February 22, 2005 It was evening. Smoke was billowing from an antiquated shop in the bustling bazaar located at the heart of the city. As I elbowed my way through the crowd to take a closer look, I found fresh mutton, taken from a just slaughtered animal, hung up in the shop. Among the adults, there was a boy busily preparing kebab, pieces of meat roasted on a skewer. It is a typical Islam dish. I was traveling in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang, the Uygur dominated autonomous region. Located at the center of the Asian continent, the region has historically been a crossroad of cultures in various parts of Asia, including the Middle East. It offers a dazzling kaleidoscope of cultural and ethnic heritages and traditions, not to be found in major Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai. The province's population of 20 million is composed of 47 ethnic groups, with the Uygurs being the majority. They are Turkic-speaking people who have been living in the region since the 3rd century B.C., when the Silk Road was prospering as the greatest East-West trade route. After conversion to Islam in the 10th century, the Uygurs developed a unique Muslim culture. Buildings similar to those in Central Asian Muslim countries are standing quietly in the old part of the city. But traditional Uygur houses are disappearing rapidly amid a construction boom triggered by China's huge development drive in the West to explore energy resources around the Takramakan desert. Nowhere is this development boom more visible than in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang province. Businesses owned by people belonging to the majority Han group have been making huge inroads into the province, building up their own communities that could be described as "Little Beijing" or "Little Shanghai." This is a modern incarnation of a Silk Road city where old and new, east and west live side by side. The Han population in the province has been growing steadily since the province was reconstituted as Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in 1955, now reaching 7.5 million. The Hans now form the second largest ethnic group in the region, following the Uygur, who number 8.2 million. Xinjiang is the largest province in China, with the total land area 4.4 times as large as Japan's. The local economy is developing at a heady pace, with gross domestic product growing at annul rates around 10 percent. Urumqi is modernizing rapidly, looking more and more like other Chinese local cities dominated by the Han people. (Published in SUNDAY MAINICHI, March 6, 2005 issue)