NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

1 / GUIZHOU AND THE LIVELIHOODS APPROACH TO ZHONGJIA HISTORY

1Aibida, Qiannan shilue (A handbook of Guizhou) (1750; reprint, Guiyang: Guizhou Renmin Chubanshe, 1992), 15.

2In this book, the term Zhongjia will be used in reference to the late imperial period, and Buyi will be used when discussing the ethnic group in the People’s Republic of China. The name Buyi and the Chinese characters used to represent it were approved by the Guizhou Nationalities Affairs Commission in August 1953, and “Bouyei” was the transcription adopted for foreign publications in 1991. See Wang Huiliang, “Lun Buyizu mingcheng ji jiancheng” (A discussion of the Buyi name and its short forms), Buyi xue yanjiu 1 (1989): 49–58.

3Here, I use Jacob Whittaker’s nuanced interpretation of the term gaitu guiliu. As he explains, the word gui implies “both a return to former conditions and the reestablishment of proper loyalty to the ruler.” See his “Yi Identity and Confucian Empire: Indigenous Local Elites, Cultural Brokerage, and the Colonization of the Lu-ho Tribal Polity of Yunnan, 1174–1745” (PhD dissertation: University of California-Davis, 2008), 338.

4Li Qingfu and Xu Xianlong, eds. Buyi jianshi (A concise history of the Buyi) (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2008), 88–91.

5Tim Forsyth and Jean Michaud, “Rethinking the Relationships between Livelihoods and Ethnicity in Highland China, Vietnam, and Laos,” in Moving Mountains: Ethnicity and Livelihoods in Highland China, Vietnam, and Laos, eds. Jean Michaud and Tim Forsyth (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011), 13. See also Terry McGee, “Foreword,” in the same volume.

6Forsyth and Michaud, “Rethinking the Relationships,” 3.

7Ibid.

8James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

9Forsyth and Jean Michaud, “Rethinking the Relationships,” 13.

10Christine Bonnin and Sarah Turner, “At what price rice? Food security, livelihoods, and state interventions in upland northern Vietnam,” Geoforum 43 (2012): 95–105. See also Jean Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics: A view from Vietnam.” Ethnic and Racial Studies; Vol. 35, no. 11 (2012): 1853–73; and Sarah Turner, “Making a Living the Hmong Way: An Actor-Oriented Livelihoods Approach to Everyday Politics and Resistance in Upland Vietnam,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102 (2012): 1–22.

11The same can be said of the Khmu (of Laos), the Tai Lue and Hani (both of Yunnan), and the Tay and Tai (both of Vietnam), as well as of many other communities in the Massif. See, for example, Janet C. Sturgeon, “Rubber Transformations: Post-Socialist Livelihoods and Identities for Akha and Tai Lue Farmers in Xishuangbanna, China” in Michaud and Forsyth, Moving Mountains, 193–214. The Buyi—the direct descendants of the Zhongjia—have also developed strategies to preserve their identity in the face of challenges from China’s increasingly market-oriented economy. As this volume was being written, Yu Luo, a PhD student in anthropology at Yale University, was conducting fieldwork that examines how the Buyi use ethnotourism, religion, and local festivals to negotiate state development programs.

12See C. Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); John E. Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist: China’s Colonization of Guizhou, 1200–1700 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007); and Whittaker, “Yi Identity and Confucian Empire.”

13When using these sources, I keep a wary eye out for the political agenda imposed by China’s nationalistic ethnographers and historians, apparent in ideological flourishes and politically inspired turns of phrase. For example, the editors of a folk narrative might put words like “oppression of the common people” into the mouth of an eighteenth-century Zhongjia teenager unlikely to have this Marxist terminology in her vocabulary. In other instances, modern-day editors might refer to the Nanlong Uprising as an example of “multinationality unity” when all historical evidence indicates that the overwhelming majority of participants were Zhongjia. The insurgents did include a handful of Han mercenaries and a few “Miao” (that is, neither Han nor Zhongjia) who were press-ganged into the rebel army.

14Because these texts use Chinese characters to represent the sounds rather than the meanings of Zhongjia words, they are often incomprehensible to historians literate in Chinese (and even to those conversant in Buyi). The script was never standardized and often varies from locality to locality. See David Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors: A Zhuang Cosmological Text from Southwest China (DeKalb, IL: Southeast Asia Publications, 2003), 45–48.

15See, for example, Zhou Guomao, Wei Xingru, and Wu Wenyi, eds. Buyizu Mojing wenxue (Mojing religious literature of the Buyi) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1996). David Holm’s Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors provides an annotated translation of two texts commonly used in sacrifices. Holm’s companion book, Recalling Lost Souls: The Baeu Rodo Tai Cosmogonic Texts from Guangxi in Southern China (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2004), explores the myths and rituals surrounding Baeu Rodo and Mo Loekgyap, two personages often revered as the founding ancestors of the Zhuang and Buyi. Although Holm conducted his fieldwork in northern Guangxi communities officially identified as Zhuang, he discovered that the local dialect and religious practices closely resembled those of the Buyi in Guizhou. He thus refers to his research subjects as “Guangxi Bouyei.” See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 12–13.

16On reading against the grain, see James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1990), 87. See also Peter C. Perdue, “Military Mobilization in Eighteenth-Century China, Russia, and Mongolia,” Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 4 (1996): 783–87.

17As Jean Michaud notes, economically and politically weak societies facing strong outside pressures are changed by those pressures, but also “actively and creatively use what power they have to interpret, adapt, and even subvert these pressures.” See Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1856.

18I would suggest that the Zhongjia possessed what Jean Michaud calls a “perceptive resilience . . . founded on an understanding that domination is a fact of life, that the stakes include cultural as much as physical survival, and that with each action come consequences.” See Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1869.

19Sherry Ortner, Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 143–44.

20See Giersch, Asian Borderlands; Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist; and Whittaker, “Yi Identity and Confucian Empire.”

21James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 3.

22James A. Millward, Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759–1864 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 239.

23Emma Jinhua Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography: Chinese Colonial Travel Writing and Pictures, 1683–1895 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 239–43.

2 / NATURAL, HUMAN, AND HISTORICAL LANDSCAPES

1Xu Xiake, “Qianri youji” (A diary of travels in Guizhou) in Xu Xiake youji (The travel diaries of Xu Xiake), 2 volumes (Shanghai: Shanghai Antiquities Publishing House, 1991 reprint) I: 621–77. For his exploration of the Beipan and Nanpan Rivers, see “Panjiang Kao” in Xu Xiake youji II: 1123–28. For a summary of Xu’s travels in Yunnan, see Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 17–20. For more general information on Xu Xiake’s career and writings, see Li Chi, The Travel Diaries of Hsu Hsia-k’e (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1974); see also Julian Ward, Xu Xiake (1587–1641): The Art of Travel Writing (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001).

