This Foreigner Went to Xinjiang and Told me this... // 这个外国人去了新疆告诉我...

today i'm going to be talking to somebody who's recently returned from xinjiang so stay tuned welcome back to the barrack channel welcome to another video if you haven't been here before my name's lee i run this channel with my son ollie we cover opinion we cover food and travel and we cover technology so something for everybody as i said earlier we're going to be talking to a guy who's just returned from xinjiang xinjiang is a really hot topic at the moment so let's get started and this is the guy here i'm going to interview noel welcome hi there helly hi hi noel so you've recently returned from xinjiang that's right that's right when did you return when did you get uh i uh came back on the fifth of april which is a monday night yep i went that uh i went on the second of april so you had three full days there it's a four day three night uh expedition okay okay so pretty tight schedule very tight very tight okay now shinjang is a really big area right so which parts of xinjiang did you go to i had gone to rob urumqi is the capital right uh i gotta check that one actually okay i would think so because yeah yeah it's a very it's a very modernized place and then a kashgar and uh whole time okay and uh so kashkar and iran to big cities and hotan is a sort of smaller more rural area um i would say cash guys well it's it's not as big as in terms of its development okay and as you know there's a especially from the five eyes countries there's a lot of allegations being thrown at xinjiang and is that the reason you went there to go and see for yourself to see if possibly some of those allegations of true or not uh well they say that if you have not been there you shouldn't really talk about it well i guess so that's that's the point yeah so that's why i went there with fernando from uh fumu bay um so we had a chance to go and i went simply to qualify me to speak a little bit on the subject that's all yeah i think that that's fair comment so so tell me a little bit so you first arrived in urumqi you flew to a romchi yes so tell me how it was when you arrived how were you you know did you feel okay there or did you feel nervous or worried so um we took the flight from shenzhen to romchi in the morning uh arrived five and a half hours later so it's a five and a half hours yes it's a five and a half it just shows you how big china is it is huge yeah um i had a good fortune well we had a good fortune that during the flight it was relatively clear skies so i managed to take a lot of aerial shots oh nice out of the the window so i can basically you know be well having some aerial shots to say to back up to back up what's actually going on in the in the region so again you know from the from the aerial shot you don't really know what's going on you don't go you don't know what it is unless you're there down there you can't really and you can only speculate what those things are yeah i mean i think this is a big misconception you'll get a lot of westerners that they'll you know some of these uh what they call um investigators saying oh he's a satellite image but what they don't realize is in china that a lot of people who work at a factory they also live on the premises in dormitories and a lot of those places will have a security wall around them exactly you know and and this is something i think a lot of westerners don't understand because in the west it's it's not common for you to to live at the factory where you work but it is pretty common in china so okay so you arrive in a rumpchi airport what were the procedures like at the airport because i mean you're i know you're not chinese but you look chinese and you speak chinese so i guess you could have easily passed off as a as a mainlander but but fernando was with you clearly doesn't look chinese so how did you find things at the airport so when we checked in um obviously there is a record of uh foreign passport boarding the plane in the manifest so it goes to show you that you know whoever is running the show knows what they are doing so the moment the plane arrived at the airport we were actually called out singled out to come out to do the registration first okay so what they were doing was basically taking our uh information by seeing the qr code that we have uh just recording our passport date of entry into china and that was it that was it so once once that was cleared then they allowed the rest of the plane to deplane and then everybody else did the same thing everybody else had to show uh the qr code because they're locals they don't need to actually show the entry that because they're already in china yeah right so only the foreign so which is just just two of us okay all right so once everybody is accounted for on the plane then uh they allowed everybody to just to just go on their way so then once you've gone through that airport security you were just free to to free your credibility so what did you do then what was that we proceeded to get a uh taxi to the local bazaar this is interruption yes so we went to the local bazaar to look at what's going on locally right like a bizarre place where you have people you have shops you have food so yeah we went there and everything was basically you know a non-event and if if i said to you so tell me is a ranch is similar to other chinese cities is did you notice any big differences or big similarities um differences definitely it's not as developed as shenzhen and shanghai and guangzhou it's it's very much i would say like a suburban place okay you feel like it's just developing uh-huh so there's many things that you i've not seen a mcdonald's there by the way oh wow i've only seen kfc okay so that's interesting that's interesting yeah no starbucks no starbucks in fact uh western stuff is basically non-existent yeah yeah it's all just local