DOCSLIB.ORG

Appropriating Otherness and the Contention of Miao Identity in Southwest China Siu-Woo Cheung

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Appropriating Otherness and the Contention of Miao Identity in Southwest China Siu-Woo Cheung The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Vol. 13, No. 2, April 2012, pp. 142Á169 Appropriating Otherness and the Contention of Miao Identity in Southwest China Siu-woo Cheung The development of the Chinese Empire and Civilisation was predicated on the construction of non-Chinese cultural others in China’s long-written history that marked the Chinese frontier and its expansion. Miao was one of the prominent ethnic categories of otherness. The formation and transformation of ethnic frontiers were often registered in the dominant paradigm of Sinicisation in the imperialist perspective, and insurgency and forced migration from the native point of view. This paper attempts to explicate a more nuanced interaction between non-Han natives and the Chinese imperial/national agents centring on Miao otherness in Chinese conception, and in articulation with natives’ conception of Chineseness. It argues that in face of imperial expansion and nation-building projects in pre-modern and modern Chinese history non-Han natives actively appropriated Miao otherness to form their own identities, through which the Miao ethnic boundary was constructed and demarcated within the Chinese state. Keywords: Miao; Otherness; China Introduction Downloaded by [Siu-woo Cheung] at 07:25 11 April 2012 The cult of Yellow Emperor was promoted as a program for ‘patriotic education’ (aiguo zhuyi jiaoyu) and flourished rapidly in the 1990s as a focus of Chinese nationalism (Yang Zhiqiang 2010, pp. 103Á13). On official occasions and popular media, such as the sacrificial address presented at the Mausoleum and television series featuring the legend of Yellow Emperor, the notion of ‘yanhuang zisun’, o r ‘descendants of Yandi and Huangdi’, was often mentioned to refer to the common genealogical origin of Chinese people. In this dominant nationalistic narrative, the Yellow Emperor is said to be joined by his ally Yandi in subduing the paramount Siu-woo Cheung is an Associate Professor. Correspondence to: Siu-woo Cheung, Division of Humanities, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Email: [email protected] ISSN 1444-2213 (print)/ISSN 1740-9314 (online)/12/020142-28 # 2012 The Australian National University http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14442213.2012.656694 The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 143 competitor Chiyou and killing him in the warring site of Zhuolu in Hebei Province, and subsequently laid the foundation for the development of Chinese civilisation. Interestingly, concomitant to the development of the cult of Yellow Emperor during the 1990s, the cult of the demonised Chiyou also flourished among the Miao minority, whose elite claimed that the legendary tragic figure was the common ancestor of all Miao people and petitioned against official and popular discourses that continued to portray his infamy.1 The Miao elite even ventured to venerate Chiyou as a founding ancestor of the Chinese nation on a par with Huangdi and Yandi, and successfully lobbied for the building of ‘The Hall of the Three Ancestors’ (Sanzu Tang), an ancestral hall housing the three legendary figures in the warring site of Zhuolu, which was formally opened in 1997 (Yang Zhiqiang 2010, pp. 105Á6). Amid this official promotion of the Yan-Huang Cult and its backlash posed by the Miao elite at the turn of the new century, some Taiwan and Hong Kong affiliated academics discussed the development of the cult as a focus of Chinese nationalism a century ago in modern Chinese history. Shen Sung-chiao and Sun Long-ji argue that the cult of the Yellow Emperor as the legendary ancestor of all Han-Chinese is a modernist invention in the construction of the Chinese nation-state when the Qing Empire was about to collapse in the early twentieth century (Shen Sung-chiao 1997; Sun Long-ji 2000). Wang Ming-ke provides a long historical perspective on the development of this cult of legendary ancestors for explicating the foundation of the modern nationalistic pursuit (Wang Mingke 2000).2 He refers to the historical ethnic process whereby non-Han groups claimed their Han-Chinese