Xinjiang: Inside the Greatest Christian Revival in History

By Paul Hattaway

God’s Mighty Acts in China

 

In The China Chronicles, Paul Hattaway draws on more than thirty years’ experience in China and numerous interviews with church leaders to provide insight into how the Living God brought about the largest revival in the history of Christianity.

 

Xinjiang, a vast region in northwest China, has been much in the news in recent years because of the plight of more than one million Muslim Uyghur people there. But Xinjiang also has a long Christian history. Today there are nearly one million believers, mostly among the Han Chinese, who have migrated into the region in recent decades.

 

In this book, the sixth in the series, Hattaway focuses on the heroic efforts to reach the Uyghurs and other Muslim groups who remain largely untouched by the gospel.

 

The China Chronicles Series:

Book 1: Shandong

Book 2: Guizhou

Book 3: Zhejang

Book 4: Tibet

Book 5: Henan

Book 6: Xinjiang

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Carey Publishing
• Release date: Dec 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645084402

Paul Hattaway

Paul Hattaway is an expert on the Chinese church and author of The Heavenly Man, the story of Brother Yun; Operation China, and many other books. Paul went on to set up Asia Harvest, a Christian ministry committed to see effective churches planted among unreached people groups throughout Asia.

Book preview

Introduction

The spectacular Heavenly Lake in the Tianshan Range

Bei Baoke

A land of contrasts

Xinjiang is a vast region of northwest China that has been shrouded in mystery and blocked off from the rest of China for much of its long history. It sits at a strategic crossroad of Asia and is a key gateway between China and the rest of the world. The Xinjiang region contains extreme geographic features ranging from K2—the second highest mountain in the world at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters) above sea level—to the Tarim Basin, which is the second lowest point on earth at 505 feet (154 meters) below sea level.

The landscape also ranges from stunningly beautiful to hideously barren. Massive snow-capped mountains encircling the region create sharp barriers between Xinjiang and the eight countries that border it: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Mongolia. A visitor wrote the following description of Xinjiang’s unique topography in 1931:

Xinjiang: a place of mystery and fascinating physical peculiarities! A land where rivers run into the ground, and then break forth again in oases and springs tens of miles from the places where they disappeared; where the winds blow from the northeast a steady gale for months on end, without a drop of rainfall; where ancient writings on wooden tablets, silk scrolls, and parchment, buried 2,000 years ago in the ruins of once-populous cities, can be unearthed today in a state of perfect preservation; where all transport is carried on camel back, and where camels get tipsy from eating a peculiar desert growth!¹

The center of Xinjiang is dominated by the huge Taklamakan Desert, which is significantly larger than the entire area of the United Kingdom and nearly as large as California. Taklamakan is a Turkic name that can be translated, Many go in, but few come out. Freezing winters give way to blistering summers. Andir, in the western part of the desert, once registered a temperature of 67.2° Celsius (153° F).²

The largest of China’s 31 provinces and regions, Xinjiang covers an area of about 643,000 square miles. Its size may be better understood when compared to other places around the world. Xinjiang is approximately two and a half times the size of Texas and is the same size as the combined area of the five large US states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico.

By another measure, Xinjiang is roughly the equivalent of the combined area of Germany, France, Italy, and Sweden. Whereas the population of these four European countries totals 207 million people, Xinjiang is home to just 25 million inhabitants and has a sparse distribution of just 30 people per square mile.

The traumatic events that have shaped Xinjiang throughout its history have resulted in sharp rises and falls in its population. After being decimated by various Muslim rebellions throughout the nineteenth century, the population had recovered to just 2.5 million by the time of the 1928 census before jumping by more than 70 percent within nine years to 4.3 million in 1937.

Also large-scale migration from other provinces has continued unabated since the 1950s, causing the population of Xinjiang to bloom to over 13 million by 1982 and 21 million at the time of the 2010 census. Future census figures for Xinjiang will be watched with interest as critics claim that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs have been systematically killed in concentration camps since 2017, while forced sterilization programs have rendered large numbers of women unable to bear children.

Xinjiang’s three regions

Xinjiang is divided by the Tianshan Mountains, which run from east to west. To the south of the range sits the Tarim Basin, while to the north is the Junggar Basin. The Tarim River flows into the massive salt marshes of Lopnur, where China conducted 46 nuclear tests between 1964 and 1996. The blast of one above ground test was estimated to have been 300 times more powerful than the one that flattened Hiroshima. The Chinese government has strenuously denied that these tests have had any adverse effects on the health of people in the area while also denying access to all independent research. Tellingly, however, cancer rates in Xinjiang are said to be 35 percent higher than in the rest of China.

