To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/139 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. The Russia-China-Mongolia border FRONTIER ENCOUNTERS Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border Edited by Franck Billé, Grégory Delaplace and Caroline Humphrey http://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2012 Franck Billé, Grégory Delaplace and Caroline Humphrey (contributors retain copyright of their work). Version 1.1. Minor edits made, July 2013. This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Billé, Franck, Delaplace, Grégory and Humphrey, Caroline (eds.) Frontier Encounters: Knowledge and Practice at the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian Border. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2012. DOI: 10.11647/ OBP.0026 Further details about CC BY licenses are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Digital material and resources associated with this volume are available from our website at: http://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781906924874 ISBN Hardback: 978-1-906924-88-1 ISBN Paperback: 978-1-906924-87-4 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978-1-906924-89-8 ISBN Digital ebook (epub version): 978-1-906924-90-4 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi version): 978-1-906924-91-1 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0026 Cover image: Chinese frontier guard at the Manzhouli-Zabaikalsk border by John S.Y. Lee http://www.flickr.com/photos/38760691@N03/ All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) Certified. Printed in the United Kingdom and United States by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers Contents Page Contributors vii 1. A Slightly Complicated Door: The Ethnography and 1 Conceptualisation of North Asian Borders Grégory Delaplace 2. On Ideas of the Border in the Russian and 19 Chinese Social Imaginaries Franck Billé 3. Rethinking Borders in Empire and 33 Nation at the Foot of the Willow Palisade Uradyn E. Bulag 4. Concepts of “Russia” and their Relation to 55 the Border with China Caroline Humphrey 5. Chinese Migrants and 71 Anti-Chinese Sentiments in Russian Society Viktor Dyatlov 6. The Case of the Amur as a 89 Cross-Border Zone of Illegality Natalia Ryzhova 7. Prostitution and the Transformation of the 111 Chinese Trading Town of Ereen Gaëlle Lacaze 8. Ritual, Memory and the 137 Buriad Diaspora Notion of Home Sayana Namsaraeva 9. Politicisation of Quasi-Indigenousness on the 165 Russo-Chinese Frontier Ivan Peshkov 10. People of the Border: The Destiny of the 183 Shenehen Buryats Marina Baldano 11. The Persistence of the Nation-State 199 at the Chinese-Kazakh Border Ross Anthony 12. Neighbours and their Ruins: Remembering 211 Foreign Presences in Mongolia Grégory Delaplace Appendix 1: Border-Crossing Infrastructure: 235 The Case of the Russian-Mongolian Border Valentin Batomunkuev Appendix 2: Maps 245 Bibliography of Works Cited 249 Index 271 Contributors Franck Billé is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, and member of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge. He is the coordinator of an ESRC-funded project (2012-2015) entitled ‘Where Rising Powers Meet: Russia and China at their northeast Asian border’. He previously carried out research in Mongolia where he investigated the prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiments. His manuscript Spectral Presences: Anxiety, Excess and Anti-Chinese Speech in Postsocialist Mongolia is currently under review, and his second book project, Phantom Pains: National Loss, Maps and Bodily Integrity, is in progress. Franck Billé can be contacted at [email protected]. Grégory Delaplace is a social anthropologist, working as a lecturer at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre. His most recent research concerned the political dimension of the invisible in Mongolia today (or the invisible dimension of politics), whereby ghosts, or spirits, are led to play a role in the postsocialist nation building process. His publications include L’invention des morts. Sépultures, fantômes et photographie en Mongolie contemporaine (2009), and Parasitic Chinese, Vengeful Russians: Strangers, Ghosts and Reciprocity in Mongolia (2012). Grégory Delaplace can be contacted at gregory.delaplace@ mae.u-paris10.fr. Caroline Humphrey is an anthropologist based at the University of Cambridge who has worked in Russia, Mongolia, China, India, Nepal and Ukraine. She has researched a wide range of themes including Soviet and post-Soviet provincial economy and society; Buryat and Daur shamanism; Jain religion and ritual; trade and barter in Nepal; environment and the pastoral economy in Mongolia and the history and contemporary situation of Buddhism, especially in Inner Mongolia. Her recent research has concerned urban transformations in post-Socialist cities. Caroline Humphrey can be contacted at [email protected]. viii Frontier Encounters Ross Anthony is in the final stages of a PhD in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and is a member of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Cambridge. His recent work focuses on issues of urbanisation and ethno-politics in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He currently holds a research fellow position at the Centre for Chinese Studies at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Marina N. Baldano is the head of the Department of History, Ethnology and Sociology, Institute of Mongolian, Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Ulan-Ude, Russia). Her research analyses the changes brought by modernisation in Inner Asia, nation-building, panmongolism and cross-border migrations. She is the coordinator of a number of research projects including “Civilizational Dynamics and Modernization Processes in the Baikal Asia” and “Border, Transborder and Migrants in Central Asia: Strategy and Practices of Mutual Adaptation”. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Valentin Sergeevich Batomunkuev is a researcher at Baikal Institute of Nature Management SB RAS, Laboratory of Nature Management Economics. His current scientific work investigates the use of mineral resources, desertification and trans-boundary issues between Buryatia and Mongolia. Previously he carried out research on the management of subsurface resources and the development of transport crossing in the border territory between the two countries. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Uradyn E. Bulag is a reader in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge. His interests span East Asia and Inner Asia, especially China and Mongolia, nationalism and ethnic conflict, cosmopolitics, diplomacy, and statecraft. His works include Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia (1998), The Mongols at China’s Edge: History and the Politics of National Unity (2002), The Mongolia-Tibet Interface: Opening New Research Terrains in Inner Asia (co-editor, 2007), and Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China’s Mongolian Frontier (2010), which has won the International Convention of Asian Scholars 2011 book prize. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Victor I. Dyatlov is a professor at the Faculty of World History and International Relations of Irkutsk State University, Russia, and Director of the Research Center on Inner Asia (Irkutsk). He published widely on cross- border migrations in modern and late imperial Russia, on the role of ethnic migrations in the formation of settlers communities in the East of Russia and on the comparative study of diasporas. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Contributors ix Gaëlle Lacaze is an assistant professor at the Department of Ethnology of the University of Strasbourg. Her research focuses on the anthropology of the body relating to Mongolian people and Turkic populations, including Kazakhs. Her current research investigates patterns of international migrations of Mongolian citizens. She is the author of Le corps mongol: techniques et conceptions nomades du corps (2012), the editor of “Migrations in Central Asia and Caucasus” (Revue europeenne des migrations internationales, 2010–13) and a number of articles in the field. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Sayana Namsaraeva is a Research Associate in the Division of Social Anthropology, and member of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, University of Cambridge. During her recent post-doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology she conducted extensive fieldwork on border regions of the Russian, Chinese and Mongolian territories. Her current project focuses on local society that straddles the Sino-Russian border in the twin cities of Zabaikal’sk and Manzhouli. She has published a number of articles in Russian, English and Chinese languages and is currently working on her book on the Qing frontier administration in Inner Asia. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Ivan Peshkov is an assistant professor at the Institute of Eastern Studies at the Adam Mickiewicz University