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Dance, Or Else: The Politics of Ethnic Culture on China's Southwest Borders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Sara L. M. Davis
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An American researcher examines how the requirements of political assimilation have threatened the unique culture of China's Tai minority, and the Tai response.

In 1997 I arrived on China's southwest borders planning to spend a year researching ethnic minority folklore. The only problem, as I discovered when I arrived, was that there didn't appear to be any.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , February 2007 , e19
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

Notes

[1] Hsieh Shi-chung, “On the Dynamics of Tai/Dai-Lūe Ethnicity: An Ethnohistorical Analysis,” in Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 301-28.

[2] Mette Halskov Hansen, “The Call of Mao or Money? Han Chinese Settlers on China's SouthWestern Borders,” China Quarterly 158 (June 1997): 397.

[3] Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999).

[4] Ma Yin, China's Minority Nationalities (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press,1989), 3.

[5] In June 2001, Tai Lūes in Shan State, Burma, who were originally from Sipsongpanna, told me they had fought in insurgencies against China that were supported by the U.S. CIA during the 1950s. See also Bertil Lintner, “The CIA's First Secret War: Americans Helped Stage Raids Into China from Burma,” Far Eastern Economic Review, 16 September 1993, 56-58.

[6] Fei Xiaotong, Toward a People's Anthropology (Beijing: World Press,1981), 60.

[7] Fei, People's Anthropology, 64.

[8] For Sipsongpanna, see for instance the “Minzu wenti wu zhong congshu,” in Xishuangbanna Daizu zhonghe diaocha (Collected investigations into Xishuangbanna Dai nationality) (Kunming: Yunnan minzu chuban she, 1983).

[9] Guojia minwei minzu wenti wu zhong congshu pianli weiyuanhui, ed., Zhongguo shaoshu minzu (Chinese ethnic minorities) (Beijing: Renmin chuban she, 1981), 342-43.

[10] Ma Yin, China's Minority Nationalities, 266.

[11] Stevan Harrell, “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 3-36.

[12] Chin Ming, “How the Peacock Dance Reached the Stage,” China Reconstructs (March 1963): 10. I am indebted to Helen Rees for sharing this article with me.

[13] Ibid, 11.

[14] William Clifton Dodd, The Tai Race, Elder Brother of the Chinese: Results of Experience, Exploration, and Research of William Clifton Dodd, D.D., Thirty-Three Years a Missionary to the Tai People of Siam, Burma, and China, Compiled and Edited by His Wife (1923; Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1996), 188.

[15] Ibid., 187.

[16] Evelyn Rawski, “Economic and Social Foundations of Late Imperial China,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. David Johnson, Andrew Nathan, and Evelyn Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 11.

[17] See also interviews with administrators at Sipsongpanna schools and colleges in which they explicitly state that their aim is to facilitate the phasing out of Tai language; Mette Halskov Hansen, Lessons in Being Chinese: Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 129-30.

[18] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Press, 1983).

[19] The Seven Sisters: Collected Chinese Folk Stories (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1965).

[20] Daizu jianshi bianxie zu (Simple history of the Dai nationality editorial group), Daizu jianshi (Simple history of the Dai nationality) (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chuban she, 1986).

[21] Yan Wenbian, Zheng Peng, and Gu Qing, eds. and adapters, Dai Folk Legends (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1988), ii.

[22] Lucien Miller, ed., South of the Clouds: Tales from Yunnan, trans. Guo Xu, Lucien Miller, and Xu Kun (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), 36.