Ethnic

Braved the falling snow to visit the Xinjiang Museum.
Started with the “Memory of the History of the Western Regions” exhibit.  But the guard — I’ve never seen so many guards at a museum! every room! — shooed me away from what was obviously intended as the main entrance and toward a smaller doorway.  I was forced to walk through the exhibit in reverse chronological order. Qing Dynasty dress and chainmail, which I thought was cool.
These smiling camel & horse statues must have been the Cheech & Chong of their day.  Some nightmare fuel…
Yet another pala, as I’ve seen all over Asia.  But I liked this one because he seemed to be standing on a demon’s balls.These are copper eye covers with tiny little pinpricks to see through.  I assume they’re for Silk Road sandstorms or something.  They seemed very Mad Max to me.
The next exhibit was a celebration of the huge number of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.  It was nice textiles & housewares complement to the ethnic minorities “intangible culture” exhibit in neighboring Qinghai province’s regional museum.    In addition to having China’s highest percentage of Uyghurs, Xinjiang has a huge mix of ethnicities including Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Hui, Tajiks, Mongols, Manchus (mostly later generations of the officers & soldiers of the Manchu Eight Banners who defended the Qing Dynasty‘s northeastern border), Russians, and an increasing number of Han.
A camel hair coat. The inside of a yurt revealed (which I realize sounds like the worst clickbait title for an article ever.)
More copper eye protection, although this one looks more Dune than Mad Max.  And more nightmare fuel!  What the fuck are these things?
The one thing I learned about intangible culture, however, was a poem called the Epic of Manas which was written down in the 18th century but which they Kyrgyz claim is a thousand years old.