FORGET XINJIANG’S RE-EDUCATION CAMPS, CHINA’S STILL A DRAW FOR MUSLIM TOURISTS
Nabil Ismailiya first tasted Xinjiang food in New York City, at the Kashgar Cafe in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighbourhood. “The food was so good, it made me curious. I wanted to know more about Chinese Muslims,” recalls the British-born food enthusiast of his first encounter with a bowl of lagman – the hand-pulled noodles popular in China’s westernmost province, where Uygur Muslims account for nearly half the population.
Ismailiya, who is Muslim, says he is “100 per cent” still interested in travelling to Xinjiang despite the troubled political situation in the region, where rights groups estimate more than a million people – mostly Muslim Uygurs – are being detained for political indoctrination in what Beijing refers to as “re-education camps”.
