China’s ‘Tibetan’ Frontiers Inner Asia Book Series

Edited by David Sneath Caroline Humphrey Uradyn E. Bulag

VOLUME 6

Th e titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/ias China’s ‘Tibetan’ Frontiers

Sharing the Contested Ground

by Beth Meriam

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012 Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meriam, Beth. China’s “Tibetan” frontiers : sharing the contested ground / by Beth Meriam. p. cm.–(Inner Asia series. vol.9) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-906876-30-2 ISBN-10: 1-906876-30-4 1. Ethnology–China–Yushu Zangzu Zizhizhou . 2. Yushu Zangzu Zizhizhou (China)–Social conditions. 3. Yushu Zangzu Zizhizhou (China)–Ethnic relations. 4. Yushu Zangzu Zizhizhou (China)–Politics and government. I. Title. II. Series.

GN635.C5M47 2011 306.0951–dc23 2011031358

ISBN 978 19 06 87630 2

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, Th e Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly toTh e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. In memory of my grandparents ~ George and Mary Dent ~ With love

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... ix List of Figures ...... xi A Note on Transliteration and Transcription ...... xiii List of Abbreviations ...... xv Maps and Plans ...... xvii Preface ...... xxi

Introduction: Opening Vistas, Bordering Spaces ...... 1 I. Reclassifi ed Societies ...... 55 II. Stressing Development ...... 82 III. Cultivating Nationalities ...... 116 IV. Civilizing Culture ...... 148 V. Empowering Locales ...... 179 VI. Other Modernities ...... 212 VII. Revisualizing Nationalities ...... 244 Conclusion: Common Ground ...... 276 Appendix One: Chronology of China’s Reform Era ...... 299 Appendix Two: Glossary of Principal Political Terms ...... 301 References ...... 303 Index ...... 321

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am especially grateful to the staff and students at Trinde County Nationalities Middle School Number One for making this research possible and for contributing so much to it. Special gratitude goes to the two Headmasters, my three literary and local dialect language teach- ers, to my friends and all thirty-seven Gao Yi, Yi Ban English option students in the 2003–4 class. Th anks to the directors of the NGO who arranged my Yushu placement, and Dr Stuart in Xining for his help with contacts and sources. Th e following people were gift ed and gen- erous translators in the creation of this book: Xiao Li, Jamji, Tenzin Jamtsho, Dawa Khandro, Nyizong, Palden Tashi, Jayang Drolma, Ye Lianwen, Xiao Guo, Tashi Tsering, Jesse Isom and Rebecca Schulz. In the UK and elsewhere, I am extremely grateful to Dr David Sneath (Cambridge) for his unstinting support and perspicacious guidance throughout his time as my doctoral supervisor. Also, I appreciate Dr Martin Mills’ (Aberdeen) insightful comments and suggestions in his capacity as a regional adviser. Th is project benefi ted from the assis- tance of Drs Hildegard Diemberger (Cambridge) and Robert Barnett (Columbia) during its inception. Professor Alan Macfarlane and Drs Charles Ramble (Oxford), Jill Sudbury (Oxford) and Richard White- cross (Edinburgh) provided valuable feedback and knowledge on later draft s of this work, which has been highly benefi cial. Th anks to Jon Aldridge at Passages for creating the national and regional maps that are included in this book. Th is research was made possible by funding from the Economic and Social Research Council of the United Kingdom. Many thanks also go to Trinity Hall for their fi nancial support of this research. I am immensely grateful to my family and friends for all the help and encouragement they have given in the course of bringing this book into being.

~Tsering!~

LIST OF FIGURES

1&2 Pastoralist homesteads and valleys, Trinde County ..... 7

3 View of Trinde town ...... 9

4&5 Seasonal views of Trinde School ...... 16

6 Physically deconstructing and reconstructing Trinde ...... 85

7 Stylizing nationality arts ...... 140

8 Great Signifi cance Symbol ...... 169

9 Lhabab (‘gods descend’) layout ...... 181

10 Promoting uncontaminated nationality China ...... 201

11 Inter-national dress ...... 208

12&13 Propagandizing the plateau ...... 222

14 Autoethnographic festivities ...... 247

15 Celebrating Trinde ...... 248

16&17 Trinde Revolutionary Martyrs’ Festival ...... 278

All photographs are the author’s own.

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND TRANSCRIPTION

Trinde speech (Tr. Trindekey) is part of the bi-tonal forms of northeastern Kham dialect (one of three varieties of Kham speech) spoken through- out Yushu, and is marked throughout as (Tr.). Kham speech is one of the principal dialects of Tibetan, which is part of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Vernacular Tibetan forms are called ‘common speech’ (Tr. khakey or phalkey), which contrasts with the ‘respectful speech’ (Tr. gutshig or jeysa) used to speak or refer to religious practitioners. Th e ‘literary-language’ (Tr. yigi) is used in scriptures and classical works. Local dialects are divided into the ‘valley speech’ (Tr. yukey or rongkey) of agriculturalist town dwellers and ‘pastoralist speech’ (Tr. drokey) of plateau dwellers. In this book, Trinde Town speech has been given approximate phonetic renderings using a simplifi ed version of Hasler’s (1999) International Pho- netic Alphabet based Derge (Kham dialect) linguistic analysis. Trinde speech contains long nasal vowels (marked õ, and so on), which involve an integral nasal ng sound. Closed vowels are marked ö (which is pronounced akin to er in ‘her’). Trinde speech’s frequent unvoiced glottal stops are marked q. Literary-language equivalents (marked T.) have been included in the absence of any spoken equivalent, or when citing texts or ‘religious lan- guage’ (Tr. chökey). Th is text is transliterated as per Wylie (1959). Accord- ing to Goldstein, Shelling and Surkhang (2001), many local written and regionally published words are ‘misspelled’. Sanskrit terms are marked (S.). Putonghua (lit. ‘common speech’) is a standard form of Manda- rin (M. Hanyu) spoken across China. Th is form is transcribed as per the pinyin system of romanization. Th ese terms are marked (M.).1 In Yushu, people speak the Qinghai dialect form of Mandarin (M. Qin- ghaihua), which contains Turkic/Altaic infl uences. In the translations given below, the term that is most in use in Yushu generally appears fi rst in the parentheses. Further details on language (including notes on dia- lect, transliteration and transcription) are included in the Introduction, which forms part of a more in-depth discussion of the complex issue of language in local and research terms in this region of China.

1 Th e various dialects of Hanyu (which means ‘Han language’, or M. Beifanghua) are what most foreigners call ‘Mandarin’. Putonghua is the state-promoted ‘common- language’ based on Beifanghua (see Guldin 1994: 142).

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CCP Chinese Communist Party ETP English Training Programme NCR New Course Reform NGO Non-Governmental Organization PLA People’s Liberation Army PRC People’s Republic of China SARS Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (T)AP (Tibetan) Autonomous Prefecture (T)AR (Tibetan) Autonomous Region VCD Video Compact Disc

MAPS AND PLANS

Map of Qinghai within China xviii maps and plans

Map of Yushu within Qinghai

Map of Yushu Autonomous Prefecture maps and plans xix Pastoralists’ Temporary Encampments Pool Fenced Agricultural Land KEY Outline Map of Trinde County Town County Trinde of Map Outline Revolutionary Matyrs Revolutionary Cenotaph Spring Shrine Circumambulation Site Residential Area Phakpa Shrine ‘Guardian of the Soil’ Cairn White Stupa Newly-Planted Saplings Rubbish Dump xx maps and plans W C Old Staff Accommodation Staff Offices Old Teaching Building Old Teaching Saplings Book/Food Storerooms Book/Food Dormitory Offices (New) Girls’ (New) Girls’ School Directors’ School Directors’ E n t r y Head- master Rota- Room Kiosk Office New Teaching Building New Teaching Saplings Doctor New Staff Accommodation New Staff Library Workshops Room Meeting Trinde School Layout Trinde Kiosk Boiler Room (Old) Boys’ Dormitories Boys’ (Old) Old Staff Accommodation Old Staff Accommodation Old Staff Accommodation Old Staff

W C

Well Kitchen Canteen

l e V r t a a e e e n g d b G Staff Canteen Students’ PREFACE

Th is book explores the shift ing political rationales and cultural practices in contemporary Trinde, a remote, nomadic and agricultural county in Yushu Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province in the far west of the People’s Republic of China. In the 1950s, Yushu was designated as an ‘autonomous’ prefecture within a modern, socialist ‘multi-ethnic nation’. Th e last fi ft y years in Trinde have involved the categorization of all local people in terms of Marxist ‘class’ categories, various eff orts towards ‘development’, the classifi cation of most local people as being of the ‘Tibetan nationality’, the outright prohibition then partial sanc- tioning and increasing (though tenuous) endorsement of many local practices, debates over appropriate forms of ‘modernity’, and an expo- nential growth in the availability and visibility of televisual media. Th e post-1978 period of social and economic ‘reform and opening up’ (M. gaige kaifeng) in China has involved a limited devolution of power, the localization of fi scal responsibilities and a relaxation of many ‘cul- tural’ and some ‘religious’ prohibitions. By then, however, many aspects of society had undergone far-reaching alterations through the upheav- als of the Maoist revolutionary era (1966–1976). In empirical terms, Trinde history and society remain poorly understood outside the region due to the County’s remote geo- graphical location, undistinguished historical standing and extensive bureaucratic restrictions. Few textual references have been written about the area, and the Prefecture was opened to foreigners only in 2002. Th is is the fi rst foreign academic research to be completed on Trinde County, and the fi rst social science doctoral work to be under- taken in Yushu Prefecture, which covers an area signifi cantly larger than Great Britain. Th is ethnographic work emphasizes how contemporary Trinde can- not be understood without comprehending a wide range of complex political, social and economic specifi cities within and between politi- cal eras. It stresses the critical importance of analysing the complex tensions between local forms of identifi cation and belonging, regional representations, shift ing global political forces, intergenerational xxii preface specifi cities and class histories. Furthermore, the book highlights how, although geographically remote, apparently ‘outlying’ nation- ality areas such as Trinde are actually intimately bound up with, and have ramifi cations for, China’s nation-state politics and others within that nation-state, and cannot be understood without primary reference to that politics. INTRODUCTION

OPENING VISTAS, BORDERING SPACES

Th e opened Chengduo [Tr. Trinde] County, the developing Chengduo County, are welcoming friends … from mainland and overseas toward here for vacation, tour, investment and business. Let us enjoy the splendid time together! —Guide to Investment in Chengduo (Song 2001: 1)

Th is book is set in Yushu, a remote autonomous prefecture in Qing- hai Province, in the far west of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In the recent past, immense changes have been wrought across this region: personally, politically, economically, socially and culturally. Essentially, the book probes people’s varying experiences of these multi-level global, national, regional, cultural and local shift s, with particular reference to themes of identity, identifi cation and belong- ing. It does this by tracing these themes with regard to the genesis, dispersal, uptake and reformation of discourses of: class, develop- ment, nation/nationality, culture, ritual, modernity and media/visual cultural arts. While the book attends to multiple levels of analysis, it is investi- gated throughout through the lens of people’s daily lives in contempo- rary Trinde. Two intertwined themes—that of identity (Who am I?) and belonging (Where, and to which social bodies, do I belong?)—are salient throughout. Use of the idiom of identifi cation (rather than the more static concept of identity) highlights how local people’s under- standings are not fi xed, and instead involve dynamic, contextual, tem- poral and, in some senses, creative and generative processes. Th e fi rst half of this book investigates the changing resonance of idioms of identifi cation as bases for social inclusion and political mobilization. Th e ethnography of this section highlights how contem- porary expressions of belonging and diff erence are not categorically ‘new’ phenomena, and nor are they wholesale or partial resurgences of inert historical forms. Instead they are dynamic, innovative reform era processes that are being expressed through idioms like ‘wealth’, 2 introduction

‘class’, ‘development’, ‘nationality’ and ‘civilizing culture’. Th is ethnog- raphy also indicates signifi cant developments within what is called the ‘reform era’1 To elaborate briefl y the fi rst chapter, focusing on ‘class’ discourses, basically asks: Who am I? in relation to China’s revolutionary era class rubrics, and: To which social circles do I believe I belong on that basis? In the chapter on development, the question becomes: Where am I in the ladder of social progress? Where are we in that social ordering? In this case, ‘we’ may refer to any existing frame of social reference, for example: to Trinde School, to the prefectural administrative unit of Yushu, to the locality of Trinde or to people categorized as being of the ‘Tibetan’ nationality in the province of Qinghai. Th e chapter on nationality asks: What does it mean to be categorized as a ‘national- ity subject’ in China’s contemporary body-politic? Who ‘feels Tibetan’, and what actions become available, or are considered necessary, on that basis? Th is chapter also considers: Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we Tibetans’? Who identifi es with this idiom, when, why and how? What other con- cepts of identity/identifi cation and belonging have simultaneous social currency in contemporary Trinde? Focusing on and deepening similar themes to the previous chapter, the discussion on ‘civilizing culture’ investigates the place of learning in people’s understanding of social belonging: Where does my personal piece of the social puzzle fi t vis-à-vis my state-administered schooling/ familial learning/knowledge of religious matters? In certain circles and contexts, the identifi cation question may be mixed with considerations relevant for other idioms, for example: Where do I fi t in China’s/the world’s ranking of ‘advancement’ based on my lowly/elevated level of cultural/modern knowledge? Th e process of questioning is only loosely emulated here for academic purposes, and does not faithfully reproduce how this enquiry process actually happens. In practice, the process is mostly pre- conscious, and is oft en not explicable by most people. Exceptions to this prevailing situation oft en include: NGO workers, religious practitioners, stu- dents schooled in ‘consciously cultural’ Xining English Training Pro- grammes, teachers with higher learning grounded in Tibetan cultural sciences (for example, ‘Tibetan’ literature and writing), students of the aforementioned teachers and local scholars (who are sometimes are

1 Th e term is used here as a temporal indicator, while remaining aware of the many changes throughout this period. opening vistas, bordering spaces 3 non-monastic incarnate lamas). Th ese sets of people are generally those who express notions of what they believe it ‘means to be Tibetan’ and ‘what Tibetan culture is’. Th e second half of the book explores how key social concepts are elaborated in the contexts of ‘ritual practice’, ‘modernity’ and ‘media’. Th e chapters underscore the intertwining and fusion of theoretically distinct domains like sacred/secular, modernity/tradition and popu- lar/high culture. Th ese sections highlight how people’s involvement with offi cially endorsed policies of modernizing development does not imply straightforward submission to, or inculcation by, an all- encompassing, monolithic ‘state’. Instead, projects are subject to dispa- rate political forces and a range of mediating social infl uences, which allow for popular and administrative reinterpretation. Some projects involve divergent metaphors of ‘civilizing culture’, innovative local alli- ances and reconfi gured ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ depictions. Th e fi nal chapters (Seven and Eight—the fi nal chapter also being the Conclu- sion) highlight how, once integrated into televisual and textual media domains, concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘history’, ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ are fair game for a wide range of social players. In terms of identity, identifi cation and belonging, the questioning for ritual practice gravitates around: Who am I in relation to diff erent attitudes towards existential (spiritual/religious) advancement? And do I consider these diff ering attitudes to be mutually exclusive or not? In terms of modernity, for all three predominant social positions broadly taken vis-à-vis this idiom (namely, conservative modernists/traditional- ists, moderate/selective modernists and radical modernists) the single question underlying all of them concerns the relative value given to: Who are we now? What, if anything, is wrong with that? From where do we take what we believe is lacking? As with the development discussion, this chapter also includes a strong temporal element. With modernity, this involves projecting imaginations of belonging and identifi cation into the future, and engaging in specifi c activities in the present on that basis. Th is generates questions such as: What future do we want to create on the basis of who I believe we are now? Which society do I imagine ‘we’ should form a part of in the future? Th e chapter involves various com- pelling sub-themes that cut across identity and belonging, such as: Who would ‘we’ become if we integrate ‘too many’ elements from ‘outside’? Th e fi nal chapter, focusing on media, concentrates on the increas- ing prevalence of digital and visual cultures as new, emergent spaces of identifi cation and belonging. Specifi c issues involve whether, and to 4 introduction what degree, I (as the audience/participant/creator/scribe/photogra- pher/actor) feel personally and socially identifi ed with this visual repre- sentation of my lived reality, and under what circumstances? More than any other chapter, the media discussion highlights the creative altera- tion of diverse social and nationality idioms of belonging and identifi - cation in practice. It underlines how symbols and symbolism in artistic genres create an interpretive leeway that expands the potential sphere of social identifi cation. It also underscores how music, in contrast to any of the other idioms and practices, opens a unique space for com- munal participation—without determining what the specifi c meaning or form of identifi cation and belonging should be. In this way, many of the popular cultural resources traditional to this region (that are now adapted to a modern and technologized context), are proving power- ful elements of contemporary social coherence. Highly popular, par- ticularly among younger generations, these modifi ed song and dance formats form a signifi cant link between the prior artistic practices that are important to older generations, and younger people’s present actu- alities, especially in communal and festive settings. In Trinde, as elsewhere, offi cial, governmental concepts such as ‘nationality’, ‘culture’ and ‘civility’ are potent but disputed idioms. Th ese modalities are linked to political discourses, which are consolidated through administrative procedures and academic disciplines. Far from being unitary, discourses are shaped through their association with exile, international, non-governmental organization (NGO), youth, Party-state, educational, monastic, local-cadre and media perspectives and infl uences. ‘Nationality’ and ‘culture’ are not instruments or prod- ucts of power. Instead, they are powerful idioms circulating through specifi c political strategies as a response to particular governmental challenges and goals at any given time. Th e chapters that follow trace how various social idioms are accentu- ated, suppressed or left undeveloped at particular political moments, how offi cial and local concepts are interpreted in varying social situa- tions by diff erent people, and how new social identifi cations are being assembled and reworked by people themselves (a conceptual-political chapter overview analyzing these themes is included below). Close investigation of local contexts highlights three pervasive insights into contemporary sociality in Trinde, namely that: there is no ‘natural’ tra- ditional ‘Tibetan culture’ but a contested process of making one, that there is no ‘real’ versus ‘representation’ distinction but the power of rep- resentations, and that there is no monolithic alien ‘Chinese state’ versus opening vistas, bordering spaces 5 innocent ‘local Tibetan’ distinction but a continuous process of mutual entanglement.2 To give a brief physical and geographical overview, Qinghai’s pre- dominantly plateau environment has an average altitude of over three thousand metres above sea level, spans over a total area of 720,000 square kilometers and constitutes some of China’s most inhospitable territory. Winter temperatures of –35°C are not uncommon. In recent years, natural disasters, including: blizzards, –45°C temperatures, droughts and fl ash fl ooding have destroyed livestock and other local income bases. Qing- hai is popularly known as an economically underdeveloped, ‘backward’ (Tr. jiluq, M. luohou) province with numerous salt swamps, disciplin- ary institutions (including labour reform camps, detention centres and drug addict rehabilitation centres, see Seymour and Anderson 1998: 154), and bases for nuclear testing. Ninety-nine percent of Qinghai is designated as being ‘autonomous’ zones: namely, fi ve ‘Tibetan Autono- mous Prefectures’ (M. Zangzu zizhizhou, abbreviated to TAP) and one ‘Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.’ Qinghai’s capital, Xining Shi, does not have ‘autonomous’ status. Yushu is situated at the intersection of Qinghai, Sichuan, the Tibet Autonomous Region and Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and is designated as a ‘Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’.3 Th e Prefecture covers an area of 267,000 square kilometres (to give a comparison, Great Britain is 229,957 square kilometres), including Tanggula Xiang (administered by Golmud) and Kekexili National Park. Th is mountainous region lies between four and fi ve thousand metres above sea level, and constitutes one of China’s poorest and most isolated areas. Until recently, Yushu was only connected to Xining by a dirt road and, later, a potholed highway. Ten years ago, trips from Yushu to Xining took two days. Th e prefec- tural population is 253,000, and the population density is 1.2 people per square kilometre. Provincial statistics list 219,336 local people and 7,186 incomers (Marshall and Cooke 1997: 2360). In Yushu Prefecture as a whole, the human population is approximately 263,040, while livestock

2 Nowadays, the idea of a ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ ‘Tibetan culture’ is common among educated local people. Th is thinking forms an important part of the Exile Government’s educational and other policies and is also present in some foreign academic literature. Th ere is also a tendency in some academic studies of socialist contexts to distinguish the ‘real’ (or authentic) from ‘representation’ (for example, see Verdery 1996). Additionally, exile and other foreign representations of this region of China have sometimes assumed that a ‘secular Chinese state’ can be separated from ‘local, religious Tibetan’ society. 3 Th e ridge-and-gorge lands of Kham are now divided between Sichuan (sixteen coun- ties), Yunnan (three counties), Qinghai (six counties) and TAR (twenty-fi ve counties). 6 introduction numbers around 4,608,800. In 1990, seventy-eight percent of the local population was classifi ed as non-literate, a fi gure that rises to ninety- two percent among women (the national average in China is seventeen percent). Yushu comprises twenty-seven percent of Qinghai Province and, as a county and prefecture capital, has a two-tier administrative system. Yushu is the only ‘Kham-dialect’ (Tr. khamkey) area in the pre- dominantly Amdo-dialect province of Qinghai. Most of Yushu’s monas- tic institutions are Sakya or, secondly, Kagyupa sect. Th e eponymous county town is also known as Jyegundo (meaning ‘place for nine kinds of happiness’ or ‘convergence of all qualities’), Jyegu, Kyegudo and Gawa (M. Jiegu, Go.gdung mGu.grags rDo.rje and Meng 1991: 15). Th roughout its history, Yushu has included a variety of sects and political and economic allegiances that do not follow any simple, bounded territorial apportionment. Previously, there were more local constituencies than the offi cial number of divisions, suggesting mul- tiple and intersecting loyalties. In the past, as is still the case today, the system of land tenure and political authority was diverse and overlapping, and included religious, economic and political links, for example with the Dalai Lama, the Panchen Lama and the Nangchen king. Some areas of Kham and Amdo were tributaries, but not protec- torates, of the Dalai Lama, and maintained indirect linkages through religious affi liations that had underlying political signifi cance (Fair- bank 1978: 92). Yushu paid taxes to the Lhasa government until the twentieth century (Gruschke 2001: 9, see also Rock 1956: 15–16).

Contextual Overview

Th e ethnography of this book focuses on Trinde (M. Chengduo), the smallest of the six counties in Yushu (see Figures 1 and 2).4 Trinde County covers an area of 15,300 square kilometres (of which eighty-four percent is useable grassland), and has an average altitude of nearly 4,500 metres above sea level (Song 2001: 3). Average temperatures range from –17°C in January to 6°C in July. Th e County population of 39,106 people is eighty-nine percent rural and has a population density of 2.4 people per square kilometre. Local communities can be classifi ed as pure pas- toralists or agro-pastoralists, depending on the relative balance of live- stock to crop production (land use changes according to altitude). In 1990, the main livelihood was herding (fi ft y-eight percent), followed

4 Th e other counties are: Yushu (M. Yushu), Nangchen (M. Nangqian), Dzatö (M. Zaduo), Drito (M. Zhiduo) and Chumarleb (M. Qumalai). opening vistas, bordering spaces 7 by farming (twenty-eight percent) and other work (fourteen percent). Over ninety-fi ve percent of the population is classifi ed as being eth- nically ‘Tibetan’. Th e County is composed of eight sub-administrative units (M. xiang), each with its respective township.

Figure 1. Pastoralist winter homes, Trinde

Figure 2. Reconstructed white stupa, Trinde valley 8 introduction

Trinde’s county town is situated 750 kilometres from Xining, a jour- ney that takes from seventeen to thirty-fi ve hours by public bus. In 2003, the Xining to Jyegu highway was paved, cutting journey times by a quarter. Yushu airport is awaiting fi nal approval (Qian 2002/2003: 6). Th e town, which lies at an altitude of 4,415 metres above sea level, is neither a municipality nor entirely rural, but is one of a multitude of small, expanding outlying county towns and district townships on the plateau (see Figure 3 and Trinde town map). Th e settlement is actu- ally an agglomeration of three villages (Tr. trongpa), namely: Druchung (M. Zhujiu), Dawa (M. Dawa) and Kangoo (M. Kangan). Kangoo is the highest village. Th is ribbon-shaped settlement follows the curve of the surrounding mountains. Kangoo runs directly into Druchung. Th is village occupies the most level and wide expanse of settled land, and is located in between Kangoo and Dawa. Th e most low-lying village is Dawa (a fuller description of the villages follows below). Each village has a particular social composition (for a general description, see Diemberger 2002: 35), diff erent mountaintop pro- tective shrines for each village god (Tr. yulha) each with their distinct propitiation days, separate stupas (Tr. chöden) and a specifi c elected village leader or ‘mayor’ (Tr. gotri, M. cunzhang).5 Agricultural fi elds and pastoralist valleys surround the village cluster. Located at 3,890 metres above sea level, it is not uncommon (as happened in 2003) for snow to fall intermittently until the end of June and start again at the beginning of September. In terms of the regional political structure, the Chinese Communist Party formulates policies, supervises government and is described by local people as having ‘real power’. Party leaders are oft en from inner China, though some are local. Th e People’s Government implements Party policies via a system of bureaux, for example those of education, health and animal husbandry. Most government leaders (over sev- enty-fi ve at the prefecture cadre level) are local people, due to China’s ‘regional autonomy’ ruling (Go.gdung mGu.grags rDo.rje and Meng Wei 1991: 5). At the national level, the Party is always more powerful than the governmental equivalent. At this level of the adminstra- tion, whether the party or government is most powerful depends on the individual leader at a given time. Despite the high degree of local

5 People’s fi rst identifi cation is with their ‘household group’ (Tr. chumtsong), and secondly with their village. opening vistas, bordering spaces 9

Figure 3. Trinde County Town looking towards Dõ Tri Monastery, and Druchung and Dawa villages from the Middle School in Kangoo)

representatives in its offi ces, the entire governmental administration is frequently referred to as being ‘Chinese’ (see also Pirie 2005b). At the county level, Trinde has an economic and political County Leader (M. xianzhang, Tr. dzongpön) who is part of the state-admin- istration. Th ere is also a county level Party Committee Secretary (M. sooji). Th is position is considered more powerful than the political County Leader. While Party Committee Secretaries are more likely to be incomers, County Leaders are usually local. Trinde’s County Gov- ernment is in Druchung. In line with the rest of the country, Trinde also has Village Committees, which are the lowest unit of governance in China. Some people say that Yushu has had forms of Village Com- mittee for centuries. Village Committees were suspended in 1958 fol- lowing the establishment of communes, but were re-established in the reform era. Households no longer have corvée labour obligations (Tr. tri) to a local lord. Th e leadership structures in this frontier agro-pastoralist region of Kham can be fruitfully compared to those among pastoralists in the adjacent region of Amdo (see Pirie 2008). In a critical study of state-local 10 introduction dynamics, Pirie (2005b) describes how, in spite of the disruption caused by collectivization and reform (whereby offi cial governmental struc- tures of the modern Chinese state have replaced the hereditary rulers, kings and monastic leaders who were the previous authorities in these areas), Amdo pastoralists have retained their prior forms of social orga- nization and many local cultural tendencies. Such phenomena include principles of revenge, customs of feuding and a continued reliance on senior lamas for mediation—despite the legal penalties imposed by the police for seeking such services. Pirie found that Amdo pastoralists resist offi cial, ‘centralized’ power by continuing feuding until appropri- ate arbitration has been undertaken on their own terms (ibid.). As in Trinde, Amdo’s pastoralist leaders are, nevertheless, concerned with the maintenance of order and, as such, sometimes turn to leaders within the offi cial administration to supplement their infl uence. Th roughout the two areas, these factors demonstrate the continuity of prior forms within the structure of governance now imposed by the contemporary Chinese nation-state. Th e continuance of such forms thereby extends a troubled relationship, which has long characterized this region, into the modern world (ibid.).

Fieldsite and Methodological Overview

Th is book is primarily a school-based study focusing on Trinde town (M. Chengduo) in the southeast of Yushu ‘Autonomous Prefecture’ (AP) in Qinghai. Th e study examines the aspirations, activities and infl uences of a small, educated class of the local population (and, espe- cially, the leaders of the County Middle School) in a remote town that is now offi cially recognized as being a ‘Tibetan nationality’ settlement. Th ese young teachers, NGO directors and other leaders are grappling with new ideas and successive—and sometimes contradictory—waves of ideology emanating from, and beyond, China’s Party-state. Th e dis- courses and values of the Cultural Revolution have left legacies that are now being transformed by the modernizing agendas and envi- ronmental concerns of the current Chinese government. Th ese young local people are struggling to make sense of their life in the PRC, as the political, economic and cultural fabric of society rapidly shift s. While few in number and only loosely aligned as a social sector, these young leaders hold an important strategic position in local society. opening vistas, bordering spaces 11

In Trinde School, awareness of the value of ‘Tibetan culture’ as a distinct socio-political entity is spearheaded by a small nucleus of directors within the institution. Th ese leaders, who are mostly, but not exclusively, young men in their late twenties and early thirties, gained their education in the minority-related subjects (mainly Tibetan litera- ture) that became available via the political reforms of the 1980s. Other leaders that specialized in nominally ‘modern’ (or Western) scientifi c subjects also have a relatively advanced level of cultural knowledge. Th is knowledge is oft en accrued through leaders’ own eff orts and inter- ests in local history, language, traditions and cultural or ritual practices. Th e esteem traditionally granted to those with advanced learning credentials gives Trinde’s young, educated leaders signifi cant weight in evaluating and approving local political and cultural matters. Most specifi cally, these leaders exert a powerful infl uence on the outlook and orientation of subsequent generations. Th is is the case, most directly, with the students who are exposed to local leaders’ ideas in Trinde’s schools. Th e leaders who are involved in teaching are partly respon- sible for the increased presence of discourses of nationality identifi ca- tion and cultural belonging in Trinde’s classrooms, concepts that are communicated directly and indirectly, for example, through songs sung during work brigade activities, via culturally-oriented examination questions, by way of symbolic murals and in student-teacher conversa- tions. Th e life histories of these people, as well as their infl uence on and interactions with other leaders, power-holders and local populations are signifi cant in defi ning their current orientation and choices, which are highlighted at pertinent points throughout the book. In total, three periods of research were conducted between September 2001 and July 2004, which amounted to twenty-three months of fi eld- work. Th e fi rst period involved seven months in Lhasa, Tibet Auton- omous Region (TAR), undertaking language immersion and social orientation at Tibet University, and carrying out preliminary research with diverse sets of local people and incomers to the region. A second, fourteen-month phase of research was undertaken while teaching Eng- lish to a class of thirty-seven students, and all seventy-seven teaching staff , at Trinde County Nationalities Middle School Number One (2002 to 2003).6 A third, three-month phase of fi eldwork in mid–2004 focused on people from Yushu and Qinghai who are resident in the Provincial

6 ‘Trinde School’ refers throughout to this middle school. Other schools are identi- fi ed by name. 12 introduction capital of Xining, and included an intensive fi eldtrip to several areas of Yushu Prefecture. A teaching contract was arranged through a Yushu-based, non- governmental organization (NGO) with international links. Th e NGO’s director had connections among the leaders of several counties in Yushu Prefecture. Trinde authorities leapt at the chance to invite a for- eign teacher, and negotiated more actively and eff ectively than the offi - cials from the neighbouring counties. My placement was thus swift ly arranged through Yushu Public Security Bureau. Th e school-based placement aff orded immediate access to social relations that touched more or less every household in the town. It also offi cially legitimized my long-term presence in the area. My colleagues at the school were aware of my research goals. Th e school leaders regarded my anthro- pological and university status as a huge scoop. Th ese authorities are all Tibetan-language teachers who took my presence in their area as confi rmation that their nationality and regional ‘culture’ is worthy of high-level study. My school campus accommodation was assigned and obligatory. Th e County Education Bureau leaders and school authori- ties had decorated the room especially for ‘foreign guests’, and the décor captured these leaders’ ‘as seen on TV’ idea of a quintessential ‘modern’ room. My local associates and friends consisted of work unit employees (especially schoolteachers), school and university students, professional, skilled and unskilled townspeople (shopkeepers, home- makers and craft speople), non-governmental organization personnel, state-administration employees (for example, county cadres, Educa- tion Bureau employees and Yushu Prefecture’s Public Security Chief), monks (from Dõ Tri and Yushu monasteries and a Trinde hermit), returned exiles and former religious practitioners (who are now local scholars, NGO offi cers and school auxiliaries) and a few Yushu-based foreign development-agency staff . My work involved at least daily contact with a diverse class of thirty- seven English-option students. Th e students ranged from fi ft een to eighteen years old. Although the students were drawn from across the region, most were based in Trinde town. One student had an incomer father, but otherwise the students’ parents were local to the county. Aside from our daily classes, which were always lively and engaging and fi lled with songs, laughter and stories, I arranged social events such as trips to local sites and aft ernoon parties in my room. All these informal gatherings involved singing, local and disco dancing, ban- ter, discussions, a feast of commercially-produced biscuits served with opening vistas, bordering spaces 13 local milk tea and, by popular request, the taking of a group photo- graph. Th e parties were appreciated by all, and cemented my relation- ship with the students. Numerous students, teachers and local people passed by my room every day, to chat, to correct letters in English, to use the telephone, to debate local political and cultural issues, to pass on invitations, to borrow kitchen equipment, to bring gift s of local produce and to knock on my window and giggle, hoping for a chat with ‘the foreign teacher’. Networks of research contacts were formed by following the diverse leads and unceasing invitations that arrived from people in the town. Seemingly everyone knew my (local) name, and had heard that I was a teacher at Trinde School. Even in remote areas, nomads came up to ask if I was the ‘Trinde teacher from England’. A walk down any road in the county town produced calls of ‘teacher’ (M. laoshi) from children, a practice that remained popular throughout the entire research period. Many of my networks originated within the school and led to diverse informants, such as mountain hermits, plateau nomad families and the town’s tailor. Other contacts were made during conversations on long local and regional bus journeys, in neighbourhood shops, while collaboratively building the Headmaster’s new roof (with many other villagers from Druchung) or at one of the many community events. I spent extended periods with diff erent households every day, stayed with numerous families in townships and isolated rural homesteads in Nangchen, Dzatö, Yushu and Trinde, and visited pastoralist encamp- ments in remote plateau regions. Being a small and relatively stable population, these contacts were themselves interconnected by numer- ous intersecting kin and other relations. As Padre,~ a local teacher put it, ‘pastoralists’ relatives are like a net’. Relationships were, wherever pos- sible, kept ‘low density’ and ‘single-stranded’ (Boissevain 1974 cited in Yang 1994: 18) to minimize the risk of reprisals for research associates. Except for published sources and well-known historical or cultural fi g- ures who are not directly connected with this research, the names of the local and incomer people appearing in this ethnography have been changed. Most of the conversations were informal, and these conversa- tions yielded much richer data. Semi-structured interviews in school offi ces, in my room and in other people’s houses were also undertaken. Local people (especially those who are not close friends) oft en pres- ent offi cially acceptable versions of their experiences when questioned in a structured way. Th is tendency raises ethical-methodological 14 introduction questions.7 Some of the villagers thought it was ‘strange’ that I had come to live alone in Trinde as an unmarried woman. My Lhasa-clothing, well-regarded local name (Rinchen Khandro) and conspicuous atten- dance at a ‘gods descend’ ritual (see Chapter Five) led some of the older generation in Druchung village to conclude (mistakenly) that I must be a nun. Unlike most women teachers, I attended events where my male teaching associates were drinking, but refrained from drinking alcohol, smoking, gambling, playing cards, whistling (particularly at night), tap- ping men’s arms, backs or heads and disco-dancing, thus upholding locally acceptable ‘female’ behaviours. Together with local friends, monks, students and colleagues, I visited many of the regional monasteries, talked to practitioners from most of the ‘autonomous’ areas of this region, and investigated local conse- crated sites (including reconstructed springs, cairns, stupas, hermit- ages and sacred mani walls). Research involved attending numerous religious events, including calendrical rituals and festivals on recon- structed sacred sites. Some occasions were low-key, like the auspicious (fullmoon) evening I spent with boarding students doing clockwise ‘circumambulations’ (Tr. kora) around Trinde School. Th e work that follows is not an ethnography of the school, per se. Th is is because research focusing on a specifi c institution is limited by the presupposi- tion that, ‘the political can be “sited” in its characteristic contexts, that the political appears in the garb of institutions and their discourses’ (Navaro-Yashin 2002: 2–3). Th e post-Mao era of ‘reform and opening up’ (M. gaige kaifang) in Trinde led to the abolition of communes in 1982, permission to gener- ate cash incomes from trading, the rebuilding of monasteries from the early 1980s onwards, celebration of local festivals and the recommence- ment of monastic studies and religious rituals. Th e monks of each household’s hereditary monastery could again undertake ritual duties for that household, and its members were able to carry out labour and other assistance in return. Kangoo, the highest village, is composed of pastoralists from the plateau and incoming east Trinde agriculturalists. Th e Middle School is sited on the outskirts of Trinde (in Kangoo), in a higher, but more

7 When I asked Jayang to relate his life-story directly, he exclaimed, ‘My life-history is so simple! From [inscribes in the dust] one to six [years old] I was at home, six to fourteen I was a monk, fourteen to eighteen, school, eighteen to fi ft y-eight a teacher … and there you have it!’ Th e story contrasted with intricate and candid descriptions that Jayang had included as part of more lengthy and unrelated narratives. opening vistas, bordering spaces 15 peripheral, location than the town’s Dõ Tri monastery. Druchung, the largest settlement, is centrally located, and is predominantly agricul- turalist. Most Druchung households are linked to Dõ Tri monastery. Settled pastoralists from the adjoining valleys populate Dawa, the lowest and reputedly richest village. Th is village is associated with the prestigious Kazang monastery. In popular understanding, Trinde is not credited with an illustrious history, and is not situated on a principal trade route. Despite living in houses and being offi cially documented as ‘settled’ (in line with current governmental policies encouraging urbanization), students frequently describe themselves as ‘pastoralists’. Walking along the main street during daylight hours involves nego- tiating gaggles of students, erratically ridden motorbikes, huddles of trendily dressed monks and bevies of unkempt youths whose pool- playing spills onto the road. Bored, incomer storekeepers dart along the pavement in novelty furry slippers, or endlessly split and spit sun- fl ower seed hulls, which litter the pavements. On the main street there is an international telephone exchange, two small Video Compact Disc (VCD) outlets, a few steamed up restaurants serving standard inner China fare, a simple hotel, bookshop, computer bar, vegetable shops and basic ‘everything from soap to soy sauce’ general stores. Th e streets leading into the centre are dotted with clusters of older women, who sit for hours, sharing the occasional piece of news or commentary, while endlessly spinning their prayer wheels and revolving their prayer beads. At Trinde School, students and teachers share the large, scrubby compound with a horse, numerous black pigs, scabby dogs, a couple of goats and the odd stray yak. An ostentatious banner hanging across the entrance reads: ‘Your progress is my only inspiration.’ Th e subse- quent banner announces: ‘Comprehensively strengthen and deepen reform. Standardize management, and ruthlessly grasp quality’ (see Figures 4 and 5). A series of bells orchestrate the school day. Lessons commence at seven-thirty. Th e school day ends at seven-thirty at night for non-boarders, and nine-thirty for boarders. Th ere are no cleaners. Instead, student brigades spend two hours every Friday cleaning the entire school compound. Th e English classroom is emblazoned with Chinese-script posters urging students to: ‘Diligently study: seek truth, pioneer!’ (M. qinduo xuexi, qiushi kaikuo). Trinde Middle School has one Headmaster (M. xiaozhang) and two male Deputy Heads (M. fuxiaozhang). One of these heads handles scho- lastic matters, the other deals with logistics. Th e third tier of the admin- istration comprises a Teaching Director (M. jiaodao zhuren) and a 16 introduction

Figure 4. Trinde Middle School in winter

Figure 5. Trinde Middle School in summer opening vistas, bordering spaces 17

Students’ ‘Director (M. xuesheng zhuren). Th ere is a group of Supervisors (M. zhuguan jiaoshi) who register attendance and undertake disciplinary duties. Each class is assigned a Class Director (M. ban zhuren) from among the staff . Local men (frequently literary-language teachers in their mid-thirties) hold almost all the positions of authority. No incom- ing teachers hold signifi cant positions within the school administra- tion. Some teachers from inner China have worked in Trinde for over twenty years, which is oft en far longer than their local superiors. Th ere are many petty authority positions, with every duty requiring its own overseeing head. Th ere are seventy-two members of staff : fi ft y-three full-time teach- ers, eight administrators and twelve auxiliaries. All together there are fi ft y-one male and twenty-one female staff members (Zhiming Longzhu 2001: 1). Anyone at the school can reel off the ‘nationality’ (M. minzu) composition of the staff , which is listed as: ‘sixty Tibetans, eleven Han, one Hui and one Mongol.’8 Among the employees, twenty-two are Party members (M. dangyuan). Twenty of these ‘government-funded teach- ers’ (M. gongban jiaoshi) have a professional degree (M. zhuanke). Pema Gunga is listed as an advanced (or ‘honorary’) teacher (M. zhongjiao). Th e average age of teachers in Trinde is thirty-four years old. Th ere are 503 students, with slightly more men than women in attendance. Of these students, all but seven incomers are local. Four hundred and two students are Chinese Communist Youth League members (M. tuan yuan). Th ere are no bathing facilities or private toilets in the compound. All water for drinking and cleaning must be drawn from a well on the edge of the campus, two hundred metres away from the residences. Many teachers raise their families in the school’s dingy and dilapidated two-room quarters. Th e local diet is a combination of dried meat and toasted-barley fl our with butter for lunch, and meat-and-pasta broth in the evening. A bowl of sweetened yoghurt, edible roots and sultanas is a summer treat consumed on special occasions. Professional people keep abreast of global events through radio and television broadcasts. Local people’s conversations include exile and Lhasa scholars’ views, for example, about the region’s integration into the PRC. Exile nationalism provides a convenient organizing lan- guage of narratives, practices and metaphors that is selectively appro- priated in Yushu. Many Yushu people consider Western countries to

8 Minzu literally means ‘race-lineage’, and has a local equivalent of (Tr.) mirig, both of which mean ‘type of people’. 18 introduction

constitute good political models, an inclination that partly refl ects the Dalai Lama’s promotion of ‘democratic’ governance.9 Evoking ‘democracy’ (M. minzhu zhuyi) and ‘freedom’ (M. ziyou) is particu- larly common among political and institutional leaders (local teach- ers and NGO staff ), students and young professionals. eseTh idioms are invoked as political imaginaries, rather than signifying a set of concrete actualities. Many of Trinde’s teachers, especially those specializing in the nation- ality literary-language, think that exile communities in India are more culturally authentic than China-dwelling populations. Th is view fi ts with widespread exile and foreign perceptions about the debasing eff ects of the ‘Chinese state’ on ‘Tibetan culture’ (see Craig 1992: pas- sim), which is oft en conceived as a unilateral and oppressive process rather than being considered to include dialogic elements. Kasur Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama’s Special Representative in Washington, stated that, ‘Today Tibet lives, not within Tibet but outside Tibet. Everything that is Tibet—the culture, the religion, every aspect of Tibet lives out- side of Tibet’ (n.d. cited in Craig 1992: 322). Shakya (1994a: 6) also notes that, in studies of this region, there has been a ‘residual sense that there was nothing worthy of study in post–1950 Tibet, as if the apparent demise of traditional society rendered further studies value- less and uninteresting. Th is attitude appears to have been widespread amongst scholars in the Tibetan fi eld.’ Perceptions about the location of ‘authentic’ nationality society also infl uenced Pema, a literary-language teacher in Trinde. He decided to send his brother to India for a ‘real Tibetan education and way of life’, arguing that: I want the family to be together, but it is impossible for a China-educated person to become the person this area requires, given Yushu’s policies on Chinese language and politics. It is like when they [central policymakers] cross this river but they will not let us cross. It is necessary [for everyone] to cross the river. Th ey borrow our shoes to cross the river, but we are still standing here! Th ey bring in a policy to ‘teach with the local methodol- ogy’ but they do not support our own language. Th e necessities of life cre- ate this situation. What we drink, eat, wear, cars and motorcycles … all are imported. Yet all the areas of Yushu send their students away. Some send their students further than Beijing. You cannot make money here. Th ey have their own political goals …

9 Local people use the title Jalwa Rinpoche (T. rgyalba.rinpoche). Dalai Lama (a Mongolian-derived title) is used here, as this title is the one that is familiar to most readers. Rinpoche literally means ‘precious one’, and is used to address or describe rein- carnated lamas from this cultural area. opening vistas, bordering spaces 19

Not all people uncritically support the exile administration in India. Th ose with exile experience complain that it is dominated by TAR elites. Most urban dwelling educated locals are more or less bilingual in Trinde-speech and the Qinghai dialect of Mandarin. Many such local people mix up the two languages seamlessly within a given sentence (inserting Putonghua verbs and vocabulary into local-dialect struc- tures), or use Putonghua and the local dialect interchangeably, saying that speaking Putonghua is ‘the same as speaking their local dialect’. Some town-based local people are so accustomed to changing between languages that they occasionally spoke to me at length in Putonghua while believing they were speaking their local dialect. Frequently, peo- ple think that competency in Putonghua (Tr. Jakey) is good, though only if this skill is matched with a similar grasp of the nationality language. Locals generally argue that people should maintain a strict separation between Putonghua and Tibetan (Tr. Bökey). Many local people under forty years old cannot read or write their own literary-language fl u- ently. Non-professionals, for example shopkeepers and homemakers, oft en have a communicational profi ciency in Putonghua. Pastoralists speak a dialect that is esteemed through its similarity to the literary- language. Th is region has oft en been analysed by foreign scholars through the lens of Tibetan Buddhism and, as a result, centres of ‘expert’ scholar- ship such as Lhasa (TAR) Derge (Kham), Labrang (Gansu) and Reb- kong (Amdo) have been focal areas for foreign scholars (see Goldstein 2004, Shakya 1999, Stevenson 1999). Subsequently, the work of Van Spengen (2000), Epstein (2002), Huber (2002b) and Kapstein (2004) has highlighted the value of the historical-political perspective avail- able from the ‘margins of the margins’. Th e absence of a specifi c empha- sis on ‘religious’ themes in this book may seem odd to those used to regional studies works that almost always emphasize monastic and ritual contexts. However, the descriptions that follow present as accu- rate a depiction as possible of Trinde life, as I encountered it during fi eldwork. Moreover, research in this cultural area increasingly attends to a range of voices and social actors in increasingly diverse cultural and political contexts, and opens fascinating new perspectives on the dynamics of this important border region (notable examples include Fischer, Makley, Pirie and Yeh). Furthermore, as Swartz, Turner and Tuden (2002: 107) argue, regions and practices do not necessarily rep- resent ‘politics’ or ‘religion’, but may be analysed in nuanced ways, for example, in terms of how people relate with the supernatural, or how 20 introduction power diff erentials are formed. Mediating between diff erent perspec- tives gives a more comprehensive understanding of social practices. As Malkki points out, success (and good ethical practice) when undertaking fi eldwork in sensitive political contexts hinges ‘not so much on a determination to ferret out “the facts” as on a willingness to leave some stones unturned’ (1995: 49). Much of the fi eldwork for this book was undertaken through people’s orally related life-narratives (see, for example, Jigmé Namgyel 1998). Th ese ‘practices of remembrance’ act ‘like bridges between private remembrance and more shared forms of discourse’, and play a part in shaping the local ‘historical imagination’ (Humphrey 1998: xvi). A few interviews were declined indirectly, or by the person saying he or she was ‘busy’. Much of the best material was gathered through spontaneous, informal conversations and repartee in offi ces, shops, kitchens, minibuses, dormitories, the rota-room and while walking the local streets. Working with two written and spoken non Indo-European lan- guages (and several local dialects), is necessary to complete a study of this kind, and has remained a principal methodological consider- ation throughout. My language and cultural training in Lhasa involved signifi cant practice in speaking and understanding the Lhasa dialect and learning the literary-language to a basic standard. Th ese Lhasa- based studies were rendered largely useless when I arrived in Trinde, as the dialects are mutually incomprehensible, even for local literary- language teachers. No foreigners had studied the Trinde dialect previ- ously, and no language materials for the local dialect currently exist. My arrival in Trinde was accompanied by an immersive period of intense study and practice, which continued throughout my time in the region. I undertook the vast majority of exchanges, interviews and conver- sations included in this research in the local (Yushu and, to a lesser extent, Derge) speech. My prioritization of the local dialect inspired confi dence, trust and a degree of pride in local people. Learning Put- onghua words and phrases was important for understanding ‘modern’, political and technical terms. A signifi cant issue throughout this book is the inclusion of indigenous terms, whether local (to Trinde and Yushu), written Tibetan and / or Put- onghua (Mandarin). Local terms for offi cial concepts like ‘nationality’ are given in the languages that have currency in the local area. People also oft en ‘localize’ bureaucratic terms, a process that occurs, in part, through the infl uence of educated nationality leaders. Such localization (and, ironically, increased language switching and mixing), happen frequently opening vistas, bordering spaces 21 in educational and NGO environments, where there is a relatively high consciousness, debate and politicization about regional cultural issues. It is important to note that young leaders do not constitute an internally-coherent or bounded group. Th e most obvious point of social cleavage is between leaders of pastoralist and agricultural families. For example, during the Cultural Revolution, agricultural students taunted their pastoralist peers; a practice that the pastoralists attribute to the overall socialist strategy at the time. Th e very same peers now work as colleagues leading Trinde School, and is another way that the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s involves continuing ironies and stresses among cer- tain neighbours and villagers of this region. Th e former rivalry between such peers is sometimes only barely concealed, and is oft en communi- cated through practical and verbal ‘jokes’. On one occasion, the agricul- tural Teaching Director and the pastoralist Students’ Director, who had been childhood rivals, ended their joking by lobbing stones at each other in Trinde School’s playground, a mutually enacted ‘jousting’ that was accompanied by acerbic banter and ironic laughter. Th is set of leaders also cleaves diff erently under other social triggers and situations. For example, while undertaking a local rubbish clean-up campaign, a group of newly appointed county leaders passed by, stop- ping their large ‘all terrain’ jeeps to greet Trinde School leaders. I was ushered towards the group, which comprised four stout local leaders and an incomer deputy. Th e school leaders gave an embarrassingly adulatory account of my eff orts at the school, and the county leader responded by asking me whether I needed anything. Not wanting to appear greedy, and hoping to boost the footing of my school’s leaders, I said that the school had provided for all my needs. Aft er the county leaders had departed, the school leaders turned on me. Some chastised me for being rude, others tut- ted. One senior teacher, expressed exasperatedly, ‘When a leader asks you if you need something from them, you say: “Oh, yes please!”’ I explained that such a response would be inappropriate in Britain, but the teacher staunchly responded, ‘It’s not like that here. In the future, you should ask for money. Th e leader is not asking whether you need food or anything like that. Your class might need equipment: you can get good stuff from him!’ While the above example highlights division by administrative rank, some other points of diff erence are: region, gender, interest, age and social rank. In this book, people are identifi ed, wherever possible, using terms relating to kin, political orientation, fatherland, occupation or dwelling place rather than by nationality markers. Where relevant to the situation described, a distinction between ‘local’ people and incomers is made. Use 22 introduction of the term ‘local’ does not mean that people live in a circumscribed, local- ized bubble free of external infl uences, but is more accurate as a relative descriptive sign than alternatives, such as villagers, indigenous or rural. Offi cially-endorsed terms like ‘Tibetan’ (Tr. Bö/Börig, M. Zangzu) and Han (Tr. Ja, which literally means ‘Chinese’; M. Hanzu means ‘Han nation- ality’, though this term is employed infrequently among local people) appear only when these are the specifi c words that were used in a textual quote or personal statement. Following Bovingdon (2004: 149), the term for ‘nationality’ is occasionally left untranslated as (M.) minzu (meaning ‘race-lineage’) in the text below, to highlight the governmental heritage of this concept. Mirig is the equivalent local translation (lit. ‘people-type’). References to local quotations in the text below frequently use the present tense to avoid ‘freezing’ local people in a timeless or traditional world. In contrast to the orientation of this book, in local parlance, national- ity terms are invoked as real, tangible entities, as is evident in the issues arising when these concepts are combined. For example, Kazang, an NGO director with local and inner China parentage and experience in various overseas contexts, affi rms that he has ‘spent a long time struggling with my identity’ on account of his geographically diverse nationality status. In cases of incomer-local parentage, local people distinguish between a tolerated, if ambiguous, category of ‘Tibetan- Chinese’ (Tr. Bö Ja), which describes people profi cient in both cultural styles. People without this dual competency are described as ‘neither Chinese nor Tibetan’ (T. Ja ma Bö). Th is scorned state is also referred to as being ‘neither goat nor sheep’ (T. ra ma luk), which is an unde- sirable ‘category mistake’. In Trinde, there is no exact equivalent con- cept for the Western concept of ‘identity’ in the sense of a refl exively conceived community or atomistic self-perception. Th e nearest term Trinde English-option students supplied was ‘identifi cation card’ (M. shenfenzheng). ‘Self-knowledge’ (M. rongxi), a spoken Putonghua term that is familiar to students at the school, has a related meaning. Th is book provides an extended discussion of the local playing out of key political tropes as they are understood and interpreted by local leaders, and includes contextualized ethnographic examples of what people, and particularly leaders, ‘do’ with these idioms in daily life.10 Th ese concepts do not exist as archetypal, bounded forms that are stable across time and place. In fact, confusion oft en exists between social idioms and political tropes

10 As a complement, subsequent studies might foreground and add to the ethno- graphic detail presented here. opening vistas, bordering spaces 23 in practice, some of which is documented below. For example, few people can explain ‘autonomy’. Trinley, Trinde School’s Headmaster, emphasized vigorously that, ‘Autonomy just means that Yushu is not like Lanzhou and not like Beijing. Yushu is a nationalities place.’ Daiyak, a university-edu- cated teacher recalls reading about ‘nationality special characteristics’ (M. minzu tesi) in a humanities or politics textbook, but argues that, ‘Auton- omy and special characteristics are only defi nitions. No one knows what these words mean! Autonomy is just a name for the area.’ Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, guff awed when I asked him what autonomy means, merely exclaiming ‘Ach, those Chinese ideas … ’ Two of the central idioms of this book, namely ‘nationality’ and ‘nationalities’, can be conceived as subsets within an overarching nation- state, and as particularistic ‘societies’ that are associated with defi ned ‘autonomous’ territories such as like ‘Yushu’. One of the main reasons that the activities of this local, ethnically ‘Tibetan’, population are inter- preted through the lens of an offi cial administrative discourse in this study, is that these forms of classifi cation have become prime reference points for many local people working within the state administration. Th ese concepts are particularly salient among young people and leaders, who are the focus of this study. Furthermore, leaders shape the nation- ality category with a wide range of local social and political meanings. Moreover, in several cases given below, this idiom has become an impor- tant point of mobilization for local leaders and, subsequently, of united action among many (especially urban dwelling) local people as a whole. To understand the complex play of identity in present-day Trinde, it is necessary to elaborate on ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ in the context of China’s nation-state (M. guojia), and to explore some of their related concepts in greater depth. Zhongguoren, which means ‘people of the central state’, is an inclusive term comprising all domestic subjects liv- ing within the area now defi ned as China (M. Zhongguo). Th e Tibetan language has no equivalent overarching term, and instead distin- guishes ‘Chinese’ (Tr. Ja) from ‘someone of Tibet’ (Tr. Böpa), ‘Tibetan person’ (Tr. Bömi or Bömuh) and ‘Tibetan-type’ (Tr. Börig). Unlike Han Chinese, Trinde people do not refer to ‘Han’ (M. Hanzu) but to ‘Chinese’ (Tr. Jamuh) to specify inner China non-nationalities people. ‘Han’, when invoked locally, is used interchangeably with ‘Chinese’. For Sangyay (1999) this is evidence that local people have always considered ‘Tibet’ to be a distinct nation. Connor (1994) and Dreyfus (2003) are also concerned to present local peoples as a distinct nation and nationality. Th eir arguments are based on notions of social groupings as founded 24 introduction on ‘common culture’ (Gellner 1983) and cohered by this nationality’s ‘intuitive’ sense of similarity grounded in fi ctions of shared ancestry. Despite these common fi ctions, regionally speaking, the ‘imagined communities’ that have currency within this region are multiple and con- text-dependent, rather than unitary or stable. For example, prior to the modern PRC nation-state, belonging was based on contextual, localized ascriptions relating to sect, birthplace, region and dialect (Shakya 1993). Social distinction was not based on nationality, but involved complex, contextual and nuanced processes of identifi cation and belonging. One dimension concerned whether people took refuge in the dharma, which made them ‘insiders’ (Tr. nongpa). Th ose that did not practise dharma were ‘outsiders’ (Tr. chipa). Terminological confusions are also possible, as references have changed through time and place. As Yeh points out, the ‘imagined community’ of this region has, until recently, been based on religion, genealogy, myth and folklore rather than on contemporary ideas of nations, nationalities and nationalism (2003: 509). Yeh further asserts that Böpa ‘referred only to non-nomadic inhabitants of central Tibet’ (ibid.). I encountered this distinction among Ü-Tsang agricultural peo- ples in Lhasa, though never heard this usage in Amdo or Kham. Nowak provides a slightly diff erent understanding, and argues that Böpa has only recently been extended to include those outside Ü-Tsang (1984: 86). As Goldstein affi rms, even in 1959, Eastern peoples used the term Böpa to refer to those of the central area (cited in ibid.). Kham people actively sought to remain independent from the peoples of Ü-Tsang (ibid.). Th e central irony is that, before 1950, the term Böpa would not have been used to refer to oneself—the term has always been about the Other. Th e use of this general term has always been centrally imposed by the ‘state’, both in the PRC and by the ‘host’ and nationality governments in exile (see Nowak 1984: passim for critique). In the early years of exile, the creation and reinforcement of a singular nationality identity was a prime objective of the nascent government in exile. Th is process was construed as being central to the legitimization of the exile government’s authority (see ibid.). In Trinde, a number of metaphors and practices are used to describe these diverse and scattered peoples as a nominally coherent group. Liter- ary-language teachers and university scholars occasionally refer to them- selves as ‘people of the snow lands’ (Tr. gang jong muh). A few Middle School students designate themselves as ‘black haired people’ (Tr. go nag muh). Th e issue of fi nding a cohering nationality idea or practice was high- lighted in a letter written to a newspaper at the time of the greatest resis- tance to outside encroachment in the past. Th e statement was addressed to ‘all tsampa eaters’. It was addressed thus, because tsampa, or toasted barley opening vistas, bordering spaces 25 fl our, was considered to unite local people regardless of religious practice, dialect, sect, gender or region (Shakya 1993: 13). As Shakya points out, if Buddhism constitutes the ‘atom’ of Tibetanness, tsampa, with its nutri- tional and ritual signifi cance, is its ‘sub-particles’ (ibid.). As these examples show, the ‘imagined community’ of ‘Tibet’ is highly polythetic. Rather than being founded on modern notions of nationhood, the idea of a ‘Tibetan’ nationality is wrought from multiple points of social identifi cation, including religious concepts and practices, a com- mon literary-language, shared genealogies, barley-fl our consumption, trade, sacred geographies, myths and folklore (Kapstein 1998: 140). In contrast, foreign research has oft en interpreted local activities through the lens of Euro-American nation-state models. Th is predominance results in certain features being noticed and investigated, while others remain unnamed and are disregarded (Schwartz 1994a, 1994b, Mills 2001). Moreover, the modern, Western conception of nation-states as fi xed, delimited political entities does not refl ect how people of this region understand, express and practice social and political belonging in contemporary or previous times.11 Nationality can also operate as a point of cleavage within a societal space, whereby Yushu becomes clas- sifi able as a ‘ninety-seven percent Tibetan society’. Residual Others are thereby rendered invisible in statistical or scholarly terms, or are amal- gamated as part of a diff erent, though similarly reifi ed, category. ‘Nationality’ technically refers to both nation and nationality in Mandarin. In this book, it is translated throughout as ‘nationality’ to distinguish ‘autonomous’ socio-political phenomena from ‘nation’ or ‘national’ in relation to China. Translating the term for ‘state’ is prob- lematic in local terms. Guojia is the closest word to ‘state’. In Mandarin ‘administration’ is xingzheng and ‘government’ is zhengfu. In Tibetan, other relevant terms are ‘administration’ (T. ’dzin.skyong), ‘government’ (T. gzhung) and ‘country’ or ‘nation-state’ (T. rgyal.k’ab). A central concept in this book is rine, which means ‘culture’ in the sense of being cultured. More recently, it has taken on the ‘anthropo- logical’ sense of denoting an identifi able set of practices uniting a social group. Although signifi cant blurring occurs between the two forms, rine is translated here as ‘civilizing culture’, which conveys a sense of social elevation and moral evolution through scholarship. Th is is because, in contemporary Trinde, ‘culture’ is frequently imbued with

11 Similarly, local Tibetan language teachers say that there is no word for ‘exile’ or ‘refugee’ in Trinde spoken dialect. Instead, Trinde people refer to a ‘Tibetan-[staying]- in-India’ (Tr. Jakarla wozi Bö) to describe exile individuals. 26 introduction this, seemingly new, meaning in local educated usage. Th is concept, as employed by educated local people, including schoolteachers, students and local academics, melds local and offi cial ideals, as is evident in one literary-language teacher’s claim that, ‘If you are well cultured, there will be scientifi c development. With good scientifi c development, good economic development will occur and nationality life will develop as per a stable, developed country.’ Th e idiom of rine is discussed in greater depth in Chapter Four. In this book, ‘discourse’ is employed in the sense of a conjunction of power/knowledge in which authoritative statements create a relatively stable ‘order of things’. Th e workings of this order systematize, produce and regulate social existence in particular ways, which shape, but do not entirely delimit, social and political subjectivities. ‘Discourse’ is not used in a solely linguistic sense, as these processes involve a certain materiality realized in, and through, quotidian social and bureaucratic processes that come to constitute the actualities of people’s social exis- tence (cf. Schein 2000: 14). It is not only offi cials’ rhetoric that con- structs the nation’s focal political tropes; printed, televisual and virtual media also restate these powerful ideas continually and local people’s discussions also reproduce them (Kipnis 2003: 278). In local practice, however, no such single totalizing view or statement exists.12 Depictions of discursive forms such as ‘nationality’, ‘culture’ and ‘autonomy’ are anything but congruent. Th is divergence stems, in part, from diff ering understandings of power, which is seen by diff erent peo- ple as destructive (cf. Bulag 2004: 113) or productive (see Litzinger 2000: 191–2, Cheater 1999 and Sangren 1995). In the analysis below, ‘offi cial’ is used to refer to statements and procedures imbued with governmental legitimacy. Th ese directives issue from within centralized governmental assemblages. Th e specifi c authors generally remain anonymous. ‘Mod- ern’ refers to phenomena existing at the present time, while ‘moderniza- tion’ involves modifying prior establishments or procedures (Williams 1976: 174–5, Tsin 1999: 6). In terms of China, ‘western’ refers to: TAR, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Yunnan and Gui- zhou. More generally, ‘Western’ refers to Euro-American societies.

12 In fact, detailed analyses note a diversity of political orientation in practice, even during China’s revolutionary-era (Goldman 1979 passim, Shue 1988: 17, 66). Diem- berger and Wangdu (1996) and Tucci (1949: 24) highlight how local contexts have been subject to disruption throughout history. Th e blurring of groupings, agencies and lia- bilities amidst political upheavals is encapsulated in Lu’s ‘revolution, counterrevolution, nonrevolution’ narrrative (cited in Barmé 2000: 217). opening vistas, bordering spaces 27

‘Leader’ refers to people who have an informal or formal, social or political leadership capacity in local society. Leaders in Yushu society include schoolteachers, county administration and political cadres, local scholars, incarnate and accomplished religious practitioners, NGO offi - cers, graduating university students and certain business people. Th e idea of leaders is related to ‘elites’, those people ‘elected’ to speak for a given constituency on the basis of wealth, family-standing or occupation, and those holding formal positions of political or social status (Williams 1976: 96–8). Th ere is no simple and unanimous view of Trinde leaders. Villag- ers and professionals consider local leaders to be anything from self-serv- ing careerists, corrupt strategists, lazy good-for-nothings, or altruistic social ambassadors. Perceptions depend on a person’s family-infl uenced social experience, and are oft en coloured by local gossip. Villagers reserve special praise for those concerned to improve local conditions.

Historical Perspectives: Th e Centrality of Marginality

Th e ‘Late Han Book: Th e Record of Xiqiang’ mentions that Yushu was fi rst inhabited by ancient Qiang people (Go.gdung mGu.grags rDo. rje and Meng 1991: 4; for a politically-oriented historical overview of these regions see Marshall and Cooke 1997: 159–74). Yushu Investiga- tive Reports (Yü-shu T’iao-ch’a Chi, M. Yüshu diaocha ji) note that the ‘languages, appearances, religions, and customs of the diff erent savage tribes living in the southern part of the Ch’ing-hai [Qinghai] Province are rather similar to those of the tribes living in Tibet’ (Rock 1956: 14). In ancient times, the Bön religion was strong in the region. Th e earliest Buddhist presence in Yushu appears to coincide with King Srongtsen Gampo and Princess Wencheng’s 640–641 A.D. stay in the region (Go. gdung mGu.grags rDo.rje and Meng Wei 1991: 51). In the Yüan dynasty (1271–1368 A.D.), Mongol censuses were carried out (Petech 1950: 233–8). Central State or ‘Middle King- dom’ (M. Zhongguo) rulers knew the people of the Amdo regions as T’u-fan (or Tubo, sometimes glossed as ‘Tibetans’) at this time (ibid., Rock 1956: 3–4, Kecheng jiaocai yanjiusuo 2001: 23).13 In 1253 A.D., as Kublai Khan’s imperial preceptor, Drogon Chogyel Phakpa, became the most powerful regional ruler since 836 A.D. Phakpa (or ‘Phasba’ in Yushu parlance) is said to have given teachings in Trinde en route

13 See Ramble (2003) for a discussion of the historical ambiguities of ethnonyms across the region considered ‘ethnographically Tibetan’. 28 introduction from Lhasa to Mongolia (Stein 1972: 78). Local people say that Trinde is named aft er this event. In the literary-language, ‘Khri.’du’ (namely, ‘Trinde’), means ‘assembly of ten thousand’ devotees. Phakpa’s student built Trinde’s Kazang Peljor monastery in 1268. Jyegundo grew around its monastery, and its inhabitants controlled the Ziling (M. Xining) and Lhasa caravan routes. Later, representatives of the Fift h Dalai Lama’s administration (1617–1682) arrived to establish a Gelugpa monastic presence in this primarily Sakya sect region. In 1718, confl icts relating to the sixth Dalai Lama resulted in the Kanxi Emperor consolidating control over these frontier areas. Resident offi cials (M. amban) and troops were stationed in Lhasa and Xining (including Yushu), initiating new interrelations between the central state and far western regions (Wu 1995: 2–3). In 1727, Kham was partitioned along the watershed between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers. Th e east fell under the Viceroy of Sichuan and the west came under the Lhasa gov- ernment, though Qing offi cials considered these areas (including those inhabited by Yushu local confederacies) to owe them allegiance through their amban. By 1723–1725, the ‘Manchu’ Qing dynasty (1644–1911) court had begun to oversee Qinghai directly through the system of ‘native offi ce’ (M. tusi zhidu, Yeh 2003: 508). Amenable leaders were given a ‘char- ter of investiture’ and seal, confi rming a right to rule on behalf of the state, according to local laws and traditions (Huber 2002a: xvii, Yeh 2003: 508). Th is system of local control continued long-standing tac- tics of indirect rule, in the form of ‘using barbarians to rule barbarians’ (M. yiyi zhiyi, Schein 2000: 6, Coleman 2002: 33). Rock considered that, ‘except for being taxed and asked to make oaths and covenants, they [local people] were free from any restraint’, and that the histories of local confederacies thereby went undocumented (1956: 14). Writing about this era, Rockhill (1975: 187–8) also describes how: Th e tribes of pastoral Tibetans living north of the Dre ch’u [Upper Yang- tze], from its sources to Jyekundo or even farther east, were organized by the Chinese government in 1732 into thirty-nine hundreds ruled by hereditary chieft ains or Deba, and under the control of the Hsi-ning [Xin- ing] Amban … Th ese tribes were to pay to the emperor an annual tribute … [and] are ruled by chiefs called Deba, who have no other offi cials under them … [T]hey levy the various taxes for China, for Lh’asa, or Derge. At this time, local leaders were given inheritable titles such as ‘thousand households’ (M. qianhu, Tr. ponpo, ‘lord’) and ‘hundred households’ (M. baihu) on the basis of the number of people within opening vistas, bordering spaces 29 a leader’s ambit (on Trinde, see Chen 1991: 38–57). Th e ‘thousand household heads’ (M. qianhu tusi) administered the region through appointed ‘village leaders’ (M. seng kuan [probably cunguan] see Ekvall 1939: 81, Coleman 2002: 33). Seven ‘hundred household’ lead- ers reported directly to him, and thirty-six were affi liated (Chen 1991: 13). Th ere were forty-three local confederacies and 132 ‘hundred person confederacies’ (M. baizhang buluo). On the basis of the 1958 survey data, Yushu had one ‘thousand household’ leader. Th e internal disorder and external challenges during the nineteenth century meant that Yushu’s status involved few tangible eff ects on the region’s laws, languages, cultural expressions or institutions (Ekvall 1939: 32–3). In the 1860s, the Lhasa administration recommenced attempts to admin- ister Golog and Yushu (Marshall and Cooke 1997: 2240). Until 1958, Yushu was under the sovereignty of the Nangchen king (Tr. jepo), who replaced the ‘thousand household’ (M. qianhu) leaders of other areas (Chen 1991: 13). Th e king’s sovereignty was extended through numerous ‘hundred household’ (M. baihu) leaders who collected trib- utes of barley-fl our and butter on the king’s behalf. Th e king was a secular ruler whose leadership was based on respect rather than force or theocratic power. Yushu’s ‘twenty-fi ve local confederacies’ (M. baihu buluo, Tr. beykhuh, or tshowa, sometimes glossed as ‘tribes’) were long associated with this local kingdom. Th e strongest of the twenty-fi ve local confederacies became the centre of present-day Yushu. Th ese social con- federacies continue to be more nominal than defi ned entities, though are oft en the way people represent their affi liation when questioned (Fernanda Pirie, personal communication). In 1912, Yuan Shikai forced Puyi (China’s last emperor, who ruled from 1908) to abdicate (Spence 1999: 262). Having won China’s fi rst national election in 1913, the Guomindang’s nominated Party leader was shot, seemingly by Yuan, though he was never offi cially implicated (ibid. 276–7). Yuan forced his own election in 1913, but his term of rule col- lapsed in 1916. Sun Yatsen, leader of the Guomindang, sought Comin- tern (Soviet Union) assistance and communist alliances to consolidate a country leaders feared was on the brink of fragmentation (Spence 1999: 214–41). Th e demise of centralized authority resulted in revolts in many peripheral areas. Th e ‘Central Tibetan’ army established control over a large part of Kham by 1918, when a peace agreement was negotiated recognizing Chinese sovereignty over Xikang (Samuel 1993: 71). In the aft ermath of the 1911 revolution, members of the Hui-Muslim Ma family assumed increasing control as governors of Qinghai-area, as 30 introduction sanctioned by the Guomindang (Rock 1956: 4, see also Zhu and Stuart 1999: 382). Between 1915 and 1942, Ma Qi, and his son and successor, Ma Bufang (1902–1973), instituted ruthless management and heavy taxation (ibid.), oft en deliberately fomenting local divisions in the process (Chen 1991: 13, Huber 2002a: xvii). Ma Bufang assumed the right to confer permits and rework borders. In 1928, the Guomindang government formally set up Qinghai Province under a Xining admin- istration, which included Yushu (see Rock 1956: 4–8). Trinde’s oldest people contend that Trinde was ‘one hundred percent Tibetan’ prior to the arrival of PLA forces. However, Khri’du (Trinde) social his- tory describes the construction of a ‘private’ (T. rgyal.’bangs) school in 1924, whereby students were forcibly collected from each household to learn Mandarin, physical education and music (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 431–2). Th e Guomindang ended the unproductive ‘native offi ce’ system in 1931, and formed counties administered by a selected (usually Han or Hui) magistrate, thereby integrating all local areas under a central- ized government (Huber 2002a: xvii). In 1931 the Xining Commis- sioner was made responsible for Yushu. 1930s Yushu was the site of struggles between locals, Ma associates and the Viceroy of Sichuan (Marshall and Cooke 1997: 2362). In 1931, Lhasa and Yushu troops joined forces to oppose Ma Bufang, who controlled large areas of Amdo with Republican support, though were defeated in Jyekundo in 1932 (Shakabpa 1967: 269). Th e Lhasa government and Ma’s general endorsed a treaty upholding the pre-confl ict boundaries, which was to local peo- ple’s advantage (Marshall and Cooke 1997: 2402). During the 1940s, Jyekundo was the most important trade centre of northeast Tibet, unit- ing caravan routes from Xikang and Kangding to the south, Lhasa to the west, Tsaidam and Mongolia to the north and Xining and Lanzhou to the northeast (see Migot 1957: 166–7). Ma Bufang instituted a high military presence in the region, hoping to maintain regional commer- cial control of this lucrative site against Red Army encroachment. In mid-September 1949, having defeated the Guomindang in the Chinese Civil War, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ‘liberated’ Xin- ing, and took over Yushu’s administration. Qinghai’s incorporation within the PRC did not take immediate eff ect, but ultimately involved military force, relocation of a range of skilled and administrative per- sonnel and closer economic ties with inner China (Yeh 2003: 509). Ger- rymandering ensured that there were fewer locals than incomers in all PRC provinces except the TAR, thus facilitating the administration of opening vistas, bordering spaces 31 these areas. In December 1951, Yushu was demarcated as an ‘Autono- mous Region’, and was then relegated to an ‘Autonomous Prefecture’ in 1955. Th e Provincial Military Committee appointed a government rep- resentative, a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Prefecture Secretary and two guards. Th e newly-created CCP divided into groups to visit Jyegu, Trinde and Nangchen county monasteries and local civil leaders. Subsequent teams collected data on local business, healthcare, agricul- ture, disputes, culture, and customs and the regulation of monasteries. In 1951, Trinde County government, a police station and court of justice were built, and a local Communist Party was formed, which included the designation of a Chief Secretary, Vice Secretary and a Party Committee. Two hundred and ninety-eight ‘Communists’ were registered in the county. In the same year, county authorities tried to establish the fi rst school in Trinde. Simultaneously, more than eigh- teen children became monks (possibly having been sent by parents to avoid the formal schooling) in Kazang Monastery (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 432). Th e opening of the school was delayed until 1952. In March 1952, Yushu’s seat of ‘autonomous government’ was created, and was protected by troops from inner China. Th is government comprised a General Secretary and several bureaux, including civil administration, education and culture, fi nance, public security and tax. Between 1956 and 1957, the main Trinde County propaganda (T. dril.bsgrags) principles were the maintenance of private property, not separating the classes and benefi ting herd-lords and pastoralists (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 406). Freedom of religious faith and other poli- cies fl ourished (ibid.). Th e rebellion breaking out in northern Sichuan prevented the policies from being implemented (ibid.). Th e causal link made locally between the rebellion and the lack of policy implementa- tion may not be technically accurate, as the end of the Hundred Flow- ers Campaign and the beginning of Anti-Rightist Campaign brought a change in policies throughout nationality areas. Th ere was very little organized resistance to outside involvement in Yushu until the 1950 Agrarian Law began the nationwide policy of land reform (1949–1952). During the Democratic Reforms (T. dmangs.grtso. bcos.bskyur, M. minzhu gaige) an army came towards Yushu from Sich- uan. Of this event, Padma Gunga writes that this ‘army changed the way of life in Trinde. Th e way they achieved this appears to be extremely bad, since it included killing and other misdeeds. However, the soldiers’ minds were kind’ (2002: 427). Many local people escaped towards Lhasa during the tumult of this period. Th e Democratic Reforms gathered 32 introduction wealth from richer people and redistributed it to poorer people. Th e private tenure of all lands was removed and communalized, which hap- pened in 1958 in Trinde. Rinchen Tsering, Sepa monastery’s reincarnate lama (Tr. trulku, ‘manifestation body’), vigorously opposed the collec- tivization (ibid. 428). Th is eminent practitioner was brutally punished for refusing to follow the new policies, though this information was not included in the Trinde social history text. In 1957, the main tasks became ‘unity’ (T. mt’un.sgril, M. tongyi), ‘peace’ (T. bde.’jags in the sense of stability, M. heping) and ‘production’ (M. chanchu/chusheng, Padma Gun.dga 2002: 406). Following adminis- trative meetings in Dzatö County, the Prefecture’s aims were defi ned as: accelerate production, forbid the use of silver, safeguard Lhasa-objects and prohibit the reselling of allotted government products. In 1958, peo- ple responded to these changes with a signifi cant rebellion (Tr. ngolog, M. fanpan), which was suppressed. Yushu and Trinde were divided at the upper part of the Yangze River. Local plans were radically changed in line with Great Leap Forward national directives, which required the uptake of modern methods that were not necessarily appropriate for the locale (cf. Sneath 2000: 96). In Trinde, seeds were planted in winter. From 1959 to 1961, harvesting fell by seventy-fi ve percent, whereupon 3,551 Trinde people and 63,000 cattle starved to death (cf. Sneath 2000: 96). In the early 1950s, central state representatives aimed to convince local people of the value of socialist reforms and modernization. Many local leaders were also optimistic about fi nding common themes between Buddhist ethical concerns and socialist humanism (Shakya 1999: 136). Gyurme, a Trinde tailor, related his opinions about ‘Th e Th oughts of Chairman Mao’: We were obliged to study that book. Actually, I think it is a good book, it has a good message: poor people and rich people must be equal and help each other, so there are no poor and rich. And if someone is rich, they cannot punish the poor. It is the same as Buddha Shakyamuni. If a person acts in a certain way with you, you have to give them the same thing back. But you should not make trouble without having such a reason. Far from being an exceptional occurrence, Trinde people oft en fi nd degrees of compatibility between dharmic understandings and certain concepts in Maoist socialism. In contrast to many well-known portrayals, Trinde’s older inhabitants remember social and political aspects of the revolutionary era (from the 1950s until the late 1970s) in appreciative ways. Th e commune-era (1958–1982 in Trinde) is sometimes recalled as a period of free time, opening vistas, bordering spaces 33 fun and music (see also Young and Qian 2002/2003: 8). Gyurme, a Trinde tailor, comments that, ‘No one went hungry. People did not have any of their own things: nothing belonged to them. Th is [“work point”] system [M. gongfen zhidu] helps people: they just work and the govern- ment distributes according to the work a person undertakes.’ Sonam, a locally-born former shopkeeper in her mid-fi ft ies who is married to a Xining-area incomer, comments that: In the old time we were very happy and had lots of free time. Land was not individually owned. Th e three villages were each made into one fam- ily called a ‘commune’ [Tr. shey, M. gongshe]. Everyone from each village worked, slept and ate together. No one had his or her own wealth and treasure. If someone was hired to help, the village paid together. Now each household has to pay individually. Despite the new institutional arrangements, local livelihoods were not radi- cally altered for a quarter of a century, and those that did change, reappeared in the late 1980s (Goldstein and Beall 1990: 137, Sneath 2000: 95–6).14 Most people in Yushu during the 1950s were agriculturalists or pas- toralists, which made land reform and wealth redistribution unpopular. Th e signing of the Seventeen-Point Agreement in 1951 formally recog- nized China’s sovereignty over Ü-Tsang (M. weizang or ‘Central Tibet’), which is roughly equivalent to the TAR (see Renmin Jiaoyu Chubanshe Lishi Shi 2000: 92–3). Mao henceforth followed gradualist policies in Ü-Tsang, while Kham and Amdo were forced to undergo early, uncom- promisingly administered policies. Jayang, a former monk, related how: When the [Liberation Army] soldiers arrived, Kham-people fl ed to Lhasa [TAR], hoping to fi nd shelter. If you knew the road and if you were brave you could arrive in India from there. I didn’t know how, so I didn’t go. But the fl eeing Kham-people didn’t know that, in 1952, twenty thousand solders had arrived in Lhasa. So, many Kham-people died on arrival. Many others died trying to cross all the rivers: there were no boats. People kept setting off from Kham because they had no way of knowing so many of the others [their compatriots] had perished in the terrible conditions lying ahead. Escaping Tibetans faced many diffi culties en route and never arrived in India. I was a young man at the time; I fl ed and disrobed in secret.

14 As Sneath (ibid. 96) argues, ‘Herding large numbers of collective animals was not, in eff ect, completely unlike raising the livestock of herd-owning nobles or monasteries under the old … lease arrangements (although the commune took all the products and returned rationed food and cash).’ Even though the ‘work-point system’ was calculated according to each individual’s labour, both local people and their administrators con- tinued to operate in terms of households as a basic unit of social membership (Gold- stein and Beall 1990: 143–4). 34 introduction

Th e ensuing CIA-supported rebellion in mid–1956 had been crushed by 1959, leading to thousands of local deaths. Some older men in Trinde and Yushu recount details about their undercover activities with the Four Rivers, Six Ranges (Tr. chuzhi gãdruq) guerrilla movement.15 Th ere was fi ghting all over Yushu, mainly from 1958–1959 onwards. Some of the worst fi ghting occurred south of Domda (M. Qingshuihe), in the north of Trinde County in mid–1958. A ‘bandit army’ (T. zing. slong.dmag) attacked a convoy of thirty-eight trucks, blowing up nine vehicles, which killed forty PLA soldiers and injured fi ft y others (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 430). Khri’du (Trinde) social history calls these men ‘traitors’ (Tr. gonyehpa, which literally means ‘two headed person’), because of their anti-state actions. Th ese ‘renegades’ destroyed Shewu and Drencheng, which forced the evacuation of surrounding familial communities (T. ruskor, sometimes glossed as ‘clans’, ibid.). Many peo- ple fl ed to the mountains as ‘escapees’ (Tr. troopo). Trinde oral histories describe the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961) as a time when many people were desperately short of food, had to survive on wild plants or starved to death.16 Sometimes the same per- son will describe positive aspects of a particular era in one conversa- tion, and highlight the diffi culties in another discussion. On the 23rd

15 Jamyang Norbu (1994: 188) describes this movement as a ‘signal to the Chinese that the Tibetans were prepared to act violently to protect their leader and their reli- gion’. MacFarquhar and Fairbank link the rebellion to the Great Leap Forward, which exacerbated an already ‘smouldering’ situation (1978: 311). Th e Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supported the rebellion as an ‘anti-communist’ measure. Local people, however, mobilized to oust incomers who threatened their lands and way of life. Th e rebellion is one of many examples of a single event being interpreted and acted upon diff erently, based on a person or group’s positioning and expectations. 16 Gyurme, a Trinde tailor in his mid-fi ft ies, described how, in their remote Sepa-area orphanage, he and his companions oft en awoke and, looking under the blankets, found that another of their friends had died alongside them in the night: My fi rst memories are of the Chinese arriving, when I was fi ve. In 1954–8 there was a revolution. Actually, should I be talking about these things? You’ve already written my name and you know my address … [Relatives laugh at the idea an undercover agent could be in their midst. Gyurme suddenly becomes serious.] It was a really bad time. From four until seven years old I went to nursery school. We ate only two tiny toasted barley fl our balls a day. We were forever hungry. Many people were dying at that time. Th at is history. Th at is why I asked whether I should speak about these things. Between seven and nine years old I had nothing to do. I just went around like an animal, with no proper clothes or shoes. 1960, ’61 and ’62 were the worst years. In 1966 it became better. Th is was because the war lasted for a long time: in 1955 one war, 1959 another war, 1960 another war. Some people escaped to Lhasa [TAR] and then India. Th e war went on because the Chinese were trying to stop them. Th e Chinese and Tibetan relationship was like that between two armies. Th ey hated each other. Th e worst thing was the food. So many people died every single day. opening vistas, bordering spaces 35 of November 1961, offi cials from three levels of the county reported that 3,714 ‘enemies’ had been annihilated, which amounted to a quarter of Trinde’s population (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 413–14). Nearly 1,400 people were killed, three hundred were wounded and just over two thousand surrendered.17 Aft er this rebellion, the number of cadres was increased in every administrative area. In 1963, Yushu Prefecture was counted as having 13,370 people, of which 9,888 were women and 4,882 were men. Many Trinde schoolteachers lost their father, with some also losing their mother, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers and aunts. During the severest two years of the 1966–76 Cultural Revolu- tion, most of the region’s monasteries were demolished, artworks were burned, libraries destroyed and leading religious and secular authori- ties exiled, persecuted or re-educated.