identities by tracing legendary genealogical linkages to the Yellow Emperor through the mechanism of ‘panfu’, or what I would call ‘mimicry for prestige’. Wang’s work on the cult of ‘heroic ancestors’ (yingxiong zuxian) extends the discussion of the imperial tianxia universalism and modern Chinese nationalism from the centre of the Han-Chinese polity to non-Han groups on its margin such as the Qiang people in his own study. The historical process of imperial expansion, according to Wang, involved a unidirectional assimilation process that Sinicised non-Han groups to become members of the Chinese political and cultural systems. His discussion draws our Downloaded by [Siu-woo Cheung] at 07:25 11 April 2012 attention to the Miao and their relationships with the Chinese state; yet the Miao elite’s endeavours are apparently involved in a more complex process than his view of mimicry for prestige and Sinicisation, as I will argue below. At the least, Chiyou in the origin myth of Chinese civilisation stands for exclusion and otherness rather than assimilation and sameness. The development of the Chinese Empire and Civilisation was predicated on the construction of non-Chinese cultural others in China’s long written history that marked the Chinese frontier and its expansion. Miao was one of the prominent ethnic categories of otherness, defined largely in terms of lack and as the counter image of Chinese civilisation, generated during the Chinese Empire’s southward expansion. The formation and transformation of ethnic frontiers were often registered in the dominant paradigm of Sinicisation in the imperialist perspective, and insurgency and migration for escape from the native point of view. This paper 144 S.-W. Cheung attempts to explicate a more nuanced interaction between non-Han natives in Southwest China and the Chinese imperial/national agents centring on Miao otherness in Chinese conception, developed in articulation with natives’ conception of Chineseness. It examines the development of Miao identity in the region of southeast Guizhou province with reference to natives’ appropriation of otherness built around ‘Miao Rebellion’ under special historical circumstances when ethnic boundaries were demarcated and identities were articulated for mass mobilisation. In addressing issues on the Chinese empire at the margins, Crossley et al. (2006) caution that the narrative of Sinicisation ‘obscured a multiplicity of institutions and networks outside the imperial imagination that were created by and helped condition the consciousness and practice of locals’, and that it ‘did not distinguish between a person’s adoption of the dominant group’s cultural markers, which may be partial and situational, and a more subjective identification with an imagined Chinese political community’ (Crossley, Siu, & Sutton 2006, p. 6). This paper seeks to examine the multiplicity of institutions and networks of the locals related to their practices of appropriation of Chinese cultural markers, particularly those referring to the Miao ethnic others, that helped condition the demarcation of non-Han identities and boundaries within the Chinese political community. This self-imposed exclusion and otherness constituted the major theme of ethnic resistance in the natives’ responses to the encroachment of the imperial state in south China throughout history by means of intermittent insurgencies and migrations for escape, which were abundantly registered as common historical memories in oral traditions of various native groups in south China. Such a polar contrast to the Sinicisation paradigm is reflected in James Scott’s latest book entitled The Art of Not Being Government: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, which explores how disparate groups that resided in upland region of Mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China fled the civilising and subjugating projects of the organised state societies that surrounded them for thousands of years (Scott 2009). According to Scott’s analysis, hill groups adapted their cultural practices specifically to avoid inclusion into lowland civilisation, leading to the abandonment of rice farming, Downloaded by [Siu-woo Cheung] at 07:25 11 April 2012 literacy and socio-political hierarchy, and developing pliable ethnic identities. While his analysis of these cultural practices and identities