Organizer: Helen F. Siu, Yale University
Chair: Donald S. Sutton Carnegie Mellon University
Discussant: Myron L. Cohen, Columbia University
The panel uses in depth historical and anthropological studies of south China to explore a region known for its ethnic variety as well as a Han identity based on strong literati and lineage commitments. It focuses on the twin issues of ethnicity and orthodoxy which have been debated in a variety of disciplines. It argues that for centuries, cultural boundaries have been fluid, and often contested under different circumstances of state and local society formation. Rather than assuming the essential qualities of a Han cultural complex propagating from the political center or stressing assertions of ethnicity at the frontier, the panel focuses on their intertwining, mutually constituting processes out of which perceptions of center and frontier emerged.
The papers cover four major ethnicity making processes closely tied to the percolation of imperial state power during the Ming and Qing. They illuminate the complex mechanisms of cultural construction involving the formation of Yao, Miao and Hakka identities in the southern mountains, the Dan in the river marshes of the Pearl River Delta, and their relationships with settled agricultural communities on the flood plains.
Apart from sieving through little known local materials the bulk of which was acquired during recent fieldwork, the papers give a careful re reading of historical texts in order to challenge conventional analytical categories. The discussant hopes to bring his research experiences in Taiwan, another southern "frontier," into our conversations.
David Faure, University of Oxford
Four events stand out in the integration of the Pearl River Delta into the Ming state: lijia registration, the uprising of Huang Xiaoyang in 1449, the Yao wars from the mid fifteenth to the mid sixteenth century, and the Great Rituals controversy at court with its consequence on the emergence of the jiamiao (family temple) ancestral hall in the village. This paper concentrates on the Yao war.
This paper begins from the observation that prior to the imposition of lijia, the distinction between Han and Yao in the Pearl River Delta and its surroundings was blurred. It is as yet unclear to me why the Yao Han conflict reached new intensity in Guangdong and Guangxi in the fifteenth century, but the threat that was experienced from the upper reaches of the West River down to the western edges of the delta at Xinhui county was obvious enough. The issue was given considerable weight by the imperial court, which appointed well established officials to take charge of the campaigns against the Yao.
Among the officials appointed was Han Yong, who served as Supreme Commander in Guangdong from 1465 to 1474. Han came to be known for having routed the Yao encampment at Great Vine Gorge in Guangxi. Less well known are the events that took place within Guangdong resulting from his campaigns that culminated in a major cultural movement with the aim of establishing orthodoxy in the village. The movement involved philosopher Chen Baisha (1428-1500) as an active participant. To appreciate its impact, it is necessary to look into the patronage structure created during the Yao wars as well as contemporary social thought. Han elevated Tao Lu (vice magistrate 1454-1463, magistrate 1463) from a junior appointment in Xinhui to his eventual posting as Guangdong Surveillance Vice Commissioner in 1477. Tao patronized the Xinhui magistrate Ding Zhi (magistrate 1479-1487) and native scholar Chen Baisha. Tao was concerned with implementing a cultural program wherever he suppressed the Yao that had as its central feature the substitution of communal schools (shexue) for local deities, while Ding and Chen produced the ritual manuals that consolidated orthodoxy in settled society. The manuals of Ding and Chen were expanded by Huang Zuo into the Taiquan xiangli (Mr Taiquan's village rites, published in 1535) that in the Qing found its way into the official compilation, the Siku quanshu. The "village rites" were supplanted in the sixteenth century by the lineage and the popularization of "family rites".
I have yet to find the reasons for the retreat of the Yao from the late Ming to the early Qing. Into the early seventeenth century, Guangdong was still threatened by Yao "uprisings". However, the Yao gradually retreated towards the upland areas in Guangxi and northern Guangdong. I suspect the close connection between land registration and the development of rice cultivation had much to do the sinicization of the Yao and this apparent retreat, but this will have to be substantiated.
Wing hoi Chan, Yale University
Parts of South China were brought under more intensified imperial control in the sixteenth century. Formerly less distinct groups became more differentiated from one another as each responded in different ways to stronger state presence and developed identities in relation to one another. This paper explores the case of the She and the Hakka who shared the mountainous borderland of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi. There are less widely known common characteristics of the two groups, which include even their ethnonyms. These suggest a relative lack of cultural differentiation between the She and the Hakka in the region until the sixteenth century. This might explain why the official accounts inconsistently applied the She ethnic label to the bandits of 1510s.
Some of the important bandit leaders did mobilize followers using a significant ethnic symbol of the She -appeals to the charter of the Panhu, the dog headed ancestor who was allegedly granted free occupation of the mountainous niche. Two important bandit leaders called themselves descendants of Panhu. They "kept with them seals and pictures [of the legend of Panhu] with which to excite the feelings of the bandits and to successfully control them." The fact that the bandit leaders used the Panhu charter to mobilize followers suggests that the She had not been sharply divided from the rest of the population.
My research indicates that the period of the bandit problems was crucial after which the She and the Hakka became more distinguishable. The suppression of the bandits was a step in the intensification of imperial control in the area. Part of the development was the adoption of literati styled lineage building among the Hakka. In contrast the She had opted out and became a closed group during the same period. Since then the She have defined themselves as a small number of surnames between whom marriage was contracted. The circumstances of this important stage of the histories of the She and the Hakka explain why the "She" has been the archetypal ethnic Other for the Hakka.
Donald S. Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University
This paper looks at ethnic adaptations against the background of official policy on another southern frontier zone, that area largely in Western Hunan known as the Miao frontier. Official incorporation in the early 18th century was symbolic as well as military and fiscal. Similarly the response of those affected was conditioned by culture as well as economic self interest under conditions of local ethnic stratification.
Official policy constrained the various so called Miao, but the Miao like other local groups defined themselves through their own actions. Were they to live within the old or new walls, keep contact with their cousins beyond them, adopt the tonsure of Qing subjects, take up Han ways and go into debt in the process, tolerate or resist the oppressions of local runners and Han engrossers, seek improvement via Han intermarriage, militia service, Chinese education and degrees, continue to worship their own gods? Such decisions created the identity of individuals and the shape of the groups to which they belonged. This paper examines the differentiation of emergent ethnic groups and classes, contrasting this multi ethnic reality with the guiding ideas and expectations of Qing policymakers.
Helen Siu, Yale University; Liu Zhiwei, Zhongshan University
Chaolian xiang was an island off the coast of the regional city of Jiangmen in the Pearl River delta. During the Ming and Qing, large lineage communities arose, acquiring vast areas of river marshes, controlling markets and temples, and displaying literati pretensions. The paper argues that these are cultural markers used by the upwardly mobile to exclude other inhabitants of the sands, labeled by them as dan.
A closer examination of historical documents and field data reveals interesting complexities in the politics of ethnic labeling. The paper focuses on the rise and fall of a lineage community at the southern tip of Chaolian xiang. Located at the southern fringe of the xiang and its inhabitants perceived as dan by others, it nevertheless became a prosperous regional market for the communities along the river. It also attained the status of a ritual center for the floating population of the region by having successfully competed for a place in the community rituals of the landed lineages in the xiang.
Although it had contributed to the reinforcement of the imperial metaphor for centuries and had at times excluded other populations of the sands, it continued to be marginalized by local perceptions and documents. The peculiar twist of fate came only during the Maoist revolution, when the established lineage communities and their literati connections to the state were discredited and the so called dan inhabitants of the sands were recruited as core cadres of a new state machinery.
Ethnicity is thus a fluid process of social change by which local assertions of power and uniqueness developed in close conjunction with shrewd manipulations of the symbolism of a centralizing state.
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