Nationality Autonomy as a Governmental Discourse of Rationality

Modern Chinese politics did not only involve the creation of idioms such as ‘society’ (M. shehui), ‘the masses’ (M. dazhong) and ‘the people’ (M. renmin), but also that of ‘nationalities’.18 Th e concept of nationali- ties, understood as defi nite, discrete ‘ethnic’ constituencies, has been the normative frame for the administration of China’s peripheral peoples throughout PRC history (Bulag 2002a: 11–21, Litzinger 1998: 24, 238–9, Shakya 1999: 3, Sorensen and Phillips 2004: passim). Local subjectivities have been critically shaped through interlinkages with China’s govern- mental projects of nationalism and socialist modernization (see Oakes 1999: 337). Early CCP policies were created using the USSR model of repub- lics, which carried nominal succession rights (Kaup 2000: 64). CCP nationality policies inherited many infl uences from—and learnt from the mistakes of—the Guomindang administration. Th e original ‘self- determination’ or ‘self-rule’ (M. zijue, zizhu, Tr. rongzen) and secession rights in China’s nationality policies were replaced by the political concept of ‘autonomy’ (M. zizhi, Tr. rongwong) by 1940. Th e reason for this demotion is that China’s nationalities comprise six percent of

17 Figures in several local sources referenced in this book do not seem to tally. 18 In his study of nation, governance and modernity in China, Tsin traces the con- struction of diff erent logics of ‘the social’ as a means of systematizing China’s ‘loose sheet of sand’ (1999: 6–9). 36 introduction the nation’s population, though occupy around fi ft y or sixty percent of the land-area (Mackerras 2004: 147). Much of this land is rich in natural resources and constitutes borderlands sensitive to secession (Liew and Smith 2004: 15, Tan 1999–2000: 17). Th e Right of Regional Autonomy was enshrined in the 1954 PRC Constitution. Nationality autonomy policies henceforth signifi cantly infl uenced the way power is exercised in China (Gladney 1991: 90, Shue 1988, Yan 2003), and the concept of nationality has been the main offi cial trope of social belong- ing and resource allocation from 1978 onwards.19 Within this rubric however, PRC nationality policies have changed signifi cantly through time. Th e post–1949 period involved a short-lived era of ‘implement[ing] according to local conditions’ (M. yindi zhiyi), where local languages, customs and practices were upheld. 1949–1966 was characterized by attempts at national integration (Kaup 2000: 76–7). Th e implementation of centralist norms intensifi ed aft er the 1957 Anti- Rightist campaign. Th ose targeted included people advocating local con- cerns (Chung 2000: 31). ‘Standardized implementation’ (M. yidao qie), though never total, continued through the radical periods of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1959), the Socialist Education Campaign (1962– 1965) and Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).20 During the Cultural Revo- lution (M. wenhua geming, Tr. rine sajey), ‘nationality work’ (M. minzu gongzuo) was disbanded and nationality identifi cation was divested of political currency. Emphasis was instead laid on everyone belonging to ‘the masses’ (M. dazhong, Tr. mangtshok), or ‘common people’ (M. ren- min, Tr. muhmong). Chinese Marxist interpretations of class became the dominant forms of social identifi cation. Local claims were not formulated on the basis of nationality characteristics and belonging during political periods when regional and cultural distinctiveness was suppressed. Th e scope or content of ‘autonomy’ and ‘special characteristics’ is itself born out of particular histories of negotiation between nationality cadres and offi cials (Bulag 1998: passim, Kaup 2000: 6). Kham scholars were in Nanjing and Shanghai during the Nationalist era, where they encountered modern political concepts like nationalism and nation- alities, and anthropological senses of culture. Strategic alliances with central authorities were used to buttress local autonomy. Th e rhetoric of ‘local autonomy’, and Kham-area leader Gesangzeren’s political-

19 For a general overview of the politics of China’s reform era, see Perry and Selden (2000). Smith (1994) gives a ‘Tibet centred’ account of this period. 20 On the specifi cs of policy implementation during the Mao era, including how adherence to centralist policies was realized in practice, see Chung (2000: 38–9). opening vistas, bordering spaces 37 cultural ideal of ‘Kham for the Kham-people’, were invoked to promote a relatively independent Xikang Province (M. Xikang Sheng) during the Republican era (see Peng 2002: 58, and Bulag 1998 for Inner Mongolia precedents). Kham leaders declined off ers to collaborate with Ü-Tsang peoples, who were advocating cooperation on a ‘shared religious and ethnic connection’ (M. tongzu tongjiao) basis (Peng 2002: 63, 67). From 1978 onwards, the party shift ed its focus from political integra- tion among nationalities to economic development. It was considered necessary to work towards ‘an emancipation of mind’ (M. sixiang jie- fang) following the excessive idealism of the Mao years (Chung 2000: 43–4). Empirical goals were emphasized, and a range of methods was used to diminish the eff ects of ideology on the application of local poli- cies. Th ese methods included amending confrontational slogans, which had been the principle vehicles for policy implementation, and further- ing economic growth and development (ibid.). From the late 70s, ‘ver- tical’ bureaucratic control over local activities was greatly decreased, and local governments were allowed to manage their own incomes and expenses (Longworth and Williamson 1993: 321–2). Th ese insti- tutional reforms resulted in realignments that brought offi cials into closer engagement with local communities (ibid.). 1980s policies moved away from independent communes towards a more integrated economy, which diminished the dependence placed on formal struc- tures in accomplishing nationwide accord and unity (Kaup 2000: 75). Many of the preferential policies for nationality were phased out (ibid. see also Sautmann 1998, and critique by Bovingdon 2004: 141, Frolic 1980: 147). Th e change of policy orientation is refl ected in a 1979 Ren- min Ribao state newspaper announcement that urged that, ‘We must combine the spirit of the central directives with the actual conditions of our localities … Since diff erent localities have their own distinct con- ditions … we must not allow the same pattern everywhere’ (cited in Chung 2000: 43–4). In the post-Mao years, constitutional revisions opened up new spaces for the authorized expression of some ‘nationality special char- acteristics’ (M. minzu tesi). More specifi cally, the 1984 Law of Regional Nationality Autonomy included powers for localities to create certain independent policies, and allowed regulations to be adjusted in line with local political, economic and cultural characteristics.21 Th e 1984

21 See Kaup (2000: 183–97) for full text of the 1984 Law of Regional Nationality Autonomy. 38 introduction ruling authorized a devolved administration of economic aff airs, edu- cation, science, recreation and law enforcement. Th is law states that commonly-used nationality languages are to be used in ‘autonomous’ administrative contexts. Leaders in all autonomous areas were hence- forth to be drawn from the nationality population (Kaup 2000: 183). ‘Local implementation’ (M. yindi zhiyi) principles thus re-emerged as a corrective to previous ‘blanket policies’ (M. yidao qie or yiguo zhu). Mid-level cadres are once again those who negotiate the scope for regional autonomy. Th ese leaders have been increasingly vocal in demanding privileges for their nationality (Kaup 2000: 76). Th e 2001 revision to the Law of Regional Nationality Autonomy was intended to facilitate natural resource extraction in return for central bureaucratic compensation (Article 65 cited in Bulag 2002b: 230) and facilitate the implementation of large-scale infrastructure projects in nationality areas. Article 9 (ibid.) of China’s original constitution stated that all natural resources were nationally owned. Initially, no compen- sation (only ‘due consideration’) was off ered to local people for resource extraction and construction schemes on their lands. In the 1980s, some exchanges with exile communities were permitted for the fi rst time since the 1950s. Exiles (many of whom are religious practitioners) pro- vided fi nancial and moral backing for restoration projects in Yushu, though Trinde reconstructions were entirely locally funded within China. Religious practitioners were rehabilitated. Bulag (2000: 547) argues that it is the deployment of ideas of ‘nation- ality special characteristics’ that authorize a ‘politics of diff erence’ (cf. Taylor 1994: 68–73). Th e specifi c ways a range of social actors deploy practices and tactics within the fi eld of ‘local autonomy’ is a crit- ical line of enquiry for a political anthropology of nominally ‘Tibetan’ China. Th is book investigates the constitution and reworking of cultural politics and political cultures in the context of Trinde. My orientation involves attending to how diff erent symbolic fi elds and idioms become integral features in people’s actions and aspirations. Locally meaningful visual, narrative and embodied symbols are oft en subtle, indefi nite or generic, which opens up a margin for personal interpretation. However, the idea of local autonomy has not completely contained local sentiments, and tensions have repeatedly fl ared up in local areas in the reform era. Th e 1987 clashes in Lhasa resulted in the 1989 ‘state of emergency’ and subsequent TAR crackdown (Shakya 1994a: 1).22 All

22 Stricter policies still usually apply to the TAR. opening vistas, bordering spaces 39 manifestations of faith in the Dalai Lama were subsequently prohib- ited, whereupon the exile leader became a symbol of ‘pan-nationality’ political aspirations. Promotion of local history and Arts publications, Tibetan-medium education and heritage conservation burgeoned along with a range of ‘religious’ activities. Th ere is increasing state endorse- ment of some nationality characteristics, largely for entertainment and tourism purposes and to promote an international image of China as a ‘nationality-friendly’ country (Litzinger 1998: 231).

Nationalities and the Problem of Religion

Immediately prior to the creation of the PRC, the Republicans re-presented Chinese and Tibetan Buddhism as diff erent subdivisions of a unifi ed ‘Bud- dhist religion’. Th e reinterpretation allowed central state leaders to use a ‘universal’ idiom to constitute an imagined community between China’s peripheral and inner China peoples. Nationalist and ‘racial unity’ rhetoric had proved insuffi cient to cohere the prior Qing territory, and ‘Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists joined forces to promote their religion within the new context of the nation-state. In the end, the presence of this Buddhist religious community was essential to bridge the gap between the imperial Qing dynasty and the modern Chinese nation-state’ (Tuttle 2005: 4). Since the inception of the PRC as a ‘unitary multinational state’ (M. ton- gyi de duo minzu guojia), the ‘problem of religion’ (M. zongjiao wenti) has been an ongoing concern. Although wenti means ‘issue/question/ problem,’ the term is best rendered as ‘problem’ since these matters are considered solvable (M. jiejue), given the right approach. To give a brief insight into this troubled history, in offi cial terms, ‘religion’ is usually allied with ‘the spiritual’ (M. jingshen), which was part of turn-of-the- century debates over appropriate idioms for state nationalism (Anagnost 1997: 80). Th e ‘essence-function’ (M. tiyong) concept, which emerged in the late-Qing period, was important in the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement (roughly 1917–1921). Th is dual concept disappeared in the revolutionary era (the ‘spiritual’ being purged in the attempt to create a socialist state), and re-emerged under the Dengist reforms. Th e essence- function political-cultural notion involved upholding Chinese learning as the ‘essence’ (M. ti), while integrating Western learning for the practi- cal ‘function’ (M. yong) of development. Th is dyad affi rmed the existence of underlying ethical and philosophical national principles (imbuing society with permanence and signifi cance) whereupon all manner of foreign practices could be integrated into Chinese society (Spence 1999: 40 introduction

224). In the reform era, offi cials realized that it was fruitless to attempt to regulate all religious practice and attempted to make both ‘material’ (M. wuxingde) and ‘spiritual’ (M. weixingde) into a complementary, productive conceptual dyad (Litzinger 2000: 200). Th e political aim was to fi ll the conceptual space left aft er the demise of Maoist ideology with a nationalistic, secular advanced civilization (Anagnost 1997: 84). In practice, as Kipnis (2001: 42) points out, the: State requirement that … [‘religious’] activities keep their distance from ‘politics’ creates the potential for their politicization. As the institutional boundaries of ‘religion’ and ‘science’ are continually policed and renego- tiated, the practitioners of these ‘apolitical’ activities, in China as well as in liberal, secular democracies, are compelled to focus on their relation to the state. Th e ‘problem of religion’ is amplifi ed in its association with the ‘nationalities problem’ (M. minzu wenti). In Trinde, there is a non-con- cordance of terms in this area, with the bureaucratic term ‘religion’ (M. jongjiao) indexing an administratively distinct set of beliefs and prac- tices while, in local Trinde terms, dharma (Tr. choo, T. chos) infuses all life actions and intentions and implies a broad and diff use fi eld. Dharma refers to diff erent fi elds of belief and practice. Th e term denotes not just religion, but associated arts, sciences, literature (the sciences [medi- cine, astronomy, mathematics], dance and drama were all primarily religious), ‘religion’ as a general term applying to other ‘religions’, Bud- dhism in contrast to Bön, the second component of the ‘three jewels’ (Buddha, dharma as natural law and sangha, ‘community’), all religious discourses or methods (from prayers to tantric literature) and any script on any slip of paper that (because it is written) is considered linked to ‘religious’ phenomena (Ekvall 2003: 630). In contrast to this diff useness in practice, ‘religion’ is nevertheless specifi ed as a distinct domain in scholarly and governmental discourses. As Kipnis clarifi es:

Western liberals call … [these ‘spaces’] religion to distinguish them from the models of institutionalized science and the ideological expressions of governments, whereas the CCP designates them as permissible or illegal religions in order to keep them from impinging on the institutionalized- spaces of science or the government itself. (2001: 43–4)

Th e problems of both religion and nationalities are intimately bound up with concepts of ‘feudal superstition’ (M. fengjian mixin, see Feuchtwang 1989). Th e idea of ‘superstition’ came to China via Japan in the late nineteenth century (Litzinger 2000: 61). Policies prohibiting opening vistas, bordering spaces 41

‘superstition’ were initiated during China’s modernizing Guomindang- period, and have continued throughout the PRC-era. Th is concept allows for certain folk beliefs and practices to be offi cially proscribed in negative terms, thus facilitating their control and elimination. In the Cultural Revolution, all outward manifestations of religion were con- sidered ‘superstitious’ and were destroyed or suppressed.23 As Taussig (1991: 465) argues, the rubric of ‘religion’ relates to the framing powers of modern state bureaucracies, whereby: Religion is not closed, or a system … [Instead it contains] as a consti- tutive force the power of … [offi cial] diff erentiation such that … [it becomes a] gathering point for Otherness in a series of racial and class diff erentiations embedded in the distinctions made between … scientifi c and religious practice. Here ‘religion’ exists … as an imaginary Other to the imagined absoluteness of [the Party-state] … and science. In China too, practices categorized as ‘superstitious’ are frequently linked to notions of backward rural practices, which provides a suitable contrast to Party-state modernity and advancement. 1980s policy modifi cations re-authorized systematic, text-based institutionalized ‘world religions’ (namely, Protestant Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, Taoism and Islam). Article 36 guaran- teed freedom of religious faith (rather than practice), prohibited coer- cion or discrimination on the basis of holding, or not holding, religious convictions, and outlawed the disrupting of stability (Kapstein 2004: 240). Reformers expected that the remaining ‘superstitious’ practices would fade away (ibid: 242). Quite the opposite happened in practice. Th ere was a huge and varied upsurge of ‘religious’ activities, includ- ing prostrations, circumambulations, off erings, prayers at temples and revered locations, the replacing of prayer fl ags and sacred mani stones, dissemination of sacred texts and icons, restoration of temples, reestab- lishment of festivals, pilgrimages and the rehabilitation of older practi- tioners and recruitment of younger monks. In Goldstein’s words aft er 1980 ‘the nomads were free to practise their religion as they chose’ (1990: 148). However not all practices were unconditionally permitted in the reform era constitutional changes. University and party rules still forbid ‘religion’ for students and cadres respectively. As Kipnis (2001: 36) points out, popular ritual

23 In real terms, before 1958, when all religious institutions were closed, there were 195 monasteries and 28,192 monks across this ethnic-cultural area (Marshall and Cooke 1997: 2362). 42 introduction practices are oft en locally declared to be diff erent forms of Buddhism, but may still be prohibited as ‘superstition’. Offi cial proscriptions persist, with ‘superstition’ being considered to be socially destabiliz- ing and an obstacle to the emergence of an advanced modern nation- hood (Feuchtwang and Wang 1991: 260). References to superstition seldom appear in offi cial public or media domains like television or textbooks. Offi cial laws are not always enforced, and many idiosyncrasies are evident in daily life.24 Disciplinary action usually only occurs where fi nancial swindling and corrupt activities are suspected (Litzinger 2000: 187). Feuchtwang and Wang (1991: 260) argue that work unit employees, local people and incoming visitors are encouraged to con- sider holy places as tourist or leisure sites. While some inner China tourists exoticize prestigious monasteries like Kumbum (Xining), nei- ther locals nor resident incomers visit Yushu’s more modest religious locations for entertainment. Nevertheless, pilgrims are presented as ‘tourists’ in offi cial publications.25 Th is ethnography of Trinde can be fruitfully compared with other recent anthropological works that provide far-reaching critiques of the complicated trajectory through which this frontier ethnic region was integrated into China, a process that has oft en involved distinct con- sequences for local men and women, and has generated diffi cult pre- dicaments for diff erent generations. For example, Makley (2008: passim) highlights how gendered disparities observed by local pilgrims represent a covert subversion, in unequivocally disregarding the offi cial explana- tion of these actions as ‘backward’ or ‘superstitious’. Her work under- scores the presence of an ongoing opposition between the old ways that are connected with valued local practices, and the new, which is associ- ated with disdained Chinese modernity (ibid.). Sudbury’s (2007: pas- sim) analysis also shows how feelings of antipathy towards the Chinese state are expressed through the use of local spaces—especially those of a religious nature—which, in being walked and re-walked, endorse the region’s pre-revolution ordering of Buddhist authority. Her analysis demonstrates how the prominence given to Buddhist-oriented narratives

24 For example, at Trinde School work unit, Drolkar, a local teacher, laughed off the Headmaster’s suggestion that she had to remove her ‘prohibited’ (Tr. machoo) prayer beads. On a diff erent occasion, Yushu Prefecture Headquarters incomer police offi cers prepared vast quantities of ritual blessing-scarves to present at a local function. 25 Trinde publicity materials estimate that thirty thousand ‘tourists’ visit the northern Trinde sacred site of Gatojowo Mountain annually (Arong Gongbao Cairen, et al. 2001: 8). opening vistas, bordering spaces 43 and practices represents an act of local subversion in a non- religious state, and shows how these contemporary discourses and actions simul- taneously cohere and sustain local communities as a whole: Th e monks’ strategies for re-construction, with the support of their lay com- munities, can be seen as forming a cogent response to communal suff ering and uncertainty. Within these narratives, those responsible for the destruc- tion of religious sites, regardless of ethnicity, are located fi rmly within a Buddhist model of order and retribution. An extension of this narrative is the importance ascribed to the physical rebuilding of the monastic environ- ment by the whole community. Th e model of order found in these narratives is, thus, refl ected negatively in the physical ailments suff ered by the trans- gressors, but positively in the physical rebuilding of the monasteries. Th e themes of external and internal order that will create maximum auspicious- ness for the future resurgence of a Buddhist model of order, whilst avoiding the karmic consequences of disorder, are thus intertwined. Th is also places the monastic communities fi rmly in their previously pre-eminent positions in Tibetan society, where an essential function of the monastic community was always to provide a conduit between the mundane world of the laity and the enlightened realm of the deities, a role that had become socially, politically and economically embedded over the centuries. (ibid.) As Makley (ibid.), Sudbury (ibid.) and the ethnography of this book show, far from diminishing with time, sentiments of hostility and mistrust of the Chinese state are now fi rmly rooted in the social experience of ethnic belonging in present-day China, and particularly among certain sections of society. Such sentiments are expressed via the continuing refutation of state policies and the rejection of offi cial interpretations of past events.

Idioms of ‘the State’ in China

Th e notion of ‘the state’ has long been central to Western concepts of China (Wittfogel 1957). Weber (1964) depicted ‘the state’ as a centralized body entitled to exact taxes, enlist subjects and monopolize force in a given area. In Weber’s view, states were rationalized, bureaucratic ‘cages of reason’ that involve signifi cant administrative procedures to execute rulings in an impartial and unresponsive way. Weber’s once-normative understanding still haunts many assumptions about ‘the political’ in China today. Similar assumptions lead to eff orts to uncover the ‘hidden transcripts’ of social and political life (see Scott 1990). Th e idea of concealed transcripts involves a version of the ‘state dominance versus local resistance’ depiction of China. Writing on ‘the political’ in contemporary China, Zhang (2001: 3) cautions against viewing everything in the PRC through a totality of offi cial 44 introduction discourses such that anything ‘unoffi cial’ comes to be taken as an authen- tic manifestation of dissent, progress and virtue. Similarly, ‘the local’ is not always a site of greater liberty and fairness in practice, as the following eth- nography shows. Th e bias towards imagining an innocent, resisting sub- ject in studies of this area sometimes means that subtler points of social integration and transformation are overlooked, and that political and new or exotic phenomena are misconstrued (ibid.). In an example from Tibetology, Goldstein and Beall frame their analysis in terms of an encounter between a remote, malevolent and singular ‘state’ that could ‘intervene again at any time and impose its alien values’ on benign, victimized local communities whose people are left with ‘feeling[s] of vulnerability, anxiety, and anger’ (1990: 155, 183, see also Germano 1998: 88 and Marshall 2002). Th e late–1980s and 2008 disturbances in Lhasa (which were brutally suppressed) have reinforced many people’s understanding of China’s politics as a struggle between state domination and nationality resistance. Some Western scholars have portrayed people’s options and the local situa- tion in terms of ‘silence, prison or exile’ (Sperling, Schell and Marshall 2000), ‘survival or submission’ (Goldstein-Kyaga 1993), ‘40 ans de colo- nization’ (Buff etrille and Ramble 1998), ‘cultural survival’ (Kolas and Th owsen 2005) and ‘control, exploitation and assimilation’ (Marshall and Cooke 1997). Similar tendencies colour ‘Th e Tibetans: a Struggle to Survive’ (Lehman 1998: 11). In this work, Lehman acknowledges that, ‘the Chinese have repressed the Tibetans, and the Tibetans have repressed each other’. However, by stating that, ‘China could never have been as successful in their occupation of Tibet without high levels of Tibetan collaboration’, Lehman (ibid.) nevertheless frames the situation in terms of a resistance, collaboration and colonization model based on unproblematized ethnic collectivities or ‘cultures’ (for a critique of analyses of distinct ‘communities’ see Watts 2004: 196–7). In practice, rather than being a ‘Sino-Tibetan’ issue, there is always a blurring of groupings, agency and liability during political upheavals, for example, as described in Lu’s 1981 narrative cited in Barmé (2000: 217).26 Using

26 Pirie (2005b) questions reports that portray tense incidents in this region as proof of confl ict between local monks and pastoralists, on the one hand, and Han Chinese and ‘sinicized’ local people on the other. She perceptively argues that such incidents should not be interpreted in terms of a reifi ed identity, but concern instead the roles and responsibilities certain local people are expected to perform as representatives of the state. Th e issue is not of fi xed cultural characteristics per se, but involves a pervasive dichotomy between two distinct forms of social organization (ibid.). opening vistas, bordering spaces 45 a contextualized approach, Mills (2001: 30) characterizes the region’s state relations diff erently: [State relations in this region are] ritualized and embedded within the quotidian and diff use practices of Buddhism, both inside and outside the ecclesiastical and legal sphere. In such a context, the existence of the Tibetan state as a symbolic system can be meaningfully discussed without requiring the presence or continuance of institutions of political dominance. However, Mills’ analysis is only partially relevant for outlying provinces and contemporary PRC-state circumstances. Buff etrille and Diemberg- er’s (2002: 5) work goes a long way towards contextualizing and com- plicating notions of belonging. Yet, their overview still distinguishes between elements ‘constructed by actors themselves’ and those ‘gener- ated by the state’. In Yushu, what may be referred to as ‘the state’ in popular parlance, is not a singular, coherent object, but involves diverse and diff used sets of governmental processes (Nugent 2004: 214). Th ese processes respond to, articulate, and mediate material and cultural forces that vary in time and space, and that alter according to their implication in shift ing inter- national power relations (cf. Gledhill 1994: 22, Rose 1998: 12). As this ethnography shows, the idea of a separation between ‘state’ and ‘non- state’ must be problematized to highlight how these realms overlap and involve each other in ways that cannot be disentangled. Mitchell highlights the power-relations at work in creating and sustaining such a distinction, pointing out that: Th e ability to have an internal distinction appear as though it were the external boundary between separate objects is the distinctive technique of the modern political order … [P]roducing and maintaining the dis- tinction between state and society is itself a mechanism that generates sources of power (1991: 78, 90).27 ‘Power’, as the phenomenon is referenced here, is exercised through ‘discourses’ that are sometimes connected to, but are not contermi- nous with, the loosely-centralized political confi gurations commonly glossed as ‘the state’.28

27 Dirks further argues that, ‘power is synonymous with order … [which is] an eff ect of power rather than its condition’ (1994: 501). 28 Local parlance reveals quite a diff erent understanding of power. Th us in Trinde, ‘power’ is instrumentally defi ned as connections to powerful people to exclude, com- mand or achieve things. In one local teacher’s terms, ‘Without power, without your social network, how would you do or achieve anything?’ 46 introduction

A closely related theme is the issue of creating and sustaining political constituencies. Academics have diff erent opinions about the way politi- cal constituencies are construed, suggesting that they are imagined (Anderson 1983), narrated (Bhabha 1990), based on ‘common culture’ (Gellner 1983) or discursively ‘derived’ (Chatterjee 1986). In Segal’s view, all ‘nationalist ideologies of unity rest on a historically-contingent principle of social order’ (1988: 301). Segal also argues that, ‘societies are (normatively) distinct sets of like individuals’, an assumption that is explored and problematized in this book. In theoretical terms, the culture-concept has been formed through wide-ranging infl uences, such as: Victorian classifi catory studies, Enlightenment ‘four-stage’ ideas of humanity’s progress and Euro-cen- tric ideas of separate nationalities, each with their ‘characteristic traits’. However, few studies analyse the actual processes through which dis- cursive formulations are maintained and contested in practice, and the results of these intricacies in everyday life (see Asad 1979: 607, and in the China context, Tsin 1999: 5). Th e constitution and reworking of political and social forms of identifi cation and belonging in practice are themes covered in this book. Explaining how such discursive processes actually happen in an Asian national context, Brooke and Schmid (2000: 10) argue that:

[Th e history of Asian nations is] never one of merely rising in ‘reaction’ to the ‘impact’ of Western imperialism … but rather is one of complex interactions between Western and indigenous practices and discourses, as elites deployed the language, territorial claims, and ideology of both old and new with the objective of fashioning a favourable place for them- selves in their nations and in the world system. Th e articulation of indig- enous national identities is accordingly less an internal process revealing a true national self than a transnational process of selecting indigenous and external cultural elements and endowing them with particular nationalist meanings through contrastive refl ection with other groups, both internal and external to the nation. Brooke and Schmid’s statement refl ects a process that has oft en resulted in notions of diff erent cultures (in the sense of stable, bounded, coher- ent groups of people), a concept that is interrogated theoretically and empirically in the analysis below. In practice, Trinde people frequently confl ate, and fi nd similarities between, apparently-divergent social concepts and political terms. Similarly, Mueggler also points out that, while ‘state’ phenomena are locally experienced as a diff use collection of organizations, measures, opening vistas, bordering spaces 47 and principles, they are oft en understood and portrayed as an inte- grated agency (1998: 188). So-called ‘state’ infl uence does not involve a collection of bureaucratic practices impinging on people’s lives from outside. Instead, these processes imply forces that create ‘profoundly intimate’ practices through which people are shaped, and by degrees shape themselves, into social beings (ibid.). Th e task is thus to under- stand how constituencies have been actively imagined, constructed and reconstructed diff erently in assorted communities, and how these modifi cations have shaped people’s conceptions and sensibilities at dif- ferent times (Huber 2002a: xx). Th e dominant view of the world as made up of separate ‘cultures’ has been convincing and powerful, and now passes as commonsense understanding in this region, as elsewhere. Accordingly, many for- eign regional studies of this area take the idiom of specifi c nationali- ties either latently or explicitly for granted.29 As a dominant social and political concept, nationality is assumed to imply an integrative, holis- tic system of collective cultural values and customs (see, for example, French 1995, Karmay 1994, Smith 1996). Identifying and systematiz- ing social collectivities creates and sustains notions of a separation between Self and Other, with stylized traits attributable to each. Once reifi ed, these nationality categories can be counterpoised with similarly essentialized understandings of ‘other nationalities’.30 In PRC politics too, each nationality has come to be associated with its own particular ‘culture’. Notions of culture (that portray a world made up of bounded, coherent and stable cultural entities) have been highly persuasive and infl uential. However, most empirical data does not support this view of a world separated into neat cultural packages.

29 Such studies have focused instead on Orientalist scholarship (Korom 1997: 1–3), Shangri-La constructions (Lopez 1998: passim), ‘anti-Chinese’ journalistic accounts (Shakya 1994a: 6–7), exile polemics (Shakya 1994a: 9–10), the global Tibet move- ment (McLagan 1997: passim), PRC rhetoric justifying intervention in ‘Tibetan’ aff airs (Shakya 2002), literary issues (Stoddard 1994, Maconi 2002) and Chinese and Western scholarly constructions of feudalism and ‘serfdom’ (Coleman 1998, Goldstein 1971). 30 Dualistic conceptualizations underpin orientations such as that of Jamyang Norbu, whose Rangzen Charter (1999) calls for unconditional independence from China, ‘human rights’ organizations (Tibet Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, Free Tibet), news digests (Tibet Information Network) and popular literature (Rowell 1991). An alternative view is provided by Asad (1979: 607), who critiques scholarly preoccupations ‘with essential human meanings—as embodied in the authentic social categories, actions and discourses of given cultures’. 48 introduction

Having been identifi ed, demarcated and specifi ed, these cultural atoms come to be imbued with a particular set of characteristics that are generalized across the perceived grouping. Abu-Lughod charac- terizes this ‘culture-concept’ as the anthropological tool par excellence for making Others (1991: 138, 146). In fact, the identifi cation of diff er- ent social groupings has a long history in this region, though the ways these have worked in practice, as well as the methods for creating and sustaining these notions, have changed signifi cantly through time.31 However, as Hostetler points out, this ‘politics of representation’ (for example, that included in the idea of Othering and Orientalism) is not simply a feature of Western modernity (2001: 99). It is instead a feature of ‘the colonial encounter, wherever colonial relations are played out’ (ibid.). Hostetler further argues that: Th e central issue is … how centres of power with a monopoly on the pro- duction and dissemination of knowledge defi ne peripheral groups and attempt in one way or another to dominate them. Th e struggle for control is not only a product of ‘Western’ hegemony. (ibid. 96) Th e above statement recalls Said’s comment that European conceptu- alizations of the Orient were not observations or objective attempts to understand Others, but expressions of ‘fl exible positional superiority’, and implied an ability to defi ne a superior Self and to subordinate Oth- ers (1978: 7). In a contemporary nationality context, Lipman uses a sim- ilar argument to assert that, ‘Th e people of China’s frontier were forced or manipulated into that same inferior position by the Han’ (1984: 286). In China, perceptions of social Otherness have a long-standing his- tory, and are not confi ned to the country’s frontiers. During the colo- nial period, European scholars encountered a Chinese literature with a long history of representing peoples on, or beyond, state boundaries (literary descriptions of ‘barbarians’ on China’s peripheries date back at least as far as the Han dynasty). Th ese societies and their elites were described as being of a lower political order than that of the Europeans.

31 For example, writing in the context of China, Bishop (1989) and Shakya (1994a) show how travellers and scholars have tended to perceive people living in this area of China’s frontiers as Others, and have oscillated between portrayals of a mystical- spiritual people and dirty-barbarians. In these studies as well as in local narratives, ‘Tibetan’ is always depicted as completely diff erent from ‘Chinese’ and ‘Western’. Within China too, these nationality peripheries evoke ideas about a ‘wild west’ characterized by feudalistic customs, sexual freedom, fertility, dirt and innocence (see, for example, Frolic 1980: 144–56). opening vistas, bordering spaces 49

Th e European scholars also noted a correspondence between European categories and those of the Imperial Qing state. Recent foreign critiques of exile contexts have also exposed the constructed and political nature of terms such as ‘Tibet’ and ‘Tibetan’ (Anand 2002, Korom 1997), and the politics and power associated with forging ‘nationalism’ and ‘identity’ among the peoples of this region (Kolas 1996).32 Th e ‘nationalism’ identifi ed by foreign scholars is oft en characterized as being of a religious nature. For example, Yeshi Choedon states that local people have a ‘strong sense of belonging and common identity based on their religion … Buddhism provided the psychological substance for nationalism and national identity’ (2002: 361). However, when ‘religion’ and ‘Tibetan’ are conjoined and divided from ‘politics’ and ‘state’, it is a short step to conceiving local people working in the state administration as ‘less authentic’. Th is view is evi- dent in some local perceptions, and is a reason why many young people are drawn to NGO work. Yet these idioms cannot be separated in prac- tice, which is a crucial point of this book. In fact, the systematic constitution of any distinct realm of knowl- edge is intimately connected to the onset of ‘modern’ forms of polit- ical-governmental power (cf. Kolas 1996: 52, 56). Th is phenomenon is as true of religion as it is of nationalities, and constitutes an impor- tant factor in the ethnography presented below. Huber (2002a: xx) has analysed how offi cial procedures and technologies have infl uenced the constitution of supra-local identifi cations in China, for example, through promoting or prohibiting diff erent language media and edu- cational systems. As Huber (ibid. xvii) emphasizes, the blurring of social boundaries (in specifi c contexts and for particular ends) is not a new, but a pervasive, phenomenon. Eschewing a categorical approach, Yeh off ers a thorough critique of the ‘alternative geographies’ and the overlapping and complex ‘mosaic of socio-territorial identities’ in con- temporary Qinghai (2003: 508, 509, 511). Her analysis evaluates how ‘new boundaries do more than curtail the spatial practices of pastoral livelihoods: they also “interpellate” subjects by creating new admin- istrative entities through which citizens of modern states conceive of themselves’ (ibid: 508).

32 In the context of the ‘Tibet movement’, McLagan (1997: 68) avoids such polar- ized depictions, and describes instead an emergent form of transnational, intercultural activism that relies on the construction and exchange of ethnically-particular symbols in contexts that traverse social and political borders. 50 introduction

A major argument of this book is that categories of identifi cation are not forced upon people by ‘the state’. Rather, local people, organizations and institutions are engaged in actively and inadvertently creating, reinterpreting and modifying concepts of identifi cation and belonging, be they offi cial or local. Upton (1995, 1999), Hartley (2002) and Yeh (2003) present detailed and subtle ethnographic analyses that investi- gate the particularities of local engagements with offi cial and institu- tional idioms and practices in marginal rural and urban contexts, and emphasize the imbricated nature of local engagements throughout. While people from Yushu oft en articulate their status to outsiders using offi cial nationality markers, they also employ many other forms of identifi cation, especially among themselves. As Humphrey notes, such contexts involve a ‘characteristic layering and hierarchization, as well as a diversifi cation, of views … [and] the strategic layering of responses’ (Humphrey 1998: xiv). Today, the nationality marker of ‘Tibetan’ indexes a historically con- structed, contextually-specifi c and politically-contrived idiom that is variously interpreted, reformed and contested in practice (Bowlin and Stromberg 1997: 132, Huber 2002a: xii–xvii, Yeh 2003). Tracing how people are intimately connected to political assemblages via techniques of power and knowledge gives clues to how diff erent social actors are enabled or restricted in shaping their own personal and social contexts at any given time (Duara 1995: 15, Litzinger 2000: 17, Tsin 1999: 14–15). People themselves therefore constitute the crucial nexus between the subjective and the social in the analysis of particular deployments of political discourses in a range of social contexts (White and Kirkpatrick 1985 cited in Levy 1998: 323). So how can political discourses be analysed fruitfully in practice? Mumford’s (1989) investigation of lama-shaman relations in Himalayan Nepal shows how discourses are inherently interwoven and endlessly reconstructed in practice. Th is analysis rejects syncretism and favours Bakhtin’s ‘dialogic imagination’ approach. As Mumford (1989: 13) argues, ‘Cultural meaning is not contained within social groups, per- sons, or linguistic terms, but rather it emerges between them.’ Bakhtin’s (1981) ideas avoid dualistic interpretations of socialist contexts (Glad- ney 1998: 109).33 Yurchak critiques such binary understandings, arguing

33 Approaches that attend to the numerous competing claims, interests and voices provide a more nuanced understanding than analyses that diff erentiate between a pri- vate ‘real self’ and an ‘offi cial self’, and which speak of ‘social schizophrenia’ and ‘duplic- ity’ in socialist contexts (for example, Verdery 1996: 94). opening vistas, bordering spaces 51 that discourses ‘hear each other constantly, call back and forth to each other, and are refl ected in one another’ (2003: 485). Echoing Bakhtin’s polyphonic understandings, Mumford characterizes social situations as having open, incomplete and non-intrinsic meanings (1989: 170).

Chapter by Chapter Overview

A plethora of idioms of social, political and economic identifi cation are in circulation in contemporary Trinde. Some idioms are currently operative as mobilizing categories, for example ‘nation-state’ (Tr. jakaq, M. guojia), ‘nationality’, ‘culture’ and ‘unitary multi-ethnic state’ ([no local term]/M. tongyi de duo minzu guojia). Other categories are dor- mant or suppressed, notably class (Tr. trarim) gender (the nearest spo- ken term is Tr. photakmotak, akin to ‘sex sign’) sect (Tr. drumtha) and religious orientation. Th e chapters in this book trace how the fi scal localizations and political devolutions of the reform era have led to new political iden- tifi cations, social constituencies and spheres of infl uence. Th is focus has involved analysing which political idioms are prioritized or sup- pressed, the ways that political concepts are locally construed and how these idioms are deployed in practice. Th e fi rst four chapters analyse concepts of ‘class’, ‘development’, ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’ and ‘culture’ in Trinde. Chapter One, Reclassifi ed Societies, analyses social divi- sions dating back to the Mao era, local understandings of wealth and reform era articulations of morality. Th e chapter questions whether the reform era constitutes a laying to rest, or a partial strengthening, of class discourses. Chapter Two, Stressing Development, introduces the politics of space, belonging and developmental ‘diff erence’, and involves local to global dimensions. Th is chapter reveals anxieties about the lack of regional economic progress and social advancement. Th ese concerns are linked to a perceived evolutionary and material hierarchy in which Trinde is characterized by backwardness, poverty and remoteness. Peo- ple have acted on local concerns by invoking idioms of belonging on an entirely new Qinghai-provincial nationality basis. Frustrations pre- date appeals to nationality diff erence. However, some concerns seem to have been aggravated by (or articulated in terms of problems associated with) an increasingly market-driven reform era economy (cf. van Beek 1996: 385). 52 introduction

Chapter Th ree, Cultivating Nationalities, explores how the constitu- tion of nationality idioms as a form of ‘autonomous’ citizenship offi - cially relegates, but does not eliminate, other forms of identifi cation in practice. ‘Tibetan culture’ and local ‘diff erence’ are currently sanctioned in offi cial policies, and are the dominant metaphors through which exile political discourses are expressed. Chapter Four, Civilizing Cul- ture, further analyses the content of local ‘Tibetan culture’ discourses, and the politics surrounding the endorsement of ‘local culture’ con- cepts as a basis for social inclusion and political mobilization in Trinde and beyond. Th e later chapters trace the deployment of the foregoing focal idioms in the contexts of ‘ritual practice’, ‘modernity’ and ‘media’. Chapter Five, Empowering Locales, investigates how tensions over reform era ritual practices expose fractures within Trinde society. Some people welcome reform era practices as legitimate revivals or innovations, while others renounce them as aberrant forms of an orthodox standard type. Th ese variations are connected, but not reducible, to educational, employ- ment and livelihood discrepancies between local people. Chapter Five also highlights the rapprochement of nominally ‘sacral’ and ‘secular’ idioms in practice. Chapter Six, Other Modernities, discusses understandings of ‘moder- nity’ and ‘tradition’ in the contexts of an innovative educational policy, non-governmental organizations and young people. People’s partici- pation in state policies of modernization and development cannot be viewed as simple capitulation to, or indoctrination of, a singular, total- izing ‘state’. Instead, local initiatives involve a margin of local interpre- tation and a diverse range of infl uences. Chapter Seven, Revisualizing Nationalities, investigates the ways that technologized media, particu- larly VCDs, are used to express a range of social and political agen- das. Media productions index diverse imaginaries of ‘Tibetan culture’, nationality identifi cation and representation. Once readily present in the media domain, idioms such as ‘nation’, ‘history’, ‘tradition’ and ‘moder- nity’ are all up for grabs. Th e Conclusion, Common Ground, revisits the organizing idioms of this book, and suggests how the issues and contexts covered in this ethnography might be fruitfully analysed in the future. State-promoted idioms such as ‘nationality’, ‘culture’, ‘modernity’ (Tr. dingrab, M. xiandai) and ‘class’ (Tr. trarim, M. jieji) are powerful, yet contested, concepts connected with a range of political discourses. Th ese concepts are sustained through a range of administrative proce- dures and consolidated by activities within various academic disciplines. opening vistas, bordering spaces 53

Th ese idioms should not be seen as outcomes or mechanisms of power. Instead, these realms are organized according to particular orientations and predicaments of government, which depend for their schemes of knowledge on specifi c organizational styles and systems of assessing people’s comportment, and as forms of expertise that render particular power-eff ects possible (Rose 1999: 18–20).

A Note on Recent Events

Although the ethnography of this book has not been substantially updated since the research period, an additional note is necessary in view of the momentous events that occurred throughout the region in 2008. Th e following section serves as a background to these tumultuous circumstances. Th e regional troubles (and Beijing-led responses) that are described below, involve and emphasize many of the political and social arguments discussed in this book. Briefl y, the disturbances started with demonstrations on the 10th of March (the forty-ninth anniversary of the failed regional uprising in 1959 against Beijing’s rule), with three hundred monks demanding the release of other monks that have been detained since autumn 2007. Soon, political demands surfaced and the protest turned violent, involving rioting, the starting of fi res and loot- ing. Some local people attacked people from non-local nationalities. Th e troubles seem to have had social and economic aspects as well as political and religious ones (see Miles 2008). Kedruq, a young man who was living in Yushu at the time, related how squads of fi ft y to sixty soldiers equipped with guns, helmets and riot shields marched through the whole of Jyekundo in an unceasing twenty-four hour patrol. An army camp, complete with sandbagged defences and a machine gun mounted on top, was stationed in every village. Local people were prohibited from buying fl ight tickets, and all tourism was forbidden. Bus transport involved stopping at numer- ous army checkpoints, where soldiers verifi ed every person’s name, age, height and nationality against lists of ‘wanted people’. Th e sheer size of the mobilization led Kedruq to comment that, ‘It was as if no sol- diers were left in China! It looked as if they were showing off , like they were going to war.’ He related how people had been ‘very scared’, that they believed they could be ‘killed if they did anything wrong’. Kedruq also commented that the incidents had made people ‘really hate the Chinese government’. Th e disturbances resulted in work unit staff 54 introduction being prohibited from going to monasteries, which carried a penalty of instant job termination. In actions uncannily reminiscent of those during the Cultural Revolution, many people with work unit positions hid and buried sacred images and statues. Th ose receiving state ben- efi ts (including widows, as well as homeless and disabled people) were not allowed to undertake circumambulations. Breaking the regulations involved losing all payments. Th ese turbulent events and challenging experiences are a potent reminder that the offi cial rights that allow for a degree of creative local or nationality expression at certain times, may be swift ly changed or completely revoked by external decision makers who are far removed geographically from the area itself. CHAPTER ONE

RECLASSIFIED SOCIETIES

If your wealth is goat-sized [not yak-sized], your unhappiness will be goat sized [Tr. djuh ratsa wo na; doeq ritsa wo]. —Local adage

Th is chapter discusses the reform era renegotiation of social categories, questions shift s in local social and political consciousness and inves- tigates perceptions of morality in the reform era, as analysed through discussions of wealth (Tr. banjur) in contemporary Trinde. Across China in the Mao era, existing wealth-based social diff erences were, to some extent, equalized or reversed, and a form of social levelling was attempted. Wealth diff erentials formed a primary basis for revolu- tionary era ‘class’ (M. jieji) distinctions. As with ‘nationality’ and ‘cul- ture’, the idiom of class was produced, and crystallized, as a point of political identifi cation and social reference through revolutionary era procedures. Class is now an offi cially de-legitimized and locally sup- pressed discourse. Th erefore, class categories are not used as rallying points in contemporary society. Instead, other markers have emerged as focal points for reform era social constituencies. However, ‘reform and opening up’ does not constitute an end to the relevance of Mao era classifi cations. Rather, it involves the transmutation and consolidation of regionally particular, historically informed expressions of class and other political idioms. Th e fi rst section of this chapter discusses pre-revolutionary and rev- olutionary social divisions and, in particular, the socialist discourse of ‘class’. It also traces the heritage of these distinctions as tensions played out in today’s complex, modern environments. Using the example of a household of settled pastoralists who suff ered serious misfortunes in 2003, the chapter investigates how these legacies link to perceptions about wealth and household morality. Th e next section explores how far class histories have been laid to rest in local areas following the reform era state restitutions. Th e discussion highlights that wealth and class histories are still a sensitive and socially ‘silent’ issue in local areas. 56 chapter one

Th e next section investigates further social perceptions surrounding how reform era wealth is used, through analyses centring on struggles to reconstruct Dõ Tri Monastery in the reform era. Th e section underlines how local strife over religious practices is interlinked with the prob- lematic place of ‘religion’ (M. zongjiao) in post-revolution China. Vil- lagers’ comments about current social tensions (such as those implied in the Dõ Tri Monastery predicaments, described below) lead in to a discussion of whether, following the Cultural Revolution, people have a more critical political consciousness. Religiosity is socially resurgent in Trinde. Aspects of this phenomenon are publically criticized by many educated Trinde people, who highlight instances of hypocritical con- duct in ways that would not have been possible in the past. In pre-PRC Trinde, status diff erences were based on lineage, wealth (indicated by number of livestock, landed property, quantity of acces- sories and quality of clothes), name, religious fi gures in the family (Tr. chooje), positioning vis-à-vis religious and other authorities and hereditary titles. Status was something people could lose in extreme circumstances. Family background was defi ned by ‘bone’, ‘patrilineage’ and ‘kin set’ (Tr. rupa, T. rus.pa). Ru is a hereditary form of social iden- tifi cation and status is traced through patrilineal forms of descent. Th us, if a person’s parents killed animals, the off spring would also be associ- ated with the inauspicious deed of taking the lives of sentient beings. A similar term (pronounced Tr. rzeh) refers to (T.) rus in rus.pa. Hence, (Tr.) rupa or rzeh yapo means ‘kin set from a good heritage’. Only those with ‘big families’ had ‘ru names’, whereas poor people had individual names. Th is form of identifi cation was diff erent from having a ‘household name’. In relation to naming practices in the area, local scholars speak of ‘eighteen great clans’ (Tr. ru cheya or rezh chen choji) and ‘four minor kin sets’ (Tr. rzeh chung zhuh). Gawa tsong were a powerful Yushu confederacy (Tr. tshowa), Gawa being a former name for Yushu.1 People are still identifi ed by adding a status reference (which relates to siblings, fatherland, dwelling place or profession) before the given name. Th e rank of high-status people (particularly religious practitioners) precedes the given name.2 In an insightful critique, Fjeld

1 For further details of ‘lineage’ in the sense of ‘race, ethnic group, nationality or lineage’ (T. rigs) see Goldstein Shelling and Surkhang (2001: 1037–8) and, as ‘lineage, descent group, clan’ (T. rus), see ibid. (1044–5). Samuel (1993: 593) found rupa to be signifi cant in Jyegundo based on his 1991 research enquiries. 2 Certain practitioners (for example, Kazang monastery lama) are so high-status that their names are never spoken by lay-people. reclassified societies 57

(2005: passim) discusses how and why these pre-revolutionary social categorizations are sustained and altered in a post-1950s situation char- acterized by wider forces, diverse concepts and socio-economic refor- mations. In the Mongolian case, Sneath (2000: 201–205) argues that prior to the revolution, commoners were identifi ed by their parent’s name, whereas noble-aristocratic households maintained their lineage identity. Th at is, commoners did not trace descent, whereas nobles did. Sneath (2007) proposes that the absence of lineage or house (Mongolian obug/yastun, literally ‘bone’) names among commoners is evidence of prior notions of social stratifi cation. Sneath’s analysis is concordant with Trinde oral histories. Some Trinde people claim locals have ‘forgotten’ their former system of names. Some among Trinde’s wealthy-class say they only had father’s name (Tr. phanye~), which suggests these people were actually commoners. Before the PRC era, social rank was, as it is today, defi ned by a per- son’s occupation, and included a large number of monastic practitioners (Tr. trawa, ‘monks’). Amongst Trinde’s rich (Tr. suqpo), a distinction is made between ‘greater’ and ‘lesser’ households. In common parlance, this diff erence involves two analogous categories: ‘rich family’ (dutsong suqpo) and ‘low family’ (Tr. dutsong chobo). ‘Nobles’ (Tr. gudrag) were described as ‘people who did not need to work’. Th ere were also ‘poor’ (Tr. drombo) people or ‘commoners’ (Tr. miser). Th ese agriculturalists, pastoralists and traders constituted the vast majority of the popula- tion. Trinde also had state-nominated and local social leaders (Tr. behu and ponpo respectively). A ‘Chinese tax offi ce’ (Tr. sago) collected taxes from families who owned plots of land. Th ere was also a set of ‘with- out anything’ (Tr. meypo) people. Th ese were either extremely poor households, or people who had relocated to Trinde and were therefore without land. Th ese families could herd sheep or plough fi elds for the local monastery in return for basic rations. Local elders say that there were no ‘low people’ (Tr. menrig) associated with purportedly unclean or inauspicious professions (for example, blacksmithing and butchery). In the PRC-era, classes were assigned on the basis of judgments about wealth, status and political orientation. In China, which was predomi- nantly rural, many localities did not manifest classic Marxist industrial society groupings. Class rationales therefore had to be modifi ed (Tsin 1999: 65). For example, Trinde had no ‘exploiting class’ or absentee land- lords. Th e local classifi cation instead distinguishes ‘patrons’ or ‘bene- factors’ (Tr. jinpa, a term with religious overtones) from ‘commoners’ 58 chapter one

(Tr. mongtsok). In some areas, class distinctions were based on mis- identifi cations of the local social structure, which was especially com- mon in pastoralist societies (Goldstein and Beall 1990: 136). Trinde social history (Padma Gun.dga 2002: 424) specifi es several indigenous levels: ‘upper class’ and ‘higher authorities’ (T. gong.rim) were classifi ed as nationality (T. mi.rigs) and religious (T. chos.lugs) upper (T. gong.rim) and intermediate level (T. ‘bring.rim) authori- ties resulting in classifi cations including ‘nationality religious middle upper’ (T. mi.rigs.chos.lugs.‘bring.gong.rim). Before 1954, the vari- ous nationality and religious leaders numbered 419 people (ibid.). Ninety-fi ve percent of the authorities listed for the county partici- pated in Trinde’s rebellion (ibid.). Of the sixty-one ‘incarnate lamas’ (T. sprul.ku bla.ma), three were killed, twenty arrested, thirteen fl ed and eleven disrobed to become ‘ordinary people’ (T. rang.ga [.ba]). One of Trinde’s seven ‘hundred household’ (M. baihu) leaders was also killed (ibid.). In Trinde, households were classifi ed as being with or without wealth, according to the number of livestock and hired labour. Spe- cifi c classifi ers like ‘proletariat’ (M. wuchan jieji, Tr. jormey trarim muh, T. ’byor.med.gral.rim.rang.mos, literally ‘wealthless class’) and ‘capitalist’ or ‘bourgeoisie’ (M. zichan jieji ziyou hua, Tr. jorte~ trarim muh, T. ’byor. ldan.gral.rim.rang.mos, literally ‘class with wealth’) are used in prefer- ence to the offi cial term for ‘class’ (M. shehui jieji, literally ‘tie together rank’) as a whole (see also Shakya 1994b: 160–1). Th e terms ‘rich peas- ant’ (T. zhing.pa.phyug.po) and ‘rich pastoralist’ (T. ’brog.pa.phyug.po) were not used during discussions of class in Trinde. In eff ect, prior notions of social rank became the baseline divisions for the wider CCP ideology of ‘class’ and ‘class status’ (M. jieji chengfen). ‘Exploiters of the masses’ became communist ‘class enemies’ of the state (M. jieji diren). Th ese ‘enemies’ were the landlord and comprador classes and bourgeoisie—those with power and money. People were punished if they were considered to be of an undesirable class. Th ese undesirable classes, which were equally denigrated, were: ‘feudalists’ (T. bkas.bkod.rgyud.’dzin, Tr. gako junzun), ‘counterrevolutionaries’ (T. gsar. brjer.ngo.logs.pa, Tr. saji ngo loqpa), ‘capitalists’ (T. ma.brtsa.ring.luks, Tr. madza reluq~ ), ‘rich’ (T. phyuk.po, Tr. suqpo) and ‘landowners’ (T. sa.bdag, Tr. suhdoq). In local parlance, ‘landowners’ are ‘cattle-owners’ who are ‘those with many livestock’ and ‘those having butter, cheese, sugar, sultanas; things that only rich people have’. Th e local word for ‘counterrevolutionary’ translates as ‘those against a change-to-new’. reclassified societies 59

Th ese people are locally described as ‘those do not like China’. ‘Capi- talists’ are described as the ‘opposite of communists’ and, more infor- mally, as ‘eat big, drink big’ (Tr. sa chey, tuhng chey), a translation of the popular Chinese phrase describing the ‘big belly of power’ signifi ed by ‘eating big and drinking big’ at the people’s expense. In Trinde, people’s primarily social identifi cation is as part of a cor- porate kin group, rather than being considered on an individual basis. Th us, Tashi-tsong describes everything relating to Tashi’s whole house- hold, rather than referring to Tashi as a separate individual. Corporate identity is the origin of the local phrase, ‘Every house has a household- group’ (Tr. kõba rere, dühtsong rere). Similarly, class label implica- tions did not only aff ect people on an individual basis, but impinged on the whole household (for agriculturalists) or tent-group (among pastoralists). Furthermore, class distinctions involved practical and ideological aspects. People were considered embodiments of their class background, and their consciousness was deemed to directly refl ect that background. Th e thoroughgoing application of class and other state defi nitions from the 1950s onwards has engendered interpersonal and social tensions that are still relevant in Trinde society today. As with many situations in the revolutionary era, knowledge diff er- entials played a part in how classifi cation played out in local events. Diff erences in knowledge aff ected how people presented themselves to offi cials, which infl uenced how classifi cation was applied in practice. Well-informed people knew to bury their religious objects, but many people did not know they should hide them and were therefore arrested as ‘class enemies’. Sonam, a Druchung villager and former shopkeeper, related that:

A year aft er my father’s death, the [Liberation Army] soldiers arrived. I was eight or nine years old. At night we heard the bombs, and saw the fi res. We escaped to the Yangzi and sheltered close to the river. A rich Tibetan man rode into the village on his way to Lhasa. Only the rich rode horses. He said, ‘Do not worry: if you are poor, you will be safe.’ My family was a poor family. We stayed one or two days in the village, then returned to Kazang monastery. Returning to Kazang, there were so many solders sleeping there! Th e soldiers gave us barley seeds to eat. If the soldiers knew the family was poor, they did not kill them. But some poor families did not understand and tried to escape along with the rich so they were killed too.

Furthermore, formerly ‘bad class’ households employed innovative ways to cope with their unfavourable situation. Goldstein and Beall 60 chapter one describe people trying to evade negative classifi cations by condemn- ing relatives (1990: 142). In Trinde, parents gave off spring fervently patriotic names (for example, M. Hongqi, which means ‘Red Flag’, and M. Jianguo, meaning ‘Establishing Th e Nation’) as a ‘social necessity’ (Tr. shentsuk gojizi, M. shehuide bi yao xing). Early in the reform era, communes were disbanded and a House- hold Responsibility System (M. baochan daohu zhi) was instituted. Equal wages (‘everybody eating from the same big pot’) gave way to raises and bonuses. Monasteries were rebuilt. Household links to spe- cifi c monasteries were resumed. Prior forms of household identifi ca- tion and obligation were resumed in an entirely new historical-political context. Independent trading was allowed. Some people, principally women, opened stores on the town’s main street. Under Deng, govern- ment restitutions worth thousands of Yuan were paid to former ‘bad- class’ households (Goldstein and Beall 1990: 147, Wang 2002: passim).3 ‘Villages’ and ‘townships’ replaced ‘communes’ as the main unit of local political administration. Money is not a straightforward marker of reform era social status or cultural authority in Trinde, nor have the signifi ers of ‘wealth’ been stable through time. In the past, wealth was esteemed and valued, as evident in local songs that wished people the best things in life. One old Golog song affi rms, ‘I hope you have a good horse, beautiful girlfriend, nice clothes, a yak-hair tent, many yaks, tea brewing inside the tent, a good son-in-law and plentiful money.’ Today, market commodities and opportunities signify that a household has status and a ‘good condition’ (Tr. chachyen yagpo). Th us, wealth in contemporary Yushu is signifi ed by driving a Mitsubishi jeep, private education, building a two-storey house, and buying a second-home in Xining. Almost all Trinde people continue to dress in regional clothing during important festivals, and evaluate other’s clothing and accoutrements as signifi ers of household wealth and standing. Wealth itself occupies a complex moral position in Yushu society. One reason for this complexity is that, aft er the revolution, China’s leaders criticized wealth, which was explicitly linked to immorality. Furthermore, among local people, rich and high-minded people are considered to be grasping. Local stories criticize attachment to money and greed rather than money per se. Various religious anecdotes are

3 Th e exchange rate throughout the period of research was 1 GBP to 14.2346 Chinese Yuan (M. renminbi). All prices have been left in the original currency. reclassified societies 61 oft en cited in support of this non-attached attitude. Tenzin, a former state cadre, summarized a prevalent view, saying that, ‘Rich people use sweet words and always need something in return. Rich people need more and more, while poorer people give off erings, teachings or butter for all sentient beings.’ Attitudes to money are also used as a basis for social belonging and exclusion, which is a pervasive theme of this chap- ter. Th us, Trinde people pit local generosity (supported by Buddhism as a basis for compassion) against outsiders’ strategizing and material- ity. Incomers are popularly depicted as being businesspeople that want to pay for a lama’s help to achieve desired outcomes. Such polarized characterizations play into wider stereotypes about incomers’ instru- mentality, while other local comments show a backhanded apprecia- tion for incomers’ business acumen. Furthermore, local people affi rm that, if you have social power (and, particularly, high-status connec- tions), money is relatively unimportant. Bauer notes that, while class categorizations have aff ected local people’s views of specifi c leaders, the leaders’ own capacity to infl uence their constituents is still based on their status and character in the society as a whole (2005: 10). However, these nominal domains are not separate but are mutually infl uencing, as the following example shows. Th e legacies of class-status are especially evident in current opin- ions about the correct use of wealth, as linked to household morality. Such perceptions are highlighted in local opinions about a household of settled pastoralists who suff ered a succession of serious misfortunes in 2003. Th e following account centres on Pema, the Students’ Director at Trinde School. Villagers’ suspicions about Pema’s household’s ‘strange’ kin arrangements and ‘bad class’ categorization appear repeatedly in people’s discussions about the household misfortune. Th e household troubles began to emerge with a cancelled trip to Jyegu. Pema said his younger brother had ‘stomach problems’. Two days later the brother was rushed to Jyegu’s rudimentary hospital in a school pickup. Th e brother (his name was never spoken) was by now unable to speak, lolled about helplessly, gurgled and oozed froth from his mouth. In Jyegu Hospi- tal, the sick man was put onto a drip. Th roughout this period of sick- ness, Pema told me the doctors did not know what was wrong with his brother. When asked, he always affi rmed that his brother was ‘a little better’. Th e next day, the hospital was in complete disarray and Pema was beside himself. Answering the telephone a day later, Pema merely stated quietly ‘now it is fi nished’ (Tr. da tsar), to communicate the death of his brother. 62 chapter one

Over the following days, Pema told people that his brother had com- mitted suicide through consuming masses of veterinary medicine. He explained that, ‘My brother did not want to live anymore.’ Th e suicide became the talk of Trinde town. News fi ltered back to family-groups and, from there, onto the village grapevine, through each household head. It is the household head who is responsible for conveying blessing papers and donations as a contribution to the aft er-death, pre-rebirth chanting in a deceased person’s household. A number of diff erent inter- pretations of Pema’s brother’s story came to light refl ecting the diff erent socio-economic character of each village. Opinions were not mentioned publicly, and even the deceased’s Dawa-village relatives lamented that, ‘It is hard to say what the truth is.’ Th e suicide was particularly inauspicious and stigmatized, given the great emphasis laid on the sanctity of human life in Tibetan Buddhist understanding. A person’s negative and positive actions (including the manner of death) form a register, which transmits to the subsequent incarnation. In cases of suicide in Yushu, the deceased receives a lowly earth-burial, rather than an auspicious sky burial. At Trinde School, Singye, the Teaching Director asked if I had seen Pema and (mimicking infantile blubbering), whether he had been crying. Th is ‘joke’ carries moral overtones since, in local understanding, crying for deceased rela- tives is believed to confuse a consciousness in its progression towards its next rebirth. Th e crying reference was a slur on Pema’s masculinity, as in the local saying ‘Women cry, men get angry.’ Crying has implica- tions for how a person’s spiritual fortitude is perceived, as in the phrase ‘An ocean-mind bears anything; crying makes one’s mind shrink.’ To give some background to this complicated scenario, in the reform era, Pema and Pasang (who live as husband and wife) have supplemented their full-time work unit positions by trading mass-produced clothes in Jyegu, Trinde and Shewu. Pema’s family also sold forty yaks. Th is capital was used to construct one of the grandest residences in Trinde County, a residence that melds quasi-vernacular styles with quintessential mod- ern inner China styles. A riot of freshly-hung prayer-fl ags garlands the roof. Padre~ gives a clue to local reactions in his exclamation: You want to know what ‘rich’ means for Trinde people? Offi cially, ‘rich’ means the class with property, those who exploit others, and ‘poor’ are those without property. ‘Rich’ is like Pema’s ‘house’ … except that that is not a house, it is a palace, a fortress; a great chanting hall [Tr. dü khong]! You just cannot miss it, especially surrounded by all those little mud-brick things [i.e. simple local residences]. It is the only landmark in the entire village … reclassified societies 63

Th e new house is a huge change from the household’s previous, lowly dwelling, and is oft en mentioned by townsfolk as Trinde’s best example of a desirable residence. Over the following months, a succession of other diffi culties occurred in the same household. First, a band of pastoralists arrived demanding a huge sum of money that the deceased purportedly owed to them. Th e men had no receipt, but used threats of physical violence to try to extort the cash. A few weeks aft er the death, Pema’s father fell gravely ill, and remained close to death for months. Soon aft er, a potentially malignant growth was removed from Pasang’s neck, requiring the whole fam- ily to relocate to Xining for a month (which also helped them avoid the pastoralist ‘creditors’). Pema’s younger brother suff ered repeated bullying at school. As the Students’ Director at Trinde School, Pema brought further infamy upon himself by beating up his brother’s bul- lies in their own homes. Soon aft er, Pema’s stepfather (a paternal uncle) fell seriously ill with prostate disorders. Th e uncle sought counsel from Kazang Monastery’s highest lama. Th is rinpoche advised against using allopathic (literally ‘Chinese’, Tr. Ja) medicine, and advocated ‘good dharma’ instead. Th e uncle died within days. Aside from the emotional aspects, the death meant that Nyija, Pema’s youngest bother, was unable to travel to India with the uncle to gain a ‘real Tibetan education’. Local people did not understand the suicide in isolation from the household’s former and current economic status. Legacies of Mao era class histories are highly salient in people’s interpretation of Pema’s household’s misfortune. Pema himself described his family as having ‘all fi ve bad-classes’. His mother was categorized as a ‘livestock-owner’ and his father was captured and held for six months for being catego- rized as ‘rich’ and a ‘leader’. Pema’s father’s oldest brother (a ‘leader’) died in the resistance struggle. A paternal uncle and lama also died in revolutionary era struggles. Th e father’s youngest brother, who was also a lama, died in prison. Th e family never learned any details of the circumstances. All these deaths occurred between 1958 and 1959. With most of the male family members dead, Pema’s mother struggled to cope with the resulting workload. Given her ‘bad class’ status, no one was allowed to assist her in her tasks and responsibilities. Pema described how their pastoralist-group’s ‘private wealth’ (Tr. thada geyla õng lã luq, which included, livestock with some jewellery and other treasures) was seized and became ‘collective possessions’ (Tr. thuh mo õng lã luq). At this time, agriculturalists and pastoralists, rich and poor, had to study Mao’s words and book from nine until eleven every evening. 64 chapter one

Many Trinde villagers explicitly link Pema’s misfortune to his house- hold’s reform era wealth, which is itself connected to their pre-revolution status. Th e family’s current situation is a notable turnaround relative to their unfavourable revolutionary era class categorization. Most villagers believe that the household’s misfortunes did not happen because of ran- dom or isolated factors. Instead, people bring together stories of wrongly maintained and nominally ‘strange’ kin relationships (giving polyandry, infi delity and illegitimate off spring as examples) as causal factors. People commonly said the adversity occurred because the family had acquired too much money too quickly in the reform era. Similar legacies of the destruction wrought during the Cultural Revolution, including the inter- pretation of these events through the medium of ‘Tibetan Buddhism’ has been found in other areas (see, for example, Sudbury’s 2008 critique).4 Padre,~ one of the family’s relatives, summarized that: If you do something terrible to someone then a similar thing will hap- pen to you. Th is is ‘bad karma’ [Tr. li] coming back to you. Th is means, if you plant misdeeds, so they will grow [Tr. nham nye dü]. Th is is a kind of ‘comeuppance’. Pema’s household did not treat the father well. Th e father acquired most of their wealth, yet they abandoned him, giving him only ten yaks. Th en the father beat the mother. Pema did not like his father. He likes his uncle. Th e younger brother is actually Pema’s uncle’s child …

Compensating Class Wrongs

China’s post-Mao leadership formulated policies aimed at abolishing class-based discrimination, and provided fi nancial recompense to ‘class enemies’ who lost herds, possessions and social status (Goldstein and Beall 1990: 147). Reform era wealth redistribution was de facto, granted to the immediately preceding holder rather than returned to the ini- tial proprietor (Wang Hui 2001: 168–9). Th e perception of Dawa as being a ‘rich’ village is a new designation that stems from its residents having been classifi ed as ‘rich’ during the revolutionary era. Many of these families received state restitutions following the excessive policies applied during the revolutionary era.

4 As Sudbury’s (2007) far-reaching and nuanced analysis highlights, local people understood that actions such as razing sacred sites during the Cultural Revolution car- ried karmic consequences, such as illnesses and untimely or wretched deaths. Many villagers later returned objects to monasteries to off set further karmic repercussions (ibid.). reclassified societies 65

State reimbursements and class relaxation policies have led some people to talk of a ‘laying to rest’ of class (see Anagnost 1997: 75). In Trinde, social diff erentiations have instead resurfaced in the reform era, as articulated, for example, through understandings about appropriate uses of wealth. Th ese reform era social distinctions are not a return to pre-revolution identifi cations, nor are they entirely novel. Instead, these expressions constitute new social phenomena informed by Mao era divisions and prior social arrangements. Trinde cannot be under- stood without reference to these regional class specifi cities. Th rough reform era state compensation and the couple’s own enter- prise (made possible by the Dengist market-economic reforms), the household returned to a relatively prosperous position. However, without familial, homeland, social or offi cial connections (Tr. drewa, M. guanxi) among the (agriculturist) Druchung-village cadres and scholars, the household’s status remains ambiguous. If class had been ‘laid to rest’, the issue would not cause people to censor their speech according to the former class of the audience, as commonly occurs. Th is continuing self-censorship raises the question of whether class has ever been publicly discussed, or whether my presence created a context for the discussion of previously unspoken themes. Further- more, if Pema’s household had shaken off their ‘class enemy’ past, they might have recouped their fi nancial losses without incurring suspicion or resentment (cf. Schein 2000: 17–21). Villagers sometimes directed resentment towards Pema, accusing him (in his absence) of using ‘grand’ vocabulary in his conversations to me, and pointing out that he would never use such phrasings in local conversations. Such com- ments also refl ect the impacts of the Mao era on the use of ‘honorifi c’ language (Tr. gu tshig) and levels and types of language knowledge (cf. Shakya 1994b). As Litzinger (2000: 185) notes, in the early 1980s, ‘bad class back- ground’ prejudices were supplanted in institutional contexts by merit systems. Institutionalized as cumulative procedural phenomena, class discrimination and more recent inequalities have thus become a central feature of reform era life. Across China, reform era changes in fi nan- cial management have exposed local leaders to accusations of eco- nomic mismanagement. Beijing offi cials are not always thought to be the source of Yushu’s problems, however. Instead, local cadres are said to be ‘corrupt’ and concerned to fulfi l their own interests. Siphoning off government resources intended for local communities is described locally as having ‘a big back pocket’. 66 chapter one

It is not surprising that class cannot be ‘laid to rest’ so easily, given the ramifi cations such classifi cations had on people’s lives and in view of the social and economic instability that characterizes the reform era. Furthermore, class signifi cations and ramifi cations have also been transferred to each household or tent group’s off spring and also to then- unborn generations. Pema related that: Most of the younger generations are not able to know what happened. Th ose who were ‘wealthless’ did not have cause to fi nd out. Th ose ‘with wealth’ were not allowed to go to school during the 1960s. We could not light our own fi re; only one communal fi re was permitted. Th ere was only one small daily meal of inferior food. Th ere were endless meetings when the commune-group had to study Mao Zedong Th ought and sayings and shout ‘Long live Chairman Mao [punches air in exultant gesture]!’ In 1970, the ‘wealthy’ were allowed to study again, but when the children went to school we were beaten by the ‘wealthless’ children. I have ended up not trusting anyone, not really trusting … During this monologue, Gao, a local teacher with a local mother and an incomer father, arrived by motorbike. Pema fell silent mid-sentence, whispering, ‘He is one of the poor ones!’ Pema quickly changed to an innocuous, curriculum-related topic. Later, I asked Pema if he could write ‘wealthless-class’ in literary-language. He did so only aft er I had promised never to let anyone see the note: ‘Otherwise no work, no wages. You understand, right?’ he said. Class is but one of many vestigial tensions stored up in Trinde people’s fractured experiences and memories of the recent past. Only a few people who come from ‘wealthy’ backgrounds (mostly pasto- ralists) were willing to discuss their family history in any detail. In every case of perceived social transgression in Trinde, all household members maintained strict public silence about the trouble, and car- ried on as though nothing had happened.5 Local ‘silence’ (Tr. kha dom mey) and unspoken issues result in equivalent lacunae in schol- arly research. PRC scholars have analysed inter-nationality tensions, for example in the Mongolian (Bulag 2000: 543) and Yao (Litzinger 2000: 86) contexts. Tibetological accounts have generally downplayed the diff erentiations, idiosyncrasies and stresses between local people

5 Local people do not talk about their familial or personal issues outside their house- hold as doing so would be ‘like admitting something is wrong’. Padre,~ a relative of Pema, likened households to spherical water containers and said that, ‘couples’ separations are ‘proof that confl icts must occur’. He describes divorce as the ‘overfl ow of confl ict’, when things cannot be contained. In this case, the pot breaks and water (the tangible signs of confl ict) fl ows out for all to see. reclassified societies 67

(especially those relating to offi cial discourses), and discussion of the ‘fi ssures and faultlines’ between local people is largely absent from for- eign accounts of this nationality region of China (see Yeh 2002: 242). Some commentators instead discuss whether the prior local system can be rightly termed ‘feudal’ (see Goldstein 1971 and Coleman’s 1998 critique). Mills is one of the few commentators to analyse the legiti- macy of ‘class-based’ reasoning used to justify liberating China’s local nationality (2003a: 329–47). Today, educated Yushu people also nar- rate local histories in terms of nationality categories or ‘culture’, rather than using class or wealth distinctions (see also Makley 2007, Sudbury 2008 passim). In Trinde, contemporary and historical diffi culties are also largely unspoken in private or public domains, which allows for a loose, but oft en unsettled, local coexistence. Memories, for example those relating to wealth, are imperfectly contained. Such recollections slip out when Trinde inhabitants’ understanding of the correct, normal or expected social parameters are disrupted, as in the suicide case above. Revo- lutionary era assumptions are also displaced onto other people using reductive social idioms, as with the example of Li Zhenxi, given below. Tensions may also be left simmering, as in the monastery example, which is also described below. As Mueggler (1999: 480) points out, ‘At times, people were seized and set against each other by these rival strat- egies; at others, they shift ed easily among them, purposefully merging or transforming them as they sought relief from political [or social] dilemmas.’ Th e Trinde ethnography included here bears witness to this process. Class histories represent one of the most painful and suppressed issues in local areas. Th e diffi cult truth is that it was not a case of incomers subjugating local people, but of local people being set against each other—a classic ‘divide and rule’ strategy. French cites the com- ments of a local person who, as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revo- lution, had participated in desecrating the Jokhang temple, one of the principal Tibetan Buddhist sites: ‘It was the Chinese who killed the sheep, but we were the ones who skinned and gutted it’ (quoted in Sudbury 2007). Similarly in Trinde, within trusted research relation- ships, formerly ‘wealthy’ (Tr. jorte~) local people describe how ‘wealth- less’ (Tr. jormey) neighbours ‘stole’ their possessions. Furthermore, people classifi ed as ‘wealthless’ were encouraged and empowered to criticize those categorized as being ‘wealthy’. As Jinpa, a Yushu NGO director, states: 68 chapter one

It was Tibetans who damaged the monastery and religious things. Th e Communists incited local people to destroy their own things and kill their own people. Chinese teachers said to the poor: ‘Why are you poor? As Tibetans you should understand!’ Th ey said that, ‘Th e rich have taken your parents’ and your ancestors’ things!’ Aft er that, farmers, landown- ers, intellectuals, high-status people and business-people were regarded as being bad. Mueggler (1998: 169) notes that, ‘the capacity of the state to infl ict vio- lence on bodies lies at the root of social memory; this capacity is not merely repressive but also productive, a determining condition for the regime within which people remember and forget the wrongs of past interpersonal strife.

Reform Era Perceptions of Morality

Th e next section highlights further ramifi cations of social divisions dating back to the Mao era and condemnations about the way reform era wealth is managed, this time in the context of Dõ Tri Monastery (T. gdong.sprad bsam.gtan chos.’khor gling). Th ese ethnographic details about ‘class’, wealth and ‘religion’ call into question any straightforward depiction of the reform era as a time of ‘liberalization’. When certain forms of religion were again sanctioned, many formerly de-legitimized people (notably, monastic practitioners) were reinstated. Increased commercialism in the reform era, the sanctioning of religious faith, and the dramatic rise in the availability and ownership of domestic television sets have sensitized people to wealth and status inequalities. While in the revolutionary era everyone had limited state-sanctioned power, politico-economic diff erentials and social stratifi cation swift ly reappeared following the 1980s reforms. People have tended to be more vocal about their grievances about the past following the 1980s consti- tutional reforms. Th ere has been a diversifi cation of authorities over the reform era, which means that Trinde is governed not less, but diff er- ently, and by a wider range of people than during the Mao-years. Th ese disparities and changes, as well as the ways some people are using their new-found authority, have led to further resentment. Th is section describes the historical trajectory of monastic-lay rela- tions in recent Trinde history, focusing on struggles that followed the 1980 reforms. Th e discussion highlights how good dharma and morality are intimately linked in local understanding, with villagers expecting a ‘good’ dharmic orientation to be accompanied by a person’s appropriate reclassified societies 69 use of money. In Trinde, every household is associated hereditarily with a specifi c monastery. Th is reciprocal relationship involves lay house- hold members paying dues and providing free labour and, in return, gaining ritual services from the incumbent monks. Th e Dõ Tri monas- tery issues only came to light aft er a year of fi eldwork, when a class of Trinde students suggested we make a third visit to Kazang monastery (T. gdong.sprad skal.bzang dpal.’byor gling). Th e students were unen- thused about visiting the nearby Dõ Tri monastery, even though none of them had ever been there. While people do not speak about this issue openly, close associates later gave their views on the events. Two work unit staff described the monastery struggles as ‘headline news’ and a ‘hot topic’. Th e matter had apparently been a staple debate dur- ing friend and family gatherings. Th e air of suspicion surrounding the monastery was not due to links to Dorje Shugden (the Buddhist deity or malevolent spirit who was banned by the Dalai Lama in 1996), but arose through the interpersonal struggles for power outlined below. In the early reform era, an old monk from the pre-revolution Dõ Tri monastery had become strong and important, and had taken charge of coordinating the 1980s reconstruction. With the appointing of a new reincarnate lama (Tr. trulku, which means ‘manifestation body’), the monks split into two factions, one supporting the old monk, while the others followed the new trulku. Th e trulku then mysteriously disap- peared, which townsfolk attribute to his snaffl ing of monastery funds to spend on himself. A replacement trulku was found in the Indian subcontinent. However, this trulku also soon departed in a cloud of suspicion. People say he was ‘working under the table’ (politically) or ‘spying’ (Tr. sowa nyewa) for the Dalai Lama. To ascertain the next trulku, a letter was hand-delivered to the Dalai Lama, who replied with a description of the next incumbent’s family situation, parents’ names and location. Following these indicators, a replacement was found in Yushu County. Two further trulkus were subsequently installed, sup- planting the previously-appointed third trulku in importance. Trinde people consider Dõ Tri’s problem to stem from the old monk’s assump- tion of authority without incarnate status, and his unwillingness to relinquish his position when the time came to appoint a trulku, who is deemed to be the legitimate overseer of the monastery. Dõ Tri monastery is under the aegis of the Religious Aff airs Bureau (M. zongjiao chu), which answers to an equivalent Provincial-level min- istry. Th e Bureau has certain powers, though these are not usually exer- cised in practice. When Dõ Tri’s diffi culties became severe, the Bureau 70 chapter one threatened to close the monastery, even though the establishment had only recently been rebuilt and reopened. Th e monks promised not to repeat the events and the Bureau’s closure order was suspended. Th is suspension was dependent on the monks fulfi lling their promise to stop their in-fi ghting. Th e Bureau still assesses all local religious institutions regularly, and is responsible for the ‘patriotic education’ (M. aiguozhuyi jiaoyu) of monks, a campaign that began in 1997 in Qinghai. Th is ‘edu- cation’ involves teaching religious practitioners about Chinese politics and emphasizing anti-splittism. Monks are required to renounce all faith in the Dalai Lama (see Diemberger 2002: 33). Th e Dõ Tri mon- astery issue is still sensitive, because all the monks took sides. Fur- thermore, nearly all schoolteachers are related to at least one of those monks. For many people, Dõ Tri has recently taken on further ambiva- lent associations through its association with a reform era unorthodox ‘ecstatic-type’ blessing practice called ‘gods descend’ (Tr. lhabab, see Chapter Five).6 Th is is especially true in Dawa-village, which is affi li- ated to the orthodox Tibetan Buddhist monastery of Kazang. Many local narratives equate the appropriate use of money with correct dharma and, thence, good moral practice. Across Kham areas, monastic practitioners are scrutinized for their lifestyle practices. Yushu is said to have a particularly high number of so-called ‘begging monks’. In fact, many younger monks can be seen fraternizing on Trinde main-street, sporting wrap-round specs and snazzy watches and using mobile phones and powerful motorbikes. Criticizing the appearance and behaviour of local monks is a popular activity in Trinde School offi ces and teachers’ homes. Many of the staff say they are unhappy that local monks give young women motorbike rides and attend cabarets in an apparent prefer- ence to studying.7 When I received a couple of perverted telephone calls in Trinde, my colleagues traced the number to a monastery telephone, which they interpreted as further proof of local monastic degeneration. Loosening of residential restrictions mean that people can now relocate to avoid residual Mao era perceptions. Gyurme is a remote

6 A similar phenomenon in described by Sinclair (2004) in the post-socialist context of Russia. 7 Non-scholarly monastic activities have a long history, and are not necessarily new features that demonstrate degeneration. Goldstein’s (1998b: 22) investigation of Lhasa’s Drepung Monastery shows that, many monks there were poor and spent much of their time making money through trade and other means. With the exception of hetero- sexual sex, the monastery made only periodic attempts to curb the range of ‘deviant’ behaviours practised, reasoning that such activities were a matter of individual karma rather than an institutional concern (ibid. 19, 22). reclassified societies 71

Sepa-born ‘poor’ tailor in his mid-fi ft ies living in Trinde town. His experience highlights some of the problems associated with wealth, morality and religion in the reform era market economy: So, why did I move to Trinde town? [Tailor addresses present company.] Should I tell her or not? [His relatives encourage him to speak.] Well, bad people fought with me in Sepa, so I had to move. In 1997, some guys stole things from our monastery. Th e lama said, ‘If you do not return the stolen things, I shall put you in jail!’ One of the guys peed in the lama’s bowl, so I got angry and fought them. Several years later, the burglars sold the monastery treasures in another area. People told the lama who had done it. Th e lama cross-questioned people, so he found out who the real cul- prits were. I informed the police, but the guys were rich and had good connections within the police force, so the police did not punish them. I explained the situation to our township leader, and asked for permis- sion to move. I was afraid of the retribution! He allowed me to move to Trinde County Town. Once here, I went to the Chinese police in Trinde and told them about the situation. Th e police said, ‘If you want them to go to jail, you can try, but it is really diffi cult.’ Th e Trinde-area struggles over religious practices are not surpris- ing given that, ‘religion’ (as it is now defi ned and delimited within the administrative category of M. zongjiao) has been, and remains, a site of intense ideological struggle in China. Schoolteachers’ critique of monks participating in the ‘material’ realm (for example, by partaking of con- sumer goods and engaging in leisure pursuits), suggests that some teach- ers use analogous distinctions to the ‘essence-function’ concept, which is described in the Introduction. In many other ways too, ‘the material’ has come to signify Marxism, politics, ‘Han’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘state’, whereas ‘the spiritual’ signifi es ‘supra-state’ religion, the latter being considered a prime marker of nationality authenticity among local people them- selves. Th e material-spiritual dichotomy is productive and pervasive in local, foreign and central discourses. Th is dyad is evident in van Dyk’s (1988: 677) view that: Chinese forces conquered Tibet in 1950. Th ere has been a great friction ever since between the pragmatic communists, who have come here to create a new world, and the pious Tibetan Buddhists, whose goal has been to live in harmony with the world as it is. Connecting and extending themes of religion, good dharma and morality, many local people express anxieties about incomers ‘arriv- ing from all quarters’. Th ese fears relate to a strong local conjunction of proper morality with localized, territorialized belonging. Continu- ing a long-standing preocupation, local people are concerned to fi nd 72 chapter one out whether monks are legitimate practitioners. Th is focus may have intensifi ed, given today’s context of movement and partial deregula- tion. One Trinde family, for example, describes administering a quick ‘facts and fi gures of Buddhism’ quiz on alms-collecting monks to ‘check whether they are real or not’. Th is unease echoes offi cial concerns about people wasting money on devotional pursuits and, particularly, on bogus practitioners. In a neighbouring area of Kham, a forty-year old local man argued against donating to ‘begging monks’, while his sidekick, who is in his early twenties, believes that one should ‘believe in, and give to, all monks because they are monks’.8 While the oldest generations were never critical of religious practitioners, younger people tend to use religion to reaffirm scrupulously their nationality credentials, for example, by withholding any criticism of religious practitioners. Here, religious practitioners come to physically symbolize dharma, which is considered to represent the quintessence of local national- ity existence in practice. The so-called ‘fake’ monks seeming disrup- tion of this order is at the heart of staff critiques. It is instead the generation of people who are now in their mid-twenties to fifties (those with experience of the Mao era ‘religious’ prohibitions) who are sometimes critical. These comments index philosophical varia- tions rather than being merely age-related.

