i constantly hear single stories. especially those of the people in other provinces. for example, people from sichuan or chongqing must love spicy food, or people from the northeast china must have super high cold endurance, or people from inner mongolia ride horses everyday, and there are only dried grapes and roast mutton in xinjiang. those were very strong stereotypes that we use to have, and those were exactly how those provinces were depicted and dilivered to me when i was little. especially the provinces that has mainly people from ethnic minority groups if the spice endurance of sichuan people and cold endurance of northeast people has at least some evidences, the stories of inner mongolia and xinjiang are very disappointedly wrong.
but i think the only way to get rid of this kind of stereotype is to get involved in the groups which are “single storied”. if i have never been to xinjiang myself, i would still probably hold the view of a hot lifeless land with mud houses and people who always dance and sing, rather than knowing the other side of xinjiang which is full of grass and water, and even a little bit cold. i’m not having preference to either of them, i’m just saying that how much the single story are expanded when you actually experienced the culture you’ve “long heard”.