Tajik People of Xinjiang: Picture of the Week

Home » Picture of the Week March 11, 2010 6 Comments
Three Tajik people of XinjiangTajik Trio

The Tajik people are one of the 56 official ethnic groups in China that primarily reside in Xinjiang. They have their own Autonomous County that borders Tajikistan near Kashgar and their nomadic population of 41,000 is majority Muslim. From the photographer 62lofu:

These are ethnically Tajik people, the girls were dressed-up to perform in a village dance, but many of the other villagers nipped home to dress-up just for the photos. If you look closely you can see that the man in the middle of the shot has clearly just put on his best shirt, you can still see the fresh fold lines in the cloth. And the hat is not an every-day hat, this one would be the equivalent of his Sunday-Best.

Interesting Facts about the Tajik of Xinjiang:

  • According to the CIA, there are more Tajiks living in the US than in China.
  • Most Tajiks in Xinjiang speak the Sarikoli language, which oddly isn’t what is spoken in Tajikistan
  • If you’ve traveled the Karakoram Highway to Taxkorgan, you’ve probably met a lot of Tajik
  • Tajik, like the Uyghurs, don’t celebrate Spring Festival, they celebrate Nowruz.
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If you are interested in contributing a photo to FarWestChina’s Picture of the Week series, please contact me and send in your Xinjiang-related photo. All photos must be originals and will be credited to you and/or your personal website.
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6 Comments

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  • Anonymous said:
    March 11th, 2010 at 2:45 am

    Are you sure the guy in the middle is not of Scandinavian origin?

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  • Josh said:
    March 11th, 2010 at 2:53 am

    I can't be for certain because I didn't take this picture, but the photographer seems to indicate that it is, in fact, a Tajik. Hopefully they can drop by and clarify.

    A lot of the minority groups here in Xinjiang do tend to have a European bone structure which might explain why this man's face looks so familiar to you.

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  • Matthew said:
    March 11th, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    That's an area of Xinjiang I'd like to visit on my next trip. I also wouldn't mind visiting Tajikistan–I lived in Dushanbe's sister, Boulder, CO. They have a really cool Tajik tea house there.

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  • Weeger said:
    March 12th, 2010 at 12:39 am

    There are quite a few Tajiks and Uyghurs who look like the guy in the middle of the photo.

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  • Anonymous said:
    March 19th, 2010 at 9:40 am

    The name is confusing, but the Tajiks of Xinjiang are different than the Tajiks of Tajikistan. Sarikoli (and the other Pamiri languages lumped under "Tajik" in China) is an East Iranian language while Tajikistan Tajik is a West Iranian language very closely related to Persian.

    Evocative photo.

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  • Maohammet said:
    April 11th, 2010 at 4:14 am

    Not surprising that the man in the middle has strong Caucasian features. Tajiks are related to Persians, fairest of Aryans. Persians in Iran had too much Arab admixture.

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