Contemporary Criticality

Writing in an exile context in the 1980s, Nowak states that, follow- ing the political and geographical upheavals of the revolutionary era, people were no longer able to ‘dwell in the naiveté of fi rst certainty’ (1984: 160). She also contends that modern schooling has produced a ‘radical break’ with previous processes of cultural transmission (ibid.). With this in mind, do these Trinde-area comments about monks and the Sepa-area tensions indicate that the Cultural Revolution, modern education and experiences and the narratives of displacement or exile have produced a newly critical, or even ‘cynical’, political consciousness in local people? And are the current refl exive and analytical capacities

8 Th ings are rarely as simple in practice, however. For example, one group of Amdo monks who lived in Lhasa during the festival season turned out to be a mixture of legitimate religious practitioners and lay people. Th e ‘seasonal’ monks said they ‘just copied the others’ mouth movements’ to perform the chanting. reclassified societies 73 diff erent in kind and/or degree to those cultivated in prior moments? Gao, a local teacher, argues that: Th e Dõ Tri issue shows the diff erence between today and in the past. Now people’s minds have changed. In the past, people were easy believ- ers. Th ey did not examine whether someone was a monk or not. Just by wearing the monks’ clothes they believed in a monk’s integrity. Referring to the Monastery troubles, Yodrön, a Druchung woman, exclaimed that, ‘Th is kind of thing has practically never happened in Trinde history. We had never heard of monks fi ghting with lamas before!’ Some Trinde people believe that experience of China’s politi- cal history has increased popular discernment. For example, Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, explained that: Th ese days people say, ‘Protect the environment, nature’. One hundred years ago, our thinking was not systematic. Tibetans liked fi ve-coloured fl ags: [symbolizing] earth, clouds, river, fi re, grass. Together, all fi ve formed the world. We always tried to accommodate, and not overrule, nature. While the Cultural Revolution is oft en considered to be responsible for causing a shift in people’s critical reasoning and political consciousness, this phase is not unanimously or entirely considered a period of social ‘decline’. In fact, some people argue that the era led to an improved situ- ation. Gao, a Trinde teacher, asserts that: If you have a time when your culture is broken apart and you have to leave it aside, then you have to learn new and diff erent things. Later, when you can do your cultural things again, your mind is freer. You return to a dif- ferent place and can see and decide, ‘Oh, this thing is good, that thing is bad.’ As Jatso, a local development worker in his twenties, also declared, ‘I want to keep our culture in any way I can, but sometimes losing things can be an improvement!’ Kapstein (2002: 110) argues that the contemporary scrutiny of reli- gious practitioners has indeed been re-formed as a consequence of the revolutionary era, though he does not attribute a single or specifi c agency to this change: Th e traditional literary expression of doubts regarding the religious elite, to the extent that such doubts were expressed at all, and of exhortations to those who fell short of the standard expected of them, had been the sole prerogative of the religious elite, whether in its scholastic or yogic dimensions. Certainly this was not [previously] within the domain of a 74 chapter one

bright, young, secular and sceptical author … For the traditional laity, what was supposed to have mattered above all was just that the [monas- tic] roles were well played, and it was this embarrassing truth, and per- haps not the truth or falsehood of tulku [i.e. incarnate lamas] per se … [A]ft er two decades of harsh repression … it became possible to value traditional roles anew … [I]t was the messenger not less than the message that disclosed how much had changed. Th ese perspectives could be interpreted as evidence of new reform era ‘freedom-of-speech liberalizations’. Or they could be seen to indicate a newly refl exive post-Mao way of articulating subjectivities of Self and Other. However, precedents for such criticality exist in Gelugpa-sect dialectics and revolutionary era self-criticism. While state-education has greatly extended the remit for offi cial projects to bring ‘the masses’ into the fold, mass-education has concurrently expanded the range of people who may, by virtue of that process, come to reconsider them- selves and their history in refl exive ways. Padre~ muses over his own tendency towards questioning and critical refl ection, but concludes that, ‘Even I do not know why I became so diff erent. Aft er my grand- mother’s death, I asked so many questions—even the lamas could not answer! My family call me “Langdarma” [who terminated the reign of the great religious kings, initiating a period of Buddhist persecution] and a “devil” [Tr. ndrehge~].’ Explaining his reasoning in greater depth, Padre~ notes that: Th e historians say, ‘History has no If … ’ For example, what if Langda- rma had not died? What if Tibet was not like it is today?’ Or, what if the Chinese had not come? It does not matter whether something is fact, leg- end or a myth. It does not matter whether it happened or not—if people say it was a certain way, you must ask diff erent people and fi nd out why. Scholars use diff erent history books. But [this is not suffi cient], we must ask: What is this scholar’s view? What is that literary-language teacher’s idea? What does Dorje think? What do Trinde schoolteachers believe? We must collect all their ideas. If you know all of them, your idea will be more comprehensive. I do not hang out with most Trinde people—they do not consider these things, or think in this way … Trinde people oft en lament that they do not know dharma well. For example, none of the Trinde teachers felt they knew enough to explain the mantra Om Mani Padme Hung. Noting this issue with frustration, Denba argued that, ‘Trinde should have a religion class so we can understand our own religion.’ Local people’s inability to articulate knowledge of their practices is oft en locally interpreted as evidence of ‘the Chinese’ having crushed local ways. reclassified societies 75

Most people are never called upon to refl ect on or articulate their prac- tices consciously as a linear, coherent narrative. Th is ‘pre- conscious’ aspect of religious practice is evident in descriptions of how people learn dharma. As Jatso, a Kham-born NGO worker in his late-twenties, recounts: I cannot remember when I became ‘Buddhist’, or when I fi rst saw a Buddha statue—it is an automatic thing! As a small child, my father, but not my mother, taught me prayers. Aft er dinner every night, father gave us a book [Tr. tagshag]. We had to read a purifi cation prayer every night. I was very bored, thinking: Let it be over so I can go! Th en I studied in Sershul monastery with fi ve or six diff erent teachers; mostly debate. I had a weekly religion class while I was in India. Nowadays a lama comes to our village every two months for a local celebration and gives a teaching and advice. Th en the people automatically believe. Kedruq’s comment also highlights how many people continue to prac- tise dharma. As Mills points out, evoking ‘supra-worldly’ gods is the principal idiom of most local Buddhist practice (2003a: 32). Embody- ing the experiences that are made available through these tangible engagements gradually gives people the capacity for more complicated and intangible conceptions (ibid: 49). Th e ethnography presented here suggests that practised, embodied forms of knowledge increasingly coexist with situations where exper- tise is defi ned and legitimated through the articulation of coherent, unambiguous ‘evidence’. Diff erences between embodied and intellec- tualized knowledge arise when knowing is increasingly specialized into rationalized bodies of information, as happened when social worth was structured into defi ned, hierarchical ‘classes’. As Weber pointed out, rationalized forms do not denote a greater intelligence about one’s cir- cumstances, but a belief that one’s environment is knowable and con- querable by analysis (1948: 139). Humphrey (1998: xii) further notes that people’s daily routines are oft en barely ‘narratives’ at all, and can be at odds with the explicit and rationalizing designations required within offi cial investigations. Th e incidence of evidence-based approaches alongside participatory, personifi ed forms echoes reform era projects that aim to ‘seek truth from facts’ (M. shishi qiu shi) through intellec- tual rigour, solid textual analysis and long-term empirical research. Th is phenomenon also refl ects the prevalence and occurrence of such thinking in quotidian aspects of local society.9

9 ‘Seeking truth from facts’ involved a rigorous search for ‘objective’ scientifi c data, which was a conscious, reform era break with revolutionary era partisan analyses. 76 chapter one

While the degree, type and constituents of social changes are impos- sible to ascertain defi nitively, my analysis suggests that religious sub- jectivities and political consciousnesses have been reconfi gured to a greater or lesser degree through the intervening years of political cam- paigns. As Hartley (2002: 4) puts it: One might say we are seeing a new form of polemics, in contrast to earlier forms of debate [T. rtsod.pa], which were generally confi ned to debate courtyards, epistolary exchange and textual storehouses written in the Tibetan monastic world. People’s present-day analytical reasoning is linked to the preoccupa- tions and actions of local scholars, who, due to the vast expansion in formal secular education in the reform era, are more prevalent in soci- ety than in pre-revolution times. However, as we have seen in the pre- vious examples, not just wealth, but people’s use of wealth can become a point of censure. Furthermore, as the next section shows, ‘incorrect’ use of money sometimes becomes a reason to vent interpersonal and nationality-related frustrations in a work unit setting.

Money, Morality and Socio-Political Affi liation

Th is section discusses diff erent understandings about ‘good’ uses of wealth vis-à-vis contemporary social and political orientations exist- ing in contemporary Trinde. Th e section focuses on Li Zhenxi, a forty- three year old, childless divorcee teacher who came to live in Trinde in 1995, through the arrangement of Yushu TAP Education Offi ce. Li had to leave his former job in Xi’an when he ‘got into diffi culties’ with the Headmaster there. When Li fi rst arrived in Trinde, his only concern was that he could now have a stable job. He found the Trinde people to be ‘very friendly and warm’ and the living conditions ‘bearable’. Li, who is a fervent Maoist CCP supporter, criticizes local people for their ‘preoccupation with religion’ and charges them instead to take up their ‘responsibility to develop the nation’. Li argues that, ‘Han and Tibetans’ diff erent ideas and religion’ are the most persistent problems he experi- ences in Trinde. Elaborating on these diff erences, Li declared: To be a teacher you should think about your country, not your religion. Th e most important thing is to take care of the country’s problems, and to think about how to develop it. Tibetan teachers think too much about religion, which has a bad eff ect on students, since students will follow the same way as their teachers. To develop Trinde’s education system, you reclassified societies 77

have to change all the Tibetan teachers’ minds. Science is the only way to educate students. I think Tibetan culture is really profound—I cannot understand it. Th e most important task for teachers is to teach students, fi rst and foremost, to love their nation, China. When comparing nation- ality and nation, the nation must always be more important. Li’s arguments (see, for example, 2002: 233) echo reform era crit- ics like Wang Lixiong (2002): both are concerned about reform era religiosity taking the place of ‘the state’. Th e example of Li refl ects how ‘good’ uses of wealth are positioned vis-à-vis the various contempo- rary social and political orientations existing in contemporary Trinde. Furthermore, it shows how social categories are oft en fl ipped and manoeuvred in context, and how status and allegiance is renegotiated ‘in the moment’ through discussions of morality, as linked explicitly to local (but contextually fl exible) ideals about good and improper uses of wealth. In the school, Li frequently engages in heated exchanges with a circle of around ten colleagues. Th ese literary-language teachers monopolize the school administration and are usually to be found in the campus rota room. Li’s younger reform era colleagues—who are his superiors within the school administration—represent Li as a Mao era anachronism. Th e local teachers base their views on his political orientation. For example, Li’s contribution to the 2002 Trinde Manual (excerpted below) is entitled ‘A Dialectical View of Unity and Opposition.’ In this piece, Li invokes Maoist socialism, the Guomindang and the CCP but does not discuss nationalities. His view (2002: 34) is that: In the present period of fl ying, we need unity and friendship, to suff use life’s heavens with a propitious cloud. We must see clearly the current situation, establish opposition, divide the mighty from the strong oppo- nent, constantly stretch tight the strings of competition and, within a jos- tling crowd, raise oneself to the front ranks. In one group discussion, the teachers began their usual banter with Li, joshing him about his pro-socialist position. Li was, as usual, the sole inner China teacher present. Li began by fervently claiming that the Nobel Peace Prize (M. nober heping jiang) given to the Dalai Lama in 1989 was ‘fake’. His argument was based on a well-known book that claims the US arranged for the Dalai Lama to receive the prize because of their antipathy towards China. Th e main reason the Nobel bestowal is considered to be a ploy is the timing of the award, the Prize being awarded only a few months aft er Chinese troops crushed public 78 chapter one

demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Unconvinced, Phunt- sog, a literary-language teacher, pointed out triumphantly that the prize is given by Switzerland, not the US. Ngawang, who is also on the rota- team, explained that:

Th e problem is that Li Zhenxi does not believe in the Dalai Lama—he believes in Deng Xiaoping! Actually, the real problem is that he does not believe in religion; he has never seen the Dalai Lama [as a living embodi- ment of the Buddha Sakyamuni, this is a sacred experience for local peo- ple]. It is not the Nobel Prize that is fake—it is Li who must be fake! Ngawang rubbed Li’s heart warmly and kept a fraternal arm round him throughout his critique. Phuntshog stated (in the local dialect then, for Li’s benefi t, in Putonghua), that Li is not actually a Communist Party member, yet he does not believe in religion. Agitated, Li stood up and separated himself from the group of vociferous local teachers, who went back to their game of ‘Chinese chess’ (M. xiangqi). Li’s professed atheism oft en becomes a symbolic rallying point against which Trinde teachers stake out and reaffi rm ‘religion’ as their own morally superior domain. On a later occasion among diff erent teachers, the atmosphere was not so fraternal. Pema remarked to Li: You are forty years old, yet you do not know how to live; you only look aft er yourself. You have no responsibilities, now you have no wife, nor do you have children or a house. Such a lot of scholarship, yet what a small brain! Li was rendered speechless while the literary-language teachers laughed heartily at him. Li has gained notoriety for begging other teachers for loans of money for provisions at the end of every month. Li’s next-door neighbour is a biology teacher struggling to raise a newborn baby in the school’s cramped and dilapidated lodgings. Li frequently disturbs her with his noisy drinking parties and late-night requests for a bowl of rice and a fl ask of hot water. Teachers point out that Li receives two thousand Yuan per month for himself, yet gambles and smokes it away (with a sixty cigarettes per day habit), rather than sorting out his life and fi nances. Li separated from his wife and now seldom returns to his homeland. Local people think this is because he does not want to miss any opportunities to gamble. Local teachers also observe disdainfully that Li enjoys hear- ing about other people’s misfortune. Pema applied an old family quote to Li, saying, ‘[With] no friends except mother, [he] does not cross any reclassified societies 79

[mountain] pass except the [household] threshold!’ Phuntshog empha- sized that, ‘If a person does not heed that saying, then they are stupid.’ Th e socio-political background to these comments is that gambling has become a sign of the chaotic social forces released in the reform era, thus legitimizing continued offi cial intervention. In Trinde, work unit professionals point to practices such as gambling to legitimate their judgments of others’ behaviour, and substantiate their comments with comments that echo offi cial anti-gambling rhetoric. Aligning local claims with offi cial policies adds an air of acceptability and authority to interventions by teachers, religious practitioners and parents in the name of upholding local morality. Local teachers use Li as a foil to dem- onstrate and legitimize their nationality’s moral superiority through combining offi cial, local and other discourses in complex and subtle ways. Li says he dislikes Trinde, but likes the people. In fact, he says that his friends are the main reason why he stays in the locale. Li was the sole incomer teacher to stay in Trinde through the long, harsh 2003 win- ter break. Signifi cantly, what Li despises about Trinde people (i.e. their practice of dharma) is the very characteristic that, for them, is cen- tral to their existence. Conversely, what local people say they abhor in themselves (i.e. their ‘vices’) are the very activities that seem to attract Li. Li himself dodges the full impact of the market-economic changes aff ecting ‘New China’s’ cities, and is able to indulge his desires with- out the more overt censure his lifestyle might provoke in inner China areas. Th us, despite his critique of the people among whom he resides, Li actually consumes and reproduces many of the (locally disparaged) features of Trinde life. Li is unapologetic about his lifestyle, and instead engages in an ongoing critique of his local colleagues’ lives and values. A further irony is that when the staff discussions are over, many Trinde men will join Li in the same indulgences. However, when local men partake of these diversions, they usually subsequently criticize themselves, seeing the moments as personal lapses or signs of ‘bad character’. Concentrating on Li is a convenient way to overlook local engagement in exactly the same practices (staying out late, drinking, smoking, playing card and board games and gambling). Despite the reciprocal critique, some Trinde colleagues appreciate Li, reasoning that, even though they disagree with him, Li is ‘direct’, which is ‘like Tibetans’. Li’s colleagues call him ‘wolf teacher’, which is a slur referring to wolves’ reputation for killing sheep ‘for killing’s sake’ rather than to eat, which is particularly maligned in local society. 80 chapter one

Reclassifi ed Sociality

Th is chapter examined some of the tensions that relate, directly or tan- gentially, to negotiations of wealth and correct deportment. Ideas sur- rounding wealth and morally ‘good’ behaviour continue to index and infl uence perceptions about contemporary social status in Trinde. Th e issue is not about religion, wealth and class per se, but concerns how politics and power are worked out and expressed through these social idioms. Local people articulate opinions through orthodox and textual religious idioms, as well as via state decrees about permitted religious practice (which are not mutually exclusive). People’s responses to the Trinde suicide show that class remains relevant in Trinde, though these distinctions are silent or muffl ed in the public domain. Local people’s contemporary ideas about wealth coincide with offi cial concerns about excessive contributions to monasteries and potentially bogus religious practitioners (Wang and Bai 1991: 34). In offi cial rhet- oric, ‘wasteful pursuits’, such as excessive drinking and gambling, are termed ‘quality problems’ (M. suzhi wenti, see Kipnis 2005). Th e mon- astery aff air, suicide case and Li Zhenxi examples in this chapter show that, whether money is at issue or not, a variety of fractured and overlap- ping social constituencies and discourses are present in Trinde. Some of the contemporary idioms are latent revolutionary era distinctions (for example, class), others are re-emergent localized affi liations (as with household monastery links) and some are conspicuous local and offi cial discourses (as is the case with the gambling narratives relating to Li). As Kipnis (1994: 207) points out, post Cultural Revolution practices are not ‘relics’ surviving from a ‘feudal’ past, but are new, post-Mao era (re)creations which are signifi cantly diff erent from pre-revolutionary practices. Rising affl uence has permitted an increase in the laying on of feasts and exchanging of gift s in an expanding range of novel con- texts (ibid.). Many other practices have not been revived. Contempo- rary social distinctions in Trinde are innovative features wrought out of social distinctions dating from the Mao era. Th ese innovative features are concurrently informed by prior local, exile and Western ideas about forms of social arrangement. Th e eff ects of Mao era social divisions have not been erased by mone- tary compensation, nor have former ‘class enemies’ or townsfolk simply ‘shaken off ’ their prior and revolutionary era understandings of wealth, moral behaviour and class. Instead, Mao era designations continue to reclassified societies 81 infl uence public and private behaviour, and in some ways have been strengthened in the reform era. Class categorizations infl uence people’s wealth, property and household status in the post-Mao era whereby the issue of class remains sensitive for those who signifi cantly benefi ted or lost out during, and following, this era. Th e next chapter analyses how uncertainties and anxieties in the fi eld of local development expose, rather than relieve, social categories dating back to the Mao era and earlier. CHAPTER TWO

STRESSING DEVELOPMENT

If you are humble you will progress, if you are arrogant you will regress. —Mao saying cited by Trinde teachers

Development is the Hard Truth [M. fazhan shi ying daoli]. —Deng quotation on a Xining hoarding

Getting better day-by-day [M. Tian tian xiang shang]! —Students’ motivational phrase

Th is chapter investigates the politics of the later reform era through the rhetoric and practices of ‘development’ (the local term Tr. gonphey, or pheyjey, is generally used, though M. fada and fazhan are sometimes heard among educated urban people). Th e ethnography highlights local anxieties about a lack of regional socio-economic progress that are linked to notions of Trinde as being ‘backward’ (Tr. jiluq, M. luohou), ‘poor’ (Tr. drombo, M. pinkun) and ‘far-fl ung’ (Tr. tohreng, M. pianpi). Th is chapter explores the critical place of local leaders in the diff usion and practical application of this idea. Similar contrasts to those mentioned above are invoked in academic discussions, informal conversations with students and villagers, offi cial rhetoric, media productions and local and central development ratio- nales. Th ese distinctions and anxieties are referenced throughout the diff erent populations in Trinde, but are particularly common among educated and work unit people and students. For many of these peo- ple, the rationality and practice of personal (spiritual and professional) development, as well as local, regional and nationality social progress, is a strongly motivating ideal. Self-critical sentiments, such as those expressed in the course of this chapter, are oft en found among those who have come to feel inferior, a common phenomenon in so-called ‘colonial-type’ encounters (Scott 1985, 1990). As Chapter 1, Article 3 of the Law of Regional Autonomy puts it: stressing development 83

Th e regions inhabited by ethnic minorities in compact communities are large, and rich in natural resources. But compared with other regions, particularly with developed regions, the level of economic and social development in these regions is relatively backward. (See Kaup 2000: 183–97 for full text.) PRC developmentalism now indexes a seemingly objective historical sequence along which local people measure standards and types of life- style (Ferguson 1999: 14). In more general terms, time is oft en used as a distancing strategy to ‘primitivize’ Others (McGrane 1989: 102, Fabian 1983: 17). In the case of China, ‘primitive’ is usually denoted by ‘nation- ality’. Furthermore, ‘primitive’ does not index an existing object, but indicates a concept or category of thought. As such, the creation of a ‘primitive’ (or nationality) Other is inseparable from the simultaneous constitution of an ‘advanced’ (inner China, Han) Self. As Peet (1999: 65) affi rms, ‘development is a form of social imagination’, its logics being better thought of as compelling secular cosmologies than inert schemas of knowledge in practice. Th is chapter explores and analyses some of these ‘secular cosmologies’ in local practice. In Trinde, modern development is conceptually linked to the West (M. xi fang), and to the era of ‘reform and opening up’ (M. gaige kaifang). Kaifang is a conspicuous reform era term indicating both the ‘open door’ policy recommencing China’s relations with foreign nations, and domestic eff orts at modernization (Prins 2002: 28). In Trinde, develop- ment implies emphasizing ‘modern’ (M. xiandai) and ‘Western’ (M. xi fang de) aspects. Th is inclination is evident in the way local leaders deco- rated Trinde School’s accommodation for foreign teachers. Th e décor of this unique campus living space captures local people’s idea of a ‘mod- ern’ room in a ‘developed’ nation. Th e room was fi tted with a garish red carpet, a fl uff y mass-produced and electric blanket, a gargantuan silver television, mock-wood high-gloss furniture, a green synthetic sofa and a well-used, yak dung-burning stove. Prefecture offi cials interviewed staff , students and me to check that the County leaders had provided a suit- ably ‘up-to-date’ milieu for their fi rst resident ‘foreign friend’. Trinde is one of the ten great natural resource counties in Qinghai, with verifi ed mineral reserves of gold, manganese and tungsten (Song 2001: 5). Th e Trinde Investment Guide advertises the county as a ‘vir- gin soil waiting for developing’ (Song 2001: 1). According to the ‘invest- ment projects summary’ (ibid. 26), the largest projects by far are the 67,833,600 Yuan ‘Lagong Hydro-Electric Station’ and the 159,000,000 Yuan ‘Ecosystem Engineering Project’, which involves closing off 84 chapter two

hillsides to facilitate aff orestation, and is discussed below. Caterpillar fungus, which is valued in Chinese medicine for its immune-boost- ing properties, is a booming cottage industry in many areas of Yushu. According to Marshall and Cooke (1997: 2361), Yushu’s per capita GDP was 977 Yuan in 1994, by far the lowest of any TAP. Yushu enterprises mostly distribute mass-produced clothing and other imported goods. Th ese businesses have been initiated by NGOs, a handful of businessmen, work unit consortia and local monaster- ies. Th e reform era shift away from a centralized power structure and towards a ‘mixed economy’ has furthered blurred nominal ‘Party-state’ and ‘people’ distinctions (see Barmé 2000). For example, in 2001–2002, Trace Foundation supported a project through a Yushu-based NGO, the Snowland Service Group, to establish a cheese factory below Trinde County Town.1 Trinde Middle School also owns a nearby petrol station. It is not just the type but also the extent of commercial activity that is changing rapidly in Trinde. For instance, in the summer of 2003, there was an astonishing change in the number and character of the town’s shops (see Figure 6). In just over two months, approximately half of the small, vernacular architecture style stores along previous main-street were demolished. Seventy-seven pristine, identical commercial units fronted by gaudy security doors were constructed, extending the main street to almost twice its original length. Despite this fl urry of activ- ity, Trinde people continue to believe that their nationality lags behind because of incorrect state policies or, more radically, because the ‘Chi- nese’ (or, contemporarily, Muslim) populations came to the region in the fi rst place. Others explain that Trinde’s present day affl ictions are due to a ‘degenerate era’ (Tr. dü nyepa~ ) that is occurring because they have not followed dharma well enough, or (following Mao’s ideas and Buddhist ideals), because of excessive personal pride. In country-wide terms, development in China is something central authorities have always assumed responsibility for controlling and deliver- ing. In regional terms, Rohlf (1999: 64–8) identifi es that, in Qinghai, the ‘bat- tle’ to open up new lands occurred between 1959 and 1960. ‘Development’ can be translated in Putonghua as fazhan, which means ‘to develop, expand, grow’, or fada, meaning ‘developed, fl ourishing’. Th e concept of development is conceptually linked to linked to (M.) kaifa (meaning ‘to develop, open up, exploit’), which is oft en associated with natural resource exploitation and

1 Th e project has been an almost complete fi nancial failure owing to inappropriate marketing conditions, inconsistent product quality and the lack of any connecting road for transportation. Th e soft -cheese is unpopular among local and inner China popula- tions, and costs more than imported cheese aft er transportation to Beijing. stressing development 85

Figure 6. Reconstructing Trinde County Town main street, July 2004 has technical connotations (as in ‘developing technology’ and ‘development zone’). Kaifa recently gained a new prominence in its association with the Great Western Development Strategy (M. Xibu Da Kaifa Zhuanlue), which is discussed below. In 2003, Xining airport was emblazoned with ‘Xining’s Great Opening Up [namely, of natural resources], Qinghai’s Great Develop- ment’ (Xining Da Kaifa, Qinghai Da Fazhan), which was a reference to the strategy of Great Western Development. When development is invoked today, the term references overlap- ping layers of prior rationales and practices. Th ese include: penetration by the imperial Chinese state (based on the heavenly mandate and a strong conception of social order and harmony), nationalism (through consolidation of ‘the Han’ and subsidiary nationalities), Marxist- Leninist-Stalinist ideology (emphasizing the construction of social- ism, community and ‘the people’) and reform era developmentalism (which reinterprets ‘development’ as scientifi c and technical progress and market-economic modernization). In an extended critique of centrally-planned social-engineering proj- ects, Scott (1998: passim) examines a range of themes, from ‘scientifi c for- estry’ to urban planning. He identifi es a ‘high modernist’ approach that is said to underlie the failure of many twentieth century projects for human 86 chapter two betterment. Scott’s work resonates with China’s centuries-long eff orts to make upland hill tribes, ‘barbarian’ peripheral Others and nationalities legible to, and more easily taxed and governed by, central authorities (Nick Young, personal communication, Litzinger 2000: 105). As evident in this chapter, prior developmental eff orts aff ect the ways that devel- opment is characterized today, and how people interpret and position themselves vis-à-vis this concept (Upton cited in Huber 2002a: xx). In many senses, China’s twentieth century political history is synony- mous with development. Th e political rationalities of socialism and mod- ernization are inseparable from ideas about linear forms of economic advancement, social improvement and technical and material progress (see Wang Hui 2001: 174–5 and Riskin 1987: 1–10 on China). Aft er 1949, socialist stages of development became key organizing tropes for system- atizing the haphazard views of ‘the masses’ (M. dazhong) into coherent social policies (cf. Goldman and Perry 2002: 72). In the revolutionary era, emphasis was laid on even development, balanced growth and egalitarian policies in an attempt to equalize society. Policies of unity and equaliza- tion were instituted with the aim to mobilize a newly empowered nation- wide constituency. Th is social constituency of ‘the people’ was portrayed as moving forward en masse into a promised socialist utopia. China’s ethnologists were involved in novel forms of governmental procedure that sought to organize and develop China’s unruly nationality fringes (Litzinger 2000: 81). For example, between 1949 and 1979, military and civilian cadres were sent from inner China to settle and develop rural areas on a permanent basis. In this way, ethnography was ‘institution- ally, discursively and materially linked to the recuperation of a rationalist vision of social science, one that was now to be applied to concrete social and theoretical problems in particular localities’ (ibid.). Th e Great Leap Forward (1958–1959) was an attempt to spur on the era of communism, while overcoming the ‘backwardness’ of China’s economy, industry, and technology. Th e aim was to industrialize and develop China’s countryside until the nation became self-suffi cient (Wang 2001: 166). One of the main Great Leap Forward slogans, ‘walk on two legs’ (M. liang tiao tui zoulu), refers to economic development. Th e phrase describes policies marrying modern macro technologies with basic, rural, local techniques. Th e phrase is still commonly used to indicate a balanced approach to reform or development. Th e policy failed to achieve its self-suffi ciency goals, and the ensuing neglect of agriculture resulted in widespread famine. Trinde elders remember these years as a time of immense suff ering. stressing development 87

Th e 1973 Four Modernizations singled out agriculture, indus- try, national defence and science and technology as the best means to develop China’s economy to a world-ranking status. Th ese fi elds became key developmental areas under Deng. Th roughout this era, plans were goal-oriented, though the exact procedures for achieving the objectives were left unspecifi c (Croll 1993: 163–4). In terms of emplacing policies, cadres became the mediating link between external knowledge and local conditions. Offi cially, the latitude for local modi- fi cations was progressively removed over time. Nevertheless, new poli- cies were oft en modifi ed during the emplacement process, even though plans were supposed to constitute a uniform ‘mass line’ (ibid. 167). In the early reform era, Deng abandoned the Maoist project of ‘equality’, and advanced the idea that ‘getting rich is glorious’ (for a Tibet-focused critique, see Wang Lixiong 2002). Party-state offi cials admitted that uneven development would occur. Th e Mao era empha- sis on ‘revolutionary spirit’ (M. geming jingshen) was replaced by the practical input of ‘experts’ (M. zhuanjia). Th e reform era political orien- tation is captured in Deng’s famous phrase, ‘It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mouse.’ In the reform era, ‘catching mice’ (signifying expertise) became more important than political orientation (which had been of paramount importance dur- ing the revolutionary era). Mao had, in contrast, opposed the use of ‘experts’ on the basis of their scepticism. Later, Jiang Zemin’s Th ree Rep- resents policy (2000 onwards) was billed as ‘Marxism for contemporary China’. Th is policy focused on lift ing China onto the same track as the world, keeping pace with the times and extolling China’s world-class progress (Jiang 2003). Subsequently, Hu Jintao (who has been China’s Paramount Leader from 2003) reaffi rmed that the PRC’s development problems should be tackled with scientifi c methods. Diff erent standpoints on development have been prominent at dis- tinct times in the PRC history, and these prior discourses infl uence today’s understandings of the concept. Th e ‘development concept’ is also infl uenced by discourses from fi elds such as those of the environ- ment, nationality and economics. Two particular explanations for the current situation became salient in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Th e fi rst is Wang and Bai’s (1991) explanation. Th ese commentators argue that western China remains poor despite plentiful resources because people’s natural entrepreneurial spirit is undermined by their adherence to ‘culture’. In this view, ‘culture’ is considered an obstacle to people’s free advancement towards modernity and development. In contrast, the 88 chapter two offi cially-favoured political economy perspective blames inappropriate prior policies for the current underdevelopment (Wang and Hu 1999). Reform era offi cial concerns have concentrated on maintaining sta- bility, especially in nationality areas. Th is shift in emphasis followed the political fragmentations of the USSR and Eastern Europe, and the late 1980s Tiananmen disturbances. In China, new policies were con- ceived aft er the 1987–1989 Lhasa uprisings. Th ese policies dramatically increased the funding from central agencies and provincial sources (M. duikou zhiyuan) to susceptible regions. In the TAR, subsidies rose from 1,057,719 million Yuan 1985, to 2,875,890 million Yuan aft er the disturbances in 1994 (Mackerras 2004: 156). In the reform era, China’s leadership has been promoting standardized, scientifi c economic models of development that allow for inter-regional variation (Clarke 1998: 19). In the context of development in the late-1990s, Clarke (1998: 19) notes that local specifi cities were only allowed within an ideal of ‘mate- rial progress’. Today, while population and material resources remain key national foci, the language of sustainable development now also appears in offi cial statements and policy documents (Technical Assis- tance Team for the Asian Development Bank/PRC 2001: 125). Current State Statistical Bureau indicators measure ‘quality of life’ and speak about ‘people-centred’ ‘soft ware investments’, such as small-scale, community schemes) rather than considering only GDP (Weldon 2002/2003: 21). China’s strategy for the fi rst two decades of the new millennium is continuing development ‘consistent with the character- istics of a modern society and furthering the realization of [M.] xiao- kang [meaning ‘moderate affl uence’] for all society’ (Weldon 2003: 20). In Yushu, Deng’s ‘reform and opening up’ (M. gaige kaifeng) involved an equal plot of land being allocated to each household under the ‘household responsibility’ and ‘bonus’ systems (see also Huber 2002a: xix). Local testimonies note improvements in schooling, health, food and infrastructure during this era. For many people, the reform era has been the period of greatest advancement in living standards. How- ever, Trinde people commonly express dissatisfaction about growing inequalities today, and frequently compare Trinde unfavourably with the fortunes of Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Echoing Deng’s statement, Gao, a Trinde teacher, argues that, ‘Peo- ple had to learn for themselves how to diff erentiate between good and bad development in the reform era.’ Speaking of the social impact of this era, Rigdrol, a Xining-based intellectual asserts that, ‘We very quickly and easily learned all the bad things from the Chinese, but only stressing development 89 slowly, and with diffi cultly, learned the good things.’ Jayang, a former monk in his mid-fi ft ies, argues that, ‘Today’s students are unable to dis- tinguish good from bad. Students these days do not know how to think!’ In nationwide terms, inner China is equated with urbanization, pros- perity, centrality and ‘modernity’, while peripheral nationality areas index remoteness, rurality and backwardness. Conceptualizations of development intersect with issues of class and nationality. Furthermore, in China’s Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist developmentalist framework, nationalities adhering to religion (Muslims, Tibetans) or nationality status (Koreans, Manchu) are specifi ed as being attached to ‘class dif- ference’ (see Gladney 1999: 59). In offi cial terms, these nationalities are therefore considered ‘more backward’ than secular nationalities with a ‘developed class consciousness’ (namely, inner China ‘Han’ populations, ibid.). Schein states that, in China’s body politic, places are ranked ‘in the eyes of its inhabitants, as humiliatingly backward on a scale of progress held to be universal’ (2000: 22–3; Litzinger 2000: 137). In Trinde town, people oft en rank Yushu counties, and locations within those counties, on the basis of their affl uence, infrastructure and consumer goods.2 People in Yushu oft en articulate regional comparisons through offi cial ideas of linear material advancement. In other ways, however, local ideas of ‘development’ are not conterminous with state-sponsored rhetoric. Th is is especially true among educated people and work unit leaders. Th ese people oft en favour partial integration or full adoption of local, nationality or Western-inspired development, in preference to state-led forms. In Yushu, there is a strong emphasis on small scale, socio-economic schemes such as barefoot doctor training courses, yak loans, micro-credit schemes, the construction of an NGO development institute in Yushu and the prioritization of the Tibetan language (as evi- dent in moves to found local-dialect schools). Many school authorities and NGO offi cers say that integrating local ways with choice elements from Western societies is the best way to improve local conditions. In developing local, ‘people focused’ projects, Yushu cadres, NGO offi cers and educational authorities are also distinguishing their orientation from macro, industrial state-led interventions whose main objective is modernizing economic advancement. Hartley (2002: 6) states that searching for causes of ‘backward- ness’ in local society is not new, but has intensifi ed as part of wider

2 Yushu is considered the ‘most developed’ county, followed by Trinde, Nangchen, Dzatö, Drito then Chumarleb. 90 chapter two

self- reassessments at the turn of the millennium. While the early reform era involved an open embrace of the newly permitted ‘traditional cul- ture’ (Tr. cheychoo, M. chuantong wenhua) and religion, a handful of younger generation and middle-aged intellectuals now say that some local practices impede the region’s development (ibid. 9–10). Others fear that offi cial development strategies intend to eliminate local and regional nationality practices and ideas. Many villagers express views, hopes and discontentment about their region’s state of advancement, views which are infl uenced and bolstered by glitzy images of foreign countries observed via the ever-present television sets in local business and, increasingly, in local homes. Local cultural and political leaders are the principal opinion formers and diff users of such perspectives, which is especially true where the opinion involves expressing an objective ‘metavision’ of the situa- tion. From this perspective, the local ‘culture’ is presented as a coherent domain that is linked to ideas about nationalism and, thence, located in a putative chain of national or international developmental stages in which Trinde is found sorely lacking. Life expectancy is sometimes given as an example, with teachers citing the fact that what is considered ‘old’ in Trinde is barely middle-aged in most developed countries. Trinde residents frequently express dismay at their lack of develop- ment in three key areas: those of economy, politics and society. Concern focuses on regional inequalities (for example in welfare, education and employment), and on offi cial policies that are said to disrupt regional livelihoods. Th ese concerns are arising in a context where market- reforms have ‘resulted in shrinking government budgets, increased domestic migration, withdrawal of the work unit-based social safety net, and rising urban unemployment and under-employment’ (Cho- ate 1998: 44). People have mobilized using a novel union of Qinghai’s Tibetan Buddhists, which cut across dialect and regional social diff er- ences, as discussed in the ‘Muslim boycott’ section below. Local statements use and reinterpret many of these ideas. Particu- larly prevalent is the idea of human progress as a process of unilinear human advancement. Th is view is refl ected in the comments of Hong Jianying, an incoming teaching assistant, who argues that: Th ey are backward certainly, but the people are good. I am also from the countryside. We say ‘enter the countryside and follow the customs’ [M. ru xiang sui su]. Before I came here, our history teacher told us that Tibetans burn cow manure. We did not understand because our cows eat grain and our cow manure does not burn. In Qinghai the cows eat grass, so you can burn the manure. Th e story made us think it was very stressing development 91

backward here. Also we heard that Tibetans do not know how to make noodles. Th ey use a rolling pin, throw some cow manure onto the fi re and then continue rolling out the dough. Th is is just backward! When I fi rst arrived I thought it was bleak and desolate, without inhabitants. Nothing grows out here, no trees, nothing. But there has been so many improve- ments. It has developed very quickly. Some people burn coal now. Th e following statement from Pema, a local teacher, reveals similar pre- occupations expressed through diff erent idioms: In the beginning, the regional economy was low that there were no real roads and no transport. Movement was slow, diffi cult and bad. At that time, Tibetan politics, law and the economy were a trio [of organizing social principles]. Each area infl uenced the others. Now none are in a good state, because of one reason: our nationality is regressing. Nowadays the dialects across Tibetan areas are so various because Tibetans’ politics, law and economy are all weak. I fi gured all this out myself: the Chinese are very strong in all three areas, and can apply their policies consistently. So, China becomes more popular than Tibet from people’s own thinking. Th ere were no strong taxes or politics. So, Tibetans go backwards, while Chinese—strong in applying policies—go forwards. Not all people share these views of why Yushu is relatively underde- veloped. Furthermore, expressions about the best route towards the cur- rently elusive ‘development’ are far from unitary. Padre,~ a young man with a foreign-taught Xining education, argues that his parents’ donations to Kazang monastery are ‘a waste of money’. Th is view is similar to that of Chinese critic Wang (2002), and to offi cial reform era policies.3 Padre~ argues that such money should be spent on poor people, schools or edu- cating one’s own children. In practice, most Trinde people (professional, non-professional and religious practitioners) give regular donations to religious practitioners for ritual services. For Padre~ and other moderniz- ers, local people’s inappropriate use of money is even more troubling given Trinde’s ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘poor’ status. Padre~ argues that people’s lack of technological expertise is the prime reason for Yushu’s ‘backwardness’.

Developing the West

‘Developing the west’ of China is not a new idea. In the 1950s, with help from the Soviet Union, state factories were built in western regions. In the 1960s, Mao announced schemes to improve heavy industry in the centre

3 Donations from residents earning a moderate income can reach seven thousand Yuan. 92 chapter two and west of China. One of the main offi cial aims from the late–1970s onwards was to extend ‘small prosperity’ (M. xiaokang) throughout China through the ‘points-line-surface progression’ approach to development (Jing 2000: 24). Th is approach refers to the offi cial policy that prioritized Special Enterprise Zone ‘points’ initially, then expanded developmental eff orts to the east-coast ‘line’ and fi nally attempted to develop the interior ‘surface’ expanses. Th us, the current socio-economic unevenness is not just a matter of chance, time or place, as preferential policies have been applied to east coast cities to capitalize on those places that were already comparatively rich. Th is was especially the case under Jiang, who was born in Shanghai. Th e ‘Great Western Development Strategy’ (M. Xibu Da Kaifa Zhuanlue) is a Jiang-era macro-policy aimed at extending and consoli- dating Deng’s modernizing economic development endeavours in the relatively undeveloped interior, or ‘surface’, regions (see Huber’s 2002a: xii Amdo overview). Th e Strategy was fi rst announced in the summer of 1999, and is aligned with objectives of the national tenth and elev- enth Five Year Plans (running successively from 1999 to 2010). Th e purpose of this Jiang-era strategy is to address the problems of widen- ing inequalities in China’s interior provinces (Jing 2000: 24). Tackling such issues is deemed necessary as offi cial policies hold that greater affl uence and better living standards lead to a more secure and cohesive nation-state, and that they eliminate the grounds for social unrest. By 2000, the central focus of the strategy was market-led growth and the attraction of capital and technical infrastructure (China Brief 2000: 24–7, China’s Agenda 21 1994: 233). Discontinuing unproductive state- run initiatives without fi rst initiating private or joint business alterna- tives would have caused serious diffi culties for local communities. Offi cials hope that overseas and national investment can be attracted to the western peripheries, and that these investors will kick-start the desired economic vitalization to bring about technological advances and employment diversifi cation (Hu 2000 cited in China Brief 2000: 26). In practice, most of the strategic resources will not be used in social development, but for the ‘hardware’ basics of modern development (Clarke 1998: 2). Th e Strategy’s priorities therefore include infrastructural inter- ventions such as the Xining-Lhasa railway (or ‘Qingzang Tielu’), an 84.5 billion US dollar expenditure on roads, investment incentives (including tax holidays and procedural simplifi cations) and support for mineral pros- pecting and environmental aff orestation (China Brief 2000: 25). In prac- tice, the Great Western Development has become something of a policy stressing development 93 catch all, with any modernizing development initiative in western regions being lumped under this rubric. In the near future, the strategy’s related interventions will mainly benefi t urban centres and, particularly, provin- cial capitals. Development will increase along the main highways, with rural regions being comparatively unaff ected (cf. China Brief 2000: 24). In Trinde, local people are sceptical about the intentions and eff ects of the strategy in their region. Padre,~ a teacher in his mid-twenties, stated that: According to the authorities in Beijing, Great Western Development means that, ‘everybody should have the same opportunity all over China’. But these policies were made in Beijing: the government cannot carry them out properly, or as they are intended to be employed locally. Pema, an outspoken literary-language teacher, argued: Western ‘Development’ Strategy, eh? Ha! In two to three years, if they hand out loads of cash, then we’ll know we have ‘Great Western Development’. And only in fi ve to ten years will we know whether it is good or bad. Right now, Chinese places have that policy, but Tibetan places do not. If foreigners want to develop China, the government says OK. If foreigners want to develop Tibet, the government says it is not OK. I myself have all I need, but in my heart I am sad, as later on there will be no Tibetans. Despite the policy focus on stimulating industrializing and moderniz- ing changes (Clarke 1998: 2, Longworth 1989), it still seems unlikely that many high-tech industries will relocate from cosmopolitan Shanghai or booming Xiamen to the plateau. Prior to the 1980s, technical advances were hard to implement logistically (Bauer 2005: 12–13). In Ho (2001) and Hu’s (1997) view, policymakers have still not created successful incentives for profi cient land management amid the swift social, eco- nomic and demographic reform era changes (Bauer 2005: 12–13). Fur- thermore, in some ways the Strategy actually exacerbates rural-urban distinctions as it involves signifi cant pay rises for state employees who mostly reside in urban centres (Costello 2002: 227).

Overview of Environmental Policies and Pressures in Yushu

In the reform era, numerous environmental management, protection and improvement policies have been applied in Yushu. Th e agricultural and pastoral policies are phased and zoned, but are not meant to be uniformly applied. An outline of the recent policies, and the context 94 chapter two of their emplacement, is given below (and see van Wageningen and Sa 2001). In 1982, livestock were returned to private ownership. Th e sub- sequent ‘National Rangeland Law’ in 1985 permitted individual house- holds to lease pastoral use rights. In contrast to the ideals of self-reliance that resulted in collectivization fi ft y years ago, China’s market economy reforms involve removing ‘obstacles’ to development (principally, pas- toralists and agriculturalists) so that the plateau can be converted into ‘a prosperous modern livestock base’ (Lobsang 1998 cited in Yeh 2003: 499). Another point of view is that of Zhaka (n.d.), who contends that pastoralists’ ‘mode of thought’ is the prime impediment to herders achieving modernization. Zhaka blames ‘irrational’ ways of thinking, and gives examples such as: herders’ provincialism, a lack of entrepre- neurial spirit, the continuance of herding livelihoods, traditionalism, as well as their rejection of science and technology and deep-rooted Bud- dhist thought (ibid.). In offi cial terms, educational work and practical activities are generally deemed useful in changing unsuitable ‘modes’ of thought. Zhaka’s argument echoes long-standing offi cial assump- tions, and also a small but increasing set of Xining-based educated men. Th e general status leaders accord to education as also a force for social change is evident in the northern Trinde slogan that proclaims: ‘To eliminate poverty, fi rst eliminate ignorance. To eliminate ignorance, establish education’ (M. zhi qiong xian zhi yu, zhi yu ban jiaoyu). Th e ‘Four Allocations Scheme’ (M. si pei tao) was piloted in Inner Mongolia in the late 1970s and subsequently applied to pastoral areas of Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu. Th is policy is a rangeland manage- ment and animal husbandry programme with an environmental sus- tainability component. It is part of a comprehensive reorganization of current pastoral and agricultural livelihood practices in Qinghai, and is creating a new spatial politics within the region. In rangeland areas like northern Trinde, the Four Allocations Scheme involves fencing productive pasture in winter months, restricting access to agricultural land, building livestock-protection blocks for use during blizzards, promoting winter feed production and constructing fi xed dwellings for pastoralists. Th ese interventions are not wholly new, but are similar to revolutionary era interventions. In the Mao era, adobe residences and primary schools were also constructed to intensify pastoral pro- duction, partly through sedentarization (Ekvall 1968 cited in Bauer 2005: 14). Th ese ‘moves towards immobility’ initiated a new and spe- cifi c type of ‘social contract’ between local pastoralists and the offi cial administration (ibid.). stressing development 95

In 1998, the Yangtze burst its banks causing the worst fl ooding in inner China since 1954. Th e cost of the fl ooding is estimated to have been 37.5 billion US dollars (see TIN 2004: 71–2 for discus- sion). Th e ‘Th ree Rivers Sources Natural Protection Zone’ (M. san- jiangyuan ziran baohu qu) refers to the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong catchment area. Th is large (318,000 square kilometres) area con- stitutes a large proportion (sixteen counties) of southern Qinghai, and is now China’s largest nature reserve. Th e reserve is said to be necessary due to increasing local desertifi cation, downstream silt run-off , fl ooding and dust storms in Beijing. Th e population of this area is 557,200 people, most of whom are designated as nationality populations (Song 2001: 1). Th is zone is promoted as an initiative to protect unique upland ecosystems. Th e policy also sanctions a raft of ‘rangeland protection’ procedures and involves the promotion of ‘sustainable’ economic development. Th e protected area is arranged concentrically. A six million hect- are ‘central zone’ covers twenty percent of the total area, and consists of twenty-fi ve closed areas for protecting endangered animals. In the encircling fi ve million hectare ‘buff er zone’, herders are allowed to graze sheep and cattle. Th e twenty million hectare ‘outer sector’ is designated as an area for scientifi c testing and tourism. One such tourist opportu- nity in Trinde is the three rivers’ confl uence on the Xining-Jyegu high- way. Th is natural feature has become a tourist attraction and currently includes picnic tables and a lookout point. Th e distinctive ‘Th ree Riv- ers Sources Natural Protection Zone–Jiang Zemin’ (M. Sanjiangyuan Ziran Baohu Qu–Jiang Zemin) monument located at the confl uence has become a symbol of Trinde, and is reproduced in numerous publica- tions (see, for example, the ostentatious cover image of Nima Songbao and Zhaxi Cairen’s 2001 publication). Th e national importance of Yushu has inspired the region’s popular epithet as ‘China’s water tower’. Th e national environmental signifi cance of this area resulted in Yushu becoming the focus of an ambitious state- led tree-planting campaign (Tr. jõma dzuq gu) in April 2003. Under this policy, all lower and middle school students worked in brigades for three full days. Every teacher had to plant fi ve trees, aside from the per capita quota for students. In practice, the quotas were fulfi lled cor- porately, with stronger brigade members making up for their slower or weaker peers. Local students reported that Yushu’s leaders were only concerned to meet the offi cial quotas. Th e fact that many of the newly- planted trees died went unreported in the offi cial statistics. 96 chapter two

As part of these interventions, family herds are being restricted to fi ve yaks per capita in some Yushu and Golog counties, and herding has been banned in sectors designated as ‘pastoral’. Th e recent reform era has seen a general shift towards urban sedentarization, which is due to the expansion of small towns and the increasing restrictions on pastureland extent and use. Yushu pastoralists are also moving off the grasslands independently, without a specifi c policy having a direct material bearing on considerations such as stocking or agricultural decisions. Th ese independent moves are infl uenced by increasingly hostile climatic conditions in summer and winter (in the past, freak snowfalls have resulted in households losing their entire herd and livelihood), and the attraction of improved urban resources, which include the increasing availability of electricity, goods and education. Pastoralists are also being relocated to purpose-built accommodation- units. Although these policies are promoted as ‘environmental’, they are strongly infl uenced by national developmental logics. Th is is because the rate of urbanization is seen as the main index for measuring an area’s development. Explaining this process in a private NGO meeting in Xining, the Deputy Director of the Qinghai Department of Agriculture and Ani- mal Husbandry described their project management centre’s objective as being to amalgamate people into progressively larger urban units. Th e centre encourages individuals and families to move to townships, then county towns, and then prefecture towns, to eff ect a rural to urban tran- sition. Th e sequence is ‘town to city’ (M. zhen gai shi), ‘county to munici- pality’ (M. xian gai shi) and ‘prefecture to municipality’ (M. di gai shi, Bulag 2002b: 212). In Trinde, local people speak of ‘farmers become rich’ (Tr. xinpa suqpo jurgu) and ‘village becomes a city’ (Tr. trongchung trongcheyla jurgu). Th e aim is to work towards eliminating herding from the ‘central zone’, which would depopulate the area through remov- ing the population’s livelihood (though this was not stated directly). Another scheme to accelerate urbanization is the conversion of counties and prefectures into cities. Between 1979 and 1997, the number of cities in China proliferated, increasing from 193 to 668, of which 221 were prefecture-level municipalities (ibid.). In a statement that highlights the integration of urbanization and conservation policies in practice, Kedruq, from neighbouring Sershul, recounts how:

In 1996, the Chinese tried to make our village into a city. Th ey had a meeting to talk, then they took seventy-fi ve percent of the land—and stressing development 97

some of it was very good land. Th ey gave us fl our and rice in return, but it was not enough [to cover the lost harvest]. Th en they planted trees all over the land. Th e trees were tiny and all of them died. An additional policy in Yushu is the nationwide soil conservation drive, which was offi cially instigated when ‘scientifi c links’ were made between upland erosion and downstream fl ooding. Th is intervention predates the Great Western Development Strategy, but its intensifi ca- tion in western regions is linked to the strategy’s environmental com- ponent (China Brief 2000: 26). Th e policy involves ‘renouncing pasture in exchange for grassland’ (M. tuimu huancao) in herding regions, and ‘returning farmland to forest’ (M. tuigeng huanlin) in agricultural zones (see Flower and Leonard’s 2005 critique of ‘ecological engineering’). Both these policies are currently being implemented in Trinde. Further- more, state-led initiatives are not entirely separate from prefectural and international interventions but, rather, dovetail with them. For example, Th e Upper Yangtze Conservation and Development Organization is a Dzatö NGO working with Plateau Perspectives (a Canadian-local NGO) and Flora and Fauna International from Britain to develop rangeland conservation. Th e Upper Yangtze Organization supports local environ- mental protection committees that were set up by herders to monitor wildlife and prevent poaching (Young and Qian 2002/2003: 14).

Development Policies and Social Anxieties

Th e policies outlined above are not limited to environmental develop- ment, but have numerous social ramifi cations as well. For example, the rapid infl ux of new and diff erent people in urban milieu makes these areas sites for the formation of new constituencies and social interre- lationships, which is oft en an uneasy transition. Yeh also reports that new, fi xed pasture-rental arrangements have exacerbated and increased local confl icts in rangeland areas (2003: 500). A signifi cant problem is that the policy rationales are not well understood locally. In the absence of concrete, transparent policy details, local people fi ll this gap with speculation and anxieties. Furthermore, on-the-ground policy emplacement tends to be uneven, which adds to the suspicion and mis- trust. Exacerbating the issue further is the confl ation of several actual and proposed regional developments (particularly the Th ree Rivers plans) in local understanding. In Trinde, this opaque soup of policies is also causing great consternation. In fact, the fencing policy was the 98 chapter two single most discussed issue throughout my 2002–2004 fi eldwork, and cut across all generational and social divides. Local descriptions frequently amalgamate diverse policies. Pema, a pastoralist settled in Dawa-village believes that in fi ve years time their familial tent-group (Tr. dütsong), which currently owns three hundred animals, will only be allowed to keep twenty-fi ve cattle. Th e fam- ily fear that most of their animals will be killed, which would dimin- ish their wealth and social status. Jayang, a Trinde elder, draws links between these current policies and prior state-led schemes of social reorganization: Th e commune time was all very diff erent for us. Th at is why there is no word for ‘commune’ in Tibetan [the word used is shey, a localization of M. gongshe]. Each village was collectivized into a commune, and every- one was allotted the same number of yaks. In two to three years there will be a new policy: no crops in Tibetan areas. Communes are diff erent from today’s enclosures, yet all pastoralists are again being collected [in town- ships]. As for the deeper reason, I have no idea. But if we cannot grow our own food, we must either eat only Chinese food or steal. If there are no crops, we’ll have no food. Without food, we’ll die. In local terms, Qinghai fencing policies are perceived to remove peo- ple’s livelihoods and welfare security (Zhang and Guan 2002/2003: 40–5). In Trinde, an exchange with Jayang, the elder mentioned above, refl ects this view:

Jayang: If the graduating students fail their examinations: Ach! BM: Th en they will have to become farmers? Jayang: No, No! Th ere are no farms anymore. If students have no schol- arly knowledge and there are no farms, what can they do? Th ey will become layabouts and roam around. If they have no money, they will turn to stealing.

Jigme, a literary-language teacher, linked the fencing to a widespread rumour that the Dalai Lama would be visiting Beijing, exclaiming, ‘All this banning of farm-work … what are we to eat? Th at is why he is coming!’ A deeper signifi cance of Jayang’s comments is that the eat- ing of dried yak-meat, homemade yogurt, dairy products and toasted barley fl our are defi nitively ‘local’ practices with ritual and moral sig- nifi cances. Similarly, numerous local comments link scholarship and Buddhism to morality and civilized behaviour among local people— and, conversely, emphasize the uncivilized behaviour that results from not being able to practise these ideals. Th e new policies are stressing development 99 interpreted as forcing local people to take up morally debasing prac- tices, which are oft en linked to a reduction of local people’s political autonomy and socio-cultural authenticity. Many people think the fencing is actually a ‘secret government plan’ to create a nature reserve out of Yushu Prefecture. Th is belief was fi ltered and relayed through social networks via a well-connected Trinde-born government cadre. According to this rumour, all residents will be relocated from Yushu TAP into inner China cities like Lanzhou. Gao, a local teacher, argues that this will mean: We will lose our culture. We will become a multi-culture. I am confused about which is best. If we move, Tibetans will lose their culture and land, but in that case, the environment would be protected. If it is enforced, most Tibetans would move anyway. Some Tibetans think that if the gov- ernment does create a reserve, they will pay us to move as compensa- tion for the loss of our livelihood. Others completely oppose the plan. Th e government never does anything in one go, they do it ‘slowly’ [Tr. kalay-kalay, used here to mean ‘incrementally’ and ‘stealthily’]. People know from past experience that if the [central] government decides to do something, they have no choice but to do what they say. Th e government has already proved they can do whatever they want. Another local perception is that Beijing officials plan to bring large numbers of incomers to Trinde because it is a ‘favourable and healthy place’ (Tr. sa zong). Kunjũ, a Xining-based development officer elaborated on the intercultural impacts and issues of the cur- rent policies: One issue that is very important and diffi cult is the Th ree Gorges Project. Th ey show this on television. People there have committed suicide … they cry when forced to leave! Why? Because they do not know what their future life will be. Th e government gave them money and a house. Yet, these things are all so new for them. Th e life of a nomad is so famil- iar: every part of nomad life is some memory. Rivers, mountains are like friends. But in Xining, there is nothing of this [familiarity]. In the coun- tryside, life is so diff erent … their lives had always been the same in their fatherlands. Th ey had everything there: water, their own language. Tibet- ans believe in belonging, they do not want to eat small fi sh, kill insects, say bad things or be unable to talk to each other. Sometimes Tibetans are selfi sh: we do as we please. But when you believe [in dharma], you always fi rst ask ‘Is this thing correct?’ Our culture is so diff erent. For Chinese and Tibetan, staying together is so diffi cult in terms of food, ideas and beliefs.4

4 On the politics of food, and its signifi cance as an index of nationality belonging, see Chapter Th ree. 100 chapter two

It is not only rural people who are aff ected by the regional policies; people in urban centres do not necessarily have control over decisions aff ecting their lives either. Chooji, a Xining-based magazine editor, described how offi cials decided to update her family’s work unit hous- ing. Th e money for the reconstruction was taken out of employees’ sala- ries in instalments, despite residents having elected to have their prop- erties left undeveloped. Chooji’s comments refl ect a common regional perception of social precariousness in the face of central-state decrees. Gao, a local teacher, explained the centre-locality transmission of poli- cies in the following way: Th ey always explain changes as ‘If you do what we ask, your future will be better.’ If the government was truthful, it could not be successful here. It is a kind of jail. Tibetans already lost their freedom. If this plan comes true, everything will be controlled by China. Tibetans have no economy any- more. We must buy everything from China. Tibetans have no factories. It is almost like we have nothing to do! Tibetans do not really realize the whole problem about their future. If they did, they would do something about it. Th e older people are forbidden to tell the younger people the reality about what happened here in the past.5 Responses to the fencing projects are not uniform among Qinghai people. For example, Lhamo, an NGO administrator, believes that ‘the state’ has neglected her homeland in Qinghai. Apparently, local people were told that the central government were going to sponsor the current programmes by promoting winter forage and corrals. In practice, local communities paid for the materials but received none of the promised recompense, which increased their discontent and mistrust.

Local Suspicions Surrounding Offi cial Developmental Intentions

Many foreign commentators, like local people, take a suspicious view of offi cial development, perceiving it to oppress ‘local culture’. Critiquing the ‘real’ intentions of state-led development projects has been something of

5 Elements of the past are, in fact, communicated to young people. Th ese messages are oft en understood and remembered in distorted or incomplete ways, and are not always acted upon in the manner that elders would like. In another moment, Gao him- self reminisced about how, as children, they played ‘Communists versus Nationalists’ aft er watching revolutionary fi lms. Ironically, these mock-battles were oft en staged in the ruins of the local monastery. Gao’s fi rst awareness of his town, nationality and coun- try’s history came when his grandmother used the children’s games as a pretext to relate why and how the monastery had been destroyed. Th is direct transmission of knowl- edge of the past is overlooked in Gao’s claim above. stressing development 101 a raison d’être for certain overseas organizations, especially those focused on political independence. Analyses of overseas agencies are generally presented in terms of nationality distinctions (see, for example, Tibet Information Network’s reports and Marshall 2002). Educated local peo- ple also use these distinctions in certain contexts. For example, Samten and Pamo, two Trinde students based in Xining, argue that: Th e government uses invisible tools and weapons to kill us Tibetans and make our culture die. To improve your position you have to join the Chi- nese Communist Party. But then you are not allowed to follow religion. Th ere are relatively few fi eld-based analyses of development in nation- ality areas of the TAR, Sichuan and Qinghai, and the ones that exist tend towards quantitative analysis (Horlemann 2002, Levine 1998, Lobsang 1998, Orofi no 2002, Winkler 1998). Among the notable exceptions is Fischer (e.g. 2004a and Fischer et al. 2009). Clarke presents an overview of the political logics and social practices of modernizing development interventions in this region, though his analysis does not investigate the social practice of development rationales (1998: 2–5). Across China, offi cial statements about development are unceasingly optimistic, and are promoted at every opportunity. A typical phrasing in Yushu was the Dzatö County horse festival announcement that her- alded: ‘Fift y years of development—Tomorrow’s Dzatö will be better!’ (M. wushi nian de fada, zaduo de mingtian geng hao!). Th ese offi cial affi rmations do not dispel the sense of economic inequality and increas- ing social pressure in Yushu. Th us, while the national economy appears to be ‘taking off ’, these macro statistics conceal regional disparities and local experiences of increasing competition and diff erentiation. Some people are currently more able to take advantage of the present politico-economic situation than others. For example, state cadres are well placed to use their existing institutional links to engage directly in local trade, organise work unit business syndicates and leverage high- status social networks (Pieke: 1995: 501). Th ose without these oppor- tunities are growing increasingly disillusioned. One Trinde taxi-driver complained bitterly about the prevailing economic situation, and vowed that, ‘If the Japanese ever come again, I’ll be the fi rst traitor!’ Pema, a Director at Trinde School, sees a clear connection between resources and nationality belonging. He argues that: China’s government does not see us as important. Tibetans did not receive what we should have received spiritually and materially. It is such crap! Spiri- tually, Trinde is not deemed important by the central government [i.e. only 102 chapter two

the material resources are valued]. You can ask yourself: ‘What do I want to do?’, but if you have no funding, you cannot do it! If you do not have money, you cannot get a degree. And whatever degree you have, if you do not have money, everyone looks down on you. Th e government and the people are the same. If you have money but no knowledge or ability you can still be an offi cial. If someone has lots of knowledge and ability but no money, there is no way to become an offi cial. Simply, that is how it is … In an animated conversation in a Xining apartment, Pamo and Sam- ten, two Xining university students from Trinde and Nangchen (Yushu) who are in their early twenties, explicitly link regional inequalities in the reform era to nationality belonging and, thence, to ‘unfair’ govern- mental policies: It is impossible to talk about the problems of ‘the nation’. We Tibetans cannot even solve the problems of our own stomachs and warmth. We can see whether the government succeeds or fails. Th e government just shows the cities to foreigners: Beijing, Shanghai. In Tibetan places, some villages have no car. Th e foreigners would never get to see that sort of thing! Th e government just cares about the surface and face. Th e situa- tion is unstable and unfair. Tibetans can feel that in their minds. Shang- hai is given advantages: it is not just a natural process. If Jyegu were given the same advantages, the payments would not have the same eff ect. Wang Lixiong (1998) develops a similar critique in ‘Sky Burial: Th e Fate of Tibet’ (M. Tian Zang). Areas designated as ‘autonomous’ receive the highest (centrally fi xed) subsidies, which aff ects state-sector wages. Sub- sidies mean that incomes in ‘autonomous’ regions oft en outdo poorer non-nationality areas (for discussions see Liew and Smith 2004: 17, Wang 2004: 226).

Regional Disparities and ‘Opening Up’ Anxieties at the School

Trinley, Trinde School’s current leader (M. xiaozhang), devotes himself with almost fanatical zeal to furthering Trinde’s local situation. Trinley grew up in a large, impoverished Druchung agriculturalist family. He frequently works well into the night and can be found in his offi ce poring over documents, even at weekends. As Humphrey notes, people’s calls for modernization and development simultaneously conceal distressing past experiences (1998: xiv). In contrast to the avuncular and oft en jovial style of his predecessor, Pemba, Trinley has a more critical and matter- of-fact manner. stressing development 103

In the course of 2003–2004, Trinley initiated scores of new personal techniques, updated old rules and introduced sweeping procedural changes that aimed at ‘higher standards’ of work and study. Th e changes include the mandatory wearing of age and status ranked identity tags for students and teachers, the instalment of imposing lecterns in classrooms, motivational slogans painted in red Tibetan script and Chinese charac- ters on school buildings, a computer for all offi ces, an ambitious campus revamp undertaken by crews of Sichuanese labourers, registration for all those entering and leaving the school, cash fi nes for teachers if a student neglects their homework three times, the institution of androgynous navy suits as teachers’ uniforms (these are mandatory on Mondays and on offi cial occasions) and the visual cataloguing of staff and students by professional photographers who were brought in specially from Jyegu. Th ese procedures required staff and students to be more strictly admin- istered, and for people directly associated with the school to adminis- ter themselves in various new ways. Th e teachers did not generally pass comment about the changes in public, though Gao, a local teacher, pri- vately summarized Trinley’s eff orts as ‘right intention, wrong method’.6 In my last week in Trinde, Trinley asked me to give a presentation and undertake a question and answer session about education in Trinde. He presented me with a list of points to cover (see below), which was hand- written in Chinese script, and emphasized that this task was of utmost importance:

1) How can teachers’ own responsibility to teach be improved? 2) What kind of training should a person have so that, by chance or in their own time, they would improve Tibetans’ own skills? 3) Should ‘New Course Reform’ constitute the new way to teach? 4) How should Tibetan students [in Trinde] improve their own studies? 5) What should every middle school-level student know? 6) How should national minorities’ local education be developed in relation to Tibetans’ situation in Trinde? 7) Compared to developed cities, how can Tibetans in Trinde become equal?

6 Staff are still required to undertake weekly study sessions (see Shaw 1996) in which they improve their ‘specialist teaching knowledge’ and contribute to Trinde School’s annual. 104 chapter two

Trinley’s concerns are similar to the six proposals Hu Yaobang made following his 1980 visit to the TAR (see for example Wang Yao 1994, Wang Lixiong 2002). Question seven was indicated as a priority topic.7 Th is weighting echoes Mao’s concern about urban youth (and particu- larly those who were privileged cadres’ off spring) having higher uni- versity entrance rates than rural students. Furthermore, Mao’s wish to avoid such social and institutional entrenchment was a catalyst for the Cultural Revolution. On the day of the education forum, the School’s meeting-room was packed with every member of staff , for whom the talk was compulsory. Th e presentation was simultaneously translated into Putonghua, which is the offi cial language of the school. Gao, the school’s only other Eng- lish teacher who was acting as a trilingual translator, found the forum to be such a nerve-wracking experience that he felt unable to complete the translation. In a muddle of embarrassed laughter from Gao, exasper- ated scowls from Trinley and titters from the audience, the evaluatory presentation was aborted. Trinley opened the forum for staff questions, which commenced with a lengthy silence. Aft er some encouragement, Zha Wanlong, an incoming teacher, asked what it was about the UK education system that produced someone who had the motivation to work for a year without being paid any wages. Chözang, a local teacher, asked why I did not experience disciplinary issues with my class, given that the local teachers spend most of their time dealing with ‘misbe- haviour’ among the very same students. Finding it diffi cult to provide any defi nitive answer, I described my practice of engaging students in active and collaborative ways of learning. Ironically, many of the ‘action learning’ methods I discussed actually incorporate methodologies that were being heavily promoted in Trinde through the new ‘participatory’ education policy that was concurrently being rolled out all over China, but which had limited or no take up in Trinde (see Chapter Six for discussion). Trinley then asked a series of questions which re-expressed his orig- inal concerns about the causes of Trinde’s ‘poor material conditions’ (Tr. chacheng sheng) and poverty (Tr. drombo), and about how the area can ‘catch up’ with the economic prosperity (Tr. sooqpo), development (Tr. gõphey) and modernity (T. da.skabs.na.nying, deng.rabs or deng.du, ‘contemporary’) of other national and international locations. Th ese

7 See Fischer (2009) for a discussion of education and social inequalities in national- ity regions of western China. stressing development 105 questions echo the political orientation of the May Fourth Movement, who expressed a need for a national pedagogy to turn the ‘low quality’ masses into modern citizens. Th e education forum referenced prior and present assumptions about modernization and development in several diff erent ways. For example, the pre-set topics and discussion questions all assume a teleo- logical progression of linear, evolutionary advancement. Th rough the forum, the hope was that, as a ‘foreign expert’, I could help solve the riddle of ongoing disparities in Trinde, and suggest what could be done to better the situation. Th is expectation and impetus is itself part of a desire to fi nd workable, locally-appropriate solutions to regional livelihood issues, as is evident in the regional NGO activities and local initiatives described in this chapter. Th is situation is also an example of how, within the performative arena of the forum, I was pressed into service to speak for, and as, an archetypal ‘modern’ subject. Here, bodily presence becomes the material vehicle through which greater (‘spiritual’, or essential) powers may be conveyed, and provides the physical connection to intangible phenomena that are too distant to be written about or orally transmitted.8 A photograph of this event was subsequently published in the ‘Trinde School Annual Report’ (Mellor 2003b: 213). One photograph, depicting my participation in the educa- tion forum, was entitled: ‘Directing, exchanging’ (M. zhidao jiaoliu), and included the inscription: ‘Laying a good foundation for students throughout life, one must take responsibility for the future hope of the nationality’ (ibid.). Perceptions of developmental inequality are also present in wider social contexts, and are restated in people’s conversations in Trinde. For example, local people say they want ‘development’, which is described in terms of offi cially prioritized visible resources and material provi- sions (schools, roads and hospitals). Yushu offi cials are oft en berated for failing to provide adequate resources. For Rigdrol, a Xining-based media professional, the region’s lack of modern development is also the principal obstacle to the region achieving freedom. In contrast, Trinde people concentrate less on ‘state policy’ specifi cs (Tr. jakaq Ruh soo- joo), than on the ‘unfairness’ that this area will again be overlooked in developmental terms. In other nationality areas, for example among the

8 Th e ‘speaking body’ has a long-standing signifi cance in legitimizing contemporary political rationalities in China, and particularly during the Mao era campaigns (see Anagnost 1994). 106 chapter two

Zhuang, elites demand greater inclusion within the Chinese state (Kaup 2000: 180). Conversely, Yushu people generally want more local ‘auton- omy’ or regional control. At Trinde School, Jayang’s ‘joke’ encapsulates the ambivalence with which state-led development is viewed locally: If the road [to Trinde] is good, it is good. If the road is bad, it is good! With a good road we can get about easily but they can take away all our yaks. With a bad road we have to walk, but at least we can keep our resources! Equally, infrastructure improved through Great Western Development that will enable local farmers to ‘get a pig to market will also bring them into competition with farmers from Guangdong’ and, following China’s accession into the World Trade Organization, overseas competition too (China Development Brief 2000: 24).

Circulation of Multiple Discourses

Discourses of improvement, progress and development are never uni- tary. Instead contemporary forms are infl uenced by prior and interna- tional understandings of ‘development’, and by related themes that infl u- ence development in concept and practice. An example of how people are emplaced within multiple discourses within the overall rubric of local development is the school exercise routine, described below. Twice a day at Trinde School a strident bell sounds. Taking their cue, students assemble in the courtyard. Th ey line up in class-based columns, before spreading out into a vast geometric grid formation (see Nima Songbao and Zhaxi Cairen 2001: 33). Crackly, revolutionary style music is blasted from loudspeakers to motivate participants. A rousing mili- tary overture is the cue for students to assume the preparatory stance. An anonymous instructor issues metronomic counting in Putonghua: ‘One, two, three, four, fi ve’ (M. yi, er, san, si, wu), which is relayed via a loudspeaker system. Participants follow a lead teacher’s embodied dem- onstration: limply waving the left arm then right arm out to the side, bending their knees, and stretching to one side then the other. Each move follows progressively from the last. Th e workout moves are sedate, formulaic and stylized, and are akin to the daily physical pre-work drills performed by students and work unit staff all over China. Ideas about a ‘healthy body’ site the school as one assemblage within a nested hierarchy of bureaux, offi ces and offi cials that comprises the socialist body of the PRC (see Zito and Barlow 1994 on China and stressing development 107

Gyatso 1987 and Samuel 1989 on areas designated ‘Tibetan’). School leaders say that the exercises are ‘good for physical health’, concerns which also appear in Trinley’s education forum comments. Th e idea of ‘health’ invoked here relates to the rationalist-scientifi c discourses of ‘the body’ promoted in the Deng era. However, the similarity between local statements and central rhetoric does not imply that Trinde people are merely reproducing offi cial reasoning, or that their consciousness has been confi gured by state-led rationales. Levinson and Holland analyse schools as ‘sites for the formation of subjectivities’ and for the ‘cultural production’ of social styles (1996: 13, 24). Th e exercises are one of many procedures that structure specifi c disciplinary and hierarchical practices through given ‘technologies of power’ (Foucault 1980, 1988a, 1988b). Th e ritualized ‘exercises’ are a particular interpretation of ‘physical education’ that reveal how bodies may be simultaneously ‘emplaced’ within several, sometimes compet- ing, discourses of ethno-national politics. Th e formalized, geometri- cal arrangements of such assemblies involve moments when the ideal of a united, improving, national (or, in this case, nationality) body of subjects is realized. Each individual student body is located within a structured mesh of bureaucratic grids. Th e people within this collective body witness themselves and each other as an administrative whole, which represents a microcosmic nation space. In practice, students follow the instructions (or their peers) within the amassed school body. Trinde Manual (Slob.gso’i.gling.ga/Chengduo Jiaofan 2002: 30) highlights the exercise activity with colour pictures, and notes that, ‘Doing callisthenics to broadcast music is one of the stu- dents’ required courses’ (M. zuo guanbo ticao shi xuesheng de bixiuke zhiyi). Watching closely, it is clear that many students never actually fully embody the sequence correctly, despite twice-daily repetitions over six years of school attendance. Staff monitors are satisfi ed if a student’s body can be visibly located and documentarily registered within the exercise layout, one of many similar structuring frames in the school procedures. A similar format, based on mass participation, synchronization and model repetition, is used for state-sponsored dancing on television and local festivals. Th is example shows how students may both deploy and disengage with educational and other social practices in ways that do not wholly assimilate, or explicitly undermine, the offi cial line. Th is phe- nomenon is what Levinson and Holland refer to as ‘paradoxical poten- tialities’ (1996: 22). Th e exercise example is important in understanding people’s broader partial enmeshment in a range of discourses. 108 chapter two

In 2004, Trinley made several changes to the school’s exercise rou- tine (Tr. yongda sey). Th ese changes were part of a raft of revisions aimed at improving the performance of actors within the school, which is itself considered to play a key part in the overall development of Trinde as a whole. Trinley’s interventions show how perceptions about the relative merit of local practices have changed over time. Follow- ing the 2003 summer-break, all teaching staff were required to join the students in undertaking the morning exercise sessions. Trinley did not intend the teachers to become a motivational model for students, as staff were positioned behind the student body. Staff inclusion in the exercises fi ts with the local drive towards motivating everyone, regard- less of age, gender, status and nationality, towards greater commitment and enthusiasm for the school project. In this way, the mass partici- pation exercises become another way of witnessing, and embodying, a specifi c structuring discipline. However, as with the students’ half hearted participation, the teachers’ embarrassed lampooning of the exercise moves disrupts any totalizing eff ects of this institutional assem- bly in practice. Trinley himself did not participate, preferring to over- see the proceedings from the sidelines. Th e teachers that did take part seemed to do so because of Trinley’s invigilating gaze. Th e changes were received with minimal enthusiasm among staff , and quickly waned to zero involvement. In a surprising early 2004 update, Trinley eliminated all militaristic music and formulaic moves from the exercises and changed them to Yushu folkdances. Upbeat regional nationality pop songs such as Om Mani Padme Hum, Shambala and Tashi Delek Shoq now provide the catalysing melodies. All staff and students, incomers included, were required to participate in the windmill-like local dances to Trinde’s jaunty folk-tunes. Th ese exercises are an example of the localizing of offi cial prescriptions about developing the effi ciency and metaphoric ‘health’ of locales. Yet in many ways, changing the school’s national callisthenics to en-masse performances of nationality folkdances extends, rather than challenges, offi cial governmental techniques. Now, however, the emphasis has shift ed from a state-national to a local ‘autonomous’ format, which is more appealing to many local leaders. Contemporary offi cial discourses and a handful of radical-modern- izing local intellectuals focus on how China’s nationalities have not ‘cor- rected’ their outmoded thinking and behaviour. Critics point to people’s reluctance to give up making lavish donations to religious practitioners and ‘wasteful’ institutions (see for example Wang 2002: 93–4). Th ese stressing development 109 opinions fi t with wider notions of nationalities (as a sub-section of the ‘peasantry’) as consuming the productive energies intended to turn China into a modern developed nation. Nationality and rural popula- tions are offi cially and popularly berated for failing to become a disci- plined, quality labour force, through these people’s ‘failure’ to curb their high fertility. In moving towards these ends, a popular national phrase identifi es the three ‘defi nitive skills a modern person in China’ should develop, namely: driving a car, speaking English and using a computer. Educated urban people in Yushu believe that learning from selected Western competencies is the best way to develop local regions. Th is option is attractive as it avoids accusations of ‘selling out’ by using only state-led methodologies. Local teachers think that English competency is a good way to improve the region’s economic development, political orientation and social independence, and this is also a principal reason why my presence received immediate offi cial support in the area. In Trinde, Trinley takes a central role in the attempts to motivate his staff through a variety of disciplinary and motivational means. Yet this role, to borrow Rose and Miller’s words, ‘is not one of weaving an all-pervasive web of “social control”, but of enacting assorted attempts at the calculated administration of diverse aspects of conduct through countless, oft en com- peting, local tactics’ (1992: 175). In the same way, Trinley’s questions, as well as other Qinghai commentaries, display revolutionary era infl uences, as well as reform era popular, social, governmental and political idioms.

Developing an Autonomous Nationality Constituency

Th is section covers reform era developments that represent nationalities becoming, in the words of the pre-Cultural Revolution phrase, ‘masters of their own home’ (M. dang jia zuo zhu, see Kaup 2000: 113, Bovingdon 2004: 119–20). Th e Muslim boycott example shows how local people have dealt with the fracturing of comprehensive state employment and welfare guarantees (known as the ‘iron rice bowl’) and in-migration. In Qinghai, people have acted on actual and perceived tensions, particu- larly in urbanizing areas by displacing them onto the administrative fault-line of nationality (see TIN 2004: 27–30 for discussion). Some university graduates describe late–1980s political disturbances as the turning point for imagining the scattered local populations as a social nationality constituency. Wongdu, a Xining-based Amdo lec- turer described that: 110 chapter two

I had not really thought about ‘being [part of a collective known as] Tibetan’ until Tiananmen Square. News spread quickly to our campus in Lanzhou University and we students set off en masse [punches the air fervently, re-enacting the uprising]. News then spread to Minyuan [Xin- ing Nationalities University] and the students there came over to join us. We were united by the same plan for the fi rst time. Now I tell students that they are all Tibetan. Related in this way, Wongdu made the Tiananmen confrontations seem to be a key moment leading to nationality consciousness and mutual engagement. However, retelling the story to a diff erent lec- turer, Wongdu mentioned that the uprising was part of a Gansu Prov- ince inter-religious (‘Tibetan-Muslim’) clash, and said that it was not a local-state or nationality (‘Han-Tibetan’) issue. Furthermore, Wongdu’s Trinde students say that, in practice, he favours people from his home area, rather than equally favouring his whole nationality regardless of their region. Th ey relate having heard him ask students, ‘Are you Khampa? Ughh! Are you from Amdo? Good!’ Th is example shows how audience and context heavily infl uence affi rmations of commonality. It also demonstrates the multiple ways ‘reality’ can be represented and the diverse socio-political forces that infl uence ‘development’ interven- tions. Th roughout the 1990s, individual entrepreneurship grew in Yushu and residence restrictions were loosened in urban centres throughout China. Hui-Muslims from neighbouring Gansu and Xining moved into Qing- hai, and frequently own the only businesses in outlying regions. During the reform era, former state guarantees and subsidies in education, farm- ing, employment and welfare have been progressively phased out (though some support still exists), and these are being replaced by services that customers purchase through the market economy. State-subsidies were initially meant to mitigate the eff ects of life in the harshest regions of China and to increase the appeal of living and working in oft en-remote nationality areas (cf. Wang and Bai’s 1991 critique). Central government has now devolved payment-responsibilities to local governments, but some subsidies are still allocated directly from Beijing. In Trinde, as else- where in China, employment is increasingly based on merit, competition, increasing scholarly qualifi cations, status and connections. Few non-work unit jobs exist in Trinde. Associated with these issues, a regionally innovative form of social action began in Yushu in 2003 when local people began to boycott ‘Muslim’ businesses (bakeries, restaurants, grocery stores and market stressing development 111

stalls). Th e boycott took place in an era in which, to quote Deng’s famous phrase, ‘Getting rich is glorious.’ Within this context, Hui- Muslims’ business acumen has become their signature nationality characteristic (Gladney 1998: 3). Th is entrepreneurial tendency grates with local people, who oft en cite compassion as their core aim. Th e Yushu-based mobilization was sparked by an inter-nationality dispute in Jianza, an Amdo area of Qinghai. Yushu inhabitants gave strikingly similar stories to explain the boy- cott. Th e main rumour was that Hui-Muslims elsewhere in Qinghai had put Bin Laden’s (or a famous imam, a Muslim lama [sic] or Sad- dam Hussein’s) ashes (or a dead Muslim’s fi nger) in local people’s food to convert them. ‘Muslims’ were said to be scattering these ashes from a motorbike or minibus (or placing them in the local water supply) to convert local people to Islam. An older version, attributed to an event in Sichuan, describes the use of mosque foot-ablution water to make restaurant noodles for lamas’ food. Th ese apocryphal tales are part of a wider nationality-based Othering mythology. Local associates vehe- mently claim that Muslims ‘eat their dead relatives’ and ‘worship pigs’ heads’ (the latter is said to explain Muslim avoidance of pork). Th ese characterizations are hotly contested by Hui incomers, who cite local ignorance of their customs as the reason for these comments. Con- versely, when local associates were quizzed about the validity of their ideas, they said that, while I might know about Muslim tendencies else- where, as an outsider, I obviously did not know about Hui social prac- tices within China. To give an example of the atmosphere during the boycott, the fol- lowing explosive encounter occurred during a mid-2003 interview with Rinchen, Trinde’s most famous scholar. Rinchen, his companion, Tsomo (a former ETP student) and I met in Jyegu town centre. Rinchen suggested we undertake our discussion in a nearby ‘Hui restaurant’. Aft er half an hour, the cook asked if anyone was going to purchase any- thing. Because of the boycott, none of our group had ordered anything. Her query prompted an immediate confrontation. Rinchen, a normally placid lama-scholar, and his companion instantly responded by hurl- ing abuse at the cook. A fi erce argument ensued. Tsomo indignantly kicked over a chair, while Rinchen harried a restaurant assistant into the kitchen. As his parting shot, he yelled, ‘We all have to live in this country you know!’ Th e row seemed to have been staged for my benefi t, which suggests that local people assume that Westerners are supportive of their cause. 112 chapter two

Investigating further, it becomes clear that the boycott involves various sub-themes and issues. For example, Lajey, a Trinde-born teacher in her twenties, says she does not ‘believe in the boycott’ and says that it is a ‘reli- gious problem’. Nevertheless, Lajey and her family now rigorously avoid all Muslim businesses that they, only months ago, patronized regularly. However, while ‘religion’ is a potent organizing trope for political mobi- lization (Marshall 1993: 239), the boycott issue is not ultimately about ‘religion’ per se. For example, Padre,~ Lajey’s classmate, emphasized that: Th e boycott is not a Tibetan [Buddhist]-Muslim problem, it is just a few people stirring-up the issues. Tibetans and Muslims have been living in Qinghai together for a thousand years. I had a good Muslim friend for four years. I always ate in his restaurant. Sometimes I paid, but if I was short of cash, I could pay later. I do not believe the ashes-in-the-food story. Some say Tibetans and Muslims are innate enemies. But if you hope to destroy everything you think is diff erent to you, you will end up being enemies with most of the world! Muslims do indeed have a long and relatively high demographic pres- ence in Yushu. For example, Rock estimates that in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, Jyegu comprised two hundred local families and forty Muslim families (1956: 7). Rigdrol’s comments clarify the link between local fears about increasing socio-economic competition in a context of underdevelopment, and the mobilization of Qinghai people on the basis of nationality belonging: From 2003, I began not having anything to do with Muslims. I still main- tain this. Why? Muslims will not eat our food. Th ey think it is ‘unclean’. Th eir food is ‘clean’—they let us eat their food. Th is, in itself, is not fair. Tibetans do not open restaurants, and the food they make is not good. However, this does not matter. Food is mainly to get one’s stomach full. I buy from Tibetans, and eat in Tibetan restaurants. If a lot of Tibetans followed suit, the profi ts would be large and our businesses would grow. Now I refuse to take their [Muslims’] vehicles, eat their food or buy their things. Th is is my individual freedom. Th is type of view is like Gandhi’s thinking. Muslims put something inside Tibetan food so it is unclean. It is a rumour—not reliable, very simple. Some criticize me for doing this in opposition, saying, ‘We all have to join together: diff erent nationalities are all one family’ and our doing this is ‘not fair’. I feel this is fair! For example, the US and China do not say ‘we are friends’, yet they have a friendship. Th e US says I am going to buy your silk; you have to buy our Kodak fi lm, Coca Cola and Boeing aeroplanes. Another aspect is that China’s currency is low value so foreign goods are more expensive than domestic stuff . So, I buy Panda televisions not Sony. Buying domestic stuff has advantages for China’s population. stressing development 113

Rigdrol’s comments highlight how seeing the boycott as an example of regional ‘participation’ masks the disciplinary measures involved in such mobilizations (Tsin 1999: 12).9 Th e Muslim boycott is best understood as a travelling technology of regional mobilization. Th is provincial activism is practised through the idiom of nationality belonging on the basis of apocryphal evi- dence, without participants necessarily understanding or believing in the rationale. Th is type of direct action was fi rst seen during Ladakh’s Muslim boycott in 1989. Similar protests erupted in Lhasa in the early 1990s. A comparable mobilization was initiated in Sichuan around the new millennium. Th is latest boycott has occurred in Qinghai from 2003 onwards. Th e ‘dangerous liaisons’ involved in Ladakh’s analogous (and now exemplary) boycott, as well as the resulting social polarization, are traced by van Beek (2004: 206). Discussing this subject in Trinde, Pema elaborated on his suspicions about ‘Muslims’ using the literary- language term khache, which has long been a derogatory term. Jokes are made about people having ‘big mouths’, which is a derogatory pun on the words kha (meaning ‘mouth’) and chey (signifying ‘big’): Khache are rich and arrogant, and have good development. If you anal- yse individual Khache, you have all sorts. But as a whole? Baaaad! Th e three reasons why I do not like them are: history, personal-experience and world-situation. If I read a Chinese history of Khache, I would trust fi ft y percent. But if Khache had written their own history, they would have written, ‘I am great, we are great!’ and almost all of it would be unbe- lievable. Th e more usual word for Muslim in Trinde is Salar, a collective term employed in local parlance to refer to all Muslims, be they Hui, Salar, Uighur or Kazak. In Qinghai, local people’s developmental frustrations and economic grievances lack any available target. Th e lack of an obvious cause is par- tially due to a diversifi cation of authorities in the reform era. Instead, provincial tensions have been channelled into boycotting Muslim businesses. In development terms, this pan-Qinghai social activism relates to local perceptions that the means for developing the region are becoming more limited, and that the rightful recipients of these

9 ‘Disciplinary’, as it is used here, refers to a whole series of techniques and knowl- edges of the body, and disciplinary power indexes an intricate focus on the smallest details of human life. 114 chapter two material development resources are local people. Th e mobilization is an attempt to reclaim Yushu people’s developmental stake, which local residents consider to be unfairly diminished by outside encroachment. Th e local Hui population constitute a politically minor and culturally germane means of trying to achieve this end. Th is example shows how anxieties about development are being linked to nationality, which, in turn, is reifi ed around specifi c religious orientations, which are increas- ingly of a unitary nature. Lingering plurality or non-concordance here is treated as a category mistake. Th us, local associates in the TAR capital rigorously contested the possibility of ‘Tibetan Muslims’ even existing, despite several such communities being resident in Lhasa (Cabezón 1997, Francke 1929).

