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China's theme park for dwarfs stirs criticism from disabled rights groups
The founder of a controversial theme park -- the Little People's Kingdom that employs more than 100 dwarfs for skits and spoofs -- says he wants to expand the project even as some disabled rights groups slam the entire park as demeaning.
One popular show with tourists is a daily spoof of Swan Lake in which both male and female performers wear tutus.
Reuters correspondent, Maxim Duncan, has a long article on the park and quotes the founder, flamboyant Sichuanese businessman Chen Ming, as saying he would like Europeans and Americans to understand his good intentions "because some people don't get it, they think we are using the dwarfs."
"But what we are actually doing is giving them a platform to live, giving them worth and the ability to work freely, to exist freely," he tells the Reuters correspondent.
The park, which opened last July near Kunming city in Yunnan province, employs 108 dwarfs, who gather on an artificial hillside twice a day to sing for tourists. The fantasy world includes little crooked houses, a king, an army, a health department and even its own foreign ministry, Reuters writes.
The article quotes one of the performers, 21-year-old Chen Ruan, as saying he was initially embarrassed about wearing a tutu, but "once I got used to it, performing it felt very natural."
Xie Yan, director of a Beijing-based disabled rights group, tells Reuters: "We need to go and tell (park owner Chen Ming) how to respect disabled people's rights, how to help disabled people to develop in their own lives, and not to exploit people's curiosity for commercial success."
(2010-03-27 / USA TODAY)
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