Religious and Ethnic Revival in a Chinese Minority

The Bai People of Southwest China

Liang Yongjia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780415528504
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429944031
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is based on anthropological fieldwork among the Bai, an ethnic minority with a population of two million in Dali, southwest China. It explores the religious and ethnic revival in the last two decades against a historical background. It explains why and how religions and ethnic identity are revived in contemporary China, with the revived analytical concept of "alterity", which suggests a world beyond here and now. The book focuses on the particular institutions and ritual technologies that seek for access to the invisible, transcendental other—both spatial and temporal. It covers a variety of topics, including pre-modern kingship, modern utopia, religious alterity, ethnic identity, religious associations, the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and temple restorations.

1 Situating the field

Dali and Xizhou

The plain of Dali is under the jurisdiction of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in the Yunnan Province, southwest China (Map 1.1). It is neither an administrative unit nor an isolate entity. Rather, it is one of the most prosperous centers Western Yunnan. The plain is between the mountain range on the west and a lake on the east. The Cang Shan, or Mt. Cang, is a mountain range of 19 peaks, with an average height of 3,800 meters, 1,900 meters higher than the plain itself. The Er Hai, or Lake Er, a water body of 256 square kilometers, is the ninth-largest freshwater lake in China, and an ear-shaped lagoon (Er Hai means “Ear Shape Sea”), locked by Mt. Cang at the north (Shangguan) and south (Xiaguan), engulfs the Dali plain that amounts to 286 square kilometers. Under the influence of the monsoons from the Bay of Bengal, 1,000 kilometers away, it is a typical subtropical area, but due to its high latitude, the weather is very mild and pleasant, ranging from 8.2°C (January) to 20.2°C (June). With ample sunlight and rainfall, the Dali plain has been one of the earliest and most prosperous agricultural centers in southwest China.

The Dali City, its sister town Xiaguan, is the capital of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture. It is one of the few Chinese cities with walls from the Ming period (1368–1644). The city cluster goes well beyond that walled area. Together with seven other towns spread out in the Dali plain, it constitutes the Dali Municipality of 652,048 persons (2010), two-thirds of which live on the Dali plain. As the prefecture’s name suggests, the area is under the jurisdiction of the Law on Ethnic Regional Autonomy (ERA). Sixty-five per cent of the population is officially Bai. The other groups are the Han, the Hui, the Naxi, and a handful Lisu, Hani, Miao, and Tibetans. The prefecture is most often represented as a Bai prefecture.

Dali is a transportation hub of highways, railways, and airways. It connects the provincial capital, Kunming – 380 kilometers to the east – with Sichuan and Tibet to the north and Burma to the south. A national highway was completed over the Dali plain as early as 1944, during the Sino-Japanese War, over an ancient route probably 2,000 years old. Parallel to it, a concrete highway was built in 1999 as a part of the nationwide project of infrastructural upgrades. Another expressway to Lijiang at the north was completed recently. An airport to the east of the lake was built in 1995, now a major hub for western Yunnan. The beautiful landscape, “exotic” ethnic culture, and developed transportation system make Dali one of the most popular tourist destinations in Yunnan.

Map 1.1 Dali and Yunnan Province, southwest China

Most of the population lives on agriculture, but there is a variety of industrial and commercial trades. The tourist industry has created many opportunities for the locals, making Dali quite distinctly different from most of the places in western China that see many outgoing migrant labors to the country’s east. But situations are changing now because of radical urbanization. People are still proud of being a “hometown-lover” ( jiaxiangbao), unwilling to go anywhere. Recently, like many other places in China, Dali is undergoing profound change that has deepened social and economic disparity.

