Thursday, May 29, 2008

Cultural Oppression of Uyghurs via Complimentary Condescension

This just in: Noble and music-loving Uyghurs have knowledge of fire and cook their meats!

On June 26th, the infamous Olympic torch will parade through the streets of Kashgar. Fortunately, the Chinese government was kind enough to give us foreigners insight into the mysterious and exotic Uyghur culture, spirit, and psyche. The following is a straight cut-and-paste job from the official torch website:

"In Xinjiang Province, there are four main nationalities: Uyghur, Tajik, Uzbeks, and Kirghiz. The Uyghur nationality is mainly distributed in the Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang Province). With a population of more than 7.20 million, Uyghur people speak Uyghur and have their own writing characters. The Uyghur nationality believe in Islam. Their households are characterized by flat roof with trap door on it. Within their house visitors could find parlor, bed room , handiwork and storage rooms. The exquisitely decorated niche ,carved from plaster, has rich flavor of the Uyghur nationality . The Uyghur nationality have "Kaizai" Festival, (vegetarian diet-breaking festival). Uyghur people are known as "the singing and dancing nationality", famous for its "Twelve Muqams" dancing performance, which is a musical epic. The Uyghur nationality attach great importance to clothing, they are always tidily dressed. All the Uyghur people wear small four-corner flower hats. The Uyghur people has the famous bridal-veil raising ceremony. Among the entertaining programs of the Uyghur Nationality Village are " Uyghur Nationality Custom Introduction", "Sing and Dancing"," Instruments Playing", and other conventional performances.

Uyghur language

Uyghur language is a Turkic language spoken in Xinjiang ,China.

The language traditionally used the Arabic script since 10th century. The government introduced a Roman script in 1969, but the Arabic script was reintroduced in 1983."

Based on this description, we now know the Uyghurs:
  • are Muslim;
  • live indoors;
  • are into craft projects;
  • love to sing;
  • love to dance;
  • are not slobs;
  • (I don't even want to imagine what the 'Uyghur Nationality Village' is);
  • love to sing;
  • love to dance;
  • love to play musical instruments;
  • have been influenced by the A-rabs;
  • have so much power over us softies at the Politburo that we let them write in their squiggly script again in 1983.
I'm surprised they left out friendly and good in sports.

Kindly ignore ginormous Mao statue in Kashi central square.

CKY

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