Bortala Culture

Bortala is a multi-ethnic gathering area, basically the Mongolian, Han, Uygur, Kazakh, Hui and other nationalities including 35 nationalities living there. In the long historical development process, these ethnic groups learn from each other so that culture, art and customs with strong local characteristics has formed. 

Language and Characters

Mongolian belongs to the Altaic Mongolian language and it is divided into three dialects including Inner Mongolia, Ba’erhubuliyate (巴尔虎布里亚特) and Oirots (卫拉特) dialects. The Mongolian of Bortala belongs to Inner Mongolia dialect. Mongolian characters have two categories -- Hudum (胡都木蒙文) and Todo (托忒蒙古文), and Bortala character belongs to the later one. The Uygur and Kazak language belong to the Turjic family of the Altai language, their current characters are the alphabetic writing based on the Arabic letters.

Religion

The Mongolian believe in Shamanism in the earliest time. They believe in Tibetan Buddhism since the Yuan Dynasty. In Tibetan language, monks are named as "lama", so the Tibetan Buddhism is also called Lamaism. The Uygur, Kazak and Hui nationality believe in Muslim.

Traditional Recreational Activities

Horse racing, wrestling and archery are traditional Mongolian recreational activities. The Mongolian have always been famous for their skilled singing and dancing. Every festival or banquet, there must be singing and dancing activities. The Mongolian folk songs are unusually abundant, and there is Pastoral Songs, Custom Songs, Proverb Songs, Passacaglia Songs, etc. And they are divided into “long tune” and “short tune”.