uh all the young rochon all the local food it's very la land based you can't really find good coffee there as well okay yeah i saw february talking about a coffee which is kind of funny on his live stream yeah and um so from a point of of security like in shenzhen shanghai there are a lot of cameras was there also a lot of cameras in the rocky would you say more or less than shanghai or shenzhen i would say there's more cameras in iraqi uh not just there but in kashgar as well in holton everywhere you turn almost every hundred meters i'm not exaggerating every 100 meters there's a set of cameras okay and what's important i must note is that when you enter the bazaar you have to actually go through facial recognition so you're going to take off your mask right and then you're getting all your belongings through x-ray before you enter into the bazaar which is basically where you have your shopping and your food see because i think the bazaar is a like a important area that you don't want people messing around you know you're not like outside so once you enter something into like a like a basement subway or at least it's a concentrated area you have to go through this security so there's only one entry and exit point that's command control okay you don't just go in anywhere you want sure sure but once you're in it's it's free and easy it's similar to going to disneyland right now you go into one exactly you go into one area and once you're in you're free to go yeah the way i see it but but do you think generally security is is tighter there than in other cities in china security was the tightest in kashgar followed by hotan and then most relaxed in ramji okay that's really interesting why do you think there's that higher level of security well because the kashgar is the closest to the other countries right neighboring ah yeah yeah so so yeah that's possible because you know there's a lot of speculation that that there are people returning who who do want to cause disruption in xinjiang and you know personally i think that if they have something like that as a threat that they need to deal with it i mean i don't know whether you're aware but but previously two to four or five years ago there was a number of terrorists i had a good friend who's from um xinjiang and she's told me a number of times that that there was a lot of nervousness there but she says now when she's seen shenzhen but when she returns home she says she feels much more relaxed yes well i think we all know about the riots uh back in the day but since then till now there's been no such thing it's been safe and on that point i'd like to also add that even the locals that i come into contact with i mean i have a factory uh associates in in dongguan even they were telling me before my trip oh be careful it's very dangerous there so because i think they don't know they have not been there themselves yeah so even local chinese students think it's dangerous exactly but when we're there you have people from beijing telling me that they're actually investing in kashgar you have lots of enthusiastic tourists from like shanton all over the place they are tour groups going to xinjiang for tours when we came back we actually were on the same plane as a tour group that companies just brought their staff over to xinjiang so yeah so wow so do you actually feel that the the authorities have pretty much got the terrorism threat under control there i would think so yeah i mean that's the impression yeah i've i've not been there but right from what i've people i've spoken to people i know who've lived there right i i get that feeling okay so what else can i ask you can i let me ask you um okay so as a a foreigner there how did you get treated by the people how how did you find you got you got true well um i don't really look foreign yeah that's the thing but because fernando definitely looks foreigner so every there was a mistaken as chinese there oh yes because there was one point where we were crossing a gantry and they were i think that's the first time they saw a foreigner for like a long time because they were like like you know oh what do we do what do we do yeah and then they were like recording fernando's uh details and they actually forgot about me and i actually went by without having to show any any id actually i i have a story and this was this was a number of months ago when when covid was much more of an issue here we went to a small village in guangdong to major and we had a problem because they they were concerned that for us and actually it was our fault because normally we stay in hotels we were staying with a friend so we didn't register at the police station and say we'd arrive so again obviously you you have to do that when you travel to places yeah so back to your point you know definitely we were gathering stairs as we walked you know on the streets you know you you'll notice that people are just looking at you and like you know fernando mentioned in his live stream there was one point where the camera was actually just following us it was so funny like a like a movie but i think i think to a point you you can understand that i mean because of the way um foreigners or western certain western countries are talking about xinjiang at the moment i would imagine the authorities are very heightened about foreigners being there wondering what the hell they're doing and this kind of brings me on to the next question you you went there to take some footage yes uh how how did that go do you find you were openly allowed just to walk around with your camera and take footage do you have to do it covertly i was i was taking pictures freely uh although of course there were some occasions where uh well this was experienced by fernando when he took a picture the guy was telling him don't take a picture that sort of thing uh-huh so but then is that just a