Fleeing poverty to forge better life ends in tragedy

URUMQI, China — As Muslim Uighurs rampaged through the streets of this western provincial capital on Sunday, Zhang Aiying rushed home and stashed her fruit cart away, safe from the mob. But there was no sign of her son, who ventured out amid the ruckus to retrieve another of the family's carts.

"Call him on his cellphone," Zhang, 46, recalled shouting to another relative. "Tell him we want him home. We don't need him to go back."

Her son, Lu Huakun, did not answer the call. Three hours later, after the screaming and pleading had died down, Zhang went in search of him. A dozen bodies were strewn about. She found her son, his head covered with blood, his left arm nearly severed into three pieces.

The killing of Lu, 25, was a ruinous end to the journey of a family that had fled their poor farming village in central China more than a decade ago to forge a new life here in China's remote desert region.

Lu and his parents are typical of the many Han migrants who, at the encouragement of the Chinese government seeking to duplicate the success of the wealthier coastal areas, have settled among the Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in oil-rich Xinjiang province.

Area transformed

The influx of Han, the dominant ethnic group in China, has transformed Xinjiang: The percentage of Han in the population was 40 percent in 2000, up from 6 percent in 1949. The initiative has boosted incomes all around, but it also has set up an uncomfortable hierarchy. Many of the new bosses are Han while the workers are from minority groups.

"We wanted to do business," Lu Sifeng, 47, the father, said Tuesday. "There was a calling by the government to develop the west. This place would be nothing without the Han."

On Sunday, Lu was among at least 156 people killed in the deadliest ethnic violence in China in decades. Rampaging Uighurs battled security forces and attacked Han civilians across Urumqi.

The government, apparently hoping to tamp down racial violence, has not released a breakdown of the ethnicities of the 156 dead. But Lu's father said that of more than 100 photographs of bodies that he looked through at a police station to identify his son, the vast majority were Han Chinese, most with their heads cut or smashed.

Each victim had a number. His son was 51.

"Of course, in recent days, we've been angry toward the Uighur," Lu's father said. "And of course we're scared of them."

The family came from Zhoukou in Henan province, a poor part of central China. There was little money in it, and the parents heard of a way out: Friends from Henan had gone to distant Xinjiang and were making enough money to support relatives back home.

The Lu family bought wooden fruit carts. They got a spot at an open-air market on the border between Han and Uighur neighborhoods. In a good month, the family netted $300.

On Sunday, as on any other day, Zhang, her son and a young cousin pushed four carts to the market. Lu's father had gone to another province to buy fruit.

Market abruptly shuts

At 8 p.m., the manager of the market told people to shut down. More than 1,000 Uighurs were marching through the streets to protest government discrimination. Street battles erupted when riot-police officers armed with tear gas and batons tried to disperse the crowd.

The first wave of the rioters arrived minutes later, weapons in hand. The younger Lu dashed home first and Zhang followed him. When she got home, she discovered that he had gone out again to rescue another cart.

She cried for three hours until she dared go out to look for him.

"I thought, If I don't find a body, then maybe he's in hiding and still alive," she said. "But I quickly found the body."

Lu's father identified his son on Wednesday.

"After we cremate the body, we'll go home with the ashes," Zhang said. The father stared at cigarette butts strewed across the floor. "We'll never come back," he said.