ABSTRACT
Just as international interest in the history and culture of the ancient Silk Road has grown over the past two decades, so the number of tourists visiting ancient sites all along this historic trade route has greatly increased. The People’s Republic of China has encouraged this new interest by allowing increased access to many formerly closed places in North-West China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Toops, 1999). Since the government of Xinjiang put forward the slogan ‘Tourism is the big opportunity for Xinjiang’ in the late 1990s, mass tourism companies based in inner China, as well as those based within Xinjiang, have begun to explore the region’s natural and cultural resources. Uyghur culture has begun to be recognized and valued in new ways, and is now becoming an important part of the region’s attractions. Some religious practices which were previously criticized or even banned have thus gained new acceptability in the interests of meeting the needs of developing tourism. In this way new spaces are opening up for local negotiation of the preservation of cultural practices.