The city was built in the seventh century and was the capital of the kingdoms of Nanzhao (652–899) and Dali (937–1254). The kingdoms were consecutive in both territory and shared ideology (Hou 2006: 118–39). Some historians have argued that the Nanzhao kingdom was consolidated because of imperial China’s (Tang Dynasty [618–907]) strategic containment of the Tibetan Tubo (Backus 1981; Ma Y. 1983). After Kublai Khan’s conquest in 1254, the relatively detached polity was gradually incorporated into imperial China. Rulers of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) made the city one of the most strategic fortresses and administrative centers in southwest China that functioned for controlling the multi-ethnic, multi-religious populations at the imperial periphery. Mass migration from the region of the lower Yangtze River took place during the late Ming and Qing Dynasties (Yang B. 2009: 141–241). The city functioned as such until the PRC period, when the Minjia-speaking population was classified as the Bai (see Chapter 4).

My fieldwork was conducted over a span of 10 years. In 2002, I spent seven months in the rural town of Xizhou. From time to time, I visited the Dali city after a 40-minute bus ride. I also visited nearby villages, especially for some temple events. I followed the pilgrims to distant destinations within and beyond the Dali plain. After I finished my Ph.D. studies in 2003, I managed to revisit Xizhou and other Dali villages in 2005, 2007, and 2010, although none of these visits was more than three months long. I learned the Bai in Dali and Beijing to the extent that I could handle everyday conversations, but most of the interviews were conducted in Mandarin unless with the help of local assistants. Fortunately, most Bai speakers are bilingual, especially in Xizhou.

Xizhou (see Map 1.1) is one of the major rural towns in the north of the Dali plain. The population has been stable at 8,000 to 10,000 for the last six decades. So is the ethnic composition. After the national ethnic classification project, the Bai and the Muslim Hui population have been around 93 per cent and 7 per cent, respectively, whereas other ethnicities are almost absent.

Most of the people live on small businesses and agriculture. As one of the tourist destinations and the major market town for the local people, businesses like restaurants, hostels, tea houses, grocery stores, cloth shops, antique shops, wet markets, or CD stores are good enough to make a living. In addition, many live through driving, carpentry, tailoring, printing, photo developing, barbering, and so on. Some are migrant workers or businesspeople from cities in Yunnan, Laos and Burma. However, not many Xizhou people go beyond Yunnan as migrant labors. The official figures show that currently, 42 per cent of Xizhou people are entirely non-agricultural.

The enterprising spirit of Xizhou surely has something to do with its long tradition of trading. During the Republican Era (1911–1949), the Xizhou merchants (Xizhou Shangbang) were so successful that they overshadowed the county seat to the extent that there was a saying: “poor Dali; rich Xizhou.” Dozens of family-based businesses made large fortunes through long-distance trading, mining, power generation, match production, and cloth dyeing. The cash owned by the two richest families amounted to 6 million U.S. dollars in 1949. Most of the luxurious houses that currently charge tourists dearly were built in 1930s to 1940s, including a French-style, five-story “foreign buildings” (yanglou), which Francis Hsu (1967: 28–38) described in detail. The Xizhou residents fondly recall the welfare these rich merchants provided, including schools, libraries, hospitals, and funeral services. They also sponsored the construction and maintenance of the temples, roads, and bridges. From 1939 to 1946, the Xizhou merchants sponsored the Hwachong University in exile from the Sino-Japanese War. With the qualified teachers and student interns, one-tenth of the Xizhou people received primary or secondary educations during the Sino-Japanese War, a rare luxury, a “wonder,” a “decent town,” a “haven,” said Lao She (1899–1966), one of the most prominent Chinese writers.

Today, when Xizhou is mentioned, it can refer to either of three different ideas: the Xizhou township, the Xizhou fair, and the “16 villages.” The first designates an administrative unit that covers a very large area where people do not necessarily think they are Xizhou people (hex jeix ni). Xizhou fair refers to the wet market in the township seat, which is composed of seven streets, whereas the “16 villages” refers to the lumping of theses seven streets and the nine villages in its vicinity (see Map 1.2). Elsewhere I have argued the “16 villages” is the vernacular Xizhou and should be given full respect (Liang 2005: 34–43). This is because “16 villages” implies a ritual space which is so stable that no record or oral history or myth provides a narration.

