All posts tagged: DongTu shabi

Shiralijan’s Fist and Xinjiang Spirit

The Xinjiang Flying Tigers may have lost the CBA championship to the Beijing Ducks, but despite this loss, Xinjiangers around the world came away from the games with a powerful meme. It came at the end of game five, after the Tigers rallied and pulled off the win in front of a hostile Beijing crowd of 18,000. Shiralijan the star Uyghur point guard for the Tigers who had been tasked with defending Stephon Marbury – the star of the Ducks (and MVP of the league, according to Anthony Tao!) threw the ball in the air and raised a fist to the crowd while turning a full circle. He punched the air with his right hand while his left hand grabbed his bicep. Relating the gesture to the semiotics on the Uyghur countryside where he’s from, most Uyghur onlookers immediately interpreted the gesture as a “fuck you” to the crowd that had been chanting “stupid East Turkistani cunt” or “DongTu shabi”[1] for the past three days. According to some Uyghur observers he was reacting as any self-respecting …