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There are many ancient Chinese poems lamenting the green eyes of the Han emperors.
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All the ancient skeletons in and around Urumchi were Caucasian (types) until around 100-200BC.

Urumqi's pre-Sinicization racial composition would likely not have had any bearing on that of the Han emperors, given that the Han dynasty originated in Jiangsu (which is in coastal East China), not anywhere near Urumqi (which is in far Northwest China). In fact, no imperial Chinese dynasties, including the Qin, originated west of the Hexi corridor (Dunhuang, Urumqi, Kashi etc., where the Caucasoids were, according to records both historical and archaeological).

Exactly which poems do you speak of? Perhaps those poems are referring to the rulers of the Later Zhao state, which was a short-lived kingdom formed by rebellious immigrant workers from the Caucasoid Jie ethnicity in Northern China circa 320 AD. Now those people could conceivably have had green eyes.

"Exactly which poems do you speak of? Perhaps those poems are referring to the rulers of the Later Zhao state, which was a short-lived kingdom formed by rebellious immigrant workers from the Caucasoid Jie ethnicity in Northern China circa 320 AD. Now those people could conceivably have had green eyes. "

I read about it in this book: The Tarim Mummies Or, in the book, The Mummies Of Urumchi also mentioned below.

Here is a book review:

....[As] one who has participated in an aspect of this research-the extent to which at least some of the later Xinjiang mummies may have been Northeast Iranians (Saka, et al.), who subsequently had an impact on both China and Japan-I can attest that Mair and Mallory have critically assessed every possible explanation before concluding that the great bulk of this Europoid population, esepcially in the later period, were in all probability Tocharian speakers of one sort or another (the earliest Europoids in the region may have been archaic Iranians, an idea recently suggested by my colleague Dr. Elizabeth J. W. Barber).

Moreover, the textile evidence, intensely researched by Dr. Barber (see her widely-praised book THE MUMMIES OF URUMCHI, W.W. Norton & Co., 1999), reinforces the conclusion that the Europoids who settled in the Tarim Basin in the latter part 2nd millennium, B.C.E., shared a common origin with a variety of Western Indo-European speakers, including the Celts, whose textiles were preserved in the salt-filled graves at Hallstatt (ca. 1300-400 B.C.E.). This, of course, also points squarely in the direction of the Tocharians, who, despite the fact that they were the easternmost of the attested ancient Indo-European speakers, shared a great many specific linguistic features in common with the Western group, especially the Celts. (Incidently,...the pointed "witches hat" is in fact deeply embedded in the ancient Brythonic-and, by extension, Celtic-culture and predates the 17th century Puritan image...by at least two millennia.)

Yes, the great majority of the current population of the Tarim is Uyghur-speaking, that is, of Altaic origin, and yes, there are some physical similarities between some of the current inhabitants of the region and the tall, blue-eyed people whose mummified remains have become so controversial. But that is to be expected whenever a new population intrudes into a region-and we know beyond a reasonable doubt that the intrusion of the "Turkic" speaking Uyghurs into Xinjiang occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries B.C.E, over a millennium after the arrival of the Iranian- (or perhaps Tocharian-) speaking Europoids.

To cite a parallel situation, the vast majority of modern Mexicans speak Spanish, a tongue introduced by a conquering culture some five centuries ago. Physically, however, most Mexicans, including those with little or no "Indio" cultural heritage, still reflect their Native American ancestry, though with a fair amount of "Europoid" admixture, especially among the ruling elite.

In short, THE TARIM MUMMIES should be required reading for anyone seriously concerned with trans-Eurasian cultural connections in the course of the last six thousand years.