The Mystical Steppes

First you taste the food, then you see the dances and hear their songs. What timing, I got an overdose of sight and sound of XinJiang culture last night at the plenary hall of the KL Convention Center. Save for the wriggily hips of the Arabian dance at the start, the rest was a saturation of colours, movements, festivities, melon harvests, tasting melons, and songs of the vast steppes. And I gather the steppes must be really vast for them to shout or sing so loud.It is also a melting pot of diverse cultures as XinJIang in the North West of China shares the border with Russia, Mongolia, Tibet, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan,Afghanistan, and Pakistan. 47 ethnic groups in total. Not only the food taste so middle eastern, the dances and dancers have middle eastern roots although they all are unified by the single language of Mandarin. I must have dreamt in full colour that night. Mystical indeed.