In Xinjiang, there’s a common saying among Uyghurs that “Chinese characters are the eyes, and Uyghur characters are just the eyebrows.” If I remember the Uyghur correctly–don’t quote me here–I believe it’s something along the lines of “Xenzuche közliri, Uyghurche qashliri.” It’s something to that effect, and what it means is that in signs throughout many cities the Uyghur characters are tiny, almost illegible specks above much larger Chinese characters. Granted, bilingual signage in Xinjiang frequently is like bilingual signage in Canada: in some places, like Vancouver, the French is a bit ridiculous and thrown on there because of the legal requirement. However, there are other places where the disproportion is a bit more telling; when I was told the above saying, the Uyghur I was speaking to was referring to the main sign of Erdaoqiao Market, which is ostensibly and arguably supposed to be a very “Uyghur” place.
Several days ago the continuously superb Xinjiang blog, Autonomous Region, noted from an April 2010 picture that on new signs in the Shanxi Xiang area, Uyghur characters have undergone a transformation and are now written as large as, if not larger than, Chinese characters. This is appropriate, of course, because this region of Urumqi is predominantly Uyghur.
Shanxi Xiang Neighborhood in Urumqi | View Larger Map
The catch–and in my limited experience there’s almost always a catch–is that rather than relaying the names of the stores or the type of wares they are hawking, the new, culturally sensitive signs instead broadcast the typical, trite ethnic unity slogans that, for some reason, the government thinks is somehow effective. Autonomous Region has already translated a few of the signs, though I hope he doesn’t mind of we take a closer look at the new slogans, sharing in particular the Uyghur phrases for any of our readers learning Uyghur, or at least interested in looking how the slogans vary and overlap between the two languages.
ھەر مىللەت خەلقى قول تۇتۇشۇپ تەڭ ئىلگىرىلەيلى!
Her millet xelqi qol tutushup teng ilgirileyli!
各族人民携手共同发展！
Let peoples of every ethnicity join hands and advance!
مىللى بۆلگۈنچىلىككە قارشى تۇرۇپ ۋەتەننىڭ بىرلىكىنى قوغدايلى!
Milli bölgünchilikke qarshi turup wetenning birlikini qoghdayli!
反对民族分裂 维护祖国统一
Let us oppose ethnic separatism and defend the unity of the land!
«ئۈچخىل كۈچ»كە زەربە بىرىپ خەلقنىڭ مەنپەئەتىنى قوغدايلى!
“Üchxil küch”ke zerbe birip xelqning menpe’etini qoghdayli!
打击《三股势力》维护人民利益！
Le
t us attack the “Three Forces” and protect the interests of the people!
ۋەتەنپەرۋەرلىك ۋە مىللەتلەر ئىتتىپاقلىقى ئۇلۇغ بايرىقىنى ئىگىز كۆتۈرەيلى!
Wetenperwerlik we milletler ittipaqliqi ulugh bayriqini igiz kötüreyli!
高举爱国主义和民族团结的伟大旗帜
Let us raise high the flag of patriotism and ethnic unity!
Trite Party slogans are a great way to learn the first person plural imperative mood in Uyghur grammar. Usually, one is introduced to the imperative mood in the form of second-person commands, as in, “[You,] come [here!],” kéling!. When you start applying imperative to first-person plural, it signifies, “Let’s [do something],” as in, “Let’s go!”, mangayli!, or “Let’s eat!”, yeyli!. In Uyghur, the verb always comes at the end, so if you ever hear a Uyghur talk at you in the usual native machine-gun pace and it ends in “-ayli” or “-eyli,” the speaker is suggesting you guys go do something together. In the above case, the speaker is the Municipal Ministry of Propaganda (市宣传部, sheherlik teshwiqat bölümi-seen in the lower-right corner of the first sign) and Miniprop is kindly suggesting that you, the reader, join him (her? it?) in “moving forward” (iligirilimek), “defending” (qoghdimaq), and “raising” (kötürmek).
