Diamond in the Dunes
Encyclopedia
Diamond in the Dunes is a feature-length documentary
produced by the Documentary Foundation about a Chinese-Muslim
baseball
team in Xinjiang Province
, China.
ethnic minority from the deserts of Western China, who leads the fight against racial segregation
through baseball
.
The population of Xinjiang Province, China
is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese
, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur and Han speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Han operate on Beijing time
, Uyghurs on unofficial local time
.
There is one place, however, where the segregation
line is broken: on the baseball field. Although Uyghur and Han Chinese students at Xinjiang University take separate classes and live in separate dormitories, there are not enough players of one or the other ethnicity to field a whole team. They need each other to play baseball.
Diamond in the Dunes follows this team and their charismatic captain, Parhat Ablat, in their struggle to overcome ethnic differences and prepare for their only game of the season: an all-in match up against a team of Tibetans from Qinghai Province.
Uyghur
, farming and herding sheep on his homestead outside Kashgar
. Parhat says goodbye to his family and gets on the train for Urumqi
, the capital of China
's Xinjiang Province, where he attends university.
The population of this hardscrabble region is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim
Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese
, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur
and Chinese
speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Chinese operate on Beijing
time, Uyghurs on unofficial local time.
Parhat, pitcher and captain of Xinjiang University's baseball team, explains that classes and dormitories at Xinjiang University are segregated, but on baseball
team, both Uyghur and Chinese students play side-by-side. When a package of donated baseball
equipment arrives from the US, Parhat shares his excitement with Yusufu, one of his Chinese teammates.
During Xinjiang's brutal winter, the team begins to practice underground and racial tensions between Uyghur and Chinese come to a point. Parhat must bring both sides of the team together and remind them that if the conflict persists, the team may be disbanded by the University.
On and off the field, Parhat's goal is to raise poor Uyghur students out of what he calls the Uyghurs' 'spirit sickness.' He teaches quantum mechanics
to a class of Uyghur physics students, counsels the younger players on the team, and starts a baseball team at the local elementary school
.
At the end of the season, the Xinjiang University team is invited to compete against the next-closest baseball
team, the Qinghai Tibetan College, more than 2,000 miles to the east. On the train, the novice players brush up on the strike zone and force out
rule.
Finally, both teams face off
for their only game of the season. The Xinjiang team plays hard, but Tibetans are too strong: the final score is 16-0. After the game, the mood is dour and the players look to Parhat for leadership. He assures them that the experience of defeat is important and a lesson can be learned: work hard, never forget your goals, and you will ultimately succeed.
The final sequence takes us back to Parhat's village. At sunset, he goes into the streets in his baseball uniform, finds a group of kids, and begins teaching them baseball. Night falls and the kids ask his name. "Parhat," he says, which in Uyghur means 'hero.'
Drawing from more than 100 hours of material, the film employs the cinéma vérité
style, with no oncamera interviews or outside narration. The film favors a personal and psychological, rather than overtly political approach. The score is drawn from 100 minutes of Uyghur folk music, and includes drones extracted and reconditioned from the folk melodies and other sound design elements by Thomas Park of the musical act 'Mystified'.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
produced by the Documentary Foundation about a Chinese-Muslim
Islam in China
Throughout the history of Islam in China, Chinese Muslims have influenced the course of Chinese history. Chinese Muslims have been in China for the last 1,400 years of continuous interaction with Chinese society...
baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
team in Xinjiang Province
Xinjiang
Xinjiang is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. It is the largest Chinese administrative division and spans over 1.6 million km2...
, China.
The film
The documentary tells the story of Parhat Ablat, a young MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
ethnic minority from the deserts of Western China, who leads the fight against racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
through baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
.
The population of Xinjiang Province, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur and Han speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Han operate on Beijing time
Time in China
China spans across five different standard time zones, from UTC+05:00 in the west to UTC+09:00 in the east, yet since 1949 China has only had a single standard time at UTC+08:00. The time UTC+06:00 is also used unofficially in Xinjiang and Tibet...
, Uyghurs on unofficial local time
Time zone
A time zone is a region on Earth that has a uniform standard time for legal, commercial, and social purposes. In order for the same clock time to always correspond to the same portion of the day as the Earth rotates , different places on the Earth need to have different clock times...
.
