Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
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Invisible China: A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
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Overview
In this eloquent and eye-opening adventure narrative, Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson, two Americans fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Korean, and Uyghur, throw away the guidebook and bring a hitherto unexplored side of China to light. They journey over 14,000 miles by bus and train to the farthest reaches of the country to meet the minority peoples who dwell there, talking to farmers in their fields, monks in their monasteries, fishermen on their skiffs, and herders on the steppe.
In Invisible China, they engage in a heated discussion of human rights with Daur and Ewenki village cadres; celebrate Muhammad's birthday with aging Dongxiang hajjis who recount the government's razing of their mosque; attend mass with old Catholic Kinh fishermen at a church that has been forty years without a priest; hike around high-altitude Lugu Lake to farm with the matrilineal Mosuo women; and descend into a dry riverbed to hunt for jade with Muslim Uyghur merchants. As they uncover surprising facts about China's hidden minorities and their complex position in Chinese society, they discover the social ramifications of inconsistent government policies--and some deep human truths as well.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781569762639 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Invisible China
A Journey Through Ethnic Borderlands
By Colin Legerton, Jacob Rawson
Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2009 Colin Legerton and Jacob RawsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-56976-263-9
CHAPTER 1
HUNTERS OF THE HINTERLANDS
* The Oroqen, Daur, Ewenki, and Hezhen *
The vigilant spotted deer loves the high mountain forests; The powerful bear loves the secluded craggy caves; The free-swimming fish loves the deep river currents; And the brave Oroqen loves the abundant Hingan Mountains.
— OROQEN FOLK SONG
The one-lane dirt road to Tuozhamin was masked on either side by a thick curtain of conifers. We sat jammed among fifteen locals as our eight-seater minivan bounced through the forest to our first destination. Nonetheless, it was far from the least comfortable ride we would encounter over the following months, and this was the only means of transport to Tuozhamin.
"Ours is an Oroqen village," the officer explained to us later that afternoon, "but these days it's mostly Han." Our first meaningful encounter in Tuozhamin began as a pointed interrogation by the village police officer, but we artfully turned it into anopportunity to learn more about our unique surroundings from the confines of a cramped police station.
Sandwiched between the Mongolian steppe and the Manchurian plain, this small village is nestled in the foothills of the Greater Hingan Mountains. The verdant forests of the mountain range were once the fertile hunting grounds of the Oroqen and their ethnic cousins, the Daur and Ewenki. As we came to learn, however, the old traditions were dying fast.
"Now, most of the Oroqen live in the Hunters Villages," the officer continued. He directed our attention to the wall map and pointed to the appendages on either side of the main village of Tuozhamin. "The Hunters Villages are meant to preserve their traditional ways. They used to make their living through hunting, but then in 1996 the government had to collect all the guns. They were compensated generously, and we now give them a monthly stipend to live on."
In this packed office, the lonely young officer was surrounded by photographic equipment and filing cabinets, while on the wall behind him hung a village map featuring each family's surname imprinted on its respective lot. Coming straight from Beijing, where a single apartment building housed more residents than this village, it was a jarring revelation to see that the police knew every resident by name.
"Even among the Oroqen there are many mixed families now. Their language isn't used very often either. Only the elders speak the language; everyone else uses Chinese and sometimes Daur. In this region, there are a lot of Daur. The Oroqen language can only be used within our village, but Daur is the language of trade."
We pressed the officer about how the Oroqen now spent the time once devoted to hunting. He seemed unsure how to respond but finally suggested that some gathered herbs in the mountains and sold them in the city to supplement their stipends. It was hard to imagine a whole village devoted to nothing but herb gathering. We finally broke free of the officer and went to see for ourselves.
As we walked toward the western Hunters Village, we observed that the animals really had the run of the town. Cows strolled down the main drag heading for the next pasture, goats rested in the shade of family-planning propaganda, an enormous pig reluctantly yielded to a honking bicycle cart. But most of all, we noticed the dogs. Large hunting dogs roamed the streets alone and in packs, fighting in the intersections and searching for food in every corner. Wherever there was a little shade, you could find one sleeping. Dogs and owners alike gave the town an aura of idleness and boredom. While the dogs wandered and played, the residents of the Hunters Village sat on wooden benches that lined the paths in front of their homes, whiling away the hours. We drew near to a motley group, and they listlessly beckoned us over.