Expressing Development Frustrations through Nationality Idioms

Th is chapter discussed how local anxieties are expressed through under- standings of the region’s nominally economically, culturally and politi- cally ‘backward’ standard of living. Th ese developmental perceptions are articulated through nationality idioms. Local perceptions relate to the pace, type and direction of nation-state ‘development’, and to reform era dislocations caused by changes in the local political economy. Nation- ality is the state-legitimated idiom for understanding and recogniz- ing social constituencies, on the basis of which resources are currently allocated. Local actions are unlikely to change the overarching situa- tion, however, as they leave the logic of nationality (as a basis for social constituency) unchallenged (van Beek 1996: 207). Subsequent chapters unpick and analyse these issues, which have been touched upon in dis- cussing the Muslim boycott above. Th e ethnography of this chapter, and particularly that of the edu- cation forum and Muslim boycott, shows how perceptions about a regional lack of economic advancement and material resources are being used as rallying calls. In the Inner Mongolia context, Jankowiak (1993: 59) also notes an intensifi cation of inter-nationality antagonism, which he believes is due to resources being allocated on the basis of categories that are appointed rather than attained. In contrast, Fischer (2004b) contends that current social marginalization and intercul- tural troubles in this region of China are interconnected, and are due to urban-based processes of population, growth and employment. He argues that discrepancies between groups, such as their relative degrees stressing development 115 of urbanization and education (rather than ‘base line’ factors like popu- lation shares or levels of poverty), are the decisive issues engendering marginalization and discord (ibid.). Th is ethnography has a diff erent emphasis and highlights dis- tinct themes. Here, the boycott is seen as a way that local people have come together as a distinctly new political constituency of ‘Qinghai Tibetan Buddhists’, which disregards previous language and dialect- based distinctions. In the context of development and society, offi cially denounced Mao era divisions are no longer invoked, as these no longer resonate with the politics of the age. Instead, PRC geographical and nationality administrative boundaries are the new points of reference for mobilization in Qinghai. Oakes also identifi es the provincial level to be the ‘focal scale’ of the new regionalism in China (2000: 699). Th e idea of developing policies to create dynamic subjects is not new, and has been especially prevalent at certain times over the PRC history. Mao’s own words espouse his belief that ‘complacency is the enemy of study’, and therefore that ‘our attitude towards ourselves should be “to be insatiable in learning” and, towards others, “to be tireless in teach- ing”’ (1965: 210). Trinley’s commitments to developing local educa- tion should not be interpreted as a quest for offi cial ratifi cation or local acceptance. As seen in the reform of Trinde School exercises, local lead- ers encourage people working in institutions to develop self-discipline, in line with both local concerns and offi cial-central preoccupations. Th is balance is being achieved through the cultivation of local idioms in line with reform era discourses of nationality autonomy. As the next chapters show, local leaders occupy strategic, if somewhat precari- ous, social positions. Th is is true even in the reform era when, as we shall see, leaders have a relatively wide rein in emplacing local policies (Chung 2000, Oi 1989, Ruf 1998, Sui 1989). CHAPTER THREE

CULTIVATING NATIONALITIES

Long Live the Unity of Each People [M. Gezu remin datuan jie wansui]! —Mao, Deng and Jiang hoarding in Xining

Th e county is an area that is mainly formed by Tibetans, who coexist harmoniously with other nations. —Trinde Investment Guide (Song 2001: 3)

Th is chapter highlights ways in which nationality (M. minzu) is invoked and deployed in expressions of belonging and exclusion, and how the nationality category is contested, overlooked and complicated by other forms of identifi cation. Nationality is central to the way Party-state offi cials have dealt with China’s ‘multi-national’ populace within the ‘country’ or ‘state’ (M. guojia). Th ere is no ultimate hierarchy that locates nationality as a higher-order register of identifi cation. In the reform era, however, this category has become a permitted, and in some cases state-supported, trope of social expression (albeit subject to ongoing political surveillance and circumscription). Nationality does not merely involve the concerns of the professional minority, but entails practices that aff ect all state subjects (for example, in the form of identity cards, the registration of births and diff erential university access). Today, local oral and recent literary resources, Tibetological works, offi cial publications and exile sources invoke similar notions of a tangi- ble and unproblematized ‘Tibetan’ nationality collectivity. Th e nation- ality concept has become emblematic of a homogeneous, delimited and ahistorical ‘ethnic’ community. In the contemporary reform era, nation- ality is the principal socio-political idiom for claiming resources and affi rming collective legitimacy, within and beyond China’s body politic. As a supra-local meta-category, nationality coexists with other registers of identifi cation, many of which involve emotional attachments and practical implications for local people. Despite the predominance of this idiom, nationality is not necessar- ily the most important identity in Yushu. In fact, any singular form of identifi cation is complicated and crosscut by a diversity of other forms cultivating nationalities 117 of belonging. As the ethnography of this chapter shows, questions of identifi cation and belonging remain shift ing, contextual and intercon- nected in practice. As Sökefeld (2003: 309) points out, a ‘single human being is characterized by a specifi c combination (multiplicity) or iden- tities (diff erences) that relate to each other in specifi c and shift ing ways (intersectionality)’. Furthermore, what may seem to be a shared iden- tifi cation is oft en the particular opinion of people whose position of power in society has facilitated the dissemination of their perspective as the universal one (ibid.). Th is process involves ‘foregrounding’ a single perspective (or an agglomeration of predominant perspectives) that becomes known as ‘nationality’, a process that obscures social plurality in practice (see ibid. 330).

Constituting Nationality

Th e idea of a ‘Chinese nation’ (M. Zhonghua minzu) was previously based on notions of civilization rather than race or ethnicity. National- ity was adapted from Meiji Japan’s word minzoju (Litzinger 2000: 5). Sun Yatsen combined European and Japanese political ideas with Chi- nese (oft en Confucian-inspired) notions of persons, family, kin-polities and state to form new concepts of ‘society’ and ‘nation’. Th e national- ity concept was promoted by Nationalists like Sun Yatsen and Liang Qichao from 1895. In 1903, ‘nationality’ was specifi ed as the appropri- ate political principle for China’s Nationalist state (Litzinger 2000: 61). Around 1900, it was feared that a limited conception of the nation-state would separate China into disparate polities, allowing western authori- ties to control the region. Japan and Germany were seen as cohesive models at this time. Like the ethnically fragmented Ottoman Empire, China’s peripheries were seen to have signifi cant linguistic, religious, cultural and administrative diff erences from inner China. Sun’s precept of ‘racial nationalism’ (M. minzuzhuyi) formed part of his infl uential ‘Th ree Principles of the People’ (M. sanminzhuyi, Dikötter 1992: 123). In 1924, Sun gave an infl uential lecture called the ‘Repub- lic of Five Races’ (M. wuzu gonghe), namely: Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan and Chinese Muslims. Th is political idea was the key propo- sition driving the Guomindang revolution (Kaup 2000: 61). Hitherto, only ‘particularistic’ family, kin confederacy and village ties had united China’s peoples. Sun now famously called for China’s ‘loose sheet of sand’ to amalgamate into a ‘modern’ nation-state (Liew and Smith 2004: 3). 118 chapter three

Nationalism was the fi rst of Sun’s ‘Th ree Principles of the People’ (M. sanmin zhuyi). Chiang Kai-shek furthered this assimilationist agenda when he chaired the National Congress in 1939. Th e National- ists did not invent the idea of a Chinese state, but instilled the notion with new ideas about a culturally and nationally unifi ed ‘Han nation’ or ‘Chinese race’ (Gladney 1991: 84). Strategies were concentrated on the northerly peoples, who had more consolidated leadership structures, demography, language, claims to statehood, and external involvements or leadership (Kaup 2000: 55–6). At this stage, only northwestern peo- ples were recognized as ‘nationalities’, while southwestern populations were designated as ‘confederacies’ (M. yi buluo). Th e fi rst offi cial usage of the phrase ‘minority nationality’ was in 1926 in the Gansu Hui context. Th en, in 1939, Sun’s discussion at the First Con- ference of the Guomindang contained the fi rst public references to ‘every nationality within China’ (M. Zhongguo yinei ge minzu) and ‘minority nationality’ (M. shaoshu minzu). Analogous neologisms such as ‘minority nationalism’ (M. minzu zhuyi) and ‘oppressed nationality’ (M. beiyapuo minzu) emerged in the party’s First to Fourth Conferences (Gladney 1991: 84–5). References to ‘minority nationality’ later appeared in ‘Th e Charter of the Chinese Communist Party’ and ‘Th e Decision on the Nationality Issue’, accepted at the Sixth Party Conference (Jin 1992: 1). By now, the phrase had broader connotations and included a variety of other peoples. In the 1950s, the Nationalities Aff airs Commission (M. minzu shiwu weiyuanhui) undertook the task of ‘nationalities identifi cation’ (M. minzu shibie) in China. Th e State Commission for Nationality Aff airs specifi ed nationalities according to the evolutionary theories of Morgan, Marx, Stalin and Mussolini (Guldin 1994: 120–1). Stalin’s (1953: 307) specifi cation of nationality as ‘a historically constituted, stable commu- nity of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common cul- ture’ was the central principle of this nationality categorization process.1 Later, the concept of nationality was expanded to incorporate civilized and barbarian distinctions and, subsequently, racial types, lineages, nations, species, eugenic evolution theories and, more recently, class

1 Th e Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library also use a four-step taxonomy to, ‘discern a group of people … that are characterized by certain shared features which make talking about them as a whole tenable’. Th e elements listed are: spoken language, a degree of literary-language knowledge, ‘shared origin myths and historical narratives that can be identifi ed as “Tibetan” ’ and ‘identity statements’. Th ese indicators render most Trinde locals ‘non-Tibetan’. cultivating nationalities 119

(Dikötter 1992: 97, 112). Today, China offi cially comprises fi ft y-fi ve ‘minority nationalities’ and a (‘Han’) majority. Th e term minzu has been widely used only since the 1980s (Newell 2000: 28). References to outlying populations did exist before the offi cial cat- egorization. However, it was through the process of labelling, autho- rizing and enumerating China’s peoples that nationalities were socially consolidated and politically empowered as operative constituencies within China’s emergent modern nation-state (Gladney 1991: 16). Before that time, people living in areas now categorized ‘autonomous’ have historically been known as ‘barbarians’ (M. yeman). Th e popu- lar perception of these peoples as dirty, superstitious, violent, dark and unable to communicate in Putonghua (Yeh 2002: 234), infl uences con- temporary understandings and experiences.2

Conceptualizing Nationality in Yushu

In Yushu, people with a scholarly background are those most able to express what the local nationality is, and what the nationality charac- teristics are. Additionally, some people gain the competency and legiti- macy to speak for a particular constituency. However, these people never achieve a total hegemony over either the given representation or others’ responses (cf. Weber 1964: 124–5). It is mainly a network of male lead- ers from ‘wealthless-class’ and agriculturalist Druchung-village families who advance ideals related to nationality autonomy. Th ese leaders are generally in their mid-thirties to mid-forties, and are people who bene- fi ted from the equalizing social eff ects of the Cultural Revolution. In this fi eld, there is also a small number of more radical cadres and teachers who come from previously ‘wealthy’ families, and who have benefi ted from reform era compensations and commercial opportunities.

2 Some inner China inhabitants describe feeling frightened when seeing rural Kham people in their city of Chengdu (Sichuan). Following a charged argument over home- lands (see below), local teachers nicknamed Li, an incomer member of staff , as a ‘Han- nationality Hooligan’ (M. Hanzu liumang). Th e term is said to describe ‘those with long hair who drink and fi ght’, and is the most common morality marker used among teachers in informal situations. Hooligan is used as a modern equivalent of the term ‘barbarian’. During teaching-breaks, male teachers stand in cliques, occasionally kick- ing the school’s only Muslim teacher up the backside while calling him a hooligan. Local teachers say this teacher is ‘like a woman’, and mimic how he ‘sits down to pee’. Trinde teachers also taunt the school’s overtly socialist teacher, calling him ‘Bin Laden’s little brother’ and ‘a hooligan’. For a summary of the historical development and cul- tural subtleties of the term liumang, as well as the word’s social usage as an Othering device, see Chen (1998: 63). 120 chapter three

Lajey, a teacher from a Trinde family, made comments that highlight the racial and cultural implications of nationality as a bounded, coher- ent entity: Every nationality has its own culture worth preserving. Tibetan weddings preserve Tibetan cultural characteristics. But it is not only cultural, because they say we look like Tibetans. And then there are all the stereotypes about being generous, big eyes, dark skin. When I lived in Xining, they would say to me, ‘You are really Tibetan, you have your nationality’s special characteristics!’ You are supposed to be able to tell a person’s nationality from their appearance and their special character- istics. Tibetans have a simple mind, without wide thoughts. Chinese are cunning and highly educated. Tibetans are blinkered by every- thing! I was in a pick-up in Yushu with Chinese and Tibetans. Someone asked, ‘Who is Bin Laden?’ Th e Tibetans did not even know! Tibetans are really good-hearted—have you seen all the beggars around Jyegu? Tibetans give to beggars, but Chinese never do. Maybe it is religion con- trolling Tibetans’ personality, their hearts and minds. Tibetans like to respect their parents and spend time at home. If they argue, that is dis- obedient. Parents forbid their off spring to smoke, drink or get together with boyfriends or girlfriends, whereas many Chinese do these things. Nationality categories also form handy stereotypes in explaining dif- ferences in social inclinations, as Tenzin, a former Yushu cadre’s com- ments show: Most Tibetans only consider things in the short-term. Th ey think of tactics and are more direct. Most Chinese think more deeply, it is like they are working out strategies. Tibetans are like snow-lions: if a problem arises, they pounce! But Chinese are like dragons: weaving about, giving situations more consideration. People do not discuss this type of thing now because the government says China is one country. Actually, Tibet- ans have both directness and mental-capacity. It is the people from Kham region who are like snow-lions. Th e tangible eff ects of notions of nationality ‘diff erence’ are evident in Padre’s~ description of his visit to a university language exchange: One Han student said she had thought Tibetans were wild and rude and so she avoided them. I felt then that there were some obstacles [rubs heart vigorously] between Chinese and Tibetans. It is not so much the language, but something indescribable … something cultural. I went on a trip to Hong Kong with four Chinese girls. Th ey are so particular about even the smallest details! Th e reifi cation of nationality boundaries tends to engender anxiet- ies over ‘authenticity’ and boundary marking. During one night duty cultivating nationalities 121 shift , the literary-language teachers watched ‘When the Dust Settles’ (M. Chen Ai Luo Ding, which was given the English title ‘Red Poppies’), a Central China Television production that dramatically reconstructs a pre-liberation ‘Tibetan’ family history. Th e inner China actors wear ornate nobles’ garb. My colleagues queried whether I thought the actors were ‘Chinese or Tibetan’ and, conversely, whether I would think that the teach- ers themselves were ‘Tibetan or Chinese’ if I were not acquainted with them. I replied that the actors were from inner China and that, although their clothing is similar, the teachers look local. Due to my own position- ing and the general charge around nationality identifi cation, I felt duty- bound to answer in this way, despite knowing that the answer would add density to racial taxonomy assumptions already circulating about nation- ality belonging (see Dikötter 1992). Trinde people are keen to maintain an essential diff erence with regard to other nationalities, and are dismayed at the relative degen- eration of their collectivity. Referring to the actors in the fi lm and fl icking the lapel of his imported Chinese suit, Tashi lamented, ‘Th at was Tibetans then … and this is us now.’ Misrecognition raises con- cerns about ‘inauthenticity’ which is due, in turn, to the complicated intertwining of identifying practices, which are not only generated by outside designations (Yeh 2002: 236, Schein 2000: 62). Local anxieties are increasing, as viewers recognize the malleability of the symbols of nationality belonging, and their susceptibility to appropriation by Others. While statements about bounded and authentic nationalities are common among educated people, the practical reality is nuanced and plural. In practice, nationality symbols are not only appropriated, but are susceptible to being over interpreted. For instance, in late 2002, Hong Jianying, a teacher from inner China was unable to get a job in the locale. She puts this down to ‘Tibetans controlling all the employ- ment connections’ (M. guanxi). Hong said that only the Deputy Head- master at the time, Trinley, gave jobs on a merit rather than nationality basis. She demonstrated the situation by separating a single coal from a heap, saying that ‘Tibetans are not like Chinese’, and concluded: We are not the same, you and I. You know too little, and I know too much. You think these people are good, but I think they are not. In China some things are better left unsaid. Re-arranging her family set-up according to the common ‘one household two systems’ model (see Dutton 1998: 215), Hong later left her husband 122 chapter three working in Trinde and relocated to Xining with their son. Hong feels she is now among her ‘own kind’, and jokes that, ‘Now I am one of the masses!’ In her new location, Hong felt free to tell the full story, and related that:

In 1992, I off ended a woman. At that time, the person was the Secre- tary of the Trinde County Party Committee, a woman and a Tibetan. A large shipment of produce came in from Xining and this woman would not allow my husband to pick the good vegetables fi rst. So I off ended her. Later, in 1995, she served as the County’s Deputy Mayor in charge of education. Th e chemistry teacher at our school married and left the school, so they lacked a teacher. Th ey hired me as a substitute teacher for two weeks without pay before they decided to hire me. If I did well, they would give me a contracted position. I continued to work there, but the woman refused to give me a contracted position. I was the most qualifi ed person. I should have been making 1,780 Yuan but instead was off ered the lowest level of employment [M. lishi gongzi]. I had the highest level of culture [M. wenhua shuiping], but I only made two hundred Yuan!

Th e ethnographic example above shows how, in practice, local people do not advance ideas about collective ‘ethnic’ belonging that engenders a specifi c nationality consciousness. Instead, sets of individuals advance their own personal networks, interests and positioning through ‘cultivat- ing personal relationships and networks of mutual dependence’ (Yang 1994: 6). Th e easiest way for local people to better their chances in the current political milieu is by promoting those with whom they are inter- connected by familial or homeland links (M. guanxi, Tr. dreywa). Th is process inadvertently generates and consolidates ideas about national- ity as a form of local belonging. Inner China-born people fi nd it more diffi cult to ‘get ahead’ because they are socially ‘unlinked’, rather than because they are of a diff erent nationality. Th e resulting centralization of power by a limited set of local people is nevertheless interpreted by those excluded (for example, Hong Jianying) in explicitly nationality terms. Th e current removal of state employment and welfare provisions provide extra incentives to protect friends and family. In an inner China context, Kipnis (1994: 202–203) also discusses the potential of social connections (M. guanxi) to unify relations of economic exchange and friendship, and to constitute and reconstitute subjectivities within interpersonal and virtual, remembered or ‘imagined’ communities. In sum, rather than nationality being a guiding trope for action, it is a case of individual objectives being furthered through local connections, which, due to the way society is organized and administered in China, coincide with imagined communities on a nationality basis. cultivating nationalities 123

Categorical Violence: Nationalities and Ancestral Land

Despite the plurality and idiosyncrasies that exist in practice, the cat- egorization of society into nationalities provokes many ‘surplus’ eff ects. Writing on this phenomenon, Bulag (2000: 534) argues that a form of ‘violence’ is inherent in categorical nationality terms. Two striking examples of the unintended results of nationality categorizations are given below. Th e fi rst outlines an intense rota-room discussion over competing understandings of the concept of an ‘ancestral-land’ (Tr. mija). Th e second concerns Zhao Yuqian, a Chinese history teacher, whose situation is described in the following section. Th e local idea of ‘ancestral land’ or ‘fatherland’ (T. pha.mes.rgyal.khab, Tr. mija) trans- lates as ‘motherland’ (M. zuguo) in Putonghua. In local terms, this idea joins ‘ancestors’ and ‘forefathers’ (T. mes.po, Tr. mipo) and ‘country’ (Tr. jakhaq). Ancestral land normally refers to a person’s forefather’s homeland. In this discussion, the literary-language teachers used the phrase to describe their nationality homeland, as per Stalinist defi ni- tions of ‘own territory’. Th e ancestral-land debate began when Phuntshog, a literary-language teacher, asked me an apparently offh and question about whether my ancestral-land is the UK (M. Yingguo, Tr. Inji Lungpa, lit. ‘England’). Th e people present throughout were the four principal literary-language teachers: Phuntshog, Pema, Dorje and Jigme, incomer teachers: Li Zhenxi, Ma Lianjiang, Chen Wenhui and Xi Mingzhi, two female stu- dent helpers and me. Only Phuntshog, Pema, Dorje and Jigme, Ma and Li spoke during the debate, the rest of us remained silent throughout. Phuntshog and Dorje stated that their ancestral-land is ‘Tibet’ (Tr. Bö sacha). I commented that I have an ancestral-land, Britain, but no house, whereupon Pema quipped that he has a house but no ancestral-land. Pema pointed out that, ‘Tibet is our ancestral-land but it does not exist anymore. All our Tibetan forefathers were executed, so I cannot have a ancestral-land.’ At this early stage, the contestation focused on competing senses of ‘Tibet’ (Tr. Bö) and ‘Tibetan-place’ (Tr. Bö sacha). In Trinde and exile ref- erences, Bö usually now refers to the tripartite area of Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham (Tr. chokha sum) without the ethnographically related areas outside China (principally: Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh). Th e arguments of the rota-room ‘ancestral land’ debate involve inter- pretations of nation and nationality that are discussed in the Introduc- tion. Th e disagreement is an example of how the multilayered terrain of 124 chapter three

offi cial and local idioms is dexterously manoeuvred and repositioned in a customary educational setting—much like an ideological bargaining chip—between diff erently- positioned teachers and leaders. Th e intri- cacy and ingenuity of the teachers’ argument in the altercation hangs on the multiple categorizations of ‘Tibet’ (and its numerous sub- and allied regions) that have accumulated over the region’s long history. Th ese multilayered notions of identifi cation and belonging are available in the cultural repertoire to be wheeled in to support a given argument.3 It also depends on the speaker’s ability to marshal their knowledge of the region’s and nation’s political history in support or defi ance of each line of reasoning. Li, a Xi’an-born chemistry teacher, declared that, ‘It is the People’s Republic of China for everyone!’ A fi erce debate then ensued between Phuntshog and Li. Pema proclaimed that, ‘Even though Li has good scholarship, a broad perspective and has been to many places, he does not know the merest detail about the meaning of Tibetan history.’ Pema cited Li’s ignorance of ‘Tibetan inhabitation of Ü-Tsang, Yarlung val- ley, both sides of the Brahmaputra, and the three rivers’ confl uence to legitimize his statement. Phuntshog emphatically pronounced that, ‘Tibet is our ancestors’ country!’, whereupon Ma Lianjiang, the school’s only Hui-Muslim teacher, retorted that the ‘Tibetan ancestral-nation is China’, and forbade the local teachers to say otherwise. Spitting out the words one by one, Pema menacingly questioned, ‘Is … that … so?

3 Th e word for ‘Tibet’ in most European languages, and the Middle Chinese word Tufan, comes fom the Turkic word (through Arabic and Persian) Tüböd (plural Tübön) meaning ‘the heights’ (cf. Beyer 1992: 7). Central State records speak of ‘sheepherd- ers’ then ‘barbarians’ on the western plateau and, during the Tang dynasty, of T’u-fan ‘agricultural barbarians’ (a term which came to refer to ‘Tibetans’) and Hsi-fan (M. Xi-fan) ‘western barbarians’ (pastoralists of today’s Amdo-area, Beyer 1992: 15–17). Th e agriculturalists distinguished themselves from the pastoralists even though their ways of living were identical in many respects (ibid.). Th e local word Bö (sometimes pronounced Byeh in Trinde) is fi rst noted in Ptolemy’s geography as ßαται (‘batai’) and in Chinese literature as fa (Beckwith 1977: 59–61). Offi cial Party-state references to Xizang Zizhiqu are specifying the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Th e TAR roughly corresponds with the area ruled by the Dalai Lamas until 1949. Xizang literally means ‘western treasure/store house’, as related to Chinese myths about the area containing gold and riches. Th is Mandarin term comes from the local term, Tsang (the western section of Ü-Tsang), which has been in use since the eighteenth century. Additionally, zang is used to describe people (M. zangzu) and language (M. zangwen), and is the basis of the the regionally inclusive term, zangzu de difang. Th e TAR currently includes former Ü-Tsang and west Kham. Amdo and east Kham are now included in Qinghai, Gansu, Yunnan, and Sichuan. People from Kham call the entire TAR ‘Lhasa’. In Derge (Sichuan) and Nangchen (Qinghai), associates indicated land over the TAR border, say- ing ‘Th ere is Lhasa’, even though those easternmost areas are technically Kham. cultivating nationalities 125

You are a nationality person, but you are telling me that my nationality is no more?’ Th e literary-language teachers now dropped their focus on Li, and targeted Ma, who is the school’s only Hui-Muslim teacher. In doing so, the focus of the argument turned from an analysis of political history to a critique of nationality issues expressed through inter-religious idi- oms. Invoking Stalinist CCP categories, the literary-language teachers stated that a legitimate Chinese nationality must possess its own lan- guage, economic-life, character and area. Using this framework, Pema affi rmed that, in contrast to Salar-Muslims settled in Qinghai, Hui- Muslims do not have their own speech and writing. Phuntshog spelled out that Hui-Muslims cannot therefore claim to be a nationality. In case it had escaped Ma’s notice, Dorje emphasized that Ma cannot read Ara- bic. Th e teachers’ statements use a framework that rests on the idea that ‘a national community is inconceivable without a common language … it is suffi cient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking for the nationality to cease being a nationality’ (Stalin 1953: 308). Gladney (1991: 71) also notes that the motive behind the Hui inclusion in the establishment of the PRC was ‘expedient’, and indicated that the Hui ‘category could not be based on Stalin’s four criteria’. Ma protested that Hui are a legitimate nationality, and argued that their religion is permitted and counts in place of their own language and textual scholarship. Pema retorted that it is impossible merely to ‘borrow’ others’ scholarship (i.e. by using Chinese characters, rather than an exclusive nationality script). He sarcastically exclaimed: Oh, I must have made a ‘mistake’! I have met all four conditions. You are the one without scholarship and writing. Your nationality is a ter- rible type of people. I should not even speak to you, for if I did, I would become fi lthy. So if you are a good nationality, tell me how you are so! Searching for a legitimizing toehold in offi cial history, Ma related that Muslims came to China from Arabia, whereupon ‘Han, Tibetan, Hor, Salar and Hui all resided together as in marriage’ (M. jiehun). His comments echo Party-state rhetoric about ‘nationality unity’ (M. minzu tuanjie), as found in school history textbooks and museum storyboards. Th roughout the rota-room discussion, the literary-language teach- ers assumed a confrontational (though not necessarily diametrically opposed) approach. Th e local teachers emphasized nationality diff er- ence, and the putative moral and civil superiority of their categorically verifi able nationality ways. In this debate, the local nationality was 126 chapter three invoked as a central, undiff erentiated category, while ‘Han’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Hui-Muslim’ were invoked as Others. Incoming teachers appeal to offi cial rhetoric to subdue their interlocutors. Yet, both the incomers and locals use the same offi cial discourses to buttress and legitimize their arguments, and to negate the dominant discourses, within the same dispute. Educated local people usually have the upper hand in these exchanges. Using ‘inter-marriage’ as an analogy, Pema triumphantly exclaimed, ‘If all those diff erent Muslims resided together in marriage, you must all be mongrels! (M. zazhong). You cannot say you are a proper national- ity. Stay with your immoral, hooligan (M. liumang) nationality!’ Pema’s statements expose the biological and political implications inherited by the nationality-concept when it was transposed into Mandarin (Diköt- ter 1992: 108–109). Some of these meanings are ‘tribe’ (M. buluo), ‘race’ (M. zhongzu), ‘people’ (M. min) and ‘descent’ (M. zu). Ma maintained that, even if Hui do not have writing, they do have scholarship. Yet, Pema persisted, and argued that, ‘Without writing, all scholarship is blind scholarship.’ Ignoring Ma’s furious spluttering, Pema pressed on, claiming that, ‘In today’s world, scientifi c development is crucial. Writ- ing and textual scholarship are critical necessities for this progress to occur.’ Pema’s linking of scripts to science and progress departs from the locally prevalent practice of valorizing texts because they transmit sacred teachings. To give some background to this comment, contem- porary offi cial sources conspicuously promote scriptural heritage as an example of ‘historically advanced culture’. An everyday example of this is reform era banknotes, which display examples of Chinese, Mongol, Tibetan, Uighur and Zhuang writing and archetypal representations of peoples from China’s ‘family’ of nationalities. Th ese images replace the Mao era representations of modernizing advancements and emblems of nation-state authority (Schein 2000: 147–50). Th e rota-room discus- sion also refl ects a marking out and reaffi rmation of this nationality status. Pema’s comments suggest that even literary-language teachers do not consider themselves a part of a simple project of cultural preserva- tion. Instead, these teachers locate themselves in a wider process that includes and empowers the benefi cial aspects of local nationality schol- arly heritage (related to the ‘fi ve major’ analytical-spiritual and ‘fi ve minor’ aesthetic sciences of knowledge), among other competencies. Th ese teachers explicitly connect their role in preserving literacy and language to local and nationality progress. cultivating nationalities 127

Endorsing Pema, Phuntsog declared, ‘Without writing, except for killing yaks, what else can you lot do?’ Local people commonly cite the killing of animals as a prime reason why they ‘hate Muslims.’ Slaughtering is an important economic activity for local Muslims. Muslims commonly slaughter animals for Yushu people to eat, since taking a sentient being’s life is locally considered to be a polluting and inauspicious deed. At this point, Ma became explosively (literally ‘red face’ in local terms) angry. Composed and assured, Phuntshog said Ma should not be angry, but must realize instead that without textual scholarship, education is almost worthless. Pema emotively exclaimed: I have not a scrap of education, and Ma is a well-schooled person. But I have my Higher National Education Certifi cate, so Ma and I are equal in terms of qualifi cations. It is the nation that sends our wages, so even as an ‘unschooled person’ I am also given a daily wage. Ma asked provocatively, ‘And what is left of you Tibetans? Almost noth- ing!’ Enraged, Phuntshog bellowed: Th is is not a Muslim place: it is a Tibetan place! Do not speak such evil to Tibetans! If you do not like Tibet, get back to your Muslim place. You need not eat Tibetan food any longer. With your wages, you buy Tibetan food, without wages, you will not have any food! In practice, Ma did not actually ever share food with local or incom- ing people, as local meals are not produced according to Muslim dietary stipulations. Phuntshog’s intention, and the impact created in the participants here, was instead to reaffi rm intra-nationality soli- darity and re-inscribe an inter-nationality boundary. Th e rota-room ethnography adds a further twist to Western schol- arly insights about xenology (‘knowledge of the other’) and civilized and ‘raw’ and ‘cooked’ barbarians on and beyond central state fringes (see Fiskesjo 1999: passim). In an inversion of normal circumstances, during this discussion, local people characterized incomers by their dubious subject-status, uncivilized behaviour and ambiguity vis-à-vis established state categories (Fiskesjo 1999: 153). For local leaders, Oth- ers (who may be people from inner China, other nationalities or locals whose way of life is disparaged) constitute an ever-present potential, or ‘exception’, that serves to catalyse a making and remaking of the Self (aft er Fiskesjo 1999: 154, and see Agamben 1995). Th is ‘Self-making’ potential is maintained through Othering those considered to be ‘dif- ferent’, and is especially pronounced in socially and politically charged 128 chapter three moments (Fiskesjo 1999: 154). Th e rota-room arguments refl ect how not only central authorities, but also local social actors, capitalize on the ‘strange usefulness’ of Others, refl ecting desires to cultivate local ways in incomers, while constituting Others’ strangeness anew. Th e moment also highlights how some Trinde people consciously play on their own ‘wildness’ in interrelations with Others (cf. Fiskesjo 1999: 140, 144, 150). Back in the rota-room, the discussion had reached boiling point. Pema described Ma as being ‘like a volcano’. Even the inner China teachers now laughed at Ma. Th e team of literary-language teachers suddenly stated that the discussion ‘was all a joke, we were only play- ing around’. Phuntshog provocatively sang an offi cial propaganda song ‘fi ft y-six nationalities, fi ft y-six fl owers’ (M. wushiliuge minzu, wushi- liu duohua). Th is ditty is a form of reform era ‘ritualized propaganda’ that involves nationalities being publicly feted on television (Litzinger 1998: 228). Th e song emphasizes an offi cial commitment to developing cooperative centre-local interrelations in building a socialist modernity (ibid.). Pema tried to shake Ma’s hand, but Ma rejected the (seemingly token) reconciliatory gesture. Having exhausted the inter-religious nationality line of discussion, Pema turned back to Li and, paraphrasing Mao, argued that: If you do not participate, investigate and experience anything, you are not qualifi ed to speak. Li Zhenxi, you have good scholarship, but lack experience. Your ways, then, actually run contrary to the wishes of our great national leader, Chairman Mao. You are therefore guilty of betray- ing your country [M. panguozui, ‘traitor’]! Irked, Li vigorously declared that Mao’s thoughts were good, and that he himself knew Putonghua to the highest level. Seemingly mindful of my presence, Phuntshog proclaimed that, ‘Knowledge of Chinese-writing is not useful anymore; English is useful!’ Li retorted vehemently that he did not want to learn English, so in that sense, English is not at all use- ful and neither does it matter; he would rather stick to his way of doing things. Addressing Li, Pema translated a local scholar’s verse into Putong- hua:

If you only know your own mother, You cannot know other people, Th is is like being ignorant, No wonder you are so savage and crude! cultivating nationalities 129

Taking advantage of Li’s inability to understand the local dialect, Pema added in Trinde-speech that Li was ‘naïve, stupid’ (Tr. leyba djankuh, literally ‘green brain’).4 In this complex play of discursive inter-linkages, the scholarly phrase, quoted above, is made to serve as a forceful affi rmation (to Pema’s cohort as much as to Li), of the civilizing capacities of ‘Tibetan culture’. Th e literary-language teachers went on to repeat a commonly affi rmed notion that ‘Li does not know how to live.’ Li was ‘left speechless’ while the others laughed at him. Th e literary-language teachers left to under- take their registration duties. Th e remaining Chinese teachers trawled through aspects of the conversation in general agreement. Xi Ming- zhi remained in deep thought throughout. Pema later claimed that Xi, his former Chinese-language teacher and ‘best friend’ among the staff , agreed with his views. In this concluding section, local-scholarly, exile and reform era PRC discourses were invoked by local teachers to criti- cize Li’s lack of benefi cial personal and social practices. Mao Zedong Th ought was used to emphasize that theory and practice are necessary and complementary aspects for judicious action. To situate the foregoing discussion in its broader social setting, the international context of the Iraq War is signifi cant in accounting for the intensity of the politics brought into play in the literary-language teachers’ interactions with Ma. Yushu people unanimously sided with the USA against Iraq. Local affi liations during this war aff ected people’s reactions to Muslims living in the area, one expression of which was the Provincial boycott (see Chapter Two). Th e Iraq War was a sensitive issue for local people in a way that it was not for incomers. Refl ect- ing on the issue, Gao, a local teacher, summarized how, ‘Whenever one country wants to take over another country: that is a reminder for us.’ Jayang, a former monk, emphasized that the Iraq War keyed into mem- ories of the past and noted that it also invoked contemporary concerns: In 1957, Trinde was a totally Tibetan place; no Chinese were here at all. Very few people lived here then. In 1958 … [writes “XXXX” to indicate the obliteration of Trinde’s prior situation]. It was like Iraq, except that

4 ‘Green brains’ is a reference to revolutionary era eff orts to create socialist men and women by implanting a new brain (Shakya 1999: 316–17). Th ose clinging to ‘old’ values and ways were said to have ‘green brains’, which contrasted with progressive people’s ‘white brain’ (Tr. leyba kapo). Th ose with white brains could be transformed ideologi- cally with Mao’s teachings. Without studying Mao’s teachings, the brain was considered to remain empty (ibid.). Th e incoming authorities stressed that the issue was not a nationality question, but a diff erence between old (for example, ‘old society’, Tr. juhn- stuk nyepa) and new (as in, ‘new society’, Tr. juhnstuk sapa). 130 chapter three

Iraq has help from all diff erent countries. All other nationalities, Muslim, US, UK, have development, but Tibetans do not have development so our situation becomes worse and worse. Despite references to earlier periods, these statements concern present Qinghai predicaments rather than the past per se (Rack 2003: 178). Jay- ang’s statement shows the explicit cross-thematic linking of development with nationality, which is expressed here as a bounded, coherent entity. In many local statements, nationality, global situation and relative development are confl ated. Forgetting their stated emphasis on ‘compas- sion’ for a moment, some Yushu leaders and students actually expressed a desire for Iraq to be invaded. School and NGO offi cers hoped that their own ‘second liberation’ would follow. In making these statements, leaders and students are expressing aspirations that their region may, in the future, be free to develop in ways that are appropriate to their nationality. Extreme comments are rare, and usually came from those who claim a radical history for their family. Global politics are the way most educated, politically engage social actors imagine their political status in China changing. With the USSR breakup in mind, a Kham singer in Derge laughingly remarked that, ‘If the US and China go to war, Tibet, Xinjiang and Mongolia will break off one by one. Th en China will be empty handed and will be left wondering: “Where did they go?”’

Becoming Pitiless in One’s Own House?

Another example that involves themes of categorical violence is that of Zhao Yuqian, a young history teacher from a rural area of Xining. I fi rst met Zhao at an informal get-together in a colleague’s campus- accommodation in March 2003. Th ree other (literary-language) teach- ers were present. Lively, seemingly good-natured repartee ensued, the themes of which relate to the subsequent tragic situation:

Dorje: [Distancing himself from Zhao] He said we are all Chinese [Tr. Ja]! [Vigorous general disapproval followed] Dorje: [Explaining] We are not Chinese; we are of the Tibetan nation- ality: one Chinese and three Tibetans. [A tense silence ensued] Dorje: Now Zhao is angry because I said we are not all Chinese. Zhao: In history we were not the same, now we have become the same. Actually, both my parents are Tibetan, but they have for- gotten their Tibetan-speech. cultivating nationalities 131

Tashi: [Joking with Zhao] Your brain is Karl Marx, your fl esh is Tibetan, your speech is Chinese. If you are not Tibetan or Chi- nese, then what are you—some other type of nationality? I do not know—you possess so many contradictions!

Countering Dorje’s comment, Zhao said that although he did not know much about Buddhism, in his heart he felt ‘Tibetan’. Th e example gives another indication of how local people hold sway in interpersonal nationality-focused encounters. A month later, Trinde schoolteachers were dealing with a very diff er- ent set of inter-nationality circumstances. At fi rst, teachers would only report that Zhao ‘fell and hit his head’ in the rota-room. Diff erent ver- sions of the events emerged through the day. It appeared that during a rota-duty drinking session, Werzi (the school’s assistant accountant) had punched Zhao, who fell backwards, hitting his head on a bare con- crete fl oor. A week later, aft er severe complications and at just twenty- seven years old, Zhao died. In Trinde, the death was depicted throughout in nationality terms. Th e school, and the two local teachers who survived the fi ght, became the talk of the town. Th e teachers continually referred to the deceased teacher as ‘Chinese’. I mentioned that his self-ascription was ‘Tibetan’. Phuntshog scoff ed at the suggestion, saying, ‘In that case, he was lying: he was listed as Tuzu’. However, in expressing this opinion, rather than using the term ‘Monguor’ (to denote the Mongolic group concentrated in Qinghai and Gansu), which is the people’s own term for themselves, Phuntshog used the offi cial nationality term, which has connotations of dirt (M. tu). Phuntshog argued that the man’s ‘parents are not Tibetan so their son was fake, he cannot speak Tibetan. Th ere are a lot of “fake goods” around nowadays.’ Th e staff also alleged that the deceased teacher was registered as being ‘Tu’ to take advantage of the lower university entry-grades for nationalities (see Gladney 1999 for discussion). Phunt- shog later commented that, ‘Nowadays if you kill someone, you pay lots of money to the family [in this case, 80,000 Yuan each, a fi ne that is administered by the police], then there is no more trouble for you.’ He continued, saying that, ‘Now it is no problem about the police, though it used to be [imitates putting a gun to his temple] clickkkk!’ Phuntshog commented that, ‘When a Tibetan dies, we are heartbroken [Tr. sedoeq]. If a Chinese person dies, we think “poor thing” [T: shatsa]. Th at is just how it is.’ Phuntshog’s attitude exposes nationality chauvinism as being 132 chapter three an unintended eff ect of categorizing shift ing sociality into defi ned ‘ethnic’ collectives.

Gendering Nationalities

Th e concept of nationality is also imbued with gendered specifi cities. Th us, so-called ‘intermarriage’ raises awkward questions (see Ekvall 1939: 38–9), particularly given the assumptions within China about purity and mixedness of nationality categories. Shen Yexin, Trinde School’s Xi’an- born electrician, asserted that, ‘It is good when Tibetans and Han marry; their children are very clever.’ However, Jigme, a literary-language teacher, argues that, ‘If the father is Chinese and the mother is Tibetan people say it is no good because Chinese and Tibetans minds are completely diff er- ent.’ Jayang, a former monk, instead states that, ‘Many Tibetan women are free because the men go into monasteries. Th ere are Chinese guys every- where. Th ey marry Tibetan women. Th eir children are neither Tibetan nor Chinese. What about Gao [a Trinde teacher whose father is from inner China]? Well, some stay more on the Tibetan side … ’ Daiyak, a Trinde Lower School teacher, relates how her ‘Tibetan’ uncle married a ‘Chinese’ policewoman:

My grandmother said ‘no’ [to the union]; she thought it was strange, no good. But three years later they [the couple] were still together. Grandfa- ther overruled [grandmother’s earlier decision]. Now they have two chil- dren. Th e older boy speaks Tibetan well and Chinese badly; he spent more time in Trinde. Th e younger girl speaks Chinese well and Tibetan badly; she grew up mostly in Xining. Now my older cousin is said to be ‘Tibetan’ and ‘black’, and my younger cousin is said to be ‘Chinese’ and ‘white’. Some highly educated women actively seek an incomer husband, explaining that local men ‘are sexist and cannot cook’. In some circles of contemporary Trinde, the social status of women has become an index for nationality civilization. Jigme argues that, ‘Han women dominate their husbands, but Tibetan men have their women under their thumb.’ Hong, an auxiliary teacher from Shaanxi, has the opposite opinion: I see Tibetans’ man-woman relations as being better than the Han. Even though they are considered backward, they treat their wives better, and they have better relationships with their relatives. If both the man and woman are working, in a Han household, then there is equality. But in the countryside, if the woman does not work, then the woman’s position cultivating nationalities 133

is lower [among Han]. Th is goes for all of Qinghai. All marriages have their problems. But if it is a pure [M. chun] Tibetan together with a pure Han, then there will be more confl icts. In Xining, it would not be a prob- lem because here Tibetans are already sinicized [M. shi han hua], their Tibetan customs do not exist anymore. Hong’s comments echo similar sentiments expressed by Xiao Sun, who is an incoming maintenance worker at Trinde School: Tibetans in Trinde are very diff erent from those in my [Xining-area] hometown, Ledu. Although their clothing and skin-colour are diff er- ent [from Han], in other ways, like in their customs, Ledu Tibetans have become almost like Chinese. Ledu Tibetans’ clothing has already changed; they are already assimilated [M. tonghua, which was later ren- dered as ‘multi-blood’ and ‘multi-culture’ in English]. In Trinde, Tibet- ans are like in the old days. Th eir holidays, food, clothing; all are the same as before. Trinde Tibetans feel Tibetan, they feel special, they are proud to be Tibetan. In my hometown today, nationality has become obsolete. Xiao Sun’s statement refl ects offi cial perceptions that nationality ‘classes’ and ‘identities’ would wither with the loss of private property (Gladney 1991: 71). Hong Jianying and Xiao Sun’s comments echo those made in 1968 by an anonymous inner China translator (Frontier Town 1980: 155) who was transferred to Qinghai from Shanghai: In the cities Tibetans are more like us, in their dress and habits, but in the rural areas where most of them live they are still backward culturally. Even in the cities, however, you could fi nd strange remnants of feudalism. Gendered nationality distinctions also have rural-urban connotations. In China, cities are associated with being sinicized and advanced, whereas rurality is linked to peasants, of which nationality is a subset. Also from a rural background, Hong recently relocated from rural Trinde to urban Xining. Th e gender contrasts she makes are part of this social-geographical transition. Her comments reveal how nationality gender discrepancies are simultaneously refracted through a number of overlapping idioms that are not easily teased out. Some of these uneasy, uneven pairings are: spatial (town/country), temporal (advanced/ backward), gender (male/female) and nationality (Han/ Tibetan). Hong’s statements contain certain inconsistencies, for if local men really do treat their wives better than incomers, it would mean that local people are the more advanced. Yet rural Trinde people are considered defi nitively ‘backward’ in relation to people from inner China. Th e similarity of gender characterizations across diff erent social 134 chapter three

populations demonstrates that nationality is operating as a symbolic marker here, and works to create a margin of social distance. In actu- ality, however, the ‘nationality concept’ does not describe a bounded, fi xed, stable range of activities or characteristics. Sometimes notions about nationality diff erence even come between close familial relations, as the comments from Gao, a teacher in Trinde, show: My parents had a really diffi cult situation, but they have equal relations. I have never talked to my father about what happened here, or the Tibet issue; it is sensitive. Maybe if he knew my real views he would be worried I might get into trouble. But he can understand the problem. He speaks some Tibetan and most of his friends are Tibetan. He has worked in local government all his life. He respects local customs and practises Tibetan Buddhism. My father is from Luhu near Xining. Luhu used to be a Tibetan place, all the houses are built in the Tibetan style, though mostly Chinese live there now. I love this place [Trinde], and the Tibetan side. I do feel fi ft y-fi ft y Chinese and Tibetan—it is in my blood [laughs]! But I do feel closer to the Tibetan side in cultural terms. I always stand between Chinese and Tibetan in discussions, and never go only to one side or the other. I just say what I think. Both Chinese and Tibetans think that the way I think is a little bit ‘outside’ [the usual ways of thinking]. But, if we compare Chinese and Tibetan, they should be equal. To overcome the apparent duality created by nationality and gendered groupings as ‘real’ social constituencies, Gao advocated the following dharma-inspired solution: I think we should understand Chinese and Tibetans without history. Follow your feeling without doors. If you have a deep understanding of Buddhism, you will not be aware of whether that person is a man or a woman—follow your mind.

International Encounters

Nationality categories are oft en invoked during international encoun- ters with foreigners (Tr. suhjaroh), for example, those from the UK (M. Yingguo) and US (M. Meiguo). In these encounters, people oft en play to Others’ expectations. For example, when Pema fi rst saw foreign- ers in northern Trinde, he ‘wanted Tibetans to be known as a generous nationality’. He bought a bag of goodies and presented them to the for- eigners, greeting them with an exile-style Tashi dele! (‘auspicious greet- ings’) salutation. He recounts how the tourists merely made ‘wa-wa-wa noises, wound the window up and raced away in their car’. Nationality cultivating nationalities 135 idioms also circulate freely within institutional milieux, as seen in a for- eign produced textbook that is widely used by nationalities students in Qinghai (see Stuart, Schultz and Kinke n.d.: 19). Far from being a totalizing ideology, however, people are aware of the ironies involved in such mutual local-foreign imaginings. For example, Lajey, a young Yushu-dwelling teacher, told a popular tale at a New Year Trinde-family gathering. Th e gag, which was warmly received, plays on the mismatch of exile and Western expectations: Th ere is a café in India with three fl oors. On the fi rst and second fl oors are foreigners who are dharma students. Th ey are all eating ‘pure vegetar- ian’ food. Th e third fl oor is reserved for monks and lamas only. Why? Because on this fl oor they can contentedly eat all types of meat! In the same vein, during an NGO soiree, Jampa, a Yushu policy offi cer, joked that, ‘If you release a Western jar of ants, they obediently march out of their jar in orderly rows, while the Tibetan ants scatter all over the place.’ Th is saying refl ects common perceptions about local people’s lack of disci- pline, a theme that was evident in the education forum. A deeper analysis of how foreigners and local people collude in mutually refl ecting desires to fi nd an authentic subject in the Other is provided by Adams (1996a, 1996b). Th e issue of ‘audience’ is pivotal in all the social interactions men- tioned above. While this issue clearly infl uenced what was said and done in the next example, the target recipient of the message remains ambiguous. In a discussion of Trinde’s past that took place in one of the School offi ces, Pema got excited and started tying my wrists to the chair, before ‘peacefully liberating’ me from the bindings, to demon- strate tangibly the offi cial rhetoric about local people’s release from their ‘feudal’ ties in the revolutionary era (see Mills 2003a: 329–47). Noticing Xi Mingzhi’s scrutiny of the enacted drama, Pema swift ly left the room. Later, Pema explained that: I got carried away and totally forgot Xi was watching everything! He does not speak Trinde-dialect, but he has been here over twenty years and understands very well. He is my best friend at the school, but I should not go on like that because we are diff erent, our nationalities are totally distinct. While local people usually assume that Western people are their allies in such encounters, it is of course possible that Pema was actu- ally intending to show exactly what he thought of the central state ‘liberation’ of local areas to Xi. To complain about the incident, Xi 136 chapter three would have had to complain to an administration staff ed by local people who are mostly of a similar orientation to Pema. Th e example suggests that a more pivotal audience may temporarily supplant the eff ects of other important onlookers. As mentioned above, in all social encounters, the presence of specifi c people alters, or even constitutes, the situation ‘observed’. Many foreign scholarly accounts dwell on nationality markers. Th is prioritization follows local ‘expert’ informants’ tendency to highlight nationality categories in international encounters, and to overlook or downplay other forms of social or political identifi cation at these times. Th e spe- cifi c comments and ferocity of expression during the ‘ancestral land’ dialogue suggest that the conversation would not have occurred in this way, to this degree, or perhaps at all, had their ‘foreign teacher friend’ not been present. As Humphrey (1998: xiv–xv) points out: Understandings of history and identity inevitably involve self-defi nition in relation to the discourses of the … state. It is important to understand that this discursive space does not ‘just exist’ but is drawn forth by spe- cifi c interlocutionary situations, such as political arguments, public state- ments, and indeed discussions with foreigners … As Kolas affi rms, by learning how to represent their situation to out- side, and particularly Western, audiences, local people are more able to secure interest and assistance (1996: 61). Furthermore, ‘foreignness’ is not a fi xed category, but a shift ing and context-dependent idiom of social identifi cation. For instance, Jatso, an NGO offi cer from a Sichuan Kham area, is aware of the diffi culties of ascribing national characteristics to ‘foreign’ peoples. He states that: I like foreigners’ ideas. Th ey are very straight, open. But then again, maybe those same people are diff erent when they are in their foreign countries. When I am in my own place, where I know people, I am very shy. But away from there, I do not need to think about other people, and can say what I think directly. Th is context specifi city does not only work in global terms, but is also a local phenomenon. For example, arriving unannounced at a remote Trinde pastoralist-encampment Gao, my local teacher companion, noted that, ‘Th ey are really shocked to see strangers here.’ I assumed he was referring to me, but Gao clarifi ed unprompted, ‘I mean me as well!’ Explaining his statement, Gao emphasized that, ‘Th ey just live here, it is like they are in a bubble. No one comes here. Few things change from day to day.’ As these examples show, a mutual (Western-local) lack cultivating nationalities 137 of intra-nationality awareness contributes to blanket defi nitions of the Other. An example of a relatively extreme catch-all statement comes from a Kham restaurant owner in Lhasa, who believed that all foreign- ers come from a single, undiff erentiated country that is simply called ‘outside country’ (Tr. suh jakuq).

Cultivating Nationality Styles

Bearing the aforementioned complexities and Mumford’s (1989) nuanced and ‘polyphonic’ analysis in mind, the next section searches for appropriate ways to analyse local belonging and social identifi ca- tion in practice. Th e idiom of ‘cultural styles’ demonstrates how specifi c actions become linked to a particular nationality. For example, modern computing skills are associated with inner China populations, while folk dancing is seen as a nationality competency. In this analysis, ‘culture’ is not seen as essential, innate or singular (which contrasts with Bourdieu’s 1990: 57 notion of ‘inculcation’), nor is it defi ned by fl uidity (Malkki 1995) or simply ‘performed’ (Butler 1990). Instead, the idiom of ‘cul- tural styles’ is used to highlight how these forms are progressively culti- vated through engaging with specifi c practices in a given time and place (Ferguson 1999: 93–102). For instance, as is clear from the ethnography above, being recognized as local or of a ‘nationality’ in Trinde is prin- cipally a matter of cultivating skills, comportments and competencies, and following enough of the key social-moral precepts that are associ- ated with the given overarching socio-political constituency. Th e idea of ‘cultivated styles’ links with Sutton’s (2005) point that diff erent nationality dances appear very similar because the troupes are trained by the same teachers, as is the case at the Central Univer- sity for Nationalities in Beijing. Th us, cultural styles are not a matter of national belonging, but of iterative practice within a specifi c con- text. With repetition through time, a given methodology and emphasis thereby produces a recognizable form. Furthermore, as Kipnis points out, social identifi cation is not a question of ‘who am I?’ but ‘to which groups of people should I, or is it possible for me to, commit myself?’ (1994: 202). Th rough participating in certain social practices, and not others, people commit themselves to specifi c ‘imagined’ and ‘intimate’ foci, and concurrently (re)create them in the process. Th e signifi cance of cultural competencies is evident in the case of Migmar, a six-year old Tibetan girl from Jyegu. Migmar’s linguistic 138 chapter three competence in Putonghua was not primarily garnered from her one year of state-education, but from the household’s omnipresent televi- sion. Turning six, Migmar celebrated with a Western-style birthday. It was the fi rst time the family had celebrated any birthday. Based on her expanded language-learning curriculum (which now included Eng- lish), Migmar summarized that, ‘Th is year I am Chinese, next year I shall be a Westerner’ (Tr. suhjarah, M. weiguoren). Here, nationality status is seen as something one can assume, given suffi cient compe- tency in the requisite cultural or linguistic practice. Th is aspect of local identifi cation in practice contrasts with commonly-held West- ern assumptions about fi xed, either/or-type nationality categories. Another way people are said to modify their nationality is through exclusively eating food from a specifi c, other region. Local foodstuff s (particularly, roasted barley fl our, butter, dried meat, yogurt, milk tea and edible roots) are imbued with immense social signifi cance. Th is is particularly the case with barley fl our (Tr. tsompa), which has religious and ritual importance and is a socially-unifying foodstuff that is eaten two or three times daily by local people across the entire nationality region. Furthermore, it is almost never eaten by incom- ers. In Trinde, if a local person eats mainly inner China foods, they are considered, in Kedruq’s words, to ‘feel weak and sick and become very Chinese’. Th e nationality-specifi c process of uptaking or, conversely, rejecting cultural practices is evident in a comment from Jampa, a Yushu-born NGO offi cer, who argues that: Unlike Tibetans, Chinese people do not like the US. Chinese do not hate England. But the US is richer and stronger than Tibetans, and between Tibetans and the US is China. Tibetans are not comfortable having to speak Chinese to another Tibetan, so they either speak less or embrace English, including monks. If monks learn English they are comfortable, but they are not at ease learning Chinese. English is the bigger one, the outside thing. If the US replaced China, maybe everything, including our feelings, would change accordingly. Singye, a literary-language teacher, characterizes nationality-specifi c styles in a way that refers seamlessly to governmental concepts and to local protocols: Chinese dance has no meaning; Tibetan dance has the [material] form and spirit of Tibet’s mountains rivers and its birds. Tibetan men take slow, measured strides and wear a contented, majestic expression. Tibetan women show respect in their dance by making stooping movements. cultivating nationalities 139

As Singye’s comment shows, local practices are not merely about politi- cal signifi cation or artful performance, and nor do they relate to an essential nationality character. Th ese idioms are linked instead to competencies emerging out of reform era changes to local nationality ‘autonomy’. Trinde people express concerns about stylistic mixing and group integrity. For example, Padre,~ from Yushu, exclaimed: When we Tibetans get together, the Khampas do the Kham and Yushu dances, Amdo people do their dances. Th ey say the weekly ‘national- ity dances’ in Xining Museum Square are from Amdo, but really they are not. When we [Kham people] join in with those dances, we have to learn to dance all over again. Th at is because, in reality, the dances are not Tibetan. Th ey just take bits and pieces from all over the place! It is so easy, and it is easy to like. Th ey do all that bottom wiggling and stuff . It is actually just new, sinicized stuff .5 Th e notion of ‘cultivated social competencies’ does not fi x people into inert nationality categories. Instead, it allows for social modifi cation as people alter their range of capacities through conscious and tacit acts. Th e ways people expand their competencies include: travel, a change of work, relocation, expanding their social contacts and through formal and informal monastic and secular education. Despite this emphasis on learning and change, people cannot simply shed cultural styles as and when they like (Ferguson 1999: 100). Rigdrol, a staunch critic of ‘local and traditional culture’ who lives in Xining, also acknowledges that: Before, I did not put Tibetan texts on the ground; it was impossible [because, as revered objects, texts are not placed low down where people may step over them, the feet being considered profane]. Now that has changed. But it is hard … it is a long process. Even when I put books on shelves, I put the Tibetan books on top! Th is [practiced ideal] has left something in me—it is in my bones. In Trinde, Padre~ also off ers another perspective on the same issue: If a Tibetan was lost in the wild and considered killing an animal to eat, the person would think ‘I cannot do it, because I would have to pay for the misdeed in my next life.’ An atheist would be OK with killing. Reli- gion is just a way of controlling people, and of making them peaceful— that is, it is a means of weakening them. Mongolians say ‘Tibetan Bud- dhism is terrible; it weakened the Great Empire!’ Chinese say ‘Religion

5 For a critique, see Anna Morcom (2007). 140 chapter three

is like a yoke’ and believe that it restricts people from transgressions. But Tibetans say that those without religion are like animals. Nationality ways of thinking or acting are never watertight in practice, and are instead susceptible to the migration of cultural styles and prac- tices (see Figure 7). For example, ‘keeping face’ (M. you mianzi) is an inner China expression relating to the maintanance of self respect and reputation. Noting the prevalence of this practice among local people in Trinde, Daiyak, a local teacher, stated that, ‘Nowadays it is not only Chinese who want to “keep face,” we Tibetans do too. Well, the younger ones do.’

Shift ing Social Constituencies

As we have seen in this chapter, invoking the idiom of nationality is important among educated people in offi cial contexts. However, many other markers of identifi cation and belonging coexist as mean- ingful points of social and personal reference, some of which are discussed below. Other social indicators include: fatherland (Tr. phayi), dialect (Tr. yuki), family standing or status (expressed as Tr. muhche~ and muhchobo, which mean ‘big person’ and ‘weak person’ respectively),

Figure 7. Synthesizing styles at Dzatö Horse Festival, Yushu cultivating nationalities 141 wealth (Tr. banjur), the allied ideas of education, ability to study and level of scholarship (Tr. xiyün, lozhong), gender (roughly Tr. photak- motak or pho-mo), household (Tr. chum), locale (Tr. yu), customs and traditions (Tr. lukso, gomso), class (Tr. trarim), lineage (Tr. rupa, occa- sionally translated as ‘caste’) and linguistic areas and regions (Tr. chokha sum). Prior forms of belonging and identifi cation coexist and interact with modern administrative units (provinces, autonomous regions, prefectures and counties). Prior regional domains (Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham) shaped, but did not contain, PRC administrative bound- aries (TAR, Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan). Both prior and modern forms of regionalization follow natural geographic limits. Th e current offi cial administrative zones are important as they are currently the basic bureaucratic units for taxation, resource allocation and state support. Like local defi nitions, the borders of these areas have also fl uctuated through time. For example, on a 2003 project planning trip to Dzatö County, a Yushu-based NGO team were plunged into administrative chaos by the incongruence between their maps, cadres’ place references and their own prior experiences (cf. Buff etrille and Diemberger 2002: 4). Only later did the group learn that several towns had been renamed with- out notice, and the district borders had been redrawn. Some towns had even been given identical names to neighbouring towns. Th e confusion was compounded by the fact that some local people now invoked the updated names, though others were unaware of the new terms’ existence. For local people, the overall nationality area in China involves a number of sub-divisions. For example, Trinde people frequently invoke variable distinctions between Kham (‘valleys’), Amdo (‘grasslands’) and Ü-Tsang (‘plateau’). Th ese regions have diff erent dialects, customs, scholarly specializations, histories, authoritative fi gures, cultural forms and stylistics (dance, music, art), vernacular architecture, livelihoods and attire. Th ese regions are not precisely demarcated in practice, but are subjectively defi ned zones. Th e regions overlap with, and absorb, other social constituencies, and coexist with local and international forms of belonging. Regional affi liation is oft en invoked to explain why a person from Kham, Amdo or Ü-Tsang acts in a given way. Sita, a Yushu composer, affi rms that: Kham-places are dancing and singing places. Lhasa [TAR] and Amdo are both deeply cultural. However, I feel they never truly get into the dance; they always control themselves, as if they are holding something back. Kham people dance and sing one hundred percent! 142 chapter three

Jatso from Kham summarizes that: All of Kham has very nice views and many monasteries, so people are very warm and friendly and talk openly with others. Amdo people have very deep, strong minds. Th ey are good people, but are diffi cult to really get in touch with, especially on the fi rst few meetings. Th ey are not so good at making friends quickly. Maybe they have a lack of trust. Lhasa [TAR] people feel like Chinese people. Th ese comments echo the distinctions in an oft -repeated Yushu phrase:

Lhasa [Ü-Tsang] for superlative dharma, Do-me [Amdo] for superlative horses, Do-Kham [Kham] for superlative people!

Many local phrases rework versions of this regionalism, such as the characterization of Kham people as having a ‘yak-like’ character (while TAR people are compared to sheep). Despite the fact that records of many great Khampa scholars exist, it is the themes of independent brave warriors, strong, characterful people and dramatic music and dance that are now used to typify contemporary Kham. In contrast, Amdo is noted for its scholarship and Ü-Tsang for its religiosity. Th ese regional imaginaries have infl uenced which local cultural special- izations have been prioritized in the reform era, thus consolidating local perceptions that these specializations are enduring regionalized characteristics. Yet despite its prevalence today, this now taken-for-granted tri- partite regional distinction is actually relatively new (Gelek 1998: 47). For example, the regions are superimposed on the mid-seven- teenth century distinction of Ngari Korsum (T. stod.mnga’.ris.skor. gsum, referring to the ‘Upper Three Districts’), Ü-Tsang’s ‘Interme- diate Four Horns’ (T. bar.dbus.gtsang.ru.bzhi) and mDo-Kham’s six ranges (T. smad.mdo.khams.sgang.drug). Each of these areas has a divine-abode mountain: Mount Kailash (T. gang.rinpoche), Amnye Machen and Gatojowo, respectively. The contemporary regions of Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham are continually mentioned in local con- versations but go unquestioned in contemporary historical accounts, despite being recent innovations (Yeh 2003: 508). In the course of this research, Trinde’s literary-language teachers and a Xining Uni- versity history scholar were the only people who pictorially mapped their region using the prior height-based designations, mentioned above. cultivating nationalities 143

Historically, Kham-areas involved multiple polities, various politico- social relations and numerous stateless zones, some of which are still used as points of identifi cation today. Yushu itself constitutes both a defi ned administrative prefecture and a more fuzzily-imagined social region. Today, Yushu is counterpoised with neighbouring Golog, which is said to be ‘conservative’ and ‘closed’. Yushu people consider their region to be the seat of ‘real resistance in Tibet’, a potential that is said to be ‘hidden in the hearts of Yushu people’. Lhasa demonstrations in the late-1980s were described as ‘nothing in comparison to the explo- sion that would happen in Yushu if some weakness or chance arises’. Trinde’s literary-language teachers did not agree, and described Yushu inhabitants as ‘fake’ Kham people in comparison to Derge’s scholarly and incomparably ‘cultured’ (Tr. yong dapa) Khampas. Th ese personal and social conceptions underscore the diversity of social identifi cation that exists in nationality areas, with reifi ed political idioms and nuanced socio-cultural diff erentiations being invoked by the same people at dif- ferent times. More localized again, the idea of ‘fatherland’ (Tr. phayi) is an impor- tant socio-personal marker for local people, and adds a further layer of complexity to the tapestry of belonging and social identifi cation in Yushu. Jamje, a Jyegu cadre, quoted the following old Yushu song to demonstrate the signifi cance of fatherland: Th e comfortable place is one’s own place, one’s own area. Even if it is not really prosperous, one’s fatherland is happy and warm. People understand ‘fatherland’ in several distinct ways. Phuntshog describes a child’s fatherland as being ‘where the placenta and blood fi rst drip onto the ground’. Cultural producers in Derge (Sichuan) argue that fatherland is ‘where one’s father comes from’ (even if the child was not born there). Many people say that fatherland is unchangeable. How- ever, for Nyima, dwelling place rather than birthplace is the important marker of belonging. Nyima stated that, ‘Trinde-town became my fatherland when we built our conjugal home here.’ Th e idiom of fatherland is particularly important given the range of shared household and village associations that connect monastic practitioners and lay people to a range of numina, and especially to the ‘household god’ (Tr. phalha) of a person’s natal household, and to ‘local chthonic spirits’ (Tr. yulha, see Mills 2003a: 255). However, Tashi’s comment that, ‘Even if I was away from my fatherland for ten years, when I came back it would still be my fatherland, and I would 144 chapter three still love it’ suggests that phayi engenders emotional attachments that go beyond mere physical and contractual responsibilities. It is custom- ary and expected that people will long for their fatherland. Other local diff erentiations are naming practices based on social rank, lineage dis- tinctions and monastery affi liation. Micro-local characterizations are invoked during social gatherings or through travel for business, leisure, work or marriage. Within locales, various registers of identifi cation are used, which indicate the diff erent ways the ‘nationality’ space is conceived within the county. Locale is invoked to explain social mores. For example, Padre~ commented that, in contrast to people from the TAR, Trinde people do not apologize on principle. Instead, aft er a big argument, the person who breaks the ice by saying ‘Have a cup of tea!’ is, in eff ect, apologizing. Within Trinde, people from the County Town distinguish themselves from Gato inhabitants, who they refer to as ‘pica-eaters’ (Tr. suhzara). Th is is a derogatory label, since pica meat is believed to be odorous (and therefore ‘unclean’), and because many of these small sentient beings (Tr. seche tãchiq) must be killed to feed one person. Within Trinde County Town itself, Dawa-village inhabitants are said to be so miserly that they prevent guests from eating their New Year buff ets so they can use the same treats the following year. Even modern institutions can become local points of identifi cation, as is the case with Gao, who is identifi ed as ‘our teacher’ (Tr. nguhtsuh gigĩ) among staff , rather than being singled out for his incomer-local parentage. Another teacher with similar parentage is identifi ed by his alcoholism and violent tem- per rather than by his nationality. All these aspects of social identifi ca- tion are brought into play as points of commonality and distinction, depending on the context, mood, intention and audience present at the time. PRC registration policies complicate this picture further. When incoming families have children in a nationality area, these off spring are registered to their birthplace rather than the parents’ homeland. For example, Zha Wanlong’s military parents were stationed in Trinde County. His Yushu birth-registration obliged him to study and work in Yushu Prefecture, despite his parents’ prior relocation to their native Henan. Furthermore, Trinde’s incomers are sometimes considered to be ‘more local’ than people of the same nationality who come from faraway Lhasa. Part of the reason for this is that incomers in Trinde understand some of the Yushu-dialect and follow certain regional practices, whereas people from Lhasa speak a diff erent dialect, follow cultivating nationalities 145 diff erent customs, cultivate diff erent styles and specializations and have a distinct political situation relating to local autonomy.

Multiple Idioms of Identifi cation and Diff erence

China’s modern political system has classifi ed people into ‘nationali- ties’. Policies have been applied, citizenship conferred and resources allocated on that basis. Th e nationality discourse can have empower- ing or disenfranchising eff ects for diff erent people at diff erent times. Th ese eff ects depend on people’s positioning relative to the existing national political orientation and, increasingly, to links sustained with foreign contacts and sources. Th e offi cial application of nationality idi- oms through formalized procedures has consolidated prior fuzzy and overlapping notions of territoriality and belonging into sharply defi ned regional constituencies. While nationality, minzu and mirig have diff er- ent connotations in local, offi cial, exile and Western contexts, all index a distinct ‘ethnic’ group as a self-evident object of analysis. As a signi- fi er, nationality has become naturalized, and is now imbued with an existential ‘reality’ in offi cial rhetoric, foreign scholarly representations and local narratives. In 1984, the State Council for Nationality Aff airs’ declared that, ‘whenever nationality education work is seized upon then nationality relations and nationality unity will be greatly strengthened’ (cited in Gladney 1999: 70). Th e Council’s statement applies in Trinde, though not in the sense originally intended. Nationalities are currently the prin- cipal fault-lines within the PRC social fabric. Th ese distinctions become evident in moments of social tension. At these and other moments, pan-nationality belonging can be deployed to downplay intra-personal social divisions (such as regional distinctions or prior class divisions), for example, through emphasizing the detrimental eff ects of reform era change. Local frustrations do not just exist or arise sui generis, however. Instead, perceptions and concerns are generated through evolutionary understandings of progress, and are channelled and reifi ed through conceptualizations of nationality within that developmental schema. In practice, nationality is only one idiom of diff erence among many. Other identifi cations based on region, prefecture, locale, fatherland and household are available to be brought into play at any time. As the ethnography of this chapter shows, ‘nationality’ actually denotes a much wider variety of perceptions, intentions and negotiations 146 chapter three than the meta-idiom, at fi rst glance, suggests. In these instances, more subtle tensions and distinctions between local people are temporar- ily suppressed. Th e rota-room discussions show how televised national and international political issues (for example the Iraq war) are contexts for discussing localized frustrations through the idiom of nationality. In fact, many contemporary urban Trinde households have access to global media through the radio and television and, occasionally, via the Internet. Nominally ‘local’ anxieties therefore now include international dimensions, and do not only refer to a limited or defi ned time and space. Tenzin, a Yushu intellectual, emphasizes that people have many dif- ferent ways of thinking. A local proverb captures this diversity: ‘Th irty people, thirty thoughts; thirty dzo [yak-cow hybrids], sixty horns.’ Ten- zin used a pocket calculator to demonstrate how a single, fl at object can yield many diff erent shapes and facets, saying, ‘From some peo- ple’s standpoint it is a triangle. From other perspectives it is a square. Looking a diff erent way, it is round. It all depends on the way you look at something.’ As with the calculator’s potential for multi-perspective complexity, the rota-room discussion can be read as a sign of increasing inter-nationality tensions, or a distinctive social moment where local teachers showed off their skill for blistering banter using the available legitimating administrative-governmental idiom of nationality. Hirsch argues that the nationality concept is part of a conceptual, inter- nal ‘double assimilation’ of individual social actors to nationality constitu- encies, and nationality constituencies to the nation-state (cited in Bulag 2004: 90). As this chapter shows, however, there is a ‘discrepancy between “offi cial” Chinese constructions and the processes that are not acknowl- edged by the dominant Chinese terms, but, rather, masked by them’ (Fisk- esjo 1999: 146). Belonging is not clear-cut, uncontested or totalizing in practice, as suggested by Hirsch, as local sociality is not a case of local people being blindly herded into inert offi cial pigeonholes. Rather, there is always an agency to people’s participation in the local interpretation and confi guration of these processes. Local articulations of nationality idioms are also part of a larger governmental discourse of local ‘autonomy’. Offi cial and unoffi cial parties, who seek to consolidate an internally coherent, all-inclusive frame of nationality reference, are disrupted by the ongoing salience of other points of social, local or personal reference. Admitting that, ‘Yushu’ is a more meaningful unit of identifi cation than ‘Tibetan’, means that the work in defi ning ‘nationality places’, ‘our nation- ality’ and ‘Tibetanness’ for practical and conceptual purposes comes undone, and the discourse of internal unity and external diff erence cultivating nationalities 147 breaks down. Th is is seen, for example, in Yushu-dwelling incomers, who are considered by their local friends in terms of their personal qual- ities, which include degrees of localness and belonging. Th ese incoming companions are not necessarily singled out for their Otherness, or for being culturally poluting foreign bodies within an essentially ‘Tibetan’ space. Paraphrasing Diemberger (2002: 53), offi cial, local, ritualized and stylized senses of belonging and territoriality coexist, with all being signifi cant, albeit in diff erent ways, in attempts to strengthen or reform regional identifi cations. Constituting new local practices, supporting ‘modern’ schooling and creating alternative healthcare programmes is bringing diverse people into new alignments. At the same time, inhab- itants are being emplaced as ‘people of’ these newly emergent local, regional, national and international situations (ibid. 53–4). A key argument of this ethnography is that context and practice are more appropriate bases for analysis than ‘ethnicity’, ‘identity’ or ‘Tibetans’. As this chapter has shown, focusing on contextual practice illuminates how people adopt and adapt strategies from other people and nationalities as forms of social competency and identifi cation. A PRC-wide nationalities focus also highlights how offi cial responses to nationality issues in one area are oft en undertaken on the basis of prior experiences of another nationality. As has been seen in the examples above, the idea of cultural styles and competencies is useful in under- standing how nationality and localized distinctions coexist. Further- more, these idioms do not simply appear or ‘exist’ in a random way. Instead, these idioms are consciously elaborated as practical, social styles and actual, linguistic, cultural and technological competencies within certain regions. As this chapter has also shown, political identi- fi cations are not necessarily characterized by fl uidity and inclusiveness, as many foreign scholars (especially among exile networks) empha- size, and this is particularly true in the case of inter-nationality gen- eralizations. Th ese pan-nationality representations are now invested with a primordial ‘reality’, and may be acted upon as such in practice. Following this logic, individuals or whole populations (as in the Mus- lim boycott) may be targeted as representatives of a nationality Other. Th e next chapter traces how the idiom of nationality is intimately asso- ciated with ideas of a ‘civilizing culture’. Th is cultivated idiom opens a fertile space for defi ning and refi ning how subjectivities can be shaped in the later reform era. CHAPTER FOUR

CIVILIZING CULTURE

If you are Tibetan, fi rst think about your nationality. —Tsidre~’s literary-language examination response

Th e previous chapter traced the general elements of the constitution of a regional ‘autonomous nationality’. Th is chapter adds greater sub- tlety and depth to the ways the nationality constituency is realized in practice. Specifi cally, the discussion below traces how the leeway for local ‘civilizing culture’ is negotiated in local ‘autonomy’ discourses in contemporary Trinde. ‘Culture’ in Tibetan regions is generally used to indicate literacy or advanced learning. However, the way this concept is currently invoked among young and educated people in Yushu, is in a more anthropological sense, which is oft en strongly suggestive of a bounded and coherent moral community. Th is locally-reworked inter- pretation of the ‘culture concept’ is reminiscent of offi cial reform era concerns about ‘civility’. Th e chapter has three parts. Th e fi rst section traces the issue of culture in inner China and Yushu, highlighting the analogous but not identical place and interpretation of this concept and practice in historical and contemporary terms. Th e second section investigates the importance of literacy as a yardstick for measuring local civilizing culture and nation- ality ‘autonomy’ in Trinde. Th e third part provides examples of how politicized notions of culture are diff used in Trinde and in other local offi cial situations. ‘Culture’ has long been a focal trope of political intervention in China. During the Ming and Qing dynasties ‘civilization’ was exem- plifi ed by a people’s manifestation of ‘culture’ (as M. wenhua), which, in turn, related to forming subjects through the cultivation of vir- tuous principles. To be cultured relates to possessing wen (which is connected to literature and writing). Here, ‘culture’ is a transformative concept analogous to ‘enculturation’ or ‘enliteraticization’ (Gladney 1999: 60–1). Before the Cultural Revolution in China, a person’s status did not depend on race or nationality, but on philosophical, moral, and ritual education (ibid. 18–19). At this time, livelihood rather than civilizing culture 149 language or ethnicity, was the most signifi cant factor when defi n- ing China’s Others (Crossley 1990: 4). Th ese Others were known as ‘barbarians’, and constituted the unrefi ned material to be ‘cultivated’ through practices of sovereignty, intermarriage, migration, educa- tion and cultural assimilation during central state expansions (Fisk- esjo 1999: 140). Harrell (1995: 3, 7) identifi es three ‘civilizing projects’ in China’s recent history, which he terms ‘asymmetrical dialogues’ between an ‘ideological discourse of the centre’ and an ‘ethnic dis- course of the periphery’. In the past, peoples outside the Central State’s civilizing frontiers were known as ‘western barbarians’ (M. xi fan), an appellation also applied to the forty confederacies of Qinghai that were ruled by local leaders (Rock 1956: 5). Chinese ‘culture’ was propagated to ‘enlighten frontier barbarians’ (M. yongxia bianyi). Th is nominally civilizing process was considered natural and possible given China’s enduring position as a regionally powerful political force, and as an advanced cultural centre. At the turn of the century, the concepts of ‘civilization’ (M. wenming) and ‘culture’ took on modern infl ections through their association with Western, Japanese and domestic ideas of development, literacy and modernity. Th e continuing interrelation of education, social status and being a cultured (and therefore moral) person is evident in the way that questions about a person’s education are formed today as an enquiry into a given person’s ‘cultural level’ (Gladney 1999: 59). Aft er the Com- munists came to power in 1949, Stalin’s idea of ‘psychological make-up’ was used to defi ne a common ‘national culture’. In Stalin’s (1953: 307) understanding, ‘common culture’ is that which is supposed to result from a shared language, territory, economic life and psychological makeup. Th is was the quartet of features deemed necessary to defi ne nationalities in offi cial CCP terms. Th e culture idiom again became salient in the 1966–1976 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (M. wu chan jie ji wenhua da ge ming). Th is radical policy was intended to demolish the ‘Four Olds’ (M. si jiu), namely, customs, habits, ideas and culture, thereby reforming China’s people. In the reform era, ‘civilization’ was promoted as a complex, potent idiom signifying the characteristics befi tting a historically-advanced, ‘modern’ nation. Th e concept of ‘civilization’ is subdivided into ‘mate- rial’ (M. wuxingde) and ‘spiritual’ (M. weixingde) aspects. Anag- nost argues that reform era intentions to develop a ‘socialist spiritual civilization’ were part of an attempt to replace Mao era ideology with a new ‘ethical-moral’ ideal, and cites central authorities’ belief that a 150 chapter four purely ‘material’ existence leads to social debasement as a contributing factor in this development (1997: 84). Th e ‘spiritual’ idiom is not new, but dates back to turn-of-the-century ‘essence-function’ (M. tiyong) debates about developing an appropriate form of nationalism for mod- ern China. China’s opening up is spawning new dilemmas about how to integrate appropriate new phenomena, while maintaining cultural authenticity. A related phenomenon was the mid-1980s ‘culture fever’ (M. wenhua re), which was propelled by assumptions about China’s inadequacy. For some people, this trend involved the rejection of domestic attributes and the adoption of Western practices. For others, this craze entailed a fervent salvage operation of China’s national char- acteristics (Schein 2000: 23). Today, ‘material civilization’ (M. wuzhi wenming) is considered to be the scientifi c and technological aspect of development, which provides the indicators of economic growth and material progress. Litzinger (2000: 200) asserts that, ‘traditional culture’ has been reconceived in the reform era, and is now included as part of the more nebulous realm of ‘spiritual civilization’ (M. jingshen wenming). Th e duty of reform era leaders has thus been to realign ‘the material’ and ‘spiritual’ as a complementary dyad (ibid. Kipnis 1994: 206). In practice, of course, ‘traditional culture’ is also material, as in the Potala and monastery reconstructions, and may be powerfully branded and marketed for domestic or international tourist, business and media purposes (Schein 2000: 155–9). In the context of Yushu, literary culture has long been valorized in this area because of its links to sacred textual sources. Religious practi- tioners (Tr. chöpa) are those deemed qualifi ed to understand the deeper meanings of these scriptures and entrusted to explain their meanings to the rest of the population. During the Cultural Revolution, most Yushu monasteries were destroyed. Religious images were banned and only those works praising Marxist ideology and the Party leaders were allowed. In 1980, Party Secretary Hu Yaobang visited the TAR. Shocked by the situation, Hu recommended far-reaching policy revisions (Wang Yao 1994: 287–8, Kapstein 2004: 239). In the reform era, the revolution- ary era excesses were offi cially re-designated as a ‘left ist deviation’. In 1984, amendments to the PRC constitution allowed greater scope for local expressions of nationality ‘folkways’ and ‘religious belief’, as seen in the Law of Regional Autonomy (M. Minzu Quyu Zizhi Fa, see Chapter III, Articles 4 and 5 in Appendix Two, Kaup 2000: 183–97). ‘Traditional culture’ was no longer labelled wholesale as ‘feudal superstition’, though civilizing culture 151 traditional practices are sometimes still considered obstacles to be eradicated in the march towards modernization. Th e policy revisions allow people to rebuild local monasteries, con- sult and be blessed by lamas and to undertake pilgrimages to sacred places like Gatojowo (a holy-mountain in northern Trinde) and Lhasa (TAR). Textual social histories were offi cially deemed valuable for the project of ‘modern’ social science and the rational documentation of local heritage. More cautious policies were allowed for ‘religion’, due to its problematic relation with socialist ideas. Policies in Yushu unfolded in line with inner China, though all these places involved inter-regional diff erences. Today, similar distinctions to those of the ‘essence-function’ dyad are made in Yushu, though these are expressed through a diff erent rationale. For example, Kunjũ, an NGO offi cer, states that, ‘Nowadays people are surviving because of their desire for spirituality, and it is the material that supports people in acquiring those spiritual desires. I think we all want something spiritual, everyone.’

Local Content of Civilizing Culture

In Trinde, Bökyi rine (T. rig.gnas, M. Zangzu de wenhua) is generally used to mean the ‘culture’ of the local nationality in the sense of high scholar- ship, education, rationality or knowledge-system (see Adams 2001: 552). Bilingual local people say ‘culture’ in their language means the same as in Mandarin (namely, ‘enculturation’ or ‘enliteraticization’). Some educated locals, as well as many leaders and people with exile experience, also use rine to refer to the civility and civilization of their region, which is refer- enced as an identifi able quality and phenomenon. Here, rine is imbued with the additional sense of the reform era idiom of ‘civility’ (also M. wenming, cf. Anagnost 1997: 75–97). Ideas of rine-as-wenhua and rine- as-wenming merge in educated usage. Rine thus takes on a connotation of ‘civilizing culture’, which is the prime focus of this chapter. In common educated usage, ‘civilizing culture’ denotes morally improving scientifi c and scholarly pursuits, a prime example of which is indexed by competence in the nationality language. Th is language is offi cially and legally upheld as an empirically verifi able social tech- nology, and as an example of advanced ‘nationality special character- istics’ (M. minzu tesi/tezheng, Tr. mirik chey choo). In contrast to the limited nature of the local ‘dialect’ (Tr. yukey) and ‘colloquial’ or ‘non- honorifi c language’ (Tr. khakey), literary-language (Tr. yige) is held by 152 chapter four

Trinde teachers to have a deep and wide, ‘oceanic’ meaning (Tr. jinseng ja chembo). Some teachers contend that the spoken form of rine signi- fi es ‘local traditions and customs’ (Tr. lugso da gõshi). Generally, how- ever, local practices are not included in ‘civilizing culture’. In a similar way, while many local people include regional dances and songs as a feature of their nationality traditions, many leaders deride this descrip- tion, saying that it is a patronizing state-designation. Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, argued that, ‘Chinese like Tibetans’ singing and danc- ing. Th ey think local nationality culture is a modern folk cabaret [M. nangma]. But scholarly knowledge and wisdom is not only singing and dancing—that is not enough!’ ‘Superstition’ (M. mixin), a potent concept in China, is never used to describe civilizing culture and very rarely (only twice during the research period) to refer to ‘traditional culture’ (Tr. cheychoo). Th rough tracing the senses of ‘civilizing culture’ in current local usage, it is evident that the locally-esteemed elements of ‘civilizing culture’ are similar, though not completely identical, to the forms sanctioned in offi cial ‘autonomy’ discourses. Furthermore, literary-language teachers emphasize that civilizing culture has a deep and wide (Tr. ja chembo) literary meaning that is similar to anthropology (M. renleixue). In this way, rine seems to have taken on a reifi ed sense such that the term now can be used to denote ‘a culture’. Th is idea of separate ‘cultures’, vis- à-vis the diversity that always exists in practice, is a focal issue of this chapter. Local people use the Putonghua term renleixue (referring to the ‘study of peoples’) rather than minzuxue (meaning ‘ethnology’), the latter being the preferred Marxist approach (Guldin 1994: 95). Levinson and Holland (1996: 21, 23) argue that all societies have a concept of a well-educated or cultured person, though the valorized competencies vary by context. In Trinde, civilizing culture is consid- ered akin to being ‘cultured’, which, in Yushu as in inner China, revolves around literacy. In many Trinde educated people’s opinion, being cul- tured involves speaking an unmixed form of the local dialect, follow- ing orthodox dharma, undertaking historical scholarship and reading scholarly manuscripts. Th e importance of textual knowledge as an iden- tifi er of cultured or educated individuals (Tr. lizipa) was evident when Pasang, a local woman, laughed sympathetically at my coal-ingrained hands and exclaimed, ‘If you know a literary-language, it does not mat- ter that your hands are blackened [through manual labour]!’ Tseden, a Trinde homemaker, repeated a local phrase containing similar sen- timents, ‘Without politeness, one will never understand’ (Tr. kha ma civilizing culture 153 nye na, xi ma). A regional maxim likewise affi rms that, ‘If you know literary-Tibetan, you can cross a wide ocean.’ Th e ideals of nationality ‘civilizing culture’ are also linked to offi - cial concepts of ‘morality’ (M. daode) and local ideals concerned with ‘being a good person’ (Tr. xinchöq zong). Describing this ideal, Jampa, an NGO offi cial, explained that, ‘Th ere’s no strict or specifi c standard or morality for Tibetans. A good human being follows the law of cause- and-eff ect, and is kind and compassionate. Tibetans try to follow nat- ural law, whatever happens.’ Kunjũ, Jampa’s colleague (from Golog in Amdo), elaborated on his opinion that ‘Golog is the most morally cor- rect area, which involves no lying and no gossiping, being quiet, believ- ing in Buddhism, not saying curses to children and using only what one needs.’ Th e perception that good cultural and moral knowledge resides in ‘good human beings’ is refl ected in a student’s statement that, ‘You should study your own language and culture and study good people.’ Th ese opinions refl ect educated elite perspectives rather than being general viewpoints. In Trinde, morality is oft en associated with moderation and secu- rity. For example, Padre,~ a teacher in his mid-twenties, states that, ‘In Trinde, you should stay with one companion, so if you go around with various people, villagers will say you are unstable and will not believe in you.’ Morality is also connected to scholarship, patrilineage (Tr. rupa) and the practice of acknowledging and displaying shame. Th ese elements have political ramifi cations, and are also emphasized in the wider China cultural area. In Taiwan, for example, Staff ord shows how, morality, culture and education (and particularly literacy as a cen- tral culturing technology) are still considered to be key aspects in the graded, developmental progression towards nationalization and the cultivation of well-cultured people (1992: 362–74). In Yushu, ‘immorality’ (Tr. xinchöq muh zong) is defi ned in terms of a mixture of old and new actions. Th ese include: taking revenge on one’s enemy, selfi shness, not keeping promises, not being able to speak and understand the local language and speaking Putonghua to local people. Civilizing culture is held to have a mitigating eff ect on morality. Th us, Phuntshog, a literary-language teacher, contends that if an educated and an uneducated person drink alcohol, the results will not be the same, civilizing culture being the critical diff erence. Furthermore, in his literary-language examination, Gunga links both anthropological and civilizing notions of culture and morality, stating that: 154 chapter four

If you do not try to fi gure out all the new problems of your culture, and consider other people’s cultures, then it will be like a burden on your back and you will always wander around like a hooligan [Tr. chambodambo]. If you do not know yourself, you will not have a chance to travel around. Even if you have a chance to go to another place, you will be rude and bully other people. If you believe in your own capabilities, then Tibetans will become the best nationality. Among local people, dharma, or natural law, is oft en described as the moral infl uence par excellence, and is considered to be a central attribute of being a nationality subject in this region. Invoking these themes, Zongbo, a famous media producer, claims that: Without religion [or aft er the suppression of ‘proper’ religion], Tibetans are no good. We spent hundreds of years killing each other! Religion arrived from India. Th en, slowly-slowly, little by little, we improved. Now some Tibetans are good, though some are still bad. Yushu people frequently identify ‘compassion’ (Tr. nyingjey) as the defi ning characteristic of being an ‘insider’ (Tr. nongpa, one who has taken the dharma into one’s being, see Kleiger 2002: 148, Yeh 2002: 236). Echoing the Dalai Lama’s famous statement, Gao, a Trinde teacher, maintains that, ‘Our religion is kindness and compassion. It is the same idea as all other religions, but a diff erent way to understand it.’ To distinguish between the local and offi cial forms, Kunjũ argues that the communist ‘morality’ (M. daode) is limited to China’s domestic ‘proletariat’ (M. wuchan jieji), whereas ‘Tibetans want to help all sen- tient beings’ (Tr. sech~ e~ tãchiq).

