The Salar People 撒拉族

We had a chance to get to know the Salar people in XunHua 循化 Salar Autonomous County in QingHai province.  

They are a Turkic minority in China who speaks Salar, a Turkic language of the Oghuz sub-branch. There are currently approximately 150,000 of them in north-western China.  

According to their tradition, they originated from around the Samarkand area, in present day Uzbekistan, in central Asia. They moved to China during the Yuan dynasty to escape from some trouble at home.  They wandered around in north-western China and eventually settled somewhere around present day north east Qinghai.  

They brought with them a copy of the Koran, which is now 800 years old, preserved in a museum.  

Nearby is the Camel Spring.  The story says that a camel got lost when they arrived at Xunhua.  They later found the camel at a spring, where the water and soil matched those at home.  Hence they decided to settle there.  

The land happened to be in a valley between mountains to the north and the south.  With the Yellow River runs through the valley from the west to the east. 

In a private museum built by one of their industrialists, we found a physical terrain model of the land.  

There is also a 100 year old mosque and a tower.  Both in the Chinese architectural style, which is common for old mosques in China.  

We are quite intrigued by the place, the people and their enthusiasm in preserving their culture.  We have since met with quite a number of people from the local community, government officials, university professors, school headmasters and teachers, private enthusiasts and anyone who are willing to speak with us. 

After much discussions, we are now planning to put together a project involving the participation from our students and teachers, local university professors and students, local schools with their students and teachers, and local museums.  The project will likely involve the application of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, computer games, and digital human technologies.  The contents will be the Salar history, culture, language, stories and personalities.  PolyU will probably focus on the technology, local universities will focus on the story, and the school children will be involved in creating, testing and improving the game-based storytelling.  It is hugely challenging, and also a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see the project in action. 

QingHai Snacks

We went to Qinghai twice already this year, to check out possible sites and partners for service-learning projects.  It looks really promising.  And we are quite excited about sending teams of students here. 

In the meantime, we are also learning a lot about the local culture, particularly the food culture.  In one afternoon,, we went to a local walking street, where there are dozens and dozens of eateries and street vendors selling all kinds of ethnic snacks and street food.  

There are these highland barley 青稞.  A kind of grain that grows well in the high altitude of the Tibetan highland.  It can be eaten as a grain, ground into flour to make noodles and cake, fermented to make beer and liquor, ...

The famous yak’s 氂牛 tasty meat. 

Buttered tea 酥油茶.  It is salty rather than sweet.   There are also yogurt and other related drinks and dessert.  

Goji berries 枸杞.  Red as well as black. 

Stuffed lamb 羊腸 small intestines. Quite tasty but spicy. 

Apricots.  …  And a lot more.  

After a while, I noticed something unusual.  At first, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.  Then I realised that there are no garbage cans.  There we’re also no garbage on the street.  Even around the street vendors selling snacks.  They all come in containers, don’t they?  What happens to all the garbage?  Finally, when we were leaving, we found garbage cans at the end of the street.  It is quite amazing, and impressive.  That the place is so clean and tidy.  I have to take my hat off, to the local people. 

My Articulated Cat

My articulated cat is made of palm leaves, coffee stirrers and toothpicks.  

11 pieces are made from the spine of a palm leaf.  

These are the skull, jaw, paws, end of tail, …

32 pieces are made from coffee stirrers. 

These are the arms and legs, tail, neck, …

25 pieces are made from tooth picks.  

These are the articulated joints: jaw, wrists, ankles, …

Roasted Chestnuts

At the cornet of the Flower Market in Mongkok yesterday, I ran into a vendor selling some of my favourite street foods in Hong Kong. This time I bought some roasted peanuts. 

But they also have roasted chestnuts. 

Sweet potatoes. Another of my favourites. 

Quail eggs.  Gingko nuts.  Macadamia nuts. 

If you are interested, you’d better burry up.  The weather is heating up.  The vendors will be taking a break in a few days. You will have to wait until many months later, towards the end of the year, to find them on the streets again. 

Fat Palm

The hollow of a very fat hand.  

With extremely short fingers.

Bouncing on two loops of copper wire.

A palm made of palm. 

#SChanPalmArt

Ocean Park Aquarium

On Wednesday, my wife and I went to Ocean Park.  We have not been there for many years, even though we can go there for free now  To me, there are only two things there that are really interesting: the big aquarium and the cable car ride.  The cable car takes one across Brick Hill 南朗山, to reach the southern part of the park.  We called the hill 雞公峰 when I was at Aberdeen Technical School.  We would climb straight up to the top of the hill, over where the Seahorse Logo is, and watch the horizon to the south.  The hill was really quite steep.  We often have to sit on our bottom and essentially slid down the slope.  We were too young to realise the risk we were taking.  There is no way I can do that now. 

This day we only have time for the aquarium.  The present one seem smaller than the original.  Which I remember as a multi-storey giant glass tank which you can walk around in a spiral, where you can see it at different levels and angles. I also miss some of the big fish such as giant groupers.   Today there is a big tank, and many small ones.  

There is still many interesting fish to look at.  Such as big and small puffer fish, of different kinds. 

They are some of most curious, often coming up to the glass to look at the people looking at them.  I wonder what they think of us.

The porcupine puffer does have sharp spines.  Other than that it looks a bit like a box fish. 

Box fish does look like a box.  I understand fish would flex its body to move around.  The box fish looks so rigid. Does it rely only on its small fins?

The Humpnose Unicornfish has a prominent protruding forehead.  What it is for?

The Napoleon wrasse is beautiful, with very fine, blue green wriggling stripes all over, particularly on the head.  The bump on its forehead gets bigger with age.  So it takes a long time to look like Napoleon’s hat, and we should respect that survival skill, or luck.  I used to watch people chop up giant ones in Sai Kung.  Their scales were like 2-inches across.  Now you don’t see them anymore.  

The pinecone fish has an intricate pattern that looks like a fish net. 

The butterflyfish is beautiful.  Sometimes one can find them in the wet market, usually the yellow ones.  They are supposed to be fatty and tasty.  

The lionfish seem to know that people find them good looking, and deadly.  It moves around slowly, seemingly very proud and without fear. 

The surgeon fish has sharp scalpels near and on both sides of its tail.  They are beautiful, and can defend themselves. 

The stingray is either smiling at, or mocking the people who watch them.  They like to flash their bellies. 

The milkfish seem to find safety in a crowd.  Do they really enjoy swimming in a circle, compelled by the circulating water in the vertical column?  

I could have stayed longer.  But we had to go to lunch.  We will be back some other time.