It’s amazing how quickly you learn propaganda terms, both in Mandarin and in Uyghur, when living in Xinjiang – even before the riots. It’s hard to overemphasize the scale at which these signs and slogans saturate the city; when studying at one of Urumqi’s three major universities, before the riots, I eventually got jaded to the white-on-red “big character” banners that were strung up all over a campus that otherwise would’ve been quite attractive. Even my Uyghur textbook’s lessons telegraphed these political sentiments. I’m probably not entirely lying when I say I learned terms like “milli bölgünchilik,” ethnic separatism, and “üchxil küch,” the “Three Forces,” before I learned the Uyghur word for toilet paper.
I’ve said, many times, both here and elsewhere, that one of the goals of this blog is to serve as a counterbalance to the cumulative image of China that’s being sewn together by both other China blogs and by media voices on the PRC. Issues like development, economic advancement, and ideological freedom tend to be spoken of as if they are spread evenly across China. They’re not. And while your average sophisticated Shanghai expat may think that hamfisted, goofy slogans are a thing of the Cultural Revolution and are an unfair portrayal of China’s current intellectual atmosphere, I’d beg to differ. And, even if, by my anecdotal experience, most people roll their eyes when asked about the banners they see every day at work and at school, I still believe that there is a significant an intimidating abstract weight that comes out of the sum influence of these ubiquitous signs. Like CCTV surveillance in London, even if the efficacy of their intent, on paper, is questioned and scrutinized, it’s less about capturing crimes on tape or encouraging people to read and comply with slogans; ultimately it’s about signaling the omnipresence of the authorities and hint at its dominance. The content on the sign, perhaps, is less important than the fact that the signs are being hung in the first place.
Comments 13
Beijing setsout 10-yearstrategy to end poverty in Xinjiang
Kristine Kwok. South China Morning Post. Hong Kong: May 21, 2010. pg. 4
Copyright South China Morning Post Ltd. May 21, 2010
Beijing set out a plan yesterday to revive the far western region of Xinjiang in the hope that an economic boom will end incessant ethnic strife and begin a new round of development in the remote backwater.
At a conference chaired by President Hu Jintao and attended by top Communist Party officials that ended on Wednesday, the central government pledged to raise the per capita gross domestic product in Xinjiang to the national average by 2015, and eliminate poverty throughout the region by 2020.
Xinjiang’s per capita GDP last year was US$2,898, compared with the national average of US$3,600, and ranked higher only than Inner Mongolia in China.
To achieve the goals, Premier Wen Jiabao announced that the much-anticipated fuel tax reform would be carried out in Xinjiang first. Beijing will double the amount of fixed-asset investment in the region in the next five years and offer tax breaks to a number of enterprises.
Under the new policies, the levy on oil and natural gas in the resource-rich region will be calculated according to their market prices instead of the production quantity, as was the policy in the past, Xinhua quoted Wen as saying.
That means the Xinjiang government’s revenue from oil and natural gas production would increase substantially in the future. The revenue from the fuel tax is divided between the central and local governments.
Many Uygur activists had criticised the fuel taxation policy, which set the levy on every barrel of oil or cubic metre of natural gas that companies extracted from Xinjiang. The activists argued it amounted to robbing the region of its natural riches.
However, the old tax was set according to the market price in the 1980s, and with the prices for oil and gas soaring around the world, Xinjiang will benefit from the new policy.
“By reforming the fuel tax, we can increase [the Xinjiang government's] fiscal strength so that it will have resources to improve people’s livelihoods. Resources exploration will directly benefit Xinjiang people,” Hu was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
Beijing is also prepared to flood the region with fresh capital.
“The central government will continue increasing our investment in Xinjiang,” Wen said.
“We encourage banks to set up branch offices in remote areas [of Xinjiang] and welcome foreign banks to open there. We will further free up land and market restrictions for businesses.
“China will focus the whole nation’s resources to revive Xinjiang.”
More than 10 billion yuan (HK$11.4 billion) will be poured into the region from next year by the 19 provinces and cities in what is being described as the biggest investment drive in history.
Beijing alone will invest 7.2 billion yuan in the next five years and support the development of the Hotan area and a Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps farming unit.
The central government will also invest a sum several times the provincial contribution and offer other preferential policies.
