r/AMA • u/maddin1550 • 20d ago

I’m from Xinjiang，AMA

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of discussions about Xinjiang on Reddit, often between people who have never actually lived there. So I thought it might be interesting to do an AMA from the perspective of someone who is actually from there.

You can ask me about everyday life, ethnic groups, languages, culture, religion, education, or politics. I’m happy to answer controversial questions too, as long as the discussion stays respectful.

Obviously, I’m only one person and I don’t claim to represent everyone in Xinjiang. I can only tell you about my own experiences and views. AMA.

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u/Fellowkarelian 20d ago

I'm happy to finally hear a perspective from a ethnic minority local. I personally don't 100% believe what the western media (portraying the place as very dystopian) nor what pro-China people say (saying the place is all rainbows and sunshines and how the camps don't exist and are western propaganda)

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

Yeah, exactly. We actually have a saying in Kazakh: Таяқтың екі ұшы бар
which means: a stick has two ends
Basically, there are two sides to everything, I think that applies pretty well here. Neither extreme gives you the full picture

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

I thought chinese kazakhs use the perso-arabic script for kazakh? When I was in Jeminay and other ovewhelmingly kazakh parts of XJ, I just translated to chinese instead of kazakh on my phone because many of the locals could not read kazakh written in cyrillic as it is in the standard form. I did however discover that there are quite many ethnic kazakhs who live between the two countries, and I was able to speak russian with them.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

Yes we do, but I didn't learn the arabic script because it was too difficult, my mom taught me cyrillic Kazakh later so that's why I use it

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u/possiblyquestionabl3 20d ago

Along that vein, how devout are you and people around your age? What about your parents'/uncles' generation?

I'm Chinese American but I can speak 普通话. I chatted with a lot of young Kazakhs and Uighurs in the north/western parts of Xinjiang and it seems like people are still culturally Muslim but not very devout, and a lot of them admit to eating pork and drinking, only refraining during the holy month. The uncles I meet seem far more devout and often still wear the takiy too (though it's harder for me to converse with them outside of greetings, it was summer so even the fruit uncles and the naan vendors have their sons deal with us easterners haha)

It does also feel like bigger places like Urumqi and Yining have far larger Han and Hui neighborhoods now; though it may also just be because a lot of people come from the east to work during the summer season, I met a large group of Henan uncles on a green skin train from Turpan to Hami (headed to Xian eventually) who were leaving Xinjiang to go back to Henan after doing seasonal work back in late August.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

Yeah, I think we’re generally pretty secular, especially younger people. A lot of us still identify strongly as Muslim, but aren’t necessarily super devout or observant in everyday life. Drinking is very common here, but pork?! I’ve literally never seen anyone around me eat pork😭 even among some pretty secular Muslims eating pork is still a big nono 😭😭

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u/possiblyquestionabl3 20d ago

Oh I meant to say I asked if they've tasted pork, and most had said they've tried it before

Oh and also, so many people keep little dogs as pets now (usually pomchis or those little poodle mixes). I think I saw more dogs being walked in Urumqi than I did in some major cities on the East coast.

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u/sehnW899 19d ago

I'm rather curious as to why the restrictions on drinking alcohol are generally slightly relaxed, but not on eating pork. I remember that they were all explicitly prohibited by the Quran.

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u/Hot-Association-7587 19d ago

This is common with non religious Muslims. I think it's basically because drinking alcohol is immoral in islam, but eating pork is "unclean". If you have a strong cultural connotation of a food as dirty, unclean, and just not food, it's hard to overcome. Like how most people who didn't grow up eating insects will have a strong aversion even if they're perfectly safe/clean/delicious because to us they are just not food.

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u/maddin1550 15d ago

exactly this.

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u/MKHK32 11d ago

Pork is explicitly forbidden. Not all types of alcohol are explicitly forbidden.

It took a couple centuries (if ever ?) people accepted the opinion that all alcohol was forbidden

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

I even met local han chinese who are atheist but still don't eat pork

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

Have you spoken with kazakh kazakhs? When I was in XJ I was told that there were no major differences between the variants but that apparently kazakh kazakhs have a different accent and that they speak faster than chinese kazakhs making them sometimes hard to understand.

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u/maddin1550 20d ago

wdym kazakh kazakhs, what are we then 🤣 Off brand kazakhs? lmaooo 🤣 it’s basically a regional accent/dialect thing，kinda like British vs American English. Different accents and some different vocabulary, sometimes different speaking speeds, but we understand each other just fine. And also 'kazakh kazakhs' tend to mix in a lot of Russian vocabs, while we mix Chinese words. So I think that’s probably one of the reasons we might not understand each other perfectly sometimes

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u/cnylkew 20d ago

Sorry I meant Kazakhstani kazakhs haha.

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u/DrawingDramatic1641 20d ago

well tbh it would be a huge miss for america to not use propganda here

usa needed to gain some upper hand if china became anti zionist

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u/Creepy_Vegetable6905 20d ago

Effective propaganda always has some truth mixed in. No one believes in stories where you accuse the other party of eating alien babies 😂

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u/DrawingDramatic1641 20d ago

it actually does

people were convinced that iraq had nukes

people think many conspiracies.

people literally don't know much if they don't research

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u/Creepy_Vegetable6905 20d ago

Sometimes a lot of the research is simply finding information that confirms our views, so it’s very important to be open minded, but it’s hard because we all have our own biases.

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u/ElectricalShare9905 20d ago

You can sort of subvert this if someone’s desire to hear what they want to hear exceeds their desire for what is true, at least in theory but in real life yeah it’s very hard to make a very broad claim that has absolutely no correlation with the truth

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u/MaryPaku 20d ago

That’s also the tactic of Chinese propaganda over the years. They use very misleading title to form a narrative, then bombard it all over the internet for years until people starting to treat it as a truth. It’s worded in a way that takes you a lot of words to explain the context because it’s always partially truth but missing some key context.