The University of Chicago New Wine in Old Village
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO NEW WINE IN OLD VILLAGE: INTRODUCTION OF INDUSTRIAL VINEYARDS AND COLLECTIVE LAND OWNERSHIP IN POST-SOCIALIST CHINA A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY BY KIHO KIM CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 2016 Acknowledgements Before I visited Hyde Park as an admitted student one cold spring day, I almost decided to start my doctoral study at a university in California. As I met people at the University of Chicago, however, they intrigued me with their academic passion and intellectual rigor. I sometimes wonder whether my doctoral course would have been less stressful in California, but I have never regretted settling down in Hyde Park for my academic career. This dissertation would not have been completed without the support and encouragement of the many people whom I met there. Most of all, I am deeply grateful to Judith Farquhar for her steadfast trust and generous patience. Whether in Chicago or in Beijing, our conversations broadened my perspective on the Chinese society and provided me with insights into new research questions. I feel fortunate to have worked closely with her and to have learned so much from her knowledge, understanding, and love of China’s laobaixing. I hope her retirement life will be both spiritually peaceful and intellectually fruitful. I am also thankful to the members of my doctoral committee. Julie Chu kindly offered a mentorship during my pre-dissertation research in the summer of 2009. Commenting on my weekly field notes, she provided me with valuable advice and warm encouragement, based on her own fieldwork experience in rural China. Jacob Eyferth was an important resource for integrating the perspective of European scholars in Chinese studies. I especially appreciate his commitment of time and energy to discussing my research in his office for hours on end. Other faculty members and colleagues at the University of Chicago deserve my gratitude. I sincerely thank Marshall Sahlins and Michael Fisch for their constructive critique of my ! ii! dissertation, and also thank Kyeong-Hee Choi for her warmth and inspiration. I am grateful to Nicholas Harkness, Duff Morgan, Jonah Augustine, Owen Kohl, Falina Enriquez, Joshua Walker, Yazan Doughan, Kathryn Goldfarb, and Chen Chen for their comradership. I also appreciate the support of Korean students, especially Yong-jin Kim, Yun-kyung Kwon, Jeong-ha Lee, Jun-hyung Chae, Jae-mahn Shim, Hye-young You, Kyung-min Lee, and Heang-jin Park. And I want to thank Anne Ch’ien, whose professionalism in administration enabled me to focus on writing without worrying about paper work. My training as an anthropologist is greatly indebted to my teachers at Seoul National University. Kwang-ok Kim, as my MA thesis advisor, has continued to advise me through my doctoral research in China. Sang-bok Han, Mun-woong Lee, Kyung-soo Chun, Han-sok Wang, Myoung-seok Oh, and Ik-joo Hwang have been valuable examples for me not only as a rigorous ethnographer, but also as an honest scholar. My work is grounded on the literature that my senior scholars had already contributed to Chinese studies in Korea. Among them, I thank Soo-hyun Jang, Han-sun Yang, Jong-ho Jeong, Ho-jun Chang, Jeong-ah Chang, Eung-chel Lee, Hyeon- jung Lee, and Mun-young Cho. I also thank Hye-sook Sohn from the English Literature Department for sharing her critical but compassionate perspective of humanity. The community of Korean colleagues has always been an academic home for me where we could share field stories, theories, rumors, food, and drinks. My thanks to Jee-hwan, Woo-jin, Ki-yeon, Anna, Jun-hong, Chang-hyun, Woo-jong, Eun-jeong, Heon-mok, and Seon-hwa. I also thank the members of Kukjeyon Circle; among them, Myung-koo, Sun-il, Jung-hwan, Je-min, Jong-hak, and Yong-il. I am especially thankful to Danielle Flam, David Kim, and Christopher Sparks for their meticulous editing and intellectual friendship. ! iii! My research in China would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Chinese villagers who remain anonymous in this dissertation. I truly appreciate the warm hospitality that they showed to a foreign researcher who visited their village without being invited. I also thank the faculty at the East Asia Research Institute of Yantai University, Hong- hui Hwang at Ludong University, Shao-xiong Zheng at the Chinese Institute of Social Sciences, and Fiona Sun at La Revue du Vin de France for connecting me with local networks both in Yantai and Beijing. For the financial support of my dissertation research, I appreciate the National Sciences Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the University of Chicago’s Center for East Asian Studies, Beijing Center, and Division of Social Sciences. My enrollment at the University of Chicago was possible with the generous support of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS). Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to my family who trusted and supported me through the arduous process of my doctoral study; Hee-jung Kim, Young-ja Ki, Yu-mi Kim, Go-woon Kim, Yeon-taek Kim, Chris Truter, Ye-rim Kim, Woo-jin Kim, Tiaan Kim Truter, Anna Kim Truter, and Jeong-eun Lee. I dedicate this dissertation to my late grandmother who was also a good friend in my youth. ! iv! Preface It was in 2004 when I began to be interested in Chinese wines. At that time, I was conducting research in Yantai, Shandong Province for my master’s thesis on trade between Korean and China carried out by overseas Chinese. On a misty winter day, I was heading for an interview on a bus running along the shore. Around a corner of the road, I came across a sign in English of ‘the Changyu Wine Museum’ out the foggy window. Passing it by, I felt as if I saw a misplaced illusion. At that time, wine and China sounded almost like an oxymoron to me, as it still does to many of my American friends whenever I introduce my research topic to them. When I visited the museum in a few days, it seemed more mysterious and even secretive with two security guards standing at the gate. Although the guards did not stop me, just giving a cold stare at me, I was not sure whether I was allowed to enter the main building. It was a grey government building, and did not seem like a tourist attraction, not even for a foreign visitor. As I took the courage to approach the entrance, someone ran out of an annex, yelling “guan men le!” meaning “closed.” Since then, several questions began to arise about not only the wine museum, but more broadly about wine in China; how could a wine museum have been established in a small city whose bustling center was made of dime stores around the shabby railway station? If wine has continued to be produced in China, how could it withstand economic austerity and rejection of Western culture during the socialist past? Most of all, who could produce wine grapes in China, which, in the Western world, are assumed to be produced by experienced vintners with the accumulated knowledge of local soil and terroir. These questions remained unanswered for five years. ! v! As I came back to Yantai for my pre-dissertation research in 2009, the city had undergone a complete transformation just in five years. The railway station was renovated on a grandiose scale, and the small stores were replaced by magnificent malls and department stores. The Changyu Wine Museum was also refurbished with a new brilliant façade that was more welcoming. This time, a professor at Yantai University whom I had met in Beijing introduced me to the museum’s director, who guided me through the museum. It displayed the glorious history of Changyu, the country’s first modern wine company, which had been established in 1892. Stepping into the basement, I was stunned to see the oldest wine cellar in Asia, storing 600 oak barrels that were taller than six feet. At the end of a short tour, I was led to the tasting room and served with a glass of Changyu’s red wine that tasted mediocre at best. Despite the director’s kind explanation, the museum seemed to be concealing more than revealing the reality of Chinese wines. My entry to the museum was like opening the Pandora box of China’s wine industry, and also the beginning of a prolonged period of research for my dissertation. My interest in wine started to develop back in 1998 when I participated in a student volunteer program for an organic farm in Bergerac in Southern France. After working hard every day, my host farmer and I would share one or two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon that were supplied by a local winery. In the beginning, it tasted merely sour to me, novice wine drinker as I was, but gradually its pungent and crisp flavor began to sooth my palate while easing the pain of my fatigued muscles. Since I came back to Korea, wine consumption had rapidly widespread as the modus vivendi for middle-class consumers. Although I could not afford to join the growing wine community in Seoul, wine remained to me as a window to a different world and its people, and also as an object of series of questions: why do its producers and consumers tend to imbue the commodity of wine with their emotion, passion, and inspiration? How could wine growers be ! vi! distinguished from producers of other agricultural products in regard to their experience and knowledge of soil and climate? What constitutes the authority of those who determine the quality and value of wine? What creates the unique power of wine that conjures up a variety of imaginaries for its consumers? These questions have not been fully answered through my project, but did attract me to rural villages in Shandong Province that produced wine grapes.