Behind all of this is Beijing’s determination to end ethnic strife in the restive region. Xinjiang was rocked by a spate of ethnic violence in the past two years that pitted the Uygur minority against the Han, who have become the majority there.
The central leadership is worried that lack of development in Xinjiang would turn the region into a hotbed for radicals – which could seriously threaten security and stability.
Critics overseas disagree with Beijing’s premise, blaming the central government’s religious and ethnic policies for the strife between Uygur and Han. Those policies, they argue, cannot be fixed simply by focusing attention on economic growth regardless of how much money is infused there.
“We must clearly realise this: Just as in other parts of China, the chief source of social conflicts in Xinjiang is rooted in the imbalance between people’s [growing] desire for a better livelihood and the lack of development there,” Hu was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
“At the same time, there are still separatist movements in Xinjiang. This means we have to focus our Xinjiang strategy on raising people’s livelihood and maintaining high stability and security,” he said.
Dilxadi Rexiti, a spokesman for the German-based East Turkestan Information Centre, said that while they welcomed economic development in Xinjiang, the new policy would mainly benefit the Han, who have a monopoly on access to resources and business.
He feared the new policies would set off a new wave of migration of Han into the region.
“The government said the meeting was convened after a wide-ranging consultation with the public, but actually a lot of Uygurs never knew such a meeting was held,” he said.
Posted 22 May 2010 at 10:18 am ¶SCMP’s coverage is the most comprehensive so far. Unfortunately, only people with subscription have access to it.
Posted 22 May 2010 at 10:26 am ¶You could add some of the Uygur sentences to http://tatoeba.org!
Posted 22 May 2010 at 12:34 pm ¶Porfiriy and Tewpiq, thank you for such a unique site. You bring to us details of live in such a remote place. And you commenters add so much value, so thanks to to Leong, Tom, Nicki and others.
Do you accept reader requests? I was wondering if you could write about neologisms in Uygur. There must be many with the country’s shift to capitalism and arrival of new technologies all the time.
Another language thing I’m wondering is dialects. For example, the language sounds different in this clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrpL0bBnVhE than in videos that Michael Manning posted. I wonder if thats down to a different dialect or a different language. There is more than one Turkic language spoken in the area, says Wikipedia.
Thank you in advance for expending your mental energy on my trivial questions.
Posted 23 May 2010 at 8:09 pm ¶Have you come across a Uyghur version of the 八荣八耻 (sekkiz sherep, sekkiz nomus)? I’ve had difficultly finding one online. (Its like the cliff notes of communist sloganeering in Uyghur)
Posted 24 May 2010 at 12:20 pm ¶Kahraman, think I found what you’re looking for:
Posted 24 May 2010 at 12:46 pm ¶http://bit.ly/aniyRz
Armchair Linguist:
Thanks for the kind words! Unfortunately, if the topic has anything to do with a genuine and serious exploration of the language, I’m totally useless. Unlike Tewpiq I have no background in linguistics. My interaction with Uyghur has been very zen; I just try to learn stuff as it comes along. However, I know several people who are learning Uyghur and have linguist backgrounds; these folks tend to study the language more systematically (and successfully to boot).
I really don’t know any neologisms. Maybe one. The word “Xitay,” which originally was the standard, totally innocuous word of “Chinese” [person], gained a derogatory connotation when the use of “Xenzu” (from Hanzu) was aggressively pushed post “liberation.” Naturally. The moment the Han start telling Uyghurs to stop using “Xitay” is the moment Uyghurs coopt the word as a way to derogatorily and insulting refer to Han people (Xitay is still used in Central Asia entirely without negative connotations).
Anyway, it’s gotten to the point over time where Chinese in Xinjiang are able to recognize the word “Xitay” and so it’s becoming less and less safe for Uyghurs to toss it out there when in public places. A passerby Han who doesn’t know Uyghur may be able to pick out “Xitay” and know he’s being badmouthed.
