Organizer: Donald Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University
Chair and Discussant: Lucien Miller, University of Massachusetts
These back-to-back panels examine the roles played by "ethnic stories" in the production of ethnicity in China. How have Han Chinese and non-Han groups defined the other, and perhaps themselves in the other's terms? The eight papers-from the disciplines of anthropology, history, literature and cultural studies-compare Han and non-Han mutual reactions and conceptualizations in a variety of places and times. Writing, rewriting and transmitting narratives prove peculiarly effective as ways of working out notions of ethnicity: oral or written stories or myths are apparently naive media that can disguise their source of authority; but they are by nature open to elaboration and may come to sustain persuasive ritual and performative expressions. As expected, Han ethnic contact narratives run parallel to, and reinforce, other forms of colonial discourse, while equivalent non-Han narratives subvert Chinese images and metaphors in one of many forms of resistance. But the picture is often blurred and complex: ethnic origin myths are borrowed and reclaimed across the Han/non-Han divide until their source is obscured, and some narratives seem deliberately to seek a middle ground, facilitating cross-ethnic communication and aiding in the creation of (officially-denied) bicultural identities.
The focus on "narrative ethnography" makes possible a comparison of official, Han, non-Han and cross-ethnic interpretations in the same terms and without privileging any standpoint. Covering a wide temporal and geographical range, the papers show how ethnicity is made to seem primordial even as its terms of inclusion shift continually in response to economic, demographic and political pressures and opportunities.
The "Li Mother Mountain" Legends of Hainan
Anne Csete, St. Lawrence University
Numerous stories about the Li people of Hainan Island link the Li to the Island's central mountains, identifying the Li Mother Mountain as the home of their ancestor, the Li Mother Spirit. Such legends about Li origins obscure the historical fact that the Li were composed of many groups and lived on coastal lowlands before the Han settlers pushed them into the mountains or assimilated them. But the legends could also work in the Li's favor. The Li Mother Spirit and lesser mountain spirits inhabiting rocks, high peaks and trees were portrayed as protectors of the Li against Han encroachment. One such story transforms the early Qing general Wu Qijue, a ruthless military victor and proponent of increased state presence in Li highland areas, into a merciful man reciprocating a long-standing debt to the Li Mother Spirit, who in the guise of an old woman had often helped him in his childhood.
As the Han turned the jungles into fields and wrested more mountain land from the Li, they became confident enough to portray some of the spirits inhabiting the landscape as "on their side," and even built temples honoring the Li Mother Spirit herself. In spite of this attempt to appropriate Li symbols, the legends remain cross-ethnic in perspective, representing a modus vivendi after the Li had left the plains. While both sides agree that the lowlands are Han Chinese, the Han concede that the highlands-explicitly in legend, tacitly in fact-rightfully belong to the Li.
Enmeshed Civilizations? Chinese and Islamic Creation Myths among the Hui Muslim
Chinese
Dru Gladney, University of Hawaii, East-West Center
In his influential work, Homi Bhaba (1994) has led a host of recent scholars in asserting that hybridity, multi-culturalism, and transnationalism are the emerging characteristics of late twentieth-century capitalism. Unlike the post-colonial world that was dominated by nation-states and eventually the alignment of smaller nations along a great divide of superpower polarities, many recent scholars have argued that the late-capitalist, post-industrial, and post-modern societies will be characterized by the diasporic condition, the dissolution of national borders, and the intermingling of identities. This paper will examine three origin and creation stories of the people known as Hui, or the Muslim Chinese, to demonstrate that these ideas of hybridity and heterogeneity not only mark their ideas of ethnohistory, but many other cultures as well. As such, these pre-modern myths are thoroughly post-modern in their contemporaneity.
The Left-Handed Kotow: Naxi Mythic Versions of Naxi-Han-Tibetan-Mongol Relations
Charles McKhann, Whitman College
Naxi Origin myths and legends unfailingly accord primary status to non-Naxi ethnic groups-especially Tibetan, Mongol, Han and Bai, in that order. This prioritization of 'ancestry' reflects not only a Naxi recognition of de facto Naxi-Other power relations, but also a strategy of appropriation-a means of subduing the Other by incorporating him/her into the Self. This paper explores the modes and consequences of these appropriations of the Other as vehicles for Naxi self-recognition and/or glorification, both past and present. Included are discussions of Naxi historical affiliations with neighboring ethnic groups and of relations with the contemporary state and other external forces, including domestic and international tourism.
Contemporary Chinese-Speaking Muslims (Hui) Remember Ethnic Conflict: Stories of
the Late Nineteenth-Century Hui Uprising from Xi'an
Maris Gillette, Harvard University
This paper examines the stories Hui residents in the Muslim district of Xi'an tell about what official history in the People's Republic of China terms the Hui Uprising, a thirteen-year conflict beginning in the spring of 1862. Contemporary Xi'an Hui commemorate this event annually with collective mourning rituals on lunar 5/17, a date some Hui claim marks the arrival of government troops in the area to massacre the Hui. The stories discussed here were collected from older Hui men and women who remembered that period through narratives passed down in their families.
These stories provide a fascinating commentary on Hui-Han relations, and demonstrate the failure of officializing strategies to shape this event as a rudimentary class struggle. Xi'an Hui overwhelmingly remember the Hui uprising as an ethnic conflict: they describe Hui participation in terms of a struggle for ethno-religious survival, while characterizing the Han as deeply antagonistic towards and fearful of the Hui. Hui attribute ethnic hatred to the Han on both a popular and an official level, remembering in story both local instances of anti-Hui sentiment and activity and the deeply antagonistic attitudes and practices of government officials whom they characterize as Han. The paper probes the significance of retelling these stories and commemorating this nationality massacre of more than a hundred years ago in the socio-political context of contemporary Xi'an, suggesting that this period's salience lies in the anxiety of older Hui men and women about ethnic survival in the present day.