The good folks at Sixth Tone have the most charming video short you’re likely to encounter today: this bite-sized feature on Xi Jiaqi, a 12-year-old hip hop dance champion from China’s far-northwest Xinjiang province. Having picked up the art of popping at the tender age of 7, Xi won a national competition in Shanghai earlier this year, and is headed to Phoenix next month, where she’ll represent China in the 2017 World Hip Hop Dance Championship. Watch:
Meet Xi Jiaqi, China’s 9-years-old popping dance champion pic.twitter.com/avkB7Qxxr4
— Sixth Tone (@SixthTone) July 22, 2017
If that 40-second vid doesn’t sate your appetite for cultural hybrids forged in the rugged peripheries of Xinjiang, we point you to this trailer for The Silk Road of Pop, a feature-length documentary about “rap crews, rock stars, and their fans in the northwest of China” released in 2012:
And here’s a slightly more sustained video on the rap scene in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, by the American branch of Chinese news station CGTN, to complete your short trip down this particular rabbit hole:
