Renowned Sydney journalist James West worked as an ‘foreign expert’ for state-run radio in Beijing from 2005 until 2006. He has documented his year abroad in a new book, Beijing Blur. He currently produces Triple J’s current affairs program, ‘Hack’.

I felt like I was on the edge of the earth; an adventure into China’s vast north-western province of Xinjiang in the summer of 2007.

I was 25. I went to explore this place I’d never heard of before.

This autonomous Muslim region is big, a sixth of China’s landmass, and shares borders with eight countries: the ‘-stans’, Russia, Mongolia and the Indian-administered bits of Kashmir. Uyghurs live here, ethnically distinct from Han Chinese (It’s in this province that recent Olympics-related violence left over 30 people dead; local separatists want freedom from what they see as heavy Chinese control).

A China with a hunger for raw energy is filling this big desert with money. There’s one-third of China’s total gas reserves here, one quarter of its oil, and two fifths of its coal. All is to be dug up and pumped east.  In the middle of the Taklamakan desert, a brilliant exposure of nothingness, empty as the sea, modern China gives me full bars of mobile coverage.

I travelled to Kashgar, once a hub on the Silk Route, now an experiment in Chinese domination. Mao’s statue in Kashgar’s People’s Square is said to be China’s tallest, nearly twenty-five metres high on a spot lit platform; his distant eyes seem to stare all the way to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The city’s other meeting place, around the Id Kah mosque built in 1442, is more welcoming with its local markets, Hotan jade, bejewelled knives, and kids slurping ice drinks watching television. And yet, here in China’s biggest mosque, a plaque declares, ‘The Chinese government always pays special attention to the other, historical cultures of ethnic groups, and all ethnic groups welcome the Party’s religious policy… All ethnic groups live in friendship together here.’ In 2001, the mosque came under the administration that looks after cultural relics, though not a relic. China’s biggest congregation of Muslims, 10,000 worshippers gather here every Friday.

It was an awesome trip. I loved seeing local children rumble in front of my camera, and bread smoke rise against mosques. Even in this landlocked place – a long way from the Bird’s Nest – the influence of China was everywhere. 

Beijing Blur is out now. Check out jameswest.net.au for more information.