has been under debate, Scott seems to be successful in widening the discussion of the formation of civilisation to include not just the examination of state-building but its obverse*it’s active avoidance.3 However, this paper seeks to demonstrate a more nuanced twist of this antithesis of civilisation with reference to native groups’ active appropriation of Chinese cultural markers for empowerment and mass mobilisation during their insurgencies resisting the encroachment of the Chinese imperial state, which might have led to their subjugation under state domination as well as fleeing the state to become hill peoples. It is the active exchanges and appropriation of otherness with reference to civilisation between the natives and the Chinese state that demarcated ethnic boundaries, rather than the simple antithesis of civilisation. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 145 In-between the dichotomy of total submission in terms of Sinicisation resulting from the practice of ‘mimicry for prestige’ (panfu), as proposed by Wang Ming-ke, and fleeing the Chinese state for self-determination to maintain
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Introduction
    Notes Introduction 1. Hobsbawm 1990, 66. 2. Diamond 1998, 322–33. 3. Fairbank 1992, 44–45. 4. Fei Xiaotong 1989, 1–2. 5. Diamond 1998, 323, original emphasis. 6. Crossley 1999; Di Cosmo 1998; Purdue 2005a; Lavely and Wong 1998, 717. 7. Richards 2003, 112–47; Lattimore 1937; Pan Chia-lin and Taeuber 1952. 8. My usage of the term “geo-body” follows Thongchai 1994. 9. B. Anderson 1991, 86. 10. Purdue 2001, 304. 11. Dreyer 2006, 279–80; Fei Xiaotong 1981, 23–25. 12. Jiang Ping 1994, 16. 13. Morris-Suzuki 1998, 4; Duara 2003; Handler 1988, 6–9. 14. Duara 1995; Duara 2003. 15. Turner 1962, 3. 16. Adelman and Aron 1999, 816. 17. M. Anderson 1996, 4, Anderson’s italics. 18. Fitzgerald 1996a: 136. 19. Ibid., 107. 20. Tsu Jing 2005. 21. R. Wong 2006, 95. 22. Chatterjee (1986) was the first to theorize colonial nationalism as a “derivative discourse” of Western Orientalism. 23. Gladney 1994, 92–95; Harrell 1995a; Schein 2000. 24. Fei Xiaotong 1989, 1. 25. Cohen 1991, 114–25; Schwarcz 1986; Tu Wei-ming 1994. 26. Harrison 2000, 240–43, 83–85; Harrison 2001. 27. Harrison 2000, 83–85; Cohen 1991, 126. 186 • Notes 28. Duara 2003, 9–40. 29. See, for example, Lattimore 1940 and 1962; Forbes 1986; Goldstein 1989; Benson 1990; Lipman 1998; Millward 1998; Purdue 2005a; Mitter 2000; Atwood 2002; Tighe 2005; Reardon-Anderson 2005; Giersch 2006; Crossley, Siu, and Sutton 2006; Gladney 1991, 1994, and 1996; Harrell 1995a and 2001; Brown 1996 and 2004; Cheung Siu-woo 1995 and 2003; Schein 2000; Kulp 2000; Bulag 2002 and 2006; Rossabi 2004.
    [Show full text]
  • A Conversation with Wu Jian'an, by John Tancock Yishu
    John Tancock A Conversation with Wu Jian’an John Tancock: Rather than write an essay on your development as an artist, I am going to ask you a series of questions so that you can speak for yourself. I hope we can clarify what you believe are the defining characteristics of your growth as an artist over the last decade. From looking at your biography, I know that you were born in Beijing in 1980 and graduated with a B.A. from the Beijing Institute of Broadcasting in 2002. I would like to know what happened in the first twenty-two years of your life to make you the artist that you are today. Could you please fill in that very large gap in our knowledge? Firstly, please tell me something about your family background and your interests as a child and teenager? Wu Jian’an: Thank you, John. My parents are from a background in the sciences; they are both mechanical engineers, and my father was outstanding in his field. They are both very clear thinkers and have a sincere belief in science. Even today, they still discuss mechanical engineering problems, many of which involve theoretical physics that I’ve never understood. Nevertheless, it has always fascinated me. Each time my father discusses these topics, he starts from simple phenomena that lead to abstract theory. I was always fascinated by simple things, precisely because I never thought such simple things could be queried, but when the discussion moved on to abstract theory, I was usually lost. Looking back, I was interested in a lot of things when I was young, but animals were always a major interest.
