The Quest for Zhuang Identity: Cultural Politics of Promoting the Buluotuo Cultural Festival in Guangxi, China
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THE QUEST FOR ZHUANG IDENTITY: CULTURAL POLITICS OF PROMOTING THE BULUOTUO CULTURAL FESTIVAL IN GUANGXI, CHINA SOMRAK CHAISINGKANANONT NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2014 THE QUEST FOR ZHUANG IDENTITY: CULTURAL POLITICS OF PROMOTING THE BULUOTUO CULTURAL FESTIVAL IN GUANGXI, CHINA SOMRAK CHAISINGKANANONT (B.A. HISTORY (2nd Class Hons.) THAMMASAT University, M.A. ANTHROPOLOGY, THAMMASAT University) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2014 i DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis is my original work and it has been written by me in its entirety. I have duly acknowledged all the sources of information which have been used in the thesis. This thesis has also not been submitted for any degree in any university previously. Somrak Chaisingkananont 22 August 2014 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ii Acknowledgements v Summary vii List of Maps ix List of Figures x Notes on Transliteration and Abbreviations xii Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Becoming “Zhuang zu”: Notion of Ethnicity as Cultural Politics 27 2.1 Guangxi as the Southern Borderland: A Narrative of Place and People 32 at the Empire‟s Margin 2.2 Zhonghua Minzu: The Rise of the New Chinese National Identity 40 2.2.1 Nation Building and Deployment of Ethnology 44 2.2.2 The Politics of Naming: Ethnonymic Polemics During Wartime 48 2.2.3 The Communist Party‟s Policy on Ethnic Minorities 51 2. 3 The Making of the Socialist “unified, multinational state” 55 2.3.1 In the Name of “Zhuang”: Problems of Ethnic Classification 58 2.3.2 Creating New Zhuang Script 65 2.3.3 The Zhuang Social History Surveys 68 2.3.4 Maoization: The Anti-Intellectual Propaganda 71 2.4 Concluding Remarks 76 Chapter 3 Buluotuo Culture: Making the Self in the Zhuang Scholarship 80 3.1 Post-Mao period: Revival of Minority Cultures 81 3.2 Zhuang Studies in the Reform Era 90 3.2.1 Discovering Buluotuo Scriptures 98 3.2.2 In Search of Origin: the Discourse of Tai-Sibling 109 3.3 The Development of “Buluotuo Culture” 117 3.4 Concluding Remarks 129 iii Chapter 4 Buluotuo Cultural Festival as Contested Domain 134 4.1 Setting the context: Places and Memories 136 4.1.1 Locating Tianyang 136 4.1.2 Ganzhuang Mountain: Different Senses of Place 147 4.2 The Buluotuo Festival: “Building a religious stage to sing an economic opera” 154 4.2.1 In the field: Festival Scene 161 4.2.2 Cultural Politics of the Marginalized 173 4.3 Concluding Remarks 194 Chapter 5 In the Name of Buluotuo Myth: Cultural Branding 199 5.1 Narratives of the Original Worship Site 201 5.1.1 The Ting-huai Buluotuo Worship Site in Yufeng Town 203 5.1.2 The Baidong River Buluotuo Worship Site 217 5.2 „Buluotuo‟ as Cultural Branding 224 5.2.1 Brand Positioning: Agricultural Industry 225 5.2.2 The Rise of New Actors 232 5.3 Making Place: Visualizing the Myth to create Memory 241 5.3.1 Mt. Ganzhuang Buluotuo Cultural Tourism Area: the Contradictions244 5.3.2 Zhuang City 252 5.4 Concluding Remarks 255 Chapter 6 Quest for the Self 258 Bibliography 272 Appendix 1 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation incorporates data from multiple sites, both urban and rural, collected over a five-year period of time. In the course of my fieldwork I was welcomed into many homes and offices by residents of the towns and villages where I visited. I am grateful to the members of the Zhuang communities in my field sites for their warm welcome, kindness, patience, and enthusiasm in building a relationship with me during my research. Many of them treated me as a daughter, sister or close friend. They shared their life struggles, passions and hope for a better future with me. While I deeply regret that I cannot identify any of their names here, I sincerely hope that the ultimate benefit of this dissertation should be for them. Funding for overseas research was provided by two sources over the five-year span in which it took place. My preliminary survey trips in 2007 - 2008 were supported by Princess Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre. A trip in 2009, my 2010-2011 fieldwork, and a revisit trip in 2012 were funded by National University of Singapore. I am also thankful to a grant for paper writing provided by the Project of Empowering Network for International Thai Studies (ENITS), Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University. During my field research, I am especially indebted to Prof. Fang Ying, Prof. Fan Honggui, Meng Yuanyao and Lu Xiaoqin from Guangxi University for Nationalities; Liao Hanbo, Yan Liyan, Wei Suwen and Xu Xiaoming, who have assisted me by providing very useful guidance; Associate Professor Nong Lifu, Standing Deputy Director of Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Professor Pan Qixu and Professor Zhao Minglong, Director of Center for the Zhuang Studies, Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, who has provided