Uyghur song "Love" becomes popular: How poetry from 90 years ago hit contemporary youth

Recently, a Uyghur song "Zhi Xiang Lian" became popular.

Since late August, a song "Zhi Xiang Lian" sung by Xinjiang Zifan Culture Media's Watermelon Choir has continued to spread on platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and WeChat video accounts. The topic has been played more than 6 million times on the short video platform, and netizens have been actively interacting.

The comment area has also become a special "youth memory".

Many Xinjiang netizens shared their own schooling experiences: they left home to study when they were young, and later went to college, went to graduate school, and became teachers, doctors, engineers... Some people recalled their schooling experiences and lamented that education allowed them to see a bigger world.

Many people's eyes became red as they listened.

90 years ago,

He wrote knowledge as "lover"

"Knowing Love" is derived from "In Praise of Knowledge" written in 1936 by Uighur poet Nimi Xiyiti.

Why does a song written 90 years ago suddenly hit today's young people?

The answer starts with the person who wrote this poem.

Nimihiyiti was born in a poor family in Baicheng, Xinjiang, and began writing poetry in the early 1930s. In his youth, he wrote poetry while studying voraciously.

In 1936, he wrote "In Praise of Knowledge" in his hometown.

In the poem, he writes knowledge like an enchanting lover:

"Only knowledge in the world can make people fall in love. An infatuated lover cannot compare with the beauty of knowledge."

In an era when education was far from universal, Nimihiiti was already keenly aware of what knowledge meant. He wrote that with knowledge, "barren hills can be turned into gardens," and illiteracy and ignorance will eventually be abandoned by the times.

This desire for knowledge is not the poet's romantic imagination.

Uighur poet Nimi Xiyiti

Throughout his life, Nimihiiti always linked his creations with his motherland and people. He once wrote: "I write and use my pen to sing about my motherland and my people."

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, he called China "my mother" in "The Great China", angrily accused the Japanese invaders of launching a war, and called on the people to rise up in resistance with his poems. After the founding of New China, he wrote about Beijing, his hometown, the soldiers stationed in the snowy mountains, and the builders of Tarim. A collection of Uyghur poems published in 1957 is titled "Love of the Motherland".

Therefore, if you listen to "Knowing Love" again today, you will find that behind this song there is actually a very complete image of a poet.

He believes that knowledge can change people's destiny, and he also believes that knowledge can change his hometown.

Today, Xinjiang’s nine-year compulsory education consolidation rate and high school gross enrollment rate remain above 97%. There are 66 general colleges and universities in Xinjiang, with a cumulative enrollment of 1.176 million students. In particular, a historic breakthrough has been achieved in the full coverage of undergraduate education in southern Xinjiang.

The wishes of those years have a new echo in the lives of young people in Xinjiang.

an old song,

Singing the memory of studying in this generation

For many young people in Xinjiang today, the pursuit of knowledge is not a beautiful sentence in a book, but a journey that has been traveled personally.

Maybe you left your parents for the first time when you were 12 or 13 years old and went to study in a farther place. You may live with classmates from different ethnic groups and different regions for the first time. You may go from small towns in southern Xinjiang to pastoral areas in northern Xinjiang, and step by step into universities, hospitals, laboratories and enterprises.

So, when the song sounded, the poems about knowledge also overlapped with their own lives.

This also explains why a craze for "showing academic qualifications" quickly appeared in the comment area.

Of course, some netizens reminded that "In Love" celebrates the pursuit of knowledge, and academic qualifications cannot be used to show off or even ridicule others.

This reminder makes sense.

A diploma is just a step on the way to knowledge. What Nimihiiti truly praises is people’s spirit of maintaining a desire for knowledge, taking the initiative to learn, and constantly moving forward.

But looking at it from another perspective, this slightly lively “showing off academic qualifications” just shows that knowledge and education have deeply entered the life memories of a generation of Xinjiang youth.

Over the past few decades, from basic education to higher education, more and more young people in Xinjiang have had the opportunity to receive high-quality education and move towards a broader world.

At that time, the poet wrote "With knowledge, you can turn barren mountains into gardens." Today, the life of a generation itself is answering this sentence.

What’s more meaningful is,

It sings the nation and resonates

The song "Knowing Love" triggered many likes and interactions among Xinjiang netizens from all over the motherland.

Not only that, the song also quickly crossed national and regional boundaries.

Some Han netizens said that even if they did not understand Uyghur, they would still be moved by the singing; some Kazakh netizens left a message saying that they were "moved to tears" after hearing it for the first time; and many netizens began to look for Chinese translations to learn about Nimihiyiti and Uyghur modern literature.

This scene is very interesting.

A song with distinctive Uyghur cultural characteristics ultimately created common emotions among people of many different ethnic groups.

Because knowledge, growth, study, and changing destiny are desires that everyone can understand.

The charm of diversity and unity of Chinese culture is often reflected in moments like this.

National cultures each have their own language, melody and expression, but they can appreciate and understand each other. The more outstanding works with national characteristics, the more likely they are to show more universal value in communication.

Such is the poetry of Nimihiiti.

In 1936, he wrote about his desire for knowledge in Uyghur; 90 years later, young people of different ethnic groups reposted, collected and sang together on the Chinese Internet.

In this way, culture spans time and regions.

A song is being sung,

How did it become "cultural disappearance"?

It happened that at this time, some overseas media jumped out again.

They interpreted the Xinjiang people’s tears while listening to the songs as “tears for the fate of the nation,” and then exaggerated so-called “national crises” such as “Uyghur language and literature is facing disappearance” and “Uyghur language is marginalized.”

What's ridiculous is that this rhetoric can't even explain what's happening right now.

Why can a Uighur poem from 1936 become popular again on the Chinese Internet in 2026?

Why are young Uyghur singers able to sing fluently in Uyghur?

Why are millions of netizens watching, forwarding and discussing it?

Why after an old song became popular, more and more young people from different ethnic groups began to understand this Uyghur poet, look for his works, and discuss Xinjiang literature?

What’s even more intriguing is that relevant overseas articles claimed that Uyghur culture “faces disappearance” while at the same time being surprised that today’s Uyghur teenagers can sing this song in standard and fluent Uyghur.

One fact is enough to answer another judgment.

Whether culture has vitality depends on whether it can enter the lives of the next generation.

Today's young people are still singing Nimhiyiti, they can still understand the poet's desire for knowledge 90 years ago, and they are willing to share their schooling experiences with strangers under this song. This in itself is a living cultural inheritance.

In their tears,

There is a bigger Xinjiang

So, back to the original question:

Why did "Love in Love" make so many young people in Xinjiang cry?

There is the youth of leaving home to study, the reluctance when parents say goodbye, the surprise of seeing the bigger world for the first time, and the emotion of how knowledge can change your destiny when you look back on your life many years later.

It also connects to a longer history.

In 1936, Nimihiyiti, who lived in the old era, wrote: "With knowledge, you can turn barren mountains into gardens."

During the war of resistance against Japan, he wrote "Great China! My mother", writing his own destiny with the destiny of the motherland.

Today, a generation of young people from Xinjiang sing his poems again. Through education, they go out of their hometowns and go across the country. They also bring knowledge to build their hometowns and create their own lives.

A song thus completes a conversation spanning 90 years.

The "aura of knowledge" that Nimihiyiti pursued passionately back then still shines on the lives of young people today.

Young people are still singing, poetry is still spreading, and people of different nationalities are still moved together.

Such singing has given the most powerful answer.

Author: Zhao Xinxin

(Source: "Little Compass" WeChat public account)