2Xu died before he could edit the diaries, and they were published in their original form. See Richard Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes: Travel Writing from Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 319.

3Like many of his contemporaries in late imperial China, Xu used the term “Miao” indiscriminately to describe the non-Han peoples he encountered in Guizhou. For some of Xu’s more upbeat observations about the region’s natural beauty, see his description of the mountain landscapes outside Guiyang in Xu Xiake youji II: 636–37, translated in Ward, 105. See also Xu’s description of the Baishui waterfalls in Xu Xiake youji I: 651–52. The Baishui waterfalls are located at modern-day Huangguoshu, approximately 322 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Guiyang, and today they are one of Guizhou’s main tourist attractions.

4During his investigation of the Pan Rivers, for instance, Xu discovered that he could not see the river source because a mountain always stood in his way. See Xu Xiake youji I: 660, cited in Ward, Xu Xiake, 109.

5Based on modern ethnic patterns of the Dingfan region the people he encountered were probably ancestors of today’s Buyi.

6Xu Xiake youji I: 639–42.

7Xu Xiake youji I: 642–45.

8The Lolo were most likely the ancestors of the people today known as the Yi.

9He Weifu, Qingdai Guizhou shangpin jingjishi yanjiu (Research on the economic history of commodities in Qing dynasty Guizhou) (Beijing: Zhongguo jingji chubanshe, 2007), 3. Guangdong receives 1500–2000 mm of rain per year, Fujian 800–1900 mm, Hunan 1250–1750 mm, and Guangxi 1000–2000 mm. See http://www.chinamaps.org/china/china-map-of-precipitation-annual.html.

10http://www.allcountries.org/china_statistics/1_18_monthly_sunshine_hours_of_major.html. Both Wenjiang and Chongqing are located in Sichuan.

11Modern precipitation and temperature statistics are taken from Chai Xingyi, et al. Zhonghua renmin gongheguo diming cidian: Guizhou sheng (A dictionary of place names in the People’s Republic of China: Guizhou province) (Beijing: Shangwu yin shuguan, 1994), 2–4. See also Robert Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 11–12.

12Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 200, 222.

13George Babcock Cressey, Land of the 500 Million: A Geography of China (New York: McGraw Hill, 1955), 223–26. See also Caihua He, Kanging Xiong, Xiaoling Li, and Xing Cheng, “Karst Geomorphology and its Agricultural Implications in Guizhou, China,” Suppl. Geogr. Fis. Dinam. Quat. III, T. 4 (1998), 121.

14Although Yangshuo in Guangxi, and Yunnan’s Stone Forest (Shilin) claim China’s finest karst topography, southwestern Guizhou also has its share of striking landscapes. The rural areas outside the city of Xingyi (Nanlong) offer some of the most stunning vistas anywhere in China.

15T. R. Tregear, A Geography of China (Chicago: Adline Publishing Company, 1965), 265. See also Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 13–14. For a detailed look at karst soils and their impact on Guizhou’s agriculture, see He, et al., “Karst Geomorphology,” 123–25.

16Buckwheat and millet are still common foods in Guizhou. During my 2001 visit, I dined with a Xingyi family who enjoyed their rice mixed with steamed buckwheat and millet. Another interesting feature of Guizhou cuisine is that nearly every meal includes at least one boiled vegetable, typically squash or green beans. The vegetables are flavored with chili pepper mixed in to some of the vegetables’ cooking liquid. One professor at Guizhou Normal University explained that this is a legacy of leaner times, when people boiled their vegetables because they could not afford cooking oil.

17See Tregear, 266–67; Guizhou tongzhi (Gazetteer of Guizhou province), 1741, 15: 3b, 4a–4b; Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 49. See also Claudine Lombard-Salmon, Un Exemple d’acculturation Chinoise, Guizhou au XVIIIeme siecle (An example of Chinese acculturation: Guizhou in the eighteenth century) (Paris: Ecole Francais d’Extreme-Orient, 1972), 168.

18This section is inspired by a similar discussion in Jenks’ Insurgency and Popular Disorder in Guzhou, 18–20. Jenks uses population and cultivated acreage data to establish a quantitative basis for the subsistence crisis in nineteenth-century Guizhou. My aim here is to do the same for eighteenth-century Guizhou.

19James Lee, “Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China, 1250–1850,” The Journal of Asian Studies 41, no. 4 (August 1982): 723–24.

20Ho Ping-ti, Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), chapters 2 and 3.

21Lee, “Food Supply and Population Growth,” 723–29. It should be noted that in 1775, the Qianlong emperor declared a new commitment to maintaining an accurate registration, and he ordered provincial officials to make sure that everyone was counted. This initiative, rather than true demographic expansion, accounts for the increase of one million persons between 1765 and 1775. Lee notes that in spite of this effort, up to one-quarter of southwest China’s population remained unregistered after 1775.

22Yang Bin, “Differentiation and analysis of the population documents in the early Qing dynasty” Chinese Journal of Population Science 1997, 9 (I): 1–8. James Lee suggests that the mid-nineteenth century population was around 7 million. See his “Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China,” 729.

23Wang Yeh-chien, Land Taxation in Imperial China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 29.

24Ge Quansheng, Junhu Dai, Fanneng He, Jingyun Zheng, Zhimin Man, and Yun Zhao, “Spatiotemporal dynamics of reclamation and cultivation and its driving factors in parts of China during the last three centuries,” Progress in Natural Science 14, no. 7 (July 2004): 608. These figures roughly square with Dwight Perkins’ estimate of 17 million mu (1.1 ha) by the late eighteenth century. See Dwight Perkins, Agricultural Development in China, 1368–1968 (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 234. According to Robert Jenks’ calculations, Perkins’ estimate equaled about 6.5 percent of Guizhou’s total land surface. Most likely, peasants learned to make better use of marginal lands and hillsides, and terracing became more common. See Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 19.

25Ge, et al., “Spatiotemporal dynamics,” 608.

26Lombard-Salmon estimates that more than 56 percent of Guizhou’s eighteenth-century population was non-Han. See Lombard-Salmon, Un Exemple d’acculturation Chinoise, 170.

27See David M. Deal and Laura Hostetler, trans., The Art of Ethnography: A Chinese Miao Album (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006). See also Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 5–6.

