In this case, my mission was personal: I was seeking records in Altay’s Civil Affairs Bureau on my father’s service in a Chinese army unit six decades earlier.
I knew police officers would soon be trailing me, as they did whenever foreign journalists turned up in Xinjiang.
President Xi Jinping had begun enacting much harsher policies in the region, home to Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims.
I knew that finding anything about my father, Yook Kearn Wong, was a long shot.
I asked her if she knew anything about an old army base of mostly Kazakh cavalry soldiers, where my father and a few other ethnic Han soldiers had served in 1952.
Persons:
Xi Jinping, Yook Kearn Wong, Wei Yangxuan
Organizations:
The New York Times, Altay’s Civil, Bureau, Civil Affairs Bureau
Locations:
Altay, China’s, Xinjiang, Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Beijing, Kazakh