They were three. On the bench sat an old lady twirling a whip in the dirt; beside her a one-legged man rested his arms on a pair of crutches. Across from them a younger fellow was proudly perched upon a shiny new moped. After the customary exchanging of pleasantries, we asked why they raised so many dogs.
"Habit," responded the old lady, encircling a shrub with a flick of the whip. "They used to help us hunt. But now we have no use for them, so they just run around freely."
Her family had once depended on hunting for their livelihood but turned to raising livestock after the hunting ban. She was not actually a resident of this Hunters Village but lived instead in the main village. Whether from the lingering habit of pursuing animals or out of sheer boredom, she simply spent the day following her pigs around town as they scavenged for food.
"This land is no good for raising animals," she continued. "There aren't any nutrients in the grass, so the animals are unhealthy. A few years ago, the government tried to start a milk industry here with all the cows and sheep, but malnourished animals make bad milk, so they gave up." She sighed and focused again on the whip.
The one-legged fellow who had been swatting flies and staring off idly suddenly piped in with an unexpected boast. "Do you boys drink rice liquor? We Oroqen drink like no other. We can each drink a bottle a day."
"Usually we just drink beer."
"Beer? What's the point? There's hardly any alcohol. You can't even get drunk." He motioned to his leg. "One day I got drunk and passed out in the street. When I woke up my leg was badly burned, so they had to cut it off. But now we can't even hunt, so it doesn't matter. I just sit around all day anyway. When I was young we didn't live in this village, we just followed animals through the mountains and set up tents wherever we stopped each night. Even during the Cultural Revolution, when the rest of the country was in such chaos, we didn't even notice, we just kept hunting." At this point, a large sow ran by, trailing behind her a litter of grunting piglets. Without a word, the woman stood up and followed them down the road.
The proud moped owner joined the conversation: "What about you? Are you still allowed to hunt in your country?"
"Depending on the season, sometimes hunting is legal."
He drew a breath and turned his head to think, then finally proclaimed: "What a good system! If we had that system, we'd still have meat to eat ... and something to do! Now we just sit around all day," he explained, motioning to the long line of benches on either side of the road. "Some of us used to collect herbs to sell, but now there aren't any left. We could play chess, but who has a chessboard? The government gave us these houses and 120 kuai each month as a stipend, but that's barely enough to scrape by."
We turned to each other in shock and discussed the amount in English. One hundred twenty kuai per month hardly seemed sufficient, as roundtrip bus fare to the nearest town where such herbs could be sold was forty kuai.
"Can you understand what they're saying?" asked the one-legged man.
The man on the moped sighed. "If I could understand what they were saying, I wouldn't be living in a place like this."
* * *
The awkward, stifled atmosphere we first felt with the bored residents of the Hunters Village was heightened by the abundance of stiff propaganda billboards everywhere we looked.
Fiercely Attack Pornography, Gambling, and Drug Use. Diligently Cleanse Our Socialist Environment. Such lessons were found up and down the narrow road of the village and its two small satellites. Implement The One-Child Policy. Collectively Construct a harmonious society read one sign in the main intersection. Immediately across from it was Loving and Protecting Our Baby Girls Starts with me. Outside the clinic: Actively Develop Morality, Enforcement, Education, Culture, Law, Sanitation: The "Six Essentials for Building a Community."
As we entered the general store that evening, we noticed one in Chinese Newspeak: Strengthen Enforcement and Patrol. Maintain A Structured and Harmonious Society. We needed a drink.
When we reemerged from the store, beers in hand, we were summoned to the village pool table by a group of Oroqen locals. We immediately recognized two we had met on the ride in to Tuozhamin: a pair of twenty-something businessmen whom we already knew to be resilient fellows. Despite the bumpy dirt road, they had each successfully downed two bottles of beer on the bus.
