Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:51:37.445Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Careful Village: Comedic Dialogues and Linguistic Modernity in China's Tibet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2018

Timothy Thurston
Timothy Thurston*
Affiliation:
Timothy Thurston ([email protected]) is Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds.
Get access

Abstract

Comedy is a powerful tool for public meditation on and critique of lived experience and discursive practice. In China's post-Mao period, comedy also provided a means for Tibetan intellectuals to access state-sponsored stages and airwaves in minority-dominated Northwest China's restrictive cultural climate. This article examines a series of four comedic dialogues popular in Tibetan regions in the mid-1990s. Centered on the fictional Careful Village, these four performances juxtapose urban sophisticates and country bumpkins in ways that allow comedians to grapple with questions of tradition and modernity in a rapidly modernizing society. Though superficially similar to Chinese state-sponsored modernity—itself centered on Chinese Putonghua—attention to these performances’ juxtaposition of characters, social issues, and linguistic practice reveals the promotion of certain forms of the Tibetan language at the center of uniquely Tibetan modernity. This Tibetan modernity is no longer assimilationist, but based on mastery of the proper, Tibetan linguistic competences.

Keywords

comedyhumorlanguage ideologieslinguistic modernitymetadiscursive regimesTibet
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 453 - 474
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Adams, Vincanne. 1996. “Karaoke as Modern Lhasa, Tibet: Western Encounters with Cultural Politics.” Cultural Anthropology 11(4):510–46.Google Scholar
Aris, Michael. 1987. “‘The Boneless Tongue’: Alternative Voices from Bhutan in the Context of Lamaist Societies.” Past and Present 115:131–64.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. Edited by Holquist, Michael and Emerson, Caryl. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, Robert. 2008–9. “Television Drama Series in Tibet.” In Tibetan Arts in Transition: A Journey through Theatre, Cinema and Painting, Seminar Proceedings, Rome and Naples. Association for International Solidarity in Asia, www.asia-ngo.org/en/images/eas/handbook%20arts.pdf#page538 (accessed September 29, 2011; URL now defunct).Google Scholar
Barnett, Robert. 2012. “Political Self-Immolation in Tibet: Causes and Influences.” Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 25:41–64.Google Scholar
Barnett, Robert, and Schwartz, Ronald, eds. 2008. Tibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field on Cultural and Social Change. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard. 1986. Story, Performance, and Event: Contextual Studies of Oral Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard, and Briggs, Charles L.. 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Billé, Franck. 2010. “Sounds and Scripts of Modernity: Language Ideologies and Practices in Contemporary Mongolia.” Inner Asia 12(2):231–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Charles L. 1996. “Introduction.” In Disorderly Discourse: Narrative, Conflict, and Inequality, ed. Briggs, Charles L., 3–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bulag, Uradyn E. 2003. “Mongolian Ethnicity and Linguistic Anxiety in China.” American Anthropologist 105(4):753–63.Google Scholar
Chen, Ping. 2004. Modern Chinese: History and Sociolinguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
DeFrancis, John. 1984. The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Dkon mchog dge legs, , Dpal ldan bkra shis, , and Stuart, Kevin. 1999. “Tibetan Tricksters.” Asian Folklore Studies 58(1):5–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dong, Jie. 2009. “‘Isn't It Enough to Be a Chinese Speaker’: Language Ideology and Migrant Identity Construction in a Public Primary School in Beijing.” Language & Communication 29(2):115–26.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1995. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstadt, S. N. 2000. “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus 129(1):1–29.Google Scholar
