The New Dominion

This is The New Dominion’s Arts & Entertainment News Roundup for 4-12 March 2008! We hope that this regular feature will help the world come to realize the richness of the arts in Xinjiang and perhaps help our Xinjiang-based readers find something to do on Friday nights.

A lot of people say that Ürümchi is a cultural vacuum, that, beyond “traditional” performances, it is difficult at best to find fine music and art. Even painters living in the city say that nothing new or creative ever appears there, nothing that is not derivative of something in the Interior.

A recent exhibition of paintings at Xinjiang Normal University by Xinjiang Mongol artist Dabuxilite (达布西力特) certainly challenged that notion for me. A young artist whose work has already begun to enter international collections, Dabuxilite produces works that play with light and space. Most striking is a series of paintings from the Turpan area: one painting produced at the ruins of Jiaohe (交河), a favorite of visitors as well as of the artist, shows off Dabuxilite’s talent for drawing the eye, not by focusing it on a distant point of entrance, as in his Tuyoq series, but by yanking it to a dozen points, all at once, as the unseen sun casts shattering shadows over the ruined stone houses. I suspect that this piece indicates a new direction for the artist, who has turned from early, somewhat pedestrian depictions of the human form to textured, rippling, more abstract work. Dabuxilite will hold another exhibition in April at the Xinjiang Provincial Library.

Wonderful news for chowhounds in Ürümchi! A Culinary Tour of the Capital - Eating in Ürümchi (都市美食游-吃在乌鲁木齐) is being published. Put together by the XUAR No. 2 Surveying Office, this guide to Ürümchi’s food displays Ürümchi’s best restaurants (however determined) on a map, created using satellite images, along with hotels and transportation routes. I am, as yet, unable to locate the book on-line, but I have some faith that it will soon join Discovering Ürümchi （发现乌鲁木齐) on my bookshelf.

“Kazakh polo” (the sport, not the food), Uyghur-style buzkashi, the art of making Yengisar knives, embroidery, and 29 other cultural practices are being considered for addition to the PRC’s list of national-level items of non-material cultural heritage. They are entering the second round of the selection process. Other practices from Xinjiang up for consideration include various holidays (including Naadam), the Sive art of bow-making, and several ways of decorating cloth. (I’ve had a look at the list myself — available in .DOC format here – and, in keeping with Xinjiang’s image as the land of happy, singing, dancing minzu, the 33 items are made up mostly of various kinds of muqam and folk dances.) Does anyone know when the list will actually be announced? The Cultural Office has no apparent news, nor indeed anything new up for a while.

The Tianshan Film Studio is hiring! They are looking, among other things, for English translators. Xinjiang Medical University is also looking for various new hires, including language specialists. Look within for details. You might have to be Chinese.