Ildiko Beller-Hann

INTERVIEW OF ILDI BELLA HANN BY ALAN MACFARLANE 29TH APRIL 2024

AM

It is a great pleasure to have a chance to talk to Ildi after many years being friends. Ildi, I always start by asking when and where you were born?

IH

1956 in Budapest.

AM

Right. And I then ask about people's ancestors back on the female and male line, a couple of generations or even more if they know anything about them. Can you tell me something about your grandparents, for example?

IH

Yes, well, I would start with my parents and moving back a little bit. I don't know that much about my remote ancestors, but because my parents got married in the early '50s, which was the worst period of Stalinism in Hungary. It was a marriage between two very different social groups, classes, I could say. So, and I'm sure that such marriages took place at other times, at other historical times as well. But I think that this kind of sort of general historical background probably gave rise to such unions more often. And my mother came from a bourgeois family, so to speak. Apparently, there was also nobility among the ancestry. And my father came from a working class family, very working class. My mother's family was probably partly at least from the northern parts of Hungary. My father's maternal line, so to speak, originated in Transylvania. And my grandfather's parents came from, again, northern Hungary to Budapest. So that's where my parents met. And for me, as I was a child already, I remember that the world was very clearly divided between those who lived in the working class area in Pest and in the more sort of classy, leafy part of Budapest on the Buda side.
AM

Which part did you live in?

IH

In Buda.

AM

In classy part.

IH

In the classy part, but we were sent on holidays to the working class area, which looking back, it seems very strange. But actually, it was perfectly normal for me because we were very close to my paternal grandparents who helped out a lot. So we spent quite a lot of time there. But it was...

AM

What was their occupation? What does your father do?

IH

My father was an engineer, but he started off as a worker, a factory worker. But he was extremely talented and he then spent a few years studying at the university, but he didn't complete that. And later on, when I was a small child, but I already have clear memories of this, he took a degree in engineering, but he had already been employed pretty much as an engineer, an electrical engineer. And my mother was a teacher of history and literature. So for me, the world was also divided in a gendered way. So that for me, women represented the humanities and maybe a little bit of social sciences and men stood for mathematics and mechanics and so on, and all this practical knowledge. So it took me a long time to unlearn these divisions, which I had in my head ever since I can remember.

AM

What was your parents' character like? I mean, how do you think their character shaped you?

IH

It's very hard to tell. They were very different. My mother was very small, but very, very temperamental, extremely agile, extremely intelligent. And my father was also very intelligent, but in a very different way, as I have already told you. And my father was more calm, more relaxed, lots of jokes all the time when he was around. So very different characters.

AM

What was your first memory? Firm memory?

IH

Well, it's very hard to tell whether it's a real memory or something which I made up as the years have gone by. But one of my first memories is that I was sitting on the chair of my mother's stepfather, who I really admired, although I have very hazy memories of him. And he was showing me a skull, which was decorating his desk, because he was actually a professor of zoology at one of the universities, not in Budapest, but in Szeged, in South-East Hungary. And he was chatting to me and talking about the importance of this skull, but I must have been four. If it's a true memory, I must have been four.

AM

Interesting. And then around that time, or a little older, when you were five, six, seven, did you have any particular hobbies or excitements or enthusiasms for anything, collecting or whatever?

IH

Well, I collected anything that my sister told me to collect. So, pictures from magazines and stamps, for example, which was actually very important, because I remember that our stamp collection and collecting stamps actually made me aware of the outside world, of the world outside the country I was living in. So, that was very important. And at a very young age, I became quite interested in archaeology, like most children become enthusiastic at some point for archaeology.

AM

What age was that?

IH

That I cannot tell exactly, but my paternal grandfather used to subscribe to a sort of popular scientific magazine, which I remember I started leafing through each time I was at their place, and he got a new issue every week. And I quite enjoyed reading this, but I must have been able to read, so I must have been over six or something.

AM

That's quite young for reading.

IH

No, I learned to read at home from my sister. She always wanted to play school with me.

AM

She was an older sister?

IH

Older sister, so I could never become the teacher.

AM

Always the pupil. What was your first school?