    [Show full text]
  • The Doctrines and Dogma of Weixin Shengjiao the New Religion of the World Taiwan Weixin Shengjiao
    Chapter 3 The doctrines and dogma of Weixin Shengjiao The New Religion of the World Taiwan Weixin Shengjiao The sect is established by heaven and earth. The principles were established by the sages. Weixin Shengjiao learns the laws of Heaven and Earth and practices them. Ancestor Fuxi Shi Lady of the Nine Heavens) Three Chinese ancestors Chiyou Emperor Yellow Emperor Yan Emperor Gui Gu Immortal Master Wan Chan Lao Chu Grand Master Hun Yuan Eternities - 32 - Chapter 3 The doctrines and dogma of Weixin Shengjiao Ancestor Fuxi Shi makes his first draw as Heaven; second as Earth. Wuji is considered as the Primordial (earlier heaven eight guas), so it is emptiness. Then Jiutian Xuannu inherited the knowledge. Tai chi is the Manifested (later heaven eight guas). Two polarities give rise to four phenomena. Then the knowledge of Bagua was passed to Three Chinese Ancestors Yellow Emperor and Yan Emperor. The Original Bagua is the knowledge of Feng Shui, describing mountains and rivers or practicing divination. Chiyou Emperor created the Later Heaven Nine Places and Eight Guas It is three Yuan Nine Yuan . Then the successor of Sage Gui Gu Immortal Master Wan Chan Lao Chu followed. Wang Chan Lao Chu and Grand Master Hun Yuan united and passed the knowledge to modern time. That is the reason why it is difficult for people to see the mystery of I Ching Feng Shui, and now it appeared after so many disasters. Weixin Shengjiao honors Wang Chan Lao Chu and considered him as the leader of Tian-jie (the ecclesial world) while Grand Master Hun Yuan is a master in mankind’s world.
    [Show full text]
  • 11 Days Guizhou Guilin Ethnic Culture Tour with Li River Cruise
    [email protected] +86-28-85593923 11 days Guizhou Guilin ethnic culture tour with Li River cruise https://windhorsetour.com/guizhou-tour/guizhou-guilin-tour-with-li-river-cruise Guiyang Anshun Kaili Rongjiang Congjiang Zhaoxing Sanjiang Longsheng Guilin Yangshuo Guilin This south China tour balances an ethnic discovery in Guizhou province and a Li River cruise from Guilin to Yangshuo. Endless natural landscapes await to be found. Added with a cultural visit to the ethnic minorities in Guizhou and Guilin. Type Private Duration 11 days Trip code GE-03 Price From ¥ 9,500 per person Itinerary This tour combines an ethnic cultural trip in Guizhou province and a memorable Guilin Li River cruise. Enjoy a wonderful time by viewing the spectacular scenery of the largest waterfall in Asia, Huangguoshu Waterfall. Experience the lifestyle of Miao and Dong ethnic minorities by visiting their villages. At the end of this tour you will have a cruise along the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo. Immerse yourself into the unspoiled landscapes and more. Your journey is full of memories. Day 01 : Arrive Guiyang As the entrance point of this ethnic tour, Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, is home to more than 30 minority ethnic groups including Miao, Buyi, Dong and Hui. Upon your arrival at the airport or railway station, be assisted by your local guide and then get settled into the downtown hotel for a short break. After having lunch at the hotel, drive to the Qingyan ancient town located in the southern suburb of Guiyang city. As one of the most famous historical and cultural towns in Guizhou province, Qingyan was first built in 1378 as a station for transferring military messages and to house a standing army.
