kyrgyzstan

For the past couple years we've been sponsoring an international university in Kyrgyzstan through a Christian foundation. I decided to pay an explorative visit to the country and the university while in Taipei.

A straight line flight from Taipei to Kyrgyzstan (3000 miles) would include an overnight stop-over in China that required Chinese visa which I didn't have, so I opted for an alternative route that took me off Taipei in early morning, stopped by Seoul for a couple hours, then a 7-hour beeline to Almaty, Kazakhstan, then a short hour flight to Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, before a driver and two students from the university picked me up at the airport and took me for a one-and-a-half hour drive to the town of my destination, Tokmok, while the night was still young.

To most people--me included--Kyrgyzstan is probably just one of those hard-to-spell "-stan" countries in the middle of nowhere Euro-Asia landmass. Indeed it is first of those "-stan" countries sprawling west of China (Kazakhstan to its north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest), occupying a key section of the ancient international highway called Silk Road, carrying a mixed-bag of cultural and historical heritage spanning millennia, as ancient civilizations ebbed and flew, East and West met and left, at the heart of the Eurasian continent.

Take two ancient ruins I visited for examples: Suyab (碎葉) was once the principal capital of Western Turkic Khaganate (西突厥汗國) who got defeated by Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty (唐太宗), and the rumored birthplace of the famous Chinese poet 李白; Burana Tower was one of the oldest architectural construction (a minaret) in Central Asia, situated in the old capital of yet another Khaganate established by people of Iranian origin.

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People here still call Chinese "Khitan" (契丹) because that Chinese ethnic group came and established the Western Liao Dynasty (西遼王朝) and ruled them for 100 years during the 12-13th century.

After some unsuccessful rebellions against Qing Dynasty by Chinese Muslims living in northwest China (陝甘回亂) in late 19th century, many of them chose to emigrate to Kyrgyzstan and other parts of Central Asia, whose descendants are now called Dungan ( 東干，東甘 ，甘肅東部 ) people, with whom you can carry on simple conversations in modern Chinese without much trouble.

Around the same time, a group of German speaking Mennonite Christians migrated from Europe to the northeast of Kyrgyzstan to escape religious persecution from the Catholic and other Reformed churches.

And tens of thousands of Korean families living in Russian Far East were force-moved by Stalin to this part of the world for fear of them being used as Japanese spies pre-World War II era.

Economically speaking, Kyrgyzstan is a poor country. It has few natural resources other than some minerals and water from the high mountains. Whatever little manufacturing industry it had collapsed after the Soviet Union breakup, and agriculture remains a major contributor to the country's GDP. Indeed I had tasted great delicious beet soup and potato mash, devoured biggest shish-kabobs ever, and crossed path with horse and cow herds on country roads.

I spent my 9-day stay at the Christian foundation's office-residential building rather than a hotel. It was a small two-story complex with nice meeting hall and homey kitchen, among other things, and a staff of capable and devoted Kyrgyz Christians who have done many great charitable works in a Muslim country for the past 18 years. I gave thanks to each of them and shared my spiritual journey with them in their daily morning devotion on the day I left.

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Crossing path with horses:

https://youtu.be/ENbEoYjrFcc

For more photos and trip details: 

https://www.facebook.com/cdwongx/media_set?set=a.10220522230190907&type=3