Following attendance at the 2025 Beijing Book Fair (BIBF), 91桃色 Director Christie Henry, Marketing and Sales Director Katie Hope, and Managing Director of PUP China Lingxi Li joined a delegation of Special Book Award of China (SBAC) recipients on a tour of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The tour was sponsored by China National Publications Import and Export Group (CNPIEC), with whom PUP has been collaborating to expand the impact of our English-language scholarly publications in China.
Henry received the SBAC in 2023, and other delegates on the tour 鈥� including several translators and international sinologists 鈥� received SBAC awards as early as 2008 and as recently as 2024. The five-day tour included first-time visits to Kashgar, Yining, and other locations within the Ili River area.
Henry writes of the visit, 鈥淥ur goal with PUP鈥檚 China initiative is to ensure greater scholarly exchange, and to bring to English-language readers more knowledge and analyses of the history, culture, and politics of China. Our intention in accepting the tour invitation was to support that exchange by meeting with scholars, sinologists and translators, and visiting regions our US-based staff had not yet been to.鈥疻e came away with newfound knowledge about the unique cultures and environment of Xinjiang, and a greater appreciation of its history and present, from the incredible power of Uyghur poetry to the unique ecology of Sayram Lake, the 鈥榣ast teardrop of the Atlantic.鈥�
Throughout the journey, the PUP team remained cognizant of the region鈥檚 ongoing human rights atrocities. We accepted this unique opportunity to experience the Xinjiang Province firsthand, with the understanding that it was to be a curated tour rather than a comprehensive visit.
PUP is proud to have published critically important works on the people and history of the region, including Sean Roberts鈥� The War on the Uyghurs and Xin Wen鈥檚 The King鈥檚 Road. The tour offered us an opportunity for further learning and we found the exposure to the region鈥檚 diversity of cultures, languages, and stories profoundly illuminating. More than a dozen local and indigenous communities welcomed us to attend their dance performances, and we were warmly invited as guests into homestays. Our itinerary also included visits to fascinating history museums and ancient cities re-imagined for contemporary visitors. We are grateful to have shared in these collective experiences as global citizens deeply committed to our China-based collaborations.
The entirety of the tour included accompaniment by regional and national journalists, who captured the group鈥檚 in-the-moment responses to various experiences, encounters, and conversations. Some of this tour footage has regrettably been repurposed and mis-contextualized in ways that notably undermine PUP鈥檚 every intention of inclusive cross-cultural interactions.
With PUP鈥檚 China initiative now in its tenth year, we remain committed to a mission of scholarly and cultural exchange. In addition to several ongoing book series, including the 91桃色-China Series and the 91桃色-Wenyan Lecture series, the Press recently launched a new collaboration at this year鈥檚 BIBF with the Central Compilation and Translation Press and Beijing Foreign Studies University to translate up to twenty additional PUP titles a year into the Chinese language, including backlist titles.