28Chapter 4 also includes a discussion of Zhongjia religion and its influence on local livelihood choices.

29Both the Bo Y and the Giay reside in the northeastern provinces of Ha Giang and Lao Cai, and they are probably the descendants of Zhongjia refugees who fled Guizhou during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Numbering only 1,450 persons, the Bo Y rank 46th in population among Vietnam’s 54 officially recognized ethnic groups, while the Giay, rank 25th with 38,000 people. See http://www.vietnamembassy.org.uk/population.html for these 2007 population estimates. Although the Vietnamese government classifies these groups as two distinct nationalities, linguists generally agree that both are subgroups of the Buyi. See, for example, Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 9; William J. Gedney, “Yay, a Northern Tai Language in North Vietnam,” Lingua 14 (1965): 180–93; and Jerold A. Edmondson, “Change and Variation in Zhuang,” in Papers from the Second Annual Meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, ed. Karen L. Adams and Thomas John Hudak (Arizona State University: Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 1994), 149.

30One of the criminal cases examined in chapter 4 highlights the close ties between the Zhongjia and the Nong. Imperial officials usually wrote character Nong with the character component meaning “dog” (). This study combines the “dog” radical () with the homophonous character nong (, meaning farmer or peasant). In a few Qing sources, Nong is written with the “human” character component ().

31Northern Zhuang and Southern Zhuang are informal designations used by linguists and anthropologists. They are not official ethnic classifications. The Zhuang language encompasses two major dialect groups, Northern and Southern. David Holm suggests that these two dialects might be more accurately classified as separate languages, for there is greater linguistic difference between them than there is between Northern Zhuang and Buyi , or between Southern Zhuang and the Nung and Tay languages of northern Vietnam. Furthermore, although the Nung and Tay are recognized as separate ethnic groups in Vietnam, in China, they are all classified as Zhuang. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 7–8. See also Snyder, “Bouyei Phonology,” 378.

32Wil C. Snyder and David Holm have suggested that the languages within the Northern and Central groups form a linguistic continuum extending from Guizhou into Vietnam. See Snyder, “Bouyei Phonology,” 378; see also Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 7–8. For a more in-depth discussion of the taxonomy of Kadai languages, see Jerold A. Edmondson and David B. Solnit, eds., Comparative Kadai: The Tai Branch (Arlington TX: University of Texas at Arlington Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1997), 2. See also Anthony Diller, “Introduction,” in The Tai-Kadai Languages, ed. Anthony V. N. Diller, Jerold A. Edmonson, and Luo Yingxian (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), 3–8.

33For a historical overview of the Hundred Yue, see Zhou Guoyan, “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai (Zhuang-Dong) Group of Languages in China” in Languages and Cultures of the Kam-Tai (Zhuang Dong) Group: A Word List (English-Thai version), edited by Zhou Guoyan and Somsonge Burusphat (Bangkok: Sahadhammika Co. Ltd, 1996), 4–7. For a discussion of the DNA and linguistic evidence linking today’s Kadai populations to the Baiyue, see Jerold A. Edmondson, “The power of language over the past: Tai settlement and Tai linguistics in southern China and northern Vietnam” in Studies in Southeast Asian languages and linguistics, ed. Jimmy G. Harris, Somsonge Burusphat and James E. Harris (Bangkok: Ek Phim Tai Co. Ltd., 2007), 39–64.

34Edmondson, “The power of language over the past,” 48. See also Zhou Guoyan, “Linguistic and Historical Explanations of the Names for the Buyi, a Group of Tai People in Southwestern China,” Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Languages and Linguistics, Pan-Asiatic Linguistics (January 8–10, 1996), 970.

35Zhou Guoyan, “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai (Zhuang-Dong) Group of Languages in China,”4.

36Zhou Guoyan, “Linguistic and Historical Explanations,” 970.

37Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 12.

38As Patricia Ebrey writes, “We have to infer that . . . [non-Han in southern China] claimed descent from Chinese migrants either because they wanted to believe it (looking down on non-Han themselves), or because it was in their best interest to do so (for local politics, social prestige, or whatever).” See Patricia Ebrey, “Surnames and Han Chinese Identity,” in Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan, edited by Melissa J. Brown (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996), 23.

39When I interviewed a Buyi family near Xingyi in 2001, they claimed to be the descendants of settlers who had arrived in Guizhou from Jiangsu during the Ming period. Buyi scholar Yu Luo (see chapter 1) has also reported many claims of Jiangsu descent. Personal e-mail correspondences, June 8, 2010 and June 14, 2010. For further discussion of these avowed Jiangnan origins and the accompanying genealogies, see “Tantao Ceheng Buyizu yuan” (Investigating the origins of the Buyi nationality in Ceheng), Ceheng wenshi ziliao (Literary and historical materials from Ceheng) 3 (1985): 74–75. This anonymous article hereafter cited as “Tantao Ceheng.”

40Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 11. Katherine Kaup suggests that Zhuang genealogies showing Jiangnan or Huguang origins may also be falsified for similar reasons. See her Creating the Zhuang: Ethnic Politics in China (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2000), 90. Jeffrey Barlow also notes that many Zhuang, “[who] lived sufficiently close to Han Chinese to learn their language and cultural practices . . . would later claim that their ancestors had been Han Chinese and that living in isolated districts, they had early received local influences which had rusticated them.” See Barlow’s online manuscript, “The Zhuang,” http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/zhuang/zhuang9.htm#_edn15, Chapter 9.

41Gu Yin, “Buyizu zuyuan yanjiu zongshu” (A summary of research on the origins of the Buyi nationality), Buyi xue yanjiu 6 (1998): 23. Chu was a powerful kingdom based in present-day Hunan. Its territory extended into northern Guangxi. Gu notes, however, that some Qing-era local gazetteers disputed the idea that the Zhongjia descended from Ma Yan’s troops. A Miao album entry on the “Kayou Zhongjia” of southwestern Guizhou also hints at Yongguan origins. See Deal and Hostetler, The Art of Ethnography, 13

42Samuel R. Clarke, Among the Tribes in Southwest China (London: Morgan and Scott, Ltd., 1911), 95.

43Zhou Guoyan, “Linguistic and Historical Explanations,” 980.

44The final “x” in Boux indicates the fourth tone in both Buyi and Zhuang. It is not pronounced as a consonant. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors, 8.

45Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, 6.

46For a discussion of the various characters used to write the name “Zhuang,” see Huang Jiaxin, Zhuangzu diqu tusi zhidu yu gaitu guiliu yanjiu (Research on the tusi system and gaitu guilu in Zhuang nationality regions) (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2007), 30.

