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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 KEY Residential Area Revolutionary Matyrs Pool Cenotaph Phakpa Shrine Spring Shrine Pastoralists’ Temporary Encampments ‘Guardian of the Soil’ Cairn Circumambulation