Ekvall, Robert B. [1960] 1964. “Peace and War among the Tibetan Nomads.” American Anthropologist 66(5):1119–48.Google Scholar
Fischer, Andrew M. 2008. “‘Population Invasion’ versus Urban Exclusion in the Tibetan Areas of Western China.” Population and Development Review 34(4):631–62.Google Scholar
Fischer, Andrew M. 2009. “Educating for Exclusion in Western China: Structural and Institutional Dimensions of Conflict in the Tibetan Areas of Qinghai and Tibet.” CRISE Working Paper No. 69.Google Scholar
Frangville, Vanessa. 2016. “Pema Tseden's The Search: The Making of a Minor Cinema.” Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10(2):1–14.Google Scholar
Gayley, Holly. 2011. “The Ethics of Cultural Survival: A Buddhist Vision of Progress in Mkhan Po ‘Jigs Phun's Heart Advice to Tibetans for the 21st Century.” In Mapping the Modern in Tibet, ed. Tuttle, Gray, 435–502. Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH.Google Scholar
Gayley, Holly. 2016. “Controversy over Buddhist Ethical Reform: A Secular Critique of Clerical Authority in the Tibetan Blogosphere.” Himalaya 36(1):22–43.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Melvyn C. 1982. “Lhasa Street Songs: Political and Social Satire in Traditional Tibet.” Tibet Journal 7(1/2):56–66.Google Scholar
Green, R. Jeffrey. 2012. “Amdo Tibetan Media Intelligibility.” SIL Electronic Survey Report 2012-019.Google Scholar
Gunn, Edward. 2005. Rendering the Regional: Local Language in Contemporary Chinese Media. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Harrell, Stevan. 2001. Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Claire. 1999. In the Image of Tibet: Tibetan Painting after 1959. London: Reaktion.Google Scholar
Hartley, Lauran R. 1999. “Themes of Tradition and Change in Modern Tibetan Literature.” Lungta 12:29–44.Google Scholar
Hartley, Lauran R. 2002. “‘Inventing Modernity’ in A mdo: Views on the Role of Traditional Culture in a Developing Society.” In Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Huber, Toni, 1–25. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Hartley, Lauran R., and Schiaffini-Vedani, Patricia, eds. 2007. Modern Tibetan Literature and Social Change. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Patrick. 2012. The Making of Monolingual Japan: Language Ideology and Japanese Modernity. Buffalo, N.Y.: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Horlemann, Bianca. 2002. “Modernization Efforts in Mgo log: A Chronicle, 1970–2002.” In Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Huber, Toni, 241–70. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Huber, Toni, ed. 2002. Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Inoue, Miyako. 2006. Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Kapstein, Matthew. 2002. “The Tulku's Miserable Lot: Critical Voices from Eastern Tibet.” In Amdo Tibetans in Transition: Society and Culture in the Post-Mao Era, ed. Huber, Toni, 99–111. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Kolås, Åshild. 2003. “Modernising Tibet: Contemporary Discourses and Practices of ‘Modernity.’” Inner Asia 5(1):17–37.Google Scholar
Jabb, Lama. 2015. Oral and Literary Continuities in Tibetan Literature: The Inescapable Nation. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lee, Haiyan. 2005. “Tears That Crumbled the Great Wall: The Archaeology of Feeling in the May Fourth Folklore Movement.” Journal of Asian Studies 64(1):35–65.Google Scholar
Li, Chris Wen-Chao. 2004. “Conflicting Notions of Language Purity: The Interplay of Archaising, Ethnographic, Reformist, Elitist and Xenophobic Purism in the Perception of Standard Chinese.” Language & Communication 24(2):97–133.Google Scholar
