Whenever D. called her grandmother, police would barge in hours later, demanding the elderly woman phone D. back while they were in the room.
For gods sake, Im not going to talk to my 85-year-old grandmother about how to destroy China! D. said, exasperated, sitting across the table from me in a café around the corner from her office.
After she got engaged, D. invited her extended family, who live in Xinjiang, to her wedding. Because it is now nearly impossible for Uighurs to obtain passports, D. ended up postponing the ceremony for months in hopes the situation would improve.
Finally, in May, she and her mother had a video call with her family on WeChat, the popular Chinese messaging platform. When D. asked how they were, they said everything was fine. Then one of her relatives, afraid of police eavesdropping, held up a handwritten sign that said, We could not get the passports.
D. felt her heart sink, but she just nodded and kept talking. As soon as the call ended, she said, she burst into tears.