IH

It was the primary school in the district, in the 12th district of Budapest, where I went to, which is still standing. It's still a popular school, and it's called popularly the “Bear School”, because even today, and also at the time when I was a pupil there, we had a couple of statues showing bears, featuring bears with small children. The big bear is reading a story to the little children around him, so it's become known because of these statues, the Bear School.

IH

Do you remember any of the teachers there? Yes, of course, I had some excellent teachers. I was actually very happy in that school, looking back, and I was there for eight years, which was the normal period of time for primary education, and I had actually in general very good teachers, but I remember one outstanding teacher who was responsible for teaching us Hungarian literature and grammar, and this was remarkable that she was not trained as a teacher of Hungarian literature and grammar, she was a psychologist, and she was a very strong character, so a lot of children, including myself, when we first met her, we were terribly afraid of her, but we soon realized that she really managed to get the best out of every single pupil, including the weakest ones in the class, and so on. So soon we developed a great respect for her, and I really learned an awful lot from her, but of course I also have to mention that as far as my love for literature and languages is concerned, I also learned a great deal from my own mother at home. She didn't teach us systematically, but whenever something occurred to her, then she would take a book from the bookshelf. We had a lot of books at home, and she would just read out passages from works, especially that we would never learn or hear about at school.

AM

You then went on from this primary school to what school?

IH

We call it a gymnasium, so it's like a grammar school in the old British system.

AM

Did you have to take special exams to get into it?

IH

No, there was a so-called, it wasn't an exam, but there was an interview with the head of the school, and of course they looked at the results of the final years of primary school.

AM

Was it a good school?

IH

It was an excellent school, and I was again very happy there, which is very important as well.

AM

So you went there when you were about 12?

IH

No, I was 14.

AM

What subjects did you find most exciting?

IH

Well, in the Hungarian school system, you covered a very broad range of subjects, so a lot of science, but you could specialize in language if you wanted to. I could have specialized in maths and physics and so on, but I always leaned towards the humanities, so we covered all the obligatory subjects like maths and physics and chemistry and biology throughout the four years we were there, but I specialized in English, so we had six, seven, eight hours of English each week.

AM

Why did you specialize in English?

IH

Because by that time I was very interested in the outside world somehow. I already mentioned the stamp collection, which influenced me in this direction, but there was another factor which you may find interesting, that my paternal grandfather, even though he was employed in a factory and so on, but maybe he was not a typical worker, he had the Hungarian equivalent of the A-levels, so he also knew some French. He played the violin and he was a great Esperanto enthusiast, and he was always very keen on teaching his grandchildren Esperanto, having failed to do so with his own children, and out of his five grandchildren I was the only one who eventually went along with his wishes, and that meant that when I had a little bit of Esperanto from him, then a new world opened up for me in the sense that he said through Esperanto you can get pen friends in different countries, and so by the time I was 14 I already had an extensive sort of correspondence, pen friends in various countries of the world.

AM

Were you good enough at these science subjects? So you say you could have done maths and...

IH

I was okay, but I was not so interested, I have to say.

AM

What other... I mean did you have particular hobbies at that stage of your life at school?

IH

Reading.

AM

Reading.

IH

It was especially reading.

AM

Literature?

IH

Yes, literature, whatever I could put my hands on, and I had a lot of choice at home, so we had a very, very good selection of the world literature as well as Hungarian literature at home.

AM

Was there no censorship because this is the end of the...

IH

There was censorship, but looking back it's quite amazing how much was available, and not only how much was available, but how much got actually actively translated and was made available not in the original languages, which I couldn't have handled at that age anyway, but in translation, and the same is true for cinema for example. So we're looking back, it's sometimes difficult to comprehend how the authorities could allow that all these films and so on could actually flood Hungary during the time when I was already a teenager, so I'm talking about a specific period of time.

AM

Was it mid-60s?

IH

Later on. From end of the 1960s, which is not an accident, in the 1970s, and this is not an accident because there was a big shift in policy in 1968 in Hungary, and that was new economic policies were introduced, it was called the new economic mechanism, that was the official term for that, and it meant an opening up of the country towards the West as well, and it meant economic improvement for everyday life and ordinary people, but it also meant that in the cultural sphere there was more openness and so on. So for example, I give you one example that on the bookshelf we had books by Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation and so on in Hungarian translation, in excellent Hungarian translation, which was prepared during this period, and it was published, and it was not blacklisted and so on.

