Geography and environment
The region treated by this study, Western Hunan (Xiangxi 湘西), refers to the Western Hunan Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture (Xiangxi Tujiazu Miaozu zizhizhou 湘西土家族苗族自治州), which encompasses Jishou 吉首 City (formerly Qianzhou 乾州) plus the counties of Baojing 保靖, Fenghuang 鳳凰, Guzhang 古丈, Huayuan 花垣 (formerly Yongsui 永綏), Longshan 龍山, Luxi 瀘溪, and Yongshun 永順. Covering an area of 15,486 square kilometers, it is bounded by Hunan to its south and east, Enshi 恩施 (Hubei) to the north, and Chongqing 重慶 (Sichuan) plus Tongren 銅仁 (Guizhou) to the west (see Map 1 in the Introduction). “Xiangxi” was not used as an administrative term until the Republican era, when the Nationalist (KMT) state established the Western Hunan Pacification District (Xiangxi suijingchu 湘西綏靖處) covering 19 counties. The Western Hunan Miao Autonomous District (Xiangxi Miaozu zizhiqu 湘西苗族自治區) was founded in September 1952, but originally only included Baojing, Fenghuang, Guzhang, Luxi, Jishou, and Huayuan, with Yongshun, Longshan, Dayong 大庸, and Sangzhi 桑植 being added three months later for a total of 10 counties. The name “Western Hunan Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture” was not adopted until September 1957, but two counties that had originally belonged to this region (Dayong and Sangzhi) were reapportioned to Zhangjiajie 張家界 in January 1989, leaving the one city and seven counties that remain part of the Autonomous Prefecture today.1
Western Hunan’s larger river valleys, the Yuan River (Yuanshui 沅水) and Li River (Lishui 澧水), were home to wet rice cultivation, dense population concentrations, and links to the larger Yun-Gui plateau of Southwest China (as well as the highlands of Southeast Asia). These areas’ leading cash crops were cotton, fruits, vegetables, sugar cane, tobacco, and opium.2 Western Hunan also had its share of industry, especially mining, lumber and most importantly tung oil (tongyou 桐油; also known as China wood oil, most often used for finishing or protecting wood), with the transport of such products depending for the most part on river networks extending eastwards to the main transshipment center at Changde 常德.3 However, Western Hunan’s topography also consisted of steep gradients, slopes reaching well over 3,000 feet, and rugged peaks extending into peripheral areas populated by indigenous montagnards. Apart from river transport, the region’s infrastructure proved slow to develop. The first telegraph system did not arrive until the 1920s, while drivable roads were not constructed until 1935 and no railroads traversed the region until the 1970s.4 Western Hunan also suffered from an uneven educational system, with many Republican-era sources claiming that much of the region was decades (if not centuries) behind the rest of Hunan, with literacy rates stagnating at under 10% in many areas.5
Demographic and social structures
Western Hunan includes Tujia areas to the north Miao areas in the south.6 One early Republican source, the Hunan fengsu minqing baogaoshu 湖南風俗民情報告書 (1912), indicates that Western Hunan’s Miao population at the end of the Qing dynasty was 187,859, slightly more than half (54.3%) of the 345,966 people classified as Miao who resided in all of Hunan Province, with the highest concentrations being in Yongsui, Fenghuang, and Qiancheng.7 Legends claimed that these Miao were descended from the Jiuli 九黎 tribe led by Chiyou 蚩尤, which was defeated at the Battle of Zhuolu 涿鹿 (on the border of Hebei and Liaoning provinces) by forces led by the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 黃帝) during a struggle for supremacy of the Yellow River valley, thereafter being exiled to remoter areas of China like Western Hunan.8 Despite a steady influx of Han Chinese migrants from other provinces, especially natives of Jiangxi and Fujian, who built temples to their gods at the places they settled (see Chapter 2),9 as late as the Republican era Western Hunan’s population density proved quite low, numbering 200-600 persons per kilometer in core areas, but down to 50-100 in the highlands. Local population totals grew at a relatively slow pace, despite a subsequent influx of Han Chinese migrants fleeing the War of Resistance against Japan during the 1930s and 1940s.10
Western Hunan contains a wide range of often mutually unintelligible languages and dialects. Apart from Standard Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua 普通話; referred to as “Mandarin” below), the four officially recognized ones are Hunanese (Xiangyu 湘語), Southwestern Mandarin (Xinan guanhua 西南官話), Miao language (Miaoyu 苗語, including Eastern and Western variants), and Tujia language (Tujiayu 土家語). Western Hunan’s Miao peoples tend to use the autonym “Kho Xiong”, but their languages might best be conceived of as a patchwork of local isolates. In general peoples living in plains or along rivers were more likely to adopt the use of Mandarin, while those in remote and mountainous areas preserve their original languages.11
