Ürümqi

Ürümqi is a young city by Chinese standards. The valley lay on a minor northern branch of the Silk Road and was grazing country for nomadic peoples for centuries, but the modern settlement dates from the Qing conquest of the Dzungars in 1755, when a garrison was built to control the northern side of the Tian Shan; settlers expanded it into a walled city in the 1760s and renamed it Dihua. Chinese, Hui and Manchu soldiers, convicts and merchants were settled around it, and it became the administrative centre of the new frontier territory.

When Xinjiang was made a province in 1884, Dihua became its capital. The city passed through the turbulent warlord decades of the early 20th century under a succession of governors who ruled the province almost independently, balancing Soviet and Chinese influence; Russian and Soviet trade dominated the local economy for a time. Short-lived East Turkestan republics rose in Xinjiang in 1933 and 1944, the second of them based far to the north-west in Ghulja rather than here.

In 1954 the name Ürümqi was restored, an Oirat Mongol name understood as beautiful pasture, and the city grew very fast. Coal, oil, steel and chemical industries were built, the railway from Lanzhou was completed in 1962 and opened to traffic in 1966, and migration from eastern China multiplied the population many times over. Riots in July 2009 between Uyghur and Han residents left 197 people dead by the official count, and led to curfew and a lasting security presence. Security across Xinjiang was tightened sharply in the years that followed, and the apparatus built then still shapes movement through the city.

Ürümqi is the meeting point of the region's peoples: Han Chinese from every province, Uyghurs, Hui, Kazakhs, Mongols, Kyrgyz, Russians and others, whose languages, foods and holidays overlap in the same streets. Signs are written in Chinese and in Uyghur Arabic script, the call to prayer and the sound of Chinese pop are heard in the same quarter, and the working week keeps Beijing time even though the sun stands two hours behind it.

Uyghur culture is most visible in the eastern districts — the bazaar, the kebab grills, the muqam music played in restaurants, the embroidered doppa caps — while Kazakh traditions of horses, felt and dombra music belong to the grasslands just outside the city. Religious practice is tightly restricted across the region. Politics, Xinjiang's recent history and religion are subjects residents cannot discuss safely with strangers.

For the many Han residents, this is a northern Chinese industrial capital with mountains on the doorstep: skiing and skating in winter, barbecues and grasslands in summer, square dancing in the parks, and a strong culture of eating out late. The city has universities, a symphony orchestra and a lively domestic tourism trade built around the museum, the bazaar and the mountain lake.

About four million people live in the Ürümqi municipality, which stretches far beyond the built-up valley. It is by a wide margin the largest city in Xinjiang and the administrative, medical, educational and transport centre for a region the size of western Europe; anyone in the south or north of Xinjiang needing a hospital, a university or a flight generally comes here.

The economy rests on energy and heavy industry — coal, petrochemicals, steel, power generation and equipment for the oil fields of the Junggar and Tarim basins — together with government, logistics and a growing wholesale trade with Central Asia. The Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a semi-military organisation, runs farms and enterprises around the city. Wages are respectable by regional standards, and much of the workforce arrived from other provinces within the past two generations.

Daily life runs on two clocks, Beijing time officially and an informal local time two hours behind in many Uyghur households, so office hours, school runs and evening meals all fall late by eastern Chinese standards. Winter dominates the year: heating comes on in autumn and off in spring, air quality drops sharply in the cold months, and streets are cleared of snow rather than emptied by it. Security screening at stations, markets and building entrances is part of the ordinary routine of getting through a day.

Ürümqi eats Xinjiang food, which means lamb, wheat and bold spicing rather than rice and delicate sauces. Dapanji, big-plate chicken, is the dish the city is most identified with: chicken stewed with potato, green pepper and dried chilli in a wide dish, with hand-pulled belt noodles slid into the remaining sauce at the end. Laghman noodles, suoman, and polo, the rice pilaf with lamb and carrot, fill out the Uyghur repertoire, and manta dumplings and samsa pastries are sold from steamers and tandoors on the street.

Grilled meat is everywhere. Mutton cubes on iron skewers, seasoned with cumin, salt and chilli flakes, are cooked over charcoal on pavements from spring to autumn; whole lamb is roasted for occasions, and offal soups are a winter standby. Bread is the tandoor-baked nan, stamped in the centre and used to mop up everything else. Hui restaurants add hand-pulled beef noodles and steamed buns, and restaurants from Sichuan, Shaanxi and the north-east serve the large Han population.

Fruit is the region's pride and fills the bazaar: Hami melons, Turpan grapes and raisins, Korla pears, figs, pomegranates and apricots, fresh in season and dried the rest of the year. Milk tea with salt is drunk in Kazakh and Mongol homes, sweet black tea with rock sugar in Uyghur ones, and local beer and Xinjiang wine are sold widely in the Han districts.