Session 13: Contested Claims: Religion, History, and Tourism in Contemporary China

Organizer: Xiaofei Kang, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Chair: Donald S. Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University

Discussant: Rubie S. Watson, Harvard University

Keywords: religion, history, tourism, contestation, contemporary China.

Religious practices and historical traditions have been increasingly integrated into the burgeoning tourist economy in contemporary China, resulting in much contestation over cultural and financial resources. This contestation, which has reshaped the local religious landscape and ethnic/community relations, remains somewhat unexplored in scholarly writings. Uniting the hitherto unconnected studies of religion, history, and tourism, this panel draws from recent fieldwork to examine contested claims about folk performances and sacred sites. Kenneth Dean’s paper focuses on local lineage feuds over two temples at the head of an irrigation system in Fujian, one of which became a tourist attraction in recent years. Tim Oakes studies Tongpu people’s claims over the historical ownership of the "tiaoshen," a form of Nuo drama popular in Guizhou, and their attempt to market this cultural resource for their own benefit in the region’s tourist development. The last two papers deal with a multiethnic pilgrimage center in the Sino-Tibetan borderland that has been made a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site. Donald S. Sutton discusses competing myths and memories attached to the site’s many way-stations by different ethnic groups, tourists, and officials. Xiaofei Kang examines the competition among the Han and Tibetan pilgrims, Daoist and Tibetan Buddhist priests, and tourist management officials surrounding the rebuilding of the two main temples. Neither demonizing government nor romanticizing tradition, the four papers, by examining cultural practice and its relation with tourism in local contexts, cast a sharp light on the manipulation of traditional cultural practices and symbols by various interested parties as China moves to redefine modernity in its own fashion.

Irrigation and Litigation: The Ebb and Flow of Contested Claims to the Mulan Irrigation System in Coastal Putian, Fujian

Kenneth Dean, McGill University

This paper focuses on two temples at the head of the Mulan irrigation system in Putian. One is dedicated to Li Hong, the Song dynasty founder of the Mulan irrigation system. The second temple is dedicated to Lady Qian, who tried but failed to build a weir at the site, and drowned in the effort. In addition, ancestral tablets of the Fourteen Founding Families, who contributed land and labor to the initial construction of the irrigation system, were also worshiped in these temples at different times. All these objects of worship were originally housed in a single temple, which became the symbolic center of several hundred years of legal contention over the rights and rites of the descendants of Li Hong and the descendants of the Fourteen Founding Families. Underlying the struggles over the representation of cults and the housing of various gods in one or the other temple was a serious battle for control of water resources downstream of the Mulan Weir. The Mulan irrigation system provides water to over 600 villages on the densely inhabited Putian irrigated plain. This paper will explore the symbolic struggles, legal battles, and ecological underpinnings of the contested cults. The temple dedicated to Li Hong has now become a tourist site with an irrigation museum inside, adding another layer of meaning to the relationship between the State and local irrigation communities. The presentation will employ GIS mapping and satellite imagery to illustrate the points of contention within the irrigation system.

Dancing the Spirits, Invoking the Ancestors: Contested Claims of Origin and Identity among Guizhou’s Tunpu People

Tim Oakes, University of Colorado, Boulder

This paper is about the Tunpu people of central Guizhou, the long-forgotten descendents of early Ming garrisons sent from the Lower Yangzi to subdue the remaining Yuan loyalists in Yunnan, defend the frontiers, and secure the Hunan-Yunnan post road. While their history has long been known locally, Tunpu culture has only recently been "discovered" by scholars who have found their ancient cultural practices compelling. Now promoted for heritage tourism as the "living fossils" of early Ming culture, Tunpu villagers have found themselves the subjects of increasing scholarly and tourist interest. With the economic potential of tourism increasingly apparent, villagers have been making competing claims of origin and authenticity in order to attract the interest of outsiders. This paper offers a preliminary examination of these competing claims and the role that external scholars and officials have played in laying the foundation for such claims to be made. In particular, the paper will examine contests over the authenticity of a unique form of opera popularly known as "dixi" but more accurately called "tiaoshen"—dancing the spirits—one form of the Nuo drama widespread in Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangxi. Contests over genealogies and rights to claim "tunpu" identity will also be examined. The paper argues that villagers have only recently discovered the commercial value of their culture and heritage, but have quickly grasped how to exploit these new concepts to their advantage.

Contesting through Narrative: Pilgrimage, Tourism, and Ethnicity in Northern Sichuan

Donald S. Sutton, Carnegie Mellon University

Huanglong (Yellow Dragon) is an old multiethnic pilgrimage center in the Sino-Tibetan borderland of northern Sichuan. Because of its uniquely picturesque karst topography, the site was also named a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1992 and became a major tourist attraction in China. This paper examines the conflicting meanings attached to the site by a variety of current users, including Han Chinese, Tibetan, Qiang and Hui (Muslim) groups, and more recently conservationists and urban Chinese tourists. Who was the Yellow Dragon and which religious tradition does the temple dedicated to him serve? Old arguments and accompanying stories, necessarily self-interested, are now overlaid with debate about emergent cults of two differing modern-day martyrs, a Daoist priest who died during the Socialist Education Movement in 1962 and a young woman who committed suicide while visiting the site in 1998. Festivals at Huanglong have consequently become the occasion for articulating and readjusting diverse ethnic and religious perceptions and positions, in the context of a struggle among officials and locals over custodianship of sacred space.

Temples between Religions: Redefining the Religious and Tourist Landscape on the Sino-Tibetan Border

Xiaofei Kang, St. Mary’s College of Maryland

Springing from the same ongoing project, this paper studies the shifting fate of Huanglong’s two major temples. One is the Temple of the Yellow Dragon, the ultimate destination of the multiethnic pilgrimage. Early associated with Bon and Tibetan ascetics, it draws not only Tibetan pilgrims but also devout Han Buddhist scripture-chanting groups and occasionally, local Muslims; since the 1990s, an officially appointed Daoist priest has presided there. The other is a way-station on the mountainside. Although local Han Chinese donated money to convert it into a Chinese Buddhist temple in the 1990s, in 2003 the official management office abruptly renovated it into a Bon temple. The paper argues that as the management office seeks to incorporate local religious initiatives and UNESCO’s eco-tourist policies, it competes with Han Chinese, Tibetan and other ethnic pilgrims, Daoist and Tibetan Buddhist priests, and tourists, to redistribute natural, financial and cultural resources. Ethnic tourism transforms both the religious landscape and ethnic traditions as each group, including the management office, tries to redefine its own place in the fast-changing, market-driven world.