Documentary : Catching the Shadow: On Being Tailed in China : The security agent following a Times correspondent wasn’t hard to spot in his white trousers and maroon sweater. His presence added some intrigue to the country’s exotic far west.

It didn’t take long before we knew that the Chinese man in white trousers and maroon sweater was following us.

He tried to stay a couple of hundred yards behind. But he never disappeared. When we stopped, he stopped. When we turned, he turned. When we slipped around a corner and stepped into a family courtyard, he passed on by. But soon he was back.

I had conducted several government-arranged interviews that morning, and after lengthy argument had managed to cancel an unwanted afternoon interview that I had never requested. That freed me to spend a precious half-day walking around this largely Uighur town, located not far from the Soviet border in China’s far western region of Xinjiang.

My wife and I skipped the time-consuming lunch arranged for us at our hotel and quickly set out to explore the town’s tree-lined residential streets and colorful bazaars. We wanted to get a feel for the place, take in the sights of Central Asian street life and chat with people free from our official guides.

But that guy in the maroon sweater--clearly a government security agent-- was on our tail.

He followed us for more than four hours. We still accepted invitations into residential courtyards. But for the sake of our new acquaintances, who might be questioned after our departure, I didn’t press political questions.

I already knew there were severe tensions between the region’s Turkic minorities--Muslim groups such as Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Uzbeks--and the dominant Chinese. Official media had reported that 22 people died last spring in a clash between anti-Chinese rioters and security forces outside the ancient Silk Road city of Kashi. I knew that many people in Kashi believed the true death toll was higher.

I had already heard the views of Uighurs angry at Chinese domination. The security agent’s persistent presence now provided a different kind of testimony to the level of repression in Xinjiang today.

We finally started doubling back on the man or waiting for him around corners. He ultimately disappeared, presumably after realizing that we had caught on to him.

It is hard to say who won this little game. My attempts to hear honest views from ordinary people suffered. But to achieve this, China’s apparatus of repression and control exhibited itself with extraordinary clarity during my 11 days in Xinjiang.

A journalist here need look no further than the behavior of governmental hosts and security agents to find evidence of oppression and misrule. One is left wondering how Chinese authorities can possibly be hiding such terrible things that they feel it best to treat journalists this way.

For Beijing-based correspondents, the process of taking a trip to Xinjiang begins the same way as for a reporting visit anywhere in China, with an application to the “foreign affairs office” of each province to be visited. These offices arrange formal interviews, provide translators if required, and sometimes help with hotel or transportation arrangements. But their most important job is to keep an eye on the foreign visitors.

In the more sophisticated coastal cities, these offices are often run by people who are open and helpful enough that their enforced involvement in a reporter’s efforts may be a relatively minor annoyance.

But the Xinjiang foreign affairs office, which only occasionally grants approval for correspondents to visit the region, has a reputation among Beijing-based journalists for being among the most heavy-handed.

Before leaving Beijing, I heard from other reporters that journalists are usually forced to take someone from this office, located in the regional capital of Urumqi, along with them when they fly to other cities in Xinjiang.

I knew that in any case I would have to deal with officials of the local foreign affairs office of each city I visited. So I informed the Xinjiang office by telex that I did not want to pay for anyone to accompany me to other cities. I stressed that I could do my interviews in Chinese and therefore even if other cities did not have English translators, I did not need to take one with me.

When we arrived, however, there was Song Zhen--a young Xinjiang foreign affairs office translator who announced firmly that not only would he be accompanying us to the cities of Kashi and Yining, at my expense, but that even while in Urumqi I must pay for him to spend every night at our hotel rather than his own residence.

“My job for the next 11 days is to be with you,” Song said. “If I am not with you, you cannot come to Xinjiang.”

In addition to all meal and travel expenses, the Xinjiang government’s bill for Song’s unwanted assistance would be $230, he explained. Car costs, he added, would be calculated at the end of our journey, and would include payment for times when the car was used to bring officials to our hotel. Conducting interviews at hotels is a common practice because foreigners are often barred from entering government offices.

Having Song for a traveling companion was even worse than I had feared.