The name Xinjiang, which means New Frontier, was only coined by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty in 1759. Historically, Xinjiang has been divided into three main geographic and cultural regions and contains every kind of terrain, from vast, sandy deserts without vegetation to glacial lakes and stunning fir forests.

Northern Xinjiang (sometimes called Dzungaria or Zungharia) refers to the area north of the majestic Tianshan Mountains near China’s borders with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia. It is a relatively wealthy and developed region and includes the capital city Urumqi (pronounced Urum- chee)—a Mongol name meaning a beautiful ranch.

Southern Xinjiang is comprised of the area south of the Tianshan Range and includes the Tarim Basin, which extends south to the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Karakoram Pass divides China from Pakistan, and the Pamir Mountains separate China from Tajikistan and Afghanistan.³ Despite this region’s abundant reserves of oil and natural gas, the people in southern Xinjiang are generally poorer than their northern counterparts.

Eastern Xinjiang includes the area around the eastern edge of the Tianshan Range which borders the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. Eastern Xinjiang is markedly different from the other two regions, with some towns renowned for their abundance of delicious fruit including grapes, melons, figs, apricots, peaches, and pears. Cotton is also grown in abundance throughout Xinjiang, with approximately one-fourth of the world’s cotton production coming from the province.

Marco Polo in Xinjiang

The Silk Road was constructed by nomadic Indo-European tribes as early as 1800 BC. The route, which connected with other routes and centuries later extended to the Roman Empire, was primarily used for trade, but also brought armies, philosophies, and religions into northwest China.

One of the first foreigners to visit Xinjiang was the famous Marco Polo, who traveled down the Silk Road in 1273 with his father and uncle. They entered China via the Pamir Mountains in west Xinjiang before continuing their journey across the vast region. After crossing the present border of China near today’s Tashkurgan, Polo remarked,

there are numbers of wild beasts of all sorts in this region. And when you leave this little country, and ride three days north-east, always among mountains, you get to such a height that ‘tis said to be the highest place in the world! … The region is so lofty and cold that you do not even see any birds flying. And I must also notice that because of this great cold, fire does not burn so brightly, nor give out so much heat as usual, nor does it cook food so effectually… . The people dwell high up in the mountains, and are savage idolaters, living only by the chase, and clothing themselves in the skins of beasts. They are in truth an evil race.⁴

Polo reached today’s city of Kashgar where he was among people who worship Mohammed. He described the people of the city in terms not far removed from how they still are today:

The inhabitants live by trade and handicrafts; they have beautiful gardens and vineyards, and fine estates, and grow a great deal of cotton. From this country many merchants go forth about the world on trading journeys. The natives are a wretched, niggardly set of people; they eat and drink in miserable fashion. There are in the country many Nestorian Christians, who have churches of their own. The people of the country have a peculiar language, and the territory extends for five days’ journey.⁵

Next, Polo and his companions took the southern route around the massive Taklamakan Desert, first reaching the city of Yarkant (Shache), where he briefly noted,

the people follow the law of Mohammed, but there are also Nestorian and Jacobite Christians. They are subject to the Great Khan’s nephew. They have plenty of everything, particularly cotton. They are also great craftsmen, but a large proportion of them have swollen legs, and great crops at the throat, which arises from some quality in their drinking water.⁶

Next came Hotan and a visit to the Lopnur area on the southern rim of the desert, where Polo found: If a husband of any woman goes away on a journey and remains away for more than 20 days, as soon as that term is past the woman may marry another man, and the husband also may then marry whom he pleases.⁷

While crossing the remote desert in the Lopnur region, Polo remarked,

the whole of the province is sandy, and so is the road all the way from Lopnur, and much of the water you find is bitter and bad… . When an army passes through the land, the people escape with their wives, children, and cattle a distance of two- or three-days’ journey into the sandy waste; and knowing the spots where the water is to be had, they are able to live there, and to keep their cattle alive, whilst it is impossible to discover them; for the wind immediately blows the sand over their tracks. . . .

There is a marvelous thing related of this desert, which is that when travelers are on the move by night, and one of them chances to lag behind or to fall asleep or the like, when he tries to gain his company again, he will hear spirits talking, and will suppose them to be his comrades. Sometimes the spirits will call him by name; and thus, many a traveler has been led astray so that he never finds his party. And in this way, many have perished.⁸

Little has changed in some parts of Xinjiang since Marc Polo’s visit. A street butcher in southern Xinjiang

Photo by Revival Chinese Ministries International. Used with permission.