One also finds differences in social structure and other cultural patterns that often correspond to the northern Tujia and southern Miao areas mentioned above. For example, far more evidence for lineage society may be found in Tujia areas, including lineage halls (citang 祠堂), genealogies (zupu 族譜), etc. Such phenomena tend to be less common in Miao areas, with the exception of those near core regions settled relatively early by concentrations of Han Chinese and featuring Miao elites who took part in the exam system or served the imperial state as low-ranking officials.12 One of my colleagues doing fieldwork in a Miao village was overjoyed to hear an informant announce that his family had a genealogy, and set off with him to find it. After hours of hiking resulting in blistered feet, the two of them ended up standing exhausted in front of a pigsty (zhupu 豬圃, not zupu 族譜).
One critically important point about the Miao areas where I did research, and which will be repeated throughout this study, is that local identity centers on the family (Ad bloud neax in Miao), albeit in the context of larger kinship and village networks of power (especially those based on the worship of a common ancestor by people of the same surname living in the same village; Ad mangx zuos). In many areas of Western Hunan, villages are inhabited by one dominant Miao surname group plus smaller numbers of scattered surname groups. Most rituals are staged in the family home, including not only ancestor worship but also offering rituals as well as rites for the making or repayment of vows.13
Moreover, as noted in the Introduction, married women and their relatives are key figures in Western Hunan Miao family and communal life, especially maternal uncles (mujiu 母舅; mother’s brothers) and brothers-in-law (qijiu 妻舅; wife’s brothers), often guests of honor at major ritual events like the oxen sacrifice (zhuiniu 椎牛; see Chapter 3). Outside ethnographers and indigenous intellectuals alike were well aware of their power, with none other than the Kho Xiong elite Shi Qigui 石啟貴 (1896-1959) lamenting uncles’ influence over married couples,14 and Academia Sinica scholars Ling Chunsheng 凌純聲 (1901-1978) and Ruey Yih-fu 芮逸夫 (1898-1990) noting that many Miao groups practiced uxorilocal marriage.15 Local conceptions of viewed the seeds of human life (“bone seeds” or “grain seeds,” both romanized in Mandarin as guzhong 骨/穀種) as being vital forces transmitted from mothers to daughters that affinal kin had to bargain for. If the bride gave birth to a daughter, her maternal uncle’s family (jiujia 舅家) had the right to take the girl back in marriage once she had reached maturity, a practice referred to as “returning bone/grain seeds” (huan guzhong 還骨/穀種).16
The enduring strength of Western Hunan’s indigenous Miao culture can also be seen in the presence of two surname systems: one Miao and the other Han. The five Han surnames most commonly used by local Miao (Wu 吳, Long 龍, Shi 石, Ma 麻, and Liao 廖) were not introduced to the region until the Ming-Qing era, and even today have not completely supplanted indigenous Miao ones, which are transmitted orally by the Miao ritual specialists described in Chapter 3 and still relied upon as one means of avoiding incestuous marriages (for more on this point, see Chapter 7).17
One final point to be considered here is whether Western Hunan’s Miao communities merit being classified as acephalous (lacking political leaders or hierarchies), or even egalitarian.18 Donald Sutton points out that Qing officials often encountered Miao hamlets without acknowledged chiefs, and had to appoint someone to do the job.19 This may not necessarily mean that such communities lacked leaders, however, for as we will see in the chapters below many facets of social and religious life (marriage and mortuary rituals, family and village fertility rites, oaths for the formation of village alliances and other judicial rituals, recounting legends about the past, etc.) were managed by Miao ritual specialists who often commanded great respect. Similarly, while Sutton correctly identifies the primacy of unwritten law and the importance of deities like the White Emperor Heavenly Kings (Baidi tianwang 白帝天王; also referred to as the Heavenly Kings or Tianwang 天王; see below, as well as Chapters 2 and 4),20 their cults and related practices could not have spread throughout the region and gained popularity without the presence of ritual specialists. What this means is that, while indigenous Miao communities may not have boasted “political leaders” in the Western sense of the term, they were hardly lacking the presence of men (and women) who could take charge of vital facets of local life.
