Mirzat Salam, owner of Bostan Uyghur Cuisine in Arlington, never expected to get into the restaurant business.

After attending medical school in Urumchi, the capital of China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, he moved to Istanbul in 2014. That’s where his parents and many other Uyghurs — a Turkic, majority-Muslim ethnic group native to Xinjiang — had immigrated to escape repression from the Chinese government.

But in 2019, his Chinese passport was about to expire, which would force him to return to his homeland to get a new one.

Fearing detention if he returned to Xinjiang, he flew to Los Angeles and claimed asylum. He soon moved to the D.C. area, and in October 2021, he opened Bostan Uyghur Cuisine in Arlington in hopes of sharing Uyghur culture with the local community.

“No one knows Uyghurs,” Salam said in an interview at his restaurant. “After opening the restaurant, helping local people know about Uyghur culture made me really proud.”

Bostan is located at the end of a strip mall that is also home to a deli and a 7-Eleven. The restaurant itself is modest. Traditional Uyghur music always plays inside.

The unassuming nature of the restaurant and its surroundings disguises its significance. By serving Uyghur food to the local community, Salam is working hard to keep Uyghur culture alive, even as the Chinese government works to erase it.

“Other than these restaurants, once you step out the door, we don’t have many ways to be with the Uyghur community. We don’t have many other ways to catch up with the Uyghur community,” Salam said. “That’s why the restaurant is very important.”

Salam decided to move to the D.C. area because it’s the center of Uyghur life in the country. An estimated 10,000 Uyghurs live in the United States, according to the Uyghur American Association, and most of them are concentrated in and around Fairfax County and other parts of the region.

Besides Bostan, other local Uyghur restaurants include Mim’s Food in Fairfax, Dolan Uyghur Restaurant in Cleveland Park and Chantilly, Virginia, and Eerkin’s Uyghur Cuisine in Glover Park and Fairfax.

The restaurants serve many purposes, according to their owners. They provide Uyghurs in the diaspora with the taste of a homeland that they cannot return to, and in doing so they help preserve Uyghur culture outside Xinjiang.

The restaurants are also an opportunity to educate non-Uyghurs about what’s happening in Xinjiang, the owners said.

China has repressed Uyghurs and other majority-Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang for decades, but abuses have significantly escalated since 2017. Beijing has detained over 1 million people in Xinjiang, mainly Uyghurs. Other offenses perpetrated against the group include enforced disappearances, torture, forced sterilizations, sexual violence and forced labor, according to think tank and media reports. The Chinese government denies any wrongdoing, saying its policies are for counterterrorism purposes.

Multiple governments, including the U.S. government, have said China’s crimes in the region constitute crimes against humanity and genocide.

Cultural destruction is central to China’s campaign, according to think tank and academic reports, and Uyghur food has been unable to escape it. In 2018, the government cracked down on halal food establishments in Xinjiang, the Guardian reported, as yet another way to forcibly assimilate Uyghurs into the country’s dominant Han Chinese group.

Food is one of the most important parts of Uyghur culture, according to Faruk Dilshat, the owner of Mim’s Food in Fairfax.

The cuisine combines flavors and techniques from the Middle East, Central Asia, China, and Turkey. Common dishes include laghman — hand-pulled wheat noodles topped with meat, vegetables and a spicy sauce — and lamb kebabs. Those iconic dishes “resemble Uyghur culture the most,” Dilshat said in an interview at his restaurant. They’re “a must in all Uyghur restaurants,” he added.

Other common dishes include lamb rice pilaf, chicken stew, pumpkin dumplings and samsa, which is a bun often stuffed with vegetables and lamb or beef. Xinjiang was once at the heart of the Silk Road, and peppers, tomatoes and an array of spices are also integral to making Uyghur dishes flavorful.

“In Uyghur culture, food means love. If someone feeds you, they feed you out of love,” Dilshat said. “Uyghurs do a lot of gatherings, and as long as there’s a gathering, someone’s cooking.”

Dilshat grew up in Xinjiang’s city of Ghulja and moved to the D.C. area in 2000 at the age of 13. Some of his distant relatives still live in his home region, but he can barely talk to them for safety reasons.