In Kashi, which is also known as Kashgar, I had requested an interview with a religious leader of the Id Kah Mosque, the most important mosque in Xinjiang.

Shen Jianfu, an official of the Kashi foreign affairs office, told me that this had been arranged at the home of one of the mosque’s leaders. Shen and Song both went along to monitor the interview, which I did in Chinese with the help of a Uighur official of the Kashi foreign affairs office who served as a Chinese-Uighur translator.

The interview was conducted sitting on beautiful Uighur carpets, with snacks of pastry, fruit and candy spread on a cloth before us. Shortly after we began, the religious leader, or imam, said that he had nothing to do with running the Id Kah Mosque, but rather headed a small neighborhood mosque. I was irritated that Shen and his office had arranged a less useful interview than I had requested and then misled me about what they had done. But it was too late to change anything, and it wasn’t the fault of the man I was interviewing. So I carried on without complaint.

Song, the Chinese-English translator from Urumqi, sat nearby but had nothing worthwhile to do as the interview progressed in Chinese and Uighur. Unaccustomed to sitting on the floor in the Uighur style, he soon stretched his legs out and leaned to one side on his elbow. Before long, in a stunning display of rudeness and cultural insensitivity, he lay down with his head on a cushion and started napping. The imam did his best to ignore the affront. I made a mental note of the scene as one more example of why so many Uighurs hate the Chinese.

Our first full day in Kashi, while wandering through a bazaar street on our own, we spotted a plainclothes security agent watching us. Later, while watching a craftsman use a drill and wire to repair broken pottery, we discovered another agent standing next to us. He carried what looked like a small black briefcase, but with a camera lens built into the side.

We flew back to Urumqi to make connections for our flight to Yining and had a free day there without any official interviews. Around noon we took a bus to the city’s museum. After viewing exhibits on the culture and customs of ethnic minorities, we started walking back toward downtown.

Our experience in Kashi prompted us to look around in search of plainclothes agents. We spotted some suspicious characters, but couldn’t identify anyone with certainty.

Then we noticed the gray sedan. It had been driving slowly our way, then pulled off to the side of the road several hundred yards behind us.

We wandered on down the road. After a while, the gray car pulled up some more. We waited a long time near a major intersection. The car waited. We reversed course once to get a better look and note down the license plate number, then continued on our way. We turned a corner. The car turned the corner and parked again.

Finally, we took some street scene photos that just happened to position the car prominently in the foreground. The driver knew that we knew.

Song, who graduated from college only last year, seemed especially happy to be in Yining, for this was his hometown and he still had family and friends here.

The night before our scheduled departure, Song informed me that he would not be flying back to Urumqi with us after all because he didn’t have an acceptable identity card with him.

Airlines in China generally require all passengers to show either passports or government-issued identity cards. Song had lost his card several weeks earlier, but an employee card issued by the Xinjiang foreign affairs office plus a letter of explanation from his superiors had proven sufficient for him to get on our previous flights, he said. But controls were more rigid in Yining, and he would have to wait here until his new government-issued card arrived.

It struck me as an extraordinary coincidence that Song ran into such bad luck in the town where he would most like to take a few days holiday. But I accepted his story.

Then Li Zhongqing, the official of the Yining foreign affairs office who was our handler in that city, walked into the room.

Li soon began explaining that unfortunately Song would be unable to accompany us back to Urumqi. Space on the Yining-Urumqi flight was very tight, he said, and his office had managed to book seats only for me and my wife.

I replied that I knew Song wasn’t going with us, but that his own explanation was that he didn’t have an acceptable identity card. I also said I didn’t know which story was true, but that I did not like it when people casually made up false stories for their own convenience.

Neither man ever made any attempt to clarify which story was true, if in fact either one was.

We were met at Urumqi airport by a young woman from the Xinjiang foreign affairs office.

As we walked into the airport parking lot, accompanied by our new government-appointed handler and heading toward the government car she had arranged for us, we spotted another plainclothes agent waiting nearby.

“He took a picture of us,” said my wife, who had heard the shutter click.

I saw that he was carrying a little black briefcase with a lens in the side.

I jogged toward the man and called out in Chinese, “Is that a camera?”

The startled man turned tail and ran.