Ethnic Minority Park

Last week, I took a trip to the Chinese Ethnic Park in Beijing; this park is a massive replica of many of the people and places to be found within China. This fantastic educational opportunity and money making tourist site can be found right outside of the future main venue of the 2008 Olympics, known as the Bird's Nest.

Ultimately, this will enable thousands of tourists to get a taste of all that China has to offer while waiting for their next favorite event to begin. The scale of this project is massive and really worth while for a person who only has one or two weeks to spend in China.

You can travel around the jungles of Yunnan.

You can go for a trip in the desert area of XinJiang and see it's Arabian architecture. But you cannot see any XinJiang people, even though they are all over Beijing. If you look behind you quick enough, you can see them trying to steal your wallet...QUICK!

After passing through that area, you can head into the center of China and see the Muslim people of  Xian dancing.

You can also see the Hunan people listening to music in their traditional way while sewing beautiful patterns on their clothes.

But actually, the Hunan people did have a cool dance. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to upload to youtube, so I will give you the more lame version; some woman singing.

To try to Gage the authenticity of this park and the job they have done, let us look at the Pagodas of Guilin;

Now we compare that to the Guilin pagodas in Beijing.

Honestly, there is a difference because you do not get to see the mountains or the actual pagodas, but they did a fine job of recreating the atmosphere in this area.

You can also make a trip to Tibet, which lays on top of a hill and has a real monastery; very classy.

The best replica of the bunch was that of LiJiang city in Yunnan province; this also brought in the worst replica of the people. The Naxi people in LiJiang wore a traditional outfit and backpack around the city all the time. However, the ones in the park wore their traditional sequins. Terrible! HAHA

Comments

[Andy 食神]

Any chance of Laowai on becoming the 55th government recognized minority? J/K

Just FYI, for those who don't know... the Chinese govn't has official recognization of ethnic mintories, which a total of 54 groups are currently recgonized.

[Simon]

If you look behind you quick enough, you can see them trying to steal your wallet...QUICK!

hah,it seems that u r very familiar with china.definitely,that's true,Xinjiang ppl have very bad fame for stealing.