Zhu arrived in Xinjiang in 1975 as a “sent-down youth,” part of a Communist Party initiative that sent educated urban youths to live in the countryside to further China’s Maoist revolution. A member of China’s Han ethnic majority, he was 17 when he departed prosperous Jiangsu province on China’s east coast for Kargilik, a remote county amid the deserts and steppes of China’s far northwest. Uighurs, the region’s largest ethnic group, had long chafed under official discrimination and economic marginalization under Beijing.

In the final edit, the film was chopped down to two hours.

Van der Luft and Stenberg (1991) have developed Miller’s analysis of the similarities between the two texts. In their paper (ibid.: 442), the two scholars claim to “present not only additional evidence that Nietzsche used Dostoevskii in the composition of the preface, but also evidence of a difference – a Dostoevskiian difference – between his predemarcation and postmedarcation writings.”

The punishment for sodomy, when completely effected, was death, and it was frequently inflicted.