Map 1.2 Xizhou map (made in 1940 by An Ziming)

Figure 1.1 “Trees of Geomancy”

Source: Photo by Liang Yongjia 2005

The ritual space has ritual boundaries at four directions. The boundary to the west is marked by two “trees of geomancy” ( fengshui shu) (see Figure 1.1). In funeral rites, here is the spot where the coffin is carried to circle around the trees three times, and the dead will “bid the last sight” before parting with the female relatives. In the communal rites of feeding the hungry ghosts (Sa pai jer, spreading of the porridge), the trees are the spot the porridge will no longer be spread, marking the boundary of the world of the dead and the world of the living. The boundary to the north is Wanhua Xi (stream of 10,000 flowers), a stream running from the mountain to the lake eastward. It is the “post office” where the ashes of ingots offered to ancestors should be deposited. It is also a place where the body of a “snickering ghost” (toushenggui) should be discarded so that without touching the soil, the ghost that troubles the family who suffers from repeated loss of newborn babies would be unable to re-enter the woman’s womb. In a word, the north boundary is again the division of the living and the dead. So is the south boundary, another stream that functions the same way but is meaningful to the people to its south.

Xizhou ends in the east at its borders with the villages by the lake. The villagers there, together with the villagers living to the west of the “geomancy tree,” are called by Xizhou people as the people of “the mountain feet and the lake side” (shanjiao haibian). The designation implies a long-lasting view of the difference in the role of woman. According to a Xizhou historian (Yang X. D. 1988: 193–4), the Xizhou women traditionally would bind their feet and wear Chinese dresses and wove clothes, but they were not allowed to work in the rice paddy. The women of “the mountain feet and the lake side,” however, never bound their feet but were good at work in the rice field and boating, however, unable to weave. Conformity to the Chinese ideal of “man grows and woman weaves” (nangeng nvzhi) is apparent here, but what matters more is the fact that until very recently, the Xizhou people seldom married with those from the mountain and the lake. Certainly the boundaries of marital alliance are broken now, but Xizhou as a community of “16 villages” persists. For example, a small Muslim settlement in the middle of these 16 villages, although part of the administrative Xizhou, has never played a role in the ritual life in the system of alliance.

Among the 16 villages, the ritual Xizhou is internally divided with urban-rural contrast, as the names of different “villages” suggests. Seven of them, forming a cluster, are called “street” ( jie or xiang), constituting a city-like layout. It did have some defensive function prior to 1949, when bandits were an imminent threat. More importantly, this urban-rural contrast endows Xizhou with the sort of sophistication that accommodates complex religious practices. For example, it hosts a cluster of city-god temples and a pagoda dedicated to the God of Exam, a cluster that one usually finds in cities. This temple cluster is a popular destination of worship for people in the entire Dali basin. Xizhou is a ritually resourceful and cosmologically sophisticated.

Xizhou’s ritual sophistication may have something to do with its regional prominence in a very long history. Ninth-century literature celebrated Xizhou (then Daxi Cheng or Shi Xian) as one of the most strategic fortresses of the Nanzhao Kingdom (652–899), “a very populated town” (Fan C. 1961: 118). We also know that the wool carpets made there were sent to the court of the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1179) as tribute by the emperor of the Dali kingdom (937–1254), which was centralized in the Dali plain and gave it the present name. This may suggest that Xizhou could be an important handicraft base. More records of Xizhou are available since Kublai Khan’s conquest of the Dali Kingdom in 1254. These records show that in addition to its strategic and commercial importance, the people in Xizhou also played an important role in literature and politics, especially after the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), which systematically imposed the policy of sinicization on the Dali people. The people of Xizhou were also very successful in the imperial exams from the Ming to the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911), including several prominent figures. Historian Hou Chong (2002: 43–92) argues that a Xizhou intellectual surnamed Yang fabricated a book called Baigu Tongji (A General History of the Ancient Bai) between 1384 and 1416, a book that tremendously influenced regional historiography. It overtly celebrated the magnificent past of the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms. We can say that many Xizhou people played pivotal roles in producing the historical literature of the region, suggesting the prominence of this ritual space.

