Mahmutjan Abla and Nurbai Qunapia
on December 18, 2020
Mahmutjan Abla and Nurbai Qunapia in an undated wedding photo, provided to the author by Nurbai’s sister, Orazhan Qunapia.

Mahmutjan Abla and Nurbai Qunapia in an undated wedding photo, provided to the author by Nurbai’s sister, Orazhan Qunapia.

Boys look at a smartphone in front of their house, next to a coal fired power plant, on the outskirts of Beijing, November 27, 2015.

In advance of International Women’s Day, women volunteering for the non-profit organization Blue Sky Rescue pass out masks as they prepare to fumigate and disinfect an area of a local bus station in Beijing, March 7, 2020.

Healthcare workers pose for photos as the last batch of COVID-19 patients are discharged from the Wuchang Fangcang makeshift hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, March 10, 2020.

Newly elected state councilors (left to right) Zhao Kezhi, Wang Yi, Wei Fenghe, Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, Sun Chunlan, and Liu He, and state councilors Wang Yong and Xiao Jie, led by Vice Premier Han Zheng (front center) swear an oath during the Seventh Plenary Session of First Session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, March 19, 2018.

A screenshot from the CYYUN website, as of August 18, 2020. Translation by ChinaFile.


The rooster hadn’t even stopped his crowing when the police arrived at my Uighur host’s courtyard in rural Turpan one early spring morning in 2008. Although they spoke calmly, almost apologetically, the uniformed Uighur officers demanded that the foreign guest return on the next bus to Urumqi. Not wanting to invite more trouble for my friends, I scrambled to pack my bags and headed toward the village bus station.