There is one place, however, where the segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
line is broken: on the baseball field. Although Uyghur and Han Chinese students at Xinjiang University take separate classes and live in separate dormitories, there are not enough players of one or the other ethnicity to field a whole team. They need each other to play baseball.
Diamond in the Dunes follows this team and their charismatic captain, Parhat Ablat, in their struggle to overcome ethnic differences and prepare for their only game of the season: an all-in match up against a team of Tibetans from Qinghai Province.
Summary and background
Diamond in the Dunes opens with pastoral shots of Parhat Ablat, a young MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Uyghur
Uyghur people
The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...
, farming and herding sheep on his homestead outside Kashgar
Kashgar
Kashgar or Kashi is an oasis city with approximately 350,000 residents in the western part of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. Kashgar is the administrative centre of Kashgar Prefecture which has an area of 162,000 km² and a population of approximately...
. Parhat says goodbye to his family and gets on the train for Urumqi
Ürümqi
Ürümqi , formerly Tihwa , is the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China, in the northwest of the country....
, the capital of China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
's Xinjiang Province, where he attends university.
The population of this hardscrabble region is divided between two ethnic groups: the indigenous Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Uyghurs and the ruling Han Chinese
Han Chinese
Han Chinese are an ethnic group native to China and are the largest single ethnic group in the world.Han Chinese constitute about 92% of the population of the People's Republic of China , 98% of the population of the Republic of China , 78% of the population of Singapore, and about 20% of the...
, who gained control of the region in 1755 from the Dzungar kingdom. Uyghur
Uyghur people
The Uyghur are a Turkic ethnic group living in Eastern and Central Asia. Today, Uyghurs live primarily in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the People's Republic of China...
and Chinese
Chinese people
The term Chinese people may refer to any of the following:*People with Han Chinese ethnicity ....
speak different languages, practice different religions, live and work in different neighborhoods, and even set their watches two hours apart―Chinese operate on Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
time, Uyghurs on unofficial local time.
Parhat, pitcher and captain of Xinjiang University's baseball team, explains that classes and dormitories at Xinjiang University are segregated, but on baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
team, both Uyghur and Chinese students play side-by-side. When a package of donated baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
equipment arrives from the US, Parhat shares his excitement with Yusufu, one of his Chinese teammates.
During Xinjiang's brutal winter, the team begins to practice underground and racial tensions between Uyghur and Chinese come to a point. Parhat must bring both sides of the team together and remind them that if the conflict persists, the team may be disbanded by the University.
On and off the field, Parhat's goal is to raise poor Uyghur students out of what he calls the Uyghurs' 'spirit sickness.' He teaches quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
to a class of Uyghur physics students, counsels the younger players on the team, and starts a baseball team at the local elementary school
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
.
At the end of the season, the Xinjiang University team is invited to compete against the next-closest baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
team, the Qinghai Tibetan College, more than 2,000 miles to the east. On the train, the novice players brush up on the strike zone and force out
Force play
In baseball, a force is a situation when a baserunner is compelled to vacate his time-of-pitch base—and thus try to advance to the next base—because the batter became a runner. A runner at first base is always forced to attempt to advance to second base when the batter becomes a runner...
rule.
Finally, both teams face off
Face Off
- Sports :* Face-off, the ice hockey event that puts a puck into play* Face Off!, a 1989 ice hockey game by GameStar- Music :* Face Off , a 2007 collaboration album starring Bow Wow and Omarion...
for their only game of the season. The Xinjiang team plays hard, but Tibetans are too strong: the final score is 16-0. After the game, the mood is dour and the players look to Parhat for leadership. He assures them that the experience of defeat is important and a lesson can be learned: work hard, never forget your goals, and you will ultimately succeed.
The final sequence takes us back to Parhat's village. At sunset, he goes into the streets in his baseball uniform, finds a group of kids, and begins teaching them baseball. Night falls and the kids ask his name. "Parhat," he says, which in Uyghur means 'hero.'
Drawing from more than 100 hours of material, the film employs the cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
style, with no oncamera interviews or outside narration. The film favors a personal and psychological, rather than overtly political approach. The score is drawn from 100 minutes of Uyghur folk music, and includes drones extracted and reconditioned from the folk melodies and other sound design elements by Thomas Park of the musical act 'Mystified'.