From “Lamb Kebabs” to “Shared Joy”: Cultural Appropriation, Ignorance and the Constrained Connectivity within the “One Belt, One Road” Initiative

Abstract

This article primarily pays attention to Han Chinese appropriations of Uyghur culture from the post-Mao era. A unique case is comedian Chen Peisi’s role of Uyghur lamb kebab peddler in a TV sketch in 1986. The root of the cultural appropriation is to re-essentialize Uyghur culture to quell the demand by the majority Han Chinese for cultural consumption in the market economy era. The author further examines a similar case of Chinese appropriation of African culture in 2018. In the end, the article argues that deeply-rooted cultural ignorance from Han Chinese towards ethnic and racial “others” is still prevalent today, which poses a subtle challenge to the Party-State’s lofty goal of building people’s bonds within the One Belt and One Road Initiative.