When I was 7 years old, my village was turned into blocks of residential buildings on the original spot. And somehow I remember my grandma has told me in her casual chat that our community was built by prisoners. When I was a kid, I barely remember anything in my childhood, but this remark stay in my head all the time till now. As a kid, I had justified the fact to myself like, they were in prison, so they were bad people, and making use of their labor was a punishment, also a compensation to the society, it’s pretty fair. I can’t guarantee you how many Chinese people still carry on my childish point of view, but I think, some of them still do.The last time that I heard about the forced labor was the news covered in Xinjiang: the re-education camp. I think I began to noticed it around 2015. And I remember when I was in middle school, there was a social unrest happened in Xinjiang which made people like me who lived in the neighbour province scared to go out alone. There was a fear of ouighours at the time, rumours were like they were chopping people’s hands off by their machete and I also heard that liberation army were sent to their place. Looking back, the fear was spread by the conflict happened in 2009, July 5th. From then on, I hardly heard any news out of the Xin Jiang anymore. So I think the control must begin from that time around. I had two impressions about ouighours. One was their advantage, one was their disadvantage. When I was in high school, I always noticed there were a couples of ouighours pickpockets around the street corner. I’ve seen them stealing before. They also stole my friend’s phone and my phone at the same spot. The thing is, we all knew, even if they were detained by the police for the stealing, due to their ethnic minority identity, the police can do nothing but giving a verbal education and release them. Somehow, the street corner thief disappeared when I was sophomore in college, that 2012. Then when I worked, I noticed some unobtrusive detail about ouighours, which explained why I saw so many ouighour thieves before. When I worked as a teacher, I’ve met two students from Xinjiang. And I was informed by casual chat that the consultant who signed contract with the student from Xijiang was warned by the superior rather than getting a bonus. Just because there is rule that you don’t recruit student from Xinjiang. And when I asked why, nobody knew. It’s just a rule, and pretty harsh one issued from the bureau of education department. It’s a red line. Then I find out that ouighour cannot move freely within our country like the rest of the common people. Somehow there are a lot of restriction on them that most people simply don’t know. Then the news of re-education camp came out from foreign news agency of course.And the last thing I’ve noticed is that Xinjiang, which used to be called a province in my old memory, this last over 5 years it was called « Xinjiang Production Military camp » if translated from the propaganda’s term. This means something but no one really ask about it in China. Most people I know from Xinjiang are actually Han people who moved in as kid, and I have to say, they are benefiters and I didn’t want dig in their backgrounds as my intuition told me then I couldn’t befriend with them So my conclusion is, most Chinese, or you can call Han people barely know what’s really happened in this region, if the entire Chinese is barred behind the Great fire wall, then within this secluded world, Xinjiang got a one more bar within the bar, secluded it from the rest of the China.

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