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Preface
Where should I begin? With the biting caress of the midsummer sun in Xinjiang? The lack of understanding of this Chinese region? Is poking fun at geopolitical paradoxes a good way to start a story? At times, I would like to come across the words of poets, serene words that you stumble upon when you are having fun drawing the roads of Xinjiang on a map,
However, as we know, a map is not a territory,
It is easy to become familiar with the maps of Xinjiang, everything looking like warm-coloured deserts, filled with inconceivable distances, and dots that look like towns, or （more likely） villages,
When you find a map of Xinjiang in Le Vieux Campeur in Paris, you can leave the shop with your head high, as if you were best equipped to see and grasp this huge region, When you first lay eyes upon it, a map is a kind of spillway for our many preconceptions, And there are many, At the sight of the map of Xinjiang, everything looks simple, and manageable, It seems that nothing, not even the surprising colours, light and inhabitants can stop us,,,
And then, you also have to add to that limited information available in France about this, That's as far as you get with those unfamiliar with the region, And then there are those who are curious： "It's a vast zone", "It's the largest part of China",
When we first lay eyes upon the map, this is what we see or comes to our mind, And we forget all the rest： ancient stories, the adventures of Marco Polo or Guillaume de Rubrouck, the cultural exchanges, the culinary fiavours, the precious materials, and the storms, There would be much to tell over the course of history, But as times flies by, as information trumps the old news, and as our memory is slowly wiped out by more compelling news to be distributed through social media,we end up trapped, And with the speed of things we forget one element essential to humanity: the human being,