    [Show full text]
  • Handbook of Chinese Mythology TITLES in ABC-CLIO’S Handbooks of World Mythology
    Handbook of Chinese Mythology TITLES IN ABC-CLIO’s Handbooks of World Mythology Handbook of Arab Mythology, Hasan El-Shamy Handbook of Celtic Mythology, Joseph Falaky Nagy Handbook of Classical Mythology, William Hansen Handbook of Egyptian Mythology, Geraldine Pinch Handbook of Hindu Mythology, George Williams Handbook of Inca Mythology, Catherine Allen Handbook of Japanese Mythology, Michael Ashkenazi Handbook of Native American Mythology, Dawn Bastian and Judy Mitchell Handbook of Norse Mythology, John Lindow Handbook of Polynesian Mythology, Robert D. Craig HANDBOOKS OF WORLD MYTHOLOGY Handbook of Chinese Mythology Lihui Yang and Deming An, with Jessica Anderson Turner Santa Barbara, California • Denver, Colorado • Oxford, England Copyright © 2005 by Lihui Yang and Deming An All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yang, Lihui. Handbook of Chinese mythology / Lihui Yang and Deming An, with Jessica Anderson Turner. p. cm. — (World mythology) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57607-806-X (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57607-807-8 (eBook) 1. Mythology, Chinese—Handbooks, Manuals, etc. I. An, Deming. II. Title. III. Series. BL1825.Y355 2005 299.5’1113—dc22 2005013851 This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, Inc. 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116–1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper.
    [Show full text]
  • Discover Your 2 Welcome
    DISCOVER YOUR 2 WELCOME Welcome to China Holidays We were immensely proud to be a Queen’s Award winner. We are an independently owned and managed company, founded in 1997, specialising in providing beset value travel arrangements to China only. Therefore we can offer you a highly personalised service with my colleagues in London and Beijing working hard to ensure you have an unforgettable, high quality and value-for-money holiday. It is because of our dedication to providing this that we have managed to prosper in one of the most competitive industries in the world. For thousands of years China has been the mysterious Middle Kingdom, the fabled land Welcome to my homeland and between heaven and earth, steeped in legends, the land of my ancestors. I almost enthralling travellers and explorers who undertook the most gruelling journeys to discover for envy those of you who have not themselves this exotic civilisation. Nowadays, yet been to China as the surprises travelling is easier but the allure of China remains and pleasures of my country are the same. We at China Holidays have the in-depth understanding, knowledge and passion needed still yours to discover, whilst for to create some of the best journeys by bringing those of you who have already been, together authentic cultural experiences and there are still so many more riches imaginative itineraries, combined with superb service and financial security. to savour – the rural charms of the minority villages in the west, sacred On the following pages you will find details of our new and exciting range of China Holidays, ranging mountains inhabited by dragons and from classic itineraries to in-depth regional journeys gods, nomadic life on the grasslands and themed holidays, which mix the ever-popular of Tibet and Inner Mongolia, along sights with the unusual.
    [Show full text]
  • Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture Lu Zhao University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons, and the Asian History Commons Recommended Citation Zhao, Lu, "In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 826. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/826 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/826 For more information, please contact [email protected]. In Pursuit of the Great Peace: Han Dynasty Classicism and the Making of Early Medieval Literati Culture Abstract This dissertation is focused on communities of people in the Han dynasty (205 B.C.-A.D. 220) who possessed the knowledge of a corpus of texts: the Five Classics. Previously scholars have understood the popularity of this corpus in the Han society as a result of stiff ideology and imperial propaganda. However, this approach fails to explain why the imperial government considered them effective to convey propaganda in the first place. It does not capture the diverse range of ideas in classicism. This dissertation concentrates on Han classicists and treats them as scholars who constantly competed for attention in intellectual communities and solved problems with innovative solutions that were plausible to their contemporaries. This approach explains the nature of the apocryphal texts, which scholars have previously referred to as shallow and pseudo-scientific.