47Zhou Guoyan, “Linguistic and Historical Explanations,” 980. See also his “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai Group of Languages in China,” 6. In both pieces, Zhou offers and then rejects alternate hypotheses for the origins of the term Zhongjia. One theory suggests that the word Zhongjia derived from homophonic words meaning “heavy armor,” a reference to the armor worn during wars of the Song, Yuan, and Ming periods. Another explanation suggests that the name derives from the character meaning “to cultivate” (zhong ), a reference to the Zhongjia’s rice-farming livelihood.

48According to Zhou Guoyan, the modern Buyi never refer to themselves as “Buzhong” or “Zhong.” See his “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai Group of Languages in China,” 6.

49Wang Huiliang, “Lun Buyizu mingcheng ji jiancheng,” 50–51. The final “k” in bouxhek and bouxhak indicates the seventh tone in Buyi and Zhuang. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 224.

50In some respects, the nomenclature in Guizhou parallels the ecological and ethnic stratifications described in Leach’s classic study of mainland Southeast Asia. See Edmund. R. Leach, “The Frontiers of ‘Burma,” Comparative Studies in History and Society Vol. 3, no. 1 October 1960): 49–68.

51Wang Huiliang, “Lun Buyizu mingcheng ji jiancheng,” 50–51 and Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 9. The final “z” in bouxnongz indicates the second tone in Buyi and Zhuang, and the final “h” in bouxloeh indicates the sixth tone.

52Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 9.

53Interestingly, many residents of northern Guangxi also identify themselves as Bouyeix. In southern Guangxi, by contrast, many local residents use the self-appellations Bouxnungz and Bouxdoj. See Zhou Guoyan, “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai Group of Languages in China,” 2. See also “Tantao Ceheng,” 75. (The final “z” in Bouxnungz indicates the fourth tone in Zhuang, and the final “j” in Bouxdoj indicates the third tone. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 8–9, 223).

54This decision, which was made at a special meeting convened by the Guizhou Nationalities Affairs Commission, was not taken lightly. There were at least twenty other names in the running, including “Buyueyi,” and “Buyue.” Some delegates at the meeting argued that “Buyueyi” was the closest approximation of the group’s autonym, but others objected to the idea of creating a three-character name because other ethnic groups employed one- or two-character names. Still others were uncomfortable about using the character yue, perhaps because of its connections to the Yue peoples of Chinese antiquity. See Thomas S. Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 111–12.

55The character used to write the name Zhuang was officially changed from to in 1965. See Huang Jiaxin, Zhuangzu diqu tusi zhidu, 30.

56According to Katherine Palmer Kaup, Guizhou Nationality Affairs officials insisted that the Buyi in that province did not want to be labeled Zhuang. See Creating the Zhuang, 88.

57Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 7–8.

58Kaup, Creating the Zhuang, 89.

59Mullaney, Coming to Terms with the Nation, 88. A similar issue arose along the Yunnan-Sichuan border. The Pumi ethnic group was divided into two separate categories, according to provincial boundaries; those in Yunnan were classified as Pumi, while those in Sichuan were classified as Zang. See Stevan Harrell, “The Nationalities Question and the Prmi Problem,” in Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan, ed. Melissa J. Brown (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, University of California, 1996), 274–96.

60Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 8–10.

61During the 1950s, Chinese officials considered dividing Guangxi into Eastern (predominantly Han) and Western (predominantly Zhuang) administrative areas that would better reflect ethnic distribution throughout the province. The idea was abandoned in favor of unifying the province into the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, one of five provincial-level autonomous regions in China. See Kaup, Creating the Zhuang, 92–96. For problems arising from the classification of the Zhuang in Yunnan, see Kaup, “Regionalism Versus Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic of China,” The China Quarterly, 172 (2002): 863–84.

62Changing provincial boundaries is difficult, although not impossible. Another solution might be to maintain the Guangxi-Guizhou border but allow the Buyi category to cross it.

63Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 11.

64According to Yu Luo, however, there seems to be a growing recognition, particularly among members of the communities along the Guizhou-Guangxi border, that the Buyi and Zhuang share more similarities than differences. It seems unlikely that anyone from either side of the Buyi -Zhuang divide will mount a campaign to change the official nomenclature, but members of both ethnic groups will continue to explore their shared heritage in an informal way. E-mail correspondence and conversations, June-August 2011 and March 2012.

65Guizhou tongzhi (Gazetteer of Guizhou province) 1697, 30: 21b; Nanlongfuzhi (Gazetteer of Nanlong prefecture) 1765, 2: 18.

66Quoted in Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, 151.

67Xilong zhouzhi (Gazetteer of Xilong department), 1673, 6: 2a.

68The dog character component was also used to represent the ethnonyms of other non-Han groups, including the Zhuang, the Miao, and the Yao. It could even be appended to the character for Hui (), the name for Chinese Muslims. David Holm notes that the dog component originally referred to the classical Chinese myth of Panhu, the legendary canine revered as the ancestor of many non-Han peoples in southern China. Over time, this orthographic convention increasingly “reflected and contributed to a view, common in Chinese society at the time, that the southern non-Han peoples were sub-human.” See Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, 5. On the application of the dog radical to Muslim populations, see Atwill, The Chinese Sultanate: Islam, Ethnicity, and the Panthay Rebellion in Southwest China, 1856–1873 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 25–26 and Jonathan N. Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 41, note 54.

69Here, as in Xu Xiake’s account, “Miao” is a generic term for non-Han ethnic groups.

70Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 223.

71For more on this, see chapter 3.

72As Donald Sutton observes in his study of the Miao in Hunan Province, “Acculturation does not mean assimilation, that is, a change of identification.” See his “Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier,” in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, ed. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 220. For more on this, see chapter 4.

73Clarke, Among the Tribes, 97.

74Ibid., 98.

75Ibid., 100. Clarke noted, however, that unlike their Han counterparts, Zhongjia women in rural areas generally did not bind their feet and often worked alongside men in the rice fields.

76Ibid., 107–8.

77Shi Jizhong “Qian Gui bianjiang Zhuangzu Buyizude tingmu zhidu” (The tingmu system of the Zhuang and Buyi nationalities in the Qian-Gui [Guizhou-Guangxi] borderlands) in Xinan minzu shehui xingtai yu jingji wenhua leixing (The social formations and cultural and economic types of the ethnic minorities in southwest China) (Kunming: Yunnan Educational Publishing House, 1997), 292.

