BEIJING, April 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Tianshan
Mountains, stretching for thousands of miles across China's northwestern frontier, divides the
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in half – the relatively affluent
north and the less developed south. For some time, people in the
south with a bigger ethnic minority population didn't understand
the rapid development in the north while those in the north lacked
accurate views of the south, let alone people from outside the
region.
After decades of development and interaction, people from both
sides of the mountains became acquainted with each other. Mountains
are physical boundaries that can be crossed, but "a dose of
prejudice comes from the mountains in our mind that prevent us from
seeing the truth," according to Han Bin, director of the
documentary "Beyond the Mountains: Life in Xinjiang."
Terrorist attacks that have plagued the region for almost three
decades left people in and outside the region in shock and panic. A
number of people from other provinces and regions of China unwittingly looked at Uygurs with
tainted spectacles, noted Chen Ruijun, a construction firm official
who went to support Xinjiang's development in 2008 and 2009 when
extremist riots were rampant in the region. The fear and
accompanying preconception have gradually subdued with greater
understanding and faster development.
In recent years, a fair portion of Western media coverage
regarding China have painted a
negative picture due to lack of information as well as lack of
trust. Xinjiang, home to over 12 million Uygurs, has experienced a
larger share of the stigma and distortion. Foreign reporting on
Xinjiang has predominantly centered around allegations of so-called
"human rights abuses by the Chinese government."
As such, the real Xinjiang is drowned in endless outrageous and
sensational headlines about "detention camps" and "forced labor" in
textile, tomato production, and even solar power sectors, to name
just a few. Such rhetoric, imbued with prejudice and presumption,
amounts to an insurmountable mountain in the minds of many
people.
"Beyond the Mountains: Life in Xinjiang," the 80-minute
documentary, is told through a collection of individual stories
that, together, chronicle the process of change in the region. It's
also about breaking stereotypes and clearing up misconceptions for
people in and outside the region.
The film features the magnificent landscape of this vast land,
as well as the modern-day life of its people from different ethnic
groups. It contains four parts: "Changing times," "Following the
money," "New generations" and "Man and nature," presenting multiple
facets of today's Xinjiang and its people.
Sabyt Abukhadir lives in north Xinjiang's Zhaosu County where
generations depend on the lush, rolling highland meadows for a
living. His grandson Erjanat Nurkidir is majoring in dance at Ili
Normal University. The two had a fight as Sabyt believed dancing
was only for girls. The wrangle didn't end until Sabyt watched
Erjanat dancing on the stage. "My kid was so good that it made me
cry," he said.
In south Xinjiang, such a change in mentality is much harder.
Many women in the four prefectures of south Xinjiang have never
left home. "Women who leave home to work won't find a husband,"
according to the traditional thinking there.
But Zileyhan Eysa, a farmer from Kuqa County of Aksu, decided to
leave for the north to work in a textile factory in hopes of
earning money so that her seriously ill mother could get proper
treatment. "If I didn't come here, Mom would already be dead," she
said.
Besides the stories that depicts Xinjiang's changes where young
people exert immense passion to bring a change in the thinking, the
documentary also tells stories of people who work to protect the
land that they love. Yang Zongzong has a very "peculiar" hobby –
finding and cataloguing every species of plants. "To me, it is the
appreciation of the beauty in the most ordinary," he said. So far,
he's gathered 10,000 to 20,000 specimens, studying their
morphology, genetics and environmental signature. Plant growth is
mostly affected by the environment, so any shift in climate
recorded by their growth is indicative of changes in climate change
and natural conditions.
These stories of dedication and breaking with tradition isn't so
much disregard for the past as much as looking toward a more
progressive future.
Link:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-04-16/Beyond-the-Mountains-Life-in-Xinjiang--Zui80BwyOc/index.html
Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWyT3CLu3do
Photo -
https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1489929/CGTN_Beyond_the_Mountains_Life_in_Xinjiang.jpg