By the way, isn't the plural "dwarves", and not "dwarfs"?

@tommann

Check before you leap:

dwarf [dwawrf] Show IPA noun, plural dwarfs, dwarves, adjective, verb
noun

dictionary.reference.com/browse/dwarfs?s=t

My spell checker shows dwarves is a misspelling.

About half way or so on the highway between Kunming and Dali there are some strange looking buildings on a hillside right off the road. If you have been on that highway, you know what I am talking about. Is that the dwarf village? What are those odd buildings?

Sounds like Dinosaur valley.

Sorta on topic. News from the World Dwarf Games:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-ouch-23601533

Haha ok I stand corrected.

I'm glad this discussion picked up again after so many years. I remember seeing Chris there when I went to check this place out after hearing about it from a local newspaper back in 2009. I felt just as ogled as the performers, but at least they were getting paid for it. When I first showed up I was appalled, but after hanging out for a little while I felt a strong sense of excitement, playfulness, and community between the participants that developed by bringing these marginalized people together. They seemed indifferent to the sea of gawkers that came and went during the day and it looked like they were performing more for each other than for us. I'm sure quite a few romantic relationships culminated in that place because the flirting and showing off seemed to be constant. If I was in the same situation then I probably would have gone there too.

I have to mention the best and most blatant reverse exploitation setting I have seen here in China. I booked an incredibly cheap Chinese tour to Hainan in 2005 to check it out and see if I wanted to move there. Normally I am not the kind of person that would ever be herded around in a tour group but I thought it would be a novelty in itself, it happened to be 200 kuai less than a plane ticket alone, and it also covered food and lodging for a week! So at one point in the tour we go to this tourist trap minority village where as soon as we walked in all the Chinese men were grabbed and held in a vice like grip by the minority girls until someone would take a picture of them together and then they were aggressively browbeaten into handing over cash before the girls would let go. Then we were all herded into an actual human corral where we were not one person besides myself was let out before they handed over some more cash. And besides a crappy gift shop that was it. They took it easy on me because I was a foreigner, but you could see in their demeanor that they all took great pleasure in bullying the Chinese who were just trying their best to avoid individual embarrassment in this group setting. Anyways, sorry to go on like that but I've been waiting years to share that anecdote with people that get the context. Great discussion guys.

It's all true what you say Alien but I have to write something, the only way to realize if this place is an abuse or not is to ask the people of the "kingdom" themselves.

You know everywhere in the world there are spontaneous "ghettos", just think about chinatowns everywhere, brooklyn in nw, a gay or lesbian bar in a big city, a VIP card club etc
It's all part of the same mechanism of human being, sharing big part of life with somebody who looks similar to protect itself.
The fact that these "dwarfs" are "disable" is actually a label that dominant society gives to them. Everybody has a disability side, even when you fail a job interview you can take it as "not able" to perform that kind of job.
These guys are free to join or not the village, as far as I know no government forces any short guy to live in that place and be part of the show, they can live in kunming or somewhere else and try to get a different job from some employer who believes in them. They have a choice, join the village and get an easy job or struggling to get something, maybe, more challenging. The same choice of an english teacher who decides to accept a job in a kindergarten where he just has to repeat banana, apple, yellow, blue few times a day.
And I tell you something more, it is possible that in their point of view the audience is the real show. It happened to me to do some performances, and while I was doing that I was in the mood to consider the audience as the show itself. I enjoyed watching their reactions, some of them were funny exactly like the clowning show I was doing myself. They were laughing at me, I was laughing at them.

Just let's ask them, what is their personal story, why they have chosen to live there, what do they think etc. That would the perfect task for a movie director. I hope somebody will be totally free to make a good documentary about that place.

Wish some of you internet philosophers would actually go visit the place and let the rest of us know what it's like.

Geezer, basketball players pander to a crowd that watches them because they are good sportsmen. Short people at Dwarf Kingdom pander to a crowd that watches them simply because they are short.

Misfit, I can sympathize with short people who go to work at Dwarf Kingdom because they can't get other jobs - they are making the best of a bad situation, and have immediate needs. However, over the long run, places like Dwarf Kingdom do nothing to improve the situation that gives them few better choices in life.