78For more on the mogong (called bumo in the Buyi dialects of northwestern Guangxi and southwestern Guizhou), see David Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 21–24 and chapter 4 of this book.

79Shi Jizhong, “Qian Gui bianjiang,” 298–99.

80Ibid., 300.

81Nanlong fuzhi 1765, 2: 20a–b. See also Li Qingfu and Xu Xianlong, Buyizu jianshi, 78–79.

82Li Qingfu and Xu Xianlong, Buyizu jianshi, 88–89. See also He Weifu, Qingdai Guizhou shangpin jingjishi yanjiu, 117–19, 238–42.

83Stevan Harrell, “The History of the History of the Yi,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 85.

84Both the Nanzhao and the Dali controlled territory in present-day Yunnan. See Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, chapter 1.

85John Herman, “The Mu’ege Kingdom: a brief history of a frontier empire in Southwest China” in Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo and Don J. Wyatt (London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), 245–85.

86John Herman, “The Cant of Conquest: Tusi Offices and China’s Political Incorporation of the Southwest Frontier” in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, ed. Pamela Kyle Crossley, Helen F. Siu, and Donald S. Sutton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 151.

87Herman, “The Mu’ege Kingdom,” 265.

88Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, chapters 5–6.

89The names San Miao, You-Miao, and Miao-Min appear in the Chinese classics and some early historical writings, but it is doubtful that these groups were Miao in the modern sense of the word. Jenks posits that in these earliest sources, “Miao” was simply used as a generic for the non-Han peoples of southern China. References to the Miao continue through the Qin and early Han but disappear from the historical record until the Song dynasty. Thereafter, and especially from the Ming dynasty onward, the name “Miao” appears in historical writing with increasing frequency, often in a compound such as “Miaoren” or “Miaoman.” See Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 32.

90Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 140–41.

91During the 1970s and 1980s, many Hmong fled Laos for the temporary shelter of refugee camps in Thailand. Some were resettled in third countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, France, and even Sweden. Some Hmong refugees made permanent homes in Thailand, and some were eventually repatriated to Laos. Today, the Miao of China number around 7.5 million. Their classification as a single nationality remains problematic. As Norma Diamond explains, it is difficult to see how the Stalinist criteria for nationalities apply to the Miao, given that many subgroups speak mutually unintelligible dialects, and do not share a common territory, scattered as they are over several different provinces. See her “Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary Views,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 92.

92Diamond, 99–100.

93Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 31–32; Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, 106–7. For a complete list of these names, see Hostetler, “Chinese Ethnography in the Eighteenth Century: Miao Albums of Guizhou Province” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1995), 159–204.

94Diamond, “Defining the Miao,” 95–96: Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 33.

95Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 33–35.

96Diamond, “Defining the Miao,” 95.

97To the extent that Ming population statistics can be trusted, it appears that the registered Han population of Guizhou at least doubled between 1502 and 1602. According to James Lee’s estimates, there were around 265,000 registered Han in Guizhou in the former year and approximately 530,000 a century later. These figures include military populations as well as civilian households. See his “Food Supply and Population Growth in Southwest China, 1250–1850,” 715.

98The six “routes” were Yuanshun (modern-day Guiyang), Bozhou (modern-day Zunyi), Xintai (modern-day Guiding), Puding (modern-day Anshun), Puan, and Wusa (modern-day Weining).

99Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 101. The provincial administration commissioner was the early Ming version of a provincial governor. R. Kent Guy translates this term “commissioner for the promulgation and dissemination of government policies.” See his Qing Governors and their Provinces: The Evolution of Territorial Administration in China, 1644–1796 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010), 34.

100 For more on the establishment of Guizhou province, see Herman, “The Mu’ege Kingdom,” 6–21. See also his “The Cant of Conquest,” 136–39 and Amid the Clouds and Mist, 94–102.

101 The Yuan and Ming also instituted the tusi system in Guangxi, Yunnan, Guangdong, and Sichuan, in the westernmost regions of Huguang (Hubei and Hunan), and in several other provinces with large non-Han populations.

102 For a list of the names for all the civil and military native offices in use during the Ming and Qing periods, see John Herman, “National Integration and Regional Hegemony: The Political and Cultural Dynamics of Qing State Expansion, 1650–1750” (PhD dissertation, University of Washington, 1993), 24–27. For a succinct discussion of the tusi system, see also John Herman, “Empire in the Southwest: Early Qing Reforms to the Native Chieftain System,” Journal of Asian Studies 56, no. 1 (February 1997): 50.

103 F. W. Mote, Imperial China, 900–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 704–5.

104 James Lee, “Food Supply and Population Growth,” 715.

105 Herman, “The Mu’ege Kingdom,” 260.

106 For a detailed account of Yongli’s peripatetic reign, see Lynn Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), chapter 5.

107 Jobtei (in Chinese Zhaobutai), the Manchu general in charge of southwestern Guizhou, received military assistance from the Cen native officials who controlled the Guangxi-Guizhou borderlands. See Dading fuzhi (Gazetteer of Dading prefecture) 1850, 48: 3a.

108 Jobtei received assistance from Cen Jilu, the native prefect of Sicheng in Guangxi. Until this point in his career, Wu Sangui was best known as the erstwhile Ming general who in 1644 allowed Qing forces to enter China at the Shanhai Pass, the easternmost gate of the Great Wall. As chapter 3 explains, Wu Sangui soon fell out of favor with Qing authorities, and so, in due course, did Cen Jilu’s successors.

109 Dading fuzhi, 48: 3a.

110 See Struve, The Southern Ming, 169–78.

111 Kai-fu Tsao, “The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories Against the Manchu Throne in China, 1673–1681: Its Setting and Significance” (PhD diss., Columbia University), 1965, 52–53.

112 Ibid., 60.

3 / THE CONSOLIDATION OF QING RULE

1The largest sub-provincial unit was the prefecture (fu). The department (zhou) was subordinate to the prefecture and usually had jurisdiction over at least one county (xian).

2In a richly detailed chapter, Kent Smith describes the two-year campaign to pacify this small corner of Guizhou and its impact on subsequent policy in southwestern China. See Kent Clarke Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China: Aspects of Ortai’s Governor-Generalship, 1726–1731” (PhD diss., Yale University, 1971), 26–39. For brief accounts of the campaign in Dingfan-Guangshun, see also Lombard-Salmon, Un exemple d’acculturation Chinoise, 231–32, and Guy, Qing Governors and Their Provinces, 340–43.

3Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 26–39. See also Guy, Qing Governors and their Provinces, 334–48. Both Smith and Guy spell Ortai based on a romanization of the Manchu name. In the old Wade-Giles system it is spelled O-erh-tai. Other scholars spell it Eertai, using the pinyin romanization system.

4Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 97–100.

5For detailed accounts of the violence in northeastern Yunnan and southeastern Guizhou, see Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 157–71 and 256–89, respectively. For southeastern Guizhou, see also Herman, “National Integration and Regional Hegemony,” chapters 4 and 6. For a discussion of the violence in southern Yunnan, see Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 43–63.

6Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, 30, 119.

7Copper was a key component of Qing coins. For more on the Yunnan copper industry, see Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” chapter 4.

8Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 229.

9Yongzheng Zhupi Yuzhi (The vermillion rescripts and edicts of the Yongzheng reign) (Taipei: Wenyuan shuju, 1965), 5: 2603. Ortai memorial YZ 4/9/19. Hereafter cited as YZZPYZ. Dates are rendered according to the Chinese lunar calendar, using the Chinese order: year/month/day.

10Kent Smith asserts that Han colonization and settlement were unintended effects of Qing policy rather than an underlying motive. At one point, Ortai had suggested dispossessing the Zhongjia altogether and turning their land over to soldiers under the military colony (tuntian) system. Ortai proposed to settle Chinese farmers on any land not allocated to the military, with the express purpose of preventing Zhongjia from reoccupying the area. He abandoned this scheme, although he did insist that Zhongjia land ownership be regulated according to Chinese patterns, using deeds and official seals. As Smith writes, “The Zhongjia were efficient farmers upon whom officials now had the necessary leverage to exact payment of taxes. The introduction of Chinese officialdom . . . may have put Zhongjia at a disadvantage vis-à-vis land-hungry Chinese, but this was a by-product rather than a purpose of imperial policy for the region.” See “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 98.

11Scott, Seeing Like a State, 3, 186–87, 190. Susan Mann has also noted that, like early modern European states, the Qing showed an “increasing capacity for seeing like a state.” See her “Mann on Hostetler,” in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History vol. 2, no. 3 (Winter 2001).

12These concepts were originally put forth by the anthropologist E. R. Leach in his work on pre-colonial Burma and later amplified by James Scott. See Leach, “The Frontiers of ‘Burma,’” 185–87; see also Scott, Seeing Like a State, 186–87.

13Leach, “The Frontiers of ‘Burma,’”185–87. As James Scott notes, “Such spaces, it goes without saying, have served as refuges for fleeing peasants, bandits, rebels, bandits, and the pretenders who have often threatened kingdoms.” See Scott, Seeing Like a State, 187. It could be argued that the Prince of Gui, the self-styled Southern Ming emperor, took advantage of the non-state spaces in southwestern China to mount his resistance against the Qing.

14Daniel McMahon suggests that gaitu guiliu in the Miao regions of western Hunan illustrated the Qing state’s desire to transform non-state spaces into state spaces. He suggests that “non-state spaces” are analogous to the remote mountainous regions known as aoqu. See his “Restoring the Garden: Yan Ruyi and the Civilizing of China’s Internal Frontiers, 1795–1805” (PhD diss., University of California-Davis, 1998), 333–34. Although he does not use the precise terminology, John Herman makes a similar case for the Guzhou region of southeastern Guizhou. See his “National Integration and Regional Hegemony,” chapter 4.

15A fourth category could be used to describe indigenous polities that were largely independent of the imperial state, such as the Nasu Yi states of northwestern Guizhou and Yunnan. And a fifth category might describe the Tai polities of southern Yunnan that paid dual fealty to China’s imperial state and the kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia. See Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, Whittaker, “Yi Identity and Confucian Empire,” and Giersch, Asian Borderlands.

16During the spring and summer of 1659, Beijing renewed the investiture of more than forty tusi throughout Guizhou. See He Renzhong, et al., Guizhou tongshi. Di san juan, Qingdai de Guizhou (A comprehensive history of Guizhou, part 3, Qing dynasty Guizhou) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 2002), 223.

17This measure was originally proposed by Guizhou Governor Zhao Tingchen. See Herman, “Empire in the Southwest,” 48–49.

18Herman, “National Integration and Regional Hegemony,” 54–55.

19Herman, “Empire in the Southwest,” 60–66.

20Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 44. See also Yingcong Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet: Imperial Strategy in the Early Qing (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009), 28–29.

21After Wu captured and executed the last Ming pretender (the Prince of Gui, whom Wu pursued into Burma) in 1662, he was named a Prince of the Blood and subsequently gained control over all the provincial officials in Yunnan and Guizhou. Wu claimed that tax revenues and profits from his monopolies would be used for public works. See Tsao, “The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories,” 58–60, 68.

22In particular, Wu Sangui targeted the Shuixi region, the traditional stronghold of the powerful An family. The Qing court authorized Wu to depose An Kun, the Nasu Yi native official, on grounds that An had collaborated with Ming loyalists who had straggled into Shuixi. To be sure, the native ruler had taken up arms, but only as a result of Wu’s repeated provocations. The Shuixi region was subsequently divided into four prefectures, all of them under Wu’s personal supervision. In 1683, the Kangxi Emperor restored the Shuixi ruling clan’s official titles, and this clan remained in power until 1727. See Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 201–15.

23Kai-fu Tsao estimates that Wu commanded 64,000 troops by 1665, costing the Qing more than nine million taels annually. See his “The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories,” 65–68. For more on Wu’s self-aggrandizing schemes, see Yingcong Dai, “The Rise of the Southwestern Frontier under the Qing, 1640–1800” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1996), 86–93.

24This rebellion, the so-called War of the Three Feudatories, began when the Kangxi emperor ordered Wu Sangui and two other feudatories, Geng Jingzhong, and Shang Kexi, to resign their hereditary governorships. Wu then killed the regularly appointed governor of Yunnan and proclaimed a new dynasty, the Zhou. By 1674, he had occupied six provinces in southern and southwestern China, and had set up a new capital in Hunan. Later that year, the other two feudatories joined Wu’s cause, bringing Fujian and Guangdong under the rebel banner. In 1678, Wu Sangui died in Hunan, leaving his throne to his grandson, who later retreated to Yunnan. The rebellion dragged on for another two years (until the younger Wu committed suicide in late 1681) and Qing armies quickly reestablished imperial control over the southwest. For a detailed account of the rebellion, see Tsao, “The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories,” chapters 2 and 3. See also Herman, Amid the Clouds and Mist, 216–18.

