Joyous Xinjiang
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. It is a large, sparsely populated area (spanning over 1.6 million sq. km) which takes up about one sixth of the country’s territory. Xinjiang borders the Tibet Autonomous Region to the south and Qinghai and Gansu provinces to the southeast, Mongolia to the east, Russia to the north, and Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and the Pakistan- and India-controlled parts of Kashmir to the west. It is home to a number of ethnic groups including the Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Tajiks, Hui, Kyrgyz, and Mongol, with a majority of the population adhering to Islam.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013: The following movie page describes my first encounter with this joyful dance form and someone actually videoed it.
Here’s a photo album on my Xinjiang dancing activities in Shanghai and Sanya.