In the winter of 2009, I was spending my weekends in the northeast Chinese city of Tangshan, and eating most of my food from the far-western province of Xinjiang. Like many minorities, the Uighur, the native people of Xinjiang, have made their chief impact on mainstream culture through cuisine. I have always favored their ubiquitous restaurants when
It was a joke, a bit of horseplay, literally, that became a much-loved song. In 1939, when songwriter Wang Luobin was with other crew members on a set in the Jinyintan Grassland in Northwest China's Qinghai province, he got to know a Tibetan girl who had a part in the film. One day Wang wanted to play a joke on her and whipped the horse she was riding. The horse bolted and she nearly fell off. The girl later got her own back on him. The experience, along with the beautiful scenery, became an inspiration for Wang to create his later famous work At A Faraway Place based on a folk song of the Kazak ethnic group.