I starred in. She died a miserable death, and her body had to be cut up for pathological anatomy. I was too sad and furious to go to her funeral. Even today, I don’t know where she is buried. If I had a knife and nobody stopped me, I would have taken the law into my own hands and put an end to that asshole. The date of my sister’s death was December 25, 1991, on Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve every year, I typically spill two cups of wine on the floor in her memory.

I got married just a month before my sister's death. My wife is my former high school classmate and first love. Her father came to Xinjiang to be a frontier guard in 1953, at the end of the Korean War. He didn't like me at all as he had no good impression about Uyghurs. However, his wife did, and she was the ultimate decisionmaker in the family. I started a serious relationship with my wife during my first semester of college. Since I had no dwelling place in Urumqi back then, my mother-in-law was kind enough to provide me with a room during summer and winter holidays. My father-in-law never even bothered to talk to me.

I returned to Xinjiang for my wedding after graduating from college. Interracial marriage was nothing new back then, nor was it more complicated than rumored. The only special requirement was that a parent from each side had to be present before a marriage certificate could be issued. I brought my mom, and my wife brought her dad, to the marriage registration office. Both parents sat there without a word. A Uyghur clerk glanced at me before looking at my file. On seeing that I graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, he kept saying in Uyghur that it was a pity an excellent Uyghur had to marry a Han woman. My father-in-law and wife couldn't possibly know what he was talking about. The clerk turned to my mom again. He was so persuasive that she was tempted to try and talk me out of the marriage. But I gave her a cold stare before she could open her mouth. She immediately changed her tone and pretended to be upset with the clerk for poking his nose into a private matter. Still unwilling to quit interfering, the clerk spent another 20 minutes buzzing to my father-in-law, in broken Chinese, about the negatives of the marriage, citing differences in religious belief, ethnicity, and life habits. My father-in-law didn’t speak until the clerk seemed to run out of Chinese vocabulary and had nothing more to say. “Go ahead and issue the certificate!” He said firmly. The clerk’s face turned livid as he rose and opened a cabinet behind him that contained blank marriage certificates. He then took out two thin pieces of paper and started writing very slowly. In the quietness, we could hear nothing but the scratching sounds of his pen on paper. He finished after taking longer than what he took talking. “Wish you ha-ppy!” He said in broken Mandarin.

In 1994, my wife and I were blessed with a baby girl. Instead of giving her a Uyghur name, we let her carry her mom’s Han family name and gave her a first name derived from my profession. When I registered her ethnicity as Han, my wife and the hospital nurse categorically disagreed with me, arguing she would be better off Uyghur because ethnic minorities enjoy privileges associated with various entrance exams. Since I never had to take advantage of such privileges, I assumed my daughter would not need them either. So, I didn’t budge. To my great surprise, my wife, who usually left all decisions to me, changed the registered ethnicity to Uyghur without my knowledge. My daughter has rarely encountered problems due to her ethnic background, and just as I anticipated, she is an “A” student who consistently ranks among the top three in her class, and is well-liked by her teachers.

However, things began to change after the Urumqi riots of July 5, 2009. As July 5 is her birthday and I was away from her in Beijing, I called her to say happy birthday. But she wasn’t back from school until after 8:00 p.m. She had to take a taxi because of blocked traffic. My wife broke down as she told me on the phone that a lot of Uyghurs had been killed. I didn’t know what to say and asked her to give the phone to my daughter so I could say happy birthday to her. Calls from friends in Urumqi soon confirmed what she was saying.

When I called my daughter again on another day, she sounded like a very different person and didn’t feel like talking. She didn’t witness any violence during the riots, but she did hear a lot of discriminatory remarks directed against Uyghurs at school. She couldn’t stand it and began speaking up for them. Because she was a good student, all her classmates comforted her, saying she wasn’t being discriminated against and that it was the bad guys who were to blame for the killings. Nevertheless, what they said only made her feel worse and cause her to lose her peace of mind.

My original plan was to change her ethnicity back to Han, and she was okay with that. After the July 5 Incident, however, she made up her mind to remain Uyghur. Although she received more blame from Uyghurs than from Han (it was the same case in college), her decision not to change ethnicity and her dissent among her classmates made me feel she was trying to protect me rather than her ethnicity. For a girl of her age, the word ethnicity may have seemed vaguer and more surreal than father-daughter feelings.

While taking the national college entrance examination, my daughter didn’t use her Uyghur background to get more credit for college admission, but she was nonetheless admitted by the prestigious Communication University of China with a great score.

My current Chinese name Lang Chen comes from a geomancer from Taiwan, who gave it to me after telling me that the turning point of my career was coming. Sure enough, in a good turn of events, I was soon appointed to direct a soap opera for CCTV and I readily accepted the offer. At the press conference for release of the TV movie, my new name was used for the first time in Xinjiang. Although I had acted in quite a few movies in Xinjiang and was widely known in my circle, I was rarely seen in public because I’m naturally withdrawn and seldom greet people on my own initiative. The moment I rose from my seat at the press conference, I heard many people sigh to themselves. When I asked a friend how he felt about my being addressed as Lang Chen, he said he was disappointed because Uyghurs had lost an outstanding member. Actually, I had never changed my ethnicity, even though that had been the cause of a lot of disappointment, pain, and trouble in my career.

After so many twists and turns, I was finally gaining some recognition within my circle and I came to the point where I could start my own studio. I am where I am today because I made hundreds of times more effort than my peers. Whether as an actor or director, I have often been denied better opportunities due to my ethnic background. The moment they looked at my Uyghur background and name, they would leap up and say “you don’t know our mainstream culture” or “your talent fits with the minority only.” Due to non-recognition, some of my works were simply pilfered away.

Many say I have become Sinicized, but I chose this path because I had no other alternative unless I was ready to sacrifice opportunities or quit facing people in other strata. The more learned or knowledgeable a person is, the less likely they would focus on your ethnic or religious background and the more likely they would judge you by your works, capability, and character. Most pressures come from society, but after many years, many people have not learned how to frankly and honestly confront the environment they live in. Going forward, I can’t avoid that radically different environment and thus must face the problems caused thereby. In the meantime, I cannot forget who I am, what I want to do, and the dream I want to fulfill. I confess, for better or worse, I cannot but choose the path of survival.

(selected from Xinjiang: Beyond Race, Religion, and Place of Origin by Kurbanjan Samat, translated by Wang Chiying, published by New World Press in 2017)