AM

And the Beatles?

IH

Well, everybody was listening to the Beatles, and I heard Bob Dylan for the first time, of course, in Hungary during this period. It was not, these things were not available freely in Hungary, but everybody knew them, everybody had them, and there were lots of people who actually had such music, for example, imported or brought in through relatives and so on, and friends and so on from abroad. There was also a black market, and in Czechoslovakia, as far as music is concerned, the firm Supraphon started releasing copies of these big names. So the first Bob Dylan record that I held in my hand was actually issued by another socialist country, by Czechoslovakia, back in the 70s.

AM

Interesting. Talking of music, has music been an important part of your life?

IH

It has, but not actively, because I remember when I was quite little, we still had a piano, which my mother brought from her own family home with her, and then we had to sell it, because we didn't have enough money.

AM

So you never learned an instrument?

IH

No, we never learned an instrument. It was not..., my mother played the piano, because she came from this bourgeois household, and it was part of her upbringing, but for us it was not possible.

AM

What about listening to music?

IH

Of course, we still do at home.

AM

What do you like most?

IH

Well, all kinds of different music, but in more recent years, in the last few decades, I mostly go for classical, but also ethnic music.

AM

Within classical, which? The greats?

IH

Well, the greats, but also I'm open to listening to composers and so on, who are less known, and so on.

AM

Do you work to music at all? Some people like to have music on all the time when they're working.

IH

Well, Chris does, my husband does, I can't, because I can't divide my attention between music and something else. So I guess it's a matter of what sort of type you are.

AM

Interesting. One thing that happens in England around the age of 14, 15, is that if you come from an Anglican background you get Confirmed into your religion. And I certainly, and quite a lot of people, went through, in their sort of mid to late teens, went through their most religious phase. Did this happen to you?

IH

Not at all. I can't say much about this, simply because it didn't play a big part in my life. I had my grandmother, who occasionally tried to make us pray when I was little, and I also had a great-grandma who lived with us for the first 10 years of my life, and she looked after us quite a lot. And she tried to take us to church, and she also taught us how to pray in the evenings, but my mother was very much against this. And so much so that I remember sort of big arguments between my mother and my great-grandmother, who was my mother's grandma, actually, about this. And of course, I sort of accepted my mother's decision, because her word counted most. But if you ask why my mother was so anti-religion, there is a very simple answer to that, that as a small child, she was put into a Catholic boarding school, where she suffered a lot in the hands of the Catholic nuns, and she swore that she would never allow that to happen to her own children.

AM

Interesting. I mean, you, later in your life, and you've done anthropological work and so on, you've been working a lot in Islamic Muslim societies. So has religion been important in your personal life at all later in your life, or how would you describe yourself in religious terms?

IH

Well, of course, I have been touched by all these experiences. And in some ways, I would say that I got to know a great deal about Islam through my work, probably more than the kind of, you know, exposure that I had to Catholicism, which is my sort of, which would be my natural background. I guess I have been touched by spirituality, but not sort of religion of any denomination. But I have a great respect for all believers.

AM

When you say, as I think I heard you, you've been touched by spirituality.

IH

Yes.

AM

What do you mean by that?

IH

Well, I don't want to elaborate on that, because it's just..., I wouldn't fill it with sort of religious content in the usual sense of the word, but certainly something bigger than we are as humans.

AM

So have you sensed that particularly in your fieldwork or just generally in your life?

IH

Also during fieldwork occasionally, but also in everyday life or readings, especially exposure to fine arts, to music.

AM

What about sports and games? Are you an enthusiast for any kind of...?

IH

I am, of course, all in favour for a healthy lifestyle. I've always been, but I have never been a great fan of extreme sports or extreme achievements. I've never had this competitiveness. So...

AM

You didn't play any games at school?

IH

At university I did play basketball, but it was never on a competitive level or even a semi-professional level or anything like that. But I used to jog, and when I first came to Cambridge, I used to play squash and I tried my hand in all kinds of things. I've never been particularly good at anything, but I continued with jogging. I still go swimming once a week and so on. So I like walking and so on, but I wouldn't say... it has been an important part of my life, but not in any competitive way, so more in moderation.