Jewher Ilham, a Uyghur advocate and author based in Arlington, doesn’t need to go to a Uyghur restaurant for a taste of home. She knows how to cook Uyghur food — she actually considered opening a restaurant a few years ago — but says being able to go to a restaurant to eat Uyghur food is a more meaningful experience.

“I can cook anything, anywhere,” she said in an interview, adding that she often cooks lamb rice pilaf for her friends. “But having Uyghur individuals serving you Uyghur food is something that you normally only get back home.”

The dire situation in Xinjiang and the fact that Uyghurs in the diaspora have a very low chance of being able to safely return makes these restaurants even more important, Ilham said. For some Uyghur customers, going to Uyghur restaurants is the closest they can get to feeling as if they’re home.

“It’s very meaningful,” she said. “It helps with healing the trauma and healing the homesickness.” Her father, Ilham Tohti, is a prominent Uyghur economist who has been serving a life sentence since 2014 in China for “separatism” — an accusation of advocating for Uyghur independence.

When asked what her favorite Uyghur dish was, Ilham quipped that that’s “the most horrible question you can ask a Uyghur person.”

“If today I’m eating pumpkin dumplings, that would be my favorite. And if I eat laghman tomorrow, that would be my favorite,” she said. “They’re all so delicious — it’s very difficult to pick.”

To her, freshness is another important characteristic of Uyghur food. Dishes often include fresh vegetables and meat, and the texture of noodles in dishes like laghman is best right after they’re made.

Medina Aini, a Uyghur woman who moved from Urumchi to Fairfax six years ago, agrees with Ilham that eating Uyghur food is a nostalgic experience. “This food brings me back to my hometown,” she said while eating laghman and other dishes with friends at Bostan.

The fact that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is working to destroy Uyghur culture in Xinjiang makes it even more crucial to safeguard and celebrate the culture outside the region, multiple restaurant owners said. Many of them worry Uyghur culture will eventually disappear in Xinjiang.

That’s why they serve Uyghur food in restaurants decorated with traditional Uyghur instruments and art, as well as doppas, the skullcaps worn around Central Asia.

Uyghur music from artists like ​​Abdulla Abdurehim plays in the restaurants. And all of them have tapestries or prints of artist Ghazi Ehmet’s famous 1984 painting “Uyghur Muqam”on display. Muqam is a genre of classical Uyghur music.

To Dilshat, the famous painting is a somber reminder of what’s happening in Xinjiang. People are playing instruments in the painting, but no one is smiling, he points out.

“It says a lot about our current situation,” Dilshat said. “Yeah, they’re playing music. But are they really happy?”

When asked whether he sees himself as helping protect Uyghur culture, Dilshat at first grew silent.

“That’s way out of my control. But I’m doing my part,” Dilshat eventually said. “Food is one part of the culture, and I’m keeping that alive.”

Hamid Kerim, the owner of Dolan Uyghur Restaurant, is adamant that he’s not a political person. But the crisis in Xinjiang makes it impossible to separate Uyghur culture from politics, he says, so he feels a responsibility to tell non-Uyghurs about what’s happening through Uyghur food.

“This is not easy. We’ve lost a lot. We’ve lost culture. The CCP is killing Uyghur people, killing Uyghur culture,” he said in an interview at his Cleveland Park location. “I have to talk about Uyghur issues. I have to let people know who the Uyghurs are and where the Uyghurs come from.”

Kerim moved to the United States in 2017 shortly after learning he was allegedly on a government blacklist and was likely to be detained. One of his brothers was jailed in 2018 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence, Kerim says.

“The Chinese want me to stop talking,” Kerim says. “But I cannot stop talking because this is not only my family’s problem.”

Uyghur food “links us to our religious beliefs and connects us to our roots,” Ilham says. The fact that it unites Uyghurs, according to Ilham, is what the Chinese government doesn’t like about it. 

But that’s exactly what makes it all the more important for “as many people as possible to have Uyghur food in their stomachs,” she adds.