extensive assistance in contacting with local government officers in various counties of Guangxi and Yunnan during my preliminary field trips from 2007 to 2009 and fieldwork in 2010-2011. My thanks also go to the Zhuang and Chinese scholars, local authorities in Tianyang, Debao, Donglan, Longzhou, Bama, Baise of Guangxi and Libo of Guizhou that sponsored and accompanied v my visits. Thanks are also due to several friends and informants in Hanoi and Cao Bang of Vietnam who provided their stories and patiently answered the many questions that I asked. I wish to heartily thank relevant institutions and numerous individuals in Guangxi for facilitating my research. I am particularly grateful to lecturers (Ajarn Daeng, Suriya, Sangrawee and Jirasak) and students from the Thai language Department of Guangxi University for Nationalities and Guangxi University who have assisted me by providing very useful guidance, translation from Chinese into Thai, and transcribing the interviews. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of my friends: Carol Chia, Jay Cheong, Kornphanat Tungkeunkunt, Martina Yeo, Tan Lee Ooi and Xin Guangcan for assisting me to translate Chinese into English; Do Truong Giang for facilitating my field trip in Vietnam; Alexander Denes and Michelle Tan for useful comments. I would like to express my tremendous gratitude to Byron Meador and Glyn R. Phillips for helping me to edit my English. I also wish to express my special gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee: Professors Goh Beng Lan, Irving Johnson, and Bruce Lockhart and several Thai professors: Paritta C. Ko-anantakoon, Suvanna Kriangkaipetch, Chavivun Prachaubmoh and Yos Santasombat for their idea-provoking questions and helpful comments on my dissertation. My final heartfelt thanks go to my family, Thai friends and NUS friends. Their support, care and confidence in me gave me strength to undertake this work. While I am deeply grateful for the assistance and support of all these people, I must clarify that any errors and shortcomings are solely my responsibility. vi SUMMARY Officially recognized as the largest shaoshu minzu (national minority) of the People‟s Republic of China, the Zhuang - a Tai-speaking people who live mainly in the southwestern part of China – have constructed their identities as a response to tremendous social and political changes initiated by the communist regime. Buluotuo is regarded as an apical ancestor of the Zhuang. The Buluotuo scriptures written in the old Zhuang scripts were evaluated as a precious folk literature which reflects the historical and socio-cultural changes of the Zhuang, as well as the taboos and morality that emphasizes the harmonious relationship between nature, man and society. The scriptures also demonstrate the development of Zhuang agricultural civilization and common culture with other Taic groups in Southeast Asia. They were thus regarded as a party- approved expression of the Zhuang‟s ethnic cultural marker in the context of post-socialist economic reform. This dissertation examines the Buluotuo cultural tourism development of the Zhuang in Tianyang County of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Based on extensive fieldwork and textual analysis, this dissertation discusses, on the one hand, how different groups of Zhuang people have negotiated, interpreted and presented what it means to be „Zhuang‟ in the Buluotuo Cultural Festival; and on the other hand, it examines how „Zhuang‟ identity is shaped by the ethno-political rhetoric of “difference” and by the state discourse of economic development and modernization. It illustrates how the development of tourism to the Buluotuo Cultural Festival at Mt. Ganzhuang has been situated in contexts for the negotiation and public display of meanings. The discourse of „Buluotuo Culture‟ is a part of cultural politics in which Zhuang intellectuals have made efforts to reclaim their “lost” traditions due to leftist mistakes during the Cultural Revolution. They speak of the issues of Zhuang ethnic empowerment by expressing Zhuang uniqueness for national and international visibility. However, a process of selective vii remembering and invention of usable pasts entails a fight for memory among local communities in Tianyang. My research demonstrates that, far from being passive, ritual masters, villagers and female devotees in the vicinity of Tianyang are “cultural strategists” and, to some degree, have the capacity to re- negotiate power relations by contestation for their ritual spaces and insist on their particular versions of narratives and memories of their sacred spaces. Ethnographic research reveals that the struggles of marginalized peoples are complex, and there are various means by which the Zhuang ritual specialists, commoners and devotees negotiate their economic exploitation and political marginalization as well as appropriate the official discourse of Buluotuo Culture to reconstruct their ritual space and local traditions that were once forbidden and denied from local social and cultural landscapes.