Finally after many weeks of toil, Polo reached Kumul (Hami) in northeast Xinjiang, which is the first major town travelers coming from China proper reach after passing through the Gansu corridor. The oasis town was the seat of a Nestorian bishop at the time of Polo’s visit, although he made no mention of it. Instead, the intrepid explorer focused on some of the customs of the area:

They live by the fruits of the earth, which they have in plenty, and dispose of to travelers. They are a people who take things very easily, for they mind nothing but playing and singing, and dancing and enjoying themselves.

And it is the truth that if a foreigner comes to the house of one of these people to lodge, the host is delighted, and desires his wife to put herself entirely at the guest’s disposal, while he himself gets out of the way, and comes back no more until the stranger has taken his departure. The guest may stay and enjoy the wife’s society for as long as he likes, while the husband has no shame in the matter, but indeed considers it an honor. And all the men of this province are made wittols of by their wives in this way. The women themselves are fair and wanton.9

Marco Polo then left Xinjiang and entered areas in today’s Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia, where he reported the presence of more Nestorian Christians. Although he was not the first foreigner to cross the length of Xinjiang, Polo was the first to record his experiences in detail, which delighted and amazed astonished Europeans when his book was published many years later.

The arrival of Islam

Islam is generally believed to have arrived in Xinjiang in AD 708, when a Muslim delegation from Persia and Arabia, carrying many valuable gifts, entered Kashgar just 76 years after the death of Mohammed. Islam grew quickly in China so that by 742, one study found, there were already 5,358 mosques scattered throughout the country.¹⁰

According to one account, the introduction of Islam in the Kashgar area came about after Prince Nasr asked the local ruler to allow him to build a mosque on a space the size of an ox-hide so he could worship Allah. The ruler saw no threat in the request and granted permission, but the cunning prince cut the ox-hide into narrow strips, connecting them to fences in a large plot of land and built the first mosque in Xinjiang.¹¹

Uyghur control of the region reached its zenith by AD 842, and by 960, Sunni Islam had become the official religion after 200,000 families converted. The new Muslim rulers of Xinjiang regarded Nestorian Christians and Buddhists as heathens, and violent hostility emerged. In 1006, the Uyghurs thoroughly demolished the last Buddhist kingdom in the Tarim Basin. One source describes the early days of Islam in Xinjiang:

The knowledge of Islam came to north China through the Uyghurs, that is, the Turks of Chinese Turkestan, and through them the trade in Persian drugs and rose water. Pearls, from the Indian Ocean, were carried in, while the Arabs traded in these articles… . Persians were mixed with them, and both together have given origin to the Chinese Muslims. As the Persians took the chief place in trade, the colloquial medium for the commerce carried on through the Uyghur country became Persian… . Mosques in China and in the Uyghur country were supplied with Persian teachers, because the Turks were not intellectually competent to teach the Qur’an.¹²

The languages of Xinjiang

Xinjiang is a melting pot of several diverse linguistic threads. While the Chinese government has worked hard to implement Mandarin as the standard language of all education and media, Uyghur remains the dominant vernacular among the Muslim population. Uyghur is a member of the Turkic language family and is closely related to other Central Asian languages such as Uzbek, Kazak, and Kirgiz.¹³ It is said that Uyghurs who travel to Turkey are able to be understood, with difficulty, if they first learn some of the many modern loanwords that have influenced Turkish vocabulary.

The written script used by the Uyghurs has an interesting background. At the end of the tenth century, a modified Arabic script like that used by Persian (Farsi) and Urdu people was introduced. In 1956, the Chinese government introduced a Cyrillic-based script in Xinjiang, similar to what the Soviet Union used, in a bid to control the Muslim ethnic groups in their republics. Just four years later the relationship between China and the Soviet Union soured, and the project was abandoned. In 1984 the authorities in Xinjiang adopted a new, modified Arabic-based script with Uyghur vowels added. This script is widely used today, although in recent years a trend has emerged among educated Uyghurs who want to replace Chinese influence with Western values. New Romanized Uyghur writing has proved popular with young people, as it enables them to use standard computer keyboards to compose emails and text messages.

The dialect of Chinese spoken in Xinjiang was traditionally labeled Northwestern Mandarin. But the influx of millions of Han from all parts of China over the past 60 years has blurred the distinctiveness of the dialect, and today the sharp tones of Beijing Mandarin are just as likely to be heard on the streets of Urumqi as the traditional Northwest Mandarin accent.