While some of the group started shooting pool, one middle-aged Oroqen man came over to show us his wounds. He removed his shirt and revealed a torso unnaturally white and rubbery — one enormous scar. "I used to hunt in these mountains: roe, deer, bears, wolves. Then they took our guns away. Now I work the fields, standing in the sun day after day. It's hell on the skin, as you can see. Back when we hunted, I would spend all day in the shade of the trees, so my skin wasn't ready for the beating sun. I burned until I had blisters. Then they popped and I burned some more. Now I don't even look like a man."
Having said his piece, he sat down quietly. We offered him a beer, but he refused. "I'm a hunter." He drew up his hands as though holding a rifle, then shook them to suggest that alcohol would impair his aim. Even though the government had taken away his hunting rights, it was apparent that his hunting identity had not been shaken.
One of our friends from the bus took us aside. "Are there hunters where you come from?" We said that there were. "We should go hunting together sometime."
"You're still allowed to hunt?" After being told several times about the death of Oroqen hunting, we were shocked by the unexpected invitation.
He grinned and nodded.
"You have your own gun?"
He nodded again, this time with an uneasy smile and quickly walked back to the pool table, leaving us no opportunity to pursue the revelation. Suddenly, the light over the pool table flickered, and the whole area was engulfed in darkness. The other side of the street still had power, so our companions went off in search of a better-lit venue. We could see through the store window that the well-prepared owner had already lit candles, so we went inside.
Power outages were nothing new to the village, which had just been connected to power lines in the year 2000. While the rest of the world was recovering from Y2K, learning that a slight technical glitch would not end all civilization, the residents of Tuozhamin were switching on their first light bulb.
Before long, enough power returned to light one of the fluorescent bulbs, and we were soon joined by the only other traveler in the village. We noticed him earlier when he arrived on the afternoon bus. His appearance was one immediately familiar to anyone who has traveled in Asia. With a large-zoom camera slung around his neck, a hefty rucksack borne on his shoulders, and Teva sandals strapped to his feet, all that was missing was an open Lonely Planet guidebook in his hand. Like everyone else in town, we had assumed he was a foreigner, but he now introduced himself as a well-traveled Han from Beijing.
"Yeah, I've been all over this country: Tibet, Xinjiang, everywhere," he explained.
Across the room, an Oroqen woman frantically tinkered with an old television set.
"I found this place in a Chinese guidebook. I had some free time, so I wanted to come see the minority culture."
"Why won't the TV turn on?" we overheard the woman complain to the owner.
"The guidebook really built up the Oroqen hunting tradition and their primitive ways. It made Tuozhamin sound like a totally different world. I thought when I got here everyone would be riding around on horseback, shooting at deer with long rifles," lamented the Beijinger.
"If we turn off these lights, will there be enough power to watch TV?" continued the Oroqen woman's frustrated monologue.
"I guess that was a pretty stupid idea. No matter where you go now, everything's basically the same. That kind of old culture just doesn't exist anymore."
"But if I can't watch TV, what else can I do?"
* * *
We Left Tuozhamin the next morning. Our next destination was another village just a hundred miles downstream, but the tricky geography of the Hingans forced us to travel a roundabout path. A few days later, we arrived in Dular by the only possible means: a jerky three-hour bus ride down a one-lane dirt road stuck in the early stages of construction. Unlike the dense forests of Tuozhamin farther upstream, the smooth, rolling hills of Dular were covered in corn and potato fields disturbed infrequently by the occasional pine grove.
The Daur are the primary minority and namesake of the Morin Dawa Daur Autonomous County, though they are still outnumbered by the Han eight-to-one countywide. While Morin Dawa primarily consists of these two ethnic groups, Dular and several smaller neighboring villages boast a thriving Ewenki community. Accordingly, it has been officially termed the Dular Ewenki Village. Like their Oroqen cousins to the north, both Daur and Ewenki have long hunting traditions, once plying the Hingan foothills in search of big game.
We hopped off the bus at the village intersection, and the driver pointed us toward the only inn. As we entered the squat concrete building looking for the proprietor, it became clear that this "inn" was little more than the village mechanic's workshop. The mechanic, busily tinkering with a tractor engine, heard us enter and smiled as we approached. We asked about lodging, and he led us to a row of bunk beds separated from the shop by a moldy green curtain. The mattresses, no more than stacks of cardboard boxes wrapped inside dirty sheets, left much to be desired, but there were no other options, so we paid for the first night.