AM

So you finished at school and obviously got good results, and then what happened?

IH

And then I took the entrance exam to university, which was a very competitive entrance exam, and I got into the University of Budapest.

AM

To study?

IH

Well, to study English, and in addition to English, I also took two other subjects, which were archaeology and Turkish philology. So when I took the entrance exam, it was not possible to apply for these three subjects. At the time, the system was such at that university that you could apply for a maximum of two subjects, and archaeology and Turkish were not offered immediately for the new students. So I had to apply to English and librarianship, and after the first year, or already during the first year, I started attending the courses for archaeologists, and in the end of the first year, I could switch from librarianship to archaeology. Then in my second year, I started taking courses in Turkish, and in the end of my second year, I could switch to Turkish. So I got my degrees after six years of study in archaeology, English and Turkish.

AM

Six years?

IH

Six years, and that was, I guess that translates into MAs. I see, MA as well. But we didn't have the BA, MA system back then.

AM

I see.
IH

But when I applied to Cambridge and I came to Cambridge, my first degrees were translated as MAs in these three subjects.

AM

Were there any teachers at university who stood out as influencing you most?

IH

I had a number of very good teachers in English, and English always remained a much loved subject for me, especially because of literature, although I have to say I also became very interested in linguistics. At the time, of course, Chomsky was the big name, and we had to delve very deep into generative grammar and so on. But because of my interests, my stronger interest in archaeology and Turkish, I spent less time with English literature and grammar. But I had some very good teachers there. And then in archaeology, I had a very, very good teacher who was a professor of archaeology, and nowadays there is a research institute in Budapest named after him. So he was actually also very well known to the general public because he also popularized archaeology quite a lot. I was very lucky to have been one of his last students, actually, and he also took me and several other of my friends, fellow archaeology students to his digs. So that was fantastic. And then in Turkish, I had some very good and influential teachers. One of them was Suzanne Kakuk, a teacher of Turkish philology, and the other one was István Vásáry , who is a specialist in Central Asian history. And it was these two people from whom I first heard about Central Asia, about the peoples and cultures of Central Asia, about Turkic languages being spoken outside Turkey. And they had a huge influence on me in this respect.

AM

Then you went straight on to Cambridge or?

IH

Well, I got married to Chris Hann. During the last years of my university studies. And as soon as I finished my degree courses in English and archaeology, I joined him, not to come to Cambridge, but to go to Poland for a year. So I spent one year in Poland with him. And I had permission from the university to spend my last year in Turkish studies there because I was lagging one year behind in Turkish, compared to my other courses. And I got special permission to spend that year in Poland with my husband. And I got a special assignment to write a small, well, not so small, but an essay about the topic which I could work on in Warsaw, while we were staying in Warsaw. And it was... and they gave me a topic which was sort of related to Poland. So one year in Poland and afterwards, I came to Cambridge for one year. And after that year, we went to Turkey for one year, and then came back to Cambridge and then spent a few uninterrupted years here.

AM

Doing a PhD?

IH

Doing a PhD.

AM

Who was your supervisor?

IH

Susan Skilliter, who was an Ottoman historian at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, as it was called back then.

AM

What was the subject of the Phd?

IH

The subject was Turkish linguistics. So Susan very kindly tolerated my diverging interest, because of course she was an Ottoman historian. And I didn't have an Ottoman historian's background, academically speaking. So when I was studying Turkish in Budapest, already in the beginning of our studies in the Turkish department, we had to decide whether we wanted to go on and become Ottomanists or study Ottoman history, or whether we go for Turkish philology. And I went for Turkish philology, which took me closer to Central Asia and so on. So that opened that avenue for me. But when I came to Cambridge and I talked to Susan, who sort of very kindly started from the beginning, encouraging me to apply for a PhD and do it under her supervision, she understood that I wasn't trained as an Ottoman historian. And she had very good and deep knowledge of the Turkish manuscript collection at the University Library in Cambridge. And she suggested that I work on the language of a late 15th century manuscript, which was written in a Turkic language, with the Arabic script. And I soon found out that this was actually a translation from the original Persian. And I also did some historical research, and I soon found out that the original Persian version had already been studied quite extensively by historians. And it was, because of these results, preliminary results, that I decided, and Susan encouraged me to continue to do a linguistic study of this language. So it was a PhD in Turkish philology.