Link, Perry. 1984. “The Genie and the Lamp: Revolutionary Xiangsheng.” In Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1979, ed. MacDougall, Bonnie S., 83–111. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Link, Perry. 2007. “The Crocodile Bird: Xiangsheng in the Early 1950s.” In Dilemmas of Victory: The Early Years of the People's Republic of China, eds. Brown, Jeremy and Pickowicz, Paul, 207–31. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Liu, Jin. 2008. “Signifying the Local: Media Productions Rendered in Local Languages in Mainland China since 2000.” PhD diss., Cornell University.Google Scholar
Yongdan, Lobsang. 2011. “Tibet Charts the World: The Btsan po No mo han's Detailed Description of the World, an Early Major Scientific Work.” In Mapping the Modern in Tibet, ed. Tuttle, Gray, 135–72. Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH.Google Scholar
Makley, Charlene. 1998. “The Power of the Drunk: Humor and Resistance in China's Tibet.” Linguistic Form and Social Action, eds. Dickinson, Jennifer et al. , 39–79. Michigan Discussions in Anthropology Vol. 13. Ann Arbor: Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Makley, Charlene. 2007. The Violence of Liberation: Gender and Tibetan Buddhist Revival in Post-Mao China. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Morcom, Anna. 2008. “Getting Heard in Tibet: Music, Media, and Markets.” Consumption Markets & Culture 11(4):259–85.Google Scholar
Moser, David. 1990. “Reflexivity in the Humor of Xiangsheng.” CHINOPERL Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 15(1):45–68.Google Scholar
Moser, David. 2016. A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Tashi, Phuntshog and Schiaffini, Patricia. 2006. “Realism, Humor, and Social Commitment: An Interview.” Manoa 18(1):119–24.Google Scholar
Pirie, Fernanda. 2012. “Legal Dramas on the Amdo Grasslands: Abolition, Transformation or Survival.” In Revisiting Rituals in a Changing Tibetan World, ed. Buffetrille, Katia, 83–107. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Pirie, Fernanda. 2013. “The Limits of the State: Coercion and Consent in Chinese Tibet.” Journal of Asian Studies 72(1):69–89.Google Scholar
Ra se dkon mchog rgya mtsho., 1996. “A khu bstan pavi byung bar thog mavi bsam gzhigs” [Thoughts on the Origins of A khu bstan pa]. Gangs ljongs rig gnas 30:92–96.Google Scholar
Rajan, Hamsa. 2015. “The Discourse of Tibetan Women's Empowerment Activists.” Revue d'Etudes Tibétaines 33:127–53.Google Scholar
Rea, Christopher. 2015. The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Jermay J. 2012. “Language Variation and Change in an Amdo Tibetan Village: Gender, Education and Resistance.” PhD diss., Georgetown University.Google Scholar
Robin, Françoise. 2008–9. “Performing Compassion: A Counter-Hegemonic Strategy in Tibetan Cinema?” In Tibetan Arts in Transition: A Journey through Theatre, Cinema and Painting, Seminar Proceedings, Rome and Naples. Association for International Solidarity in Asia, www.asia-ngo.org/en/images/eas/handbook%20arts.pdf#page538 (accessed September 29, 2011; URL now defunct).Google Scholar
Robin, Françoise. 2014. “Streets, Slogans and Screens: New Paradigms for the Defense of Tibetan Language.” In On the Fringes of the Harmonious Society: Tibetans and Uyghurs in Socialist China, eds. Brox, Trine and Bellér-Hann, Idilkó, 209–34. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Press.Google Scholar
Roche, Gerald, and Xiangcheng, Wen. 2013. “Modernist Iconoclasm, Resilience, and Divine Power among the Mangghuer of the Northeast Tibetan Plateau.” Asian Ethnology 72(1):85–117.Google Scholar
Shakya, Tsering W. 1993. “Whither the Tsampa Eaters?” Himal 6(5):8–11.Google Scholar
Shakya, Tsering W. 1994. “Politicisation and the Tibetan Language.” In Resistance and Reform in Tibet, eds. Barnett, Robert and Akiner, Shirin, 157–65. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Sichuan Sheng Minjian Wenyi Yanjiu Hui 四川省民间文艺研究会, ed. 1980. Akou Dengba de Gushi 阿叩登巴的故事 [Stories of Uncle Tonpa]. Chengdu: Sichuan Minzu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Sman bla skyabs, and Phag mo bkra shis, . 1996a. “Sems chung sde ba'i sa rtsod” [Careful Village's Grassland Dispute].” In Ru sde khra mo [The Vibrant Nomad Camp]. Ziling [Xining]: Nub mtsho mi rigs sgra brnyan par skrun khang [West Lake Nationalities Audio-visual Publishing House]. Audio cassette.Google Scholar
