Wonderful and exciting Traditional Sports
3 min readThe magnificent and colorful recreational activities in Xinjiang minorities are full of unique characteristics and regional features. the recreational activities of agricultural people are mainly for watching and the recreational activities of nomads are mainly for competing In the process of long history, these activities describe the lives, customs, wisdom and pursuits of various ethnic goups in a unique way.
Wonderful and exciting Traditional Sports
The sports and recreational activities in xinjiang minorities are rich and colorfuL. In the festival celebration, various minorities will hold many nteresting recreational activities, such as high altitude ropewalking, horse racing, goat grabbing and girls’ chase, which will make people forget to leave.
Darwaz
Darwaz, also known as”Darga chikish”, is a traditional athletic event, which means”high altitude ropewalking”. The Darwaz has a long history. According to Chinese historical records the darwaz is also called”Walking on a big rope Walking on a rope Walking on a soft rope Treading on a rope”and so on.
According to the description in the epic Goddess dressed in a White turban written by a Uygur poet Kurban Barat, as early as the Uygur people believed Shamanism, artists set up a high altitude rope and hung colorful flags to perform various adventurous actions along with musical sounds to thank the god in order to celebrate the harvest As written in the poem:
On the plane full of gravels not far away,
The ropewalker set up the rope as high as touching the sky
The youth dancing on the soft rope
Various adventurous actions are under performing
The colorful flags are whirling in the wind
Both the Suona horn and the tabour are playing simultane ously
Joyful applauses are dedicated to the performer,
He is ascending to the blue sky step by step
The one shouting loudly is the dancing Shaman,
He is giving a lecture on the moral of the ropewalking by s outing loudly
The moral about the forever yearn for the high altitude
The moral about the devout veneration to the blue sky
There are mural paintings about performing the darwaz in the Kizi Thousand-Buddha Cave near Baicheng County of Xinjiang. Among gigakiterracotta figures which are unearthed from the astana ancient tomb established in the 7 to 8 century and are stored in the Museum of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, there is a pair of terracotta figures holding a balancing pole and tilting feet highly, and their postures are extremely similar as the actions of today’s Darwaz As mentioned in the Turkic Dictionary the darwaz performed by people is the acrobatics performed on the rope.
A legend about the darwaz among the Uygur people says: in ancient times, a demon appeared in the city where the Uygur people lived. It was unscrupulous and usually brought disasters to the world and all the people in the city were restless. People wanted to eradicate the demon, but the demon came and went in the sky, controlling the forces of nature. One day, a young man named Ubul appeared he decided to kill the demon to remove the evil for people. Ubul set up a number of crude wooden columns as high as touching the sky and the wooden columns are connected by crude ropes. He deftly stepped on the ropes to struggle against the demon when the demon was appearing in the city. Finally, he cut the head of the demon and removed the evil for people.