* * *
That evening we walked down the road to the village basketball court. Situated next to the Communist Party office, it was a popular gathering place for villagers of all ethnicities and ages. We played a basketball game similar to Horse with a group of local youth while several more watched from atop a concrete sign that read Friendship First, Competition Second in faded red characters. It dawned on us that this was the only sign we had yet seen in Dular that was reminiscent of the socialist propaganda billboards spread throughout Tuozhamin. In the much more relaxed atmosphere, we began to ask our new friends about ethnicity in the village.
"We're Daur," one boy answered in Chinese, pointing to five of his companions. "He's Ewenki, but he can also speak Daur," he continued, motioning toward a lanky boy standing at the back of the group. "So when we're together we always speak Daur." We asked where they had learned to speak Chinese, and he pointed to a two-story building with sheet-metal siding that looked completely out of place among the mud-plastered farmhouses. "At school, all of our classes are taught in Chinese. Sometimes our teachers explain things in Daur, but Daur has no writing system, so we always have to write in Chinese anyway. And most Han can't speak Daur, so we always have to speak Chinese to them."
After a skilled Han friend sunk a jump shot to seal his victory, we cleared off the court to allow a hodgepodge group of farmers, road workers, and government officials to play a full-court game. We watched the game for a short time, but were soon drawn away by lively music coming from the small courtyard between the Party office and the government building.
Eight teenage girls in two uneven lines waved their hands back and forth to the rhythm of a cheery melody playing out of the instructor's boom box. We joined a small group of spectators sitting on the wide doorstep of the government building, then asked a well-dressed fellow about the dance.
"Next week there will be a dance competition in the county seat. Villages from all over the county will participate, and we're sending these girls to represent our village's Ewenki heritage. Right now we're celebrating our fiftieth anniversary, so this year's competition is especially important. They've been practicing for weeks to get these dances just right." The man proudly introduced himself as an Ewenki, and Dular's number two leader.
Each level of Chinese administration consists of parallel party and government bureaucratic hierarchies. The cadres of the party structure always outrank their governmental peers. Though this party official did introduce himself to us by name, he was so quick to point out that he was second in the more powerful party bureaucracy that we always referred to him between ourselves as Cadre Number Two. His superior, naturally, became Cadre Number One.
"I've heard that we Ewenki are related to the Eskimos in your country. So are the Oroqen and Daur, Hezhen, and the Mongolians: we're all closely related. That's why we don't look like the Han. Our cheekbones are much higher. See?" He proudly posed in profile as we leaned in to get a better look at his face. It was not a characteristic we had noticed on our own, but he and many of the others did indeed have higher cheekbones. "Our traditions are very different from the Han as well," he stressed.
One of the most significant differences was certainly the reliance on hunting. Wishing to learn if the situation was now the same as in Tuozhamin but also hoping to broach the topic gently, we asked if his government job allowed him time to chase game. "No, not anymore. In recent years the deer and roe populations have started to dwindle, so hunting was outlawed to protect the wildlife. We had to collect all the guns a few years back," he explained without any noticeable emotion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Invisible China by Colin Legerton, Jacob Rawson. Copyright © 2009 Colin Legerton and Jacob Rawson. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Authors' Note,
INTRODUCTION,
I The Northeast,
1 Hunters of the Hinterlands: The Oroqen, Daur, Ewenki, and Hezhen,
2. Immigrants and Emigrants: The Koreans,
3. The Windswept Kingdom: The Mongolians,
II The Southwest,
4. Fishermen of the South Sea: The Kinh,
5. Valley of the Headhunters: The Wa,
6. Selling Ethnicity: The Naxi,
7. The Country of Daughters: The Mosuo,
III The Northwest,
8. Left Behind: The Dongxiang,
9. Prayers on the Plateau: The Tibetans,
10. The Sweltering Oasis: The Uyghurs,
11. Yaks and Yurts: The Tajiks,
IV The East,
12. Chinese Jews?,
13. Final Thoughts: A Day at the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park,
Afterword,
Selected Suggested Reading,
Index,