Photo Gallery China's Useful Exotics
An entertainer wears the traditional attire of the Qaing ethnic minority -- a people hit hard by the devastating May 12 earthquake in China.
An ethnic Uighur sleeps as he waits for customers to ride his camel on Id Kah Square in Xinjiang's famed Silk Road city of Kashgar in China's far northwestern, mainly Muslim Xinjiang province.
A delegate from a Chinese ethnic minority group arrives at the National People's Congress in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in March. The exotic delegates adorn the cover stories in newspapers and serve as telegenic actors on the government's nightly TV propaganda programs. But like the other representatives of the people, they too are little more than interchangeable cheerleaders, brought in to nod through laws presented by the authorities.
Tibetan youth, with long stainless steel needles sticking into their cheeks to ward off illness, attend a ceremony to worship mountain gods at Nianduhu Village in Tongren County of Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in China's Qinghai province.
Members of a minority group perform during a traditional festival in the Qinghai province.
Horses fight as part of the traditional festival held by China's Miao minority in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous region.
A 13-year-old Miao girl walks on knife points as part of a traditional sport festival in Guiyang in southwest China's Guizhou province.
