​AUDREY CHIN 

In Xinjiang, the water tables are buried deep.  The winters are cold, the summers burning – a  geography perfect for forcing fragrant grapes, tiny heady perfumed roses, and the saffron yielding crocii that carpet the mountains during the brief snow-fed springs. Yes, even then during that summer, political unrest was already brewing.  Our Uighur tour guide, for example, had rejected a government job to do something “more meaningful” he said. He insisted on using local time, no