Civilizing Culture Work of Local Leaders

Th e prominence of ‘civilizing culture’ discourses among local leaders is connected to the reform era diversifi cation of professional positions. Th is is partly due to the reopening of higher-education institutes that off er new courses on the scientifi c study of nationality history, culture and language. Almost all of those holding positions of authority in Trinde School (the Teaching, Students’ and Class Directors and Regis- tration Heads) are male literary-language teachers who specialized in these subjects in Jyegu, Xining and Lanzhou colleges. Many local lead- ers experienced pre-revolution society, or were raised in households prioritizing local cultural practices and beliefs (see also Diemberger 2002: 41). Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), businesses, new civilizing culture 155 or reinstated religious practitioners, rehabilitated scholars and political leaders are among the reform era mix of authorities in Yushu. Two of these authorities are described below. Trinley, Trinde School Headmaster, was the eldest of ten children in a desperately poor family. Nowadays he is well-connected in the County and Prefecture administration, and is allied with publishing houses in Xining. Villagers comment on his outstanding commit- ment to improving the school and locale’s conditions. Many villag- ers think that Trinley shaves his head and abstains from marriage, alcohol and smoking because he is a clandestine monk working in the administration. Others believe his unmarried status means he can devote his life to education. Pema is Trinde School Students’ Director (M. zhuren) from a pastoralist kin-group that was catago- rized as ‘wealthy’ during the revolutionary era. Although he has gained a high position within the school’s administrative hierar- chy, he is bitterly critical about the injustices of the past, in both personal and nationality terms. As Pema commented sarcastically, ‘They say we attained “autonomy” after the liberation. That is how they express it.’ Most of Trinde’s cadres (M. ganbu) and school authorities (Tr. gotri) are from, or have settled in, Druchung-village. Th ese well-connected men in their thirties and forties are from agriculturalist families who were classifi ed as ‘poor’ during the revolutionary era. Some leaders were promoted during the early stages of the revolutionary era as part of national strategies of local rule. Th ey either fl ed Trinde, or stayed and were denounced and persecuted amidst the tumult of the 1950s and 1960s. Th ese leaders were formally rehabilitated during the reform era (cf. Goldstein and Beall 1990: 145), and have benefi ted signifi cantly from the expanded reform era opportunities. Th ese people are well positioned and able to articulate ideas about their nationality’s civiliz- ing culture. Th rough their position and linkages they can also negoti- ate social advantages, such as negotiating trade engagements, buying a house in Xining or aff ording better schooling for their children. As Diemberger points out, working for the good of the local populace com- bines with ideas about furthering the social and fi scal advancement of rural areas, which unites offi cial principles with individual objectives (2002: 47). Th is point condenses several themes that are strongly evi- dent throughout this book. Local authorities are signifi cant nodes in the local distribution of knowledge, and are critical in constituting civilizing culture as a central 156 chapter four motif among the people of this regionally-imagined nationality constit- uency. As Mills argues: Knowledge … [and] the formation of all social identities revolves around this question of hierarchy and authority, because … we are incapable of ‘authoring’ ourselves … [T]he construction and reconstruction of social realities thus becomes a balanced process of authorization and tutelage. (2003a: 142) Creating ‘a culture’ (in the anthropological sense of bounded, coher- ent, stable cultures) out of the region’s troubled past, is primarily a con- cern of local leaders, rather than being a general preoccupation among Trinde people as a whole. Furthermore, processes of ‘localization’ and ‘regionalization’ are signifi cant ways in which associations with China’s ‘imagined community’ are created and disputed in local practice (aft er Litzinger 1995: 117). In a nationality education-focused analysis, Hansen (1999: xiii) states that, ‘School education … leaves no room for the transmission of cultural values that might contradict the state’s interpretation of nation- alism, atheism, and the common interests of multiethnic China.’ Th is view is reminiscent of other foreign studies of China’s nationalities (see, for example, Bass 1998). In Trinde, however, schools are nexuses for the production of notions of civilizing culture and well-cultured national and nationality subjects, and are prime sites for contesting and dismiss- ing civilizing culture ideals. In Trinde, there is a pervasive local and for- eign assumption that the local civilizing culture is in a degenerate state. At the school, literary-language teachers consider it their responsibility to rescue, preserve and empower their region’s cultural heritage. Goldstein and Beall (1990: 155) argue that, ‘nomads complain that new decrees and orders are passed down from above and, even when contradictory or ill thought out, are enforced’. In Trinde, while local leaders employ the signifi ers, language and force of the state-adminis- tration, their authority rests on keeping village and regional constitu- ents ‘on side’ through astute resource management and allocation (Ruf 1998: 157, cf. Sui 1989: 7, 14). In this area, school, administrative and NGO leaders’ political power and social infl uence is intimately con- nected to their local knowledge and their ability to speak authorita- tively for the present constituency, advising on cultural matters and negotiating resources (Diemberger 2002: 41). Local authorities are able and willing to pay attention to regional idiosyncrasies to improve local conditions and gain better resources on that basis. Th ese leaders civilizing culture 157 do not force people to act in a more culturally civilized way. Instead, they enter into a series of micro-political practices aimed at redirect- ing people’s esteem for scholarship and religious practice in a reform era system of relative nationality autonomy (cf. Harrell 1985: 212). As Pirie (2005b) also affi rms in an analogous context of Amdo, rela- tions between pastoralists and the administrative authorities cannot be considered within a domination-resistance framework, nor do such interrelations signify the rightful affi rmation of a leader’s power. As is the case in Trinde, instead of consistently accommodating or oppos- ing offi cial authority, local people have evolved diverse means of using such power in particular ways and, sometimes, for their own ends. Th e specifi cs of these relations mirror the ‘segmented’ nature of local social structures that the pastoralists have rebuilt within the context of the modern Chinese state (ibid.). Ideas about ‘civilizing culture’ and ‘Tibetan people’ (Tr. Bö mnyuh) as nationality subjects are diverse, and relate to each person’s social posi- tioning, family history, education and generation.1 Adding to this diver- sity, local leaders are not, in themselves, a coherent group, and nor does everyone express the same ideals (see Introduction for discussion). As Yeh (2002: 240) points out, in spite of foreign-scholarly, exile or offi cial views that claim an internally coherent, externally bounded ‘politics of diff erence’, eff orts to defi ne the scope and appropriate content of local constituencies occur as much amongst local people as between larger populations. Th e idea of civilizing culture is also used to represent the national- ity question in colonial terms. Educated young people, especially those with overseas experience, invoke colonial and genocide situations (for example, First Nations peoples of North America, Quebec, Kosovo and Palestine) to express the nature of their nationality belonging in China (and for a published counterpart, see Moynihan 1999). Civilizing cul- ture is also interlinked to meta-discourses like development, national- ity status, education and autonomy. For instance, Pema argues that: Civilizing culture is of oceanic proportions … oceanic! It is like an over- fl owing cup: the best nationality! Now Tibetans are a poor nationality. In the future, ‘Tibetan-speech’ will continue, but the writing, traditions will disappear. Our ‘own-character’ may or may not endure. Now parents force their children to learn Chinese so they can earn as much as possible.

1 Th e term used in context is in the local language, with the Putonghua term some- times being given in educational or NGO contexts too. 158 chapter four

My dream is that our conditions improve. If Trinde people became rich, they would not learn Chinese. Education is central here. Th e main task is building Tibetans’ brains. Nowadays, from where can you learn Tibetan history? If we had development, we could become rich, but instead we are like beggars, begging from the Chinese. Th e poor crouch, the rich walk tall! Tibet is like a treasure trove. Th e Chinese tried to wrench it open, but had to admit they could not do it! Th ey were shocked. It was not what they expected! We were shot, left ‘headless’ [when the Dalai Lama went into exile]. Sometimes I cry, even now. Only four of the literary-language teachers have this shared idea, but there are many sympathizers in town. We get together to drink liquor and discuss ‘Th e [Tibet] problem.’ Some- times we cry together. Others ask us ‘Why do you cry?’ But, they do not understand or even care. Elements of Pema’s discourse can be compared with accounts of similar situations in analogous cultural areas. In the TAR, for example, Sud- bury (2007) notes how the narrative structure of local monks draws signifi cantly on a Buddhist model of order and karmic consequence— not only to explain historical incidents, but also to communicate the diffi cult feelings that many continue to feel for neighbours who had participated in local acts of destruction. In fact, some of the statements in Pema’s narrative do not accu- rately refl ect the local situation. While Pema claims that parents force their children to learn Putonghua, Trinde English-option students’ stress that their parents vigorously encourage them to maintain their mother tongue capabilities. Th e parents’ emphasis emerges from the area’s history, as many among the older generation were not allowed to learn the nationality language while at school (Upton 1999: 310). Th e force of Pema’s comments does not derive from their ‘truth value’, but from the interlinkages made between the powerful, mutually con- solidating ideas of nationality, local coherence, civilizing culture and morality. In his narrative, Pema refers to Tibet as the horse and China as the rider, which is a common metaphor in revolutionary PRC rhetoric repre- senting feudal exploitation. Th is exploitative relation is acted out in Serf (T. Nongnu) from 1963, and in the ‘Red River Valley’ television show.2 Sneath (personal communication) notes that, within Inner Mongolia, people who met to drink, weep and regret Chinese supremacy were those persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, which accords with

2 Donald (2000) criticizes these productions, and argues that Serf and Temple Moun- tain (1998) use local nationality peoples as symbolic objects for ‘ideological redemp- tion’ in cinematic productions. civilizing culture 159

Pema’s own familial past. Finishing his narrative, Pema drew a miniature circle enclosed by a barbed wire ring and labelled it ‘Tibetan place’ (Tr. Bö sacha). At the edge of the perimeter, he drew a tiny circle labelled ‘sci- ences’ (Tr. tshe˜rig) as a part of civilizing culture. Screwing the paper into a ball, Pema brought down a heft y book (representing ‘China’) onto the ball (of ‘Tibet’), crushing it decisively underneath. Civilizing culture is a potent discursive idiom through which a vari- ety of local people mark out a place for themselves as civilized subjects and cultural specialists amidst China’s increasingly technological and scientifi c society. Both civilizing culture and nationality have, in many senses, become ‘real’ to local people, though this has not happened through the internalization of external discourses (Werbner 1996: 23). Th is phenomenon can be seen in the following comments from Padre,~ a local teacher, who argues that:

Tibet and Tibetan culture is important because I want to be myself! What is my ‘nationality’? Tibetan! If you speak Qinghai-dialect but your father and grandfather are Tibetan, what have you become? It makes you suf- fer if you do not know who you are. Everyone has a nation, a culture. If civilizing culture disappears, it is not only a matter only for yourself but a misfortune for the nation and the whole world. If Tibetan Bud- dhists lost their views, how would they satisfy themselves, how would they manage these days? Tibetan culture has taken a thousand years to improve [to this standard].

Th is statement indicates how local people come to imbue idioms (such as the linked terms of nationality and civilizing culture) with an exis- tential reality, though this process always leaves room for personal and social reinterpretation.

Literary Culture as an Index of Nationality Civility and Autonomy

As mentioned above, ability in the nationality literary-language is signifi cant in establishing a person’s status as a moral, cultured nation- ality subject. As a civilizing practice, the literary-language is con sidered to be ‘a powerful tool for the construction of a notion of common Tibetan experience and identity’ (Upton 1999: 308–309). As such, the literary-language is used to explore civilizing cultural commonalities across regional and linguistic diff erence. For example, there is a per- ception among educated people in Trinde that without knowing the literary-language, one cannot be a proper, good (Tr. zongbo) or ‘moral’ 160 chapter four

nationality person. A common phrase among domestic workers and professionals is: ‘If you know the literary-language, you can go any- where and need never be afraid.’ Phuntshog, a literary-language teacher, summarizes the predicament and importance of the literary-language:

Th e Chinese are strong so they can apply their policies; everyone learns their language. Now students know English but they do not know Tibetan, it is useless [Tr. muh lozi]. Your own language is like your parents—if you do not know it, you have no spirit-essence [Tr. nãshi]. It is the same as a dead body. Phuntshog’s comments echo historical nationality concerns in this region. For instance, when offi cial assessors recommended Tibetan language amendments, local scholars interpreted this move as an eff ort to fragment their social group since, if every dialect-zone used their own linguistic form, the single factor uniting their nationality would disappear (Prins 2002: 32). Th ese examples demonstrate how the recu- peration of civilizing cultural practices (and particularly language) has become a yardstick for gauging local capacity to implement nationality autonomy (see Litzinger 1998: 238). Lhamo, an NGO administrator, emphasizes the seriousness of this issue in local areas and stresses that, ‘Ethnicity without language is like a museum.’ Despite the perception that the literary-language is a unifying practice among people of this nationality, language as a whole is a contentious issue dividing Trinde School authorities (who are literary- language teachers and pro-locale cadres), and Yushu Prefecture cadres. To give some background to the current situation, in the reform era, nationality leaders from Yushu prioritized Putonghua as the medium of instruction in Yushu’s schools. It remains a constitutional right to use the local dialect in work situations, though it is Qinghai speech that is used in practice. Local terms appear in Putonghua as translitera- tions that are created out of Mandarin phonetic equivalents which have a positive meaning. However, this practice removes the historical and cultural signifi cance of local words, as is the case with ‘Chengduo’ in Putonghua (Tr. ‘Trinde’). Local students complain that transliterations also make local names sound and look ‘strange’, with the local name Tashi (meaning ‘auspicious’) rendered as Zhaxi in Putonghua. A further regional-administrative issue is that, being a Kham dialect area in an Amdo dialect province, Trinde School has to use Amdo dia- lect textbooks (produced by a Xining-based US educator), which stu- dents fi nd diffi cult to understand. Despite Amdo intellectuals’ claims civilizing culture 161 to the contrary, most Trinde people, even those with good knowledge of the literary-form, cannot understand the Amdo dialect. Pasang, a Trinde accountant, contended that ‘Amdo and English are the same to me—both are incomprehensible!’ A further level of complexity was added in 2002, from which time onwards, students have had to choose between specializing in the nationality literary-language or English. In this set of nationality, morality and civilizing cultural prac- tices, language ability, under use, misuse or mixed usage is taken as an index of cultural degradation. This issue is reflected in comments from Jayang, a former monk, who believes that local- speech and Putonghua have become ‘the same’ because of the high degree of mixing. Another example draws a direct parallel between nationality existence and the civilizing culture of literary-language. Speaking about these themes, Phuntshog argues that, ‘Among the general population, sixty percent of Trinde people and forty percent of Jyegu people know Tibetan well—in fifty years time, Tibetans and Chinese will be almost the same.’ Some local cadres and teachers speak badly of those who do not fi t their model of a good person. Th e disparaged grouping includes those who cannot speak the local dialect, or who speak in ‘mixed’ way, which is described locally by the phrase ‘goat-sheep speech’ (Tr. rama luk gey, for a discussion, see Tournadre 2003). For instance, Gao main- tains that Bamao, a confi dent, capable, attractive young Trinde teacher could never be a role model for local students because, ‘She is not very Tibetan, she can hardly speak her own language’. Pema further under- lined to me that, ‘You may like your students, but when they speak it is a fi ft y-fi ft y mix of Chinese and Tibetan that comes out.’ People claiming to be nationality subjects who cannot speak the local language are lia- ble to be excluded as ‘fake’, and may be suspected of being government informers. Citing research on ‘code-switching’ in this region, Shakya confi rms that local people use the regional or national language accord- ing to the particular context of usage (2008: 14). He further states that thirty to forty percent of Lhasa people’s vocabulary is generally ‘bor- rowed from Chinese’ (ibid.). Th e term ‘code-switching’ is misleading here, as it implies that people make a conscious decision, and that the two styles are independent, neither of which is the case in Yushu prac- tice. For example, Tseden, a Yushu-born solar-panel specialist, repeat- edly spoke to me in Putonghua while believing he was speaking the Yushu dialect. He bemoaned, ‘Th is is what happens to you when you stay in Chinese places so long.’ 162 chapter four

Linguistic prestige does not lie in a dialect itself, as shown by certain people’s opinion that it was a ‘waste of time’ for me to learn ‘parochial’ Trinde-speech. In fact, many people argue that Putonghua would be ‘much more useful’. Others pitied me and called me a ‘poor thing’ for having prioritized Kham-speech over Putonghua. Th e linguistic quirks of Trinde-speech are not celebrated as signs of cultural distinctiveness in an array of equally-valued alternatives. Instead, Trinde-dialect is denigrated as being ‘distant’ from Lhasa or Derge ideals. Th e import of local dialects instead lies in their being markers of social identifi - cation among people themselves. Th erefore, as territorialized, civiliz- ing cultural nationality practices, Trinde people should know unmixed Trinde-speech, and Nangchen people should know pure Nangchen- speech. It would, however, be considered absurd for someone from Nangchen to spend time learning Trinde-speech. New technologies are modifying the place of writing systems and, by extension, the socio-cultural status of those specialized in such technologies (Chow 1995: 10). Furthermore, the literary-language has become so closely linked to civilizing culture that the demise of this practice is now associated with a parallel disappearance of the nation- ality, or with fears that the nationality will ‘exist in name only’. Dur- ing one rota-room discussion, Jigme, a literary-language teacher, threw mounds of the teachers’ empty beer cans recklessly into the rubbish bin, exclaiming that, ‘Th is is what China wants to do to us Tibetans!’ Similar anxieties are evident in Pema’s description of a 2005 education strategy to relocate fi ft y of the students to inner China: Th e Tibetan students with the purest brains and the best grades will not study written Tibetan from the root. So we, this nationality, our whole language will be discarded! Th e situation can be compared to a tree: there is no need to cut down the tree [i.e. the nationality], you just cut off the roots [civilizing cultural practices] one by one until the tree dies. Pema’s comment also fi ts with the idea of cultural styles as elements that become real and meaningful only through practice in a given context. One of Pema’s students, Deje, included a strikingly similar comment in her literary-language examination: Every nationality likes its own culture. Only a few nationalities do not have their own culture. Our own civilizing culture is like a foundation to study another’s culture. Now many Tibetans do not like their own language and spend energy studying other languages. If Tibetans do not have our own civilizing culture it is just like we will disappear from this world. civilizing culture 163

Furthermore, there is also a sense that if a child cannot speak the local dia- lect, that child is metaphorically ‘lost’ to the household and to the locale. As is the case in the examples above, powerful ideas ‘travel’ between peo- ple in educational and other formal and informal contexts. Other indi- viduals and groups then reproduce these ideas, with the original notions being interpreted and altered to diff ering degrees in the process. Four Stalinist categories constitute the rubrics upon which the modern political existence of each nationality is based. Signifi cant local anxieties cluster around these four issues, namely economic life (see Chapter One), territory (Chapter Two), language and own-character (Chapters Th ree and Four). People also link the cur- rent fate of their region with conceptions of a degenerate or evil age (cf. Mumford 1989, and see Chapter Five). Because the Stalinist categories have been empowered as operative categories, language work has become a focus for the preservation of the entire national- ity, particularly among literary-language teachers. By affi rming the importance of the nationality language, people are not merely being strategic. Rather, the issue of civilizing culture is imbued with deeper resonances. Furthermore, localized civilizing cultural phenomena are perceived to act as social fi lters that allow incoming elements to be locally mediated (Tsing 2005: 6).

Transmitting Civilizing Culture

As with many studies of China’s nationalities vis-à-vis ‘culture,’ Yeh’s analysis invokes nationality terms as undiff erentiated, bounded entities. In her critique, a concurrent similarity to, and diff erence from, peoples from inner China is considered to prompt young nationality people to want to embody and perform their own authentic ‘Tibetanness’ (2002: 251). Similar ideas are found in local statements, for example that of, Padre,~ a Trinde teacher, who argues that: Yushu is so far away that it is easy to convert the people; they are not aware of ‘being Tibetan’ because they have no experience of persevering. In Tongren [Amdo, Qinghai] they lost their culture, lost themselves, and then had to coexist [with the incomers]. Yeh argues that this diff erentiation stands in ‘stark contrast’ to the con- stitution of exile identities, which occurs through the ‘constant repeti- tion and verbalization’ of the ‘mythical-history of Tibet’ (ibid.). However, this research shows that the processes of social belonging and cultural 164 chapter four

identifi cation are not so clear-cut. In fact, various forms of historical and cultural mythologization and contestation are conspicuous in Yushu. Th ese forms circulate in NGOs and schools, in local scholarly, county administrative and university publications, and in leaders, students and some villagers’ comments. Greenblatt suggests that the archetypal indication of power is the capacity to ‘impose one’s fi ctions upon the world’ (1983 cited in Anag- nost 1997: 52). Yet such all-encompassing statements overlook the idio- syncrasies involved in struggles to defi ne, interpret and reform political rationalities (such as nationality and civilizing culture) in local practice. Unilinear models cannot capture the manifold ways such ‘fi ctions’ are realized, or the tangible processes through which ideas become ‘real’ to people in practice. Moreover, people fashion these ideas through repeated use in everyday contexts. In this way, ideas like ‘nationality’ or ‘civilizing culture’ become part of people’s own identity (cf. Kipnis 1994: 216–17). Th ere is an agency to people’s participation in this process, with power- ful ideas being reinterpreted and elements being modifi ed, consciously and less consciously, in practice. Similarly, in contemporary Trinde, con- duct is not governed by the application of direct force. Instead, people are increasingly called on to govern themselves (Sigley 2004: 570) as nation- ality, ethnic or diff erently-cultured subjects. In the reform era, nation and nationality, culture, civility, civilization or civilizing culture and morality (Tr. chöqzong, M. daode) have become political vocabularies for depict- ing and debating knowledge about how this shift can be best achieved. Th e following section investigates the practical contexts for the trans- mission of civilizing culture. Commenting on similar themes, Hansen proposes that, ‘Th e classroom is an arena where processes of ethnic identifi cation become highly relevant when minority students inevita- bly are confronted with the government’s monopolizing interpretation of their identity’ (1999: 159). In the context of Trinde, however, teachers’ examination questions, and students’ responses, show that no straight- forward or oppositional process of ‘state assimilation’ is occurring in practice. Moreover, localized ideas (for example about ‘being cultured’ or about belonging to a given nationality) are frequently reworked, and sometimes contested, in discussions at Trinde School. One such overt promotion of a politicized form of civilizing culture is the nationality pop song ‘Deeply Loving Younger Brother’ (M. Shen Qing de Di Di). For many people, this song represents the ‘Tibet Ques- tion’. Th e song is performed, anthem style, during informal gatherings. ‘Deeply Loving Younger Brother’ and ‘White Stupa’ (M. Bai Ta, which civilizing culture 165 is understood to represent the Dalai Lama) are banned from being performed in local cabarets (TIN 2004: 161–2). A literal translation of the lyrics is given below:

Who is it that scattered your fl ock of sheep? Left you behind guarding the fi nal grassland? Unable to touch your loved ones’ hand/s, Unable to cry or weep, Over there your dreams grow, Coloured rain, silvery river, Homes constructed on the green hillside, A pair of little hands carrying a bright lamp, Little, little younger brother, Full of deep love for younger brother, Must walk on the destined path, Deeply loving little brother, Little brother hiding away scars, Let us go forward hand in hand together!

Th e last line is always rendered as an impassioned crescendo. Pema, a literary-language teacher, related his interpretation of the song: A ‘shepherd’ is looking aft er his sheep. Th ey are the Tibetan people and Tibet’s wealth. A wolf, that is the Chinese, eats all the sheep. Th e little brother is left alone in an immense place. He possesses hope but can- not even shout or cry and no tears fl ow. Th e tiny home is Tibet today, in India. Now Tibet is so diminished. Th e candle is the Tibetan system of knowledge that lights up the praying hands. In the past, Tibetan culture was like the rising sun. Pema says the interpretation is ‘just his own thinking’, and empha- sizes that he does not know whether he is right to think this way. Although unspecifi ed, the ‘shepherd’ and ‘little brother’ references refer to the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama respectively. Th e song metaphorically describes the fragmentation and suff ering of the peo- ple from this cultural region through the idiom of the scattered fl ock. Th e shepherd (implied) is addressing the younger brother, who has been left protecting the ‘fl ock’. Th ese elements refer to the Panchen Lama, who stayed in China while the Dalai Lama went into exile. Th e song wants the ‘brothers’ to be reunited (TIN 2004: 161).3 Pema later

3 When I asked Padr~e, a normally forthright colleague, if he could translate ‘Deeply Loving Younger Brother’, he asked, ‘Why that song? I heard Zongbo [the singer] got into trouble over that one.’ Padr~e asked if we could translate it ‘next time’. Deferral and nonattendance are ways Trinde people avoid unwelcome tasks. 166 chapter four related that he had sung ‘Deeply Loving Little Brother’ to his students in one of his lessons at Trinde School. Th is event caused great excite- ment, with students rushing to tell their peers that, ‘Pema sung that Zongbo song!’ Pema commented contentedly, ‘Now those students are teachers all over Yushu, and forty are studying in Xining!’ Pema thus used a state-endorsed administrative context to promote a cul- tural form that draws on exile-style interpretations that are intended to inspire a pan-nationality political consciousness. Another way that politicized messages about nationality sentiments were diff used using cultural forms within the school was the English- option students’ 2003 literary-language examination. Dorje and Pema, two literary-language teachers, created a literary-language examination on the twin themes of ‘civilizing culture and history’ as ‘an experiment, a new approach’. Th is ‘experiment’ coincided with my stay in the area as an anthropologist, which also prompted many discussions about the connections between nationality, civilizing culture and cultures in the anthropological sense. Th e focal question (see below) asked students to discuss an adaptation of ‘Tibetan scholar’ Shonte˜ Tenba Jantsen’s maxim: If you do not know the customs of your own nationality, and do not think your own customs are good, you throw them out like rubbish. To study another’s customs, you feel very arrogant, but you cannot learn their cus- toms completely, so [the endeavour] has no meaning. If your clothing looks like other non-Tibetans, you are neither like a real ‘Tibetan’ nor a real ‘Chinese’ person. Th at kind of person is like a destitute beggar. Elaborating on the theme of the examination, Pema argued that, ‘If we do not know ourselves and we really want to recognize someone else, it is useless and meaningless. If one does not know one’s own self, it is not possible to speak of, or evaluate, others.’ All the students’ examination papers were written using common literary-language vocabulary slotted into Trinde-speech sentences. Th e highest scoring papers used a relatively high proportion of lit- erary-language vocabulary (the top mark was ninety-nine percent), though the answers given were no more remarkable than in the lower- scoring papers. In fact, the students’ essays were all remarkably similar. Looking over the responses, one Yushu teacher declared that, ‘Th ey are all exactly the same.’ Th e scholarly quote included in the examina- tion was indeed frequently repeated among literary-language teachers. Th is phrase had also been painted on the School building in large, red, literary-language script in 2003. Th e students all restated the focal civilizing culture 167 quote in their examination responses, oft en saying that this senti- ment was his or her ‘own deep feeling’. Pema took almost no time and devoted little care to marking the papers: the assessment was instead intended as a consciousness-raising exercise. In the examination answers, the students also drew on a mixture of local scholarly, poetic, popular and offi cial allusions to describe their region:

We are snow land people. We live on the roof of the world. We are studying Tibetan knowledge that is like an ocean. Tibetans have another name: we are the black haired people. Th ose who do not know Tibetan language and culture are like a lion made of earth [i.e. fake]. Our homeland is the Kham grasslands with fl owers on the high mountains.

Similar eulogies to locality and regionality are found in popular Yushu texts (for example, Go.gdung mGu.grags rDo.rje and Meng 1991: 5). In other examination answers, the students’ modify, contest and consoli- date prevalent nationality and regional cultural ideals. As Rigzin argues: Tibetan language is becoming useless, but English is the opposite of Tibetan. My father-language and culture are important, but I only use the important parts of Tibetan civilizing culture. Th at is why I had a silly new idea—even I study English now! English is becoming popular in many countries. English and English culture should be the important part, but because I am Tibetan, I, once again, studied Tibetan hard, as with English. In these examination responses, dharma was not highlighted in the overtly political ways some foreign scholarly analyses indicate and, indeed, expect (cf. Schwartz 1994a, 1994b). Th ere were three com- ments about dharma in total. Only Chönzom notes that, ‘Th ere is a very famous saying: If you understand religion that will be a great help.’ Sherap refers to, ‘Th e benefi ts that keeping Buddha’s precepts will bring in the future’. Nyezong argued that, ‘In this new era, it is important to improve one’s own language and culture and to keep Buddha’s main points, to be compassionate and endeavour to adopt that type of behaviour.’ Th e examination quote is imbued with a cultural determinism that is present in many local narratives and assumptions about nation- ality in China and beyond. Ujen, an English-option student, thus writes that, ‘Even a person who wears Tibetan clothes, if they do 168 chapter four not know their customs, it is just like they are not Tibetan.’ Lekshey specifi es that, ‘Even if Tibetans wear non-Tibetan clothing, their language and customs are like Tibetans, they do things as Tibetans.’ Uyo, expresses that, ‘Even if I go somewhere else, I am still a Tibetan. For example, if I went to America, I still need to understand Tibetan culture, history, and language.’ Th e reifi cation of ‘culture’ as a basis for national belonging is not surprising since, in line with Stalin’s defi nitions, ‘nation’ and ‘nation- ality’ are not ‘imagined’ but are instead considered to be manifestly ‘real’, historically-evolved social entities. According to this model, these phenomena result from the particular economic relations which give rise to ‘a people’ living in a given territory, to a common language, culture and character (Stalin 1953: 307, 313). A similar cultural determinism is also evident in some foreign scholarship, as is the case with Führer-Haimendorf’s (1990: 1) view that, ‘Departure from a familiar environment oft en results in loss of a population’s cultural infrastructure and hence in the sudden transformation of its traditional lifestyle and worldview.’ Another way schoolteachers convey politicized civilizing culture messages beyond the immediate school domain is through visual images, such as the Great Signifi cance Symbol (T. gla.che.bi.mtshon. brtags or ha.cang.tso.gnad.che.bi.mtshon.brtags) on the head wall of Trinde Community Hall. During the wedding of two local school- teachers, Phuntshog and Drokar, the literary-language teachers proudly pointed out the symbol. An inscription above the symbol reads: ‘Adoration for the beautiful and friendly young people who are like the profusion of bright fl owers on the plateau. May you always have abundant wealth, happiness and peace!’ (T. rab.mdzes.lang.mtsho. mdza’.mthun.me.tog.rnam.bkr’i.thang.rab.mang.long.spyod.bde.skyid. gru.tshar.rtag.tu.’jo). It had taken the teachers a long time to agree on the images and arrangement of the mural (see Figure 8). Th e symbol depicts a plateau traversed by the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers (whose headwaters fl ow out of Trinde). Yaks graze on grasslands backed by snow-clad peaks. A sun and moon are poised on a pair of yak horns. Th e symbol of the ‘sun and moon together’ (T. nyila nyeh) is integrated from pre-Buddhist Bön traditions. A circular sun within a crescent moon symbolizes the ‘sacred seed’ syllable ‘hung’ (as in the mantra, om mani padme hung) that is seen on the top of stupas and in many other religious symbols. Th e Dalai Lama is oft en identifi ed with the sun, and the Panchen Lama with the moon. Th e horns enclose the civilizing culture 169

Figure 8. Great Signifi cance Symbol in Trinde Community Hall blazing sword of Manjusri (aka Manjughosa or Jamyang), which represents cutting through obfuscations. Th e sword springs out of a scripture (Tr. pheyche), representing discriminative awareness. A lighted butter-lamp is superimposed on the horns, and a ‘white conch’ (Tr. dungkar) and a ‘lotus jewel’ (Tr. pema norbu) spring forth from a lotus. Th ese elements symbolically represent the pure mind that comes from dharma practice. Pema said that, through looking at the picture, people can under- stand the nationality’s history and culture, and the ‘Tibetan problem’ (Tr. Bökyi nitsuh). Gao explained that: Now Tibetans’ situation is depressed, so the yak does not have a whole body, only horns. Th is represents the Tibetan situation today. In the future, Tibetans can become like the whole yak, with the whole body belonging to us. I should not say this, but that is independence. In the case of the Great Signifi cance Symbol too, the Trinde teachers also selected symbols that can be interpreted in multiple ways, and which fi t into various political agendas and cultural narratives (on such multi- vocality, see Schrempf 2002: 149). As with performed practices (for example, Deeply Loving Little Brother) and textual sources (for exam- ple, the literary-language examination experiment), visual materials also contain political messages, though these are not always apparent to those outside the community to which the symbols refer. In a similar vein, the Trinde ‘school emblem’ employs the imagery of the fl aming sword of Manjusri. Th e encircling inscription reads: From the [impure] muddiness, [comes] the exquisite, clean lotus mind, Th e character of a clean mind is a smiling lotus, 170 chapter four

Th e place of knowledge bears auspicious fruit, Pray to receive these three things at the same time! Th e iconographic juxtaposition of this emblem indicates that the ‘knowledge’ implied here is infl ected with ideas expressly about nation- ality language, history, culture and religion. To maintain the purity of civilizing culture as an appealing guiding social ideal, local leaders do not only displace awkward issues onto other nationalities (as is evident in the examples given in Chapter Th ree), but also onto those considered marginal to the civilizing culture idiom. Th is set of people includes: women, incomers, younger generations and those taking unorthodox courses of social action. Nevertheless, civilizing culture is not a defi ned range of practices or a stable body of inert infor- mation. Instead, what counts as valued knowledge is constantly negoti- ated in practice (Levinson and Holland 1996: 22). As such, not everyone in Yushu agrees on the same defi nition of civilizing culture, invests this concept with the same importance or wishes to develop this concept in the same way (cf. ibid.). Th e views of local offi cials, scholars, teachers, parents and development staff are contested, and supported, in a num- ber of direct and indirect ways, some of which are described below.

Gendered Civilizing Culture

Civilizing culture has a strongly gendered dimension. Th e ability to become, and be accepted as, a specialist in local and nationality cultural and historical issues is currently a male preserve in Trinde. Th is spe- cialization is refl ected in the gender ratio of literary-language teachers in Trinde School, which is currently one woman to nine men. Female teachers usually specialize in Putonghua/Mandarin or science, which are considered to be ‘Chinese’ subjects. Singye argues that, ‘Women cannot read or write Tibetan well, only men can do that.’ In local and televised cultural shows, a male presenter announces using the nation- ality literary-language and women announce in Putonghua. Only men are perceived to have the knowledge, rational capacity and mental organization to structure and convey sustained analyses of a civilizing culture type. At the Lower School, locals and incom- ers refer to Trinde’s renowned lama-scholar’s sister as the ‘Tibetan dictionary’ because of her deep linguistic knowledge. Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, argues that, ‘I do not believe she has her own ideas or could organize her thoughts in a book in the way that Rinchen can.’ In civilizing culture 171 a similar vein, Padre~ also declares that, ‘Women only talk about pop stars and knitting.’ Lajey, a female teacher and former ETP student, also expresses that: All women talk about is car-crashes, their off spring’s new date, hairstyles, what colours do you like, what are you cooking? It is all very domes- tic. For a woman to speak about politics, and writing, history or culture would be exceptional. But I spent fi ve of my teenage years out of Yushu in Xining. I am interested in the future, in NGO development projects, politics and religion. If I talk about these with my female friends, they say: ‘Stop that, you are just a woman!’ Gendered cultural perceptions have a bearing on how procedures are carried out in local practice. In 2003, the school lunch-break was extended for the women teachers at Trinde School. In practice, this alteration, which was welcomed by the female teachers, actually gives women extra time to do more domestic work on everyone else’s behalf. One exception to this general pattern occurs in the lodgings of a Henan couple. In this household, Hu spends her extended lunchtime chatting with her female friends while her husband, Yang, does forty-fi ve min- utes extra work and arrives home to cook for Hu and her friends. Soon aft er the lunch break rule had been implemented, female teachers were prohibited from sleeping at the ‘Teachers’ Festival’ encampment. Trin- ley, the school Headmaster who had instated the change, stressed that the prohibition was ‘for women’s own safety’. Th e women teachers said they were happy about the prohibition, with Chözang adding that she is ‘scared’ in such settings. Th ere is little room for creative manoeuvre here, as local women disregarding gender ascriptions are liable to be described as being ‘Chinese’. Th e tendency to redirect questions about civilizing culture (be it queries about history, language or society) to ‘experts’ or ‘religious prac- titioners’, who are usually male, is common among foreign regional stud- ies scholars and local people alike (see Germano 1998, Kapstein 2002, Stoddard 1994, and see Diemberger 2004, Havnevik 1994, 2002, Makley 1997). Wongdu, a Xining lecturer, relates that, while doing research in his fatherland he only speaks to old male relatives and other men to gather data. Wongdu argues that, ‘I do not talk to the women because they do not know Tibetan history or civilizing culture. I think that what they talk about is not important: everyday life, cooking, and such like.’ Makley’s research points to an increased gendering of local practices and civilizing culture in this nationality region (2002). However, analysis in nationality terms reifi es what is, in practice, a diverse and contextual 172 chapter four actuality. Th us, while gender proscriptions apply everywhere, the form these take varies by regional situation. For example, Trinde women avoid touching men above the elbow, particularly in pastoralist societ- ies. In Derge, Sichuan, it is not the upper but lower body that is off - limits. Discussing these regional diff erences, one associate laughingly squeezed his male companion’s shoulder and slapped his friend’s bot- tom with gusto to mark out the permitted and prohibited areas. Local leaders do not necessarily intend to suppress alternative points of view, and sometimes aim to be progressive, as with Trinley’s gender-based lunch-break extension. However, many such leaders align themselves with those with similar interests, who also happen to be men. Th e rough concordance among local scholars, cadres and school authorities regarding understandings of civilizing culture also demotes those unable to excel in the linguistic, moral and cultural competencies, which currently locally signify well-educated moral nationality individuals.

Th e Risks Of Prioritizing Civilizing Nationality Cultures

In Germano’s understanding, the 1980s so-called ‘cultural revival’ con- veys a ‘strengthening of Tibetan identity’, which is ‘a potentially unify- ing social force’ (cited in Manderscheid 2002: 286). In Trinde, civilizing culture provides a convenient reference point in rapidly changing times. However, promoting civilizing culture as a basis for re-imagining uni- fi ed constituencies involves excluding those deemed to fall outside this idiom (see Goldman and Perry 2002: 2). Local people express pride and shame about the local state of civilizing culture. Offi cial positions on local practices have also fl uctuated signifi cantly. Th is local and China- wide spectrum of opinions has echoes in foreign Orientalist scholarship and colonial narratives, which portray local people in terms of physical backwardness and disgust and also spiritual sophistication and pride (cf. Bishop 1989: passim). Similar narratives of civilization and barbarism have a bearing on self- perception and of social inclusion and exclusion today. Samten and Pamo, two ETP students, believe that: Tibetans are not fashionable, so people assume we must be hooligans. Of course, students are not fi lm stars, so they must be hooligans— especially if you have long hair! Chinese also have a history of long hair. Th e Manchus were forced to cut their hair. Th e Communists cut their civilizing culture 173

hair like Westerners. Tibetans are good at copying from Chinese, but we should not copy the bad things. Many inhabitants of Kham say they feel proud of their nationality heri- tage when undertaking performing Arts tours, or while travelling for business or pleasure in inner China areas. Others report being taunted for being ‘uncivilized’, ‘hooligans’ or ‘barbarians’, especially in urban centres. Popular views continue to depict China’s southwest nation- alities as ‘soft ’, and the northwest nationalities (including people from Qinghai) as ‘hard’ (that is, tough, uncivilized, manly and hostile to inner China assimilation, Gladney 1999: 63). As with the other chapters of this book, this section traces how offi cially sanctioned idioms (such as class, development and civiliz- ing culture) constitute powerful meta-frames that conceal diverse and overlapping local social realities. Educated people invoke macro terms as guiding ideas for achieving certain regional ends. Local people’s use of offi cially-sanctioned meta-idioms does not imply that they agree with the authorized representation of a term or issue. Instead, these idioms are best understood as productive tropes through which people formulate rationales for action, and contest and reform others. Writing about cultural politics in a Tibetan Buddhist context of India, van Beek (2000: 551) argues that people’s activities ‘draw on local practices and idioms of identifi cation, but the meanings of those “identities” are radi- cally altered in the process’. Th is process is evident in Trinde, where the idea of civilizing culture is connected to people, institutions and tech- niques that are producing new local and pan-nationality imaginaries. Th e perceptual links between civilizing, scholarly culture, ‘culture’ in an anthropological sense, and nationality, are evident in the ethnographic examples included here. Th e presence of, and alterations to, offi cial categories prompt local dis- cussions about, and eff orts to redefi ne, the scope and content of salient contemporary socio-political idioms. Th is is one way that offi cial notions of civilizing culture that are produced through formal procedures of cat- egorization never remain stable, bounded or ‘monologic’ (Ranger 1993: 98). For example, in a staff -canteen conversation, Tashi urged me to, ‘Eat—it is good Tibetan food!’ I commented that the lunch consisted of inner China dishes. Tashi scooped up a chopstick full of pork and laughingly exclaimed, ‘Well now it is Tibetan food because we are eat- ing it—now it is the same!’ Tashi pointed out that, ‘Even Xi Mingzhi [an incomer teacher who has lived in Trinde for twenty years] and people 174 chapter four in Lanzhou eat toasted barley fl our nowadays’. Tashi’s comments also affi rm the idea of ‘cultural styles’ as ways of being and acting that are developed through a person’s recurrent involvement in particular prac- tices in a specifi c time and place (see Chapter Th ree for discussion). Some local articulations of civilizing culture are reminiscent of past and present central state notions about belonging as a process that sub- jects take on by becoming appropriately cultured (Harrell 1995: 3–19). Colleagues oft en asked whether I eat barley fl our (Tr. tsampa), can recite mantras (Tr. pemey) and believe in ‘Christianity’ or Tibetan Buddhism (Tr. yishi and nõngpa choolug respectively). In one such exchange, Tashi affi rmed that, ‘In fi ve years you would become Tibetan, given the lan- guage you know, and the food you eat and all that. You would forget your own language by then!’ Tashi’s comments are similar to the birth- day example in Chapter Th ree. Th ese instances show that both nation- ality belonging and identifi cation with civilizing culture and popular styles is not fi xed, but are practices that can be learned. As Yeh (2002: 40) points out, social and political identifi cation involves ‘neither pure essentialism nor a free fl ow of signifi ers’, which is evident in many of the Trinde exchanges described in the context of civilizing culture here.

Rejecting Civilizing Culture

Some local people do not want to promote their nationality’s civiliz- ing culture. For example Lajey, a Trinde teacher, feels frustrated at her ‘boring’ state-school job and lack of social options in Yushu. She is criti- cal of the usage and teaching of the nationality literary-language. Lajey believes that: Tibetan teachers like to say to young Tibetans: ‘You are the fl ower of the future, the fl ower of our future!’ But those teachers just read texts from start to fi nish, it is just a memorization exercise. Literary-language teachers do not take responsibility for being part of the future. Th ey do not make teaching relevant or up-to-date whereas Chinese-language teachers encourage students actually to do things with texts, like sum- marizing them and completing exercises. In this way, you can learn more eff ectively. Lajey even advised me to incorporate key Putonghua words and phrases when speaking the local dialect, arguing that, ‘In this way your Tibetan- language will sound more natural. Some Tibetan-language words sound strange to us nowadays; we never use them. We use Chinese instead.’ civilizing culture 175

Zopa is a Xining-based Amdo media specialist in his mid-thirties. For him, ‘local culture’ (including ‘religion’) is the obstacle holding Tibet- ans back from progressing towards modernity. He asserts that people of his nationality have ‘full belief whereas Chinese believe just a third. Chinese take only the useful part. Th at way is realistic’. Zopa wishes fel- low nationality people would take a ‘rational approach to religion and civilizing culture’. Rigdrol, Zopa’s colleague, criticizes people who pro- mote culture by calling it ‘traditional’, both of which he sees as obstacles to regional improvement. Zopa and Rigdrol’s views are similar to the May Fourth Movement, which, in 1919, argued that Chinese customs hindered China’s development into a modern nation-state. For Rigdrol, the general principle is that, ‘Th e mainstream should go directly mod- ern, that is, to Western culture.’ He argues that: Some say that, by taking in Western culture, we will lose our own culture. I think we do not need to be afraid of that. An American ambassador said about Japan that, ‘Ninety-nine percent of Japanese culture is Western culture; one percent is Japanese culture.’ But from that one percent you understand that Japan is not like the West. Japanese and South Koreans wear suits and follow what the West does but from their spirit [points at his chest], they are not the same as the West. We Tibetans—teachers and lamas, for example—always talk about ‘the nation’, ‘protecting our cul- ture’, but from their spirit and way of thinking, they are like Han. Monks might wear robes, but what they say is superfi cial, corrupt, like the Han. One lama returned from abroad to Golog saying that, ‘Tibetan culture is great, we have to continue Tibetan culture!’ But the last numbers of his cell-phone number are 88888. [eight is considered to be lucky in inner China because the word sounds similar to that meaning ‘prosper’ or ‘wealth’.] All Chinese want these ‘get-rich’ numbers. You can see what those Tibetans say about Tibetan culture is fake speech. It is a lie. As the comments in this section indicate, those rejecting ‘civilizing cul- ture’ must do so by concurrently participating in nationality and civi- lizing culture discourses as local nationality social actors. To negate the nationality idiom means forfeiting one’s legitimacy to speak authorita- tively to local, regional or international constituents. Regional modern- izers must therefore follow certain conventions that are simultaneously, and inseparably, ‘local’ and at the same time ‘offi cial’. In a similar way, authorizing local nationalities, ethnicities and cul- tures does not replace nation-state forms of identifi cation. As Watts points out, ‘communities (with their attendant forms of identity, rule and territorialization) can be produced simultaneously at diff erent spa- tial levels (scale politics) and may work with and against one another 176 chapter four in complex and contradictory ways’ (2004: 198, original emphasis). Th e simultaneity and complexity described by Watts also character- izes Trinde. Furthermore, the reform era devolution of power does not always work to empower ‘the local’ but sometimes strengthens nation- state forms. Th is is the case when Yushu people direct their frustrations about regional ‘corruption’ and ‘inappropriate policies’ away from cen- tral authorities onto the newly empowered county and prefecture level nationality cadres.

Reorganizing Cultural Politics and Political Cultures

Contemporary Trinde society is undergoing a complex reorganiza- tion and localization of interpersonal and social power-relations. Civ- ilizing culture is only one discourse through which local people are systematizing and reconstituting local comportment and sensibilities in ways that are diff erent from, and sometimes more limited than, the scope allowed in previous times (cf. Samuel 1993: 215). Anxiet- ies about defi ning and maintaining civilizing culture are bound up in a range of complex, non-linear social processes. Th ese processes relate to perceptions about increasing social (ex)change in locales and regions, newfound permission to undertake certain nationality practices within China’s nation-state and increasing integration into global systems that consider mechanisms for maintaining cultural or ethnic ‘diff erence’ to be a desirable feature of modern governance (cf. Schein 2000: 143).4 Th e 1980s and 1990s re-empowerment of nation and nationality as categories of social organization, and the institution of policies for ‘bringing local culture back in’, are part of a wider contemporary reor- ganization of power within China’s body politic. In regional foreign scholarship on this nationality area, the reform era is characterized as a period of scholarly and cultural ‘liberalization’ (Prins 2002: 28) ‘revival’ (Goldstein 1998a) or ‘revitalization’ (Terrone 2002: 213). Writing about a Qinghai pastoralist context, Pirie (2005a: 2) argues that localized spheres of infl uence are resurfacing as the governmental administrative

4 In view of such complexities, Li goes beyond perspectives of ethnicity and diff er- ence that are constrained by national borders and argues that a post-nationalist per- spective, which views events in terms of a ‘global/local nexus’, is more appropriate for interpreting social change, as this analytical device captures the ‘simultaneous dilution of the nation-state and … its reinvention through close integration into global struc- tures’ (2000: 212–13). civilizing culture 177 structures weaken in the reform era. As Pirie’s conclusions suggest, it is misleading to understand the reform era as a straightforward period of ‘liberalization’, as the devolution of power to locales does not necessarily make local processes any more empowering or fair. In fact, Trinde peo- ple believe that some local administrative processes are unreasonable, as evident in their assertions that the former Deputy Leader of Trinde county ‘bribed her way in’. Padre~ asserts that, ‘It was not like this before. In the beginning, in Mao’s time, the Party was small and young. Th ere were few people to bribe. Now it is changed, corruption has become our culture!’ It is also not the case that prior cultural forms ‘resurface’ in a pre-revolution form, as people have developed new understandings and competencies, and reshaped older ones, in the interim period. Discussing cultural practice and nationality, Dreyfus argues that local areas are characterized by a ‘fl eeting confi guration of power dis- tribution’ such that political, institutional and administrative organi- zations are inappropriate bases for discussing the construction of a ‘Tibetan collective identity’ (2003: 506). Dreyfus further argues that the ‘force of certain cultural memories’ gives a ‘sense of belonging to an intrinsically valuable community’ such that long-range tendencies have a ‘much more important role in determining identity’ (ibid. 502–506). However, politics and power are crucial to any social analysis, not least because political discourses shape what is deemed ‘cultural’, and what is considered mundane or ‘political’. In Trinde, memories are linked as much to the reproduction and re-imagination of cultural practice, civi- lization and locality as they are to ‘modern nationalism’. Several foreign regional studies of this region rely on notions of ‘revitalization’ (for example, Wallace 1956, Malefi jt 1968, Goldstein and Beall 1990: 154). As a concept, ‘revitalization’ understates people’s active and unpredictable associations with contemporary social pro- cesses and institutions (for example, see Ching Chang and Lang 2007). As the ethnography above shows, people are not ‘duped’ by ideology, and nor do they merely imitate or invert offi cial notions of advance- ment in nostalgic ‘revivals’ of recently-commercialized local practices. Rather than being a single incident internal to ‘a community’, what is termed ‘revitalization’ actually entails a discursively complex process of constitution and interpretation within and between people, ‘peoples’ and local and supra-local institutions (Havnevik 1994: 264). As the examples of this chapter show, ideals about being cultured are shift ing to new ideas about this nationality as ‘a culture’ in an era of ‘multi-lifestyles’, to use one local expression. Local discussions about 178 chapter four

‘civilizing culture’ echo idioms invoked in exile, PRC governmental, Western social science and modern nation-state discourses. Literary ‘culture’ has now been offi cially cleared of its previous negative con- notations, and is a highly prized attribute in Trinde, particularly among educated work unit employees. In addition, educated people’s belief in the potential of their cultural forms is suggestive of reform era moral discourses of ‘civilization’. Yet despite the numerous discussions about civilizing culture and its revival, the diversity of local understandings of this concept highlights that there is nothing that can be defi nitively termed ‘Tibetan culture’. In practice, there is instead a set of historically particular, regionally diff erentiated local practices and concepts that are specifi ed as ‘Tibetan culture’ by virtue of their being associated with peoples now categorized as belonging to the ‘Tibetan’ nationality. Th e discrepancy between discursive ideals and local and regional actualities generates a fi eld of political engagement and social debate. Civilizing culture is not locally appreciated because it is old, or because it inverts a ‘state-as-modernity’ hegemony. Rather, civilizing culture is valued as an integrated rationality, knowledge system and ontology that is embodied through the practice of ‘good’ traditions. Such culture is thought to be imbued with morally-enhancing, socially- progressive potentials, which are particularly prized in off setting what is considered to be a degenerate era (see Chapter Five). Furthermore, local scholars, teachers, cadres, parents and NGO offi cers do not con- sider the potentials of civilizing culture for creating a modern moral community or civilization as merely equal to nation-state ethical endea- vours and Western approaches. Instead, some local people, and par- ticularly educated professionals, believe that, given the right conditions and formulation, nationality-based civilizing culture is a vastly superior form of social belonging. Th ese themes are analysed and explored in greater depth in the following two chapters of this book. CHAPTER FIVE

EMPOWERING LOCALES

Masses Unite: We Shall Win [M. wanzhong yi xin women hui ying]! —SARS banner, 2003

Early one cold winter’s morning, I joined a group of rural Trinde women as they crunched through the freshly fallen snow to Druchung community hall. Th e opportunity to attend the local ritual arose when the son of the school storekeeper suggested I accompany his mother, Tsering to the event. Although doubtful at fi rst, Tsering apprehen- sively asked whether I understood what it was. Satisfi ed with my reply, Tsering agreed to the idea. Th e hall was already packed with people, though their dark forms were barely visible as we entered from the blinding sunshine outside. People prostrated at the doorway, before hurrying to claim a seating place. A charged and expectant buzz permeated the gathering. Scan- ning the room, well-worn, dirty-black Kham-clothing encumbered almost everyone: it was obvious that work unit professionals had stayed away. Th e two small, grimy windows at the back admitted only patchy beams, but rays of sharp winter light streamed through the wide-open doorway. Two feeble, naked bulbs hung forlornly in the blackness of the roof. A multitude of fl ickering neatly-arranged butter-lamps soft ly lit the front plinth. Vapour-strung breaths issued from the crowd. Th e sharp scent of burning juniper waft ed out as we crossed the scuff ed wooden threshold, its billowing vapours mixing with clouds of dust sent up by the shuffl ing feet of new arrivals. An elderly woman passed over a grime-encrusted mat to save me from having to crouch on the uneven, dusty fl oor. Regular attend- ees perched on their own miniature stools, barely raising them above fl oor-level, while fi rst-timers squatted on scrubby sacking. All fi dgeted excitedly and uncomfortably, murmuring with their friends and rela- tives, while waiting for the ‘gods descend’ (henceforth Tr. lhabab) ritual to begin. An attendant picked his way nimbly through the throng of attendees to present me with a faux leopard-skin chair, and insisted 180 chapter five

I use it. At that point, I was the only layperson seated in an elevated position. Th e event assistants gave me a chipped mug, which they attentively topped up with milk tea, poured from a gargantuan bat- tered aluminium kettle, throughout the proceedings. Unusually for mixed local gatherings and rituals, only women occupied the prestigious central front area, outnumbering men by approximately seven to one. Men squatted around the dim fringes of the room. Seven monks from Lab Monastery were seated on the front dais (T. khri), alongside the butter-lamps. A monk in his early- twenties was seated on the highest plinth. Th e chanting started. Th en, aft er barley and rice had been scattered over the attendees, people started to experience lhabab. No one left for the three-and-a-half hour duration. Out of approximately 150 Trinde residents present, around fi ft een people experienced lhabab, all of whom were seated in the front-central zone. Th ese people were exclusively women between forty and sixty years old, with the exception of one monk, who was the sole monastic practitioner among the lay attendees. Th ose expe- riencing lhabab loll their heads. Th eir arms joggle as if animated by invisible strings. Some people say mantras or prayers, talk in diff erent voices or speak fragmented ‘god’s female-consort speech’ (Tr. khandro dakyi) and melodious dialogues that ‘only certain people can under- stand’. One male participant related how, ‘really scared feelings arose in my mind’ when he fi rst saw people experience lhabab. Tsering later asked me if I had experienced lhabab, and expressed her great desire to do so. Th e seating arrangements in the community hall followed a num- ber of social-spatial hierarchies (see Figure 9), which also structure the monastery, its monastic lodgings, lay household rooms and numerous village and ritual sites dotted around the landscape. Th e height of attendees’ seats decrease according to their status. Th is verti- cal organization of space is a prime way of indexing purity and author- ity (Mills 2003: 34, 51). Th us, the principal monk is seated in the centre of the ‘head’ (Tr. go) of the room, and occupies the highest and most ornate seat. Th is is where statues of the deities invoked in the chant- ing are situated. During lhabab, the chanting monks (to the left of the dais) all sat on plain burgundy cushions, in a higher position than the laity who sat before them. Typically, monks who have taken the most vows are seated nearest to the end of a prayer hall that houses the statues, along with the main ritual practitioners. In general, older women gather towards the head of the hall, while younger women and empowering locales 181

Butter lamps Dais Monk’s Seat

Post Post M M Main e Lhabab e n’ n’ Activity s s

S S e e a a t t i Women’s Seating i n n g Post Post g

E n t Men’s Seating r Men’s Seating y

Figure 9. Druchung Community Hall layout during lhabab

children were seated towards the ‘ bottom’ (Tr. zhuq), the end near- est the door, where lay people watch and prostrate. Men of all ages attended, but were predominantly older laymen. Th ese attendees sat at the ‘bottom’ and round the edges of the room. Th e gendered rever- sal of normal seating arrangements (men usually occupy the highest and most central positions in Trinde gatherings) relates to one of the many socially unconventional aspects of lhabab practice. Th e ‘head’ to ‘bottom’ seating order is more typically: lamas, monks, older laymen, younger laymen, older women, younger women then non-infant chil- dren (Mills 2003: 34). As Humphrey and Laidlaw argue, ritualized actions should not only be comprehended as part of a more general set of social relations, but also in terms of how rituals are subjectively interpreted by individuals themselves (1994: 6). Much of the fi eldwork for this chapter thus took the form of oral testimonies integrated with participant observation in a variety of ritual and social settings. Some of the principal followers mentioned in this chapter are Jampa, a Yushu-born NGO policy offi cer in his early thirties. Kunjũ is twenty-fi ve and comes from a Golog pas- toralist family. He works alongside Jampa in a Xining NGO offi ce. Both 182 chapter five these men became interested in lhabab through their discussions with Jorten, who is from Sengze in Yushu (which is the same fatherland as Jampa). Jorten is the forty year old director of a local NGO. Jampa, and later Kunjũ, started to participate in lhabab, a practice that has become a signifi cant part of their lives. Th ese men discuss lhabab avidly, for example at informal work-related social events. As it becomes clear in the ethnography below, the ‘study of ritual and other popular cultural practices (is) … never too far removed from debates over social order, morality, and the question of how best to govern … populations’ (Litz- inger 2000: 28).

Lhabab Overview

During lhabab, lama Namje, a Lab-area monk, or his student, invokes one of a number of deities to temporarily inhabit participants’ bod- ies. Th e ritual moment is instigat by monastic practitioners’ chants that participants consider to be imbued with the necessary ritual power (cf. Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 5). Havnevik describes this as ‘possession’, which she describes as, ‘a condition where a non-human being enters a human body and partly or fully takes over the personality’, or, alterna- tively, ‘as any altered state of consciousness interpreted in terms of the infl uence of an alien sprit’ (2002: 259). Th e deity enhances a person’s consciousness and sense faculties for the duration. Some people relate seeing deities that appeared like scrolls painted with sacred images (Tr. thangkas) and extraordinarily vivid, ‘real’ three-dimensional gods. Fol- lowers remain aware of their actions during lhabab. Followers and critics use diff erent terminology to describe the prac- tice.1 Jampa described, ‘one who mediates with local-deities’ (Tr. lhawa) using the English word ‘shamanism’. Th ese practitioners are monasti- cally unaffi liated ‘spirit mediums’ (Samuel 1993: 291). Th e practice is well established and found in many areas, and particularly in Rebkong, Amdo (Epstein and Peng 1998: 126). Jampa termed this practice ‘deity possession’, and contrasted it with tantric monastic practices like lhabab. Jampa describes deity possession as, ‘a kind kind of job—people pay spirit mediums to go into a trance to achieve something or to receive an

1 Foreign scholars have analysed related phenomena such as: village oracles in Ladakh (Day 1989), female oracles (Diemberger 2004), a female state oracle (Havn- evik 2002), rites of exorcism (Mumford 1989), exorcism (Ortner 1978) and a ‘shamanic matrix’ (Samuel 1993). empowering locales 183 answer, but you do not worship the spirit medium’. In contrast, lhabab is considered to be a ‘blessing’ practice (Tr. shela~ , T. byin.rlabs). Follow- ers emphasize the heightened consciousness of a person during lhabab, and contrast this with the possession experienced by spirit mediums, and also with the week-long comatose state experienced by revenants (described below). Lhabab is the expression most oft en employed to describe the ritual practice (Tr. dzeygo, M. li) described in this chapter. By all known accounts, lhabab is unique to reform era Trinde.2 Lhabab is becoming increasingly popular, particularly in Yushu and Trinde Counties, Amdo areas of Qinghai and eastern China.3 In Yushu Prefecture, lhabab is followed principally by unskilled women of all ages, men working outside the formal sector, NGO staff and directors and Dõ Tri Monastery affi liates. It is less popular in Nangchen and outlying counties like Chumarleb. Non-professional women of thirty to fi ft y years old constitute the overwhelming majority of participants. Many of these women are storekeepers or kiosk assis- tants who thereby have a measure of economic independence. Th eir fi nancial status does not translate into social, political or religious sta- tus. Th e women’s centrality in lhabab may be partially related to the apparent general lack of opportunities for unschooled rural women to gain respect and social standing, at least outside of domestic contexts, amidst the new administrative structures of post-reform Yushu.4 In Trinde, lhabab is only popular with poor, non-professional men. Work unit and professional men are not banned from participating, and in other Yushu areas some professional (especially non-work unit) men do participate. Jampa related how some Yushu work unit profes- sionals and cadres ‘practise in secret’. In Trinde, however, work unit employees vehemently critique lhabab as ‘new’ or ‘invented’ dharma— a heterodox tradition that does not fi t in either local textual or offi cial defi nitions. Jayang, a man in his mid-fi ft ies and a former monk men- tioned that his non-professional thirty-fi ve year old spouse participates. Jayang explained that, ‘If they believe in lama Namje they can “dance” and do strange things when the gods are in their mind.’ He does not

2 Th e term is documented for Buddha’s descent from Tushita (T. lha.bab.dus.chen). 3 Scholarly evaluations of ritual practices are frequently at odds with those given by local people. Volf attributes the increase in the number of mediums in Ladakh to a local reaction to modernity, whereby mediumship becomes an expression of local ‘cultural identity in the face of major social and economic changes’ (cited in Havnevik 2002: 282). By contrast, a local person suggested the increase was due to deities fl eeing Chinese-occupied Tibet and amassing in Ladakh (ibid. 282). 4 Th is point requires further research. 184 chapter five condemn lhabab. All the other work unit professional men and women are scornful of the practice. Conversely, those undertaking so-called ‘free work’, such as NGO employment, have been able to keep a ‘foot in both camps’, being both professional and able to engage in novel ritual practices. Th e diff erent states a person experiences are dependent on the par- ticipant, and on whether a ‘true’ (within the Buddhist pantheon) deity or a ‘non-Buddhist’ deity inhabits a person during the ritual. Jampa described ‘mountain gods, strange creatures and weird life-forms’ as ‘not real deities’, and explained that, ‘Th ese beings are unable to help sentient beings benefi cially as they are outside the Buddhist pantheon.’ Jampa divided lhabab deities into ‘natural’ or ‘worldly’ and ‘other- worldly’, ‘spiritual’. Tenzin, a former Yushu cadre and a critic of lhabab, further distinguishes ‘possession by higher levels of Buddha protector- deities’ (Tr. yishibab), ‘lama blessings’ (Tr. sebab~ ) and ‘possession by non-Buddhist deities’ (Tr. lhabab). As Mills (2003a: 31–2) elaborates, in contrast to ‘worldly gods’ (Tr. jigten phalha), ‘supra-worldly deities’ (Tr. jigten laydey phalha) are considered appropriate objects of ‘refuge’ as their veneration is benefi cial for a person’s journey to enlighten- ment. Oracles can only be inhabited by worldly gods, but incarnates are considered to be embodiments of supra-worldly deities (ibid. 272). Elaborating on these distinctions, Kedruq from Sershul describes how: You can always worship true deities. Th ose deities will help you in this life and in your next life. If you hang prayer fl ags for mountain gods, they can only help you in this life, for example, with your employment or health, but they cannot help with your future. Th ey are a quick [expedient] form of help for you. You do not prostrate to mountain gods, for if you do wor- ship them, they will make you a slave and you will be forced to remain there for years and years. Jampa distinguishes between higher tantra specialists, for whom lhabab is part of Buddhism, and ‘academic’ specialists who ‘do not understand tantra well, they just read and debate’.5 Th e diff erent realms within the Buddhist cosmos and their relation to practices involving ‘possession’ are discussed by Havnevik (2002: 259–61). Educated followers tend to interrogate lhabab refl exively, scrutin- izing the authenticity of their own understanding. Jampa warned that

5 Tantra is the body of beliefs and practices that endeavours to ritually utilize and focus the universal energy, within human beings, in productive and liberating ways. empowering locales 185 personal experiences should not be retold and said he could relate his knowledge ‘only superfi cially’. Describing lhabab experientially, Jampa reported how he felt, ‘very relaxed and normal. I was not thinking, “How interesting, how mysterious!” but, rather, I was in a state of equanimity.’ He described how: When the lama rang his bell, the sound vacated all my thoughts; I heard only the pure sound. As the lama continued to chant the mantras, I did not want to, but I performed. I said, ‘Om Ah Hung’—like when you sneeze! I was very logical, not ‘drunken’ [a popular charge against follow- ers]. All the time I was thinking: Am I performing, or is this happening naturally? But I could not stop it. I would not normally do that in front of people. It is not like a dream or drunkenness—what I did, I know clearly. I did not visualize anything, but I did do the ‘disco-dancing’. My arms became numbed up to the shoulder. I could not control the numbness, so I myself stopped what was happening. It was about ten minutes in total. I was sober throughout. When I got home, I was tired. I asked myself: How was it that I performed? I tried to recreate it at home, but I could not repeat it as I had done in the moment. Now Jampa is keen to learn about other followers’ experiences and to ‘see things’ himself. ‘Gods descend’ (Tr. lhabab) and ‘spirit mediums’ (Tr. lhawa) can be compared with revenants (Tr. delog, T. ’das.logs, lit. ‘gone-return’). A ‘revenant’ is someone who is said to ‘die’ and then returns from the dead to assist living people. Revenants suggest which virtuous actions a person should undertake before death (for example, giving donations to monastic practitioners for chanting) to ameliorate their suff ering aft er death (Samuel 1993: 292–4). Delog are linked with Buddhist tradi- tions, and are thus considered more akin to dharma practitioners (Tr. chöpa) than spirit mediums (Samuel 1993: 292–4). Pommaret (1989: 146) describes revenants as predominantly female (having a female-male ratio of four to one) and notes that they come from modest family backgrounds. Revenants may be married or single, and are occasionally reincarnations of a former practitioner. Most rev- enants have a physical irregularity like epilepsy or blindness, but can- not otherwise be recognized by outward attributes (ibid. 146–7). Gao, a schoolteacher, described that revenants no longer enter a seven-day comatose state, but instead ‘chant and think at the same time’. Trinde teachers describe checking for air entering and exiting a person’s nose, and conclude that revenants ‘only look dead.’ Th is informal testing shows how ritual practices are subject to local scrutiny, as discussed in Chapter One (and see Taussig 1991: 461–2). Th is alteration was not 186 chapter five state-mandated, but was a local modifi cation undertaken in the case of a supposedly ‘borderline’ ritual practice. Gao stated that, ‘In this way, revenants are becoming more powerful. It has been hard for the gov- ernment to stop such practices, now they allow people to believe.’ In spite of this relative freedom, there are currently no young revenants in Trinde. During a discussion about revenants at the school, Denba, a teacher from a pastoralist area, related how a young herdsman from Domda (northern Trinde plateau-area) had died unexpectedly. Th e father visited the female revenant in the nunnery (Tr. ani gonpa) in Chari, Sershul. Th is ‘spirit-medium nun’ (Tr. ani lhama) is widely held to be around 120 years old. Th e revenant related that the son was ‘still in hell’ (Tr. nyawa) as he had killed a dog. It would thus be very diffi - cult for the son to be reborn as a human being. Returning to Domda, pastoralists living in the locale confi rmed the revenant’s story to the surprised family. Revenants’ practices do not attract the condemnation critics reserve for lhabab, nor is the practice unequivocally upheld, as with Pema Jungne’s ‘sky letter.’ Th ese practices and issues are analysed further in the discussion below.

Lama Namje’s History

Lhabab was initiated solely by lama Namje, who is a monk from Donkhoo village in Lab District in Trinde. Lama Namje is venerated by followers in Qinghai and beyond, many of whom carry laminated photographs of him in their wallets, oft en alongside images of the tenth Panchen Lama. Lama Namje has now trained a number of other monks, for example in Dõ Tri Monastery, in Trinde county town. Lhabab meetings are commonly held in private houses, but lama Namje’s visits to the county town monastery are also signifi cant moments of venera- tion for local people. One particularly large, open-air congregation was held opposite the school. Th e goings-on attracted bemused responses from students and derisive remarks from teachers. In informal conversations amongst themselves and with foreign- ers, followers focus on retelling lama Namje’s life-narrative [T. rnam. thar]. Describing a religious practitioner’s lineage is part of a respected and long-standing local practice (see Garratt 2002, Germano 1998: 58–63). In 1958–1959, Namje fl ed to Lhasa, where he was imprisoned. Later, while worshipping at the Jokhang in Lhasa, lama Namje’s mind empowering locales 187

‘fused with Shakyamuni: he truly recognized Buddha’. Back in Trinde, Namje meditated in secret during the commune era during which time followers say he attained a state of ‘unmediated cognition’ (T. dngos.su rig.pa, Tr. ngösu rigpa), or that his ‘nature became indistinguishable’ (T. ngo.bo.dbyer.med.du.gyur.pa). Even before 1978, followers had started to gather around lama Namje. Th e early 1980s saw the formal reinstating of religious belief and the ‘opening up’ of the PRC. In 1984, when Jorten, a long-standing follower, fi rst saw lama Namje, he started to cry, although, as he said, ‘At that time, I was only worshipping him, not really understanding.’ In 1985–1986, Jorten had a new feeling towards lama Namje: I felt that he is not the same as other people; he is very compassionate. When lama taught the dharma [Tr. choo], it was not repeated from sutras and texts. Rather, [having assimilated the wisdom directly] he was able to teach directly from his mind. Lama thinks very deeply about dharma and explains Buddhism very clearly. He imparted new understandings and transmitted feelings of purity. It was a feeling that all the people present shared. It is so diff erent that I cannot adequately explain … people truly loved him. Later, when lama gave a sutra recitation, I noticed changes in two or three of the followers’ bodies. Th ese people were reciting, sing- ing and dancing, but I did not feel anything then. Lama Namje did not explain clearly what this was. Gatherings began to occur more frequently. By 1991, Jorten ‘also had that kind of feeling’ (a lhabab experience) and describes participants as having seen ‘many things that you cannot see in any other place’. He related the experience in some detail: I was too shy to sing very loudly or dance. It was not that I wanted to dance—it came from inside. It was like a kind of power that made me sing and dance. Lama initiated us into things, but it was only barely ‘us’ [doing those things]. We experienced a kind of compassion. I am not just say- ing that. A strong feeling came; but our comprehension also expanded. I wanted to take on all the suff ering in life myself. I did not want to return to my daily life and home. Today, Jampa regularly attends lhabab across Qinghai. He describes one experience as follows: Th ere were three thousand people in the monastery yard—quite spec- tacular! Th irty to forty people went into trance. It became so dusty, like everyone was disco dancing! Lama told them to stop, and they cooled down. Some people dance peacefully, some angrily. It depends on whether calm tantric meditation deities like Chenrezig [T. spyan.ras.gzigs.dbang. phyug, S. Avalokitevara] or wrathful deities like Chagdor [T. phyag.rdo, 188 chapter five

S. Vajapani], Tamdrin [T. rta.mgrin, S. Hayagrīva] or Gonpo [T. mgon. po, S. Mahākāla] are inside their minds. All deities are good, but they have diff erent natures. I could not say whether men are only possessed by male deities, and women by female ones. I saw a woman possessed by a female deity, and never saw men possessed like that. But I was not paying that type of attention [mimics lhabab state]. When people are inhabited, their mouths and eyes are open and their hands try to hold something. It is like the deities themselves appear! Some inhabited participants say they felt like they can bear all living beings’ suff ering. Many cry—it is very emotional. Jorten related how lama Namje’s capacity to heal the sick demonstrates his effi cacy and religious power: Lab Monastery conditions were especially poor then, worse than our own houses! Lama worked all day curing the sick, never becoming tired or pausing to eat. He said, ‘If I can help, I will not feel any suff ering.’ Lama took water into his mouth to spray over people. He cured people who hospitals could not save. Followers did not just feel his power; they saw it. Lama could not cure everybody, but cured most. Th is is because of the karmic cause-and-eff ect relationship. For example, weeds grow up naturally. People are also like this. If lama were to save everyone, it would be like breaking the natural law. Jorten then gave an impassioned description of how lama Namje remotely empowered (Tr. lama sa wong nong) Jorten’s own recovery during a seemingly life-threatening illness. Jorten elaborated that, despite his non-incarnate status, lama Namje has a unique capacity and method: Lama is an ordinary man—he has developed by himself. Lama has never confi rmed whether he is a reincarnation of this or that person. He has almost become a Buddha [by] himself. I initially felt that lama is a medi- tator not a scholar, but later I felt he is both. Lama is unlike other medi- tators who have a traditional view of things. Th e way he sees things is diff erent. He is not the kind of person that must understand or believe Tibetan Buddhism. He counsels: fi rst, one must understand like Shakya- muni. You really have to become enlightened. Lama does not say one must worship as soon as you arrive, he advises that one must debate. I told lama that my belief in Tibetan Buddhism had previously been only superstition; but now I knew the true power and wisdom of Buddhism, though only understood its power a little. Lama Namje’s stated aim is not to make money but to introduce his religious practice to more people. Nevertheless, substantial contrib- utions are fl owing in to lama Namje from wealthy devotees in seaboard cities (for a similar phenomenon in the case of Jigme Phuntshog, see empowering locales 189

Germano 1998: 91). Diff erentiating between the diff erent tendencies found in the east and west of China, Jampa describes how people of the regional nationality embody monastic ritual-dance positions (Tr. chã), while inner China followers assume qi gong postures. Follow- ing lama Namje’s widespread gatherings, lhabab has gained swift popu- lar acceptance in Amdo, tantra being strong in the Nyingma practice of Dzogchen (T. rdzogs.chen, ‘great perfection’), prevalent there. Nuns on Qinghai Lake Island recently asked Namje to become their abbot. Donations have paid for a temple outside Xining, though lama Namje does not want to fi x his residence as large numbers of people could ‘cause problems’.

Local Critiques of Lhabab

As lama Namje’s following grows, he attracts fervent censure from local critics, especially from work unit professionals. Tenzin, an intel- lectual former cadre turned charity offi cer from Sichuan, describes lama Namje as, ‘a Dzogchen lama who learned his skill and gained his power through specializing in meditation’. Tenzin described the lhabab phenomenon as, ‘just vertical and sideways jumping [Tr. parzhok]. Th is is an automatic physical response that does not arise through training. It is just making people feel things.’ Tenzin noted that lama Namje is approved by a high-standing Kandze lama, but maintains that: Th is [lhabab] way is not good: it might look like lhabab, but it is not the same. Padmasambhava [Guru Rinpoche] and Shakyamuni did not do this stupid, crazy stuff . Dorje Shugden also did not really take refuge. He became a protector, but not from Buddhism. Shugden was not an ancient, but a new, protector. In this narrative, Tenzin equates lama Namje with Dorje Shugden, whose veneration was banned by the Dalai Lama in 1996. Dorje Shug- den is variously understood to be the emanation of Buddha Manjushri, a transcendent or worldly Dharma Protector or a malevolent spirit. Th e ban spawned a religious crisis (see Mills 2003b), which is what local crit- ics are trying to avert in the case of lhabab. Local people say that lama Namje does not, in practice, have associations with Dorje Shugden. Pema, a literary-language teacher, makes a similar distinction to Tenzin, and contrasts stable, dharmic progression and unsteady lhabab senselessness. He stated dismissively that: 190 chapter five

Th ere is no need to think deeply about lhabab: it has no meaning! What villagers believe is lhabab is actually sebab~ ; just wa-wa-wa [lolls about drunkenly]. It is like drinking alcohol. Th e Dalai Lama is the world’s high- est lama. When he teaches dharma, not even one person does this sebab~ . Th ose Lab guys at Druchung are not lamas; they are just young monks. If a person follows dharma the mind steadily proceeds [slowly tilts a book from a vertical to horizontal position]. Lhabab is like a feather blowing about on the wind [Tr. absibuh]. Lhabab is new dharma [Tr. choo sapa], that is all. For me, I like new computers and old religion! Pema asked that I refrain from discussing his views with the Headmas- ter and Teaching Director. He commented that, ‘Th ey would be furious. Th ey think lhabab must, oooh [parodies reverential tones] really mean something.’ As it turned out, the Headmaster and Director held highly critical views about lhabab. Lama Namje is also regarded with suspicion by many other lamas. Following one of the gatherings, the town’s leader unceremoniously ordered lama Namje out of the neighbouring county of Sershul. Local struggles to defi ne whether lhabab is ‘good’ (Tr. yapo) or improper, new or old dharma relate to the multiple meanings that dharma has always involved. Th is multiplicity renders lhabab suscep- tible to accusations of being ‘improper’ by certain professionals, and allows followers to understand the phenomenon as a sanctifi ed and legitimate practice. Current discussions in Yushu about ritual legiti- macy refl ect earlier redefi nitions of authentic and orthodox dharma during periods of rapid social change (Dorji Wangchuk 2002, Davidson 2002). As Stein (1972: 191) argues, it is oft en impossible to diff erentiate between autochthonous, Bönpo and exotic elements of local dharma. He points out, for example, that dharma also means ‘custom’ and that, during ‘invocations to local gods of soil which have preserved indig- enous deities to some extent, we are told that a deity bore such and such a name in the religion of men and some other new one in the “religion of the gods”’ (ibid.). Th e distinction drawn here is between ‘indigenous religion’ (Tr. michoo) and ‘Buddhism’ (Tr. lhachoo) in Trinde parlance and understanding. Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, related a ditty popular in Dawa village (which is affi liated to Kazang Monastery, whose lama upholds a strictly ‘clerical’ style). Th e ditty is: ‘Old man came, windy it became, old women went crazy’ (Tr. ngige~ yong dü, lung chenbo xi janey, thuni, bumo tsongma nyenba cho sung). Th e ‘old man’ is lama Namje, who is affi liated to Dõ Tri Monastery. Th e wind symbolizes an unwanted element that these people wish would blow away. Th e lhabab women participants are those empowering locales 191 said to be going ‘mad’ (Tr. nyonpa). Th e fact that ‘women’ are specifi ed as lama Namje’s followers serves to devalue his credibility, and consolidates the conjunction of women, irrationality and social destabilization. Th is conjoining occurs partly because, in ritual terms, women are related to bodily ‘pollution’ (Tr. drub). In some instances, women should not touch certain ritual objects or visit particular sacred places.6 Diff ering perceptions about the legitimacy and ‘rationality’ of lhabab exist even among followers. For example, Kedruq, a local man in his mid-twenties, reports that during one lhabab assembly in Sershul, a woman and man of around sixty years old removed their clothing and stood in the mid- dle of the crowd, embracing each other tightly. Many fellow participants were taken aback by the pair’s behaviour. Some followers comment that gods practising male and female union (S. yab yum) must have entered the woman and man’s minds, while others laughed hysterically. Local debates about lhabab have not been silenced by the offi cial validation of lama Namje and lhabab in Beijing, as discussed below.

Negotiating Offi cial Scrutiny

In the reform era, traditional practices have been allowed under the governmental-administrative rubric of local autonomy. Practices that are permitted offi cially are frequently those considered to further social order, stability and morality in policymakers’ and, now, in many local people’s understandings (cf. Litzinger 2000: 28). In moral terms, both the positive and negative characterizations of lhabab are signifi cant in terms of local and national debates about how to ‘construct an order of practice that might domesticate the divisive forces that have come to per- vade their environment’ (Marshall 1993: 214–15). Th ere are two main ways people believe this mediating ‘order of practice’ should be created. One is through gradualist ‘clerical’ study, while the other is via direct, participatory experience. Th is diff erence relates to the concept of ‘skilful means’ (T. thabs.kyi.bskyed.rim) namely, teaching Buddhism by the most suitable method for the person and context (Mills 2003a: 250). Th e particular take up or rejection of such a morally-signifi cant practice is revealing, and a particular course of action is usually prudent accord- ing to a person’s position and circumstances.

6 Such proscriptions depend on region, contextual circumstances, age and mode of contact. 192 chapter five

In 1998, and before the Falun Gong crackdown in 1999, lhabab came under the scrutinizing gaze of Beijing’s National Religious Bureau. Lama Namje was asked to participate in a fi ve-day national panel of experts at the Bureau’s conference on Tibetan Buddhism. Many scholars interested in Buddhism attended, but lama Namje was the only monk present. Th e scholars had to reconcile the reform era policy of toler- ance for ‘correct’ religious practice with the ongoing offi cial emphasis placed on maintaining a ‘material’ (M. wuzhi wenming) basis for Chi- na’s national ‘spiritual civilization’ (M. jingshen wenming). Lama Namje’s responses to offi cial questioning about lhabab suggest that he is highly competent in handling offi cial discourses. At this con- ference, Lama Namje presented lhabab using offi cial Chinese-language distinctions, and characterized his practice as body or ‘material’ sci- ence (roughly, M. wuzhi shang de zhuiqiu, ‘materialistic pursuit’) rather than mind or ‘spiritual’ science (M. jingshen shang de zhuiqiu, ‘spiri- tual pursuit’).7 Lama Namje’s phrasing rids the concept of lhabab from the superstitious overtones with which the practice might otherwise be imbued. By ‘materializing’ lhabab as ‘body science’, he presents the practice as consistent with the state-sponsored rhetoric about the eff ects of ‘correct’ religion on health, body and mind, as well as relating it to China’s advancement towards a ‘socialist spiritual civilization’ (M. she- huizhuyi jingshen wenming). Jampa commented that the experts were ‘unable to decide whether the practice was true or not’. Ultimately, the authorities decreed that lama Namje’s many years of experience should be considered a ‘valuable cultural achievement’, whereby the practice of lhabab could continue. In a Kham context of Sichuan, the late Jigme Phuntshog (the founder and abbot of Sertha Buddhist Institute) was also skilful in invoking ‘mnemonic icons’, and in exploiting terminolog- ical ambiguities (Germano 1998: 60–1). Th is cultural dexterity allowed him to affi rm regional identifi cation and ‘symbolic community’ implic- itly, whilst concurrently restoring a local institution without offi cial prohibition (ibid.). Perhaps the practice seemed too complex for the scholar-authorities to delve into, particularly as the monk’s own characterization of the practice fell within the bounds of permitted practice, and considering the sup- port the phenomenon receives from people on China’s eastern-seaboard.

