Tong Liya Comes in Peace with T Magazine China Lensed by Hailun Ma
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T Magazine China [New York Times] February 2026 issue features actress Tong Liya, styled by Clara Jiang in clothes that honor her home and heritage in Xinjiang.
Photographer Hailun Ma [IG] captures Tong Liya’s style, which strikes AOC as regal and powerful, especially with her braids. This entire issue of T Magazine appears to have been shot and storied in the region.
On the Road with T Magazine China . . .
We focus on Tong Liya who was born in Qapqal Xibe Autonomous County. She is Xibe ethnic minority, one of more than 40 groups in the region. Her birth place in Northern Xinjiang is close to the border with Kazakhstan.
Liya Tong’s hometown in the Ili Valley is widely considered one of the most beautiful parts of Xinjiang, especially in late spring and summer when the grasslands are in full bloom. It’s a stark, lush contrast to the desert landscapes of Kashgar and the south.
. . . Collecting GlamTribale’s Beautiful Beads
AOC is taking extra time with the geography of this region, because in our New Humanism channel the Silk Road is central to our storytelling.
My GlamTribale artisan jewelry collection is relaunching soon. I’m a trader at heart, so inspired by many of these very human stories — and my own — which will be shared.
One of the key distinctions in the jewelry is that I’m deliberately mixing the very beads that were acquired on these trade routes, moving from prehistoric shell beads onto the Silk Road, including Venice, and even fast-forwarding into Paris in the 1920-1960 years for special beads to extend the arty mix in a representation of our world today.
Remembering Bibi Breslin’s FW 2025 story shot in Samarkand for Holiday Magazine, I queried Gemini 3 Pro — trying not to sound too uninformed — asking if Liya Tong’s hometown is located along the same Silk Road route as Samarkland.
My intuition said ‘yes’, both are on the northern route. The copy flowed from there, with an affirmative ‘Yes, Anne’.
We Take the Silk Road’s Northern Route
In the ancient world, travelers and merchants following the path through Liya Tong's home Ili Valley region were on a trajectory that led directly into the heart of Central Asia, where Samarkand stood as one of the most vital hubs. On our journey, we traveled a key corridor that bypassed the formidable Taklamakan Desert by traveling north of the Tianshan Mountains.
Indeed, we are all connected.
I love tossing all these new places at friends and readers — especially when a massive door has opened to Anne of Carversville. In 2026, this is a very special honor, and I am grateful for the trust put in me as a narrator of our collective human stories.
In welcoming so many new friends to AOC in the last six months through their AOC door of New Humanism, my focus is stopping the rewriting of history in my own country.
The Philadelphia federal court’s lightening speed reversal yesterday of Trump’s destruction of an exhibit about our first president George Washington and the slaves he owned, gives me hope.
My marching relatives trying to protect their immigrant neighbors in Minneapolis-St. Paul give me hope, along with our courts.
Across America people of every political persuasion are giving me hope in the fight to protect our neighbors.
In this moment my focus is not geopolitics and commenting — as I have done with ferocity — on women’s rights conflicts in other part of the world. Although I’m rooting for my friends in Hungary.
I consider opening my mouth now a form of hypocrisy, given what’s happening to women’s rights in America. No more begging forums to PLEASE stop calling Vice President Kamala Harris ‘killer Kamala’ at 3am my time. I was defeated in that fight.
As we travel these old trade routes together, I will not be taking sides on these thousand-year-old conflicts, ones we run into at every turn. My focus is restoring my America to a democracy, as it teeters in the direction of authoritarian rule.
Please understand and respect my decision. And note that it was not my decision to turn off AOC comments over a decade ago. It was the decision of readers, who badgered me with no mercy for 72 hrs. straight into my decision. Same group of people, now that I think of it.
Speaking of hope, any wonderful fashion story like this one from from T Magazine China, that also shares white doves — has a home on Anne of Carversville. Peace out. ~ Anne
