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Diamond in the Dunes is a feature-length documentary produced by the Documentary Foundation about a Chinese-Muslim baseball team in Xinjiang Province, China.
The documentary tells the story of Parhat Ablat, a young Muslim from an ethnic minority in the deserts of Western China, who leads the fight against racial segregation through baseball.
The population of Xinjiang Province, China is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur and Han speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Han operate on Beijing time, Uyghurs on unofficial local time.
There is one place, however, where the segregation line is broken: on the baseball field. Although Uyghur and Han Chinese students at Xinjiang University take separate classes and live in separate dormitories, there are not enough players of one or the other ethnicity to field a whole team. They need each other to play baseball.
Diamond in the Dunes follows this team and their charismatic captain, Parhat Ablat, in their struggle to overcome ethnic differences and prepare for their only game of the season: an all-in match up against a team of Tibetans from Qinghai Province.
The film is directed by Christopher Rufo. [1] This is his third documentary film.
Diamond in the Dunes opens with pastoral shots of Parhat Ablat, a young Muslim Uyghur, farming and herding sheep on his homestead outside Kashgar. Parhat says goodbye to his family and gets on the train for Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang Province, where he attends university.
The population of this hardscrabble region is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur and Chinese speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Chinese operate on Beijing time, Uyghurs on unofficial local time.
Parhat, pitcher and captain of Xinjiang University's baseball team, explains that classes and dormitories at Xinjiang University are segregated, but on baseball team, both Uyghur and Chinese students play side by side. When a package of donated baseball equipment arrives from the US, Parhat shares his excitement with Yusufu, one of his Chinese teammates.
During Xinjiang's brutal winter, the team begins to practice underground and racial tensions between Uyghur and Chinese come to a point. Parhat must bring both sides of the team together and remind them that if the conflict persists, the team may be disbanded by the University.
On and off the field, Parhat's goal is to raise poor Uyghur students out of what he calls the Uyghurs' 'spirit sickness.' He teaches quantum mechanics to a class of Uyghur physics students, counsels the younger players on the team, and starts a baseball team at the local elementary school.
At the end of the season, the Xinjiang University team is invited to compete against the next-closest baseball team, the Qinghai Tibetan College, more than 2,000 miles to the east. On the train, the novice players brush up on the strike zone and force out rule.
Finally, both teams face off for their only game of the season. The Xinjiang team plays hard, but Tibetans are too strong: the final score is 16–0. After the game, the mood is dour and the players look to Parhat for leadership. He assures them that the experience of defeat is important and a lesson can be learned: work hard, never forget your goals, and you will ultimately succeed.
The final sequence takes us back to Parhat's village. At sunset, he goes into the streets in his baseball uniform, finds a group of kids, and begins teaching them baseball. Night falls and the kids ask his name. "Parhat," he says, which in Uyghur means 'hero.'
Drawing from more than 100 hours of material, the film employs the cinéma vérité style, with no oncamera interviews or outside narration. The film favors a personal and psychological, rather than overtly political approach. The score is drawn from 100 minutes of Uyghur folk music, and includes drones extracted and reconditioned from the folk melodies and other sound design elements by Thomas Park of the musical act 'Mystified'.
The Hui people are an East Asian ethnoreligious group which is predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam who are distributed throughout China, mainly in the northwestern provinces of the country and the Zhongyuan region. According to the 2011 census, China is home to approximately 10.5 million Hui people, the majority of whom are Chinese-speaking practitioners of Islam, but some of them may practise other religions. The 110,000 Dungan people of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are also considered part of the Hui ethnicity.
The Dzungar Khanate, also written as the Zunghar Khanate, was an Inner Asian khanate of Oirat Mongol origin. At its greatest extent, it covered an area from southern Siberia in the north to present-day Kyrgyzstan in the south, and from the Great Wall of China in the east to present-day Kazakhstan in the west. The core of the Dzungar Khanate is today part of northern Xinjiang, also called Dzungaria.
Islam has been practiced in China for about 1,400 years. Muslims are a minority group in China, representing between 0.45% to 2.85% of the total population according to the local government. Though Hui Muslims are the most numerous group, the greatest concentration of Muslims is in Xinjiang, with a significant Uyghur population. Lesser but significant populations reside in the regions of Ningxia, Gansu and Qinghai. Of China's 55 officially recognized minority peoples, ten groups are Sunni Muslim.
Northwest China is a statistical region of China which includes the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia and the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai. It has an area of 3,107,900 km2.
The Kazakh exodus from Xinjiang occurred in waves during the 1950s and 1960s after the victory of the Communist Party of China in Xinjiang.