7 For a diff erent understanding of body and spirit in ecstatic practice, see Comoroff and Comoroff (1985: passim). empowering locales 193

Lama Namje’s representation of lhabab cuts across offi cial and local artic- ulations, as Jorten, a Yushu NGO director describes: Chinese say Tibetan Buddhism is a kind of superstition. Th ey think reli- gions are spiritual and Marxism is materialist. Th e Chinese Communist Party say that spiritual is bad, material is good. Lama explains that Bud- dhism is not spiritual, it is material: because if one does not have a body, one cannot mediate. Meditation is not spiritual; it is a real thing. You cannot just imagine you have become a Buddha. Jorden further stated that: Lama does not like it if followers ask for blessing—he likes questions about what Buddhist dharma really is. Nowadays, the negative part for Tibetans is that they believe in Buddha, but do not actually understand what Tibetan Buddhism actually is. Th e inclination Jorden describes, summarizes and refl ects the general shift towards an increasing popular critical consciousness vis-à-vis ritual and religion, as described in Chapter Two.

Th e Politics of Reform Era Ritual Practice

China’s policy fl uctuations over ‘religion’ and offi cial attempts to curb excessive donations and root out bogus practitioners are signifi cant in understanding local support of, or objection to, particular reform era ritual practices. Debates about what constitutes ‘a ritual’ or a ‘correct’ sacred practice, and about whether a ritual is ‘good’ or not, refl ect the social concerns of a particular historical and political moment. Such discussions highlight the presence of multiple and overlapping sets of coexistent social perceptions (see Bell 1992: 91). In the context of lhabab, these discussions highlight the contradictory tensions existing in Trinde society. Th ese tensions relate to a tendency towards social conservatism (typical of ‘clerical’ Buddhism, as favoured by work unit professionals), and to the preferences for personal and social transfor- mation that are evident in the lhabab followers’ inclinations (aft er Bell 1992: 169). Increased ‘clericism’ and conservative interpretations of the vinaya (the ‘discipline’ element of Buddha’s teachings, which is com- plemented by dharma, or ‘doctrine’) are common to both the religious ‘revival’ across this region, and to monasticism in exile. In part, this is linked to the need for sponsorship, which is particularly pressing now that the prior fi nancial bases of support have been severed (Jill Sudbury, personal communication). 194 chapter five

As an unmediated sacral experience, lhabab represents a reassuringly local style of practice that is accessible to everyone, irrespective of sta- tus or cultural competence. As Havnevik elaborates, ‘In a Buddhist con- text, power tends to be transmitted from the deity to its human vehicle, and a divine being gives the medium (i.e. the god-descended person) power to do good and this enhances the self-respect of the one pos- sessed’ (2002: 282). Lhabab also off ers a set of non-professional ‘home- makers’ a way to mediate the eff ects of increasing local socio-economic stratifi cation, and to gain a measure of moral status in the absence of other reform era opportunities. In contrast to ‘clerical’ approaches, lhabab does not involve the accumulation of wisdom through asceticism and meditative practice. Instead, lhabab allows god-inhabited followers to relate directly to potent sources of ritual empowerment and authority by contracting tan- tric deities and other ‘culture heroes’ (Samuel 1993: 9, 34). Tantric and ‘clerical’ Buddhism can be thought of as diff erent ‘modalities or orienta- tions within the Buddhist and Bönpo teachings, rituals and practices’ (ibid. 7). Local tantric Buddhism is not a marginal phenomenon, but is instead strongly linked to the ‘bodhi orientation’ and concerned with realizing goals of enlightenment (see Samuel 1993). Local work unit staff and orthodox monastic practitioners criticize lhabab for bypassing the standard ‘clerical’ approach, involving gradual progression through persevering with standard dharmic practices and texts, and with the established traditions of interpretation by which those texts have to be read (Samuel 1992: 204–13, 217). Gaining status within the lhabab context thus circumscribes the standing that non-professional follow- ers attain among Trinde’s work unit professionals and among orthodox monastic clerics. Th at said, diff erent social actors (for instance, NGO offi cers and homemakers) are not all empowered by, or criticized for, participating in lhabab in the same way (cf. Bell 1992: 222). Kunjũ suggests that lhabab has a potent appeal because, ‘Th rough this practice, lama Namje can show his power. He can demonstrate what dharma actually is.’ As these comments show, both critics and followers are concerned about the authenticity of religious authority and experi- ence. For followers, the embodiment of deities becomes an authenti- cating device, and the potential to be inhabited by a Buddhist deity is lhabab’s most attractive aspect. For some critics, the potential for losing control (in both the lhabab moment, and in terms of a future enslavement to earth-bound deities) through being inhabited by a mountain god or other spirit from outside the Buddhist pantheon is disturbing. For other empowering locales 195 work unit professionals, lhabab is either seen as an unsanctioned, poten- tially ‘superstitious’ practice, or presented as a new-fangled deviation. Samuel suggests that ‘clerical’ Buddhism carries the possibility of being undermined by more immediate advancement through tantric practice (ibid. 204–13, 217). Th e directness of lhabab as a route to enlightenment is one reason it is so attractive to followers. Conversely, this shortcut possibility is threatening to work unit authorities, as it downplays or bypasses the need for their hard-won scholarly competencies in literacy, local knowledge and history. As Bell points out, ritualization is ‘designed to do what it does without bringing what it is doing across the thresh- old of discourse or systematic thinking’ (1992: 93). To clarify the ori- entations further, there are conceptual links between ‘respectability’ and ‘clerical’ religion, and between ‘reputation’ and the types of Bud- dhist practice characterized by lhabab. ‘Reputation’ involves subjective evaluations of interpersonal worth within contexts that do not involve hierarchical comparison, for example lhabab gatherings. ‘Respectabil- ity’ involves a singular, linear, individualized scale using rigid, external criteria (Wilson 1973 cited in Samuel 1993: 215–16). Th ese structured approaches equate with work unit situations and orthodox monasticism. In Yushu and the surrounding autonomous regions, religion has become a prime locus around which diff erent social actors attempt to defi ne an authentic nationality space and practice. Discourses in reform era Trinde are not only constituted by inner China or state authorities, but are also infl uenced by contemporary and prior monastic authorities, household elders, cadres, NGO offi cers, village leaders, schoolteachers, students and work unit staff . Asad argues that the shift in the meaning of ritual, from a disciplinary technique for controlling moral disposi- tions to a contemporary understanding of ritual as ‘enacted symbols’ refl ects the historical disempowerment of religious ritual (1993: 57). Other analyses link the demise of a ‘traditional’, ‘religious’ or ‘sacral’ worldview explicitly to the onset of modernity in new nation-states (Chatterjee 1993: 6, cf. Benavides 1998: 186–201). In contrast to Asad, in Yushu, the perception of lhabab as a personally eff ective or socially empowered ritual practice does not depend on people experiencing a transition towards increasingly rationalistic ways of thinking. Instead, it primarily rests on a series of interrelated work unit versus non-work unit distinctions. In this loose social alignment, proper/clerical and improper/non-clerical contrasts correspond, respectively, to an institu- tional/non-institutional distinction. Th ese distinctions are newly salient points of contrast, but play on old oppositions, for example between 196 chapter five tame (or civilized) and wild (Akester 2001: 26–7, Samuel 1993: passim). Th ese axes of social diff erence are currently more important than sect (Tr. drunta) and educational level (though education is a prime factor in whether a person becomes a professional). Cadres, ‘clerical-style’ practitioners, work unit employees and local scholars are aligned in suppressing practices that are considered to be unorthodox as invented, new, fake, destabilizing, strange or ‘not real religion’ (cf. Mills 2003a: 101). Th ese people prioritize offi cially- verifi able, textual, gradualist practice, and consider practices that are sanctioned in offi cial and local institutional terms to have a ‘good’ and ‘stable’ eff ect on morality and society. Th is position is at odds with unaf- fi liated ritual specialists, tantric practitioners, non-professional (oft en female) followers and non-state ‘free work’ (e.g. NGO) professionals who favour lhabab’s embodied approach. Lhabab is unsettling to work unit professionals because its central fi gure, lama Namje, is a Buddhist monk, yet his practice contravenes established defi nitions of ‘proper’, gradualist dharma practice and orthodox defi nitions of proper ritual. Th e ritual practice nevertheless remains within the remit of permitted practices according to offi cial local autonomy discourses. Ironically, work unit professionals’ percep- tions ignore the fact that monastic Buddhism has long contained non- hierarchical elements and embraced social relations based on repute rather than rank. As Samuel maintains, various dharmic and social norms (for example, clerical and non-clerical) were previously found together within communities. Diff erent meanings were, as they are today, attributed to the various threads of understanding (1993: 215). As Humphrey and Laidlaw (1994: 6) point out, rituals are always conditional, ephemeral and diverse in practice. Despite that diversity, Trinde work unit professionals strive to defi ne ‘proper’ ritual as ortho- dox, gradualist dharma, which is pitted against lhabab. Conversely, followers perceive lhabab as a genuine dharmic practice that is comple- mentary to, and an improvement on, prior ritual forms. For followers, lhabab can be considered to be a: Powerful metaphor for new types of practice, for the creation of ‘auton- omous spaces’ of practice which defy the oppressive logic of current ‘power monopolies’ … for the articulation of strategies to create, exercise and legitimate new power relations and new opportunities for survival, and, fi nally, as a symbolic and material resource for the ‘elaboration of a conceptual challenge to the power monopolies’. (Bayart 1986 cited in Marshall 1993: 215) empowering locales 197

Of course, power and offi cial autonomy discourses do not exist as pure types, but are reinterpreted and reshaped in practice. As Rack, writ- ing in a diff erent Chinese nationality context, points out, reform era religious phenomena are not a return to a previous tradition that coun- ters the disturbances created by China’s associations with modernity. Instead they are forms of ‘constantly recreated local knowledge which is highly relevant to China’s continuing economic and social changes’ (2003: 171–2). In practice, ‘revivals’ do not involve returning to an uninterrupted tradition, but are an adaptable way of engaging with modernity, even if that involves the expression of confl ict (ibid.). In some senses, lhabab represents an alternative mode of sociality that involves political considerations. Th is is because engaging in, or rejecting, this practice aff ects a person’s ability to conduct their own, and others’, comportment within local society (cf. Marshall 1993: 238). Work unit professionals are those who advance and uphold civilizing nationality culture discourses in public contexts, and also deride lhabab as ‘new religion’. To ascertain whether lhabab is ‘proper’ or ‘improper’ dharma is important for work unit professionals because of its signifi - cance as a cornerstone of local morality. As Marshall points out, ‘To align oneself with the wrong sort of supernatural and material powers, and regulate one’s conduct according to the wrong, indeed false, set of precepts, opens up the space in which the nominal “failure of the nation”, or nationality, is manifested’ (Marshall 1993: 238). As Litzinger (2000: 254) also argues: Th e critical reinhabitation of the past and the reimagining of the local were informed by an increasingly frenetic and anxious socialist modern- ization agenda … Th e interest in ritual and social morality was intricately tied up with the search for new forms of local governmentality. Protestations about lhabab and the advancement of a more ‘objective’, internally-coherent ideal are not only attempts to preserve critics’ mate- rial conditions and positions within local society, but involve subjective moral considerations as well. Furthermore, as Rack’s work highlights, nationality policies have an obvious, and possibly unanticipated, eff ect of reinforcing the idea among Trinde people that there may be, and in fact are, expressly local modes of knowledge (2003: 172). To summarize, lhabab is a local practice, arising in the context of rapid reform era social and economic change, which involves both localized and supra-local elements. Both Trinde non-work unit and inner China people participate in this ritual practice, and it is vigorously contested by the majority 198 chapter five of state-employees and ‘clerical’ monastic practitioners. Local responses to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (henceforth, SARS) epidemic, dis- cussed below, also involve both Trinde people and incomers participating in a range of local practices. Unlike lhabab, however, SARS responses did not attract condemnation from local administrators, teachers or monastic practitioners due to the critical circumstances and the particular practices employed. SARS, and the related phenomenon of Pema Jungne’s sky letter (see below), are two moments that resonate with lhabab. All feature popu- lar participation in local and ritual practices and debates about authenticity, orthodoxy and morality. None of these practices and responses are petri- fi ed forms resurfacing aft er a long suppression by a totalizing ‘Chinese state’. Rather, they constitute new forms that are intimately connected to the politi- cal history of the Mao era, and to rapid reform era social changes.

Local and National SARS Responses

Th is section presents an analysis of local responses to the infectious dis- ease, SARS. SARS is a highly infectious, life-threatening viral infection, which epidemiological World Health Organization experts believe orig- inated in southern China. In early 2003, the virus spread quickly through many areas of China, except the TAR and Qinghai. SARS had signifi - cant eff ects on the daily practices of local people, limiting the places they would go to eat, visit or work, and greatly expanding health and hygiene measures, like the wearing of white facemasks. SARS prompted a wide range of cultural and political responses that were reminiscent of practices in prior eras. For example, offi cial revolutionary era type campaigns were seen along with commercial marketing. Furthermore, popular ‘folk’ remedies and invocations were used together with high- tech medicines and state-organized rural medi-camps. Revolutionary- style slogans were displayed on prominent banners and China Central Television (CCTV) poured out slick, ‘scientifi c’ health messages as part of the national epidemic prevention campaign. Leafl ets were widely distributed. T-shirts matching billboard and banner messages declared: ‘Attack SARS!’ Offi cial messages urged public vigilance, and slogans informed people that: ‘Controlling the SARS outbreak is everyone’s responsibility!’ (M. kong zhi fei dian yi qing shi mei yi ge ren de ze ren). Each work unit received documents from Yushu Hospital via the Prefecture government, explaining symptoms and responses. Tibetan- script and Chinese-character messages were displayed in prominent empowering locales 199 positions outside all school offi ces. Most Trinde people relied on the television news information about SARS. Updates were conveyed through school and government administration authorities, visiting ‘experts’, newspapers and staff gossip. An ‘anti-contamination’ sani- tation vehicle made regular visits to the school. Th e van disgorged a squad of masked, white-suited hygienists who inspected staff -rooms, classrooms and dormitories, and disinfected the whole school with giant pump-dispensers. Teachers said they approved of the hygiene measures but considered them to be ‘useless’ and argued that, ‘Th e gov- ernment cannot do anything.’ SARS, and the contemporaneous Iraq War, stimulated signifi cant political debates about the current global situation and about China’s offi cial handling of these domestically and internationally sensitive issues. Few Trinde residents believed the offi cial television and newspaper stories that the outbreak was ‘under control’. In remote Qinghai, the ‘modern’ preventative measures local people could take were particu- larly limited. Religious practices and ‘popular’ remedies instead became the main precautionary measure in Trinde. At the height of the scare, Norbu reported pandemonium at Trinde’s Tibetan Medicine Hospital. He exclaimed, ‘You should have seen it—droves of women fi ghting each other to snatch the remedies!’ Norbu related that teachers were send- ing locally-blessed traditional medicine to relatives in ‘Chinese places, like Xining’. During SARS, incomers also bought traditional medicine to send to relatives in aff ected areas. Trinde people related that Yushu Health Bureau distributed consecrated Tibetan medicine that was widely consumed by local people and incomers alike. Professional and non-professional locals used ‘folk’ cures, with musk commonly being worn in a pouch next to the ‘mind’ (Tr. se~). With the illness spreading, a team of teachers at the school turned two of the staff -rooms into a printing house for the production of a pro- tective mantra. No one at the school fully understood the text or knew its author or origins. However Jayang, a former monk and the school’s caretaker, explained that understanding is not important—the orator only has to have ‘absolute belief’ in whichever religious authority wrote the invocation. We were urged to recite the benediction continually. Th e Sanskrit mantra reads: Om Padma Sha Wa Ri Phags; Nan par Shig; Na Ga Nan; Tadya Th a, Sarba Wi Ri Ta; Ha Na Ha Na Badre Na Raksha Raksha Sva Ha, which is a wrathful phrasing. Th e school’s sole com- puter spewed forth copies of the script, which one inner China teacher described as a ‘superstitious saying’ (M. mixin shuofa). Th e same teacher 200 chapter five later noticed me watching him take a script, and quickly explained that he was ‘only taking it for the [Trinde] student’ lodging with him. Some incomers kept the scripts on the outside of their doors until well into 2004. Trinde residents’ affi rmations echo Malinowski’s (1974) theoriza- tion that people turn to miracles in times of social or individual crisis. At this time, literary-language teachers were in great demand, and were the focus of numerous pleas to correct people’s pronunciation of the mantra. One evening, two students telephoned home to Shewu from my room to tell their families that the Dalai Lama would be undertaking a special remote ‘empowerment’ (Tr. wongnõ) from India at ‘9:11’ that night, a globally signifi cant date. Th e news was related as a strict secret, but spread like wildfi re at the school, and was circulated among staff via a highly-organized staff ‘phone-tree’. By eleven minutes past nine, all the local teachers had fl ung their doors and windows open, and juniper smoke billowed into the freezing night. Everyone followed the instruc- tions, which had been related by word-of-mouth. Jackets were to be kept tightly zipped and all jewellery had to be removed. Th e practice of removing jewellery, which could captivate unwanted sprits, identifi es a rite as an exorcism (Martin Mills, personal communication). SARS provided a context in which nationality places, statuses and moralities were fi ercely debated. While people usually lament the remoteness and underdevelopment of their far west region, the SARS health crisis prompted a re-imagining of negative perceptions about the locale. During SARS, Trinde’s remoteness from east-coast disease epicentres like Hong Kong and Beijing, its pure high-altitude envi- ronment, sparse population and location in an unfrequented valley cul-de-sac became positive aspects of the County’s marginality. Local people refl ected on why the illness did not aff ect Qinghai, and noted a common view that, ‘Even though many Tibetans live in Beijing, and although countless Chinese became ill, not a single Tibetan contracted the illness.’ Many people claimed that the fact that no local people were infected was proof of the Dalai Lama’s ‘immunizing’ apotropaic power.8 For Trinde people, these statistics also validated their absolute faith in him and confi rmed the purity of their nationality plateau homeland

8 Apotropaic power may be conferred through carrying Rinpoche’s image as a talis- man, or by direct or remote blessings bestowed through a formal ceremony. Photo- graphs are oft en treated like thangkas (sacred paintings) and statues, which embody the sacred. Many local people believe these objects possess apotropiac power. High lamas are thought to be able to avert disaster. Monastic practitioners and professionals say that warding off all evil is not doctrinally possible if there is a lack of virtuous merit. empowering locales 201

(for an inner China version, see Figure 10). Among local residents, SARS also reaffi rmed the power of dharma, which is considered to be the central characteristic of this nationality. During SARS, moral contrasts between purity and degeneration operated on a number of levels. In inner China, SARS was considered

Figure 10. Marketing white gold: ‘When there is altitude, there is purity’ (M. you gaodu, you chundu) 202 chapter five to involve pollution from outside the nation, whereas Trinde people considered SARS to be pollution from urban inner China centres. Trinde people also linked SARS to local moral degeneration via idi- oms associated with Western and Chinese modernity. Th is degrada- tion was expressed in a famous ‘sky letter’ (Tr. nãyiq, T. nam.yig) that people received from Pema Jungne six years ago. Th e sky letter is a form of ‘treasure’ (Tr. terma). Th ese prohibited scriptures, ritual objects and other reliquary eff ects are hidden in secret places. In the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition such texts were usually prepared, sealed and concealed by Pema Jungne (Padmakara, Padmasambhava or Guru Rinpoche who is credited with bringing Tantric Buddhism to this region in the eighth century) and Yeshe Tsogyal (a tantric practitioner and one of Pema Jungne’s fi ve female consorts). Th is phenomenon occurred when Buddhist dharma, following a comparatively brief fl ourishing, was endangered and persecuted in a time of decline under King Lang- darma. Terma operate as ‘time capsules’ of cultural knowledge. Th ese teachings are hidden for the sake of future generations, either due to contemporary discrimination or because their messages are considered too sophisticated for those living at a given time. ‘Treasure discoverers’ (Tr. terton) exist to rediscover terma. Pema Jungne is thought to have hidden these teachings for subsequent discovery by ‘treasure discover- ers’ who interpret the message in an intelligible contemporary form for local people (Gyatso 1993: 98). Speaking of Pema Jungne’s sky letter, Gao, a local teacher, described how: Pema Jungne, who lives in a diff erent world from us, wrote that in 2003 we shall have an illness, which is SARS. We received this letter because we learned bad habits: now people do not get sad even if they kill [abort] their own baby. Wives make trouble between fathers and children and between other families, like by taking a lover. People talk behind each other’s back about other relatives. People play all manner of games. Men gamble, smoke, drink and are fascinated with the dark- side, like killing animals and feeling good. People do not know how to care for their own bodies: if they have even a small problem, they turn to suicide. Women like to compare themselves to others, for example, in wealth. Children do not look aft er their parents when the parents are old—they only care for themselves. Parents prioritize their favourite child and single out the least liked one, who is sent away or married off , and is not bothered with any further. Monks do not chant or learn to be compassionate: they spend time learning singing and dancing instead of practising a good way to be. Some lamas do not work for humankind or worry about other people, they only care about themselves and about empowering locales 203

becoming rich and powerful. Other lamas are sly and know clever ways to get treasures from other people by talking nicely, saying, ‘I shall chant for you—as long as you pay!’ Yet those lamas do not chant, and just run off with the money. Most lamas now refuse to give up anything for any- one, for example for a patient who is sick. A patient might have a bad kidney and need to replace it. Monks should learn to renounce their hold on things of all kinds, especially for the benefi t of others. However, many do not give up even a bit of money, let alone their kidney! Sky letters are written on paper and can be found by anyone (on a mountain, for example), not just by a treasure discoverer. Local people say it is very rare to fi nd a sky letter, and caution, ‘Who knows for sure whether it is a sky letter or not?’ Kedruq stated that, ‘I believe in Pema Jungne’s sky letter, but only this one. His is very, very famous.’ Local people do not know who found this letter, or where it was discovered. As with other eras in which terma became important, dharma is cur- rently locally understood to be in decline under state persecution (cf. Germano 1998: 91). Th ese perceptions of degeneration are linked to ideas about a ‘degenerative era’ (Tr. dü ngepa), a concept that is com- mon to all Buddhist traditions. Th is decline is technically doctrinal and philosophical, though some local people, for example Gao, a Trinde- born teacher, say it was ‘predicted by former Bodhisattvas’. Mumford describes this degenerative era concept as an ‘orthodoxy’ of meaning that assumes a steady, unavoidable deterioration of dharma, the world and its people. Acts like the renewal of shrines become structuring idioms through which the anticipated decline may be slowed (1989: 228–9). Notions of decline have a long history, as shown in Akester’s discussions of a sixteenth century text (2001: 25–34). In eff ect, the inevitable decline occurs until the next Buddha is born. Th is refl ects the cyclical nature of samsara, the ongoing cycle of reincarnation or rebirth. Contemporary anxieties centre on the loss of local practices. Th is process is directly attributed to external social pressures and inter- nal moral decline, which are themselves interlinked. Degeneration is also identifi ed in certain foods, clothing, production materials and in the relative cohesion within households. Th ese degradations are con- ceptually linked to the expansion of the market economy and to the increasing popularity of commercial goods (cf. Mellor 2001: 38–9). Local people with access to ‘orthodox’ textual sources emphasize that people’s overall knowledge of religion has deteriorated and, with it, they note a decline in general ethics. Deterioration is associated with exotic practices and outside encroachment, which are considered to have a 204 chapter five corrupting infl uence. Some of the activities that are said to be damag- ing are: gold-mining, vegetable consumption, monks attending caba- rets and giving women lift s on their motorbikes, stepping over books, integrating ‘Chinese’ fi reworks and mass-produced foodstuff s into local New Year festivities, inability to read or recite the literary-language, women wearing yellow or red and increasing social mixing. Decline is also linked to nationality relations, as in Pema’s remark that, ‘Th e gods do not like it if you chuck rubbish into the fi re. Th e Chinese do that— and nowadays Tibetans do the same, for example, by pointing their feet at the fi re or at people. It was not like that before.’ In Trinde, many local people disparage modern science and tech- nological innovations. Allopathic (M. Ja, literally ‘Chinese’) medicine is commonly held to ‘make people ill’ and is always contrasted with local traditional medicine. Modern medicine is also conceptually linked with self-seeking individualism, adoption of debasing ‘outside’ leisure pursuits and inappropriate attachments to money. Th ese ori- entations are associated with reform era inner China, which is some- times associated with the industrialized West. Some fear that the situation will become so serious that religious practitioners will soon be religious in name only (see also Mumford 1989: 230). Th e sky letter is meant to be a social warning that reminds people to wake up and take action. As Gao described, ‘Th e letter is like a mirror. I look in it, and it is me!’9 Perceptions of degeneration are evident in Pema’s statement, which identifi es a decline in critical consciousness: Everything Chinese is dodgy [Tr. alapala]: things people, cars. Older people, over forty, know ‘the problem’, and know that Chinese are not direct or true [Tr. thikathika]. Today’s students just like to play and chat: ha ha ha. Pema’s comment stands in contrast to the increased critical conscious- ness described above (in Chapter Two). Th e impact of the comments made here is sustained not through the statement’s ‘truth value’, but from its association with powerful regional ideas about a degenerative era. Trinley, Trinde School Headmaster, also expressed concerns about the negative eff ects of social change: Developments are mostly for the better. Before there was no good clothing or food, no electricity, the school was very small and there

9 A popular proverb also describes how one needs a mirror to see one’s own face. empowering locales 205

was no high level of civilizing culture. We are still without a factory or manufacturing work, and there is not much development in the sciences or civilizing culture. But before, each place was well developed in its own way, had its own particular customs and good progression in scholarship in the sciences and arts. Before, people were good-minded, now they are becoming worse. Most are still good, but the youth are not good. It is the same throughout Tibetan areas. It is because there are fewer and fewer Tibetan scholars and literary-language specialists. In China and England there are plenty. Th e youth here do not know their civilizing culture and history. So their behaviour becomes not good. Now they do not know Tibetan or foreign history [exasperated silence]. Gyele,~ a literary-language teacher, voiced fears about the environmental consequences of social change and linked them to moral degeneration: Before, people were generous and kind [Tr. geywa]. Now people are becoming quite the opposite [and are] changing into Chinese. Now the [living] conditions are better, but the grassland, rivers, animals and peo- ple’s character, all are worse. Concerns about perceived degradations and cultural homogeniza- tion have even prompted new preservation practices. As Jatso, a Kham NGO offi cer, summarizes: My father told all sorts of stories. Storytelling is something I like about Tibetan life! Now I write the stories down. I also use a videotape to record how they make Tibetan boots and the tents. In a thousand years time, maybe there will only be one language and one way of life in the world. Th en people can see [what I have recorded] and know that, in the past, the world had a Tibetan culture. Local discussions about SARS and the sky letter interlink environ- mental and moral concerns with perceptions of encroachment. In Trinde, degeneration is only sometimes conceptually or practically linked to China and the West. Sources of decline are oft en unspeci- fi ed or intertwined with local people’s beliefs that their own failings are bringing about the current degeneration. Such concerns are echoed in texts dating back several centuries. Th ese texts detail struggles between a ‘powerful coalition of interests’ involving senior ritual practitioners and established clerical and administrative elites (Akester 2001: 30–1). Th e sky letter focuses people’s attentions closely on individuals as moral beings, and puts the onus on nationality subjects to behave as an ethical community. Interpretations of the sky letter are part of eff orts to shape and reconsolidate dharma from within the orthodox Buddhist canon at a time of perceived religious and social insecurity. In this way, 206 chapter five

SARS was used to reaffi rm dharmic authority. For some people, lhabab also ameliorates contemporary social degradation. In contrast to SARS, however, ‘clerical’ monks do not favour lhabab. Instead, these practitio- ners follow and uphold orthodox traditions. As a founding fi gure of Buddhism in this region, Pema Jungne (and therefore also his sky letter) possesses a legitimacy that contemporary and particularistic lhabab (in originating outside of orthodox, clerical, scriptural monasticism) does not. Th e messages of Pema Jungne’s sky letter are amenable to professional and non-professional people alike, as this missive is understood to come from a trustworthy source within the Buddhist canon. Th e degenerative era and sky letter involve forms of collective mobilization and self-directed personal change, though the idioms for expressing these constituencies and the specifi c type of dev- elopment impied diff er in each case. As with the sky letter, the late Jigme Phuntsog (mentioned above), also promoted practices that are characteristic of the reform era (Germano 1998). Th is rinpoche’s widespread esteem is linked to his work being considered to fall within orthodox monasticism (ibid.), whereas those who deem lama Namje’s rituals to fall outside this fi eld reject the practice outright. Despite certain diff erences, treasure discoverers, Jigme Phuntsog’s institutional ingenuity, lama Nam- je’s lhabab and Pema Jungne’s sky letter are all part of reform era attempts to: Establish a more authentic way of religious life style that advocates the past as the ultimate model. Th is life style promotes a detachment or semi- detachment from urban areas and the maintenance of the teachings into a carefully circumscribed entourage of disciples and lay practitioners. (Terrone 2002: 224) Th e sky letter presents modernity as a spiritual, cultural and moral source of degeneration that is depleting the nationality social body. Th is moral aspect gives the sky letter a political edge, which is itself related to the close conjunction of modernity, inner China and the West in certain nationality discourses. Th is regional idea of external contamination parallels central state discourses that link ‘spiritual pol- lution’ to ‘cultural imperialism’. An analogous offi cial and popular fear centres on the ‘infl ux’ of foreign bodies that bring ‘corrupting’ Western infl uences into China’s body-politic. Th is notion has practical ramifi ca- tions, as is evident in China’s early rejection of the World Health Orga- nization’s announcement that the ‘polluting’ force of SARS originated empowering locales 207 in China. Within the country, the disease was popularly understood to originate outside China. Some people in inner China also believed that SARS was a US plot to weaken the country. SARS thus became one of many epidemiological motifs of Western spiritual and mate- rial ‘infection’ to be guarded against in the reform era (other motifs being AIDS, Western imperialism and social ills such as prostitution and gambling). SARS also provided a national context for disseminating ‘scientifi c’ education on the ‘eff ectiveness’ of governmental capacities in the fi eld of modern medical procedures, such as hygiene, sterilization and quar- antine. Simultaneously, a host of alternative (offi cially borderline or nominally ‘superstitious’) practices to ‘attack SARS’ were also prevalent among PRC people (Lam 2003). Th ese locally particular responses coexist with nominally ‘universal’, ‘modern’ scientifi c techniques that are promoted in governmental strategies.10

Imbricating Idioms

SARS responses and lhabab show that people’s responses to pressing social predicaments are creative and oft en idiosyncratically deployed. People’s narratives are not always congruent (as is the case with percep- tions of degeneration, spiritual pollution and criticality), and they act in ways that blur conceptual boundaries. Lhabab and SARS are two fur- ther examples of reform era constitutional changes that provide novel contexts for re-envisioning local sociality, common forms of existence and people’s place within that sociality. Local social practices are per- ceived to be diff erent from scientifi c methods and offi cial domains, and are participated in by a range of scholarly and non-scholarly locals and incomers in Trinde. Lhabab practices and responses to SARS in Trinde are born out of particularities relating to China’s reform era commercializing moder- nity. Debates around nationality (M. minzu), religion’ (M. zongjiao) and dharma (Tr. chö) are also connected to attempts to reframe local practices as an orthodox moral form (see Smith 1978). Th ere is a clear offi cial/validated versus local/unverifi able distinction. Work unit professionals and ‘clerical’ monastic practitioners tend to accept the

10 An interesting comparison would be to contrast offi cial and Trinde reactions to AIDS, although this illness was never mentioned in the course of fi eldwork. 208 chapter five

objectively verifi able practices and disengage from those that might be construed as unconfi rmed or unorthodox. As the above ethnographic examples show, eastern-seaboard popula- tions are becoming major consumers of a range of tangible and intangi- ble phenomena from this nationality region (Adams 1996: 68, Fullbrook 2004).11 As Anagnost writing about an inner China context argues, appropriately reworked tradition can be bowdlerized and redirected for the advancement of domestic tourism and overseas interest (1997: 195). Today, locally orthodox ‘civilizing culture’, ‘nationality special char- acteristics’ and state-approved ‘religion’ are burgeoning commercial industries consumed by urban nationality subjects and inner China populations. Th ere is an increasing economic valorization of plateau environments. Within this commercializing context, distinguishing ‘religion’ is important in the exoticization of aspects of ‘Tibetan religion’ in offi cial tourist publications and, increasingly, in local people’s own statements (see Figure 11).

Figure 11. Try an other nationality for size: Incoming tourists dress up in local outfi ts at Kumbum Monastery

11 For example, SARS prompted a massive demand and price boost to the micro- industry for ‘immunity-boosting’ caterpillar-fungus in Qinghai. empowering locales 209

Speaking of prior occurrences of degeneration and persecution, Ger- mano (1998: 56) states that: Th e bodies of religious Tibet were sacrifi ced and resacrifi ced on multiple fronts … which resulted in the literal deconstruction of an entire civiliza- tion. Th e sacrifi ce was not total, however, for not only were the essential elements of Tibetan religiosity preserved in memories and emotions bur- ied within the bodies of individual bodies of Tibetans … Tibetans also concealed in the earth of Tibet an unknown quantity of … ritual items. In contrast to Germano’s somewhat fi xed conception, Kipnis (1994: 57) argues that such practices should not be understood as ‘survivals’ from feudal times, but as new, post-Cultural Revolution (re)inventions. For example, the current possibility of consulting an expanded range of monastic and non-monastic authorities is changing how people negotiate predicaments amid times of rapid socio-economic change. Rather than the party being a source of ‘socialist spiritual civilization’, it is instead religious rites and folk-practices that are a spiritual-moral reservoir for many people in contemporary China. As seen in the eth- nographic examples presented here, ‘local’ responses and practices can- not be separated from ‘state’ in any categorical way. Rather, strands of offi cial and popular understandings are inseparably and continually intertwining. Although local practice has long contained similar ritual elements, the rapidly increasing and geographically widespread popularity of local ritual and social practices indicates the Party-state’s failure to recreate itself as an all-embracing guardian of ‘new China’s’ spiritual civilization. As Kipnis (2001: 43) points out, such spaces of local ‘sym- bolic participation’ are increasing because other post revolutionary era ‘world-ordering models’ cannot encompass popular mass social involvement, and because participating in them furthers a broad array of grassroots and personal aspirations. Th e popularity of ritual also sug- gests a failure of ‘clerical’ Buddhism to satisfy the contemporary spiri- tual needs of many local people. In this respect, work unit professional, local ‘clerical’ and state-led idioms are aligned. It is instead local rituals like lhabab that provide all-encompassing forms of spiritual engage- ment, as well as alternative sources of authority for local people. Both lhabab and SARS practices are imbued with extra signifi cances through being considered to have nominally ‘traditional’ precedents. As is clear from the preceding ethnography, contemporary monastic practitioners are imbued with the ability to mobilize local people. Local alliances with monastic institutions and individuals coexist with other 210 chapter five forms of allegiance, including locale, household, school, work unit, nationality or region. Attempts to defi ne ‘real’ dharma, for example, by rejecting lhabab and local SARS responses, relates to ideas about the practices of ‘good’ or moral people. Th e failure of these attempts (that is, the ongoing popularity of lhabab and local remedies) reveals the inability of offi cial and Trinde cadres’ attempts to govern the heteroge- neous local sociality in any totalizing way. As this ethnography shows, the practices mobilized during par- ticular moments of social distress can have uniting or divisive social eff ects. Such practices highlight continuities existing between the Mao and reform eras, links that are disturbed and interrupted by other social and personal factors. In Trinde, it is important for all people— regardless of nationality status—to engage with popular ‘religious’ prac- tices during critical social moments such as SARS. Th is shared partici- pation occurs despite incomers having a diff erent relationship with the local and nationality past (see Rohlf 1999: 26, 28). Th e mutual local involvement ceases to be perplexing considering there is no absolute duality between nationalities. Th ere is instead a politically contrived set of national distinctions and a set of local diff erentiations that are invoked in contextually specifi c ways. Th is shared practice within local contexts contrasts with the emphasis laid on the distinctness of each nationality in most foreign scholarly, exile, offi cial and local discourses. In fact, ‘dif- ference’ is actively and tacitly created, elaborated and reformed through the acquisition of specifi c social competencies. While nationality ‘dis- tinctness’ is emphasized in exile narratives, foreign area studies analy- ses, offi cial rhetoric, local expressions and NGO documents, categorical representations do not accurately refl ect people’s myriad involvements in practice. Within locales, people routinely enter into a plethora of engage- ments that transcend nationality categories. Ritual practice has oft en been assumed to be the main post-Cultural Revolution domain for invoking modern, democratic and nationalistic aspirations for nationality self-empowerment (Schwarz 1994a, Karmay 1994: 112–20; for critiques see Mills 2001 and Stevenson 1999). How- ever as the ethnography of this chapter shows, the actors and issues involved in this domain are infi nitely more complex than can be cap- tured by the idea of a simple, unilateral push for autonomy or indepen- dence. Furthermore, rather than constituting bounded and unchanging cosmologies that encounter external forces wholesale, ritual practices are dynamic social phenomena that are imbued with many subtle and porous realms of meaning. empowering locales 211

Interpreting reform era ritual practices thus requires an understand- ing of how: Th e representation of ritual is seemingly always trapped in such logics of displacement … [R]itual is also represented through constructions of a political temporality, of how Maoist radicalism misrepresented and misunderstood the importance of social order and identity. Th us, a post- Mao … [nationality] identity has been constructed in part by drawing attention to that which it ultimately desires to transcend—the feudal past, the excesses of radical Maoism-haunting signs of fragmentation, disorder, and irrationality. (Litzinger 1999a: 301) Th e main point here is not to gauge the ability of ‘the state’ to circumscribe diff erent aspects of nationality ‘reality’. Th e critical issue instead concerns how power is dispersed and circulates in quotidian routines in Trinde, and how this operates to regulate appropriate deportment, cultural competen- cies and ritual practices. Th is research shows that there is a progressive blending of offi cial rhetoric about ‘proper’ conduct with local concerns about good morality, which pick up threads already covered in Chap- ters One and Four, though in quite a diff erent social setting. Th is fusion obscures the source of offi cial rhetoric, while providing a context for the reformulation of central governmental authority within local contexts (ibid. 313–14). CHAPTER SIX

OTHER MODERNITIES

Study new things: link them up to your real life! —Slogan painted in red Chinese characters on Trinde School for a 2003 education strategy

Th is chapter analyses the ways in which local schoolteachers, non- governmental organization (NGO) offi cers, parents and students establish contemporary projects that relate to creating and reshaping local modernities. Th ese projects are created mainly, but not exclu- sively, through the constitutional latitude allowed for local ‘autonomy’. Th rough these initiatives, leaders aim to guide experiences and rec- oncile perceptions of modernizing changes to create a more eff ective, moral and advanced local society. While poor peasant status was val- ued during the revolutionary era as advancing Mao’s revolution, in the reform era ‘backwardness’ became the most prominent negative attribute of rural (and nationality) peoples. Rural people, of which nationalities are a subset, are still seen to be retarding China’s devel- opment towards the ‘socialist utopia’, as per the teleological doctrine of Marxism (Kipnis 1994: 207). NGOs and young people are signifi cant in the orientation and inter- pretation of projects within Yushu. Projects such as the New Course Reform (NCR) 2003 education policy, NGOs and younger genera- tions are not signifi cant because they present an ‘authentic’ grassroots challenge to a totalizing ‘state’. Instead, these themes and social sets are imbued with both desirable attributes as a nationality space for advancing an ‘autonomous’ or local modernity or, alternatively, they are considered to be ‘modern’ elements with a degenerative eff ect on contemporary Trinde (cf. Tsin 1999: 14). Th e politics of conceiving and creating local modernities is not confi ned to state-led infrastructure projects in health, education and communication. In Yushu, these poli- tics also include negotiations surrounding the rebuilding and augment- ing of monasteries, the use of textbooks written in the regional dialect or nationality literary-language and local people’s participation in rit- ual practices. A ‘twofold’ perspective characterizes these developments other modernities 213

(see Diemberger 2002: 46), which involves a ‘modern’ notion of the centre as advanced and generous to the weak and backward peripheries, and prior notions that shape the ways that contemporary developments and modernity are conceived. While scholars, cadres and NGO offi cers advance projects that are all, to a greater or lesser degree, attempts to develop locally-workable, and sometimes distinctly ‘autonomous,’ modernities, their modes of opera- tion and expression are not always alike. Yushu was opened to foreigners only in 2002. My volunteer placement exemplifi es a relative openness to foreign visitors within previously-sensitive nationality areas of China. Th is residency also involved new forms and degrees of cooperation, for example, between school authorities, county-level Education Bureau leaders, Jyegu’s Nangchen-born Public Security Bureau Foreign Sec- tion Chief and Namgyel, a prominent Nangchen-born NGO director (formerly a monk in exile), who initiated the negotiations via contacts in the UK. Th rough developing English-language capabilities, school, county and prefecture leaders hope to develop a local economy that will inch Trinde practically and conceptually towards the standards of liv- ing they see foreign countries enjoying, while avoiding the culturally- debilitating eff ects Putonghua is conceived to involve. Trinde Middle School Number One is the largest, most geographi- cally diverse nexus for educated people in the county. An institutional position at this school provides a platform for teachers to articulate a wider range of viewpoints than is possible for those with county administrative posts. Th is school is the focal site in Trinde County in the circulation and emplacement of a range of local administrative, exile, scholarly, Western and offi cial discourses, past and present. A discussion of modernities requires sensitivity to intergenerational dif- ferences, as these have a bearing on how age-sets perceive local changes and what type of intervention is considered appropriate. Writing about a rural inner China context, Yan (2003: 222) defi nes four generational sets by political era: ‘illiterate and newly awakened young revolutionar- ies’ (1950s), ‘idealistic youth’ (1960s), ‘post-Cultural Revolution youth’ (1970s) and a ‘more individualistic and materialistic youth’ (post-Mao). Th e school aff ords ample opportunity to witness how students are creating subjectivities that are not conterminous with, but are instead located somewhere between, offi cial policies, exile rhetoric, schoolteachers’ aspirations and local scholars’ opinions (see also Upton 1999: 307–308). More generally, the range of perceptions within the 214 chapter six school demonstrates that diff erent generational experiences shape, but do not fully determine attitudes and inter-relations among residents. In Trinde, people advance a range of projects through offi cial institu- tions, discourses and policies rather than in opposition to them. Like- wise, people create personal subjectivities and common imaginaries in line with, as well as in opposition to, offi cial organizing procedures (Kipnis 1994: 202). People are able to do this because their projects can be presented as coinciding with the state’s new vision of a civilized nation with mutually supporting spiritual and material characteristics, and as part of the rationale of a ‘family of nationalities’ with a margin for ‘autonomous’ decision-making. A principal argument of this chapter is that rural peoples are not pliable subjects who exist passively within offi cial projects. Instead, as Schein puts it, ‘In their everyday struggles, people not only positioned themselves vis-à-vis a particular modernity, but they also strove to reposition themselves, sometimes through deploying the very codes of the modern that had framed them as others’ (2000: 25), which is a phen- omenon demonstrated in the ethnography of this chapter (and see the Conclusion for a summary discussion).

Th ematic Overview: Complex Modernities

Th e Chinese term qimeng denotes Chinese ‘modernity’ in the sense of a set of themes, norms and targets inspired by post-eighteenth century his- torical processes (for a theoretical discussion, see Wang Hui 1995). Th e Putonghua for ‘modern’ is xiandai, with ‘modernization’ being xiandai- hua. Daga nanyi was volunteered as the closest local word for ‘modern’ (T. da.skabs.na.nying, connoting ‘contemporary’ or ‘fashionable’), but this word is not generally encountered in practice. Th e colloquial Trinde word for ‘modern’ is Ja (literally ‘Chinese’). Daiyak, a Xining-trained tutor, emphasized that, ‘New things are always Chinese, so we say “Chi- nese medicine” [Tr. Jamen, which refers to modern, Western treat- ments] and “Chinese clothes” [Tr. Jagusi, namely, mass-produced gar- ments]. Two other Kham-dialect terms for ‘modern’ are derab~ and dedü.~ Th e former term means ‘nowadays’ in the literary-language, and is not generally heard in Trinde, and the latter means of ‘at that time’. ‘Modernity’ is always conceptually contrasted with ‘tradition’ (Tr. chey choo, M. chuan tong), and these two terms are linked to inner China and nationalities populations respectively. In fact, the categories other modernities 215 are so distinct and incompatible that the concept of ‘advanced’ or ‘modernized’ cannot conceptually be combined with ‘nationality’. Nationalities living in urban areas are considered to have lost their customs. Th erefore, an ‘urban Tibetan’ category cannot logically exist, as that space is reserved for ‘Han-Chinese’. Th is incompatibility partly stems from prior ‘national unifi cation’ (M. minzu tuanje/ronghe) ideas, where it was assumed that peripheral peoples would evolve from ‘sav- agery’ through ‘barbarism’ towards superior ways exemplifi ed by the peoples of inner China. As this chapter shows however, such elements and phenomena intertwine in practice. Wang argues that, from the late-Qing onwards, China’s socialist modernization involved elements of a ‘historical anti-modernity’, which denounced Euro-American capitalist modernization (2001: 167). Con- tinuing with this general orientation, PRC leaders subsequently inte- grated the modernist ideology of Marxism (ibid. 163–5). Th e post-1978 socialist reforms aim to continue Marxist modernization. Maoist ‘anti- modernism’ has been dropped and state-mediated market-economics have been implemented. Th e early 1980s market economic turn was considered necessary to complete China’s unfi nished nationalism and to develop ‘modern’ science and technology. Long-standing tangible ontological-evolutionary aims became technical objectives for China’s ‘modern’ nation-state and bureaucracy. In Trinde, however, CCP rhetoric is oft en called into question or rejected outright. For example, Pema argues instead that: Today China is socialist only in speech. If you do not have your own money, you will not get any help from the government. When it comes to collecting from ‘the people’, China is socialist, but when it comes to providing for ‘the people’, there is no socialism in China. Regarding the national drive towards modernization, offi cial state rhet- oric declares that there has been an overall improvement through his- tory. Within this general progress, the Mao era is now depicted as an error based on ‘left ist deviationist thinking’ (M. zuo qing si xiang). In the early reform era, inner China and modernist intellectuals attempted to reposition themselves amidst economic reforms and the disintegration of Maoism as a guiding principle and practice, Yushu and Xining lead- ers also struggled with the changing political winds of the reform era. Th e 1980s devolutions and restructuring brought increasing personal scope, and expanded local expectations for, nationality leaders to pres- ent a coherent, plausible idea of how to reconcile ‘tradition’ and advance 216 chapter six

‘modernity’ in developing the region. In the reform era, ‘modernity’, and its downgraded discursive twin ‘tradition’, have been offi cially and locally invoked as two sides of a productive dyad. Allied with, and con- solidated by, notions of ‘development’, tradition and modernity have together become a principal way of conceptualizing, and explaining, the ranking of places and peoples within a teleological global trajectory. Th ese terms have become a most productive offi cial discursive binary that has been fascinating to foreign-scholars (Cohen 2003: 48). Th e dyad has also become a way that people have come to understand themselves and discuss Others (Duara 1995: 90). In Trinde, local people also invoke ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ dynamically, as practical-motivational and conceptual-organizational idioms. Th e coordinates of this dyad are not fi rmly defi ned in local people’s thinking, but instead act as emotive ideational expressions (Litzinger 2000: 200). Th e post-Mao easing of residential restrictions has created oppor- tunities for trips to urban centres within and beyond PRC limits. On these visits, scholars and cadres consolidate, or alter, their views about how best to improve their areas, through exposure to each other in new contexts, and through interacting with new places and diff erent people. Th ese trips can be business and work trips to Beijing and Shanghai, overseas study placements, pilgrimages and family visits. Nationality- focused projects such as the Xining-based English Training Programme and Th e Bridge Fund’s Sichuan, Qinghai and TAR initiatives are also part of the reform era realignments. As mentioned above, one signifi cant regional reform era innovation is an English Training Programme (henceforth. ETP) run by a US educa- tor. Th is Xining University project allows ‘nationality’ students from all fi ve ‘Tibetan’-populated provinces to study a range of courses with Western graduates. Th e opinions of the young adults from one of these nationality classes (which comprised forty students in their early twen- ties from the fi ve PRC provinces with designated ‘Tibetan’ populations) indicate the social and political mood of the next generation. Th ese students said the best aspects of their society are: generosity, compas- sion, Tibetan Buddhism, respect, way of living, good knowledge of the Tibetan language, monasteries, Tibetan art, honesty (an answer caus- ing much laughter), history, Tibetan medicine, customs, folk-tales, local dances, songs, riddles and special resources. Th e worst features are said to be: education (specifi cally, formal schooling), superstitions, poor conditions, economic development, backwardness, conservatism, diff erences between men and women, human rights (omitted from the other modernities 217 list on the board), closed-mindedness and disappearing wildlife. Many of these expressions echo Western, offi cial and exile preoccupations. Th e Xining students’ opinions are remarkably similar to those expressed by teachers, students and townsfolk in Trinde. Social anthropology is always the most popular subject by far. Padre,~ an ex-student, enthusi- astically stated that, ‘Social anthropology allows us to understand Tibet in many new ways, for example in considering Tibetan life in relation to Malinowski’s Trobriand Islanders, or in terms of base, structure and super-structure.’ In 2004, a US-based cultural-preservation and education NGO held a conference for a range of NGO offi cers, all of whom were men in their fi ft ies. ETP students in their early twenties also attended. Th e NGO rep- resentatives condemned the students for participating in ETP, accusing them of being ‘fake foreign devils’ (M. jia yang guizi). Th e offi cers chose a potent ‘anti-Western imperialist’ central state idiom to make their claim, which was (ironically, given their line of argument) articulated in Put- onghua. Th e NGO representatives insinuated that these students were becoming inauthentic (Tr. dzumba), or even traitorous, through their contact with English. Th ey argue that, through ETP, students are trying to live, speak and behave like foreigners. Speaking on a related issue, Rigdrol, an Amdo media specialist, called these NGO offi cers ‘mission- aries’ to depict their zeal in promoting culturally conservative ideals. Lajey, a Jyegu schoolteacher, related that a Yushu lama had also criticized ETP, pronouncing that students, ‘Eat like Tibetans but fart like foreign- ers: they think that the moon is more round in Western countries’. Back in Trinde, the explicitly ‘local’ (and, by extension, nationality) focus of this education programme is considered critically, and is evalu- ated in terms of the existing circumstances and people’s future aspira- tions. Gao, a Trinde teacher who attended the ETP ten years ago, is both respectful and discerning of localized customs. For example, in Trinde School, the English-option students elected to use foreign produced ‘Tibetan’ textbooks (Stuart 2002: 167, 172). Gao, however, argued that:

I will not use those ‘Tibet’ books. Th ey are too appropriate! I want to expose these students to new ideas and places. I mean, they already know their own culture, right? Th ey can check Tibetan vocabulary for them- selves. But they will need to know about other, wider ways, especially if they are going to become interpreters, and translate cross-culturally.

In Xining, Qinghai’s capital, Hartley (2002: 8) identifi es three main, though not mutually exclusive, social positions vis-à-vis modernity, 218 chapter six namely: conservative modernists or ‘traditionalists’, moderate or selec- tive modernists and radical modernists. Th ese social clusters are also identifi able in Trinde, which suggests that knowledge and opinions about modernity are being transferred as relatively stable posionings vis-à-vis this idiom through broadcast sources, printed media and oral discus- sions on regional visits. Broadly speaking, conservative-modernists accept some new infl uences, but resist discarding prior forms. Th e NGO offi cers who condemn ETP students exemplify this posi- tion. In Trinde, these people are oft en orthodox ‘clerical’ monastic practitioners and older townsfolk and scholars. ‘Selectivists’ advo- cate maintaining the ‘good parts of nationality culture’ as a basis for integrating useful aspects from elsewhere. Th is is the most common orientation in Trinde County Town, particularly among work unit professionals. In Trinde’s education forum (see Chapter Two), Trinley, the school Headmaster, aimed to ascertain the best local and Western elements to create a confi dent and competitive ‘local modernity’. In contrast, radical modernizers want ‘traditional culture’ to be replaced by more ‘rational’ methods. Th e idea of radical moderniza- tion was encapsulated in a controversial Qinghai newspaper article called ‘Realizing the New Consciousness’ (cited in Hartley 2002: 19). Th is orientation is similar to the 1980s New Enlightenment Movement of pro-Western liberal radicals (whose critique of tradition and feu- dalism and affi rmation of modernity obscured a more latent critique of socialism) and some socialist reformers (Wang Hui 2001: 171). Many of these people have spent a year in Shanghai or Beijing and are interested in foreign and new Chinese economic theories. In fact, in one radical modernizer’s words it is ‘not the vase, but knowing how to make a vase’ that is important (cited in Hartley 2002: 9). Rigdrol and Zopa, two Xining-based Amdo intellectuals in their mid-thirties, exemplify this position. Rigdrol and Zopa are associates of a man who argued in a Qinghai newspaper (using a pseudonym) that the enduring ‘backwardness’ of local society is due to ‘progress-thwarting propensi- ties’ in ‘Tibetans’ collective consciousness’ that must be purged before local society can progress (cf. ibid. 1). Some of Trinde’s educated elite (namely, schoolteachers and cadres) invoke selected elements of this radical modernizing position. Trinde’s borderline radical modernizers stop short of the Xining intellectuals’ categorical stance, which is con- sidered to be too state oriented (Hartley 2002: 11). While diff erent social inclinations are identifi able in a general sense, it is also important not to reify these positions. As Vargish and Mook other modernities 219

(1999) argue, ‘modernity’ should be understood as a historically con- stituted practice involving ‘values that fi nd contemporaneous expres- sion in disparate fi elds’ (cited in Hartley 2002: 14). Following this logic, what may look like divergent positions and opinions are oft en actually diff erent ways of reaching a common aim—in this case to further the conditions of a certain region. In Qinghai, divergence occurs over the amount and type of nationality characteristics the local reinvention of modernity should involve (Hartley 2002: 11–12). Several people point to conservative tendencies within Trinde soci- ety. For example, Khandro, a Hubei University student, believes that, ‘Trinde people do not want things to change and they are not open to new things.’ In her opinion, the encircling and opposing mountains ‘blinker’ people so their perspective is confi ned to matters within the valley. Hong, a Shaanxi-born woman who lived for eleven years in the county, suggests that, ‘Trinde people can only understand what is in their own environment (M. huan jing). What the television shows is the only little bit they know of the outside world.’ Padre~ is a former ETP student whose unconventional choices and go-getter attitude have been treated with some suspicion in the local- ity. For example, when Padre~ quit his work unit job a second time, he forfeited his right to the comprehensive benefi ts guaranteed to every state-employee. His parents were deeply shocked and said that he had ‘broken the iron rice bowl’ (M. dapo tiefanwan). Padre~ later commented that:

I am becoming unacceptable here. Th e ordinary people who were always so kind to me have changed their attitude and keep their distance. But the cadres who used to ignore me because I was a kid have begun to coo round me.

Trinde ETP students in Xining relate that they have modifi ed how they present themselves publically aft er witnessing some local people’s critique of their elder peers on account of their educational choices and vocational aspirations. For instance, Pamo, an ETP student, describes how, before he arrives back in Trinde for the holidays, he changes out of his cargo trousers and trendy T-shirt and into local clothes that are ‘one colour, worn, just fi t for old people’. While he is in the local area, Pamo continues to tend the herds as he did when he was young. He relates that local people say, ‘Wow, Pamo’s a great person. Other people went out and changed. Th ey became like Chinese. Pamo went out to study in Xin- ing but did not change. He’s a regular guy.’ Invoking cross-generational 220 chapter six shift s, he argues that, ‘Th ere are so many ways people can change, but parents think that one can only change in one way—in a bad way!’ Considering the idea of change through time, Padre~ argues that, ‘Trinde people never have to think whether there are changes or not— Trinde always stays the same. We are just like tethered goats, going in circles, pegged-down on a leash.’ Padre~ relates that his US-born edu- cators encouraged ETP students to ‘always look at both sides’, though warned that, ‘In Yushu, too much openness is a dangerous signal to many people.’ Padre’s~ opinion comprises both conservatism and change. He argues that, ‘New things always happen. Do you want to take them? If so, do it with your culture behind you. I also do not like it if our culture gets left behind.’ Chooji, the founder of ‘the only Tibetan PRC women’s magazine’ also argued that: Having one’s own thoughts is not important to Tibetans … they have not been liberated. Tibetans do not approve of Western ideas like freedom and Western love aspects and styles of marriage. Women are married off , even if they have not seen their husband. I would not marry a husband I had not seen! But if you have no learning, you have no power. I grew up in the city—my thoughts are like the Han. I do not ‘love my nationality’, [because that signifi es] wearing clothing for others more than for your- self. My mother did what other women could not do. Her philosophy was: Help others and do something for yourself. Th e quest to fi nd a distinctly ‘autonomous’ answer to contempo- rary challenges and styles is evident in Yushu debates surrounding the selection and use of languages, clothing, architecture and employ- ment. According to this logic, big urban cities signify ‘modernity’, and small hamlets and rural pasturelands index ‘tradition’. While practis- ing comparatives and superlatives, Trinde School’s English-option stu- dents also invoked divergent opinions about tradition and modernity and expressed diverse socio-political preferences: Yushu is good, Xining is better, but Beijing is best. [Th is statement refl ects the offi cial view.] Xining is good, Jiegu is better, but Chengduo is best. [Local, traditionalist orientation.] China is good, Tibet is better, but Chengduo is best. [Fatherland priori- tization.] English is good, Chinese is better, but Tibetan is best. [Autonomous nationality perspective.] In practice, it is impossible for people to invoke identical expres- sions about what ‘modernity’ or ‘tradition’ is, as these terms do not other modernities 221 constitute concrete, unchanging actualities, nor are these concepts predictable unilinear processes. Instead, tradition and modernity operate as conceptual idioms indexing an assortment of practices and imaginaries. Later reform era positions and articulations interweave offi cial, exile, international political and social-science discourses. For example, NGO offi cers, school leaders and county-level cadres all advocate expanding local modern hospitals and medical facilities, formal schooling and economic opportunities. Trinde leaders’ aims draw on and rework offi cial slogans (M. kouhao), which are visible on walls, banners, placards and public signs in all Trinde settlements. Th e slogans contain civilizing ideals and identify education as the swift est route to modernity: Th e hope for vitalizing nationality is in education. [M. zhenxing minzu xiwang zai jiaoyu] Place education in the position of preferential development strategy! [M. ba jiaoyu fang zai youxian fazhan zhanlue diwei] In 2003, motivational statements were etched physically into the landscape and inscribed on architectural sites all over Yushu (see Figures 12 and 13). Th e slogans are intended to convince visiting Xining offi cials that Yushu people are so keen on education that it is worth investing the Provincial Education Bureau’s money in support- ing the Prefecture’s formal schooling endeavours. Th e most conspicu- ous inscription is a Buddhist mantra, etched twice by teachers into the hillside near Domda (M. Qingshuihe) in northern Trinde. Th e fi rst line is the principal prayer to Chenrezig, and the latter two lines are invoca- tions to Pema Jungne (Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche). Th is public undertaking shows the importance accorded to the literary-language as a key part of nationality civilizing culture in developing an appro- priate ‘autonomous’ modernity for the region. Attempts to develop a distinctly ‘local modernity’ are evident in the reinterpretation of centrally-promoted education policies in Trinde School, and particularly NCR. Education Bureau leaders and Trinde schoolteachers and students consider NCR to be recognizably ‘Western’ as well as appealingly local. Th e idea of melding the best of the West and the local (while ignoring elements perceived to be ‘Chinese’ or ‘offi cial’) is an orientation common among school leaders, county authorities, NGO offi cials and students. Th is combination is not only considered equal to, but to surpass, the quality and scope of offi cial national responses. 222 chapter six

Figure 12. Trinde School slogans. Upper phrase reads: ‘Study without rest’ (M. xue er bu qin). Lower phrase reads: ‘Go towards New Curriculum [NCR]’ (M. zoujin xin ke cheng)

Figure 13. ‘Education is the most real poverty alleviation’ (T. slob.gso.ni.ches. mngon.’gyur.gyi.dbul.skyor.yin / M. jiaoyu shi zui xianshi de fupin) other modernities 223

Autonomously Reformed Courses

In this section, the example of New Course Reform shows how state pol- icies are reinterpreted to make them more responsive to contemporary local actualities and more attuned to desired autonomous modernities. Th e process of re-imagining Trinde’s modernity in local terms involves structured, intense (though not necessarily public or clear-cut) strug- gles for local social, economic or political power. From the 1990s, Party objectives focused on revivifying China using science and education, and by developing ‘human resources’ (see Murphy 2004). Th e emphasis has been on the maintenance of a stable, ordered national polity with peace- able nationality class interrelations and the endorsement of traditional practices that impart social accountability and moral standards (Litz- inger 2000: 205). Ideologically-oriented schooling became increasingly problematic in the context of the 1980s social, political and economic reforms. Th ese new and diff erent circumstances required a thoroughly reworked approach. Th e policy reorganization was intended to change the orientation of the curriculum, rather than the nature of the education endeavour itself. At this time, NCR was centrally conceived and locally introduced. To give a brief overview of the sequence of educational policies that have been applied in Trinde, ‘hard-style teaching’ (M. ying shi jiaoyu) was undertaken from the Guomindang-era until 2000 in Trinde. Th is methodology is contrasted with the US ‘open’ or ‘lib- eral’ approach (M. kaifangxing) and Australia’s ‘capacity-building education’ (M. nenglihua jiaoyu). From 1977 to 2002, ‘foundational education’ (M. ji chu jiaoyu) involved the diff usion of broad, basic knowledge. ‘Hard-style education’ contrasts with ‘quality education’ (M. suzhi jiaoyu), a pre-2003 approach which, in Trinde, is under- stood to ‘create people who improve themselves through education’. NCR radically modifi es the previous pedagogic methodologies (ele- ments of all of which coexist in contemporary Trinde), and the type of personal characteristics that policymakers wish to create. Gao, a local teacher, summarized the national modernization of education in the following way: It used to be that the government made a book and students only needed to study that book thoroughly. NCR is a new class revolution, a new way to teach. Th is methodology radically changes earlier teach- ing methods. Now the students can think many things for themselves, rather than just relying on books. Now they must also imagine real life. It is more active too. 224 chapter six

NCR is not an entirely ‘modern’ break with previous policies. It involves links with prior policies such as those concerned with ‘quality education’ modernizations that emphasize comprehensive training of young people’s abilities (cf. Anagnost 2004). NCR is innovative in its use of participatory methodologies, and in the re-envisioning of each student as a ‘unique individual’ whose ‘own distinctive talents’ are to be appreciated by pedagogues. In NCR, the focus is on student-centred activities and on learning through classroom games, which is distinct from the current formal, structured teacher-student dynamics of hard- style education. Singye, Trinde School’s Teaching Director, commented that: With NCR, teachers do not stand at the front with all the students lis- tening—teachers’ whole rationality has changed, and students are more active. Th e new method focuses on small group discussions. Students move their hands to make things, rather than just listening. Before, the focus was on teachers, now students are the important, conspicuous ones. It is all about the process of teaching, and involves teachers helping students. NCR is about the real way of doing things, knowledge linked up to life. At the basic level, the goal is to change a person’s creative ability. All students have diff erent talents. NCR will help realize those abilities. Th e reform era national slogan ‘Seek truth [i.e. realistic results], bring forth new ideas!’ was painted in Chinese script on Trinde School in 2003 to signify the commencement and orientation of New Course Reform. Th is motto echoes Mao’s opinion that people should ‘discover the truth through practice’ (1975: 308). From a top-down perspec- tive, the aim of NCR is to create well-rounded, self-disciplined moral ‘modern’ citizens, as is evident in the comments of Yang, a Henan-born teacher, who states that: Now we place importance on a person’s own development. Except in Mao’s time, the methods of previous eras emphasized results. However, the goal must be related to the era. Now students’ quality is improving. Th e changes are all rather good, especially in terms of respectfulness and self-cultivation [M. zishen de xiu yang]. All along, the goal from the nation’s point of view is to create talented people, but people’s feelings about education were diff erent pre-reform. Now it is a person’s compre- hensive development that matters. Foundational education was mostly curriculum rather than method based, so it supported and developed only some aspects of the student. Education must be related to society, family, parents, teachers, school and nation. School is the most impor- tant of all, though the infl uence of parents-teachers-school cannot be other modernities 225

separated. In our country, things are rather good. Our methods are rather good. It is not just me who thinks the methods are good; others acknowl- edge it too. NCR was initiated in Trinde County in August 2003. Shewu school was selected as Trinde’s typical educational establishment, and became the County’s ‘model middle school’. Th roughout late 2003 and into 2004, Trinde schoolteachers undertook NCR training courses in Shewu. A two-week explanatory course at Trinde School initiated a county-wide collection of staff in the NCR methods. Teachers’ opinions about NCR are not uniform, however, and instead diverge on a local-incomer basis. Local teachers and students describe NCR as being ‘the same as our [traditional, monastic] Tibetan methodology’, while incomers insist the policy is a national one and has no regional variations. Th e fol- lowing conversations provide a deeper insight into how NCR is being worked out conceptually and practically in contemporary Trinde. Trinde educators proudly emphasize NCR’s methodological newness, its diff erence from ideological styles and openness to Western educa- tional expertise. Speaking of NCR, one school authority commented that, ‘Th is liberal-style teaching [M. kaifang shi] is very appropriate for us Tibetans. In this way, we return to our traditional education: not only traditional, but also Western. Now we imitate and diff use this new teaching method.’ Jayang, a community elder and school warden, also describes NCR in a similar way: Th is new NCR style is like the old style Tibetan monastic education. Stu- dents have to engage in discussions, like Gelugpa [sect] practices! In the old style of Tibetan study, the small ones read, even if they do not know the meaning. When they grow up, they do dialectics [debating]. Learning depends on one’s age. Each age is diff erent: an old monk talks about the deep meaning, young monks deal with the superfi cial meaning. Local teachers say that Yushu Education Bureau representatives com- municate the policy in this way. As such, NCR serves as a revival and validation of the region’s own educational methodology. In general, local professionals emphasize the superiority of a ‘best of local and best of West’ approach as a route to an appropriate Trinde modernity. NCR is presented as being congruent with this model. Accordingly, teachers and students describe the policy as being ‘like education in the West and reviving our traditions’. As with other modernizing initiatives, NCR is not a singularly under- stood project among individuals, and nor is it uniformly perceived 226 chapter six within or between nationality groups. In fact, NCR is not institution- alized in any direct, formal or universal way. Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, describes the NCR training courses critically, explaining that, ‘All these leaders are so good at talking, but it is all rubbish. Nothing ever actually changes.’ Daiyak claimed she could say nothing whatso- ever about the NCR training, and reasoned that it was, ‘the same as all the other courses’ that they, as teachers, had been obliged to attend. Tuden, the English-option students’ Class Director, approved of NCR, but could not envisage implementing it in his classes. Only one teacher, Chözang, put NCR fully into practice, while engaging groups of young students in Putonghua action-songs. Padre~ concluded that the prob- lem with trying to implement NCR is that, ‘It is just like a traditional old lady dragging her bound feet. Th e system is too vast to change! It is the same situation [of bureaucratic inertia] as with all government policies!’ In terms of NCR implementation, Trinde students report that the incoming teachers have not changed their teaching in accordance with NCR. English-option students state that only Th uten, their Class Direc- tor, and Yangchen, another local teacher, have reformed their teaching in line with NCR. Yishi, a sixteen-year-old student, remarks on these teachers’ new teaching style: Before they just said the correct answer, and taught us to memorize things. Now we have to think about it, the good and bad things. Now they are making us express our own opinions. Nowadays it is rather relaxed. We receive relatively little homework. Th uten and the Headmaster have instituted daily journal writing, which is consistent with the NCR emphasis on ‘individual uniqueness’. Students read the news and record the meaningful events and impor- tant happenings from each day. Typical entries are: Last Th ursday, teachers from the Prefecture came to investigate our school. When the teacher explains a topic, the meaning becomes clear. If there is nothing to record, the students write sentences about spe- cifi c lessons or metonymic set-phrases (M. chengyu). One example is ‘To cross a river by feeling the stones’ (M. mo shitou guohe), which is a reform era political phrase attributed to Deng Xiaoping. Th e students use Chinese script (M. yuyan) to write the journals. Th e NCR journaling echoes revolutionary era practices of self-inscription as self-criticism. other modernities 227

Speaking in his capacity as a school leader and presenting the offi cial NCR line, Pema began by describing NCR in formal policy terms: Th e biggest advantage of NCR is helping students realize their talents. Before liberation there was no reform. Basically it was always hard style education, full and thorough. In the past, education just focused on students’ grades and records. Students just got ‘the right answer’ from teachers. Now students’ own opinions are important—they have multiple abilities and are multi-talented. NCR focuses on students’ uniqueness and hobbies. NCR develops whatever interest they have. Many questions appear through exploring classroom research. All students participate in class. Before, students only thought what the teachers thought. Dropping the offi cial rhetoric, Pema now focused on inter-regional dis- parities, and the locale’s failure to achieve a modern, developed status through the methodologies hitherto applied: By itself, moral character is limitless. But China’s students’ moral char- acter is limited. What kind of person cheats? Cheating will not produce any sort of talented person. To be a person of good moral standing is related to the economy and to one’s family. But even so, the economy is too backward; the market economy requires hard work to stimulate it to work. If you work hard in this place, you still get no results.1 In contrast to his own statements, Pema’s students say his literary- language classes have not changed, and say that, ‘We study records as before because he does not use the new methods.’ Pema himself is rela- tively unconcerned with the practical benefi ts of NCR. For him, NCR signifi es China’s fi nal admission of fallibility and national incomplete- ness. Drawing local, national and international considerations into his critique, NCR is used as proof that China’s policymakers now believe that Western-inspired educational methodologies are the best models to achieve a productive, disciplined populace. Furthermore, NCR is taken as confi rmation that China has at last admitted that socialism will not work, and is fi nally going down the same path as Western nations: Socialism has what kind of qualities or benefi ts? If I am already excellent, I do not need to study anyone else’s things. Various people in the early- modern period post-liberation demonstrate that there were things China had not discovered. For example, China had poets but lacked inventors. Although they say China is a socialist society, all these reforms are in line with advanced nations like the UK and US. NCR contains socialism on the surface, but if socialism were so good we would not need to study foreign things, especially in relation to education. Nowadays, if you do

1 For an academic critique of these ideas in the China context, see Harrell (1985). 228 chapter six

not know English, you are only half a person. Without English there is no way out [of the current trajectory]. To be an educated person infl uences your character. If bringing things in from the US demonstrates ‘society’ or ‘socialism’ then [I believe] both are good. On the surface, socialism is good, but socialist thoughts are now outdated. Now we need modern methods for our requirements. Unscientifi c reasoning does not go along with pace of the age. Foreign ways of teaching and Western models satisfy the needs of the age. Th e precedent of learning abroad that has existed in China since the early Republican period is overlooked in Pema’s narrative. Many CCP leaders were, in fact, educated in foreign (especially Soviet) institutions, which were particularly infl uential in the Mao era. In sharp contrast to the comments included above, Yang Weitang, an incomer teacher, sees the progression towards modernity in quite a diff erent way from local people: When I fi rst arrived, the bad aspect of Trinde was the school. Now teach- ers are constantly getting better, across the whole country. Now China’s education is rather good. Government leaders see education as incredibly important. I cannot think of any other problems. Yang laughed off the possibility of a connection between NCR and local or monastic teaching, past or present: A monastic connection? In Yushu? Th e Yushu government did not say that! NCR is not connected to monasteries! NCR is in step with the whole country. Localities are not allowed to have diff erences. As far as the country is concerned, NCR is a unifi ed thing. All theoretical publica- tions explain NCR like this. Th ere is no such connection. For Yang, ‘NCR is the reform of methods and textbooks—action teach- ing and getting closer to the methodology of the UK, Japan and US.’ Yang affi rms that NCR ‘expertise’ is, ‘based on the fi ndings of scientifi c research’, which fi ts with the reform era notion of ascertaining of ‘truth’ through rational, scientifi cally verifi able methods. From 1977 onwards, the drive to ‘seek truth from facts’ (M. shishi qiu shi) was an integral part of the post-revolutionary political agenda. In this era, ‘objective’ facts rather than ‘subjective’ ideology became the standard for judging policy ‘correctness’ (that is, the strategy had to work in practice). Th is reform era valorization breaks with the practice of deferring to ‘tradition’ (which is considered to be a categorically outmoded tendency) or to the ideology of a central fi gurehead, which is characteristic of the Mao era. Yang’s narratives shadow offi cial lines on NCR as faithfully as possible. Th is other modernities 229 practice should not, however, be taken as evidence of PRC indoctrination, cowardliness or personal strategy. Work unit employees can lose their posi- tions due to statements that are considered to be inappropriate. As May- fair Yang points out, ‘In a culture of fear, everyday social relationships are highly politicized, and identifi able organizations and communities such as work units and neighbourhoods serve as basic units of social and political control and surveillance’ (1994: 24). In Trinde, Yang’s incomer status is rel- evant here, as only local people can play the nationality belonging card. In fact, Pema and Yang’s comments both coincide with offi cial dis- courses that acknowledge a place for select foreign infl uences. Th ese and other comments relate to the Chinese paradox of seeing powerfully attractive elements in the exotic other of ‘the West’, but not wanting the ‘whole package’ (Schein 2000: 22–5). Th e diff erence between incomer and local understandings is that Trinde’s leaders promote an expressly ‘autonomous’ nationality modernity, which both protects (in its local cultural aspect) and advances (in its marriage with Western method- ologies) local futures and resources. In contrast to the Trinde conceptions described above, in the urban context of Xining, local practices are not necessarily highly regarded or even accepted. Rigdrol, an intellectual activist who lives in the city uses a similar reasoning to Pema, but argues that local practices are an unnecessary deviation. Th e nationality strategy should, in his terms, be ‘going straight to modern’. Rigdrol further asserts that: Deng said education has to face towards the world, to the future and to modernization, and to catch up with advanced societies. One Tibetan college director added that education must also face towards society because the knowledge taught in school cannot now be used in society. Th e ten ‘sciences of knowledge’ are not appropriate or useful. We need to develop—we need knowledge appropriate to society. Offi cial rhetoric has long held that ‘old propensities’ (Tr. bachaq) are a prime obstacle to advancement. In a similar way, Rigdrol argues that: What we intellectuals focus on is the Tibetan reality, [we are interested in] those in school, planting fi elds and herding, [we concentrate on] their futures. Monks in monasteries are not Tibet’s future. Monks do not have any prospects. What is important is this piece of land, our compa- triots being well off in terms of eating and clothes and having no great problems seeing a doctor or getting to school. Milarepa will not have any place in, or be useful to, this. We do not make our fi lms for Han or Westerners to watch. Our fi lms will not be like Th e Cup [Phörba, an exile-Tibetan fi lm], which is good in the sense of technology. We are 230 chapter six

proud that Tibetans can make something that good. Our articles, televi- sion and documentaries will be like those Iranian fi lms. I do not agree with those who say that modern civilization is destroying traditional culture and primitive modes of production. Why is it that the entire world can change, but we have to continue with this primitive mode of production and way of life? Th at is to say, why cannot we make changes? Rigdrol drew a political analogy, saying, ‘Th ere’s a wolf, that is the Han, which bites Tibetans. Do you blame the wolf? Biting is the wolf’s nature! Tibetans are weak. It is their own fault they were bitten!’ Rigdrol’s opin- ions resonate with the ‘May Fourth Movement’, which continued in the PRC as the revolutionary directive to ‘Smash the Four Olds’. For Rigdrol, people of his nationality must transform their spirituality (as ideology) to change their material conditions. Th ese rationalizing political- science views are similar to Li Zhenxi’s socialist orientation (described in Chapter Th ree), and they also align with the 1980s ‘New Enlight- enment Movement’ (see Wang 2001: 170–87). Th is line of reasoning is almost unanimously rejected in Trinde. Rigdrol does not prioritize local forms and instead wants to ‘go straight to modernity’. He does not condemn ‘religion’ per se, and actually calls himself ‘Buddhist’. Aside from anything else, rejecting Buddhism would invalidate, or at least reduce, Rigdrol’s credibility to speak as a ‘nationality representative’ to, and for, others. Th e far-reaching rationalizations he wishes to see (espe- cially in the fi eld of ‘religion’) are akin to reform era state policies. In Trinde as elsewhere, policy emplacement inevitably involves per- sonal interventions, political interceptions and cultural interferences that frustrate or distort a policy as it was originally draft ed. Sometimes the distortion produces what Longworth and Williamson have dubbed ‘policy mirage’, a phenomenon that involves loopholes that exist (or are introduced) in local practice. Sometimes these theory-to-reality ‘imple- mentation gaps’ are so large that the stated interventions melt away or invert when they are implemented in local contexts (1993: 321–2).2 Th is ethnography demonstrates how, specifi cally, these negotiations and intercessions happen in Trinde practice. Th us, the stated existence of a specifi c policy is no guarantee either of its practical eff ects or of its con- ceptual interpretation. Policies may thereby have quite a diff erent impact, or be imbued with a distinct signifi cance, than the one that was initially intended. Th is process of policy refraction through local implementation

2 Local people are aware of this tendency, which was neatly summed up by Namgyel, a Yushu NGO director, who believes that, ‘Th ere are no policies going on in Nangchen; they are just doing mumbo-jumbo there.’ other modernities 231 is the case with NCR, which is reconceived in Trinde as an appoach that aims to confi rm ‘local plus West’ as the best regional route to modernity. While few changes can be seen at the level of educational practice in Trinde, NCR has nevertheless involved the creation and extension of numerous new processes and procedures, such as meetings, train- ing courses, school visits (and other geographical relocations) and the creation of a model school. NCR also provides a novel ideational-moral context to debate diff erent visions for Trinde’s modernity. Among local people, NCR is understood as a public demonstration of China’s failure to develop a viable home-grown future or modernity, and proof that central policymakers wishing to integrate international methods have supplanted those upholding domestic-national and socialist methods. Conservative Party-state offi cials are presented as having had to eat humble pie and adopt the long-despised foreign methodologies. In this ideological-moral space, many leaders in Trinde are promoting nation- ality practices as compatible with, or enhancing of, ‘modern’ state edu- cation. In an ironic local twist, the national state-led policy of NCR thus becomes a springboard for leaders to legitimize the import of ‘civilizing nationality culture’ as a feasible, and indeed necessary, component of a modern Trinde life. In Trinde, ‘modernity’ implies affi rming the importance of the region’s civilizing nationality culture as compatible with Western meth- odologies. Th is conceptualization cuts out the ‘middle man’ of Beijing, and allows a margin for regional cultural distinctiveness and owner- ship. In this way, NCR presents an opportunity to comment on the import (and underdeveloped potential) of Trinde in the development of viable ‘autonomous’ modernities for China. NGOs are another social organizational form prioritizing an integrative ‘West plus local’ route to modernity, which leverages local ownership and support. In Trinde, these organizations are generally considered to be an authentic, local, socially-altruistic response to the foregoing political upheavals, and an apt solution to contemporary challenges. As the following comments show, however, not all local people understand NGO interventions in the same way, or welcome them as a locally appropriate intervention.

Debating Modernities through NGO Practice

Yushu NGO interventions and their reception among local people form part of quests to fi nd ways to modernize local areas in appropriate, 232 chapter six autonomous ways. Th e focal concerns and activities of Yushu NGO staff reveal the existence of diff erent views about what a distinctly local, nationality answer to the predicaments of modernity and the possibili- ties of the reform era could look like. NGOs are something of a reform era craze in other parts of the PRC too. However, Yushu’s specifi cities distinguish the Prefecture in historical and political terms. NGOs have only been analysed by Foggin (2000) in the context of biodiversity protection, and constitute an important topic for further research (see Orofi no 2002 for an overview of development aid in Amdo). Th e disturbances in Yushu during the late 1950s and 1960s are well known for their severity, and led to the Prefecture being designated a ‘restricted’ area for longer than most other areas. During the revolu- tionary era, a huge number of religious practitioners fl ed. Of the practi- tioners who survived the fl ight into exile, following the 1980s and 1990s reforms, many set up NGOs and other philanthropic projects in their fatherlands and in Jyegu Prefecture Town. In Yushu, such initiatives include: Jyegu’s Orphanage School and local Medical Hospital, rebuild- ing monasteries and creating religious study centres. Yushu is remarkable for the amount, rather than the diversity, of NGO activity, a quantity that has increased immensely through the late 1990s and into the new millennium. Th is concentration was the rationale behind China Development Brief’s choice of a Qinghai for their 2004 NGO conference (see Young and Qian 2002/2003: 12–19 for a Qinghai NGO summary report). NGOs active in Yushu include: Jinpa Project (undertaking healthcare training programmes and bridge construction), Th e Bridge Fund (health, education and livelihoods), Snowland Service Group (schools), Th e Association for International Solidarity with Asia (pastoralist surveys), Children in Crisis (emergency relief), Plateau Per- spectives and Upper Yangze Conservation and Development Organiza- tion (environmental protection), Rokpa International (education, health and environment), Surmang Foundation (healthcare) and Trace Foun- dation (education, rural development and culture). In China, NGOs must work through state bureaucratic channels.3 Th is is a standard procedure also required in the UK and elsewhere.

3 Th e administrative issues posed by working through these agencies are not always the ones that might seem obvious or logical at fi rst. For example, one Jyegu orphanage and healthcare project run by Christian staff constantly faces closure due to bureau- cratic diffi culties. Th e issue here is not the overtly religious nature of the NGO team, but the County authorities’ perception that this explicitly foreign project was exposing their failure to provide adequate healthcare in Yushu. other modernities 233

Th e exponential growth of NGOs in China links to debates about the declining infl uence of ‘the state’, and the simultaneous emergence of an extra-political realm known as ‘civil society’ (M. shimin shehui, see Lu 2005, Goldman and Perry 2002: 2). Many local people also understand NGOs as categorically ‘diff erent’ from state institutions and activities. It is as though NGOs really do manifest the ‘extra-state’ features Zhang (2005: 234) warns people against idealistically imputing. Cadres and students depict NGO work as a locally-appropriate alternative to ‘state- work’ (Tr. jakaq lizi), which is sometimes characterized as involving moral compromises. For example, during one lunchtime registration, I mentioned that I had no administrative number (Tr. anguh). Singye, the Teaching Director, remarked that no number is a good thing. When I commented that no number means no wages, Singye countered that ‘no number means autonomy’ (T. rongwong). Mimicking a throttling action, he argued that, without a number, no one can (metaphorically) ‘strangle’ you. Pema, the Students’ Director interjected, explaining that, ‘Without an administration number you can go wherever you want, and say whatever you want.’ Th e implication here is that, by extension, an autonomous modernity would involve congruence to local cultural- moral precepts and having a measure of decision-making power. Writing about a contemporary inner China village, Yan laments that there is no ‘counter-mechanism’ to develop people’s social responsi- bility and to mitigate the ‘ego-centred consumerism’ in local society (2003: 234). In Yushu, however, there is little consumerism of the type mentioned by Yan and, instead, many local people engage in forms of reciprocal help. NGO work is a highly sought aft er and well-regarded area of employment among intellectuals and university students from Yushu. In contrast to Yan’s statement, schoolteachers students, schol- ars, cadres and NGO staff oft en remark that NGOs are altruistic and exist to ‘help others’. NGOs are thus interpreted as a form of social phi- lanthropy that is in line with the local prioritization of compassionate, charitable actions towards others. NGOs are an important response to reform era predicaments, and are a result of local people taking on the challenge of ‘developing modernity diff erently’. Th e 1990s and ‘noughties’ have involved an expansion in NGO workshops, which are oft en given by international (or internationally- educated) trainers. Th ese workshops are an important context for refl ecting on and practising new methodologies. Th e exotic methods are integrated into everyday practice in innovative ways. For instance, having attended a US-funded NGO workshop, one university lecturer 234 chapter six integrated the systematic tape-recording of oral history data into his research repertoire, despite fi nding the workshop’s ‘salvage ethnog- raphy’ theme ridiculous. Th e expansion of NGOs involves a similar increase in planning trips to rural locales. Th ese visits bring directors and outreach staff into direct contact with administrative directors, NGO staff , government cadres, work unit professionals and a range of other nationality leaders. Th ese moments provide opportunities for the exchange of ideas, ideals, contacts and knowledge. Conversing with NGO staff , local teachers gain knowledge about other local develop- ment strategies and information on sources of support for furthering local objectives to develop autonomous modernities for their region. Former monks with exile experience in Nepal or India, Xining Univer- sity English Training Programme graduates and foreigners motivated to preserve ‘nationality culture’ are oft en those who initiate NGOs in Yushu. Local people, foreign visitors and development and research specialists consider Yushu to be one of the most demographically and culturally ‘authentic’ of all PRC areas. Marshall and Cooke state that, ‘However [cen- sus] numbers might be fudged’, Yushu is ninety-seven percent Tibetan’, which makes it ‘the most Tibetan of all Tibetan places’ (1997: 2361). For- eigners wishing to support the development of a ‘really Tibetan’ place remark on the scarcity of ‘Chinese’ infl uences, which similarly fi ts with the ‘local and Western’ model for developing an autonomous modernity. NGO staff perceive these organizations to be a virtuous form of socio- moral service in an era of increasing consumer choices. Th e following fervent discussion about the politics of NGO interventions in eff orts to develop local modernities took place during a farewell dinner in Xin- ing. Th e debate involved four staff in their twenties and thirties from an internationally-funded NGO. Jampa is in his early-thirties. His father was active in the Four Rivers, Six Ranges Tibetan resistance struggles in Yushu. Kunjũ is from a pastoralist family in Golog, Qinghai. Lhamo, the organization’s administrator, is also from Golog. Kazang is their Yushu-born manager, who kicked off the discussion, by arguing that:

Kazang: I not only learnt English from foreigners, but also their methods. I repeated these techniques many times, so they became true. Democracy is transparent. No one gives you pres- sure and it is fair. Jampa: Our NGO has no ‘back door’ [i.e. it is not corrupt] so people have more faith in the organization. However, we are criticized by people who say it will ‘change Tibetan culture’. other modernities 235

Kunjũ: Prepare for more quarrelling! People do not criticize us for cultural or political reasons. It is a matter of jealousy. Human nature cuts across all other reasons. It is like a broken machine whose life is fi nished. Tibetans are like broken machines, this part is working, and this part is not. Now Tibetans become rich, but we are losing our culture. And if we change, then what are we? Jampa: But people are the same, and have the same spirituality, the same souls. Th e issue is probably that Tibetans are not yet enlightened! Kunjũ: I am against politics and politicians. If you practise and practise dharma, everyone is your friend, your parents. So why would you want to compete, fi ght and protect yourself? Politics is just me protecting my land, my belief, my ideas, my culture and my traditions. Th is [material self-interest] is why I do not like China. China is all destroy, destroy.