    [Show full text]
  • A New Model in the Study of Chinese Mythology
    Journal of chinese humanities 3 (���7) �-�� brill.com/joch A New Model in the Study of Chinese Mythology Liu Yuqing 劉毓慶 Professor of Literature, Shanxi University, China [email protected] Translated by Casey Lee Abstract Chinese mythology [shenhua 神話] does not exist independently as a cultural medium like mythology does in the West but, rather, comprises ideological and narrative forms that emerge according to historical and cultural trends. Not only have myths withstood humanity’s conquest of nature, but they have drawn and continue to draw on the mys- teries of scientific development for new content. It is possible to identify three high- points of creativity in the history of Chinese mythology, each corresponding to shifts in the function and nuance of myths. The first highpoint occurred very early on in China’s ancient history, in the period of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors [wudi san- wang 五帝三王], when myths were a way to articulate history—that is, history as myth. The second highpoint occurred in the period from the Qin through Jin dynasties, when mythology mainly expounded on philosophy and theory—that is, philosophy as myth. The third highpoint occurred during the Yuan and Ming dynasties, when the narrative content of mythology turned toward the religious—that is, religion as myth. Keywords ancient Chinese history – The Classic of the Mountains and Seas – myth – mythology Mythology is a Western concept. The study of Chinese mythology dates back only to the broad dissemination of Western learning in early twentieth century China and, for most of the past century, has employed concepts, theories, clas- sifications, and research methods developed by Western scholars.
    [Show full text]
  • Hellenes and Romans in Ancient China (240 BC – 1398 AD)
    SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS Number 230 August, 2012 Hellenes and Romans in Ancient China (240 BC – 1398 AD) by Lucas Christopoulos Victor H. Mair, Editor Sino-Platonic Papers Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 USA [email protected] www.sino-platonic.org SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS FOUNDED 1986 Editor-in-Chief VICTOR H. MAIR Associate Editors PAULA ROBERTS MARK SWOFFORD ISSN 2157-9679 (print) 2157-9687 (online) SINO-PLATONIC PAPERS is an occasional series dedicated to making available to specialists and the interested public the results of research that, because of its unconventional or controversial nature, might otherwise go unpublished. The editor-in-chief actively encourages younger, not yet well established, scholars and independent authors to submit manuscripts for consideration. Contributions in any of the major scholarly languages of the world, including romanized modern standard Mandarin (MSM) and Japanese, are acceptable. In special circumstances, papers written in one of the Sinitic topolects (fangyan) may be considered for publication. Although the chief focus of Sino-Platonic Papers is on the intercultural relations of China with other peoples, challenging and creative studies on a wide variety of philological subjects will be entertained. This series is not the place for safe, sober, and stodgy presentations. Sino- Platonic Papers prefers lively work that, while taking reasonable risks to advance the field, capitalizes on brilliant new insights into the development of civilization. Submissions are regularly sent out to be refereed, and extensive editorial suggestions for revision may be offered. Sino-Platonic Papers emphasizes substance over form. We do, however, strongly recommend that prospective authors consult our style guidelines at www.sino-platonic.org/stylesheet.doc.