Xinjiang’s lesser known ethnic groups

Apart from the dominant Uyghurs, smaller Muslim groups in Xinjiang— including Kazak, Kirgiz, and Uzbek—also use the Uyghur script, while the 60,000 Tajik people on the far western edge of China speak two different Indo-European languages that are related to Persian (Farsi) rather than to any of the Turkic varieties. The Tajik are followers of the Ismaili sect of Islam, which other Muslims in Xinjiang consider heretical.

Approximately 22,000 Uzbek people live in and around the city of Yining in northern Xinjiang, where they represent just a tiny sliver of the nearly 30 million Uzbek people throughout Central Asia. After the gospel made progress in Uzbekistan in the 1990s, a group of 40 Uzbek believers volunteered to plant churches in other parts of Central Asia. Some crossed the border into Xinjiang, where today about 100 Uzbek people are followers of Jesus Christ.

Other officially recognized minority groups in Xinjiang include approximately one million Chinese-speaking Hui Muslims; 150,000 Mongols, and 60,000 Xibe and Manchu people, whose forefathers were soldiers left behind during the expansion of the Qing Dynasty from 1644 to 1912. Additionally, a cluster of small ethnic groups that are not recognized by the Chinese authorities are scattered throughout Xinjiang, some of whom are the remnants of centuries of conquest and migration along the Silk Road. These fascinating, little known groups include the 7,000 Ainu people of southern Xinjiang whose language is a mixture of Turkic and Persian; the 3,000 Akto Turkmen who say they came from Samarkand in Uzbekistan; and 800 Keriya people who claim to be the descendants of the Gug tribe who fled into the Taklamakan Desert centuries ago to escape the Ladakhi army that crossed the border from north India. Today 700 Nubra people in southwest Xinjiang speak Ladakhi and may be the descendants of those soldiers who chased the Keriya deep into the desert.

Ili in the northern tip of Xinjiang is home to several tiny people groups that may be on the verge of extinction. These include 300 Tuerke who are losing their language and customs due to intermarriage with Uzbek and Kazak people.

In eastern Xinjiang, 44,000 Lopnur Uyghurs speak a distinct language that may be related to Mongol, while 70,000 Yutian Uyghurs live in the very south of Xinjiang. Yutian was the capital of the Jumi Kingdom, which flourished until 1370. Today, the Yutian Uyghurs retain customs and clothing that differentiate them from all other Uyghur groups.

Finally in 1990, a Chinese oil exploration team came across an extraordinary community of just 300 Taklamakan Uyghurs who were living around an oasis in the heart of the remote, sandy wastes of the desert. They were described as having

a gentle culture, living primitive lives in extreme isolation. Experts discovered this tribe had been out of touch with the world for 350 years. As a result, they knew nothing of the historical fact of the Qing (China’s last dynasty) or about anything else up to the present time… . At the time of their discovery, the Taklamakan Uyghurs told the time by the sun, had no form of government or authority structure, and no schools or writing system.¹⁴

History of Christianity

The history of Christianity in Xinjiang is unique and can be split into two main eras. The first period details the astonishing influence of Nestorian Christianity from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, while a second main period covers the progress of the gospel in Xinjiang during the past 150 years.

Other books in The China Chronicles series may be more pleasant to read than this one. Xinjiang is a place where much barbaric cruelty has taken place over the centuries, and parts of this book may be difficult for some people to read. It is our hope to neither shock nor underplay events in Xinjiang, but to present the facts and hopefully help readers better understand the background behind the present tensions in this troubled region.

Uyghurs praying outside the Kashgar mosque in the late 1980s

Researching material for this book has presented challenges unique among all the provinces of China. For example, few accounts of early missionary work in Xinjiang were produced in English. Instead, an extensive array of books were published in Swedish, only a few of which have ever been translated into English. For decades, Xinjiang was like a blank region on world maps, and the Swedish Mission was content to toil away in relative obscurity. As a result, many people reading this book will be learning about the tremendous work of the Swedish Christians for the first time almost a century after they were expelled from Xinjiang.

A special mention and word of thanks are owed to Sigfrid Moen and Margareta Höök of Sweden for kindly allowing the use of many of the best photographs in this book, which were taken by their families in the 1920s and 1930s. These invaluable images vividly portray the marvelous work of God Who delivered hundreds of Muslims throughout Xinjiang out of darkness and into the glorious light of Jesus Christ.