Th e dialogue reveals discussants’ opinions about the politics of creat- ing modernities. As evident in these discussions, some NGO person- nel emphasize that mundane considerations are not their principal concern, thus diff erentiating their intentions from the ‘materialism’ associated with ‘Chineseness’. Later, the NGO personnel discussed their personal and social motivations in greater depth:

Kunjũ: NGOs are not selfi sh. Lhamo: NGOs are selfi sh! People’s fi rst priority is always their salary, helping others is only ever their second priority. Jampa: If I did not do any work, I would still receive a salary. Kazang: I work and I have not been paid for three months! Lhamo: But if we never received any salary, then we would not work. We could not work for nothing unless we came from an extremely rich background. Kunjũ: If I were not paid, I would still do NGO work. Th e personal stuff is not important. I can fi nd money to pay my living costs, but not enough to cover projects. If I were not working for this organization, and was without pay myself, I would still try to undertake projects. Lhamo: Your plan could not work if you had no income from anywhere. Jampa: Aha! But this is only your assumption, Lhamo. Perhaps Kunjũ would fi nd a pot of gold. Th at could be his assumption [i.e. that good intentions are rewarded]. 236 chapter six

Kunjũ: As long as I can work and talk I can still earn money. Kazang: Nowadays no one is starving. Now people worry too much. God sends you to earth so we should not have a plan. God has a bigger and better plan! Lhamo: People think that they are the most important and that other issues are secondary.

Th e debate highlights how not everyone, even within one NGO, agrees that local motivations for modernizing their region are altruistic, or that nationality intentions diff er signifi cantly from other forms. Among these NGO staff , the provenance of resources is also a politically loaded issue, which underscores how a coherence of process and means is con- sidered important in reaching the desired modernity results. As Jampa remarked: China does not like the US, so they will be a powerful enemy in the future. Tibet likes the US because of the Dalai Lama. In fact, Tibet is the biggest US fan in world! In 1983–1984, the Dalai Lama sent a message to Tibetans: ‘Be kind to Westerners.’ Whatever the Chinese give to Tibetans, we never appreciate it, but when foreigners give money or whatever, we always appreciate it! When Chinese see Tibetans talking to Westerners, they say Tibetans should not speak English. Chinese think Tibetans are dangerous people. Chinese say we are too proud! NGO associates tend to imagine that their organizations are making a special (and sometimes distinctly ‘nationality’) contribution to fur- thering the practical, civilizing cultural and moral conditions of their locale. Th is focus distinguishes ‘autonomous’ modernities from macro state-led projects. Considering this tendency, Kunjũ argues: If someone else has already walked a particular road, then it becomes that person’s road. If someone else already ate something, even if it was really good, then it does not have any fl avour anymore. We have our own circumstances. Again, not everyone within Yushu agrees that NGOs are special or ‘appropriate’ to local conditions. For instance, in 2003 in the adjacent Golog Prefecture, one nationality-focused NGO was trying to encour- age the attendance of young pastoralists at their new school. During this promotional eff ort, one pastoralist arrived in person at the school and threatened staff , saying that, ‘I have got one son, and one gun.’ Th e pastoralist did not want his son to be separated from their family and way of life through being emplaced within any institution—be that other modernities 237

governmental, non-governmental, foreign or local. In many rural areas, life-skills are still rated above formal education and qualifi cations, and there is no signifi cant push towards a distinct modernity. As is evident from these ethnographic descriptions, NGOs are one way educated people mark out a local, ‘autonomous’ political-space, which is defi ned in terms of its ‘diff erence’ from other ‘nationality’ con- stituencies, offi cial administrative institutions and Western approaches. Th is diff erence is marked by emphasizing regional, collective and nationality altruism, Buddhist compassion, civilizing culture and local practices. In this way, NGOs are linked to wider discussions about the importance of taking a comprehensive view of practices that may gen- erate viable and locally-suitable modernities for Yushu and beyond. Another way that other voices can be brought into the debate around modernities is by attending to the contribution of younger generations in envisioning a modern future for Trinde, and further afi eld.

Modernizing Youth Perspectives

Th e fi nal section of this chapter explores the younger generation’s per- ceptions of reform era discourses. Foreign scholars have tended to overlook this set of people, perhaps because they consider post-revo- lution generations to be less informed about their societies relative to older generations. However, these post-Mao generations constitute a critical set of people for the making of nationality modernities. Some of these people will occupy highly strategic decision-making positions in millennial-era society. Th e pace and path of reform and opening up has prompted some people to describe the contemporary era as a ‘short-cut’ to a new PRC (im)morality (Yan 2003: 217–35). Young people in Trinde, however, mediate carefully between, and attempt to reconcile, local authorities’ and elders’ messages about being a ‘good’, well-cultured person with the complicated demands and practical exigencies that their lives now involve. In contrast to Yan’s statement, Uyo, a teenage English-option student, expresses that, ‘Teenagers have a responsibility to study their own language and culture and, when in other places, are responsible for demonstrating how Tibetans are.’ Th ese young adults are keen not to alienate themselves from their communities. Th e positions they can thereby take up are infl uenced by the close association of China with modernity and ‘locality’ with 238 chapter six tradition. Contemporary exigencies include concerns to gain employ- ment within China’s formal bureaucracy, which requires competence in Putonghua. However, the English-option students’ literary-language examination responses reconcile tradition and modernity modalities in innovative ways, as is clear in the following comment from Ujen: Nationalities have their own individual culture, language and customs. Th at is why it is called a ‘nationality’. Our nationality has a really long history compared to other nationalities, so that is why our nationality has the ability to adapt to new things. Th at is why we need to study more about our own history, and why we should defi nitely develop more new things. Gyatso’s statement shows a similar reconcilement and intention: Tibet has really great resources. We still have really good culture and local resources because our ancestors did a really good job [of sustainability and preservation]. We should not waste our ancestors’ culture and resources. We should protect our culture and develop the Tibetan lifestyle. It is the younger generation who are lowest in the age-hierarchy of local society, and whose allegiance to local ways is being carefully monitored and worked upon by parental and educational authorities. Older gen- erations frequently invoke ideals about ‘good’ practice to mark off the desired morality and ‘real nationality culture’ of their age-set from that of younger generations. Yet the same students that elders disregard as ‘fi sh and vegetable eaters’ present themselves as butter, meat and yoghurt loving tsampa-eaters (i.e. consumers of ritually-signifi cant nationality foods). Th ese ‘children of the reform era’ are keen to demonstrate their active cultivation of nationality practices and local ways, and to concili- ate elders’ ideals and activities with their own lives. Students do not blindly accept scholarly articulations of civilizing culture, or express desires to strive for Maoist socialist-utopian or Den- gist consumerist ideals. When leaders and elders are not present, stu- dents express idiosyncratic perspectives and desires that incorporate contemporary Western, offi cial PRC and exile discourses. Th us, young people sometimes criticize, innovatively resolve or reject contemporary political idioms and social rationales. Tseyong and Chödrön are two English-option students. Th ese young women’s aspirations are formed on the basis of scholarly and school histories, oral narratives, present considerations and potential opportunities. Both women consider English to be ‘very useful’ and ‘practical’. With English-speaking profi - ciency, they think they will be able to go to foreign countries. Both want other modernities 239 to become translators so that they can ‘translate for all the nations of the world’. Th ey wish to ‘spread our nationality’s habits, customs, history, Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist culture because now we can- not transmit these things’. Tibetan history is, they relate, ‘very long’, so they ‘have to preserve it’, and it is therefore ‘important to know Tibetan history well’. Tseyong and Chödrön emphasize that both their parents and teachers want them to ‘learn Tibetan, and not to forget Tibetan’, as it is their ‘own language’. During an informal get-together, the English-option students dis- cussed ‘modern’ ways of life, aspirations and concerns about their own futures and possibilities relating to their region. Students’ discussions about their favourite historical fi gure or ‘personal idol’ (M. ouxing, Tr. pawo, meaning ‘hero’, or gedra chey / ye chey, which means ‘great per- son’) hint at the kind of values they consider to be important now and for the future: Mao Zhuxi [widespread sniggering] Tonmi Sambhota … Songtsen Gampo … Nyatri Tsenpo … Gendun Choepel … Napoleon Hitler! Trisong Detsen [T. Khri.srong lde.btsan. Th is name was handed in on paper in the literary-language]4 Mao Zhuxi Songtsen Gampo … Pema Jungne … Jalwa Rinpoche … Gesar … Marx Shakyamuni … Buddha … Jalwa Rinpoche … Gandhi Beethoven. Th e students’ heroes are drawn from across the social and politi- cal spectrum. In contrast to the revolutionary era, when every person would be expected to answer ‘Mao’, a much broader range of ‘personal imaginaries’ can currently be articulated through the idiom of ‘heroes’. As is clear from a glance at the doodles on the students’ notebooks and hands in class, some of these young people are actually loyal fans of David Beckham, Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan. Finally, aft er a long pause of consideration over the idols question, the students’ teacher, Gao, volunteered his hero, ‘Me! Yes, every one of us has a chance. All famous people have a talent for a certain skill, but, still, ordinary people can get lucky at being the best. We can all create that surprise.’ Here, Gao

4 Trisong Detsen was a Tubo dynasty king of the numerous ‘deity mountains’ (Tr. lharuh) along the Yangtze. 240 chapter six melds ideas about equality that were popularized during his revolu- tionary era childhood with reform era notions about every individual making a distinctive and valuable contribution (as highlighted in the section on NCR above). In practice, students oft en hold divergent views on the objectives local people should follow in developing their area for the future, as Dechen and Nyija’s contrasting statements show:

Tibetans have a long history and deep culture so Tibetans are a very special nationality. We teenagers are the people who will pro- tect our culture. Trinde teacher: What do you want to be when you fi nish school? Nyija: An American …

Other students want to become doctors ‘to help poor people, for example, during the SARS epidemic’ or translators. Off ering answers that echo the ‘local plus best of the West’ idea, Trinde’s English-option students refer to their ‘Culture Close Up’ English-language textbook as a source of information on the ‘international diff erences between China and foreign countries’. Students said that their textbook informs them that the UK and USA are ‘capitalist’. Th ey commented that China is ‘not free’, ‘not open yet’ and ‘life is not yet independent’ because China is ‘socialist’ and Tibetan areas ‘feudalistic’. Th e stu- dents related that a principal diffi culty for Tibet has been its former nobility, whereas for China it is the vast population. Similar neo-mal- thusian conceptions about the hindering eff ects of China’s vast popu- lation form the basis of the nation’s population policies (Anagnost 1997: 117–37). Students most want to visit: England, USA, Switzerland, India, Egypt and Germany. With the exception of Egypt, all these nations have accepted signifi cant numbers of Tibetan refugees. Germany was specifi ed ‘because of their environmental protection’. Students’ main interest in the US and UK was ‘freedom … because [British and American] people are more free from their parents’. Young Trinde people’s articulations contrast with Yan’s (2003: 218) statements about the striking decline of parental power, authority and prestige in rural inner China. For example, Gao a twenty-seven year old Eng- lish teacher, will not go home aft er drinking alcohol in order to avoid his parents concern and rebuke. Most young Trinde people live with other modernities 241 their parents until marriage (which, for educated people, is oft en in their mid to late twenties). Local households operate as corporate entities, whereby unmarried working members give their wages to their parents. Harrell (1985: 217) describes a similar situation in an ‘economic family’ (M. jia) in inner China. Th e students’ prime concern focused on ‘freedom’ (Tr. rongzen, M. duli) or ‘autonomy’ (Tr. rongwong, M. ziyou), which is linked to what Sandhup termed, ‘diff erences in love and marriage between Yushu and the UK and US’. Th e English-option students say that, ‘In the UK and US, teenagers are independent—they fall in love and move out of their parents’ home.’ Lodro refl ected that life in foreign countries, ‘must be diffi cult, but [at least] it has lots of freedom’. If the students had ‘free- dom’, they say they would ‘just go out’, ‘hang out’, ‘play’, ‘travel some- where’, ‘sing songs, dance and chat’ and ‘use the Internet’. Students invocations of ‘freedom’ do not depict a fully thought out or ‘utopian’ vision, but portray ‘freedom’ as the releasing of personal constraints they feel are acting upon them, and an ability to partake of certain pleasures that consumer societies are perceived to off er. Th ese ideas are reminiscent of instrumentalist liberal theories that understand personal happiness to be good, and self-determination to produce happiness. Refl ecting on the young people’s responses, Gao commented quizzically that when he was these students’ age (ten years ago), he and his peers were, ‘not sensitized to this freedom. My genera- tion never wanted independence. Th ese days, students really want to be free, to be independent’. Having lived in Canada, Gao perceives the desire for independence (in terms of living and relationships) to be the prime diff erence between foreigners and Tibetans.

Integrating Discourses

As is clear from the preceding discussion, many of the ways ‘moderni- ties’ are imagined locally coincide (conceptually, at least) with offi cial concerns, for example, in aiming to produce people who have more personal autonomy, self-discipline and social decorum. Some projects are the result of attempts to reconcile prior and existing practices with contemporary social expectations and future aspirations. Some of these forms could be described as part of quests to create a regional moder- nity, or to nationalize, regionalize or localize projects that are seen as part of state-driven modernizations. 242 chapter six

Th e ethnographic section on NCR shows that people’s participa- tion in, and interpretations of, policies associated with ‘modernity’ and ‘development’ cannot be viewed as simple capitulation to, or indoc- trination of, ‘the state’. Nor should these idioms be placed in categorical opposition to cultural restoration projects in practice, since both simul- taneously relate to the same concerns (Hartley 2002: 11–12). Local projects coincide to diff erent degrees with Party-state directives. How- ever, local initiatives are not identical to offi cial projects, and neither of these work out in a ‘singular’ or ‘hegemonic’ way in practice. Investigat- ing local engagements in fi ne detail shows how people act to overcome apparent diffi culties in achieving local aims. For example, Jigme Phunt- shog registered his Serta, Sichuan institution as an ‘educational estab- lishment’ to circumvent offi cial attention and state restrictions applying to ‘religious’ institutions. Following suit, a Yushu NGO recently reg- istered a reconstructed Nangchen monastery as a ‘school’. Th is is an example of how technologies, practices and ideas ‘travel’ as people learn from one another directly and remotely, within and between regions. Regarding the place and impact of NGOs, trying to discover authen- tic social spaces somehow beyond the reach of ‘the state’ misses the point (Zhang 2001: 3), as do attempts to ascertain whether ‘the state’ is ‘omnipresent’ or ‘limited’. Distinguishing ‘state’ from ‘people’ or ‘soci- ety’ in categorical terms is also analytically inadequate and contextually misleading. As Mitchell argues, the boundary where the ‘state’ stops and ‘society’ starts is ‘elusive, porous, and mobile’ (1991: 77). Hann fur- ther asserts that, ‘Th e assumption of an overriding antagonism between state and society is futile. If these terms can serve at all, the task must be to investigate their complex and continuous interactions’ (1993: 9). Questioning whether China is ‘really’ or ‘only nominally’ ‘socialist’ or whether the country has become ‘post-socialist’, ‘democratic’ or ‘lib- eralized’ overlooks signifi cant points of contextual rapprochement that are evident through direct engagement with interpersonal dynamics in local contexts (see Davis et al. 1995, and Latham 2005 for critique). For that reason, we can better understand the politics of contempo- rary China by noting the diverse and imbricated ways people deal with the current political moment in relation to offi cial policies and local pressures. As this chapter has shown, expressions of personal ‘autonomy’ (Tr. rongwong), social and political ‘freedom’ (Tr. rongzen), conscientious self-application (Tr. bedsern chey) and opportunities (Tr. gokap) are emerging as focal idioms through which belonging and personhood are other modernities 243 articulated among Trinde’s younger (and especially reform era) gen- erations. ‘Diff erence’, as it is expressed here, is especially intergenera- tional, but also involves interpersonal, interregional and international elements, and emerges when ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ come into confl ict (for example, in local development projects and in relation to acceptable behaviours for younger generations). Furthermore, younger people’s ideas about greater social liberty coexist, rather than contrast, with other cultural idioms as an ideal or career-path rationale. CHAPTER SEVEN

REVISUALIZING NATIONALITIES

What comes out of your mouth is what you become. And if you do not speak, that too is worth noting. —Tsering Wangmo Dhompa an exile poet from a Yushu family (2003: 45)

We are drawn in to a merry scene, as laughing children play with tin-can-and-string ‘toy telephones’. Th e camera zooms in on a high- tech mobile phone. A stunning young woman decked out in exqui- site, colour-coordinated Lhasa clothing rings an ancient monastery bell. Pristinely dressed Lhasa-area pastoralists, farmers and monks stop their tasks to gaze in awe as an immense, solitary China Mobile hot air balloon fl oats eff ortlessly up and over Lhasa’s golden mon- astery roofs and plateau. Th e building is left indistinct, but appears to be the Potala (formerly the Dalai Lama’s residence as head of the theocratic state rather than the Jokhang (Tr. Tsuglhakhang), the most sacred Tibetan Buddhist temple. Night falls and the colour- ful city lights refl ect in the rain-drenched streets. Our female pro- tagonist reappears, now alluringly windswept, cooing down her mobile phone to her fantasy-suitor. Audiences can imagine how easy love relationships and urban dating can be using China Mobile’s technologies. In another song, the mood shift s and we meet a local ‘Beach Boys meets Bollywood’ boy-band who are singing an infectiously catchy number. Th e lead-singer is a young incarnate lama from Yushu. Th e super-styled group sport dangly ear-rings, trendy togs and fl ashy, wraparound sunspecs. Th e singer proceeds to serenade his love inter- est (appropriately enough, Lhasa’s top model), who is dressed in superlative, Lhasa-style silk clothing. He competes for her attention with his supporting mates (from Sichuan and the TAR). Th e boy- band members appear, all nattily tousled and thoroughly love struck, on a series of fairground rides. Th eir disinterested beloved appears to spurn the chirpy trio. In the closing sequence, we see that she has capriciously reconsidered, and has selected the Nangchen trulku. Th e happy duo are driving off over an ultra-modern suspension bridge revisualizing nationalities 245 festooned with spanking new prayer-fl ags in an open-topped jeep, while the rejected duo run futilely behind. Th e opening vignette describes a promotional video compact disc (VCD) produced in mid-2003 by China Mobile, a key state-owned telecommunications enterprise. Th is chapter investigates the ways that media technologies are used to express a range of social and politi- cal agendas in Trinde, and how nationality imageries are important forms of public culture. Th e examples below demonstrate the exten- sive circulation, reproduction and creative reinterpretation of many of the key idioms that have already been discussed in this book (namely: wealth, development, nationality, culture and local livelihoods, ritual practice, modernity, tradition and history) in the context of contem- porary media and within local practice. Th ey highlight the modifi - cation and re-appropriation of diverse social and nationality idioms across media genres. As invoked here, ‘cultural media’ and ‘media technologies’ encompass a multifarious fi eld that is concurrently a way of analysing their expression. Following Costello, ‘cultural production’ refers to the tuition of skilled people and the fabrication of texts, folk- songs and opera (2002: 221). Technologies, media and cultural pro- duction involve a wide-ranging domain of communicative arts, and they include popular and informal forms. All three imply the negotia- tion of power relations and struggles for control in local, regional and national contexts. Similarly, they entail the forming of social relations and conveying of social relationships, as well as the promotion of sym- bols of globalization and localization. In Trinde, embodied, visual and narrative forms present an inno- vative take on important historical, political and social themes in the burgeoning fi eld of nationality arts. Such productions invoke signs that have been elevated to the status of pan-nationality markers. Sometimes the elements coincide with those identifi ed by Dreyfus (2003) as the bases of a nationality ‘protonationalism’, namely: common language, sacred geography and narratives about historical fi gures. Oft en, how- ever, the images and narratives dwell on the ‘typical’ quotidian activities of a pastoralist lay person and their family. In cultural political terms, the regionally produced VCDs consoli- date a fi eld of nationality reference points. Th ese coordinates index a reform era pan-nationality ideal that is allied with the concerns of educated scholars, administrative leaders, NGO staff and media producers. Th is virtual pan-nationality appeals to a wide range of people because it presents an immediately recognizable imaginary 246 chapter seven of offi cially-legitimized nationality belonging. Within this space, the specifi c idioms and meanings are left indistinct. In this way, the maximum array of people can identify with the same symbolic imag- ery in diff erent ways, yet minimum offi cial scrutiny is attracted in the process. Moreover, unlike scholarly cultural forms, the media- tized pan-nationality idioms are not esoteric or socially exclusive. However, as the ‘China Mobile’ section below demonstrates, impre- cise symbols may coincide and collude with Party-state authorities and governance (Chow 1995: 40). In this way too, Yushu’s recent media developments are not technically or symbolically separable from offi cial projects. Instead they are, in many cases, being worked out through the same channels using similar idioms (cf. Gladney 1994a: 95). Religious practitioners, NGO staff , administrative employees, insti- tutional leaders and scholars are those who, in Yushu society, are most likely to hold institutional positions, and are oft en the people who are locally accorded the ability to speak for local constituents on cultural themes. Pratt’s description of ‘autoethnography’ captures this process whereby people intentionally present themselves in ways that become involved with the existing fi eld of knowledge (cited in Chow 1995: 38). Local media specialists, NGO offi cials, schoolteachers, cadres and stu- dents are all relatively separate (due to their education, relocations and their area’s politicized history and circumstances), from the contexts they represent. Th ese factors facilitate the objectifi cation and rearticu- lation of local practice as a stable, defi nable, exclusive body of knowl- edge known as ‘nationality culture’. VCDs bring an idealized, virtual ‘greater Tibet’ into domestic contexts, and commercial markets disseminate this polished, commodifi ed ver- sion to regional, national, exile and global audiences. Urban-based media professionals are those best placed to return to their fatherlands as salvage autoethnographers wielding Sony cameras, to focus on rural, ‘national- ity’ life (see Figure 14). As Perinbanayagam argues, ‘refl exive objectifi ca- tion’ of one’s situation in a fi eld of Others and other ways of being occurs through objectifying representations. Th ese re-presentations are simul- taneously part of ‘complex vocabularies’ through which conscious indi- viduals identify with, and are situated in, those intricate discursive forms (cited in Terrone 2002: 215). As Chow notes, this type of fi lmmaking sits between art gallery and ethnological museum, easily slipping into degrees of ‘fetishization’ and commodifi cation of iconographic elements of the place and people (1995: 38). In fact, my own ‘exotic’ presence in revisualizing nationalities 247

Figure 14. ‘Autoethnography’ photo opportunity, Jyegu Horse Festival this nationality area was included in a couple of pop videos, which show me contemplating a beautiful river near Derge, and watching a vibrant local monastic ritual. From the 1980s onwards, new recording media and cultural perfor- mances have spread in a context of loosening state controls and increas- ing commercialization of nationality arts (see TIN 2004: 57–62). In the reform era, the central government created and supported national- ity academies, troupes and competitions to ‘professionalize’ ‘folk arts’ (Mackerras 1984: 454–5). Today, state-sponsored televised ‘song and dance extravaganzas’ (Tr. luhtsuq, M. yinchanghui) are a prime way in which this nationality becomes visible to inner China populations, and is a principal arena for the public presentation of ‘nationality culture’. Th e nineteen-stage, three-month Jiuzhaigou spectacular in Sichuan (2003) and Xining Nationalities Festival are examples of such state- sponsored nationality events. One popular way in which stereotypical ‘pan-nationality’ forms are promoted is local ‘cabaret’ (Tr. noma,~ M. nangma). Jyegu’s ‘Khampa Cabaret’ (which local people refer to as the kambalama, meaning ‘Kham people’s cabaret’) draws crowds of professionals (mostly in their twenties and thirties), monks, parents and children, all of whom are highly vocal in their evaluation of performers. Ideas of pan-nationality 248 chapter seven identifi cation and belonging are also transmitted, particularly through song, at: banquets and informal get-togethers, labour brigades, festi- vals (National Day, International Women’s Day, Teenagers’ and Teach- ers’ Festivals and local and regional horse festivals), domestic contexts, school competitions, weddings and sometimes even bus journeys. Th ese contexts are collectively described as ‘having a good time’ or ‘celebrating’ (Tr. gaga trotro sey). Th e various contexts involve diff erent considerations regarding which song should be performed, how and why. Usually, attendees perform a ‘party piece’, which is oft en a nationality or ‘mantra pop’ song. ‘Nationality pop’ refers to a genre of popular recorded music that employs stylized visuals and stereotypical lyrical elements. Th is genre is expressed through archetypical nationality idioms, and oft en contains religious references and fragments of sacred mantras. Th is genre is the most popular type of music in urban centres and townships of Yushu, and is available on cassette, compact disc or VCD. Nationality cultural arts, song and dance have become integral fea- tures of Kham, and especially Yushu, identity (see Figure 15). Th e fol- lowing two phrases: ‘If a child can walk, it can dance. If the child can talk, it can sing’, and the ‘sea of song, kingdom of dance’ (T. glu.yi.rgya. mtso.dang.bro.yi.rgyal.khams, M. ge de haiyang, wu de wangguo) are commonly heard in China in reference to nationality populations and

Figure 15. State-designated New Year in Trinde Town’s main square (Druchung) revisualizing nationalities 249 are invoked to imagine diverse and overlapping communities. Trinde and Yushu people cite these phrases to distinguish their special skills relative to other Yushu Prefecture peoples. Yushu Kham people dif- ferentiate themselves from those from Amdo and Lhasa in this man- ner. Local-dwelling incomers describe Trinde people using the same phrase. Inner China inhabitants mention that this characteristic typi- fi es nationalities in general. Exiles now sometimes typify themselves by citing the same ditties (see TIN 2004: 116–119). Th e variable appli- cation of these sayings indicates the adaptive, non-exclusive nature of such cultural activities in practice. Song and dance is now an emblematic nationality cultural compe- tency, even though there is no evidence that song and dance is more prevalent in Yushu and nationality places than elsewhere. Within Yushu Prefecture, Yushu and Trinde are the main counties specializing in song and dance, which has an infl uence on local practices and per- sonal presentations. For example, almost all the performers in Yushu Song and Dance Troupe (M. gewutuan) are from Trinde and Yushu; few come from Nangchen, and virtually none come from Dzatö, Drito or Chumarleb. Lack of song and dance ability is one way that incomers characterize themselves. Th is was the case during the party piece seg- ment of one particular evening in a Yushu restaurant. On this occa- sion, the Beijing-born visitors selected forfeits rather than perform. An incomer photographer lamented that, ‘I do not know any love songs, so I’ll eat some fried bread [as a penalty] instead.’ Such stereotypical designations refl ect how ‘nationality culture’ is presented as an exotic, depoliticized folk genre (ibid. 118). Th ese genres are offi cially permit- ted and supported, oft en for commercial purposes. Th eir cultural forms involve contemporary Chinese stylistics mixed with local elements. Th is mode of representation presents regional nationality subjects as socially unsophisticated and politically anodyne. As Gladney ironically comments of nationalities vis-à-vis cultural arts, ‘Th ey sing, they dance; they twirl, they whirl. Most of all, they smile, showing their happiness to be part of the motherland’ (1994b: 95). However, nationality cultural or media forms are not universally accepted or favoured. In fact, among the urban youth of modernizing Jyegu, formulaic representations of ‘nationality culture’ are distinctly passé. Lajey, a Yushu-dwelling teacher from a Trinde family, argues that, ‘It is Chinese people who like to see Tibetan shows. Most Tibetans do not like them, especially teenagers. Th ey do not know the words nor can they understand the historical meanings.’ In contrast to Lajey’s comments, 250 chapter seven the 2003 reopening of Trinde People’s Th eatre demonstrated that, cul- tural spectaculars remain highly popular among many younger people in the outlying rural county of Trinde. Th e theatre was reopened aft er a local restaurant-entrepreneur and local government offi cials had under- taken a joint venture to refurbish the county’s derelict People’s Th eatre. Th e inaugural event was a storming success. Th e most visibly enthusi- astic spectators were the teenagers, who climbed up on stage to present blessing scarves to the performers at every opportunity. Parents, teachers, government staff , other professional and non-professional villagers and monks also attended. Many people went home singing. A few attendees mentioned that the event had rekindled their desire to become singers. Th e refurbishment project also shows how certain local people with the means, know-how and inclination can combine business, community and nationality objectives in the reform era. Song and dance owes much of its popularity to the fact that this is the way nationalities become visible on a national and, in some cases, international stage. However, this social acclaim is compromised by the widely held assumption that performing is a sleazy and low-status occupation, particularly for women. Th e strong linkage of local arts with depoliticized and commercialized forms of recreation means that specialization in performative genres reduces that person’s credibility within non-performative social contexts. Despite, or possibly because of, this public prominence, performing arts create local spaces for com- menting on present nationality positioning, which is oft en achieved through subtly re-presenting offi cial versions of ‘history’. For example, at the state-supported 2003 Xining Nationalities Festival, Yushu Song and Dance Troupe presented a version of the ‘Princess Wencheng story’.1 Th e stage show contained unusual performative twists on the saga. Th e packed theatre indicates that incomers are attracted to con- sume contrived representations of (what they consider to be) their own glorious history. In this case, however, Yushu Song and Dance Troupe’s message was subtly nonconformist. In this version, a Yushu dancer played the Han Princess. Th is con- trasts with the televised version, where an actress from inner China plays the Princess. Halfway through the performance, King Songtsen

1 Incomers usually refer to the ‘Princess Wencheng Story’ (M. Wencheng Gongzhu, T. Rgya.bza’.gong.jo), while Kham people speak of ‘Songtsen Gampo television’ (T. Srong- srong.btsan.sgam.pos.glog.bsnyen). Chinese Central Television’s 2000 Lhasa-dialect version of the ‘Historical Epic—Tang dynasty’ shows the Princess in Tibetan dress. Ste- venson (1999) provides an insightful critique of the politics of representing this story. revisualizing nationalities 251

Gampo and Princess Wencheng return to the stage. Th e Princess is wearing local dress (as in the China Central Television production), and learns an archetypal regional dance. Th e dance symbolically valo- rizes regional practices through Wencheng’s own active participation in, and embodiment of, regional (now nationality) practices. Th e local and incoming dancers mix. A classical Chinese-style version of an old local folksong (which was recently rerecorded as a disco smash-hit) accom- panies the sequence. Six women spin with bobbins while the others sew on circular embroidery frames. Th is symbolizes an equal mixing of local and incomer technologies. Th e theatrical presentation updates offi cial sources, which credit Wencheng with bringing culture and advanced production techniques from the central state to areas now constitut- ing the PRC’s far western margins. Th e women exchange bobbins and frames. Wencheng now practises using the bobbin, symbolizing an active uptake of local forms. Suddenly, fl amboyantly dressed male danc- ers enter performing a feisty ‘kung-fu’ type dance-sequence. Th e scene provoked a standing ovation, which was initiated by a non-nationality contingent among the audience. Th is cultural arts example shows some of the diff erent ways nationalities are interpreted and broadcast in depo- liticized, diff erently politicized and commercialized ways.

Local Arts in Historical Perspective

To provide a short background to the processes and phenomena described above, Yushu’s televised song and dance scene is primarily a reform era innovation, though it draws heavily on earlier cultural inclinations. Th e local saying ‘Even if your voice is like a goat or sheep bleat, when you are happy you should sing!’ (Tr. kathey huru geythey rakey õng lukey dra na yong, shipo yö du, yitong go re) shows the impor- tance of song as a socially inclusive practice in everyday life. Prior to the revolutionary era, most songs in Trinde were of the lazhe type—earthy, improvised melodic banter between an unmarried couple (see Anton- Luca 2002 for a general introduction and Mellor 2003a for a contextual summary detailing revolutionary and reform era social and stylistic changes). A typical exchange is: ‘I loved you, but you loved someone else, so now I love someone else!’ Th ere are many styles (romantic, sarcastic) and themes (lamas, love and hometown) of lazhe. In the revolutionary era, local artistic forms like lhazhe were suppressed. Revolutionary songs and Maoist recitations replaced lazhe and the other main recited form, 252 chapter seven that of religious mantras. Adulatory revolutionary socialist genres were offi cially instated in their place. Mao’s speech at the Conference on Lit- erature and Art in 1942 exemplifi es the rationale of those times: ‘Th ere is no such thing as “art for art’s sake”: all art must serve socialism and the socialist state. Literature and art are from the masses, for the masses and should raise the standards of and educate the masses’ (cited in TIN 2004: 13). While relating her life history, Sonam gave an account of these changes to local media styles: During the Cultural Revolution, lazhe singing was banned. Everyone recited Chairman Mao’s sayings instead. Aft er the Cultural Revolution, lazhe started up again, especially in rural, nomad areas. Now, lamas are always chanting, children studying. Th ere is no time! No one sings any- more, they only watch television. According to Gao, Sonam’s son, lazhe did not stop in urban Trinde because people considered it a ‘bad custom’. He argues that, ‘Aft er the revolution, the singers’ forthright messages made people feel uncom- fortable, whereas they can listen to the new [pop] songs comfortably.’ Th is comment suggests that the revolutionary era purges and offi cial proscriptions have led to a local preference for sanitized practices, with earlier elements being neglected, abandoned or suppressed. In the reform era, Party-state controls on artistic media were relaxed. Local narrative forms, visual practices and styles of embodi- ment were permitted. A wide range of cultural practices is now in evidence in the fi eld of art (see Kvaerne 1994), song (see Ramble 2002) and dance (see Mackerras 1984). Lazhe began again in pasto- ralist areas, though never regained its former popularity in Trinde town. In reform era urban areas of Yushu, the regionally-popular lute-type instrument (Tr. danye) was supplanted by recorded music (M. luzhende yinyue). Virtuoso players now appear alongside play- back artists in stage shows. In Yushu, most danye players are currently young men who strum simple melodies in return for small change in Jyegu restaurants. As a socio-moral practice, visuality has long been highly signifi cant in regional society, particularly with respect to religious practice. Prior visual forms include venerated religious specialists, thangka paintings, exegetic paintings (for example, the ‘wheel of life’), deities in monas- teries and sacred places in the landscape. Local practices also involve embodied and narrative arts, such as the performance of local and monastic, ritualized dances (Tr. chã), epic poems, informal singing and the recitation of historical-religious scriptures. revisualizing nationalities 253

Within urban centres, commercialized and depoliticized genres of popular recorded music appeared in place of prior forms. Televisual nationality stereotyping burgeoned, and local artistes increasingly deployed nationality forms in active and creative ways. Diversifying media channels expanded and changed the composition of audiences from impromptu performances at local gatherings to televised mass media extravaganzas. Th e current prominence of the nationality idiom in local arts representations is evident in the practice of referring to old folksongs as ‘Tibetan songs’ (Tr. Böguo) by virtue of the singers having been offi cially categorized as being of this nationality. In practice, most of these songs have a local ambit unless, of course, they are turned into nationality pop hits. Despite the newness of the media, most contemporary nationality pop songs are based, at least in part, on prior narrative forms. Nationality pop songs incorporate local narratives, epic poetry, quotidian signifi ers of ‘local life’, iconic visuals (sacred mountains, monasteries), pictorial elements and Buddhist motifs (mandalas, painted scrolls), embodied practices (prostrations, circumambulations), cultural styles (as seen in festival dances) and religious elements (mantras, ritual paraphernalia). Many songs employ textual elements that have a sacred signifi cance. For example, Tsering Pasang’s Om Mani Padme Hung (M. liuzi zhenyen, ‘six- character mantra’) invokes the bodhisattva Chenrezig (S. Avalokites- vara). Six Ornaments (Tr. zhen druq) is about the great ancient Indian Buddhist commentators. Many of Trinde’s elders object to the use of man- tras in recorded songs. One Druchung-village grandmother described the use of Om mani padme hung in pop-songs as ‘bad and wrong’. Local people say that a lama warned that, ‘When the vast bird fl ies in the sky, people will use Om mani padme hung in a song, and their minds will become unclear and distorted.’ Gao explained that, ‘Th e “very big bird” refers to aeroplanes, people had to work that bit out.’ Local people credit Trinde’s Beylong hermit and Pema Jungne with the prophecy, and believe that the appearance of these phenomena indicate the commencement of a ‘degenerate era’ (Tr. düngepa, see Mumford 1989: 228–9 and Chapter Five). Pema Jungne is commonly attributed with the prophesy that states that, ‘When the iron bird fl ies and the horse goes on wheels, dharma will travel west to the land of the red men.’ In Trinde, local people combine this prediction innovatively with local circumstances. It is not only prior local forms that have a lingering infl uence in Trinde cultural arts. Revolutionary genres have not entirely disappeared either, as evident in the Trinde School anthem, ‘We Are the Children 254 chapter seven of the Grassland’, composed by Ngawang Ongdra. Th e anthem’s style and lyrics are imbued with reminders of the revolutionary PRC past. Th e anthem is orally transmitted through performances at offi cial school occasions, and is reproduced in numerous school publications (for example, Ngag.dbang Dbang.phrags 2001). Th ree teachers chose the anthem as their ‘farewell song’ at my leaving ceremony. A literary- language rendering exists, though only the Putonghua version is gener- ally performed. Th is rousing song (which is included in the left -hand column, below) is juxtaposed with Padre’s~ interpretation of the text’s ‘real meaning’ (in the right-hand column):

We are children of the grassland! We are the Th is makes it seem as pride of the snow mountain! if we have left religion Teacher told me the unforgettable history of the behind us. Not the nation! morality part—we kept Teacher leads me to pass over the prayers of that—just the supersti- yesterday! tion! Th e dusty days gave us strength! When did they? Heaven knows! We can only guess at the ideas and mean ing around the words ... Th e accretion of history gave us wisdom! [Chortles, exclaiming We are fl ying! wildly] I could write We are singing! better than this! We are praising, praising the beautiful school! Teacher told me the way of this century, Teacher encourages me to shine. Th e magnifi cent snow mountains gave us the Now I would give backbone, Tibetans the yak’s backbone and the snake’s eyes, an eagle’s wings and the grass- land’s heart. But then, if you had all this, it is like saying you are not a human being! Ha ha ha! Th en what would you be? revisualizing nationalities 255

Th e fl owing river gave us hot blood! We are seeking! We are advancing! We own the life of the sun! Who knows what that could mean?

Revolutionary era media have not entirely disappeared either. Th ese Mao era channels, such as loudspeakers, were formerly reserved for propaganda. While the medium remains the same, the output and broadcasters are now local and self-selected, rather than being offi cial and ascribed. Outside the school, a few Trinde household-compounds blast out monastic chanting in the morning, at noon and again at night. In Gao’s opinion, these chants are ‘a good sign. It shows that people are now allowed to follow their own religion spontaneously’. In fact, the political propagandizing loudspeakers of the Mao era have not necessarily become socially ‘multi-vocal’ in the reform era. Instead, the loudspeakers continue to resound with a unitary and authorita- tive message, though nowadays the output is always overtly ‘religious’, which is considered more appealing and relevant in local terms, and is oft en thought to be apolitical.2 Modern technologies and opportunities for market commercialism have made the reform era media explosion possible. VCDs are currently China’s predominant form of televisual media and are a highly visible and audible medium for assembling, representing and disseminating ideas of ‘pan-nationality’. VCDs rely on an iconographic visual short- hand of archetypal forms for their content and recognition. Th ey also depend upon recent technological advances for their transmission and on nationality discourses for their collective form of expression. Addi- tionally, these VCDs are partially dependent on autonomy policies, which provide an authorized margin in which to express nationality cultural ideas. In contemporary China, the ‘mediating’ technologies for viewing these televisual forms of expression are now available to anyone who can aff ord them, and who has access to the requisite markets (see TIN

2 In Ladakh, another Tibetan Buddhist area where religion has become a site of com- munal tension (van Beek 2004), piped chanting is broadcast from the New Monastery at regular times, which coincide with the Muslim call to prayer in the adjacent mosque. 256 chapter seven

2004: 64–70). Consequently, many Trinde town homes now contain a television and some households also have a VCD player, tape recorder and radio. A basic VCD player retails for approximately fi ve to six hun- dred Yuan. Only a couple of households in Trinde have personal com- puters. Chengdu (Sichuan) is the centre for producing regional VCDs. Many artistes reside there permanently or temporarily on account of the concentration of state-of-the-art recording studios and technical expertise there. Xining’s state-owned studios are mediocre by com- parison. In Yushu, most of the VCDs sold are counterfeit, and retail at around fi ve Yuan each. DVDs, the vast majority of which are also pirate copies, began to appear in Xining’s most upmarket outlets in 2004. Th e most popular recording artistes in Yushu are: Yadong (pop ballads, from Kham, Sichuan), Rongzhong’Erjia (pop ballads, from Amdo, Sichuan), Ayong Zerang (pop ballads, from Amdo, Qinghai) and, to a lesser extent, Dube (traditional Amdo music; the artist is based in Gansu). Th ese singers’ hometowns are historically-renowned centres for performative arts (Yushu) and cultural learning (Lhasa, Derge, Rebkong). To provide an overview of the production process, nationality pop VCDs involve a local composer (Tr. luhtsong khe) who contracts a local lyric-writer (Tr. tseytruh khe) who sets words to the music. Artistes in Sichuan and Qinghai cite ‘civilizing nationality culture’ as their prime reservoir of inspiration for songwriting. Th e composer then approaches a nationality singer (Tr. luhwa) who works with inner China session musicians (M. yinyue jia) when producing qual- ity recordings, or with synthesizer-technologists (Tr. midili muh) in the case of budget recordings. Finally, inner China or local camera- men (Tr. parja khe) shoot a custom-made video depicting the vocalist singing passionately in an iconic pastoral scene or monastic setting. Frequently, this expensive undertaking is substituted, or inter-spliced, with a slow-motion mélange of quintessential nationality imagery. In this case, the singer has no control over the cameramen or images used. Kham media professionals are key-players in the regional pro- motions of new media forms. In Kunjũ’s view, ‘Singers get so much money these days. Now it is dancers and singers [more than cadres] who are really powerful!’ However, while the new facilities allow a range of artistes to produce commercial recordings, only a handful of these performers achieve popular ‘culture hero’ stardom, or acquire revisualizing nationalities 257 great spending-power and transregional, inner China and even international prestige. As Sita, a Yushu composer, lamented, ‘Because I write songs, others in my work unit think I just want to take a holi- day, to do my own work and get loads of money. However, I do not do my own work, nor do I get much cash.’ Furthermore, achieving fi nancial success by becoming a famous nationality pop performer can be a double-edged sword in rural locales. For example, return- ing to his homeland from Chengdu, Zongbo describes how Derge people had been friendly when he left his hometown as a poor truck- driver to embark on a musical career in the city. Nowadays, when he returns to his homeland as the most popular nationality singer within and outside his nationality’s regions of China, local people behave coolly towards him. Zongbo encapsulates this turnaround using the Putonghua phrase: ‘Person leaves, tea goes cold’ (M. ren yi zou cha jiu liang). In contemporary Yushu, televisual media have become a channel to express ‘pan-nationality’ characteristics or affi rm nation-state loyalty. Additionally, many nationality pop songs contain messages that can be interpreted as political. Chenrezig (S. Avalokiteshvara), who is invoked in the nationality pop song, Om Mani Padme Hung, is one of the eight major bodhisattvas and a patron-deity of Tibet. Chenrezig manifested as the progenitor of the Tibetan Buddhists of this region, the early dharma kings and the Dalai Lamas, all of which can be read as unify- ing symbols of a pan-nationality constituency today. In contrast, some nationality artistes choose a revolutionary style to invoke PRC political allegiance. Many Yushu people take exception to this practice. School- teachers and students say they hate ‘Daughters of the Same Mother’ (Tr. Ama chigi bumo’) by Tseten Drolma (M. Caidan Zhuoma), which describes how:

Th e sun [China] and the moon [Tibet] are daughters of the same mother, Th e name of the mother is radiance, Th e Tibetans and the Chinese are daughters of one mother, Th e name of the mother is China. (TIN 2004: 103–104)

Tseten Drolma’s other famous (and equally locally detested) song is ‘On the Golden Mountain in Beijing’. Th is is one of the few revolutionary era songs still popular (primarily among inner China populations) in 258 chapter seven

China.3 Zongbo, a famous Kham singer, is derisive about this genre, and considers it to be duplicitous. Extending his arm in one direction, he parodied the singers’ dual orientation by warbling ‘Lhaaaaasa’ in a high-pitched voice. Crooning and supplicating in the opposite direc- tion, he trilled ‘Beiiiijing’. Some nationality cultural producers strive to use televisual media to make their region, its people and their civilizing culture and cul- tural practices visible not only to national, but also to global (and par- ticularly Western) audiences. Sita, a Yushu composer, emphasizes that, ‘VCDs are always important. A VCD can go worldwide. Everyone in the world will come to know the places it shows. Th e VCD is an adver- tisement for these places.’ He also stressed that, ‘I work for the Tibetan people. If others see my work, they do not think, “He is Sita,” but rather, “He is Tibetan.”’ As evident above, VCDs off er an attractive global platform for the dif- fusion of pan-nationality ideas and non-elite cultural practices. In con- nection with this strategic thematic interlinkage, nationality pop VCDs and cultural shows do not only have entertainment value, but also have a signifi cant didactic potential. Sita notes that: If they include a literary Tibetan or history scholar, those shows can be worthwhile. Th en viewers can learn and check for themselves by watching the programme. Lhasa shows always include a biography [Tr. namthar, T. rnam.thar], which is useful because it connects with the culture, and culture always connects with history [see Garratt 2002]. Every Tibetan song should have a little introduction from scholars or lamas, so people watching can learn Tibetan history. Th e director of Yushu Song and Dance Troupe then gatecrashed the conversation, arguing that, ‘Each person receives their education in diff erent ways: songs, words, images, and history. Chinese people do not have this history but, traditionally, Tibetan people recite and repeat things. In this way, VCDs are like education.’ Here, the direc- tor invokes commonalities between singing VCD songs and the long- standing regional practice of chanting mantras, and affi rms their moral, developmental aspect. Some songs’ didactic potential is both explicit and implicit. For example, one drinking song, popular with incomers and locals alike, reminds people of their ranked priorities. Th e song

3 Th e lyrics are: ‘Th e rays of the golden mountain of Beijing spread across the four directions, Chairman Mao is just like the golden sun, so warm and kind, brightening up the hearts of the serfs. We are walking on the path that leads to socialist happiness’ (TIN 2004: 101). revisualizing nationalities 259 invokes respect, fi rst for the ‘three jewels’ (Tr. konchoq sũ, namely: the Buddha, dharma and sangha), second for one’s parents, and then for one’s friends. Singing the song, local people turn to each other and make blessings at the appropriate points by fl icking alcohol into the air with their right-hand ring fi nger. Th is song highlights how narration, embodiment and visuality are not separate genres, but involve mutually infl uential and non-exclusive elements in practice. In evaluating songs, most people stress that meaning is a very important aspect. Sita also notes that it is important to understand the signifi cance of a song, but points out that fi ve people may have fi ve diff erent ideas about what that meaning is. For him, sung media ‘must be twinned with development of the Tibetan nationality’s economy, culture and all other aspects’. He believes that, ‘As with all tasks, good songwriting must be undertaken with a healthy mind, so that the task will progress well’ (Tr. se zõ, sang druq). However, not everyone thinks that a song’s meaning is important. Chimey, a female Yushu Song and Dance Troupe presenter, comments that she never pays any attention to the meaning. Tseyji, a rural-born Trinde teacher, further laments that, because of her ‘poor education’, she hardly speaks Putonghua and just copies the noises and sings ‘whatever it sounds like’. Furthermore, Zongbo, a famous Kham singer, argues that a song’s meaning goes beyond words. For him, the listeners’ emotional response is the most important factor. Yet it is not just meaning per se, but also linguistic issues that are sig- nifi cant in the transmission of meaning. To expand on this issue briefl y, transregional understanding is frustrated by national and national- ity language diff erences, divergent literary and spoken forms, foreign language popularity and multiple dialect forms. Because of this diver- sity, the choice to sing in one form will mean that the VCD’s lyrics will always remain incomprehensible to listeners who do not have compe- tence in that particular form. Th e VCD therefore has to be understood via another person’s translation. Th e practice of interpreting fi lmic images without fully understand- ing the words has a long history in Yushu. For example, Jampa a Yushu- born former ETP student, describes how this was the case in his youth in Sengze commune. Jampa relates that those with some knowledge of Putonghua narrated for the majority who could not understand the dia- logue. People repeatedly watched the same fi lms, and the older men debated the plot, even though the dialogue remained incomprehensible to most of them. Th e majority of these people could recognize isolated 260 chapter seven keywords like Communist Party (M. Gongchandang), Nationalist Party (M. Guomindang), liberation (M. jiefang), Liberation Army (M. jiefang- jun) and revolution (M. geming). Today, Jampa explains that, ‘Th e old men still cannot understand Chinese well, but discuss the “fascinating” international news, Iraq and SARS anyway.’ Th ese men’s contemporary social interaction echoes the way they watched and dissected revolutionary era propaganda fi lms at the time of the communes. Ironically, a parallel situation occurs today with literary-language and dialect versions of cultural media. For example, Khandro, a Hubei-educated Trinde woman, identifi ed a famous King Gesar VCD reconstruction as being in the region’s lit- erary-language. However, the speech on the VCD is actually a spoken Golog pastoralist dialect. Khandro likes watching the images of the Gesar fi lm anyway, even though the dialogue is ‘incomprehensible’ to her. Th ere is one local-dialect channel in Yushu, though this is only avail- able within the Prefecture Town of Jyegu. Amdo dialect Qinghai state television is available in Trinde. Th e politics of language and interpreta- tion continue to play a signifi cant part in people’s viewing experiences today. Commenting on these themes, Kunjũ, a university– educated Golog pastoralist, summarizes that: Gesar is outdated … international news has replaced Gesar! On Yushu Prefecture Television you can only watch endless pop songs. And as for the national Chinese news, you have to just assume the reverse of what- ever they say. In Trinde, Gao likewise asserts: If the US says one thing, China’s government news puts it in a diff erent sentence to change people’s minds. So, even though that word is the truth of what was said originally, they change its location or translate a word and give it a slightly diff erent meaning. Th ey use information selectively to confi rm what they already believe. Similarly, Samten and Pamo, two Trinde students studying in Xining, assert that, ‘Han are very smart, very clever. Th ey cheat people. You can see this [characteristic] with the television—what they say is not real. If we meet any educated Chinese, we do not talk about important things. Among students, no activity cuts across all classes.’4

4 One example of the national media’s ‘creative’ use of ‘real life’ voices occurred in Lhasa, when two Western Tibet University students found their names, US and China study details and ‘their’ quotations in a national newspaper article entitled: ‘Foreigners revisualizing nationalities 261

In practice, the vast majority of nationality pop songs are sung in Putonghua, which refl ects the importance of this form as a pan- regional lingua franca. Th e literary-language is seen as important, in Sita’s words, ‘for recording our own ideas and reading our own texts’. He points out that, ‘Songs in Tibetan have been too local’, which he believes is due to the plethora of regional dialects and limited range of the literary-language outside the nationality region. Commenting on the signifi cance of language as regards the popularity of regional songs, Tseden, a Xining-based Yushu professional, comments that, ‘Pastoral- ists like Zongbo, but they do not understand Chinese, so they prefer Dube. Kham people do not like Dube because they do not understand his Amdo dialect.’ Linguistic modifi cations are on the horizon here too. To increase his reach, Zongbo has chosen English as the medium for his next album. He emphasizes that, despite this change, the songs will continue to contain ‘purely Tibetan themes’. Given the various language considerations, it is not surprising that images become the principal vehicle for communicating meaning. Images are doubly important given that most VCDs are viewed at social gatherings, where the words are usually lost in the exuberant babble of conversation. Participants watch the images (and accom- panying lyrics) intermittently, as viewed via prominently displayed screens. Th ese nationality pop videos present a universal photomon- tage of disparate local particularities. Neither the custom-made nor archival videos make any specifi c connection between the meaning of the lyrics and the images, and neither do the videos involve a linear storyline. Instead the cinematographic gaze focuses on the dominant nationality metaphors. Th e video visuals are commonly recycled from a stock of symbolic elements, which include: the Potala, mass folk dances, daredevil manly displays of horsemanship at horse festivals (oft en Yushu) and women undertaking pastoral tasks. Consequently, Mount Kailash (in the far-west of the TAR), the Potala (central TAR), forested valleys (Kham, Sichuan) and grasslands (north TAR and Qinghai) may appear as a seamless image–sequence of places that are not geographically contiguous. Th ese sequences draw viewers into an archetypal nationality world that is, on closer inspection, everywhere and nowhere all at once. marvel at social order in Tibet’, without ever having spoken to the paper. One student is quoted as having said: ‘When I was in the United States I dared not go outside at night because lots of people have guns. But I felt it is safe in Tibet and oft en had a walk around by myself aft er dark’ (China Daily 2002: 39). 262 chapter seven

Th e songs employ an emotive, melodramatic style of singing. Simulta- neously, the lyrics appear as subtitles on the screen, and are coloured in, ‘karaoke style’, in time with the singing. Rural ditties, traditional songs, religious invocations and poetry are woven into the song, either whole or as fragments, with local forms being translated into Putonghua equiv- alents in some instances. Most song topics invite audiences to consider a typical aspect of belonging and identifi cation among this nationality, for example to: ponder the beauty of the grassland (which is the case in ‘Yearn for the Divine Eagle’, M. Xiangwang shenying), long for the fatherland (an example being ‘Homeland,’ M. Jiayuan), respect mater- nal love (‘Mum’s Sheepskin Jacket’, M. Mama de Yangpi Ao, ‘Mother’, Tr. Ama-la) and value mother’s benevolence (‘Kind Mother’, M. Cixiang de Muqin). Other songs discuss: location within the nation-state (for example, ‘West Region’, M. Xibu), remoteness (‘In a Faraway Place’, M. Zai na Yaoyuan de Difang), regional characteristics (‘Qinghai People’, M. Qinghai Ren), manly pride (‘Red Cheeks of the Young and Brawny Tibetan Man’, Tr. Domar Böjuh Phogey, T. gdong.dmar.bod.kyi.pho.rgod, ‘Kham Youth in his Prime’, M. Kangba Hanzi, ‘Hey Th ere, Kham-Man!’, M. Aruo Kangba) and religious devotion (‘White Stupa’, M. Bai Ta and Tr. Chöden Kapo, ‘Pilgrimage Road’, M. Chaosheng de Lu, ‘Sky Burial’, M. Tianzang, ‘Cherishing the Memory of Panchen Rinpoche’, M. Huai- nian Banshen Dashi). Th e Yushu-dialect song, ‘Red Cheeks of Young- and-Brawny Tibetan Man’, is by far the most frequently performed song in Trinde. Out of a multitude of alternatives, it was this song that stu- dents presented six times in two hours at Trinde School National Day local arts competition. Nationality pop circulates exotic stereotypes about Kham men as untamed, virile youths (Tr. pusa dayamaya, M. hanzi). Th ese terms connote male strength, courage and sexual vigour. Men in these VCDs are never elderly or fathers. In fact, VCD images exclude cer- tain people who are actually highly visible in Yushu, namely: daugh- ters, wives, other nationalities, incomers and foreigners. Usually, women only appear in their post-reproductive capacity as old, exem- plary mothers. As elders, women’s raw and dangerous sexuality has been symbolically tamed and physically extinguished. Much more rarely, women may appear as the remote object of the male singer’s yearning. Th e most prominent example of this genre in Yushu is Wang Luobin’s smash-hit ‘In a Faraway Place’ (M. Zai Na Yaoyuande Difang), which distances women’s ‘impure’, and therefore polluting, sexuality (Makley 2002: 60–74). revisualizing nationalities 263

‘In a Faraway Place’ is also a good example of the politically inoff ensive, sanitized nationality ‘culture’ that offi cials wish to promote for television and tourist consumption. Both trade on the seductive and commercial potential of ‘primitivized’ nationality Others. Wang copied the melody from a Kazak folksong. Th e lyrics describe an actual instance when Wang was captivated by an ‘enchanting’ Kazak pastoralist, and document the protagonist’s urge to give up all his wealth just to herd sheep with her every day. Some Kham people claim the song actually describes an Amdo woman. Furthermore, ‘Qinghai: A Faraway Place’ has become a common tag-line for coff ee-table books and promotional provincial literature. Many rich, urban, eastern and inner China twenty- somethings now travel in Derge, Lhasa, Xining and Yushu (Fullbrook 2004: 17). Many of these travellers express dissatisfaction with their lives back home, a desire to experience China’s remote places and nationality people and an interest in the regional form of Buddhism. Young incoming visitors describe local people as ‘friendly’ and ‘very devoted to religion’.

Discussion of Televisual Media’s Eff ects on Nationality

Th e 1980s technological explosion has facilitated the promotion of a musically identifi able, stylistically formulaic and culturally anodyne televisual genre. Th is genre is characterized by media-friendly idi- oms that fl atten out geographical specifi cities into a ‘pan-nationality’ domain of social reference. As with other contemporary media (for example, popular and scholarly texts), VCDs are a way of promoting ideas about social cohesiveness, a shared regional territory, common practices and unifi ed cultural characteristics. Th ese and other nation- ality ideas depend on central state categories, and are reminiscent of offi cial eff orts to promote coherent, stable, nationality constituencies in a ‘unitary multi-ethnic state’ (M. tongyi de duo minzu guojia). Th ese televisual idioms build on, modify, and increasingly mix, nationality characterizations from Western sources, local texts, inner China mate- rials, exile discourses and state rhetoric. Televisual genres are visually anodyne and lyrically generic. Th eir style opens the medium to personal reinterpretation while diminishing the risk of offi cial censure. Th rough VCDs, cultural producers advance and consolidate stereotypical representations of nationality. However, as Litzinger points out, narrative and visual ‘truth claims’ are found in 264 chapter seven the structuring of the images rather than in any nationality ‘reality’ or singular ‘culture’ per se (1999b: 843). Th is overall unifi ed eff ect is cre- ated through ‘technologies of abbreviation, cutting and focalization’ (Chow 1995: 15, Litzinger 1999b: 844). In Yushu, these televisual forms provide a context for presenting politicized messages, and are a source of local pride. In this way, televisual media images and lyrics are both socially produced and socially productive (Hartley 2002: 4). Chow (1995: 25) argues that the screen develops as a register of tangible and imagined symbols that compose and structure a ‘history’ (and ‘social imaginary’) of a thematic fi eld. In Yushu, media producers use a restricted repertoire of identifi able and reproducible nationality idioms to visually and orally invoke a reform era quintessence of pan- nationality. Presenting ideas of ‘pan-nationality’ involves (conscious and unconscious) editing, nostalgic (re)assessment, reconstruction and manipulations. Sometimes tropes are interpreted as structur- ing ‘oppositional’ critiques of former offi cial discourses (Chow 1995: 49). However, representation does not restrict people’s interpretation, especially since symbols are left intentionally vague, partly to avoid offi cial reproof. In fact, the idioms invoked in regionally-produced VCDs are oft en those offi cially prohibited in the past, though these same concepts and practices are now offi cially sanctioned or even state-supported. Th e administrative shift s and complex regional mix- ing has created a ‘grey area’ of ‘ambiguity and interpretation’ in the fi eld of nationality arts (TIN 2004: 140–4). Th is space for reinter- pretation has opened up at a critical moment in the region’s history. As Chow notes, when the central state wanes or when a dominant civilizing project is questioned (as has happened during the reform era), principal elements of the established society are displaced amidst momentous transformations in the mechanisms of meaning-making (1995: 21–2). At these times, images and ideas of heritage are oft en reconceived as authentic sources of valued, bygone elements, and as loci for mutual understanding and social orientation amidst rapid changes (Fiskesjo 1999: 140). In the context of Miao cultural politics, Schein examines singular discursive practices that ‘frame’ and systematize China’s nationali- ties through the presumptions and procedures in nationality clas- sifications (2000: 73). However, overarching frames tell us little about what happens in practice, or about the contested reproduc- tion, dismissal and reworking of idioms in local contexts. People’s conscious reception, constitution and reforming of genres is evident revisualizing nationalities 265 when visiting cabaret and karaoke bars (M. kalaokba). Nationality VCDs are played as background music, with people dipping into the montages on an ad hoc basis. Local viewers pick out features with which they identify: aspects of local dress (particularly hats), a vis- ited monastery, a famous regional site or their family’s campground at a festival. Taylor (1994: 25) affi rms that failure to recognize or misrecognition of local ‘identities’ or social characterizations can ‘infl ict harm’, or be a ‘form of oppression’, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being. While well intentioned, Taylor’s statements assume a unitary validating agent, which some commentators might identify as ‘the state’ in Trinde. However, the mass of competing powers exposed by local negotiations over regional media productions empha- sizes that there is no ultimate representation of a fi xed ‘reality’, but a contested and socially diff erentiated process of nationality characteriza- tion. In line with this reasoning, Gutmann (1994: 7) argues that social repertoires and subjectivities are dialogically constituted, which dis- solves any contradiction between ‘atomistic’ and ‘socially constructed’ persons. His conception fi ts with the intricate and intimate practice of subjectivity formation in Trinde. In terms of ‘identity recognition’, it is important to point out that local people do not necessarily see ‘themselves’ on screen, and more commonly see people dressed up as quintessential or bygone char- acters. Viewers are oft en keen to pick out other forms of identifi ca- tion, for instance: Golog-people, dance-troops, a particular famous singer or a distinctive sartorial element. Th e television programming itself involves certain cultural contradictions. For example, Qinghai and Yushu Television presents people wearing local dress during cul- tural events. At other times, for example during news broadcasts and interviews, public fi gures and people wear mass-produced clothing. Depending on a person’s own inclination and insight, agriculturalists, students, monks, urban dwellers, pastoralists, homeworkers and work unit professionals can all be discerning interpreters of central-offi cial and local images. Finally, regional music VCDs are by no means the only, or even the most popular, form of televisual entertainment. One Sunday, an entire household of settled pastoralists were agog over a rented VCD of the US blockbuster ‘Titanic’. An older member of the group commented enthusiastically that it was their third viewing. Furthermore, young- sters in Yushu, avidly await performances of their favourite inner China 266 chapter seven and Korean pop stars during national variety performances. Other teenagers immerse themselves in computer-generated and television ‘action hero’ adventures. Teachers sometimes tune in to TV quiz shows during their lunch breaks. Some media professionals, local townspeo- ple and, occasionally, monks hire pornographic VCDs from incomers’ shops. One entire Trinde family sat up all night viewing a twelve-hour boxed-set of inner China period drama VCDs. While local people con- sume a variety of modern digital and computer imagery, Hollywood and Bollywood movie images and Central State Television dramatiza- tions, booming Chinese communication industries are using images of China’s ‘exotic’ western fringes to boost sales among urban inner China and coastal populations.

Communicating a Boundless World: China Mobile’s Virtual Tibets

In July and August 2002, China Mobile (M. Zhongguo Yidong) produced a promotional VCD that has been hailed by top media professionals as superlative and unprecedented. China Mobile brought in top inner China lyricists, technicians and producers and choice nationality and inner China performers, which put the product in a diff erent league to almost all other productions of its type.5 Viewers describe the VCD approvingly, as ‘good viewing’ (Derge. dasa yakpo). While nationality productions are commercial products in and of themselves, and are intended to generate personal, social and nationality identifi cation, the China Mobile VCD is aimed at encouraging mobile-phone purchases and is not available for purchase on retail markets. China Mobile’s VCD diff ers from other nationality productions in its sophisticated range of cinematographic techniques, high-calibre images and sophisticated storylines. In this VCD, nationality places, people and practices feature as detachable signs that appear in diff erent televisual forms. In this production, inner China songwriters place their imaginary of ‘Tibet’ into the mouths of national- ity performers, whereby these artistes televisually represent ‘nationality culture’ back to an unmarked, primarily inner China audience. Zongbo, a Derge-born singer, was a central participant in the China Mobile production team, though he was required to answer to China Mobile’s team of artistic directors. To give an overview of this Kham artiste, Zongbo is easily the most famous and well-liked singer among

5 China Mobile paid Zongbo, a Kham media star, 170,000 Yuan for his work on this VCD. revisualizing nationalities 267 nationality performers. However, Zongbo has a chequered history in offi cial and personal terms. His open and fervent ‘pro-nationality’ stance has imbued him with offi cial notoriety, which further boosts his popularity among local people. Trinde teachers and NGO direc- tors say his songs have great political and cultural signifi cance, and describe ‘searching for the deep meanings in the lyrics’. Sita, a Jyegu- based songwriter, emphasized that: Zongbo can bring out the spirit of the song. His songs are similar to Ten- gur [Mongolian] and Liu Huan [an inner China singer who has been said to have ‘the best voice in China’] who are popular in inner China. Zongbo is not popular there. Th e government makes you popular if you listen to them and do everything they ask. Zongbo has never reached the heights of fame because he never fl attered China’s government. Th at is why I want to give my songs to him. Zongbo hails from the former kingdom of Derge (Sichuan), one of Gesar’s putative homelands. People allude to Zongbo as a contemporary ‘culture hero’ and sometimes see him as a modern Gesar fi gure. Yushu people consider Zongbo to be one of Kham’s ‘special characteristics’, and call him ‘our Kham person.’ Namgyel, a Nangchen NGO director, refers to Zongbo as the ‘hero of Tibet’. With a full beard, long ponytail, taller-than-average stocky frame and charismatic persona, Zongbo is oft en cited as typifying Kham masculinity. One Kandze man described Zongbo in mythical proportions, as a ‘giant looking man’, without ever having seen the singer. In Zongbo’s close friend Sita’s opinion: Zongbo has a great infl uence on Tibetan areas because of his voice and personality. Everyone in the music business has his or her own thoughts about this, but I think it will be hard to fi nd another Zongbo. Actually, he has spoiled the young performers because they all look up to and copy him. Th ere is still no one better than he is. Another participant in the China Mobile project is Wang Mei, a strik- ing incoming singer from Chengdu. Wang was ‘discovered’ when Zongbo heard her ‘great voice’ in a Chengdu karaoke bar, and decided to support her career. He commented that, ‘Whether she is Chinese or Tibetan was not in my thoughts. I support any young singer who has a good voice. Even though she is Han, she likes Tibetan places, people and religion.’ Unlike some of the local singers in the videos, Wang appears decked out in one of several magnifi cent silk outfi ts from Lhasa (Tr. chuba), or wearing picture-perfect, colour-coordinated, pastoralist vestments. However, this sartorial choice is not a moment of interethnic transference, or a reversal of the usual balance of power. Th e ultimate 268 chapter seven power to defi ne remains the prerogative of China Mobile offi cials, who consolidate, rather than democratize, their position as defi ners through their economic power. In keeping with this general trend, inner China inner China artistes now produce compositions shaped by identifi ably nationality genres (Upton 2002: 99–119). ‘Mother’ (Lhasa honorifi c. Ama-la) is a China Mobile promotional track that encapsulates the symbolic and cinematographic elements of many locally produced VCDs in a condensed and perfected form. Th e sequence begins with an aged, diminutive mother with a bronzed, lined face collecting dried yak-dung. Mother peers into the distance to see the son returning with his pack, dressed in a dapper colour-coordi- nated pastoralist robe (Tr. kajong) and a dazzling white shirt. He looks around, as if remembering formerly familiar places. We zoom in on Zongbo sitting on the grassland surrounded by a cluster of livestock, a high-altitude mirror lake, fl uff y clouds and a deep blue sky. Th e picture alternates between this prototypical grassland-panorama, a rainbow and a soaring eagle. Th e camera closes in on an unusually solitary black yak-hair pastoralist tent, just as mother rushes out to touch foreheads with her fi ctionalized ‘son’. She is miniscule in comparison to Zongbo’s bulky fi gure, making the mother-son idea seem laughable—it looks like a casting mistake. Inside the tent, mother churns milk and plunges butter tea in a cylinder. A choir pops up on the soundtrack to rescue the fl ag- ging melody and emphasize the fi lmic moment. Th e scene shift s into slow motion. Mother is seen through a dreamy haze of vapour. Seated son looks up at mother respectfully. Mother, standing and relentlessly plunging, looks back adoringly. Mother off ers her son butter tea. Sitting together, the son suddenly pulls out a mobile phone from his pastoralist-garb and passes it to his wizened mum. In the VCD, Zongbo’s movie-mum readily throws down her prayer wheel and eagerly grasps the modern gadget. Zongbo keeps his hand over hers, controlling the telephone. He dials a random number, showing her how to work the new technology, and instructing her in what it can do. Zongbo is laugh- ing while he does this, a moment which looks unscripted. Mother seems enthralled by the new apparatus, and speaks into the telephone. Watching the VCD in Derge Hotel there was a cackle of laughter from Zongbo’s sidekicks, which increased to guff aws on the second showing. Zongbo laughed uncomfortably. Th e moment seemed to suggest that Tibet’s ‘hero’ had sold out, or that he had been bought off (particularly in view of Zongbo’s well-known history of outspo- kenness). Zongbo explained that China Mobile staff had asked him revisualizing nationalities 269 to undertake the scene in this way, and justifi ed his actions immedi- ately, saying that, ‘China Mobile are good guys. Before, when I was in Lhasa, I could not telephone my mother. Now if I am in Chengdu, I can always be in touch with her. Wherever I go in the world I can keep in touch with my mother.’6 Despite Zongbo sounding reminiscent of a China Mobile advertising slogan, his pals’ cackling subsided on hear- ing his views. Continuing with the VCD, the sequence cuts to Mount Kailash rimmed by prayer fl ags. Back on the grasslands, mother is using her son’s phone. Th is seems unlikely since she is silently holding the telephone a good distance away from her ear. Th e closing scenes show mother resuming her endless prayer wheel turning. Commenting on the fi lm’s lyrics and orientation, in Zongbo’s opin- ion, all the China Mobile songs have ‘almost the same meaning’. How- ever, in terms of the themes of this chapter and book, Keysang Chujen’s fi nale stands out as an extraordinary juxtaposition of symbolic images. Th is sequence contains highly politicized references and contested symbols that are nevertheless presented in a seamless web of cinematic rhapsody. Th e words (with repetitions omitted) are as follows:

We rise in the same way as the rising sun, Our name is China Mobile, Because of us, life is more glorious, Th e motherland is decked in prosperity, Communication begins from inside your and our hearts, Genuine service, Serving the masses, Sprinkle colourful feeling between people [in human relations], Th e world transcends an aff ectionate wind, We use dedication to release a rainbow, Because of us, the years are more splendid, Th e future is in your hands, Transmit an auspicious song in the world [lit. ‘between heaven and earth’], Th e landscape is covered in a verdant dream.

Th e sequence commences with a predictable Potala scene in colour, which quickly shift s into monochrome archival images, transporting us back to the 1950s. Huge placards of China’s former leaders and banners are borne aloft through Lhasa’s streets. Flags are carried past the Potala. Armed soldiers march into the city. Laughing liberated crowds of

6 Ironically, Zongbo is currently not permitted to leave China. 270 chapter seven people wave red fl ags feverishly. Th e scenes cut from Mao with the late Panchen Lama to Deng to Jiang, before focusing on a poster of all three historic leaders. Yushu dancers are then pictured on early colour fi lm— liberation being the moment that the ‘monochrome’ quality of this people’s existence supposedly came to an end. We shift to Lhasa’s Fift y-Year Anni- versary Celebrations, and are now located fi rmly in the technicolor-era of market economy brightness. Th e celebrations not only portray nationality gratitude and reiterate the undimmed vitality of local cultural traditions, but also present mass participation as a tool of persuasive power. Keysang Chujen appears in a China Mobile employee’s suit, backed by a blaze of China Mobile signboards. She then appears in front of the Potala in Lhasa attire, thus condensing a plethora of associated political and historical connotations into a single signifying iconic moment. Corporate staff bow in respectful service to us, the univer- sal customer. Th e singer reappears in front of the Potala in a China Mobile suit. Staff bear medals to bestow on outstanding employees. Shots cut between staff , staff plus fl ag, then the lone red fl ag of China fl apping in the breeze. Th e camera then lingers on sunfl owers sur- rounding a plaque that reads: CORPORATE BUSINESS PRINCIPLE, PURSUE CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Chujen, now back in Lhasa-dress, releases a single, pure-white dove. A blizzard of doves then ‘takes off ’ in front of the Potala. eseTh scenes represent ‘peaceful liberation’ and the reform era ‘take off ’ (M.qifei ) of the economy, benefi ts that are depicted as spreading vigorously and uniformly (cf. Zha 1995: 205). Th e camera pans over the sacred sites of Lhasa valley’s topography. Th e masses wave themselves into a blur in Tiananmen Square, as presided over by the ‘great helmsman’ in picto- rial-iconic form. An aeroplane takes off , further inscribing the reform era as an economic launch-pad for reaching the heights of a technolo- gized modernity. China’s fl ag fl ies in front of the Potala. Reaffi rming the importance of rural China, we return to the sun setting over yellow fi elds of oil seed rape, a signifi cant cash crop. In the next sequence, a bulkily dressed man kitted out in opulent local ceremonial apparel strides up to a China Mobile counter. Th e video thus valorizes local practices, albeit only aft er they have been stripped of their dirt and other problematic aspects. Ironically, customers in local cloth- ing are oft en ignored or looked down upon in similar offi ces in Yushu. In the VCD, however, local forms become special, distinctive traditions revisualizing nationalities 271 that are presented as being compatible with, or complementary to, the brash modernity of the telecommunications offi ce. A globe spins in front of the China Mobile sign, whisking us off visually to another iconic location, in this case, Yumbu Lagang palace.7 China Mobile staff welcome us back with harmonized bows. Four archetypal pas- toralists, all using mobile phones, fl ash onto our screens: a young, unadorned girl, a Kham man wearing a black-silk headpiece, an Amdo pastoralist with gold-rimmed teeth holding an umbrella and a woman in her best outfi t. Th e Potala appears with the rays of a setting sun behind it.8 As we reach the closing moments, a bewildering array of symbols fl ash up on the screen: butter tea, Mao, spinning globe, China Mobile signboards, China fl ag and marching soldiers remain imprinted on one’s retina aft er the sequence ends. Pausing the sequence reveals an expanded series of monochrome scenes: streams of amassed people processing along Lhasa’s streets, rifl e-armed soldiers fi ling by, peas- ants working together and smiling local women lined up and cheering. Th e subsequent colour-fi lm shots show contemporary political sym- bols: China’s golden yak statue (Beijing’s ‘gift to the Tibetan people’), modern Lhasa by night, Lhasa’s Fift y Year Anniversary events, a China Mobile employee sitting on a patch of grass with a ‘traditionally’ attired local man who is examining her mobile phone and, fi nally, a crum- bling monastery wall. Present day local men decked in silk brocade and dreary suits provide a contemporary counterpart to the revolutionary era scenes. Th e identity tags of these freeze-framed marching men are blurred, and they remain anonymous and incongruous nationality fi g- ures imported into a politicized, promotional drama. Th e VCD con- cludes with an ostentatious musical crescendo that is matched visually by triumphal ‘Chinese’ fi reworks. We return symbolically to the place where we began, China Mobile having more than affi rmed its messages. As with revolutionary propaganda fi lms, VCDs do not necessarily have an expected or specifi c eff ect on their audience. For instance, by the time Keysang Chujen’s video came on in the Derge Hotel, the ‘audience’ was not viewing the VCD attentively, or at all. In many cases, the VCD format constitutes a visual equivalent of muzak. Yet even when they are

7 Nyatri Tsenpo, fi rst of the ‘seven heavenly kings’ of the Yarlung Dynasty (c. 247–100 BC), built this palace in Ü-Tsang (now TAR). 8 Th e sun oft en symbolizes Mao but, in this case, seems to be an affi rmation of nationality inalienability. 272 chapter seven scrutinized attentively, all visual media are ‘read’ diff erently by diff erent people (as infl uenced by gender, age and region), in diff erent contexts. Th ese VCDs are important visual testaments to the ways nationalities are represented in the contemporary reform era. Both regionally-produced and China Mobile VCDs traffi c in cultural symbols, and bring a variety of epochal forms into visual coexistence. In this way, snapshots of radical era socialism, market economy, Buddhist monasticism, rural traditions and ‘high modern’ ways of life become simultaneous, if uneasy, bedfellows on a single, seamless visual media plane (cf. Litzinger 1999b: 846). Th e China Mobile VCD employs similar idioms to regional VCD productions. Th e shared iconography emphasizes the political polysemy of the historic and cultural idioms presented. In contrast to China Mobile, regionally-produced VCDs do not show revolutionary propaganda footage and instead dwell on arche- typal primordial visions of ‘Tibet’ that involve older, married women undertaking locally ‘typical’ activities in pristine natural environments. Th e very same material that in state-sanctioned hands counts as adver- tising might well be considered splittist propaganda if the producers had been of the regional nationality. As Isom (1998: 74) argues in the context of state-produced nationality publications: Tibetan-ness was reduced to the anachronistic clothing that signifi es Tibet not only as an Other of modern China, but as an Other of its own historical moment. But in the interchangeability of ethnicity [as a sym- bol] in China, a Tibetan essence is not essential. Rather it is something wholly disposable and superfl uous. ‘Tibet’ has been reduced to the vis- ible signs of diff erence that can be signifi ed by [markers such as] national dress, which in its utter disposability and interchangeability, is not essen- tially diff erent from ‘China’. The China Mobile VCD did not emerge as a result of collaboration, or even discussion, with nationality media professionals. Instead China Mobile directors controlled the major performative deci- sions and media stylistics. However, certain details suggest that the artistes did have a measure of say over issues that China Mobile bosses considered less important. This was obvious in the presenta- tion of some performers: Zongbo appears in his familiar bohemian- style dress, and one of the boy-band singers wears a Swayambunath stupa T-shirt, identifying himself, to some viewers at least, with exile communities in Nepal. China Mobile’s Party-state compatible fi lmic messages present a world framed by socialist development idioms and contrasts: old and revisualizing nationalities 273 new, tradition and modernity, local, rural, nationality, state, coop- eration, consumerism and commercialism. Yet there are no hard- edged distinctions here. Rather, all images are rendered seamlessly in a symbolically condensed fi lmic present. China Mobile’s commer- cial advertising invokes revolutionary era material to consolidate, not socialist, but reform era nationalist sentiments. Th is technique can be thought of as a reform era ‘velvet propaganda’ that ostensibly contrasts with, but actually extends, prior forms of political infl uence. Song-and-dance performances in Yushu have been boosted by offi - cial reform era acquiescence towards specifi c manifestations of local diff erence. Th us, televisual styles of ‘being nationality’ are frequently embodied and performed by people during get-togethers with friends, colleagues, relatives and other people in the area. China Mobile’s VCD depictions are signifi cant for Trinde people in terms of regional and nationality–based struggles over cultural legitimacy and the continuing power fl uctuations and imbalances that characterize the governance of this region. Given the ongoing and oft en rapid changes occurring in local societies, future VCDs may well prompt knotty debates over ‘authenticity’. Furthermore, media professionals may well fi nd themselves to be simultaneously cast as dynamic media professionals, active cultural consumers and photogenic local representatives of China’s ‘multi-national’ diversity. A challenge to ‘nationality pop’, and a further crinkle in debates sur- rounding authenticity, comes from a nascent music scene that readily incorporates characteristic nationality motifs into a quirky mélange of disco, rap, Central Asia folk styles and rock. It remains to be seen whether, in time, the embryonic ‘postmodern’ mélange will displace or reshape the currently predominant nationality pop on the Qinghai music scene (see Yangdon Dhondrup 2003).