normal citizen guy i that's what he told me yes i didn't really see it okay but i he he explained to me and i guess that was a citizen guy yes no not police not police because i mean i mean that that's fair enough the only the only police uh encounter was in urangi when we were trying to get the bus to the railway station and i was actually doing some filming and i saw the skateboarder i did a video on that after that the police guy came over and said it's a young guy what what is flaming and we just explained we're just uh you know doing our own vlogs then he was like okay okay oh yeah it was like that yes he didn't come over to actually check it out i mean doing his due diligence right he can't be like he's a policeman and he has orders to look up for such things and he can't be like oh you know i just turned a blind knife so he went over did his job ask what are we doing and we explained and he said okay oh wow yeah yeah because we weren't actually like doing very like sinister things we were filming ourselves sure yeah so it explained itself right we were filming ourselves and we explained the situation and then he accepted the answer did you talk to many people while you were there yes i tried to talk to as many people as i could and i actually talked to a barista in a coffee shop she's a wigger i talked to a a uyghur man who owns a little stall in the ancient city of kashgar i have all that on video i'll be uh putting it i'm going to put on all right put out the video okay did you find people were quite open to talk to you or mostly are open um again there were many interactions the one who was having we had a lunch there we actually took a picture together you know another lady at a stall when i was taking pictures of her i'm not sure if he's her son or a staff she was telling me oh don't take don't take because he's ugly eating he's eating but in the end you know i exchanged wechat and i actually sent her the photographs that i took so i actually added about i think three or four wechat from people in kashgar uh and whole time i think and only only two of them deleted me after that but the rest kept me on the friends list so i'm actually friends with people i think it is important to communicate and explain to people what you do and why exactly and just one other interesting question is that there's a lot of the west think that they're trying to get rid of the uyghur language now my argument to that is that china are trying to get the whole country all speaking chinese put on war so there's many people in shanghai who previously couldn't speak putin while there's many people in guangdong who couldn't speak putin but now they're teaching it in all the schools yeah did did it appear to you that they're trying to get rid of the the language i think this is uh similar to when singapore was formed and uh lee kuan yew mandated that english would be the first language and then every other uh race would learn their mother tongue so that's why i knew mandarin is because i am chinese and i had to learn my mandarin the malays in singapore had to learn their malaise and slightly similarly for indians they got to go for their tamil classes yes so i think it's the same it's happening in xinjiang where one country needs to learn the main language which is yes and then you can go and practice your own shanghainese and whatever well i say this all over it's like um i have a friend who's got a young daughter her first language is is putin wah but then she speaks cantonese because she's from guangdong and then thirdly she's got her own like area language it's just kirchhoff so yes yeah but but at school she's taught in mandarin her parents featuring cantonese and some of her friends so you know it's and it is a good idea because previously a lot of these people couldn't communicate you know there's a lot of the older generation here as you know that can't speak to each other because these might speak shangrini's they speak cantonese they've got no uniform language exactly but having you know bringing putin war into the equation that everybody can then speak to each other which personally i think it's a the right thing to do exactly yeah so before we wrap up now is there anything else you'd like to sort of say and tell me about about your trip well then are you glad you did it are you glad you went i'm very glad even though it was very exhausting but i'm glad i went there because uh if i don't go there i have no right to talk about it so okay and we can look forward to the the videos coming on both yours and fernando ferbani's channel yes that's right and uh okay that's that's great so i'll leave a link to your channels in the description of the video i'd like to thank you for thanks for joining me this afternoon to do that and i appreciate that so i hope you enjoyed that chat with noel please go to either his channel and or movies channel because they're both going to have videos up there if they've not already all about their trip to xinjiang so please check them out i'd also like to give a shout out to a guy in guangzhou called new moves who's also been to xinjiang so have a look at his channel i'll put the descriptions the channels in the description below and uh if you did like this video give it a thumbs up if you do like the channel consider hitting that subscribe button anyway as always for now take care [Music] you

Channel: Barrett

Views: 372,829

Rating: 4.904397 out of 5

Keywords: barrett, barrettyt, china, culture, travel vlogger, china vlogger, oli barrett, lee barrett, the barretts, 中国, 外国人, 中国大陆, 英国人, 老外, 旅行, 文化, 旅游, Xinjiang, Xinjiang news, what is happening in Xinjiang, foreigner in Xinjiang, expat in Xinjiang, can foreigners go to Xinjiang, Xinjiang genocide, Xinjiang Uyghur, Uyghur, uighur, Uyghur genocide, china Xinjiang

Id: p6uI_GF4e6o

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021