AM

And you enjoyed doing it?

IH

In the beginning, yes, but after a while, my interest sort of shifted a little bit, and that was under the influence of my husband, who is an anthropologist, and who started bringing home rather interesting looking books about anthropology. And of course, having talked to him a lot about his own fieldwork back in Hungary, and then having accompanied him during fieldwork to Poland, and having picked up some of his books, which he brought back home from the library, I started becoming interested in anthropology. So I sort of turned away from philology after the PhD, and I started delving more and more into anthropology. But I have to say that up until now, I have always remained to some extent, faithful to my philological background, in the sense that I always continued working with texts, and I really attribute great value to textual work. And I have tried to combine, very often whenever I could, in my work, I tried to combine fieldwork with textual work.

AM

But you do both, you do fieldwork as well?

IH

Yes.

AM

When did you start going to Central Asia, and where did you go?

IH

Well, I first went when I was still a student, because in Hungary, so I was quite fascinated by Central Asia. And it was in 1978, and the only way to get to Central Asia at that point was to join a tourist group, an organized tourist group from Hungary, to the former, at the time it was still the Soviet Union. And it was a three-week tour, which started in Moscow, and from Moscow we were flown to basically Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and having visited Dushanbe, we then went to Khiva, Samarkand, and Bukhara, and Tashkent. So I saw these places during the Soviet times. It was a very short visit, but it gave me a taste of a completely different world. So it was at that time. And after that, my first, my next longer visit took me to China, to Northwest China, to Xinjiang, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and that was in 1986, for about half a year.

AM

With Chris?

IH

With Chris and the children.

AM

Tell me about what Xinjiang was like then.

IH

Well, 1986, we went, we wanted to do some fieldwork, but of course we didn't have the necessary language skills, and also we didn't have a research permit. Xinjiang had just opened up to foreigners at the time, and most of Xinjiang was still closed to foreigners, so we were allowed to go and stay in Ürümqi, the provincial capital of Xinjiang, but we weren't allowed to do any research. It was also not allowed for us to visit other parts of this enormous province, and they also wanted at least one of us to do some English teaching. Chris, being a native speaker of English, he said no way he's ever going to do anything like that. He's not qualified. I told the authorities that I am qualified, I had a degree in English from Budapest, and if they accept that I am not a native speaker, I'm quite happy to do that. They were quite happy to do that, so eventually we went, because I took on this teaching job, teaching assignment at the medical college in Ürümqi, and that's where we lived. We lived on the premises of the college, and that's where I also taught, and it was a special group of students who had this intensive course with me, so 15 hours a week with the same people, young students. They were both graduate students and young teachers at the medical college, so it was a very special group, very interesting, mostly Chinese, one or two members of local minorities, and it was a very interesting time. Most of the time we were in Ürümqi, which was at the time already a big city, but not as big as it is now. It was already a very colourful, quite multi-cultural city, but Xinjiang as a whole was not as well developed as it is now. But it was the first time that I was exposed to a Turkic language, which was not Turkish of modern Turkey, so that was the first shock, because I had expected that I could communicate using my Turkish from the beginning, but that's not how it worked. I had to sit down and start learning this language almost from scratch, although there are a lot of similarities with modern Turkish. For example, the numbers are the same, but then when it comes to kinship terminology, they are already quite different. But it helps if you already know modern Turkish or another Turkic language related. So that was one of the shocks. And politically speaking, it was a very optimistic period of time, so things were looking up for these minorities, including the Uyghurs, because they were given increasingly more cultural rights, which had been denied to them during the Cultural Revolution.

AM

So there was a time when things were looking up. When did you next go back there?

IH

After 1986, it wasn't possible for me to go back for quite a few years for personal reasons and for professional reasons, so I did more research during this period in Turkey. But then in the early 1990s, I started getting grants from the UK, and I think for the first time I went in 1993 and then in 1994, each time for a few weeks preparing for fieldwork for a later stay. And then in 1995 again, I was there for almost half a year. No, again, just a few months. 1996 for half a year, and then 1997 I went to Kazakhstan to do a bit of work among the Uyghur diaspora there. And then again, we carried out again long-term fieldwork almost a year in 2005-06, and revisiting the region in... I can't remember exactly, several times after that, the last time I was there, it was 2013.

