Urumqi Memories

Urumqi is such a special city, and you can see it even from its name - Urumqi. It’s not a Chinese name nor an Uyghur name - the name is of Mongolian origin, meaning beautiful pasture. As the name reflects, it is located in the vast Central Asian steppes and now it is rising as a metropolis and a gateway to something entirely new to the world.

I was born here and spent my childhood and adolescent years until I left for university.

For me, Urumqi is more than a city - it is home and it was my entire world - the only world I knew.

I’m glad that the city is growing too, as I grow into an entirely new person.

My family used to live in a quieter part of a very busy neighbourhood called - Youhao - it means “friendship” if you translate it. It used to be the most commercially developed part of the city, where you could find giant shopping malls, hospitals, schools and many tall buildings. It used to be the gathering spot for my friends to hang out and do all kinds of cool things. It only became clear to me later that hanging out in the shopping malls was not something every kid did growing up.

There were some iconic spots to hangout, for example, the KTV (karaoke TV, my favourite one) on the top floor of a bookstore building. We’d always sneak in to sing, since it looked like something only bad kids did back then, but it wasn’t true. I remember it was one of the places that I can fully be myself - I’d imagine myself to be a pop star when holding the microphone and singing the lyrics with perfect precision, while imitating the facial expressions of the superstar appearing on the big TV screen.

These images are playing like a music video when I’m typing these lines on the computer screen and I’m laughing to myself, a silly younger self.

I used to have a superstar dream, or maybe I still have one.

Music was a big theme in my family, where both my mother and father’s side of family had a musical history. I might have inherited it and had a genuine interest in culture and in music since young, and I was most fascinated by the bold characters of the American pop stars and the profound symphonies of the European classical.

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For high school, a close friend and I decided to go to the same school that is on the other side of the city, in an area that was the most culturally Uyghur in entire Urumqi city. These areas were a mystery to me since I had grown up near a commercial centre. I had very little understanding of what it would feel like to be in areas where you can hear people speaking my native language and restaurants and shops with signs written only in the Uyghur language.

It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I gave up the opportunity to go to other provinces in China, and stayed in Urumqi to go to school with kids that are more like me.

It might sound silly but the high school was considered to be the one in all of Xinjiang with the greater number of good-looking boys and girls, in Chinese - 帅哥, 美女. And I think it is true!

Back then Facebook was still available in the region together with other types of social media. People would post pictures of good-looking people and gather opinions from others.

It was a lot of pressure but it was fun.

Very soon, all kinds of rumours would spread, like who was dating who, who got dumped by who.

There were always new things and trends emerging in the school and we also had the coolest kids in the entire city who wore the most extravagant hairstyles and most distinctive outfits.

Though the school administration was very strict about straightening out these behaviours and asked everyone to wear school uniforms, people still did what they wanted to do.

That was the spirit!

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Now, speaking of music!

I have to thank the West for making all kinds of musical dreams visible to the world. 90s kids in Urumqi grew up listening to the rock stars and pop stars from the West.

Soon after starting in the new school, I discovered all kinds of concerts and events organised by students, and there were flyers everywhere inviting people to their rap, rock and death metal concerts!

This was new to me and it was genuinely exciting. I also helped to write a few lines for a rap song for my high school first love’s would-be rap band.

There was an entire street, hidden and exclusively available for cool kids who had bands and they would invite people over to have fun. In my memory, that was a silent street with overgrown trees alongside it and it wasn’t easy to notice that there would be something going on. Who would have imagined that the silence was just a cover for an untamed lion that would only roar at night!

On the surface, we were all good students in one of the most well-ranked high schools in the Xinjiang province, but underneath, we had a wild heart to pursue what the society deemed unacceptable. These kids were definitely the “trouble makers”.

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However, this obsession with music didn’t just come from the soft power outpour from the West. It propelled it. The root was here - in the heart of every Urumqi kid - to show up, to stand up, and to demonstrate their true values to the world rather than just accepting what they were told.

The outer layer of this musical dream lies in the Uyghur culture itself - passed down through generations of people who have been trying to reach the hearts of others and to be seen by the world for who we are.

From the 70s to the early 2000s, the cultural expression has reached its peak and all kinds of musicians and artists emerged, making their voices heard. It attracted international attention - the theatres were often filled with all kinds of concerts and shows ranging from Central Asian to European - Urumqi was a cultural centre.

This city had a musical dream.

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In the year of 2026, I came back to Urumqi - a city that used to be my entire world - and discovered it to be different from what I remembered.

The last 16 years have changed me and they have changed the city too.

Urumqi

July 2026