An Uzbek man from northern Xinjiang

Paul Hattaway

Chapter One: Secrets from Beneath the Sand

History tends to be the least favorite subject of many students at school. But it is crucial for readers of this book to have at least a basic understanding of the rise and fall of Xinjiang’s kingdoms because recent events that have shocked the world cannot be properly understood apart from the historical context that has shaped life in the region over the past four millennia.

The ancient Silk Roads that connected China to the Middle East and beyond enabled waves of merchants, armies, and missionaries to enter the region. Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam all entered China through Xinjiang, as did other lesser known faiths including Zoroastrianism which came from Persia and flourished in Xinjiang for 1,000 years. Even today, some of the festivals celebrated by the Uyghur, Tajik, and other peoples in Xinjiang retain elements of the Zoroastrian fire worship religion.

Thousands of years of warfare and migration have seen the rise and fall of many dynasties and kingdoms in Xinjiang, and a long arm wrestling for power continues to the present day. More than twenty civilizations have claimed at least part of the region at one time or another, many of which have vanished beneath the desert sands.

The Kumtag Desert in eastern Xinjiang

Photo by Lu Jinrong. Used with permission.

Xinjiang is a land of closely guarded secrets, but occasionally outsiders are given a glimpse into its surprising and varied past. One such glimpse occurred in 2007 when the Chinese government allowed a team of National Geographic experts to examine a collection of mummies that had been excavated from an ancient cemetery near Hami, on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Due to the extremely dry climate in the area, the mummies were remarkably well preserved, and Chinese scholars waited with bated breath to see what conclusions the Western experts would reach.

After extensive DNA testing on the mummies, which they dated to as far back as 1,800 BC, National Geographic found that the mummies were Caucasian people, some of whom had blonde or red hair. Spencer Wells, who led the DNA testing, concluded that rather than having a single origin, the people came from Europe, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley in today’s Pakistan and northwest India. Scientist Victor Mair wrote that he was awed by the sight of the bodies … preserved for over three millennia. They are clearly of Caucasoid-Europoid extraction (long noses, deep-set eyes, blondish, light-brown or red hair, and so forth).¹ Elsewhere Mair further notes, The new finds are also forcing a re-examination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.²

While many international scholars were not surprised by the findings, the report was rejected by the Chinese Communist Party because it contradicted their narrative that Xinjiang has always belonged to Han people and has been an indispensable part of the Chinese realm. In response, Chinese historian Ji Xianlin said that while China supported and admired the research by foreign experts, Within China a small group of ethnic separatists have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting like buffoons. Some of them have even styled themselves the descendants of these ancient ‘white people’ with the aim of dividing the Motherland. But these perverse acts will not succeed.³ Despite protests from Beijing, it is clear that the earliest people in Xinjiang were fair-skinned Caucasians. Turkic and Mongol people arrived much later, and the Han are among the most recent arrivals in the area. Thus it is worth making a quick summary of some of the more prominent people groups that have shaped the long history of Xinjiang.

The Scythians

Although a centuries-long struggle is currently underway between the Han Chinese and the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs over control of Xinjiang, the earliest inhabitants of the region were Scythians, whom most scholars believe were an Eastern Iranian people. Nomadic Persian tribes are known to have migrated eastward and settled throughout the Altai Mountains in northern Xinjiang.

The Scythians reached the zenith of their influence from the ninth century BC until the fourth century AD, and this influence is believed to have extended into central China. Chinese records from the era referred to the Scythians as Sai people, and Scythians are also mentioned in the New Testament (see Colossians 3:11). Many of the Caucasian mummies unearthed in Xinjiang are believed to be Scythians. Their nearest relatives today are the Iranian Farsi-speaking Tajik people who are still found in modest numbers in southwest Xinjiang.

The Wusun and the Hun

Another ancient ethnic group that rose to power in Xinjiang was the Wusun who originally settled in southeast areas before relocating to northern Xinjiang in the second century BC. Ancient Chinese accounts describe the Wusun people as being blue-eyed and red-bearded. Wusun power in Xinjiang overlapped with the arrival of the Hun people, who are called the Xiongnu in Chinese history.

The Huns rose to prominence in Central Asia and Eastern Europe after Atilla led a group of Huns on a rampage throughout Europe in the fifth century AD, but few historians record the significant contribution the Huns made in faraway Xinjiang at a much earlier time. Around 176 BC, the Huns living on the Mongolian steppes expanded westward into Xinjiang.

The Huns