AM

The 1990 visits, you went three or four times in the 1990s, but after a gap of about seven years or so, had it changed much by that time?

IH

Well, it was... the cultural openness was still there, so there was still a lot of publishing and Uyghur culture was still very much supported and so on, but you could feel increasing political tension. But it was still possible to do fieldwork, the fieldwork was controlled.

AM

You could go where you wanted?

IH

No, no, of course not. You could never do that, even at the best of times, but it was allowed that foreigners do fieldwork, and I did it always with official permission. And I was lucky enough to get the permission to do fieldwork in the countryside, but of course I didn't have much say in where. My preference would have been elsewhere, but then I just followed the official advice and I just went wherever I was allowed to go. So eventually, the longest fieldwork, so several months of fieldwork took place in the vicinity of Kashgar, in exceptionally successful so-called model villages. A couple of villages were chosen for fieldwork by the local authorities, and most of the time throughout my interviews I was accompanied by a Chinese professor who was a fluent speaker of Uyghur, so I actually learned quite a lot of Uyghur from him, because Uyghur was the only language of communication between us. But I was, I'm still astonished when I look back how much material and how much information I got, even under such controlled circumstances.

AM

Have you published?

IH

Yes, I published quite a lot, and of course I see most of my publications as preliminary, because I was tackling topics that nobody, no other foreigner had worked on before in the context of Xinjiang. Part of it is that I was lucky enough to start going to Xinjiang and learning Uyghur and so on, at a time when very few foreigners were around doing the same, and also because I was very lucky that twice I was allowed to do fieldwork in the countryside. So up to the present day there have been very few studies by foreigners about the Uyghur countryside. Most of the other international colleagues who have done actually very good work in Xinjiang, they have worked in urban areas and not always with a research permit.

AM

What were the subjects? You said you were studying, subjects which others hadn't?

IH

Well I dabbled into lots of subjects because there were just so many things, and I was pretty much without discipline when I chose my subject matter, so I allowed myself to be guided by what I heard from local people, so what concerned local people became my own concern as well. So I did quite a bit of work on gender. I'm talking mostly about articles now in terms of output, gender, but also rural production, crafts, and especially women's engagement, but also male and female engagement in various household crafts and so on. I also did quite a bit of work on oral tradition, working with textual sources as well, and I have a monograph where I mostly work on the basis of written sources both in Uyghur and in European languages, and I intended that work to be an introduction to the historical anthropology of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, between the late 19th century and the second half of the 20th century.

AM

You said you went back again in I think about 2005 and then a couple of times after that to 2013. When did you notice, or did you notice, a big shift in the atmosphere in any of those visits?

IH

Well the atmosphere was gradually worsening actually during our visits, respective visits throughout the decades I would say, but in 2005 and 6 it was still possible for us to get a research permit and do research, not in the Kashgar area which was in southern Xinjiang, but in eastern Xinjiang, so a long long way away from our previous field site.

AM

It wasn't possible?

IH

It was possible. It was. So that was actually a good sign and part of that research or most of that research we did without being accompanied by a local researcher, or in theory we had to have someone, but in practice it wasn't taken that seriously. So we did quite a lot of interviews without being accompanied by a mentor so to speak. Having said that, I know that practically everybody whose house we entered were visited after we had left and people were questioned and so on about the contents of our conversations and so on and so on, but the situation became much worse by 2013, and in 2016 I was planning to go back again for a short visit, a follow-up visit, and in the last minute I pulled out because I already heard so many unconfirmed rumours about developments there that I just didn't see any point in going back.

AM

Would they have given you permission do you think?

IH

I think they would have. I think not to do research but to... I would have got a visa at that point. One of my colleagues from the UK, she visited the region as late as 2018 and she got a visa.

AM

Would it be possible now to get a visa?

IH

I have no idea but at the moment I have no wish to go because even if it was possible I don't think I would feel relaxed and I certainly wouldn't feel that it would be a good idea to visit old friends and so on simply because I don't know what sort of consequences such a visit would have so I would prefer to play it safe and not to go.

AM

I mean it's a difficult question, a large question, but what do you think the roots of the growing tension and anxiety are?