Virtually Circulating Nationalities

Contemporary nationality VCD production involves what Mbembe calls an immense scope for ‘equivocation, simulacrum, bargaining and improvisation’ by diff erently positioned people (cited in Anagnost 1997: 97). In practice, VCDs represent culturally productive spaces in which singers, songwriters, fi lmmakers, producers, funders, distributors, pirate-producers and viewers from many locations (local, regional and national) actively engage in interpretations and re-presentations of 274 chapter seven nationality societies. Yet this improvised ‘space’ is anything but a tabula rasa. Instead, local people must continually engage with the politics of PRC national and nationality history in the trivial and routine details of cultural production, and with contemporary political-administrative limitations. Media professionals’ representations of nationality pop draw on, and buttress, a range of representations about the region’s physical and social characteristics. As Schein points out, the ‘genre blurring’ that oft en characterizes the creation, circulation, interpretation and outcomes of media reproductions are by no means a ‘contamination’ of some previ- ously pure ‘folk’ practice, but are inevitable elements of all cultural prac- tice (2000: 27). Writing in an exile context, Venturino (1997: 112, 116) identifi es lit- eracy as the prime ‘agent and object’ of a ‘Tibetan diaspora’ national identity. In Yushu however, a whole host of communicational and artistic technologies are signifi cant in shaping and informing national- ity identifi cations and representations. Rather than being a context for ‘democratic critique’ (as argued by Venturino), access to cultural tech- nologies is mediated by a range of structuring factors, such as: location, language competence, social status and disposable income (1997: 113). Furthermore, all the cultural and artistic technologies acquire mean- ing through their use in tangible political and social processes. When broadcast electronically or orally, such technologies enter a politicized discursive fi eld, thereby becoming media for the negotiation of ideas and foci for ongoing adaptation (cf. Abu-Lughod 2004: passim, Appa- durai 1990: 299). Offi cial reform era market-economic shift s and reworked cultural policies have allowed local people to make nationality cultural styles visible and important in new ways. For example, what is now identi- fi ed as ‘tradition’ is oft en actually promoted and consolidated through the uptake and practise of ‘modern’ competencies, and through techno- logical innovations. Th ese very innovations are undermining the com- petencies, and therefore the status, of local institutional, governmental and NGO leaders. Several factors are interrelated with state and local struggles to defi ne, represent and maintain ‘authentic’ cultural forms, for example: the dis- mantling of state-backed social provisions, a rapid increase in the avail- ability of information about alternative lifestyles, the circulation of new artistic genres and greater knowledge about diff erent political forms. As Venturino puts it, the ‘politics of Tibetan essentialism is written into the text of global hybridity’ (1997: 110). A long-term study of this revisualizing nationalities 275

phenomenon warrants further scholarly attention (for an initial analy- sis, see Diemberger 2002: 35). In a Trinde School essay, Nyezong, an English-option student, expresses similar opinions about increasing social diversity, and links these to concerns to keep cultural infl uences separate: Th e wheel of history is always turning onwards. Science is improving through time and all countries’ relationships are changing and becoming closer. In this way, they have more chances to study each other. Th at is a really good new direction. If you do not study your own language and culture like a bee [i.e. ‘industriously’] and instead just study other lan- guages and cultures, that person will not quite understand either the new language and culture or their own. Th e fi nal irony is that, in the process of producing commercially success- ful VCDs with a pan-regional appeal, local media professionals have, in some ways, accomplished what the state failed to do, namely to cultivate a politically unproblematic, culturally anodyne and socially bounded version of a single nationality, their lands and ‘way of life’. In conceptual and nationality terms, it could be said that prominent local people are visually circumscribing ‘authentic nationality belonging’ for others pre- cisely through their freedom to choose (adapted from Rose 1999: 87). CONCLUSION

COMMON GROUND

Knowledge Changes Fate [M. zhishi gaibian mingyun] —Slogan that is frequently seen on school walls and is etched on a Trinde plateau hillside1

Having knowledge is both valuable and dangerous. —Trinde school assistant commenting on the Revolutionary Martyr Remembrance Day

Th is book has focused on Trinde School, which is the principal site of offi cial central state interventions and local authorities’ activities in the county and, as such, constitutes the prime location in this area for witnessing the playing out of the main political idioms of present-day China. Th is institutional context highlights three pervasive conclu- sions about contemporary sociality in Trinde: that is there is no ‘natu- ral’ or ‘traditional Tibetan culture’ but a contested process of making one, no real versus representation distinction but the power of repre- sentations, and no monolithic, alien (‘Chinese’) state versus innocent (‘Tibetan’) local distinction, but continuous processes of interdepen- dence, mutuality and collective entanglement. As the examples of this ethnography repeatedly illustrate, people participate consciously and actively, as well as routinely, in a plethora of social and institutional contexts. Furthermore, as English option students’ examination responses indicate, elements of offi cial jargon, foreign scholarship, Euro-American ‘eco-speak’, institutional rhetoric, NGO schemas, Lhasa-society ideals and exile political discussions are used freely in local narratives. Students’ informal narratives (Chapter Six) also show how people buy into, dismiss, reinterpret or co-opt proj- ects to reform local society. Two examples, a commemorative event and a local photograph album, further underscore these overall conclusions. Th e Remembrance Day highlights Trinde School as a state-sponsored site in which local

1 Th is phrase reproduces a catchphrase popularized by the renowned fi lm director Zhang Yimou in a succession of televised public service announcements. common ground 277

autonomy is interpreted, consolidated and contested. Th e event shows how local people participate in, critically reframe or remain largely indiff erent to, revolutionary history in the later reform era. Th e event is a public testament to shift s within the national political imaginary between the revolutionary and reform eras, and to people’s increasingly vocal suspicions about, and oppositions to, state-produced (or infl u- enced) histories. During the Revolutionary Martyr Remembrance Day (M. Gem- ing Lieshi Jinian Bei, seemingly a politicization of the Qingming Jie ‘clear and bright’ tomb-sweeping day), or ‘Heroes’ Festival’ (Tr. pawo dhuchen), local people are expected to revere the incomer soldiers who died ‘peacefully liberating’ them. In bygone years a local lama predicted that the commemoration ground for this event would be associated with ‘rivers of blood’. The locale subsequently became the site of Trinde’s abattoir (hence the zone’s name of Shallikö, meaning ‘meat-packing corner’), as well as a burial ground. The inauspicious locale is geographically and conceptually separated from Trinde-town. The cemetery is locally known as the ‘Chinese cemetery’ (Tr. jarolasa). As a preamble to the event, Jayang described how all work units parade to the Remembrance Day cenotaph in northern Trinde. ‘Will I attend?’ he asked, laughing at the mere thought, ‘Of course I am not going to the Chinese cemetery. I have been around a long time now, I do not do all that [imitates military marching and salutes] stuff any more!’ Th e following day, all lessons were cancelled, but students’ attendance at the Festival was compulsory. At 9 a.m., a cavalcade left the campus preceded by a student bearing the school’s Xining-bought ceremonial rosette (Tr. metok). Teachers packed themselves into cars, leaders rode motorbikes and supervisory staff policed the processing subjects on mopeds. Students marched in class-groups, and a specially assigned monitor called military-style marching orders (see Figure 16). Singye, the Teaching Director, joked loudly, ‘No crying from you, they are our heroes!’ Th e sarcastic comment provoked hearty laughter from Singye’s nearby colleagues. Th e ceremony commenced with a military tune, rather than the national anthem. Teachers commanded everyone to remove their headgear to show respect. Students and teachers took this instruc- tion as a cue to swipe each other’s hats off , with some students mis- chievously stealing caps from behind their friends’ backs. Th e general atmosphere was rather festive and upbeat. Two incomer cadres and 278 conclusion

Figure 16. Marching to Shallikö Cemetery

Figure 17. Sweeping the grave and burning Trinde School memorial rosette common ground 279 one Lower School incomer student gave speeches. Work unit groups then walked clockwise to their respective burial-sites. Staff joked uproariously, tossed stones onto the grave, burnt incense and ‘gold money’ (an inner China funereal custom) and burned the school rosette. Female students swept the grave while male students shovelled over the earth (see Figure 17 above). Commenting on the speeches, Pemba, the Headmaster at that time, merely reiterated, ‘Th ey were heroes.’ When asked, ‘And what else?’ he merely chuckled, saying, ‘Th en nothing else!’ Padre,~ a Lower School teacher, later elaborated that, ‘Very few Tibetans died—one local army guy died aft er the revolution was over, and one policeman was killed by robbers with a grenade.’ Gao, a Trinde teacher, related that the Middle School ‘martyrs’ were actually ‘two Chinese teachers who died in a car crash’. Th ese deaths were not related, except by era, to any revolution- ary struggles. Padre~ reminisced that when he was young, ‘We had to act like we were mourning and experience deep sorrow for three minutes. We had to say, “We miss you! Th ank you for what you did!” Ach, that is typical Chinese style! But we were all laughing, ha ha ha! Anyway, that is the procedure.’ Th e following day, Jayang commented quietly, ‘It is not good if you know a lot about these things. What does that mean? Well, if you knew a lot about my own history, I would not like it, and if I were a thief, I would not like others to know.’ Pema later described the event in private:

Tibet has been repressed since 1948–1949. We can never be content until we have our own authority. Khampas are not ‘heroes’. Maaaaybe fi ft y years ago, but not now. Th e Chinese guys are today’s heroes. China would not be able to squash us if we Khampas were heroes nowadays. Th oroughly discouraged, Pema crossed out his explanatory notes, screwed up the paper and threw it away hopelessly. Using a popular fi n- ger ranking method, he evaluated inner China’s living standard as ‘third grade’ and graded local conditions as lower fourth. ‘Some people here,’ he declared, ‘do not have enough to eat, even in terms of barley fl our.’ Th ese attitudes towards the past echo comments made by other Qinghai associates. For example, Zhao Yuqian, an incoming Chinese history teacher, argued that, ‘Studying Chinese politics and history has no meaning; it is all fake! And the Tibetan equivalents are almost the same—only science is not fake and has meaning.’ Pamo, a Trinde-born Xining University student, emphasizes that: 280 conclusion

I studied Chinese politics for three years in middle school, but I am not sure whether Chinese politics is true or not. As for Tibetan politics, there are no sources—even Tibetan authors prioritize Chinese things. Old books are republished with a new introduction to show a Chinese connection. Texts say that skilled people were brought to Lhasa by Princess Wencheng. Well that shows that they were here, but it does not prove what the Chinese texts say—that until Western imperialism there were no outside infl uences in China. But, what about Buddhism? Th e defi nitions of Han changed through history. Actually, Chinese history is more politics than history. Padre~ used such historical inconsistencies, in this case citing the offi cial Princess Wencheng story, to refute the offi cial idea of fi ft y-six nationali- ties in a ‘unitary multi-ethnic state’ (M. tongyi de duo minzu guojia): Th e real question is: why do the Wencheng histories miss out the part played by the Tibetan army? Because Srongtsen Gampo threatened China! So it seems China was afraid of Tibet! And even if China was not afraid of Tibet, Tibet certainly was not afraid of China! If this is so, it disproves the idea that Tibet is an inseparable part of China. And if the two were independent, then ‘we’ are not a ‘family’! Following these discrepancies, local people diff erentiate between ‘straight and true’ (Tr. thikathika) and ‘crooked’ (Tr. dzanshidzunshi) histories. Th e former is considered to be a defi nitive Kham characteris- tic, and is oft en used to diff erentiate the local nationality from incomers or Muslims. Flicking through a Trinde-family album aff ords the viewer a glimpse into the complex multi-texturing of the social and political situations most families’ lives involve. One album, belonging to a former Middle School student, contains snaps of: Khandro and her siblings posing at Tiananmen in Beijing, sightseeing at the Stone Forest (M. Shilin) near Kunming, dressing up in hired Miao nationality costumes for a photo- opportunity in Sichuan, Khandro graduating in ‘Han language’ (M. Hanyu) at Hubei University, her older brother with his military squad, her extended-family posing by a summer tent during a grassland horse festival, a postcard of ‘F4’ (a tousled boy-band from Taiwan) and her unmarried sister practising as a doctor.2 Th e album also includes a pic- ture of Khandro’s high-ranking county cadre father dressed in a suit for a state- celebration. Refl ecting on the image and her family’s fortunes in general, Khandro explained that her father began life as an itinerant,

2 Local men have apparently spurned the idea of marrying Khandro’s sister on account of her deformed eye. common ground 281 destitute orphan eking out an existence among herding families on the northern Trinde plateau. Extending Maconi’s (2002: 186) insight, neither ‘Tibetan’ nor ‘Chinese’ are suffi cient to depict such complexly interwoven social worlds in practice. As with many of the examples in this book, the Revolutionary Martyrs commemoration does not show a ‘real’/local versus ‘fake’/ state distinction. Instead, it highlights the latitude currently accorded to local people to interpret and represent local history. It also shows how struggles over ‘history’ oft en say more about the present than about the past. Khandro’s photograph album underscores the lack of intrinsic ‘autonomous culture’, and emphasizes the mutually entwined and intersubjective forms of sociality that characterize contemporary Trinde. Th ese intertwined styles and practices are the shift ing social sands that local leaders and state offi cials work to refashion into a mor- ally circumscribed and social cohered constituency. Looking through their photograph albums, people commonly specify toponyms, bor- ders and depictions of territory as points of local, regional or offi cial identifi cation. Once they have been offi cially categorized, however, places that were originally identifi ed in diff use or contextual ways can become sites of intense dispute in local contexts (Diemberger 2002: 35). Th e concordances between ‘local’ and ‘offi cial’ (as evident in Khan- dro’s photographs) challenge any notion about an external, singular ‘Chinese state’ being opposed to local societies or nationalities, and also demonstrate the continual interlinkages in practice.

Final Summary and Analysis

Th is book has investigated how local, regional and nationality forms of identifi cation and belonging, and a variety of cultural styles, have been bureaucratically institutionalized and, thence, socially imagined as discrete, stable and homogeneous entities. Th ese processes have been accomplished through nationality procedures (for example, state identifi cation cards and the nationality-specifi c registration of couples’ children), and local leaders’ activities. Some of Trinde authorities’ aspirations can be seen in the 2003 literary-language examination, which was couched in, and rewarded students for responding using, a range of nationality idioms and practices. Th is examination high- lighted the transmission of nationality ideas and their institutionaliza- tion within Trinde School and, from there, their transmission into and 282 conclusion

reinterpretation in wider society. Th is process refl ects Bulag’s statement that the deployment of ‘nationality special characteristics’ authorize a ‘politics of diff erence’ (2000: 547, cf. Taylor 1994: 68–73), at least among certain sectors of society. Attempts to create or reform social constituencies are interrelated with wider reorganizations of power, as well as with the deployment of political technologies for regulating people’s conduct in new ways (Tsin 1999: 6–9). One such reorganization of power in China began with the post-Mao market economy reforms. However, micro-reorganizations of power are forever altering the possibilities for negotiating social issues and personal positions. It is important to note that the 1980s and 1990s devolution of fi scal responsibilities and localization of power (through the constitutional reorganization of nationality autonomy) have not challenged the basic logic of governance, which is still based on the idea of stable, relatively homogeneous, bounded nationalities. Much of this book details the workings of social inclusion and diff erence through offi cial idioms related to local autonomy. Th is process involves overlapping, competing and contested ideas of simi- larities and diff erences. Working in this terrain requires sensitivity to how distinct people, groups and social phenomena have been empow- ered or disenfranchised at diff erent times, according to the specifi c political or social context. Th is play of politics and power is evident in the class divisions analysed in Chapter One, in the perceived regional advancement discrepancies described in Chapter Two, in the national- ity distinctions made in Chapter Th ree, in the scholarly and uncultured diff erentiations of Chapter Four, in the social divisions created through undertaking ‘correct’/old or ‘incorrect’/new ritual practices investi- gated in Chapter Five and in the debates about modern subjects and the development of an appropriate modernity, as explored in Chapter Six. Th e book concurrently highlights the subtleties involved in the creation and maintenance of social ‘diff erence’. As evident in the gender discus- sions in Chapter Th ree, people of diff erent nationalities may concur- rently identify the same disparaged or esteemed characteristic in the Other. Th e construction and mobilization of nationality identifi cation on a provincial Qinghai basis is an unprecedented reform era phenom- enon, and was a particular focus of Chapter Two. Th e ethnography in general shows how local cadres and villagers deploy nationality and other idioms within and against offi cial and other discourses. Reifi ed or partial depictions of nationalities mainly repre- sent the socio-political ideals of administrative offi cials and scholars. In common ground 283 general, the idea of nationality categories encourages blanket categori- zations. Th is tendency is evident in a statement made by Liang, a young Trinde incomer, who said that, ‘I think they [“Tibetans”] are bad people. I cannot explain exactly why, but I think they are bad.’ Th e scholarship and dedicated learning in places like Lhasa, Derge and Rebkong mean that these places start to formulate and transmit their own ideals of nationality, as refracted through local experience. Yushu people engage with these depictions, concurrently modifying the representations in line with local variations and according to their personal inclination. Yushu’s ‘special characteristics’ thus become an operative discourse in a wider fi eld of circulating ideas and practices about nationality, civiliz- ing culture and local autonomy (cf. Foucault 1980: 133). Even in con- ceptual terms, however, the range of understandings of belonging dis- rupts any fi ction that these idioms are externally bounded, internally coherent or stable across regions (see Chapters Th ree and Four). Th e frequent policy reversals in recent history destabilize and challenge ideas about an established or outright hegemony. Th is is true for individuals, political factions and other social collectivities. Trinde sociality is currently characterized by a tenuous hierarchy on the one hand, and intrinsic heterogeneity (with potential for contes- tation) on the other. Stresses, ambiguities and manoeuvrings are not abnormal disruptions of an otherwise harmonious and homogeneous ‘society’, but are instead an intrinsic quality of sociality (van Beek 1996: 15). As shown in Chapter Four, attempts to suppress the ‘infi nite and unpredictable play of [social] diff erences’ into an ‘easily manageable organic and fi nite whole’ do not result in an ordered society (Tsin 1999: 86, Litzinger 2000: 29). Instead, such procedures can make man- ifest the very contradictions these groupings seek to resolve (van Beek 1996: 7, 70). As Diemberger (2002) and Karmay’s (1994) analyses suggest, social categories can generate political constituencies. However, the condi- tions through which constituencies agglomerate or fragment are com- plex and opaque. Social constituencies are human creations. As such, these forms of belonging are always susceptible to attempts to create more localized or increasingly transnational constituencies. As Han- dler asserts, critiques of pluralism oft en merely replicate the very ideol- ogies and processes they seek to criticize, thereby becoming implicated in a ‘never ending quest to locate authenticity in individuated units at some other level’ (1988: 189, original emphasis). Th is book shows that both nation-state and localizing tendencies have been present in recent 284 conclusion

Trinde history. Th ese themes live on as narrated and embodied knowl- edge in local people themselves. In academic, political and also local terms, arguments about state fragmentation are sometimes associated with ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ state debates (Left wich 1993). Formal analyses tend to focus on the relationship of localities to offi cial national procedures and institu- tions. Th is focus overlooks county and prefecture authorities who do most of the regional administrative work in practice, and does not take into account these leaders’ interrelations with the people in their con- stituencies (see Yeh 2003: 510–11 on Qinghai, Upton 1995: passim on Sichuan and Diemberger 2002: 40–6 on the TAR). Furthermore, the workings of social constituencies in nations occur within a context of global political and economic relations in which failures, restructur- ing, growth and decline in fl ows of capital occur (Nugent 2004: 214). Th e waxing and waning of national political infl uence is thus aff ected by wider reorganizations of power. Th e degree of national infl uence shapes how eff ectively offi cial classifying frameworks may be estab- lished, and the particular outcomes to which structuring practices can be deployed (ibid.). Reform era modifi cations have increased the scope for undertak- ing many regional practices, for instituting local specifi cities and for deploying nationality idioms during policy implementation. Th ese modifi cations are ameliorating some prior and revolutionary era social fractures (for instance, by removing class labels) and entrenching others (for example, people who benefi ted from favourable educational opportunities and state-administration positions have generally main- tained their social privileges in the reform era, and their children have usually benefi ted as well). Post 1980s tactics and politics have led some cultural commenta- tors to describe the reform era and its attendant commercialization as ‘a new form of tyranny’ that has led to the spread of a ‘depoliticizing commercial culture’ (Zha 1995: 209). On the basis of this research, it seems more accurate to say that contemporary Trinde is diff erently politicized, rather than depoliticized. In a related manner, recent foreign analyses of China describe reform era political changes as a process of ‘liberalization’ (cf. Upton 1999: 296). Similarly, Germano (1998: 55) speaks of a ‘religious renaissance’ and Kapstein (2004: 239) of a ‘cultural revival’. However, as with all reifi ed political categories, this term obscures multiple nuances, confl icting experiences and ambiguities in practice (Guo 2004: 24). Such terminology conceals common ground 285 the disciplinary aspects of constituting and maintaining notions of local, regional and nationality collectivities in practice (ibid. 23–38). Furthermore, the idioms of social constituency invoked by Guomind- ang, CCP and local leaders have been remarkably similar. At the same time, these leaders employ extensive and innovative types of manage- ment of those for whom they claim to speak (aft er Tsin 1999: 5, 8). As Sigley (2004: 562) argues, the reform era is characterized not by fewer, but diff erent, techniques of rule. Th ese forms are, however, less identifi able, being dispersed in a diversifi ed fi eld of political and social actors. Foreign scholars have not adequately discussed the thoroughgoing local enmeshment and dialogical constitution of offi cial, exile, foreign scholarly, international and inter-regional discursive forms in local practice. Instead local people who engage with modern, offi cial, or Western discourses are liable to be devalued to the point of disappearing from scholarly accounts. Such people may be mentioned in a context of monastic practice, but their wider engagements are omitted or downplayed (cf. Mills 2003a). Furthermore, as Humphrey and Mandel (2002: 13) point out, the various fi elds cannot be properly understood as being somehow disconnected from each other. Instead, ‘relational persons are inevitably also political actors and subjects in whatever power relations surround them’ (ibid.). Huber (1999: 89) notes that local understandings of place and agency are strongly linked to routine movements and practices. Huber’s work focuses on ritual pilgrimages, but is also relevant to understanding ‘the political’ in contemporary China. Th is Trinde- based research involved countless implicit references and embodied inferences to political rationales in present and prior eras. Th e research also required understanding localized versions of Putonghua politi- cal terms and identifying exotic infl uences. All these factors could have been overlooked if specifi c attention had not been devoted to these implicit and subtle aspects of local life. Unless foreign research- ers carry out comprehensive experiential investigations and have a deeper knowledge of the various forms a given practice may take, the tacit aspects of, and innovative practices in, daily life will pass unno- ticed (ibid.). Some works present the revolutionary and reform eras as diametric opposites, as is the case with Goldstein and Beall’s (1990: 151) quotes about the Mao and Deng years, respectively: 286 conclusion

Compelled to abandon the traditional beliefs and symbols that gave meaning to the world around them and to actively embrace a new ‘communist’ culture consisting of norms and values that they considered repugnant, they [north-TAR pastoralists] experienced a crisis of morality and meaning. China’s new post-1980 policies created conditions wherein individual Tibetans were able to resurrect a more satisfying culture by readopting traditional components of their cognitive and aff ective systems and discarding components of the ‘revolutionary’ culture they had been forced to profess. One of the principal conclusions of this research is that analyses should not focus on territorialized ‘cultures’ of given ‘ethnic groups’ (cf. Appadurai 1991: 192). Rather, the investigative focus must attend to how politics and power are constituted, worked out and refracted in, or through, broader social contexts and discursive political fi elds. Th is context-based orientation avoids understanding sociality as bounded ‘groups’, imputing essential breaks between historical periods or con- ceiving political modifi cations as stable, bounded or linear evolutions. Contemporary forms are never entirely new, as people do not totally reinvent themselves with every change of policy or political era. As Kip- nis (1994: 216–17) points out: Subjectifi cation takes time. Subjectifi cation is not merely a matter of institutional classifi cation, but the creation of a subject within and against that classifi cation. It is only aft er adapting one’s classifi cation, and creat- ing something positive within it, that people can make themselves and be made into specifi c kinds of acting subjects. Likewise, policies, practices and techniques are politically empow- ered at given times, but do not completely disappear when a new set of governmental rationales and practices is introduced. As Ortner notes, practices that seem to have disappeared oft en continue in diff er- ent forms (1998: 259). For example, some of today’s wealthy people in Trinde are those who were relatively affl uent pre-revolution, lost every- thing during the revolutionary era and then regained some of what they had, or more, in the reform era. Th is has been the case with Pema’s household (described in Chapter One). Th e household recovered their formerly advantageous economic status by engaging in regional trade, though the household’s social status is still ambiguous. Many lamas have experienced similar changing fortunes during the political switch- backs of the last fi ft y years. common ground 287

More than anything, this book deconstructs the concept of nation- ality, and argues for a more nuanced, shift ing and interpersonal understanding of identifi cation, subjectivities and belonging. Th e chap- ters above trace how recent political modifi cations are also inducing new social fractures and increasing socio-economic diff erentiation. Some recently arising social diff erentials are: fi nancial wealth, language ability (in Putonghua and, increasingly, English), relocations (to larger urban centres), second homes, home improvements (for example, covering one’s house with white tiles), business ventures (especially through local connections and syndicates), religious practice (such as participating in novel forms of religious practice like lhabab) and social action (seen in provincial mobilizations against incoming Muslims on the basis of perceived resource inequalities). As New Course Reform (Chapter Six) shows, responses to dis- courses of development and modernity are not reducible to offi cial parameters, nor do local actions represent simple reversals of those rules and policies. Instead, people draw on diverse sources, and rein- terpret idioms, events and phenomena in idiosyncratic ways. Th ese novel reinterpretations are evident in the ancestral land discus- sions described in Chapter Th ree, and in the development of local modernities through a creative mixing of international and local methodologies. New cultural forms derive symbolic patterning and practical know-how from prior social processes, as well as from the very procedures that people are, by undertaking new forms, seeking to critique. Some scholars argue that people come to construe events as though an essential schema underlies them (for example, van Beek 1996: 15, Wedeen 1999: passim). In his early analyses, van Beek analyses bureau- cratic rubrics of social alliance as ‘formal hegemonic frame[s]’ of understanding and representation that are empowered and institution- alized forms of social ‘groupness’ (1996: 39, 30). In a contextualized study, Kaup instead highlights the agency in local people’s activities and interpretations, and argues that educated people are aware of the arbi- trariness of offi cial categorizations of local and nationality constituency (2000: 89). In view of these last points, a key fi nding of this ethnogra- phy is that the extent to which people are able to rework and creatively deploy political discourses, and how aware they are of such discourses, is always open to debate. Investigating the issue of agency and socio-political consciousness further, close attention to the ways that a broad cross-section of people 288 conclusion invoke idioms of social constituency shows that certain individuals are conscious of some aspects of political rationales, but do not question others. Similarly, people are oft en aware, though to greater or lesser degrees, of the diff erent prior forms of social belonging that existed in Trinde. Furthermore, while a person can be more-or-less conscious of the politics involved in social categorization, in a diff erent moment, that same person may go on to invoke a category (such as ‘nationality’) as though it was a concrete, self-evident object. Shedding light on the subtly interconnected nature of social and political life, Humphrey (1998: 7) writes that:

It is a mistake to see the offi cial ideology simply as counterposed to a distinct sphere called ‘real life’ or ‘everyday life’. For the very reason that ideology is institutionalized it has to be seen as integral with the power structure which is itself part of ‘everyday life’. Th is does not mean … that the ideology encompasses all of people’s consciousness, only that it forms part of everyone‘s consciousness.

Th is process of rapprochement is evident throughout the Trinde eth- nography presented above. In fact, throughout China, undertaking state-assigned work unit tasks inevitably involves supporting the politi- cal administration in practical senses. Th is is because each state position is, in practice, both imbued with the logic of the overarching political system and concurrently involves local infl uences and elaboration (ibid. 456). Carrying out one’s work necessarily involves attending to the job’s structure and objectives, which remains the case ‘even if the dominant part of one’s consciousness is alienated from the task at hand’ (ibid. 8). Th is contextual infl uence helps to explain why reifi ed expressions of society litter popular narratives, offi cial information, NGO reports and school resources despite the fact that bounded social groupings do not exist in practice. Reform era Sinological debates have focused on where China stands on the socialist/post-socialist spectrum (Meisner 1989, Dirlik 1989, Litzinger 2002). In Trinde, the legacies of socialist institutions, prior socio-political terminologies and tattered family-histories are still highly salient features of local life. Mindful of these historical conti- nuities, Humphrey proposes the term ex- rather than post-socialist to emphasize the continuance rather than the severance of past forms in contemporary times (1998: vii). While continuities remain important, the ethnographies of Upton (2002), Hartley (2002) and Kipnis (2005) and this investigation of Trinde suggest that the political in China (if common ground 289 not the stated governmental orientation) is changing signifi cantly and rapidly. To analyse these fast-paced developments, researchers must shift from more bureaucratic, institutional and textual approaches to an increasingly responsive and contextualized research strategy in order to understand how particular social aspirations are harnessed, endorsed, sustained or reworked in practice.3 Th is ethnography illustrates that offi cial rubrics are not foisted wholesale onto local people by a ‘Chinese’ regime. Such depictions misrepresent the subtle and manifold interconnections at work between offi cial discourses, schoolteachers, cadres, work unit staff , NGO offi cers, foreign scholars, exile ideologues, students, religious practitioners and townsfolk in Trinde. A similar point is expressed by Barnett, who argues that local people are not ‘passive participants’ or ‘victims in a larger process’ but, rather, are ‘creative agents in whatever situation they [fi nd] themselves’ (1994: x). Furthermore, offi cial reform era policies are not unfurled in a compre- hensive, predictable centre-to-periphery manner, and are not necessar- ily experienced in a nationality-specifi c (or, indeed, any other categorical) way. Instead, policies involve subjective, localized and context-specifi c dif- ferentiations that are invoked on the basis of dialect, language, dress, local practice and social belonging, as highlighted in Chapter Th ree. Th at said, while educated classes currently have a good deal of lee- way within local administrative contexts, local power and privileges always hang in a fragile state-ascribed balance, and the local mar- gin for manoeuvre oscillates according to provincial, national and international social and political shift s. Th is issue was amply demon- strated during the disturbances of 2008 (see the Introduction), which occurred aft er this research was completed. Moreover, local people who do not occupy positions of power have little direct say in the run- ning of local government. Th e system, while localized by virtue of the extensive participation of local people, is not, in itself, indigenous to the region but is imported from elsewhere. As Pirie (2005b) points out, in comparison to the local pastoralists, the Chinese government has tremendous military and economic power, as well as immense potential to manage territories, communications, markets, rural areas, education and fertility. Nevertheless, apart from in exceptional circumstances of politi- cal unrest, the government administration cannot completely control pastoralist activities. In practice, the authority offi cial representatives

3 For a discussion of these themes, see Sigley (2005: 563–6). 290 conclusion usually have over struggles between factions is the power local people themselves discern should be allowed, for example, as a complement to their own leadership. Offi cial support is sought as and when the situa- tion is deemed to require such intervention (see ibid.). In practice, the interaction of conventions, force and infl uence that distinguish diverse social groupings in Trinde, as elsewhere, is taking a new shape in con- temporary China’s nation-state. Th is book highlights how nationality has become a highly expedient political-administrative concept in Chinese, exile and local terms, and demonstrates the particular importance of this idiom for a select group of local educational and NGO leaders. Within social science, a parallel categorization defi nes and authorizes a host of academic engagements in a fi eld of knowledge now defi ned as ‘Tibetan studies’ (Shakya 1994: 8–10). In this discipline, nationality rubrics are also commonly invoked as discrete, homogeneous and unambiguous objects of knowledge. As Gudin points out, the techniques and procedures through which par- ticular fi elds of knowledge are created are integral to the formation of the phenomenon they profess to examine (1994: passim, Tsin 1999: 7). Accordingly, objectifying and categorizing local people as quantitatively and qualitatively diff erent from inner China and nationality Others, has delimited a privileged domain for Tibetological, anthropological and ethnological studies, and legitimizes endeavours undertaken in the name of ‘Tibetans’ under nationality studies rubrics. Th e somewhat arbitrary nature of these categorical boundaries is captured by Herzfeld, who argues that ‘bureaucrats work on the categories of social existence [in] much the same way as sorcerers are supposed to work on the hair or nail clippings of their intended victims’ (1992 cited in van Beek 2001: 365). Conducting research about a ‘social group’ (for example, on the basis of nationality categories) results in a failure to question the rubrics of analysis themselves, and does not expose the need to analyse the practices by which such discourses are sustained (for insightful cri- tiques of this kind see Rack 2005 and van Beek 1996, 2000). A lack of critical refl exivity perpetuates the logic of reifi ed ‘cultural types’ and misinterprets what are much more complex social actualities. As Dirks (1994: 501) points out, processes of ordering (such as those at work in systematizing sociality into discrete groups) depend on the pre- existence of power. Th is means that we cannot comprehend the ‘politics of diff erence’ by analysing groupings as natural forms of ‘identity’ (van Beek 1996: 58, 67). We must instead expose the mechanisms of their constitution and maintenance in practice. As Rose points out (1998: 18): common ground 291

Critical history helps us think about the nature and limits of our pres- ent, about the conditions under which that which we take for truth and reality has been established. Critical history disturbs and fragments, it reveals the fragility of that which seems solid, the contingency of that which seems necessary … It enables us to think against the present, in the sense of exploring its horizons and its conditions of possibility. Its aim is not to predetermine judgement, but to make judgement possible. Th e theoretical and empirical material included above indicates that, within and outside China, analyses should be based on context and place, rather than focusing on specifi c ‘cultures’ or ‘ethnic groups’. Researchers are thus able to acknowledge and investigate the politics at work between a range of diff erent people in practice (Ferguson 1997: 93, van Beek 1996: 387), rather than risk consolidating essentialized distinctions. However, scholarly re-evaluation is only part of the pic- ture. Even if academics understand social identifi cation in dynamic, multiple and unbounded ways, others working locally and nationally may still seek to recreate everlasting and unchanging social identities (aft er Oakes 1997: 526). Such an impetus involves actively producing frontiers, uniting ‘cultures’ and determining an immutable history. Th e central irony here is the recognition that people’s own ‘creativity’ and agency can result in limiting and ambivalent results (ibid.). As discussed in Chapter Seven, increased private ownership of tele- visual media has boosted the circulation of local and regional nation- ality idioms, and has dramatically increased the fl ow of wider infor- mation into local areas. Th is expanded realm of information sharpens understandings of local, regional or nationality ‘diff erence’, as expressed through discourses of class, development, nation and nationality, cul- ture, ritual practice, modernities and media.4 Local people have used many of these relatively new channels, technologies and idioms actively and creatively. Some young leaders have employed these novel mea- sures to promote and diff use messages about nationality culture. Mass education and other knowledge-based initiatives means that a wider variety of people currently participate in regional debates than in pre- revolution times (cf. Horowitz cited in Hartley 2002: 18). In light of these developments, even though a person is based in Trinde, this does not mean that their infl uences and awareness are confi ned to that locale. One example is Padre,~ a Trinde teacher, whose aspirations refl ect reform era discourses that are at once local, national and global:

4 While television has failed as a political propaganda tool, this medium has been a tacit success as a means of social discipline and regulation. 292 conclusion

Before, I had an overwhelming desire to get out of China. Now I want to set up a business to really help Tibetans. I must know Tibetan for the local area, Chinese as the national language and English for international situations. In 2003, Padre~ decided independently to relinquish his work unit posi- tion. He also fulfi ls reform era expectations of becoming a modern person (by speaking English and using a computer), and concurrently aims to ‘do something for Tibetans’. In Trinde, incomers encounter a range of challenges and opportu- nities that, in some ways coincide with, and in other respects diff er from, those of local inhabitants. Th is lived and living correspondence is overlooked in most foreign analyses, whose nationality and religious focus reinforce a skewed view of local contexts and a nativist under- standing of belonging. Some local leaders and foreign scholars convey the idea that their nationality is special or even superior to others. Th is prioritization is linked to perceptions that the nationality has a so-called ‘unique’ spirituality (Pema Dorje cited in Hankin 1996: 1). Th e strength of this idea means that the experiences of incoming populations usu- ally go unacknowledged or are underplayed (cf. ibid.). Th e practical ramifi cation here is that there is no equivalent awareness or movement to support other nationalities living within the PRC (Lewis 1997: 1). Rather than analysing a specifi c ‘ethnic’ group, or political struc- ture, this book proceeds from a critical vantage point of practices and concepts associated with a number of broadly-defi ned political themes and social contexts. Th e related call for ethnographies of given con- texts is not to reify ‘the local’ as a fi xed, singular or insular conceptual and practical location, but to acknowledge that life is always lived in the particular even as it concurrently involves diverse global elements (cf. Strathern 1995a: 158). Contextual analyses help move away from approaches that rely on primordial and reifi ed idioms of race, national- ity, ethnicity or culture as the real or proper basis for social belonging. Exile, foreign and Yushu discourses all, at diff erent times and to vary- ing degrees, present local situations in terms of a hegemonic nation- state regime versus blameless, authentic, nationality peoples. Arguing against an exclusive nationality focus does not imply downplaying the immense suff ering many people have lived through as a result of mis- conceived or misapplied political (and nationality) policies. Th e main concern here is that such categorical views obscure the complicated involvements and contradictory ways that people experienced the Mao years (Litzinger 1998: 133 and 2000: 26), and conceal people’s agency in common ground 293 interpreting and reforming how those discourses work out in practice (see Chapter Six). Th e actions of most people could not be described as fully collusive with, nor entirely opposed to, revolutionary era social- ism or reform era modernization projects. As Anagnost puts it, ‘domi- nation and resistance are complexly intertwined, occupying the same space and the same time’ (1997: 97). Th e chapters of this book address the consequences of perceiving, identifying, structuring, inscribing and representing living sociality as discrete, homogeneous and unambiguous constituencies, such as nations, peoples, cultures, classes and tribes. As the ‘Muslim boycott’ ethnography of Chapter Two shows, ideas about identifi able, delimited groups do not only exist at the level of representation, or remain separate from ‘reality’. Instead, discourses collapse the distinction between the two in practice (cf. van Beek 1996: 60). Offi cial modes of political organization, and their associated mechanisms, have become important points of reference for local people in Trinde. However, idi- oms and elements of social orientation are not imposed on people in a predetermined, infl exible process of state compulsion. Rather, forms of belonging and identifi cation are born out of dynamic processes of shared appropriation, modifi cation and interpretation. Rationalities of governance and technologies of power have endur- ing eff ects, since the individuals they promote tend to govern the same communities, albeit not always continuously. Th is tendency does not mean that political mechanisms are fi xed, self-replicating totalities, or that they represent the ‘reductive theoretical functionalism of Power’ (Yang discussed in Kipnis 2003: 283). Furthermore, offi cial rationales and practices are only one of many approaches people use for making sense of, and acting in, historically and politically specifi c social con- texts. Th eorizing politics and power in China does not involve reject- ing the signifi cance of socially or politically empowered individuals or disregarding the disciplinary outcomes of discourses. What is required instead is a form of analysis that mediates between both (ibid.). Attempts to uphold local interpretations of the past, proper morality, correct ritual practice and regional autonomy constitute sites of contest and debate among diff erently positioned people, as is the case with the lhabab practices (described in Chapter Five). In a subtle and contextual analysis, Feuchtwang states that: Ways of judging government and everyday conduct are preserved which stand apart from current political ideologies. Th ey are alternative are- nas for telling or performing stories which refl ect on the corruption, 294 conclusion

inequality and lack of security and support seen and experienced by the subjects of the Chinese People’s Republic … [T]emple and festival con- texts are offi cially treated and sanctioned as … cultural and ecological treasures, but within this offi cial sanction villagers maintain a distinct criteria to judge the conduct of government. (2000: 161, 173) As the updating of the physical exercise routine (described in Chap- ter Two) shows, latitude does exist for locally emplacing, and respond- ing to, offi cial directives in Trinde. Cooperation is required, but not enforced. Th is was evident when Pemba, the former Headmaster, mobilized his entire social network to construct the roof for his new house (see also Yang 1994: 3–6). Villagers contributed a full day of vol- untary labour on the basis of tacit understandings about structured relations of assistance in local society, rather than because of any offi cial law or institution compelling their participation. Local authorities also enforce policies and offi cial rules in unpredictable ways, following their own personal preferences. Moreover, local actions or styles are some- times similar to inner China forms. In these situations, Trinde people diff erentiate their actions by saying that, while it might look like their practice is the same as that of incomers, it actually means something quite diff erent (on the basis of their own nationality-specifi c purpose or method). With signifi cant political adroitness, local leaders similarly argue that their nationality traditions are ‘irreducibly diff erent’ from those of ‘China’ (Prakash 1999: 7), and call for this diff erence to be refl ected in the status and policies accorded to their region and people. However, the process of creating and maintaining the idea of ‘Tibet’ as a separate culture or nation does not negate the logic of China’s national- ity discourses but, rather, reinscribes them under the new authority of ‘the local’ (cf. ibid.). Th is book indicates how social constituencies or ‘peoples’ are pro- duced through interacting with, and inhabiting, a variety of complex, overlapping sites of social and political engagement. As seen in the chapters above, political rationales can be socially-aligning, inclusive and empowering or mutually exclusive, disenfranchising, divisive or repressive for diff erent people in diff ering contexts at distinct moments (aft er Duara 1995: 15, Litzinger 1998: 225). Th e ethnography included here is also a testament to the degrees of latitude individuals have in fashioning conceptual and practical responses. Th e eff ect of political rationalities on the scope of local action relates to the concept of agency, which Giddens (1984) theorizes in terms of people’s actions being limited or facilitated by ongoing social relations and organizations. In a common ground 295 subtle formulation, Strathern links agency to how people’s ability to act is assigned, and to how accountability is worked out in practice (cited in Mueggler 1999: 480). Distinct possibilities always exist for the play- ing out of agency in diff erent social contexts, as is evident in the eth- nography above. Th e ways that Trinde people evaluate or contest dominant principles (be they nominally religious, state, exile, foreign-scholarly and paren- tal) usually involves invoking the language and assumptions that are being disputed. Th is was the case in the ancestral land debate in Chap- ter Th ree. As Tsing argues, even ‘when those excluded from universal rights protest their exclusion … [i]t extends the reach of the forms of power they protest, even as it gives voice to their anger and hope’ (2005: 9). A critical insight of this ethnography is that people are not con- fi ned within a single discourse. Instead they deploy a variety of prior, regional, state, exile and foreign discourses and modify offi cial reform era logics in practice. Th is creative and innovative approach is obvi- ous in local interpretations and modifi cations of New Course Reform (Chapter Six). ‘Th e unity of opposites’ is a quotation from Mao’s 1937 treatise ‘On Contradiction’, in which he states that, ‘All contrary things are interconnected; not only do they also coexist in a single entity in given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. Th is is the full meaning of the unity of opposites’ (1967: 340, cf. Schell 1998: ix). Th is quotation is Mao’s interpretation of dialectical materialism, and also echoes elements of Chinese philosophical traditions (ibid. 343). Li Zhenxi, a Xi’an-born teacher, chooses similar themes for his contribu- tion to the Trinde County 2002 manual (2002: 233). Marxist dialectics aside, Mao’s statement is an apt reminder of the divisive border inscrib- ing potentials of modern systems of rational examination, categoriza- tion and management. Specifi cally, defi ning any social group or ‘unity’ involves the simultaneous constitution of Others outside this realm who may, under certain circumstances, be considered to hold ‘oppo- site’ characteristics. As Tsin (1999: 12), writing about Guomindang-era China, puts it: Th e construction of a cohesive body was a process of boundary-making, and the putative integrity of the organic whole could be represented only by consistently dichotomizing those who belonged and those who did not. Th e self-assigned task of the government was to dissect sys- tematically the make-up of the people. It was to identify, marginalize, and exclude those deemed threatening to the unity of the social body. 296 conclusion

Th e idea of a ‘unity of opposites’, as it is used here, refers to the practice of holding social and cultural diff erences in tension without trying to tidy them up into neat categories. It does not imply that people have internalized essential identities, that ‘unity’ is a result of ‘totalitarian state’ operations or that all people everywhere are equal, have a single mindset or share some ‘essential traits’. Problematizing the ‘unity of opposites’ is a point of departure and a step towards a more nuanced and diff erentiated methodology, not a ‘truth-statement’ about ‘how the world really is’. A general problem with distinguishing ‘unities’ and ‘opposites’, as invoked in Mao’s quote, relates to (mis)conceptions that universality and particularity are opposing or mutually exclusive orders. As Jameson (2002: 182) explains: Th e universal is [not] something under which you range the particular as a mere type … For the dialectic of universal is a conceptual construction that can never know any empirical embodiment or realization: all of its particulars are also specifi c and historically unique, and the function of the universal in analysis is not to reduce them all to identity but rather to allow each to be perceived in its historical diff erence. Invoking Jameson’s theorization does not imply that ‘unity’ matches ‘universal’ while ‘opposites’ correspond to ‘the particulars’, or that these concepts are organized within a simple dialectical relationship (for a China-specifi c discussion, see Wang 2001: 174). Similarly, Trinde does not signify a particular representation of ‘diff erence’ as contrasted with a unifi ed ‘Tibet’, just as ‘Tibet’ is not an ‘ethnic’ particularity of a universal ‘China’ (cf. Strathern 1995b: 177). Instead, sociality in Trinde highlights the specifi cities and issues in local encounters with exten- sive, global or so-called ‘universal’, discourses. References to unities and universals are never politically neutral. Th ese terms are instead deployed to engender specifi c, relatively planned results. As Tsing (2005: 9) emphasizes, ‘universals’ are char- acteristically expressed by dominant groups, and signify growth towards ever advancing ‘truths’ and common human betterment, while subordinate peoples are typifi ed as having ‘particularistic’ com- munities and localized rationalities beyond which these groups are deemed unable to progress. In popular understandings too, China is associated with dominance and the drive for integration, unity and universalism. In Trinde, particularly among educated people, there is a greater emphasis on ‘diff erence’ (cf. also Schein 2000: 28). common ground 297

In practice, references to ‘universals’ are always implicated in local conceptions of value. Th is was the case with re-articulations of ideas of civilization in the 1990s, which were made manifest in diverse localized and exotic ways. People’s preferences for overarching or particular forms are seen in their participation in, or abstention from, diff erent forms of religious practice, a choice that involves moral aspects (see Chapter Five). As Pandey points out, when encountering references to universals in the fi eld, it is important to continually interrogate ‘how particular unities—of nation, of culture, or history—came to be con- structed as mainstream and even “natural”, and how other mainstream unities, other histories, may still be constituted’ (1998: 36). Th e commonalities people claim are inherent to particular social groups and are not necessarily stable across social constituencies. Th e ‘opposites’ invoked during social encounters (for example, when local people characterize themselves as ‘spiritual’ in contrast to ‘materialist’ incomers) are not intrinsic or defi nitive distinctions. Invocations of diff erence can obscure what are, in practice, more salient conceptual and practical interconnections. Implicit everyday interactions always constitute the unmarked substrate of all social relations, against which ‘diff erence’ is set off , or fl ares up, at certain moments. Such charged and polarized moments do not necessarily unmask the ‘really real’ or a normally hidden-from-view ‘authentic truth’ about a given context. In reality, the shared practices of local people and incomers (for example, in lhabab and during SARS, described in Chapter Five) negate any cat- egorical understandings of nationality constituencies. As Kaup (2000: 3) asks, are China’s nationalities really unique constituencies each with their own ‘rich ancient history and culture’ as offi cial sources claim, or are they ‘purely artifi cial recent construct[s] of the Communist Party … Are they [or in which ways are they] really any diff erent from the Han?’ Viewing the issue of categorization through a diff erent lens, nominally distinct political systems (‘socialism’, ‘fascism’ and ‘liberal democracy’) are also generally opposed in popular thought. Yet, while ‘authoritar- ian’ and ‘liberal’ modes of government involve diff erent governmental technologies, apparatuses and procedures, all these political discourses share the same ‘conditions or possibility’ as modern regimes of gov- ernance concerned with administering the conditions of existence of populations (Watts 2004: 196, Dean 1999: 131, 144)—what Foucault (1997) called ‘biopolitics’. Rather than positing that specifi c govern- mental rationalities are created to generate a particular type of person, 298 conclusion recent analyses point to a coexistence of diff ering governmental tech- niques that lie in ‘irresolvable contradiction’ with each other (Kipnis 2005: 5). Th e latter phenomenon is evident in the Trinde ethnography presented here. As a basis for defi ning and sustaining ideas about social belonging and constituencies, ‘cultural diff erence’ is both a rationale and an eff ect of Western social science, national, nationality, local administrative and popular discourses. However, the concept of ‘diff erence’ itself is not straightforward in social practice. As Abu-Lughod argues, ‘to say that we all live in the particular is not to say that for any of us the particulars are the same’ (1991: 157). Th is is an issue that academics must strive to expose and critique rather than merely faithfully describe (Rack 2005). Our research must be mindful of, and highlight, the myriad contextual interconnections that are cultivated, and reaffi rmed, in daily life when people from diff erent areas live and work together in the same socio- political context. Processes of social and political identifi cation in Trinde are context-based, constructed through local practices and con- tested in various ways. Analysing the realities of daily experience high- lights the institutional structures, organizational procedures and sci- entifi c objectifi cations that work to constitute empowering or divisive social contexts. An intimate focus on everyday life grounds rationales in practices that allow for more nuanced, overlapping, and ultimately more liberating notions of belonging and identifi cation. APPENDIX ONE

CHRONOLOGY OF CHINA’S REFORM ERA

In 2008, China celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the start of economic reforms that have transformed the country into a global economic power. Th e following chronology highlights the important milestones since then:

1978 Economic, social and cultural reforms launched under Deng Xiaoping, two years aft er the death of Mao Zedong. GDP per capita is 381 Yuan 1979 US and China establish diplomatic relations. One Child Policy introduced 1980 First special economic zone established in Shenzhen 1982 Population surpasses 1 billion 1986 Deng promotes ‘open-door’ policy to encourage foreign investment 1988 Spiralling infl ation and corruption prompt limits on foreign investment and monetary fl ows 1989 Students protest in Tiananmen Square to demand economic, political and social change 1990 China’s fi rst stock exchange opens in Shanghai 1992 Deng tours southern China to re-launch economic reforms 1994 China connects to the Internet 1996 Chinese currency becomes convertible 1997 Deng dies. Jiang Zemin becomes president. China reassumes admin- istration of Hong Kong 1999 Government prohibits Falun Gong 2001 China joins the World Trade Organization 2002 Entrepreneurs allowed to join the Communist Party 2003 Hu Jintao replaces Jiang as president. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) breaks out in China. 2004 Th e United Nations estimates 1 million Chinese are infected with HIV 2005 Chinese government stops pegging the currency to the US dollar 2006 Th ree Gorges Dam and railway to Lhasa, TAR, are completed. China becomes the world’s fourth-largest economy 300 appendix one

2007 China tops the world with 210 million Internet users. GDP per capita reaches $2,760 Yuan 2008 Sichuan earthquake kills 70,000 people. Beijing hosts Olympic Games. Unprecedented protests in Tibet and China APPENDIX TWO

MULTILINGUAL GLOSSARY OF PRINCIPAL POLITICAL TERMS 302 appendix two

Trindu, as it appears in the Glossary above, refers to an alternative transcription of Trinde, the focal town and county of this book. With thanks to J. Isom for his help in entering the Tibetan script and Chinese characters in the Glossaries. REFERENCES

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INDEX

Advanced, Advancement—concepts of. Government 31, 38 See also Progress 2, 11, 40, 51, Prefecture 1, 5, 31, 141 83, 86, 87, 90, 105, 126, 133, 149, 151, 215 Backwardness—local concepts of 51, Agency 44, 47, 73, 146, 164, 285, 86, 89, 91, 172, 212, 216, 218 287, 291, 293, 294, 295 Barbarians 27, 28, 48, 86, 118, 119, Agriculturalists 14, 33, 57, 59, 63, 94, 124, 126, 127, 128, 149, 154, 172, 173 124, 265 Belonging. See also Pan-nationality 1, Altruism—local interpretations of 27, 2, 3, 4, 11, 24, 36, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 154, 231, 233, 236, 237 61, 116, 117, 124, 140, 146, 147, 163, 174, Amban 28 177, 242, 247, 281, 283, 287, 288, 289 Amdo 6, 9, 10, 19, 24, 27, 30, 33, 111, Ancestral lands 141 123, 124, 139, 141, 142, 153, 157, 163, Civilizing culture 174, 178 182, 183, 189, 249, 256 National/nationality 25, 51, 99, Ancestral land (Tr. mija) 123- 30, 101, 102, 112, 113, 121, 122, 137, 136, 287, 295 145, 157, 164, 168, 229, 246, 262, Anthem 164, 253, 254, 277 275, 292 Anti- splittism—see Splittism Regions 71, 141, 143, 145 Anthropology—political interpretation Betrayal—of nation, of nationality of in China, local interpretations. See 128, 34, 101, 128, 217 also Ethnology/Ethnography 38, Bin Laden, Osama 111, 119, 120 152, 217 Biography 258 Anti- Rightist Campaign 31, 36 Blanket policies (M. yidao qie/yiguo zhu) Arts—nationality, cultural 1, 40, 173, 38 205, 245, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251- 63, Body 264 Concepts of healthy 106, 192 Authenticity 52, 71, 72, 77, 78, 99, Socio- political 2, 89, 106, 116, 120, 121, 131, 143, 150, 161, 167, 175, 206, 295 184, 194, 196, 198, 217, 273, 279, 281, Speaking 105 283 Bön 27, 40, 168 Authoritarian government 297 Bone—vis- à- vis lineage 56, 57 Authority 6, 17, 24, 29, 42, 60, 68, 69, Bonus system 60, 88 79, 126, 154, 156, 157, 180, 194, 199, Boundaries—social, administrative, re. 205, 209, 211, 225, 240, 289 mixing of categories. See also Fencing Autoethnography 247 30, 40, 48, 49, 115, 120, 141, 207, 290 Autonomy 26, 99, 139, 152, 157, 159, Boycott of Muslim businesses 90, 210, 233, 241, 255, 282, 283 109- 15, 129, 147, 293 Development of political concept Buddha. See also Buddha Sakyamuni 35- 9 40, 75, 167, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, Local interpretations 22, 23, 115, 193, 203, 239, 259 119, 145, 146, 148, 155, 160, 191, Buddhism. See also Tibetan ~ 40, 41, 196, 212, 242, 277 42, 45, 49, 61, 98, 131, 134, 153, 184, Regions 8, 82, 106, 150, 293 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, Autonomous 202, 206, 230, 263, 280 Areas 5, 23, 38, 102, 119 ‘Clerical’ ~ 193, 194, 195, 209 Citizenship 52 Culture 14, 31, 102, 141, 148, Cabarets (and karaoke) 70, 152, 165, 195, 221 204, 247, 265, 262, 267 322 index

Cadre 4, 8, 12, 27, 35, 36, 38, 41, 61, Cultural revival 90, 176, 232 65, 86, 87, 89, 99, 101, 119, 120, 143, Politics of 31, 38, 47, 52, 176- 8 155, 160, 161, 172, 176, 178, 183, 184, Cultural Revolution 10, 21, 35, 36, 189, 195, 196, 210, 213, 216, 218, 219, 41, 54, 56, 64, 67, 72, 73, 80, 104, 119, 221, 233, 234, 246, 256, 277, 280, 282, 148, 149, 150, 158, 252 289 Customs—vis-à-vis local way of life, Callisthenics (school exercise routine)— political policies, and revolution as a social-political practice 107, 10, 27, 31, 36, 47, 48, 90, 111, 133, 134, 108 141, 145, 149, 152, 166, 168, 175, 205, Capitalist 58, 59, 215, 240 215, 216, 217, 238, 239 Caterpillar fungus 84, 208 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 34 Dalai Lama 6, 18, 28, 39, 69, 70, 77, Celebrations 14, 75, 270, 280 78, 98, 124, 154, 158, 165, 168, 189, China—see People’s Republic of China 190, 200, 236, 244, 257 China Mobile 245- 6, 266- 73 Dance 4, 40, 108, 137, 138, 139, 141, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 8, 142, 152, 183, 187, 189, 216, 241, 247, 31, 35, 40, 58, 76, 77, 101, 118, 125, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 261, 273 149, 193, 215, 228, 260, 285, 297 Dawa village (Trinde) 8, 9, 15, 62, Chinese Communist Youth League 17 64, 70, 98, 144, 190 Chumarleb 6, 89, 183, 249 Degenerate era—concept, local references Citizen 49, 105, 224 to 84, 156, 163, 178, 253 Civilization, Civilized 40, 98, 117, Democracy 18, 47, 234, 297 118, 127, 132, 248, 149, 150, 151- 9, Democratic Reforms 31 164, 172, 173, 177, 178, 192, 196, 209, Deng Xiaoping 78, 226 214, 230, 297 Derge 19, 20, 28, 124, 130, 143, 162, ‘Clans’—see Familial communities 172, 247, 256, 257, 263, 266, 267, 283 Class 1, 2, 10, 31, 36, 41, 51, 55, 57, Development 1, 2, 3, 26, 37, 39, 51, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64- 8, 80, 81, 89, 216, 52, 82- 115, 119, 126, 130, 145, 149, 223, 282, 291 150, 153, 157, 158, 173, 175, 204, 205, Classifi cation—of nationalities as a state 206, 212, 213, 216, 221, 224, 232, 234, project, eff ects in local practice 242, 245, 246, 259, 282, 287, 289, 291 23, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 264, 286 Dharma 24, 40, 63, 68, 70, 71, 72, 74, Colonial encounter 48, 82, 157 75, 79, 84, 99, 134, 135, 142, 152, 154, Colloquial language—see Dialect 167, 169, 183, 185, 187, 189, 190, 193, Commercialization 247, 284 194, 196, 197, 201, 202, 203, 205, 207, Commodifi cation 246 210, 235, 253, 257, 259 Commune 9, 14, 32, 33, 37, 60, 66, Dialect 24, 25, 90, 91, 115, 140, 160, 98, 187, 260 162, 212, 259, 260, 261, 289 Communism, Communist 21, 29, Amdo 6, 141, 160, 161, 260, 261 31, 34, 58, 59, 68, 71, 78, 86, 100, 149, Kham 6, 141, 160, 162, 214 154, 172, 286 Lhasa 20, 144, 250 Consciousness—critical, political 21, Local 19, 20, 78, 89, 129, 151, 152, 55, 58, 59, 72, 73, 76, 110, 166, 193, 160, 161, 162, 163, 174, 260 204, 287 Qinghai 19, 159 Constitution—of PRC 36, 150 Trinde 20, 25, 135, 162 Consumption, Consumers 25, 71, Ü-Tsang 141 89, 204, 208, 233, 234, 238, 241, 263, Yushu 144, 161, 262 273 Diff erence—social perception 89, Corruption—discourses of 176, 177, 120, 210, 213 294 Discourse. See also Civilizing culture Counterrevolutionary 26, 58 1, 20, 45, 46, 71, 79, 80, 106- 109, 136, Culture 148, 149, 158, 159, 195, 214, 241- 3, Civilizing 2, 3, 25, 52, 147, 148- 78, 283, 287, 291, 293, 295, 296, 298 204- 205, 208, 221, 237, 258, 283 Class 2, 51, 55, 291 index 323

Exile 238, 263, 292 Enter the countryside and follow the Governmental 35, 40, 146 customs—political principle 90 Nationality 11, 115, 145, 178, Equalization—policies of 86 197, 206, 255, 294 Essence- function (M. tiyong) concept Offi cial 67, 126, 152, 192, 210, 39, 71, 150, 151 213, 229, 238, 264, 282, 285, 289 Ethnicity 43, 117, 147, 149, 160, 176, Political 4, 10, 14, 44, 50, 52, 177, 272, 292 221, 287, 297 Ethnology/Ethnography. See also Reform era 129, 195, 237, 291 Anthropology, Autoethnography Religious 40 1, 2, 6, 13, 14, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 52, Socialist 55 53, 67, 75, 82, 86, 114, 115, 117, 127, Divide and rule 67 137, 145, 147, 152, 177, 182, 209, 210, Dõ Tri Monastery (Trinde) 9, 12, 15, 214, 230, 234, 246, 276, 282, 286, 288, 56, 68, 69, 70, 73, 183, 186, 190 289, 293, 294, 295, 298 Dorje Shugden 69, 74, 123, 125, 130, Exclusion—social concept of, in local 131, 166, 189 practice 61, 116, 172, 295 Drito 6, 89, 249 Experts—vis- à- vis reform era changes Druchung village (Trinde) 8, 9, 13, 19, 87, 105, 136, 171, 192 14, 15, 59, 65, 73, 102, 119, 155, 179, Exile 4, 5, 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 38, 39, 181, 190, 248, 253 44, 47, 49, 52, 72, 80, 116, 123, 129, Dzatö 6, 13, 32, 89, 97, 101, 140, 141, 135, 145, 147, 151, 157, 158, 163, 165, 249 178, 193, 210, 213, 217, 221, 232, 234, 238, 246, 263, 272, 274, 276, 285, 289, Economy, Economic 37, 51, 71, 84, 290, 292, 295 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 100, 101, 110, 114, 203, 213, 227 Falun Gong 192 Education 8, 11, 18, 30, 60, 70, 72, Familial communities (aka ‘clans’) 2, 90, 94, 96, 103, 107, 110, 114, 115, 34, 65, 66, 98, 122, 134, 159 127, 135, 139, 149, 151, 157, 162, 196, Family of nationalities—political concept 212, 216, 217, 221, 223, 225, 228, 229, of 126, 214 231, 232, 237, 246, 258, 259, 289, Far fl ung—concepts of geographic 291 proximity, use of concept in songs ~ Forum 104, 135, 218 82 Hard- style 224, 227 Fatherland 21, 56, 99, 123, 140, 143-4, Liberal 223, 225 145, 171, 182, 220, 232, 246, 262 Participatory 104, 191, 224 Fencing—eff ects on people, local Quality 223, 224 interpretations of, offi cial policy in Education Bureau 12, 213, 221, 225 Yushu 94, 97, 98, 99, 100 Elite—religious, social 19, 27, 46, 48, Festivals 14, 41, 60, 72, 101, 107, 140, 73, 106, 153, 205, 218, 258 171, 247, 248, 250, 253, 261, 265, 277, Emancipation of mind (M. sixiang jiefang) 280, 294 37 Fetishization—and local culture 246 Empowerment—social, spiritual 176, Feudal, Feudalism—for ‘feudal 194, 200 superstition’ see Superstition 47, English language—in state education, 48, 67, 80, 133, 135, 158, 209, 211, 218 regional status. See also English Food—social meanings, ritual signifi cance Training Programme 2, 11, 12, 21, 33, 34, 66, 88, 98, 99, 111, 112, 127, 13, 15, 22, 109, 128, 138, 158, 160, 133, 135, 138, 173, 174, 204 161, 167, 213, 217, 220, 226, 228, 234, Foreign 236, 237, 238, 240, 241, 261, 275, 277, Foreignness 5, 18 287, 292 Bodies 147, 206 English Training Programme (ETP), Commentary on 19, 25, 47, 49, Xining 2, 111, 171, 172, 216, 217, 100, 105, 136, 145, 147, 156, 157, 218, 219, 220, 259 167, 168, 171, 172, 176, 177, 182, 324 index

210, 216, 237, 277, 284, 285, 289, Habits—bad ~, vis- à- vis political 292, 295 changes 133, 149, 202, 239 Discourse 71, 136, 292, 295 Han—dynasty, as a nationality category ~ Friend—concept of 83, 134 17, 22, 23, 27, 30, 44, 48, 71, 76, 83, Goods 112, 227, 229, 231 85, 89, 110, 117, 118, 119, 120, 125, Languages 20, 259 126, 132- 3, 175, 215, 220, 229, 230, Nations 83, 90, 102, 137, 213, 238, 250, 260, 267, 280 240, 241 Hegemony 48, 119, 178, 283 Practices 39, 93, 135, 213 Hero—Culture ~es, local importance, Staff 12, 213, 234 student opinions of 194, 239, 257, Teachers 12, 13, 83, 136, 228 266, 267, 268, 277, 279 Textbooks 135, 217 Historical imagination 20 Four Allocations Scheme 94 History—local 3, 11, 26, 34, 39, 48, Four Modernizations 87 58, 66, 73, 74, 90, 100, 121, 124, 125, Freedom 18, 31, 41, 44, 48, 74, 100, 130, 131.134, 136, 157, 158, 195, 205, 105, 112, 186, 220, 240, 241, 242, 243, 234, 238, 239, 245, 246, 250, 252, 258, 275 264, 279, 281, 284, 297 Honorifi c language 65 Gambling—social interpretations of Hooligan—concept within China, local 14, 79, 80, 207 usage 119, 126, 154, 172-3 Gatojowo Mountain 42, 142, 151 Household 14, 29, 61, 64, 66, 141, Gawa—see Jyegu 163, 195, 210 Gelugpa 28, 74, 225 Economic 33, 88, 286 Gender—research considerations, social Gods 143 aspects of 42, 51, 108, 132- 4, 141, Monastery links 69, 80, 255 170- 2, 181, 272, 282 Morality 55, 61 Gesangzeren 36 Social identifi cation 8, 12, 56, 59, Getting rich is glorious 87, 111 60, 62, 65, 81, 121, 132, 143, 145, Green brains 129 171, 265 Golog 29, 60, 96, 143, 153, 175, 181, Household Responsibility System 60, 234, 236, 260, 265 88 Governance 9, 10, 18, 35, 176, 246, Hu Jintao 87 282, 293, 297 Human rights—local concepts of 47, Government 8, 25, 31, 33, 53, 99, 186, 216 293, 297 Hundred Flowers Campaign 31 Autonomous 31 Hundred household leader (M. baihu) Budgets 90 28, 29, 58 Centralized 30, 110, 247 Hundred person confederacies Chinese 10, 28, 53, 101- 102, 120, (M. baizhang) 29 215, 260, 267 Guomindang 30 Identifi cation 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 11, 22, 24, Informers 161 25, 36, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 58, Lhasa 6, 28, 30 59, 60, 65, 116, 117, 118, 121, 124, 136, Policies 223, 226, 228, 295 137, 138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 145- 7, Resources 65 162, 163, 164, 173, 174, 175, 192, 247, Restitutions 60 262, 265, 266, 274, 281, 282, 287, 291, And SARS 198, 199 293, 298 Government in Exile (i.e. Tibetan) 24 Identity 1, 2, 22, 23, 24, 44, 49, 57, 59, Great Leap Forward 32, 34, 36, 86 103, 116, 118, 136, 147, 159, 164, 172, Great Western Development—political 175, 177, 183, 211, 248, 265, 271, 274, strategy, local, perceptions, practical 290, 296 eff ects 85, 92, 93, 97, 106 Ideology 10, 37, 40, 46, 58, 85, 135, Guanxi 65, 121, 122 149, 150, 177, 215, 228, 230, 288 Guomindang 29, 30, 35, 41, 77, 117, Imagined communities—nations as 118, 223, 260, 285, 295 24, 25, 39, 47, 122, 156 index 325

Incarnate lama—see Rinpoche 214, 221, 227, 238, 239, 260, 261, India 18, 19, 25, 33, 34, 63, 75, 135, 276, 281 154, 165, 173, 200, 234, 240 Politics of 20, 29, 38, 88 Inner Mongolia 37, 94, 114, 158 Law of Regional Nationality Insiders—local concept of 24 Autonomy 37, 38, 82, 150 Iraq War 129, 146, 199 Lazhe—songs/singing 251- 2 Iron rice bowl 109, 219 Leaders, leadership 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, Japan 40, 117, 175, 228 37, 38, 39, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 65, 82, Jiang Zemin 87, 92, 95, 116, 270 83, 88, 89, 90, 94, 95, 107, 108, 115, Jiegu—see Jyegu 118, 119, 124, 127, 130, 149, 150, 151, Jigme Phuntshog Rinpoche 188, 192, 152, 154- 9, 160, 164, 170, 172, 195, 206, 242 212, 213, 215, 221, 226, 228, 229, 231, Jokes 12, 21, 62, 77, 106, 113, 122, 234, 238, 245, 246, 269, 270, 274, 277, 128, 135, 146, 251, 277, 279 281, 284, 285, 290, 291, 292, 294 Jyegu—Prefecture town, 2008 Left ist deviationist thinking 150, disturbances, horse festival 6, 8, 215 28, 31, 56, 61, 62, 95, 102, 103, 111, Lhabab (lit. ‘gods descend’) 179, 180, 112, 120, 137, 143, 154, 161, 213, 217, 181, 182- 6, 187, 189- 91, 194, 195, 196, 232, 247, 249, 252, 260, 267 198, 206, 207, 209, 210, 287, 293, 297 Jyegundo—see Jyegu Blessing 70 Politics of 191, 192, 193, 197 Khache—see Muslim Possession 188, 194 Kangoo village (Trinde) 8, 9, 14 Lhasa 6, 11, 17, 19, 20, 24, 28, 29, 30, Karaoke—see Cabaret 31, 33, 34, 38, 44, 59, 72, 88, 113, 114, Karma—local perceptions of 64, 70 124, 137, 141, 142, 143, 144, 151, 161, Kazang monastery (Trinde) 15, 22, 162, 186, 244, 248, 256, 258, 260, 263, 28, 31, 56, 59, 63, 69, 70, 91, 190 267, 268, 269, 270, 271, 276, 280, 283 Keeping face—local use of concept Liberal government 40, 297 140 Liberation 121, 130, 135, 155, 227, Khakey (non-honorifi c speech) 151 260, 270 Kham 5, 6, 9, 19, 24, 28, 29, 33, 37, Liberalization 68, 74, 176, 177, 284 70, 72, 119, 120, 123, 124, 130, 136, Liberty—see Freedom. 139, 141, 142, 143, 167, 173, 180, Lineage 56, 57, 118, 141, 144, 186 192, 205, 248, 249, 250, 256, 258, 259, Literary language—see Language 261, 262, 263, 266, 267, 271, 280 Livestock 5, 6, 33, 56, 58, 63, 94, Kin sets 56, 59, 155 268 Kyegudo—see Jyegu Local confederacy (M. baihu buluo, Tr. beykhuh/tshowa, aka ‘tribe’) 28, 29 Lama 3, 10, 18, 32, 58, 61, 63, 69, Local implementation (M. yindi zhiyi) 71, 73, 74, 75, 111, 135, 151, 170, 175, 38, 230 181, 184, 185, 202, 203, 217, 244, 251, Local, localization 20, 51, 98, 156, 252, 253, 258, 277, 286 176, 245, 282 Lama Namje 186- 91, 192, 193, 206 Land Reform 31, 33 Ma Bufang 30, 127 Language Manifestation body—see Rinpoche Literary language (aka ‘written Mandarin 19, 20, 25, 30, 124, 126, Tibetan’) 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 151, 160, 170 25, 26, 28, 66, 74, 77, 78, 93, 98, Mantras 199, 200, 252, 258 113, 121, 123, 125, 126, 128, 129, Ritual signifi cance 74, 168, 174, 130, 132, 138, 142, 143, 148, 151, 180, 221, 253 152, 153, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160, Use in modern songs 185, 248, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 253 170, 174, 189, 200, 204, 205, 212, Mao Zedong, ~ Th ought 66, 129 326 index

Maoism 51, 55, 63, 65, 68, 70, 72, 77, Morality 51, 55, 61, 68- 72, 76- 9, 98, 80-1, 87, 126, 149, 211, 215, 228 119, 153, 158, 161, 164, 182, 191, 196, Morality—politics of 51, 55, 68- 72, 197, 198, 211, 237, 238, 254, 286, 293 76- 9, 153, 158, 161, 164, 182, 191, 196, Motherland 123, 249, 269 211, 237, 238 Multi- Ethnic State—see Unitary State Market 60, 92, 106, 110, 246, 255, 256, Muslims—for Muslim boycott, see 266, 289 Boycott 84, 89, 110, 111, 112, Market economy 51, 65, 71, 79, 85, 113, 114, 117, 119, 125, 126, 127, 129, 94, 110, 203, 215, 227, 270, 272, 274, 130, 255, 280, 287 282 Hui- Muslims 29, 110, 111, 124, Martyr 279 125, 126 Marx, Karl 118, 131, 239 Marxism 71, 87, 193, 212, 215 Nangchen County 6, 13, 31, 89, 102, Marxist 36, 57, 150, 152, 215, 295 124, 162, 183, 213, 230, 242, 244, 249, Marxist- Leninist- Stalinist—political 267 rationality 85, 89 King of 6, 29 Masses 35, 36, 58, 62, 74, 86, 105, 122, Nationalities—state identifi cation, 179, 252, 269, 270 problem of 23, 24, 35, 36, 37, Masters of their own home (M. dang jia 39- 43, 46, 47, 49, 53, 77, 85, 86, 89, zuo zhu)—concept of nationalities as 108, 109, 112, 116- 47, 149, 156, 162, being 109 163, 170, 173, 175, 210, 212, 214, 215, Material/ism—political concept of 238, 244- 75, 280, 281, 282, 292, 297 71, 235, 295 Nationality—belonging, political May Fourth Movement 39, 105, 175, concept. See also Protonationalism, 230 Transnational 101, 102, 112, 113, Mayor (elected village leader) 8, 116, 121, 137, 145, 157, 168, 229, 246, 122 275 Media 1, 3, 4, 26, 42, 49, 52, 82, 105, Pan- nationality 39, 145, 166, 173, 146, 150, 154, 175, 217, 218, 245, 272, 245, 246, 247, 255, 257, 258, 263, 273, 274, 275, 291 264 Memory 67, 68, 99, 262, 268 Pop songs 108, 164, 248, 253, 257, Minzu—see Nationality 261, 262, 273, 274 Mirig—see Nationality Special characteristics 23, 37, 38, Mixing— of language, nationalities 20, 120, 151, 208, 282 132, 139, 149, 161, 204, 264 National Rangeland Law 94 Moderate affl uence (aka ‘small National unifi cation (M. minzu tuanje/ prosperity’)—concept of 88 ronghe) 215 Modernity—concepts of 3, 48, 52, Nationalist Party—see Guomindang 213, 214, 218, 220, 221, 223, 282 Nation- state 10, 23, 24, 39, 51, 117, Monastery—reconstruction 14, 56, 126, 175, 176, 195, 215, 257, 262, 283 70, 150, 242 Social- body 25, 92, 114, 119, 146, Monastic practitioners—see Monks 178, 290 Money 18, 21, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 69, Native offi ce system (M. tusi zhidu) 70, 72, 76- 9, 80, 91, 98, 99, 100, 102, 28, 30 131, 188, 203, 204, 215, 221, 235, 236, Natural resources 36, 38, 83, 84, 85 256, 257, 279 Nature, Natural—concepts of 5, 73 Mongolia(n)—infl uence in Qinghai Nature reserve 95, 99 5, 28, 30, 57, 66, 117, 130, 267 New Course Reform (NCR) 103, 212, Monks 12, 14, 15, 31, 33, 41, 43, 44, 223, 224, 287, 295 53, 57, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 89, 129, 132, Nobel Peace Prize—Dalai Lama, debates 135, 138, 155, 158, 161, 175, 180, 181, about authenticity 77- 8 182, 183, 190, 192, 196, 199, 202, 203, Noble 33, 57, 121 204, 213, 225, 229, 234, 244, 247, 250, Nomads—see Pastoralists 265, 266 Non- Governmental Organization (NGOs) index 327

2, 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 22, 27, 49, 52, 67, Reform era 82, 193- 8 75, 84, 89, 96, 97, 100, 105, 130, 135, Tibetan 91, 274, 280 136, 138, 141, 151, 153, 154, 156, 157, Policy Mirage 230 160, 164, 171, 178, 181, 182, 183, 184, Pollution—ideas of social ~ 191, 206, 193, 194, 195, 196, 205, 210, 212, 213, 207 217, 218, 221, 230, 231- 7, 242, 245, Post- Socialist 70, 242, 288 246, 267, 274, 276, 288, 289, 290 Poverty—concepts of 32, 51, 56, 57, Nuns 14, 186, 189 62, 63, 66, 68, 70, 71, 82, 87, 91, 94, 104, 115, 155, 157, 158, 183, 212, 222, Offi cial 99 240, 257 Old Power 4, 8, 10, 20, 26, 29, 36, 37, 41, Propensities 229 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 58, 59, 61, 68, 69, Society, 42, 103, 129, 133, 153 80, 105, 107, 117, 122, 149, 156, 157, Open Door policy 83 164, 176, 177, 182, 187, 188, 189, 194, Oral history—as a local practice, in 196, 197, 200, 201, 211, 220, 223, 233, research 34, 57, 234 240, 265, 267, 268, 270, 276, 282, 284, Orientalism 48 286, 289, 290, 293, 295 Outsiders—local concept of 24, 50, Practice/s 61, 111 Ethical research 20 Foreign 39, 150 Panchen Lama 6, 165, 168, 186, 270 Remembrance/memory 20 Pastoralists 6, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19, 31, 33, Religious 24, 25, 40, 41, 56, 71, 34, 55, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63.66, 94, 96, 98, 75, 80, 157, 169, 187, 192, 199, 124, 155, 157, 172, 181, 186, 234, 236, 210, 252, 287, 291, 297 244, 245, 260, 261, 263, 265, 267, 268, Ritual 3, 11, 52, 183, 185, 186, 271, 286, 289 193- 8, 210, 211, 245, 282, 293 Patriotic Education 70 Social 20, 101, 107, 111, 129, 137, Patriotic names 60 209 Peaceful Liberation—see Liberation Primitive, primitivization 83, 263 Peasant, Peasantry 58, 109, 133, 212, Problem of religion (M. zongjiao wenti) 271 39- 43 Pema Jungne 198, 202- 203, 204, 206, Progress 44, 46, 87, 89, 106, 126, 145, 221, 239, 253 215, 218 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 30, Economic 51, 82, 150 33, 34, 59, 260 Scientifi c/technical/material 85, People’s Republic of China (PRC) 1, 86, 88, 126, 150 10, 17, 24, 30, 35, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44, Social interpretations of 2, 82, 90, 47, 56, 57, 66, 83, 87, 88, 106, 115, 296 124, 125, 129, 141, 144, 145, 147, 150, Propaganda—examples, as a tool of 158, 187, 207, 215, 216, 220, 229, 230, socio-political engineering, occurrence 232, 234, 237, 238, 251, 254, 257, 274, of in Trinde, local interpretation. See 292 also Slogans 31, 128, 255, 260, Points- line- surface progression— 271, 272, 273, 291 approach to development 92 Protonationalism 245 Police 10, 31, 71, 131, 132, 279 Public Security Bureau (PSB) 12, Politics 18, 19, 35, 38, 40, 48, 51, 71, 213 94, 115, 129, 171, 212, 235, 250, 260, Public Security Chief 12 282, 284, 290, 291 Purity—social concepts of 132, Chinese 35, 44, 47, 70, 242, 273, 170 279- 80, 293 Putonghua 19, 20, 22, 78, 84, 104, Cultural 49, 52, 107, 157, 173, 106, 119, 123, 128, 138, 152, 153, 157, 176- 8 158, 160, 161, 162, 170, 174, 213, 214, Global 130 217, 226, 238, 254, 257, 259, 261, 262, NGO 234 285, 287 328 index

Qing dynasty 28, 39, 49, 148, 215 Cultural 172, 178, 284 Qinghai 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 11, 19, 26, 27, Reform era policies 52 28, 29, 30, 49, 51, 70, 83, 84, 85, 90, Revolution 26, 29, 34, 57, 60, 69, 94, 95, 98, 100, 101, 111, 112, 113, 154, 177, 212, 223, 252, 260, 279 115, 124, 125, 130, 131, 133, 135, 141, Revolutionary Martyr Remembrance 149, 163, 173, 176, 183, 186, 187, 198, Day (‘Remembrance Day’) 276- 7, 199, 200, 208, 216, 217, 219, 232 281 Revolutionary- Era. See also Cultural Race 17, 22, 56, 117, 126, 292 Revolution 2, 32, 39, 55, 59, 63, Racial nationalism 118, 148 64, 68, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 86, 87, 94, Rhetoric of racial unity 117 109, 129, 135, 150, 155, 198, 209, 226, Real 232, 239, 240, 251, 252, 255, 257, 260, Concept of 5 271, 284 Opposed to ‘offi cial self’ 4, 5, 50, Rich 32, 36, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 166, 276 64, 68, 71, 87, 96, 111, 113, 158, 175, Versus ‘fake’ 281 203, 235, 263 Rebellion (Yushu) 31, 32, 34, 35 Right of Regional Autonomy 36 Rebkong 19, 182, 256, 283 Rinpoche 18, 189, 200, 202, 206, 221, Reform and Opening Up 14, 31, 55, 239, 262 83, 88 Ritual 1, 14, 19, 179, 181, 182, 184, Reform- Era—historical overview, 193- 8, 205, 209, 210, 211, 247, 285, political and administrative changes 291, 293 1, 2, 9, 36, 38, 40, 41, 51, 52, 55, 56, 60, Ruskor—see Familial communities 62, 64, 65, 66, 68- 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93, 96, Saja (n.b. local pronunciation of Sakya 102, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 119, sect). See Sakya. 126, 128, 129, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148, Sakya 6, 28 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 157, 160, 164, Sanskrit 199 176, 177, 178, 183, 191, 192, 193- 8, School 204, 206, 207, 210, 211, 212, 215, 216, Administrative structure 15, 17, 221, 224, 226, 228, 230, 232, 233, 237, 21, 42, 77, 84, 103, 106- 107, 108, 238, 240, 243, 245, 247, 250, 252, 252, 115 255, 264, 270, 272, 273, 274, 277, 282, As research site 10, 11, 12, 13, 284, 285, 286, 288, 289, 291, 292, 293, 14, 61 295 Science—local understandings of 94, Refugee 25 126, 159, 170, 192, 204, 205, 229 Religion 18, 19, 24, 34, 39- 43, 49, 56, Secular 3, 5, 29, 35, 40, 52, 74, 76, 83, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 78, 80, 89, 90, 101, 89, 139 112, 120, 125, 139, 151, 154, 167, 170, Sedentarization—local eff ects, regional 171, 175, 190, 192, 193, 195, 196, 197, policy, vis- à- vis fencing 8, 10, 15, 203, 207, 208, 230, 254, 255, 263, 267 94, 96, 221 Religious Aff airs Bureau 78 Seeking truth from facts—reform era Representation 4, 5, 48, 52, 119, 173, policy 75 193, 211, 249, 264, 265, 276, 287, 293, Self 296 And Other 47, 74, 127 Research 161, 171, 227, 228, 234, Censorship 65 289 Criticism 74, 82, 226 Considerations 25, 75, 163, 290, Determination / Rule 35, 241 298 Development 83 Politics of in China 66, 211, 232, Knowledge 22 284, 285, 286 Perception 22 Revenants 183, 185- 6 Real 50 Revival (or revitalization) 176, 177, Sentient beings 56, 61, 144, 154, 184 193, 197, 225 Local concept 127 index 329

Settlement—see Sedentarization Economic 63, 183, 286 Seventeen- Point Agreement 33 Inequalities 68 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome In relation to height 180 (SARS) 198- 207, 209, 210, 240, Political 27, 130, 183 260, 297 PRC- era 57, 58, 212 Shakyamuni Buddha 32, 78, 187, Pre- PRC 56, 64, 148 188, 189, 239 Religious 183 Shared religious and ethnic connection Social 27, 60, 64, 80, 98, 132, 149, (M. tongzu tongjiao) 37 162, 183, 274, 286 Sichuan 5, 26, 28, 30, 31, 94, 101, Yushu 29, 50 111, 113, 119, 124, 136, 141, 143, 172, Strategies 90, 118, 120, 147, 155, 207 189, 192, 216, 242, 244, 247, 256, 261, Local 43, 67, 196, 234 267, 280 Subjectifi cation 286 Silence—social occurrence, in research Subjectivities 26, 35, 74, 76, 107, 122, 44, 66, 104, 130, 191, 205 147, 181, 213, 214, 265, 287 Sky letter 186, 198, 202, 203, 204, Suicide 67, 99, 202 205, 206 Local occurrence 62 Smash the Four Olds 230 Perceptions of villagers 62, 63, 80 Snow lion—local symbolic use 120 Sun Yatsen 29, 117 Slogans. See also Propaganda 103, Superstition 40, 150 198, 269 Symbols 4, 49, 95, 168, 195, 257, 264, Local occurrence 37, 94, 212, 221, 269, 271, 272, 286 222, 276 Local political use of 121, 169, 246 Political use of 86, 224 Socialist Education Campaign 36 Tactics 28, 38, 109, 120, 284 Socialism, Socialist 5, 32, 35, 39, 50, Tantra, tantric 40, 184, 187, 189, 194, 55, 77, 85, 86, 106, 119, 128, 129, 149, 195, 196, 202 151, 192, 197, 209, 212, 215, 218, 227, Contrast with ‘clerical’ forms 182 228, 230, 231, 238, 240, 242, 252, 258, Tax 6, 28, 31, 43, 57, 86, 91, 101, 118, 272, 273, 288, 293, 297 141 Song and dance 4, 247, 248, 249, 251, Previous political loyalty 92 252 Television 17, 42, 68, 83, 90, 99, 138, Songs—cultural importance, political 146, 198, 199, 219, 250, 256 aspects, within local education Cultural considerations 107, 128, 11, 12, 60, 108, 152, 216, 226, 241, 249, 230, 251, 252, 263, 265, 266 251, 252, 253, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, Political tool 112, 121, 128, 158, 262, 267, 269 260, 291 Soviet—infl uence of in China 29, 91, Terma (hidden sacred ‘treasures’) 202, 228 203 Special Characteristics—see Nationality Textbooks 42, 160, 217, 228 Special Characteristics Politics of 125, 212 Spiritual—political concept 39, 40, Th ousand household leader (M. qianhu, 149- 50, 192, 209 Tr. ponpo, ‘lord’) 28- 9 Splittism 70, 272 Th ree Gorges Project 99 Srongtsen Gampo—king 27, 239, Th ree Jewels 40 250- 1, 280 Th ree Principles of the People 117, 118 Stalin 118, 125, 149 Th ree Represents policy 87 Stalinist categories 123, 125, 163, Th ree Rivers Sources Natural Protection 168 Zone 95 State administration. See also Offi cial Tiananmen Square 78, 88, 110, 270, 9, 12, 23, 49, 156, 284 280 State of emergency (1989) 38 Tibet Status 77, 81, 103, 108, 126, 138, 140, History of name 49, 124 155, 157, 159, 216, 229 Regional considerations relating to Autonomous 5 identifi cation and belonging 330 index

18, 23, 24, 25, 49, 123, 124, 158, USSR—see Soviet 159, 163, 164, 165, 209, 266, 272, Ü-Tsang 33, 37, 123, 124, 141, 142 280, 294 As a cultural entity 24 Tibetan Local perceptions of 24 Local/regional identifi cation with the concept 2, 3, 52, 118, 123, Video Compact Disc (VCD) 15, 52, 129, 130- 1, 133, 134 245, 246, 248, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, Politics of nationality in practice 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 266, 268, 269, 25, 45, 50, 118, 146 270, 271, 272, 273, 275 State classifi cation of nationality Bollywood 266 2, 5, 10, 22, 49, 116, 118 Hollywood 266 Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP) Violence 63, 68, 123- 30 5 Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) Wealth 1, 27, 32, 33, 51, 55, 56, 57, 5, 11, 31, 124 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 71, Tibetan Buddhism. See also Buddhism 76, 77, 80, 81, 98, 141, 165, 168, 175, 19, 39, 62, 64, 67, 70, 134, 139, 174, 202, 245, 263, 287 188, 192, 193, 216, 239 Wencheng, Princess 27, 250- 1, 280 Tibetan Government in Exile—see Western, Westerners—interpretation in Government in Exile China 11, 17, 22, 25, 26, 39, 40, Tibetan Studies 29, 44, 66, 116, 290 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 80, 83, 89, 109, 111, Tibetan- Chinese 22, 132, 149 127, 135, 136, 138, 145, 149, 150, 173, Tradition 3, 11, 28, 52, 141, 152, 175, 178, 202, 206, 207, 213, 214, 217, 157, 178, 183, 185, 194, 197, 206, 214, 218, 220, 221, 225, 227, 228, 229, 231, 215-16, 218, 220, 221, 228, 235, 238, 234, 236, 237, 238, 258, 263, 280, 285, 243, 245, 270, 272, 273, 274, 294 298 Traditional culture 4, 5, 90, 139, 150, Wild West—comparisons with Yushu 152, 218, 230, 276 48 Transliteration 160 Work Point system 33 Transnational 46, 49, 283 Work unit 12, 42, 53, 54, 62, 69, 76, Tree planting campaign 95 82, 84, 89, 90, 100, 106, 110, 178, 179, ‘Tribes’—see Local confederacies 183, 184, 189, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, Trinde 198, 207, 209, 210, 218, 219, 229, 234, County 1, 6, 31, 34, 62, 122, 144, 257, 265, 277, 279, 288, 289, 292 177, 183, 225, 249, 295 Nationalities Middle School Number Xikang 29, 30, 37 One (‘Trinde School’) 2, 11, Xining 5, 8, 12, 28, 30, 42, 60, 63, 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 42, 61, 62, 63, 83, 85, 91, 96, 99, 101, 110, 120, 121, 122, 84, 101, 102, 103, 105, 106, 133, 130, 132, 133, 134, 154, 155, 166, 171, 154, 155, 160, 164, 166, 170, 171, 181, 189, 199, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 204, 212, 217, 220, 221, 224, 253, 229, 256, 260, 263 262, 274, 276, 277, 278, 281 Xining Commissioner 30 Town 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 28, 56, 62, Xining English Training Programme 71, 84, 89, 144, 186, 218, 248, 252, (ETP) 2 256, 277 Xining- Jyegu highway 95 Trulku—see Rinpoche Xining- Lhasa railway (M. qingzang tielu) Tsampa (toasted barley fl our) 174 92 Political and cultural Xining Museum Square 139 signifi cance 24- 5, 238 Xining Nationalities Festival 247, 250 Xining Nationalities University 110, Unitary multi- ethnic state (M. tongyi de 216, 234 duo minzu guojia) 51, 263, 280 Using barbarians to rule barbarians Yukey 151 (M. yiyi zhiyi)—as a political Yushu practice 28 Prefecture 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 17, index 331

18, 28, 29, 34, 42, 56, 69, 84, 145, 143, 148, 152, 153, 154, 163, 174, 144, 160, 195, 212, 213, 221, 232, 220, 232, 234, 236, 241, 283 233, 244, 249, 251, 256, 274 Political unit 9, 10, 23, 30, 31, 32, Environment 93- 7, 99 45, 65, 88, 106, 114, 141, 151, 176, Folkdances 108, 139 212 Health Bureau 199 Song and Dance Troupe 249, 250, Nationality pop music 248 258, 259 Perceptions of 23, 25, 27, 50, 60, TAP Education Offi ce 76, 225 67, 70, 89, 91, 101, 105, 120, 129,