Reinventing Chinese Tradition

The Cultural Politics of Late Socialism

Ka-ming Wu

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9780252081408
  9780252039881
• eBook ISBN:
  9780252097997
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Chinese History
• Index: Social Sciences

The final destination of the Long March and center of the Chinese Communist Party's red bases, Yan'an acquired mythical status during the Maoist era. Though the city's significance as an emblem of revolutionary heroism has faded, today's Chinese still glorify Yan'an as a sanctuary for ancient cultural traditions.

Ka-ming Wu's ethnographic account of contemporary Yan'an documents how people have reworked the revival of three rural practices--paper-cutting, folk storytelling, and spirit cults--within (and beyond) the socialist legacy. Moving beyond dominant views of Yan'an folk culture as a tool of revolution or object of market reform, Wu reveals how cultural traditions become battlegrounds where conflicts among the state, market forces, and intellectuals in search of an authentic China play out. At the same time, she shows these emerging new dynamics in the light of the ways rural residents make sense of rapid social change.

Alive with details, Reinventing Chinese Tradition is an in-depth, eye-opening study of an evolving culture and society within contemporary China.

CHAPTER 1

Paper-Cuts in Modern China

The Search for Modernity, Cultural Tradition, and Women’s Liberation

During the summer of 2004, I visited the seventy-year-old Gao Fenglian, one of the most renowned paper-cutting masters in China. A capable woman villager who had served as a civilian militia leader, head of the women’s association at the rural administration level, and village party secretary, Gao began making paper-cuts in the late 1980s. She quickly stood out as a talented artist able to integrate folk knowledge, legends, and local stories into her designs. Since the mid-1990s, she has often appeared on Chinese television programs and has been recognized as Art Master by UNESCO. Her works are featured in museums around the world, and there are monographs, memoirs, and a Web site devoted to her life and art (Hei 1999; Liu 2003; Zhou 2005; http://gaofenglian.com, last accessed on March 5, 2015).

At the time of my visit, Gao Fenglian lived on a hilltop of Baijiayuan village, about an hour’s motorcycle ride on a small trail along terraced cliffs from Yanchuan county, east of Yan’an city in Shaanxi province. Outside of Gao’s cavehouse were acres of apple and apricot trees, grapevines, tomato fields, and the northern Shaanxi staple—millet. Gao’s eighty-year-old husband was tending his beloved mule—a beast of burden that has all but disappeared in the Yan’an region because of improvements in transportation. Inside her cavehouse, Gao Fenglian spread out her paper-cuts on the kang bed and explained the symbolism of each piece: images of snakes or scorpions are hung on children during the Dragonboat festival to ward off noxious influences; “Sweeper of the Skies” brings an end to excessive rain; lotus (lian) is a homonym of the word to bear sons to continue the family line (lianshengguizi), as well as to fulfill wishes for wealth and honor (Wachs 2004). Every time I marveled at the use of visual puns, rebuses, and symbols, paper-cutting artists explained the ways the images were connected to language, lives, and longings of the people in rural China. Each of my subsequent visits to the homes of paper-cutting artists became a step in a larger process of understanding layers upon layers of the historical meanings of—and the entangled relationships between—culture, gender, history, and the state in modern China.

The Question of Tradition, Gender, and Modernity

The question of folk traditions, gender, and modernity has long been the subject of scholarly discussion (Chatterjee 1993; Mani 1987; Schein 2000). Rita Felski demonstrates that the equation of tradition, peasant culture, and woman with “Mother Nature” and an enduring tradition outside of historical development is a significant element in nineteenth-century modern Western thought and social theory, and a similar theme has been reiterated in a wide array of scientific (Darwinian model of evolutionary development), anthropological (the notion of savages), and historical texts as well as literature. Eastern philosophy, religion, and culture, for instance, have been imagined as an atemporal space of eternal truth and sacred authority in these writings. The major reason for making the traditional and the feminine as emblematic of a nonfragmented modern identity, Felski argues, is because they provide “alternatives or a source of authentic spirituality against which the progress-oriented, rational and materialist impulse of the West could be judged” (1995: 136). Similarly, in Minority Rules (2000), Louisa Schein has found that the ethnic minority Miao women, their outfits, and their songs and dance have been represented in the dominant public culture within China as simultaneously indigenous, promiscuous, close to nature, and infantile. She argues that the domains of the peasant, the folk tradition, and non-Han minorities have come to be regarded as the feminine keepers of Chinese tradition and the exotic Other against which the Han urbanites assert their urban modernity. In short, tradition, nostalgia, the feminine are no entities of primordial and transcendental meanings. Their meanings have been central to the nationalist constructions and the ongoing quest for modernization in different periods of time as they become equated with “authentic points of origin,” “mythic referents untouched by the constraints of social and symbolic mediation,” or a “symbol of the atemporal and asocial” (Felski 1995: 37–38).

