Nanjing was earlier this week gifted four enormous truck loads of epidemic-relief supplies which had made a remarkable journey from distant Xinjiang. And it was all thanks to an initiative to support the region dating from more than a decade ago.
On 11 August, the four articulated vehicles arrived in Jiangning District of Nanjing, their drivers accompanied by five others and a Xinjiang government representative.
They had just travelled 4,500 kilometres by road with 80 tons of watermelon, beef jerky and other anti-epidemic materials. It’s their way of making a modest contribution by way of support to those living in lockdown, the many front-line medical professionals and volunteers on duty in Jiangning 24 hours a day.
And they had come from a quite remarkable place. A city with no traffic lights and an urban plan that features in the ancient Chinese divination text, the I Ching (Book of Changes).
Tekes County (特克斯县) is located in the north central part of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Lying in the Ili River Valley in the depths of the Tianshan Mountains bordering Kazakhstan, the Tekes County seat is Bagua New City.
Built in 1937, eight streets radiate from the city’s centre; Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Xun, Kan, Gen and Kun, named after the the Eight Trigrams used in Taoist cosmology.
In 1996, the local government removed all traffic lights from the city, presumably counting on divination to prevent accidents.
Links with Jiangning began in 2010 with the District government setting up a program to support the remote western region, reports The Paper.
And so you get what you give. With the outbreak in Nanjing at the end of July, so the Tekes County government set about preparing aid.
Zhang Qing, director of the County’s General Office of Supply & Marketing Cooperatives, accompanied the aid on its mammoth journey and spoke of the County’s responsibility to assist. He said that as compatriots, Tekes must come to support the people of Jiangning in their time of need.
