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Chinese Little People's Commune & Theme Park (Kunming)

maximus otter

Recovering policeman
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A community of dwarves has set up its own village to escape discrimination from normal sized people.

Everyone in the mountain commune in Kunming, southern China, must be under 4ft 3 ins tall and they run their own police force and fire brigade from their 120 residents.

Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters.

"As small people we are used to being pushed around and exploited by big people. But here there aren't any big people and everything we do is for us," said spokesman Fu Tien.

The idea of housing dwarves in special compounds would be anathema in the West, and the village has sparked fierce debates among expats living in China.

"When I first heard this I pictured myself obscure freak shows from a hundred years back," wrote one commenter on the GoKunming website. "Pay the entrance fee and you can watch these people perform."

But others said that it was the dwarves' best chance of employment given the surplus of labour in China.

"We might feel aghast at treating humans this way but this is the best way the Chinese government can deal with the situation right now," wrote Tonyaod.

"Go back a hundred years or so in our culture and we will see that we did the same thing à la the freakshows and the circus."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/6245665/Dwarves-found-theme-park-commune-to-escape-bullying.html

maximus otter
 
maximus_otter said:
A community of dwarves has set up its own village to escape discrimination from normal sized people.

&

maximus_otter said:
Now the group has turned itself into a tourist attraction by building mushroom houses and living and dressing like fairy tale characters.

Self-defeating?
 
maybe the bit where they escaped discrimination meant they also escaped from money and food :(

i guess things got desperate.
 
I can understand them founding their own village, but not why they then want to turn it into a theme park. I don´t suppose they could run their own chocolate factory instead.

The comparison to freak shows is interesting, but some of those freaks earned a lot of money. Tom Thumb was at one point earning more than the US president.
 
Very strange.

I remember watching a thing about freak shows a long time ago, and how when there was an outcry to shut them down, it was the freaks who protested the most. They made tons of money, just sitting around, and they were among people who accepted them as just people. They could never do as well in a normal life. Once the freakshows got shut down, many were out on the street and quite a few were handicapped. This article reminds me of that situation. I guess if you're an oddity, you might as well make a heap of money off it. (Being a little person doesn't make you too much of an oddity, at least in the US, but a whole town of them certainly is.) It really does sound distasteful, like they're being mocked, as a knee-jerk reaction, though.
 
Yep, the freaks weren´t necessarily being exploited anymore than supermodels are. However instead of earning lots of money and being proud of their differences, we instead want them to stay at home and wait for their social security checks.
 
A funny story though behind it is the question of how we view the rights of other people, and whether able bodied people should be allowed to put their judgement of what is exploitative for someone else ahead of the judgement of those who it is alleged may be being exploited.

The Kingdom of the Little People is one of China's more unusual tourist attractions. Established in 2009, it was created as a secure place of employment for people with dwarfism who are often shunned in China's superstitious culture - but some have criticised it for isolating staff from society.

As I arrive at the Kingdom of the Little People, a welcome party emerges through the mountain mist looking anything but unhappy and exploited.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32217998
 
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Originally posted photo (remote-linked from PhotoBucket) is MIA. This replacement was taken from the BBC article cited above.
 
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Is it not cool to say:
"The theme park where all the staff are dwarves."?
 
Is it not cool to say:
"The theme park where all the staff are dwarves."?
AAAAAH, now after having been to many a diversity and equality workshop, I have an answer to that one. No, it would not be cool, as dwarfism is a condition which the sufferer might or might not want to be a defining part of his/her identity. By calling someone a dwarf you are implying that this is the main thing that defines them.
You did ask!
 
I suspected that.

The problem is that being far smaller and in quite different proportions to the vast majority of society really will define you for almost everybody with whom you do not have a close relationship, no matter how we try to mask the matter. Taking a job at a business that only employs dwarves doesn't help!
 
I suspected that.

The problem is that being far smaller and in quite different proportions to the vast majority of society really will define you for almost everybody with whom you do not have a close relationship, no matter how we try to mask the matter. Taking a job at a business that only employs dwarves doesn't help!

A dwarf is someone who is not to scale, over-sized head, short legs etc. Whereas a midget is proportionally correct.
 
I think dwarf sounds rather cool, as a word - good connotations via fairy tales and Tolkien; Midget, alas, doesn't suggest anything positive.
 
A funny story though behind it is the question of how we view the rights of other people, and whether able bodied people should be allowed to put their judgement of what is exploitative for someone else ahead of the judgement of those who it is alleged may be being exploited.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32217998

I think it's ace but Warwick Davis doesn't sound to impressed when taking a call from Karl Pilkington from the park ..

 
I think it's ace but Warwick Davis doesn't sound to impressed when taking a call from Karl Pilkington from the park ..


I just wish Karl would apply for celebrity Big Brother. They could dress him up has Bullsh*t Man (which he dreamt up in idiot abroad) in a celeb task :D
 
I think it's ace but Warwick Davis doesn't sound to impressed when taking a call from Karl Pilkington from the park ..

I'm not convinced that whole thing with Warwick Davis wasn't just about making Karl feel uncomfortable. The aim of the whole thing always seems to be about making Karl uncomfortable.
 
I just wish Karl would apply for celebrity Big Brother. They could dress him up has Bullsh*t Man (which he dreamt up in idiot abroad) in a celeb task :D

Maybe Karl interacting with the krankies would TV heaven :)
 
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