I’ve met a *few* Uyghurs who are taking this a step forward: tons of Uyghurs absolutely adore studying English–they see it as a way of getting around Mandarin–and some are actually using the word “Chinese,” in English, as the derogatory word for Han people. The twist is they add the *Uyghur* plural suffix, -lar, to it. So the word is “Chineselar.” Granted, most Han in Xinjiang learn English, but their level is usually poor due to lack of interest and poor instruction, and Han people aren’t expecting to hear an English word with an Uyghur suffix.
So I guess that’s a neologism: Chineselar. Heh. As in, “Bah, look at those Chineselar, that merchant is totally conning them.”
As for the video, it’s Uyghur. I heard a “peqet,” which is the Uyghur word for only. The reason this is my yardstick is because the only other candidate was Uzbek but in Uzbek it’s “faqat.” Also, some Uyghur commenter on the youtube site said this:
Posted 24 May 2010 at 12:57 pm ¶I didn’t even know that the slogans in Chinese could be interpreted as first-person-plural imperatives until I moved to Xinjiang. I really thought they were just exhorting the reader! Little did I suspect that they actually voice, at least in Uyghur, a collective subject to which the reader implicitly belongs. I wonder if Han interpret the Chinese slogans this way?
As for neologisms… One of my favorite places to look for these is the newspaper. Frequently, an article will be translated from Chinese into Uyghur, and it shows. The translators have to employ some awkward phraseology, and sometimes invent new “pair-words” (jup soz) in order to get across the meaning of those odd Chinese words that summarize whole sentences. Similarly, listening to RFA can be fun. They make up words, too.
Posted 24 May 2010 at 11:11 pm ¶@porfiriy Thanks!, that’s exactly what I was looking for (I even looked on that tianshannet).
Posted 25 May 2010 at 1:02 am ¶Porfiriy and Tewpiq, thank you very much for your enlightening response. This is getting more fascinating by the day. Learning English is a form of resistance? Fascinating.
With the Xitay word, will the visiting Central Asian get into trouble for using it quite innocently, I wonder?
Just a quick note on that video again. To my untrained ear it soudns like the woman is singing in one language and the guys – in a different one. Theirs sounds more like what you’d hear in the clips that Michael Manning uploaded.
Speaking of which, someone should reupload all the Uyghur Youtube videos in a higher resolution. Everyone else on Youtube is moving to hi-def uploads.
I apologize for hijacking the thread with the neologism thing. Your post on the “eyes” and “eyebrows” is very interesting.
Thank again.
P.S. This is off-topic so you don’t need to respond to this. I just wonder if they can just borrow words from Turkish whenever they needed new ones. The Turks, like the French and Finns, have a language planning state body that generates neologisms. Estonians, AFAIK, have borrowed some from Finnish when Estonia entered the world of capitalism.
Posted 25 May 2010 at 1:49 am ¶@Armchair Linguist
Sure, don’t worry about “hijacking” threads, either! We don’t believe in the concept here. All discussion is welcome.
As for the Xitay word being used by visiting Central Asians, the negative insinuations of the word are really informal and unofficial; it’s not institutionalized or enforced by some agency and what not, so if a Central Asian were using it in his speech I would guess it would be unlikely that trouble would brew: I guess if confronted it would come out quickly that said person is a foreigner.
I can’t comment on how much Uyghurs borrow from Turkish – I haven’t heard anything like that myself, but I’m not familiar with Turkish’s influence in Xinjiang so anything that may have come up would’ve probably just zoomed over my head.
I’ll have to take another listen to the music video when I get home – this computer I’m on right now doesn’t have speakers.
Posted 31 May 2010 at 7:08 am ¶I also think Uighur sentences are lengthier when compared to Chinese characters, hence the smaller font.
Posted 07 Jun 2010 at 12:31 am ¶Interesting observations about the changing connotations of the word Xitay. This must be a uyghyrization of the word Khitai, aka. Khitan (Mandarin: Qidan), who are a mongolic people that ruled northeastern China in the 10th century, before being expelled by the Jurchen (proto-Manchu) to present day Xinjiang, where they established the Qara-Khitai Empire.
I believe all Turkic and Slavic words for “Chinese” are based on the same etiological origins.
Posted 13 Jun 2010 at 1:51 am ¶