Accordingly, Lata Mani and other theorists of gender and nationalism have shown that it is often in such discourses of tradition, gender, and modernity that a woman’s experience and practices are associated with the gatekeeping or demise of national traditions or sexual morality while men are always supposedly the subject pursuing national progress and modernity (Ong 1990; Mani 1987; Yuval-Davis and Anthias 1989; Chow 1991; Mc-Clintock 1995: 355; Meng 1993). As I show in the following section, gender figures prominently in the narrative of the folk cultural form of paper-cuts in Yan’an and its later deployment by urban intellectuals in various nationalist campaigns.

Yan’an Paper-Cutting

Paper-cutting (jianzhi) has been practiced in China for centuries, not always by women only and not exclusively in rural areas. Archeological evidence suggests that it dates to as early as the Northern Dynasties (386 to 581 C.E.) (Zhang 1980: 7). Approximately the size of one’s palm, paper-cuts are commonly called “window flowers” (chuanghua) in Yan’an. The designs are cut out from red-colored paper with scissors, and pasted as decoration on wood-framed windows made of rice paper (Figure 1.1). Popular during special celebrations such as weddings or the Chinese New Year, paper-cut designs are well-known for symbolizing good harvest and auspiciousness. Today, they also exist as stand-alone works of art, larger and more varied in size. Paper-cutting of Quanzhou in Fujian province, Foshan in Guangdong, Nanjing in Jiangsu, Weixian in Hebei, Gaomi in Shandong, and Lüliang in Shanxi are well-known examples of such.1 In these places, paper-cuts are produced in large-scale workshops, some being made with knives rather than scissors by professional male craftsmen. In this book, I use the term paper-cuts to refer to the art form and paper-cutting to refer to the practice.

Yan’an paper-cuts, sometimes also called Shaanxi paper-cuts, have a special place in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) because it was in Yan’an where the CCP leaders started to write about, reform, and re-create the traditional cultural form of paper-cuts for the purpose of resisting the Japanese, winning people’s support, and spreading revolutionary ideas. After 1949, paper-cuts were mass-produced in large workshops; used for illustrations in newspapers, stories, greeting cards, and children’s movies and also exhibited abroad—all of them professing the happiness of the peasantry under the new government (Wachs 2004: 16–17).2 In and outside of Yan’an, paper-cuts are a symbol of prosperity, modernity, and the better lives of the masses under CCP rule.

Yan’an paper-cuts also have a special place within the debates about tradition and modernization. Since the 1980s, Yan’an paper-cuts have become the subject of folk cultural studies (Chaowen Wang 1993; Fu 2000; Pan 1992a, 1999; Zhang 1980, 1999) but most importantly of historical (Ansaixian Wenhua Wenwuguan 1999; Jin 2001, 2002), social, and anthropological inquiries (Chen 1992; Li 2003; Fang 2003; Qiao 2005). Today, Yan’an paper-cuts continue to remain a powerful cultural form and have made recurrent appearances in the nation’s major events and diplomatic exchanges, such as the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and recently the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008.

FIGURE 1.1. Traditional small paper-cuts on the wood-framed windows of a cavehouse.

However, both in and outside of China, paper-cutting is almost exclusively treated as or reduced to a simple time-honored traditional practice, a domestic craft, and a folk art form. Considered a rural and feminine practice, paper-cutting has often been included in what is thought to be authentic Chinese culture. In 2006, it was elevated to a national intangible cultural heritage and became a marker of the Yellow River civilization. The relationship of paper-cuts with the socialist political power, Chinese intellectual concerns, and modern cultural governance has not been systematically investigated.

This chapter challenges the assumption that paper-cutting is a quintessential feminized traditional cultural form. It examines the practice as operating in Duara’s notion of regime of authenticity (1998), in which paper-cuts become intimately affiliated with the domestic sphere, the nonindustrial Loess, the nostalgic mourning for both an unchanging folk tradition and an idealized past. It also treats paper-cutting as a medium of articulation in which the Chinese male intellectuals discussed the meanings of the modern progress, cultural origins and traditions, and their projection of a cultural China in different periods of time.

My objective in this chapter is to investigate the changes in paper-cutting as it was transformed from a rural practice to a national heritage. It seeks to trace the various actors, debates, and themes through which paper-cuts were discussed in relation to the questions of traditional culture, the modern state, and their relationship with each other. In each of the periods under discussion here, paper-cutting has come to share a number of newly created discursive spaces: on the use of old forms in promoting modern new lives in the Yan’an period, as the site of recovering the lost Chinese civilization in the 1980s, as an urban nostalgia for vanishing ritual practices in the 1990s, and as the emphasis on capital, profit, and personal success in the 2000s. In other words, paper-cuts are more than just a symbol of Chinese tradition; they serve as a signifier of the different desires and visions in modern China.

