Life is a Cigarette

In Xinjiang, where life is cheap but love is costly, queer Uyghurs navigate between tradition and expression, finding resilience in borrowed language and stolen moments of authenticity.

Photograph of a cigarette statue on the way to Tianshan Mountains.

Uyghur culture is traditional. Infused with Silk Road heritage, Islamic influences and arranged marriages, the culture is distinct. Social responsibility and kinship ties are important. Initially, my Uyghur friends agreed to take me to a Uyghur wedding. But plans changed. Tired of traditions, they suggested we go to a club instead. When accompanying my Gen Z Uyghur friends to T3 (a local Uyghur-owned club), there was an eclectic mix of genres from Blackpink to WAP to afrobeats to Uyghur rap to traditional Uyghur folk music, which prompted the crowd into a synchronised Uyghur folk dance.

In Xinjiang, Asku is one of the major cities in the autonomous region of the same name, located in the North of China. Located near the Taklamakan Desert, sandstorms are common, the UV is strong, the air is dry, and the environment is challenging, with air quality concerns (the AQI reached a peak at an unhealthy 181 in December 2025). Here, a bottle of water costs 2 yuan, in Shenzhen, a bottle of water costs 9 yuan. Life is cheap. And endowed with snow-capped mountains, deserts, and parks- it's a popular destination for mainland Chinese tourists to visit for weddings, family holidays and young couples, the club embodied the contradiction of the landscape, mixing traditional folk dances with twerking, ancient rhythms with modern beats.

[Photographed from the train from Asku to Kashgar during a desert storm.]

'Sky', a pseudonym for my Uyghur friend, who loves Adele and studied at Shenzhen University, told me he likes going to the club because when he is with his family, he 'has to be a straight man.' When in the club, he kisses his friends passionately and twerks on the floor. Out of sight of his Uyghur relatives, he snogs on the train and copulates in the car. Code switching is a commonly practised trait among stigmatised communities. Here, where life is cheap at 2 yuan for water, authentic expression comes at a premium.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in China in 1997, quietly untangling same-sex intimacy from the broad and ambiguous charge of "hooliganism", a term that once blurred the boundaries between private desire and public disruption. Four years later, in 2001, the Chinese Society of Psychiatry removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, a shift that signalled progress, though perhaps more in policy than perception. Legal changes may arrive with the stroke of a pen, but acceptance moves more slowly, like a folk melody carried on desert wind, weaving its way through customs, country and tradition at different speeds.

    [Photograph in T3 Dance Club.]

In more conservative regions like Xinjiang, social acceptance drips slowly through the cracks of tradition, like rain tracing its way down ancient stone. A PubMed study revealed that among 1,467 MSM (men who have sex with men) participants from Urumqi, Kashgar, Aksu, and Yining cities of Xinjiang, only 44.7% had a positive view of their own gay identity (ego-identity) and only 29.1% felt accepted by society (social-identity). Unfortunately, this makes lavender relationships common in the queer Uyghur communities. In China, this is referred to as 形婚 xínghūn, which literally means "marriage of appearance," a marriage between a gay man and a lesbian woman, a common practice among queers in China. The same region that draws mainland Chinese tourists for romantic weddings and family holiday, to places like snow-capped Asku, sees its own queer residents navigate marriages of mere appearance, where love becomes as elusive as relief from the region's harsh, dry air.

On our way to the Tianshan mountains (a UNESCO World Heritage site) a large cigarette statue stands before entering. "You have the Big Ben, we have a cigarette," my friend quipped. The cigarette statue reflects the place, dirty, smoky… secretive. Like the challenging air quality in Asku, the atmosphere here is thick with things unspoken. By the roadside near Tianshan, there proudly stands a phallic-shaped monument, perhaps a crude metaphor of the underground queer presence in the region. Xinjiang is officially an autonomous region within China, a place of complex history and ongoing social tensions. International organisations have documented concerns about the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in the region. The contradiction persists- a region marketed to tourists for its natural beauty while navigating complex internal challenges. Perhaps more lies behind the glamorous headline 'Xinjiang Steals the Spotlight during the New Year Gala' (People's Daily 2024) after CCTV used Kashgar as a sub-venue for CCTV Spring Festival Gala. And again, in 2025, Xinjiang played a prominent role in Lunar New Year celebrations, with the Xinjiang Arts Institute collaborating with Hangzhou Unitree Robotics to showcase AI-powered Yangge dance.

Phallic shaped Mountain statue on the way to Tianshan Mountains.

In my room at Pudong Holiday Hotel (a 4-star traditional Chinese Hotel) a sign reading "prevention of AIDS you and I are involved" sits on the desk. Located on the outskirts of the city, Sky told me this is the hotel where he goes with his boyfriend to avoid being spotted by relatives or family friends. The same region that welcomes mainland Chinese couples for extravagant weddings because where the cost of water is just 2 yuan- life is cheap, sees its own queer love relegated to the margins, to hotels on dusty outskirts where secrecy is as essential as bottled water. Because here, while material life is cheap, emotional authenticity comes at an impossible price.

Without the ability to seek guidance on matters of sex and desire from loved ones and with sex being a very taboo subject in both Uyghur and Chinese culture, traditionally stifled, wishing to be sexually liberated, the necessary caution is not always exercised. By September 2019, Xinjiang had 48,423 living HIV/AIDS cases (including 13,996 AIDS patients), ranking 6th nationally, with 16,004 reported deaths (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press). The air isn't the only thing that poses health challenges in this region where UV rays are strong and protection scarce.

" ئاشنى تەتمەكچى بولسىڭ، قازانىنى توغرا بىل. "

Ashni tatmaqchi bolsan, qazanini toghra bil.

Which is a Uyghur idiom for "If you want to taste the meal, first know the pot".

.

Rather than nationalism, identity politics is the focus of Uyghur netizens I met in Asku. Some told me they are a "bad bh," others said they are "queens." In doing this, these Uyghurs weren't merely adopting Western slang but weaponising it, transforming borrowed language into armour against erasure. These self-appointed titles of empowerment serve as both shield and sword. Defiant they stand as proclamations of self-worth in a context that doesn't always welcome queerness, where personal pride becomes the last unconquerable territory. In a place where sandstorms are common and the environment itself seems hostile, these young people create their own weather patterns, their own climate of defiance. Like Asku, where deserts clash with snow-capped parks, they are contradictions-'Queen' and 'bad bh'—I told them they are all of those things and so much more.

[Photograph of street sellers in Asku on Valentines Day.]

At the end of the trip, I wanted to ask Sky, "Can I call you Rose?" Because Uyghur queerness blooms like Taklamakan desert roses, resilient flowers that find beauty in the harshest terrain, their petals unfurling against impossible odds. Like this region itself, endowed with snow-capped mountains, deserts, and parks yet battered by sandstorms and environmental challenges, these individuals embody a spirit that persists: present yet cautious, beautiful precisely because they bloom despite the difficulties they face.

Photograph taken whilst driving to Tianshan Mountains.

Sky- limitless, creative and unbounded by social expectation, he remains resilient. Like a rose in the desert. He is 'grateful for everything in my life- for being born into a loving family, for my family, my friends and my motherland.' In Xinjiang, where life is cheap but love is costly, he and others like him find ways to bloom, distant from mainstream acceptance perhaps, but blooming nonetheless.

Written and photographed by Parsiah.