- published: 04 May 2016
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Karamay dialect (simplified Chinese: 克拉玛依话; traditional Chinese: 克拉瑪依話) is a Beijing Mandarin dialect spoken in northern Xinjiang, China. It is also known as North Xinjiang Area dialect (Chinese: 北疆话, 北京官话北疆片), the regions of which include Karamay, Shihezi, Burqin County, Toli County, Hoboksar Mongol Autonomous County, Wenquan County in northern Xinjiang and a few other regions in the southern. Karamay dialect is commonly referred to as a representative variant of the Beijing Mandarin dialect, while some linguists deny that because their survey concludes that the involved regions failed to form any variant form the Beijing Mandarin dialect .
Karamay, Qaramay or Kelamayi (also: Karamai) (Uyghur: قاراماي, ULY: Qaramay, UPNY: Ⱪaramay?; simplified Chinese: 克拉玛依; traditional Chinese: 克拉瑪依; pinyin: Kèlāmǎyī) is a prefecture-level city in the north of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in northwestern China. Qaramay comes from the Uyghur language, and means "black oil". Karamay was the site of one of the worst disasters in modern Chinese history, the 12/8/94 incident, when 324 people, 288 of them school children, lost their lives in a cinema fire on 8 December 1994.
On December 8, 1994, a fire broke out in Friendship Theatre (友谊馆), Karamay, which caused the death of 325 people including 288 school children, according to official figures. Many teachers were killed while trying to protect and evacuate their students from the building, which lacked adequate safety features. A show was being organized at that moment for a number of local government officials, who managed to escape ahead of the others on spotting the fire, and were afterwards charged with neglecting their duty and received prison sentences of up to 5 years.