This chapter, however, does not intend to read paper-cuts as just products of modern political appropriation or a state propaganda tool. Through a limited reconstruction of the cultural history of Yan’an paper-cuts, it reveals several logics that are not always consistent with the modern political history of the state: paper-cuts as part of folk indigenous knowledge and ritual power in rural society, the urban intellectual recovering and articulation of such folk knowledge; and the contemporary practice and market values of paper-cuts. Presenting these several logics shows how the modern Chinese state, urban intellectuals, and rural practitioners are in constant tension and negotiation with each other. Finally, by analyzing the shifting meanings assigned to the practice, I explore rural culture, political appropriation, and Chinese tradition not as taken-for-granted concepts, but as being actively manufactured and contested in various historical contexts.

The following sections present three portraits of paper-cuts in the respective periods of early (1949) and early reform era (1981), mid-1980s, and 2000s in Yan’an, based on published writings and my ethnographic fieldwork with various artists and intellectuals involved in the production of paper-cuts. I present my own ethnographic encounters of paper-cuts in 2004 and in 2008, during which I stayed with and interviewed paper-cutting artists in Ansai and Yanchuan counties in Yan’an. I have also conducted in-depth interviews with major urban artists in Yan’an and in Beijing, who have for the last few decades taught and written about Yan’an paper-cuts. Combining historical sources, ethnographic experience, and interview data, this chapter explores paper-cutting as a lived experience of villagers and as a site through which modernity and tradition in China have been imagined.

Paper-Cutting in the Yan’an Period (1937–1947)

At the “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art” in 1942, Mao Zedong asked the urban intellectuals to go to the countryside “to observe, experience, and study” the masses and to “sinicize” Western art forms. Art and literature, he expounded, should identify with the lives of commoners and promote the ideals and policies of the CCP government in the border region rather than serve for the enjoyment of highbrow elites. This was the context in which urban intellectuals first set out to learn about paper-cuts in the region. This section focuses on the first CCP-sponsored collection of paper-cuts, Northwestern Paper-Cuts (Xibei Jianzhi Ji) (1949), edited by Ai Qing3 and Jiang Feng.4 It provides significant insights on how the early Communist urban intellectuals understood this folk cultural form in the Yan’an period, an understanding that extended throughout the Maoist era and beyond.

Ai Qing, the renowned poet, and Jiang Feng, a leading woodcut artist were among the most authoritative figures in the field of art in the People’s Republic of China. Both Ai and Jiang went to Yan’an to participate in leftist revolutionary activities, and both held top bureaucratic positions in the Communist party-state–affiliated art academies after 1949. During the Yan’an period, Ai was the vice director of the Literature and Arts College at the Shanxi, Chahar, Hebei North China United Revolutionary University (Jin-Cha-Ji Huabei Lianda) between today’s Shanxi and Hebei provinces, and Jiang Feng was an instructor at the Lu Xun Academy of Literature and Arts (Luyi) in Yan’an.

In response to Mao’s call, Ai Qing and Jiang Feng, along with other urban writers and artists such as Gu Yuan and Li Qun, set out from their academic institutions to learn about popular cultural forms such as paper-cuts, New Year prints (nianhua), and various folk literature and songs in the area (Holm 1991). Their task was to create a socialist art form that would absorb local cultural resources, yet reject elements considered as superstitious and feudal, and at the same time appeal to the broad illiterate masses in the border region. Paper-cut designs, with their bold lines and bright colors, convey a sense of optimism, fitted well with these intellectuals’ desire to depict peace, joy, and abundance of life under CCP rule in the area (Hung 1994: 244).

In 1944, the artists put together an exhibit of the paper-cuts they had collected during their travels (Xu 2005: 96) and put together the volume, Northwestern Paper-Cuts (1949) (Figure 1.2).5 The collection could therefore be considered a crucial text by Communist urban intellectuals when they first interpreted paper-cuts’ meanings within a socialist, modern, and realist framework.

FIGURE 1.2. The book cover of Northwest China Paper-Cuts (1949). The featured paper-cut is entitled “Feeding Chickens.”

In the preface to the volume, Ai Qing describes “going down to the village” with woodcuts artist Gu Yuan and a cooperative member Liu Jianzhang to the townships of Yanchi, Dingbian, and Jingbian in the border region. There, they met with herdsmen, Mongolians, and a few well-off families living in villas. Ai saw paper-cuts displayed in their homes and obtained a number of pieces. He described paper-cuts as “a product of the rural households” (nongcun jiating chanwu), “an art form without print condition (meyou yinshuatiaojian de chusuo de yishupin)” created out of the hands of the common folks, mostly household women (jiating funü).”6 He described paper-cuts as pure and beautiful, just like folk songs in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Paper-Cuts in Modern China: The Search for Modernity, Cultural Tradition, and Women’s Liberation
• Chapter 2. Narrative Battle: Fabricating Folk Paper-Cutting as an Intangible Heritage
• Chapter 3. Traditional Revival with Socialist Characteristics: Propaganda Storytelling Turned into Spiritual Service
• Chapter 4. Folk Cultural Production with Danwei Characteristics: Folk Storytelling and Public Relations Activities
• Chapter 5. Spirit Cults in Yan’an: Surrogate Rural Subjectivity in the Urbanizing Rural
• Notes
• Glossary
• References
• Index