By Lisa Carducci

After the Uyghurs (more than 8 million), the Kazaks are the ethnic group that ranks second in number in Xinjiang with 1.25 million nationals.

Tall, with an erect bearing, thick hair, and even, very white teeth, Tusipbek (pronounced Tu^rs'bⁱek) welcomed me punctually at the entrance of his apartment with a wide smile. The 60-year-old man had just retired, but he did not spend his days in idleness, as we will see. Tusipbek was not the type of man who sought publicity; he displayed great modesty, even though he had been interviewed several times in the past few years. As he was not very talkative, I had to extract his revelations one by one.

Lisa(M) and the couple [Foreign Languages Press]

His wife, who is rather small, with brilliant eyes that captured my attention, is called Hanipa. I asked them about their family name, and I learned that Kazaks of both sexes just add their father's given name after their own, but it is not necessary to mention it except in official situations. For example, their son's name is Ayden•Tuspbek. Here I must clarify something for the rest of the story. Written Kazak language uses the Arabic alphabet in Xinjiang, while in Kazakhstan, people use the Slavic characters. When it comes to a phonetic translation in the Western alphabet, the Xinjiang Kazak use Latin alphabet mixed with Cyrillic. When Ayden had his name cards printed for international use, he chose to write his father's name without an "i," in such a way to make it easy to read and memorize for the people of different countries and languages he has contact with. In the present gallery of portraits, I transcribed the names as I heard them, to be read using the English pronunciation.

Conversation took a while to really begin. At first, my two interlocutors answered with a "yes" or a "no" only. Did they fear the foreigner that I am? Were they timid by nature? I learned that their daughter Aixia married a doctor last year, also Kazak, whose name is Erken. The young couple live in an apartment they bought not far from their parents. Tusipbek and Hanipa also own their very comfortable and pleasant apartment. I envied the three carpets of different styles that cover the living room, the dining room, and the hallway, which are all open space. The house was remarkably clean, and visitors, as well as the owners of the place, remove their shoes when they arrive.

Tusipbek is from Urumqi, while Hanipa, both Kazak and Muslim, was born in Altay, the administrative centre of the Altay Prefecture. She has lived in Urumqi for 30 years. When they were primary and middle school students, only the Kazak language was taught. It was when they entered university that they started learning Chinese as the national language. They could speak it a little but completely ignored the written language. Tusipbek attended Minzu Daxue or University of Ethnic Minorities in Beijing from 1962 to 1968. Then, for two years – in the middle of the "cultural revolution" – he was sent to the countryside to be "re-educated" by the peasants. Things went differently for Hanipa, who was born on the "right side," while Tusipbek came from a family with "bad origins," meaning that his father and mother were part of the heiwulei, or peoples' enemy, such as landowners, wealthy peasants, counter-revolutionaries, criminals, and rightists.

When I asked Tusipbek about the impressions he kept from these two years of re-education, he answered enthusiastically, "Oh! I learned lots of things! First, how to cook. We were three students living together and we had to manage. In another field, I was studying politics before; in the countryside, for sure, it was out of the question. I decided to become useful and I served as an interpreter for the Kazak peasants who didn't know a word of Chinese. That gave me the idea, then, to compile a dictionary of botany and zoology for them, first a little one, and later this one, in Chinese and Latin to Kazak, written in Latin-Slavic phonetic alphabet. It adds up to over 800 pages."

Hanipa graduated from Xinjiang University in 1968. It was later that Tusipbek met her in the chuanlian (literally "establishing ties" or "making contacts") period, at the beginning of the "cultural revolution," when the Red Guards used to travel all around the country – and for free – to gather their forces and chase heads to cut off.

Their son, single then, still lives with them. He is a specialist in the Russian language. After several years with the regional information bureau, he had recently established a company of international commerce. Business was just starting and the staff numbered only a handful, but progress could be seen already. Surprised that Ayden had abandoned his Russian schooling for the business world, I asked the obvious question. Tusipbek clarified, "Ayden does business with Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan, Russia, where everyone works in Russian." The elder daughter, Aixia, is an employee in the financial field.

From 1971 to 1991, Tusipbek was an editor for the Kazak language section of the Renmin Chubanshe (People's Publishing House) where Hanipa also worked until her retirement. Then, he was with the Xinjiang Ribao (Xinjiang Daily) until 2006 when he retired. He used to be deputy editor-in-chief with the title of senior reporter. But Tusipbek had remained active, as I could tell when he pointed to a pile of 100 envelopes that were ready to be mailed and that contained negatives or photos for the illustrated section of his former journal. His cooperation is deeply appreciated and he offers it willingly, because photography is much more than a hobby for him. It is a passion!

Under my eyes Tusipbek turned the pages of what seemed to be his favourite work, An Overview of Kazak Folk Customs, which required a decade of preparation. This large book speaks with images of landscapes, cultural relics, ballad singers, traditional clothing and accessories, literature and art, yurts (or "felt houses") as family homes, musical instruments, handicrafts, games and sports, tourism, hunters, fauna and flora, sciences and technologies, culture, education, health, agriculture and husbandry, developing market, food and, finally, Nature's masterpieces. It is not without basis that Tusipbek is known as a photographer: he is the producer of 20,000 photos about the Kazak people.