No Beards

I learned something interesting about the rules for the Uyghur students lately. They are apparently prohibited by the school from having beards. A number of my Uyghur students have mustaches but the full beard is out. If I had known this earlier I probably would have regrown my ridiculous beard I had in China a few years ago, but it's a little late now. It's a lot harder for me to talk to the Uyghur students, even my best students don't have a ton of English, but there's an interesting tension between them and the Chinese students that always just under the surface. I was asking one person about if any of the Uyghur kids go to Chinese high schools and she said that very few do then added that the Chinese hate Uyghurs. I get the sense this feeling may be much more prevalent than I first realized it's just hard to get it out of people. It's one of those times when I really feel the language barrier. And I don't think knowing Chinese would help that much, it's still not their language. I'm not sure there's really a way around this without speaking Uyghur.