Quote:
Originally Posted by Bettafish
Uyghur can appear from very European to very Mongolian to very Iranian. Most are in between.
The very Caucasian ones tend to live in poorer areas with worse economic conditions. I wonder if western influence has shaped people's view of beauty there.
|
I'm not really sure - you do have some very European-looking Uyghyrs. There is a family of them that sell bread near the Kecun and Chigang metro stations who I thought were Europeans initially: light brown, reddish hair, pale skin, a few of them have green eyes. They're very friendly to me and other foreigners - you can tell that they feel a degree of kinship because we look similar. I used to live near those metro stations, and would buy bread from them every couple days; one of the teenage sons cut his hair into a mohawk like mine and would compliment me on my style, so I got him a pair of Pumas and a Ramones shirt for Eid at the end of Ramadan... I don't think he's taken them off since... they seem to be pretty poor, either that or they just hoard all their money for things other than clothing.
Most of the ones you see in GZ are fairly poor, and dress mostly like rural Han Chinese, or like the average person in China did 15-20 years ago. People tend to gravitate towards looks that suit them, and so I'm sure that many Uyghyrs, given a better economic situation, would adopt *some* Western or Mediterranean/Middle Eastern fashion and beauty standards, at least within the confines of their religion.
Quote:
|
Personally I'm only familiar with 3 Uyghurs. Two of them are just like Han Chinese, but they are pure Uyghurs. One of them has some Middle-Eastern traits. They all have advanced degrees and speak near-native Chinese.
|
We have a little girl at our school whose mother is Uyghur, but totally-secularized and dresses and acts like any other Han Chinese woman. Her husband is Han, and owns a factory. The other moms and grandmas fawn over how beautiful they both are, with medium-brown hair and light-brown eyes; the mother looks like she could be mixed, or from Southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc.
I did know one Uyghyr back in the States who emigrated to the US on his own and was basically a stoner/metal dude who spoke like nine different languages... cool guy, didn't really exhibit any cultural holdovers from home and seemed pretty stoked to be in the West.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