Sman bla skyabs, and Phag mo bkra shis, . 1996b. “Sems chung sde ba'i mna’ ma” [Careful Village's Bride”]. In Ru sde khra mo [The Vibrant Nomad Camp]. Ziling [Xining]: Nub mtsho mi rigs sgra brnyan par skrun khang [West Lake Nationalities Audio-visual Publishing House]. Audio cassette.Google Scholar
Sman bla skyabs, and Phag mo bkra shis, . 1996c. “Sems chung sde ba'i ston mo” [Careful Village's Wedding]. In Ru sde khra mo [The Vibrant Nomad Camp]. Ziling [Xining]: Nub mtsho mi rigs sgra brnyan par skrun khang [West Lake Nationalities Audio-visual Publishing House]. Audio cassette.Google Scholar
Sman bla skyabs, and Phag mo bkra shis, . 1996d. “Sems chung sde ba'i rkun ma” [Careful Village's Thief]. In Ru sde khra mo [The Vibrant Nomad Camp]. Ziling [Xining]: Nub mtsho mi rigs sgra brnyan par skrun khang [West Lake Nationalities Audio-visual Publishing House]. Audio cassette.Google Scholar
Sujata, Victoria. 2005. Tibetan Songs of Realization: Echoes from a Seventeenth-Century Scholar and Siddha in Amdo. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Suoci, 索次. 2003. “Lun Zangyu Xiangsheng de Lishi he Xianzhuang” 论藏语相声的历史和现状 [On the History and Current State of Tibetan Language Xiangsheng]. Xizang Yishu Yanjiu 西藏艺术研究 3:12–24.Google Scholar
Thurston, Timothy. 2012. “An Introduction to Tibetan Sa Bstod Speeches in A mdo.” Asian Ethnology 71(1):49–73.Google Scholar
Thurston, Timothy. 2013. “‘Careful Village's Grassland Dispute’: An A mdo Dialect Tibetan Crosstalk Performance by Sman Bla Skyabs.” CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32(2):156–83.Google Scholar
Thurston, Timothy. 2015. “Laughter on the Grassland: A Diachronic Study of A mdo Tibetan Comedy and the Public Intellectual in Western China.” PhD diss., Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Thurston, Timothy, and Caixiangduojie. 2016. “An A mdo Tibetan Wedding Speech from Ne'u na Village.” Asian Highlands Perspectives 40:299–351.Google Scholar
Tong, Q. S. 2010. “Global Modernity and Linguistic Universality: The Invention of Modern Chinese Language.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 43(3):325–39.Google Scholar
Tshe dbang rdo rje, , Anton-Luca, Alexandru, and Stuart, Charles Kevin. 2009. Tibetan Weddings in Ne'u na Village. New York: YBK Publishers.Google Scholar
Tuttle, Gray. 2010. “The Failure of Ideologies in China's Relations with Tibetans.” In Multination States in Asia: Accommodation or Resistance, eds. Bertrand, Jacques and Laliberté, André, 219–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tuttle, Gray. ed. 2011. Mapping the Modern in Tibet. Andiast, Switzerland: International Institute for Tibetan and Buddhist Studies GmbH.Google Scholar
Volosinov, Valentin N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. New York: Seminar Press.Google Scholar
Wu, Qi. 2013. “Tradition and Modernity: Cultural Continuum and Transition among Tibetans in Amdo.” PhD diss., University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Dhondup, Yangdon. 2008. “Dancing to the Beat of Modernity: The Rise and Development of Tibetan Pop Music.” In Tibetan Modernities: Notes from the Field on Cultural and Social Change, eds. Barnett, Robert and Schwartz, Ronald, 283–304. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Yao, Wang. 1994. “Hu Yaobang's Visit to Tibet, May 22–31, 1980.” In Resistance and Reform in Tibet, eds. Barnett, Robert and Akiner, Shirin, 285–89. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Yeh, Emily T. 2003. “Tibetan Range Wars: Spatial Politics and Authority on the Grasslands of Amdo.” Development and Change 34(3):499–523.Google Scholar
Yeh, Emily T. 2013. Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Yü, Dan Smyer. 2013. “Subaltern Placiality in Modern Tibet: Critical Discourses in the Works of Shogdong.” China Information 27(2):155–72.Google Scholar
Zenz, Adrian. 2014. ‘Tibetanness’ Under Threat? Neo-Integrationism, Minority Education, and Career Strategies in Qinghai, P.R. China. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar