Love overcomes ethnic hurdles
Song Huashou and his wife were outwardly calm as they told their love story, but it was easy to spot their inner excitement.
With a restrained smile, Song did not explain his feelings extravagantly. Instead, he recounted their experience in simple language.
His parents came from Qingdao, Shandong province, but his soldier father brought the family to the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region just after Song was born in the early 1950s.
“It was an age of passion. Once my father received his instructions from the Army, he packed his bags without the slightest hesitation, and my mother was willing to leave with him,” Song said.
It was not long before Song’s father was assigned to Altay, a young and culturally diverse city. To Song and his family, a brand-new world awaited.
Song was raised in Hongdun, a community in Altay which has a large population of ethnic Kazakhs, and quickly mastered the Kazakh language.
As Song grew up, no one in his town thought he was different from the local Kazakhs. His neighbors still call him Kurmankhan, a name given by a Kazakh friend that means “sacrifice”.
Being fluent in Kazakh not only helped Song adapt to life in Hongdun, but also brought him love with Nurzipa, a Kazakh, who grew up alongside him.
“He was tall and handsome, not like a typical Kazakh boy,” she said. “In my eyes, the difference was not his ethnicity, but the tender way he treated me.”
They wanted to marry and raise a family, but things didn’t go as planned. In the 1980s, marriage between ethnic groups was rare in Xinjiang.
Differences in lifestyle and beliefs meant young people like Song and Nurzipa could not get permission from their parents, so despite being of optimum marriageable age, they parted.
Eventually, they married other people and raised families. However, even though their lives were fine, they still missed each other.
Shortly after his marriage, Song joined the Army. He didn’t return to Hongdun until 1990, when he became a local Party cadre. His reliable character and linguistic skills saw Song respected by the villagers — that was when people started to recognize his “second identity” as a Kazakh.
In 1995, Nurzipa’s husband died, which left Song struggling with a dilemma. He knew that leaving his wife would be a harsh move and did not want to hurt her, but he had been offered a second chance to follow his heart, so he asked for, and obtained, a divorce.
“It was a hard time. I kept asking myself ‘Do I have to do this?’ But the answer was always ‘I love Nurzipa’,” he said. “To my surprise, my daughter had no objection. I felt so relieved.”
In 1997, the two finally married. They had broken through the ethnic barrier, and as time passed, their love became stronger.
In their house full of Kazakh furnishings, Song took a sip of his milk tea and said: “The process of being together is not important; being together matters. Now, all I can say is I am very happy with my wife.”