Xinjiang historically consisted of two main geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct regions with different historical names: Dzungaria north of the Tianshan Mountains; and the Tarim Basin south of the Tianshan Mountains, currently mainly inhabited by the Uyghurs. They were renamed Xinjiang in 1884, meaning "new frontier," when both regions were reconquered by the Chinese Qing dynasty after the Dungan revolt (1862–1877).
Kazakhs are a Turkic ethnic group and are among 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China.
The name Dzungar people, also written as Zunghar, referred to the several Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they were one of major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation. They were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word "Dzungar" and also called "Kalmyks". In 2010, 15,520 people claimed "Ööled" ancestry in Mongolia. An unknown number also live in China, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Xinjiang, officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is a landlocked autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest of the country close to Central Asia. Being the largest province-level division of China and the 8th-largest country subdivision in the world, Xinjiang spans over 1.6 million square kilometres (620,000 sq mi) and has about 25 million inhabitants. Xinjiang borders the countries of Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. The rugged Karakoram, Kunlun and Tian Shan mountain ranges occupy much of Xinjiang's borders, as well as its western and southern regions. The Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract regions, both administered by China, are claimed by India. Xinjiang also borders the Tibet Autonomous Region and the provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. The most well-known route of the historic Silk Road ran through the territory from the east to its northwestern border.
The Ili Rebellion was a Turkic war of national liberation backed by the Soviet Union against the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China in 1944. After the start of the rebellion, the rebels established the Provisional Government of the Second East Turkestan Republic in 1944. The Ili Rebellion was the start of the East Turkistan National Liberation Revolution also known as the Three Districts Revolution, which lasted from 1944 to 1949.
The Kuomintang Islamic insurgency refers to a continuation of the Chinese Civil War by Chinese Muslim nationalist Kuomintang Republic of China Army forces in Northwest China, in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, and Xinjiang, and another insurgency in Yunnan.
The Dzungar–Qing Wars were a decades-long series of conflicts that pitted the Dzungar Khanate against the Qing dynasty of China and their Mongolian vassals. Fighting took place over a wide swath of Inner Asia, from present-day central and eastern Mongolia to Tibet, Qinghai, and Xinjiang regions of present-day China. Qing victories ultimately led to the incorporation of Outer Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang into the Qing Empire that was to last until the fall of the dynasty in 1911–1912, and the genocide of much of the Dzungar population in conquered areas.
Migration to Xinjiang is both an ongoing and historical movement of people, often sponsored by various states who controlled the region, including the Han dynasty, Qing dynasty, Republic of China and People's Republic of China.
Altishahr, also known as Kashgaria, is a historical name for the Tarim Basin region used in the 18th and 19th centuries. The term means 'Six Cities' in Turkic languages, referring to oasis towns along the rim of the Tarim, including Kashgar, in what is now southern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.
The Dzungar genocide was the mass extermination of the Mongol Dzungar people, at the hands of the Qing dynasty. The Qianlong Emperor ordered the genocide due to the rebellion in 1755 by Dzungar leader Amursana against Qing rule, after the dynasty first conquered the Dzungar Khanate with Amursana's support. The genocide was perpetrated by Manchu generals of the Qing army sent to crush the Dzungars, supported by Uyghur allies and vassals due to the Uyghur revolt against Dzungar rule.
Anti-Mongol sentiment has been prevalent throughout history, often perceiving the Mongols to be a barbaric and uncivilized people.
The Qing dynasty in Inner Asia was the expansion of the Qing dynasty's realm in Inner Asia in the 17th and the 18th century AD, including both Inner and Outer Mongolia, Manchuria, Tibet, Qinghai and Xinjiang.
The Qing dynasty ruled over Xinjiang from the late 1750s to 1912. In the history of Xinjiang, the Qing rule was established in the final phase of the Dzungar–Qing Wars when the Dzungar Khanate was conquered by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China, and lasted until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912. The post of General of Ili was established to govern the whole of Xinjiang and reported to the Lifan Yuan, a Qing government agency that oversaw the empire's frontier regions. Xinjiang was turned into a province in 1884.
The historical area of what is modern-day Xinjiang consisted of the distinct areas of the Tarim Basin and Dzungaria and was populated by Indo-European Tocharians and Saka peoples, who practiced Buddhism. They came under Chinese rule in the Han dynasty as the Protectorate of the Western Regions due to wars between the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu and again in the Tang dynasty as the Protectorate General to Pacify the West due to wars between the Tang dynasty and the First, Western, and Eastern Turkic Khaganates. The Tang dynasty withdrew its control of the region in the Protectorate General to Pacify the West and the Four Garrisons of Anxi after the An Lushan Rebellion, after which the Turkic peoples living in the area converted to Islam.
Uyghur nationalism is a form of nationalism which asserts that the Uyghur people, an ethnic minority in China, are a distinct nation. Uyghur nationalism promotes the cultural unity of the Uyghur people, either as an independent group or as a regional group within a larger Chinese nation.