25One official who fell under the emperor’s suspicion was Cai Yurong, governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou from 1682 to 1686. At one time an imperial favorite for his role in suppressing Wu Sangui, Cai was eventually dismissed from office after he pushed for an aggressive policy against the native officials. See Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet, 28–29.

26Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 44.

27For a comprehensive discussion of Yongzheng’s reforms, see Pei Huang, Autocracy at Work: A Study of the Yung-cheng Period, 1723–35 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975). See also see Mote, Imperial China, 900–1800, 887–911.

28For example, Yongzheng legalized the tax surcharges that local officials traditionally assessed to augment their meager salaries and used the surcharges to subsidize merit increases for all officials. See Madeline Zelin, The Magistrate’s Tael: Rationalizing Fiscal Reform in Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). The Yongzheng emperor also created an inner court haven where he could discuss policy with small, informal committees made up of his most trusted officials, and made expanded use of palace memorials (zouzhe), confidential reports submitted directly to the throne by a select group of officials. He adopted the use of palace memorials from the Kangxi Emperor, who had originally employed the secret communiqués to establish a private channel of communication with officials in the Imperial Household Department (neiwu fu). From there, the practice spread to other government organs in the capital and then to provincial officials. Whereas Kangxi had allowed only a few favored individuals to submit memorials, Yongzheng extended the privilege to a much larger number of men. This ensured a steady flow of information from all over the realm, and also enabled the emperor to cultivate close relationships with the memorialists by writing detailed responses in vermilion ink, known as vermilion rescripts (zhupi) on the original documents. As Smith explains, Ortai’s relationship with Yongzheng flourished in large part as a result of their correspondence through memorials and rescripts. See his “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China.” For more detailed discussions on the inner court and palace memorial system, see Beatrice S. Bartlett, Monarchs and Ministers: The Grand Council in Mid-Ch’ing China 1723–1830 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). See also Mark C. Elliot, “The Manchu-language Archives of the Qing Dynasty and the Origins of the Palace Memorial System,” Late Imperial China 22: 1 (June 2001): 48–55.

29Edict of YZ 2/5/17, reprinted in Qing Shilu Guizhou ziliao jiyao (A collection of materials on Guizhou from the Qing Veritable Records) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1962), 305. This collection hereafter cited as QSL-GZ. Also cited in Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 45.

30The transition from a conservative policy to a more aggressive one is summarized in Smith, 44–46. Ortai was a prime example of Yongzheng’s “new men”—officials whose loyalty and talent compensated for a lack of family connections and scholarly credentials. The Emperor preferred such officials to men of letters, whom he considered less likely to be his willing tools. “New men” owed their career success almost entirely to Yongzheng and thus became, in Smith’s words, “eager instruments of [the emperor’s] assault against the status quo in the empire.” See Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 14–16. For more on Yongzheng’s “new men,” see William T. Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), esp. 45–85.

31The Guizhou governor expressed concern that the unlawful native officials in Dingfan-Guangshun would have a bad influence on the more quiescent ones. See YZZPYZ 1: 580–81, Mao Wenquan memorial YZ 2/10/24. Provincial officials dealing with the unrest in Nanlong also complained that the native rulers failed to hand criminals over to Qing authorities. See, for example, Yongzheng chao Hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian (Collection of Chinese-language palace memorials from the Yongzheng reign), compiled by the Zhongguo di yi lishi dang’an guan. (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1989) 9: 8–10, YZ 5/2/2, Han Liangfu memorial. This collection hereafter cited as YZHZZ.

32YZZPYZ 5: 2603, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/9/19.

33Dai, The Sichuan Frontier and Tibet, 107–8. See also Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 44–45.

34Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 43.

35Most of the tusi in this region were Zhongjia, but a few were Miao. See Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 43, for a comprehensive list of the fan.

36Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 49.

37Guangshun zhouzhi (Gazetteer of Guangshun department) 1846, 5: 14a and 17a–b, also cited in Smith, 54–55.

38YZZPYZ 1: 574–75, Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/5/14.

39YZZPYZ 1: 575, imperial rescript on Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/5/14.

40YZZPYZ 1: 580–581, Mao Wenquan, 2/10/24. See also Gongzhong Dang Yongzheng Chao (Secret palace memorials of the Yongzheng reign) (Taipei: National Palace Museum, 1978), 4: 372–73, YZ 2/10/25, Gao Qizhuo memorial. This collection hereafter cited as GZDYZ. (Note: YZZPYZ is organized by memorialist, while GZDYZ is organized by date. References in this chapter are written to reflect the internal organization of each collection.) Mao Wenquan tried to hide Qing failures from the emperor for as long as possible. The true course of events came to light in Gao Qizhuo’s memorials. See Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 60–66.

41GZDYZ 5: 773–76, YZ 3/1/26, Gao Qizhuo memorial.

42Ibid.

43YZZPYZ 1: 580, Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/8/28. See also YZZPYZ 1: 581, Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/10/24.

44There was, however, one minor setback at the very beginning of the campaign. Before the Qing expeditionary force set out from Dingfan, five hundred Qing soldiers arrived in a village inhabited by members of the Qing Miao ethnic group, not Zhongjia. The inhabitants had already fled into a nearby grove, and the troops set up camp in the village. The troops burned down this and four other friendly Miao villages. The villagers, understandably enraged by the wanton destruction, surrounded and attacked the troops, wounding several. See YZZPYZ 1: 580–81, Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/10/24, and GZDYZ 774, 3/1/26, Gao Qizhuo memorial.

45Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu [The tusi system in China] (Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe, 1992), 840–41.

46YZZPYZ 1: 582, Mao Wenquan memorial, YZ 2/11/17.

47Ibid.

48Smith, “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 67.

49Edict of YZ 3/4/13, reprinted in QSL-GZ, 497.

50Shi Liha assumed this position in the spring of 1725, taking over from Mao Wenquan.

51YZZPYZ 1: 322–23, Shi Liha memorial, YZ 3/10/13.

52YZZPYZ 1: 327, Shi Liha memorial, YZ 4/3/20.

53Gao Qizhuo’s original plan called for the transfer of troops from Dading in northwestern Guizhou to Ding-Guang.

54YZZPYZ 5: 2581, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/4/9.

55YZZPYZ 5: 2581–82, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/4/9.

56Ibid. Kent Smith notes that other provincial officials had lobbied for a nonviolent solution in Changzhai, but they did not have enough influence with the emperor to give their views force. See his “Ch’ing Policy and the Development of Southwest China,” 77–80.

57YZZPYZ 5: 2591, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/6/20.

58YZZPYZ 5: 2593–94, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/7/9.

