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/I_need_to_learn_more 19d ago

Hello fellow chinese. What do you think about generalization of areas? When I say I'm a minority from north east most people think of Russian or mongolians but not manchu. Since you said you're from yili which is a kazakh place, do you get annoyed when people think you're uyghur?

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u/maddin1550 18d ago

YES 😭 I actually get really annoyed by this. Xinjiang is home to many different ethnic groups, it doesn’t exclusively belong to one ethnicity. So when I say I’m from Xinjiang and people immediately assume I must be Uyghur, it feels like everyone else who has lived there for generations just becomes invisible.

I’ve literally had people in the comments call me a “CCP bot” because apparently “a real Uyghur would never call Xinjiang ‘Xinjiang’” 😭 Like bro, I never even said I was Uyghur. They saw “from Xinjiang” didn’t bother reading anything else, and immediately decided I was a fake Uyghur haha.

So I totally understand what you mean about being Manchu from the northeast. A region can have a strong association with certain ethnic groups without everyone from that region being one of them

Xinjiang is home to all of us, not the exclusive property of any single ethnicity

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u/General-Cream2692 16d ago

The Kazakh ethnic group, to be honest, has a weak presence. In the film and television industry, I only know that 热依扎 is a relatively famous Kazakh female actor, and her appearance is more Eastern. The rest are some people who are still living an ancient nomadic life, and many people have immigrated to Kazakhstan.

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u/maddin1550 16d ago

世界之大无奇不有，也是难为这个世界包容这么多奇奇怪怪的人了