← Back to context

Comment by coupdejarnac

2 years ago

Was that interviewed man in Xinjiang a Han or a Uyghur? I'd be challenged to think of something more duplicitous than a street interview in Xinjiang.

3 comments

coupdejarnac

Reply
FooBarWidget  2 years ago

There are many more ethnicities in Xinjiang than just Han and Uyghur you know. Chinese typically don't focus on people's ethnicities and prefer to refer to people by their place of origin (e.g., "Xinjiang people", "Shandong people", etc), the Chinese way of being inclusive. The man appeared racially ambiguous, could just as well be mixed.

I have a Uyghur acquaintance in Germany who's pretty mad at the media's depiction of stuff. He views it as slander of his home region. At the same time he resents that most westerners don't actually care about the truth, they just want their viewpoints confirmed and get mad at him for presenting a different narrative.

He even gets death threats from other Uyghur diaspora for holding this view.

  • coupdejarnac  2 years ago

    Colloquially, when Chinese people refer to Xinjiangren, they mean non-Han Muslim people. I heard a lot of casual racism directed towards them while I lived in China. Chinese are being "inclusive" because A. they are ignorant, B. they assume most people are Han, with the occasional minority that looks mostly Han anyway, and C. they associate a region with ethnicity or local culture.

    All street interviews that are shown in media parrot official state talking points. If you don't understand that, I don't know what to tell you.

    I think it's actually a shame that you now live in a society with free access to information but choose to take state media at face value.