“Mysterious western hunan” – zombies and poisoning scares
In Miao communities of Western Hunan, the presence and persistence of striking cultural differences from “standard” communities in core regions of China has led to a number of labels being affixed to this region, the most common one used today being “mysterious” (shenmi 神秘). Accounts using such a label often cite two seemingly exotic practices, both of which have some basis in fact but have also been warped by exaggeration and rumor.
The first of these practices is generally known as “rushing [home with] zombies” (ganshi 趕屍), but should not be taken to mean hordes of the undead swarming the streets to gobble up human brains. Instead, the term refers to a practical and pressing need, namely to bear the corpses of people who died far from home (kesi taxiang 客死他鄉). This grim and exhausting task was undertaken by a range of specialists, including some Daoists and ritual masters who had studied techniques for preserving/embalming corpses or else dismembering them for transport. One English term used to describe such individuals is “corpse walkers”, also the title of a translated collection of stories by Liao Yiwu 廖亦武 that includes oral accounts of corpses being transported by two-man teams, with one bearing the corpse on his back with a large robe covering both of them and a mourning mask on top, and the other man walking ahead with a lantern to warn his companion of obstacles ahead (as well as unsuspecting travelers of their approach).21 As one might suspect with such an unpleasant and dangerous practice, few reliable written or oral accounts are available for study. Perhaps the best work available has been compiled by Lu Qun 陸群, which features not only historical sources but also some first person reminiscences, including one by a PLA soldier who arrested a master-disciple team and learned about the techniques they used.22
The second practice involves the manufacture of poison to harm one’s enemies or enrapture potential lovers. Such a poison, known as gudu 蠱毒, was said to be produced by placing various poisonous creatures (snakes, lizards, centipedes, spiders, etc.) inside a large jar, letting them fight it out, and using the poison extracted from the winner. Such practices were said to exist throughout China from ancient to recent times, but have often been associated with the non-Han peoples of Southwest China, including the Miao, and especially women (including the female mediums discussed in Chapter 3).23 The fear of gu poisoning was common in Western Hunan as well, with one Qing gazetteer noting that such practices were common after the Awakening of Insects (jingzhi 驚蟄) date of the lunar calendar (falling between early and mid-March). On the evening before, people were instructed to use lime to paint an image of a bow and arrow on their door, which would ward off any gu poison.24
Such fears, and the intense social tensions they could spark, persisted into the twentieth century as well. Ling Chunsheng and Ruey Yi-fu describe one 1928 case during which a woman accused of killing a neighbor’s children using gu poison was summarily shot.25 Shi Qigui’s data are much more detailed, including the observation that most illnesses said to be caused by such poisoning tended to be of a gastrointestinal nature (including worms) and usually afflicted infants and young children. Moreover, Shi observed that failed rituals could be blamed on gu poisoning, and that female mediums might be summoned to perform rites to counter their negative impact. Shi also recounts two stories about how accusations of gu poisoning could disrupt communal life. In the first instance, an unscrupulous artisan tried to take advantage of an ...