IH

Well I think the roots are historical to some extent and of course political. Well it is that Xinjiang has been in a colonial situation and I think that is the main root of the conflict and the Uyghurs have never really made their peace with this arrangement so to speak. If they had been given more cultural and political autonomy I think they would have been quite happy to remain within the confines of China but as the autonomy promised in the official name of the autonomous region, the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region has never been realised. I think we have to find or look for the reasons there.

AM
Was it anything to do with the placing of Xinjiang because the southern areas I visited, Guangxi, Guizhou and so on, Yunnan and other areas where there are autonomous regions they are given a great deal of autonomy but they're not bordering on to areas which might encourage secession or anything like that whereas Xinjiang is bordering on to that whole Central Asian area.

IH

I think you are absolutely right Xinjiang's geopolitical position is such that it creates this tension and also that the Uyghurs are or have been concentrated as a fairly large sizeable population in these border areas. A counter example are the Chinese Muslims who are of the Hui who number approximately the same within China as the Uyghurs. They are also Muslim but culturally they are closer to the Chinese but also they are not concentrated territorially in the same way as the Uyghurs are in one particular corner of China because Hui communities are found in many different parts of China.

AM

Particularly in the south-west.

IH

Yes so they don't seem to pose such a threat.

AM

They also don't have a separate language and so on.

IH

Well because of their cultural proximity to the majority.

AM

I mean the idea of an East Turkestan which is the worry of the Chinese government you know it's a larger movement in Central Asia. We're coming towards the end of the interview but tell me something about your life in Cambridge however you found it living in Cambridge. Was it a shock when you first came?

IH

It was a shock. It was a discovery in many ways but for me it was also strange because it was when I first came to England I was immediately exposed to Cambridge at the same time and it took me a while to realize that the two things are not quite the same so that Cambridge is quite special and life in Cambridge is very different from life elsewhere in the UK. I think I integrated quite well and I learned the ropes as much as one can. It's a very privileged place and I consider myself to have been enormously privileged to have been able to live here and so on. As you know after a number of years we left the UK and we spent about 24 years in other countries in Europe and then it was only more recently after our retirement that we returned to Cambridge so we are still getting used to Cambridge again, but now as pensioners rather than active academics.

AM

You had two big blocks, you had about I don't know 10 years in Kent at the University of Canterbury when...

IH

Six years.

AM

Six years was it? How was that?

IH

I liked it a lot as well. It was a very different university from Cambridge but we had very good colleagues as well and I liked the city as well very much so it was a bit of a challenge to leave the UK after such positive experiences both in Cambridge and in Canterbury.

AM

So you then went to Halle?

IH

First we went to Berlin and we spent a couple of years in Berlin. From there we moved to Halle and officially I was a resident in Halle for 22 years so that makes 24 years altogether in Germany. Out of this I spent 10 years working at the university in Halle, the Martin Luther University, after which I got a job in Copenhagen, University of Copenhagen and I retired from there only a few years ago, two three years ago. So the last 12 years of my working life I was actually commuting between Halle and Copenhagen.

AM

Did you enjoy Halle?

IH

I enjoyed Halle, I enjoyed Berlin as well so it was a new challenge to learn fluent German and so on, also to learn all about the German academic system. I also studied there so I got another degree at the Humboldt University, and I was employed at various German universities and I had teaching experience at a number of German universities. I think in Halle we also had a rather privileged position and a privileged life.

AM

Well I very much enjoyed my visits to Halle each time in different ways. You're obviously a very good linguist like your husband, and speak many different languages which I greatly admire being useless at languages. Is there anything that you would have liked me to ask you that I've forgotten? I haven't talked about your family, about your daughter and grandchildren but they're an important part of your life obviously.

IH

Yes, we also have a son so we have two children, a daughter and a son.

AM

And that's... you're being grandmotherly nowadays on a large scale but you're also writing and working presumably?

IH
Not since retirement. I only do, I take on very small assignments because my priority are the grandchildren at the moment so I haven't been publishing or I haven't been doing a lot of research more recently but I still do peer reviews and occasionally examine PhDs and write letters of recommendation that kind of thing. So I try to keep a hand in things but my absolute priority are the grandchildren. So as they say in the place where I spend a lot of time. Xiè xie