    [Show full text]
  • Resolving Grievances to Make Life Harmonious”
    $ The Journal of CESNUR $ A Comparison Between Daesoon Jinrihoe’s “Resolution of Grievances for Mutual Beneficence” and Weixin Shengjiao’s “Resolving Grievances to Make Life Harmonious” Taesoo Kim Seoul National University [email protected] ABSTRACT: The article compares two parallel concepts, “resolution of grievances for mutual beneficence” in Daesoon Jinrihoe, one of Korea’s largest new religions, and “resolving grievances to make life harmonious” in the Taiwanese new religion Weixin Shengjiao. Exploring the two concepts show their similarities, as both are grounded in a sacred history and emphasize ancient grievances of ancestral times. Differences, however, also emerge. Daesoon Jinrihoe’s resolution of grievances is based on the idea of the “Reordering of the Universe (Heaven and Earth),” performed by the Supreme God, Sangje, incarnated on Earth as Kang Jeungsan (1871–1909). Weixin Shengjiao places more emphasis on the individual solutions of grievances based on the practical aspects of I Ching, i.e. divination and Feng Shui. Both religions see themselves as including the Three Teachings of Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, but Weixin Shengjiao seems to rely more on Buddhist sources, while Daesoon Jinrihoe, which also has some Buddhist features, seems to share more elements with Daoism and Confucianism. KEYWORDS: Daesoon Jinrihoe, Kang Jeungsan, Reordering of the Universe, Resolution of Grievances for Mutual Beneficence, Weixin Shengjiao, Resolving Grievances to Make Life Harmonious, Hun Yuan, I Ching, Chinese Folk Religion, Weixinism. Introduction On January 1, 2017, I went to Taipei’s Linkou Stadium to participate in the 12th United Chinese Nationality Ancestors Worship Ceremony, organized by the Taiwanese new religion Weixin Shengjiao.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Article
    6th International Conference on Electronics, Mechanics, Culture and Medicine (EMCM 2015) Investigation and Analysis of Gejia Wushu Culture Zhenghhong dLi an Zhenhua Guo College of Sports Science, Jishou University Jishou, China e-mail:[email protected] Keywords: Wushu Culture;Gejia People; Unidentified Nations;Investigation; Harong Festival Abstract. From the perspective of the development of ethnic groups, the research pays special attention to the inheritance and protection of special small ethnic folk sports culture. Using the research methods, such as anthropological fieldwork, ethnic Literature, non structural interview method and so on, Gejia’s Wushu culture has been excavated and sorted, and oral History and discourse deconstruction on the materials collected has been done, too. The result shows that Gejia’s In order to survive and develop, Gejia have created rich and colorful martial arts culture. The martial arts culture penetrates into every aspect of Gejia people’s lives, embodies Gejia people’s martial national character and national character. They express their memory of ancestors of Gejia people by Wushu, strives for the survival by Wushu, to pray good for the coming year, to pray peace and prosperity for the coming year by Wushu, to pray thrive by Wushu by Wushu, to comfort the dead by Wushu and so on. It lifts Gejia people’s national spirit, improves the national prestige of Gejia people,and adds the brightness for the Chinese nation's sports culture too. Gejia's Present Survival Situation Gejia has had a tradition of admiring martial since ancient times. Gejia claims to be offspring of Yi who was Shooting Heroes.
    [Show full text]
  • Paintings of Zhong Kui and Demons in the Late
    Imagining the Supernatural Grotesque: Paintings of Zhong Kui and Demons in the Late Southern Song (1127-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) Dynasties Chun-Yi Joyce Tsai Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2015 ©2015 Chun-Yi Joyce Tsai All rights reserved ABSTRACT Imagining the Supernatural Grotesque: Paintings of Zhong Kui and Demons in the Late Southern Song (1127-1279) and Yuan (1271-1368) Dynasties Chun-Yi Joyce Tsai This dissertation is the first focused study of images of demons and how they were created and received at the turn of the Southern Song and Yuan periods of China. During these periods, China was in a state of dynastic crisis and transition, and the presence of foreign invaders, the rise of popular culture, the development of popular religion, as well as the advancement of commerce and transportation provided new materials and incentives for painting the supernatural grotesque. Given how widely represented they are in a variety of domains that include politics, literature, theater, and ritual, the Demon Queller Zhong Kui and his demons are good case studies for the effects of new social developments on representations of the supernatural grotesque. Through a careful iconological analysis of three of the earliest extant handscroll paintings that depict the mythical exorcist Zhong Kui travelling with his demonic entourage, this dissertation traces the iconographic sources and uncovers the multivalent cultural significances behind the way grotesque supernatural beings were imagined. Most studies of paintings depicting Zhong Kui focus narrowly on issues of connoisseurship, concentrate on the painter’s intent, and prioritize political metaphors in the paintings.
    [Show full text]