After the decline of the Xizhou merchants in the Republican era, Xizhou’s prominence ended in 1951, when the Dali region was declared peacefully liberated by the communist PLA. Under the new political and economic systems, Xizhou became a rural administrative unit. Grassroots commercial activities were replaced by a top-down distribution system. Agriculture remained major source of livelihood. However, Xizhou continued to play a relatively important role due to its multitude of skilled craftspeople and educated elites. It was also because of this, together with its rich cultural heritage, that the people of Xizhou suffered more than any other rural areas in Dali from the political campaigns. Many prominent Xizhou elites were either executed or put in jail in the campaign of Suppressing the Counter-revolutionaries in the early 1950s. During the Cultural Revolution, countless public monuments, architectural decorations, relics, books, and everyday utensils were destroyed. The destruction was so devastating that in the vernacular expression today, the Cultural Revolution is called Destroying the Four Olds.

There is a small Hui settlement near the Xizhou seat, and some Hui live nearby the Bai. They speak the Bai language, living mainly on commercial activities. There are many social interactions between the Bai and the Hui, and the inter-ethnic relations have been quite smooth since the Panthay Rebellion (1856–1973) (Atwill 2005). However, the interactions are limited in the sense that inter-ethnic marriage is almost absent. and religious activities do not refer to each other. The present book will contribute to the religious practice of the Bai so that Muslim populations will be mentioned only when they are relevant.

Kingship as alterity: historical roots of political theology

Dali used to be the center for the Nanzhao (652–899) and Dali kingdoms (937–1254), two polities of immense importance to the local and regional historiography. Of course, memorialization of the past is kept in various forms – books, archives, inscriptions, relics, and landscapes – and the methods of memorialization are also subject to different agencies. The Mongolian conquest started the gradual incorporation of Dali into China, and the historiographies began to represent Dali as a proper margin of China, although not without trouble when neighbouring countries were involved (see Chapter 4). In everyday life, history of the locality, the lineage, and the ethnicity are often visible, especially in ritual occasions. For example, the local patron gods, benzhu found in every village, are often significant figures of the past, whose noble hagiographies are celebrated as benevolent sources of local prosperity. Most of the gods are called kings ( jingdi), although they were never kings when alive. There are so many kings, princes, ministers, generals, and consorts in the local pantheon that they cannot make sense without examining the kingship of ancient Dali, a kingship that characterized by the power of incorporating and assimilating the alterity (Liang Y. 2011; Sahlins 2008).

The kingship in the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms has been argued to be close to Chinese models despite the fact that the kingdoms made tremendous and steady efforts to be politically free from Chinese dominance and that the Song Dynasty (960–1279) ceased claiming any authority over the Dali kingdom. Yang Bin (2009) proposed that the consolidation of Yunnan should be understood in a complex, global perspective by taking the power of distant connections beyond China into consideration. Such opinions regard power – military or economic – as decisive. However, it can be argued that power in a purely social sense alone cannot account for polities that lasted for centuries because “perhaps it is only lately in human history that power became a purely social fact, as established by real – instrumental means of coercion – the way it seems to contemporary Social Science” (Sahlins 2008: 184). It is more important to consider the “power” exterior to society more generally as a type of “superhuman power” essential to sustain the social world – the kind of “power” at once of kinship, politics and religion – the power of a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures, maps, tables and illustrations
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• 1 Situating the field
• 2 Removing religions in the 1950s and the early 1960s
• 3 Introducing ethnicity: the promise of the utopian alterity
• 4 Ethnicity perpetuated: Nanzhao history between China and Thailand
• 5 Religious revival in Dali and Xizhou
• 6 Culturalization of religion and ethnicity
• 7 Temple lost, temple regained: the sacred public space
• Conclusion
• References cited
• List of Chinese terms
• Index