59YZZPYZ 5: 2602, Ortai memorial YZ 4/8/19.

60YZZPYZ 5: 2612–14, Ortai memorial, YZ 4/11/15.

61Scott, Seeing Like a State, 65.

62Sicheng was a native district (tuzhou) during the Ming dynasty, and was later elevated to a native prefecture during the early days of Qing rule.

63By the late Ming period, the Cen clan controlled seven domains in central and northwestern Guangxi, making them the province’s second-largest lineage group of native officials. The Huang lineage was the largest, with eleven domains. See Leo K, Shin, The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion on the Ming Borderlands (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 75, 82–90.

64Claims to Han Chinese descent probably gave the Cens some leverage over the non-Han peoples they governed (many of whom made their own claims to Chinese ancestry, as noted in chapter 2), and enhanced their legitimacy in the eyes of Ming officialdom. See Ebrey, “Surnames and Han Chinese Identity,” 23.

65Shin, The Making of the Chinese State, 70; Huang Jiaxin, Zhuangzu diqu tusi zhidu, 228.

66Shi Jizhong, “Qian Gui bianjiang,” 292–93. The uprising was led by Nong Zhigao, who is still revered as a folk hero in many Zhuang regions. For a discussion of Zhuang relations with the Song state, see Jeffrey G. Barlow, “The Zhuang Minority of the Sino-Vietnamese Frontier in the Song Period,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 18, no. 2 (September 1987): 250–69. See also Barlow, “The Zhuang Minority in the Ming Era,” Ming Studies, No. 28 (Fall 1989): 15–41.

67Shi Jizhong, “Qian Gui bianjiang,” 292–93. In recent years, scholars have questioned both the Cens’ ancestral links to Cen Zhongshu and their purported Zhejiang roots. Although some historians still contend that the Cens moved to Guangxi from Zhejiang during the Song period, others have suggested that the family originated in Guangxi and belonged to the indigenous Zhuang elite. Still others argue for a middle ground in which the Cen family was originally Han Chinese but lived among the indigenous populations of Guangxi for so long that they internalized local culture and effectively became Zhuang. See Barlow, “The Zhuang,” chapter 9, note 15. See also Huang Jiaxin, Zhuangzu diqu tusi zhidu, 228–31.

68Huang Jiaxin, 230–31; Gong Yin, Zhongguo tusi zhidu, 1107. See also Shi Jizhong, “Qian Gui bianjiang,” 292.

69Shi Jizhong, “Qian Gui bianjiang,” 292–93; Huang Yiren, Buyizu shi (A history of the Buyi nationality) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1992), 147–49.

70Nanlong fuzhi 2: 2a–2b.

71It is not clear if the Cens had any dealings with the Southern Ming leaders based in southwestern China during the 1650s.

72The first Cen native official to receive this title from the Qing was Cen Jilu.

73YZZPYZ 5: 2627, Ortai memorial, YZ 5/1/25.

74In 1667, Nanlong was made subordinate to Guiyang prefecture, even farther away. Twenty years later, it was placed under the jurisdiction of Anshun. See Xingyi fuzhi, 46: 9a. See also Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 219 and 227.

75Xingyi fuzhi 46: 9a; see also edict of KX 50/8/13, reprinted in QSL-GZ, 496–97 and Aibida, Qiannan shilue, 222.

76The Guangxi chieftain’s name was Wang Shangyi. His adversary in Guizhou was A Jiu.

77As noted earlier, the Huangcaoba garrison had only 1,500 troops, which may explain Cai’s reluctance to use military force against the warring chieftains. Although Cai does not say as much in his memorial, it is possible that his colleagues’ repeated humiliations in Dingfan-Guangshun two years earlier had taught him that Qing commanders could not afford to underestimate the Zhongjia.

78Yongzheng chao Hanwen zhupi zouzhe huibian (Collection of Chinese-language palace memorials from the Yongzheng reign), ed. China Number One Historical Archives (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1989) 7: 896–97, YZ 4/8/16, Cai Chenggui memorial. This collection hereafter cited as YZHZZ.

79YZZPYZ 5: 2627, Ortai memorial, YZ 5/1/25.

80YZHZZ 9: 8–10, YZ 5/2/2, Han Liangfu memorial.

81Edict of YZ 5/2/29, reprinted in Qing shilu Guangxi ziliao huibian (A collection of materials on Guangxi from the Qing shilu) (Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1982), Vol. 1: 245.

82YZZPYZ 5: 2649, Ortai memorial, YZ YZ 5/i3/26.26.

83YZHZZ 9: 601–2, YZ 5/4/8, Han Liangfu memorial.

84As noted earlier, Zhejiang was supposed to be the Cen family’s ancestral home, but much evidence suggests that the clan originated in Guangxi.

85YZZPYZ 5:2663, Ortai memorial, 5/6/6. See also YZHZZ 10: 197–98, YZ 5/7/10, Cai Chenggui memorial.

86YZHZZ 10: 81–84, Ortai memorial, YZ 5/6/27. See edict of YZ 5/8/20, reprinted in QSL-GZ, 258–59 and Xingyi fuzhi 46: 13a–15b. The former Guangxi territory of Luoke was originally placed under the jurisdiction of Yongfeng department, but in 1749, it was transferred to the jurisdiction of Dingfan department. Evidently, local officials determined that the transportation and communication routes between Luoke and Dingfan were better than those linking Luoke to Yongfeng.

87Xingyi fuzhi, 9: 1a–10. See also Li Qingfu and Xu Xianlong, Buyizu jianshi, 76–77.

4 / LIVELIHOOD CHOICES IN THE MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

1See, for example, Zhupi zouzhe, minzu shiwu lei (Palace memorials, minority affairs category), 2074–15, QL 8/6/10, Guizhou surveillance commissioner Song Hou. These documents hereafter cited as ZPZZ mzl.

2Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1862.

3This chapter only includes cases on the Zhongjia found in the minzu shiwu lei category of the Palace Memorials (zhupi zouzhe) housed at the First Historical Archives in Beijing. I have also examined twenty-five murder cases from the collection of Xingke tiben, tudizhaiwu lei (Board of Punishments Office of Scrutiny, Routine Memorials, homicide cases related to disputes over land and debt). Interestingly, most of these cases involved Han-on-Han violence rather than violence within non-Han communities, or between Han and non-Han residents. Based on this small sampling, it appears that inter-ethnic aggression was rare on a day-to-day basis. This is in keeping with William T. Rowe’s observation about violence in southwestern China. As he notes, “Aggrieved parties resorted to arms to defend highly complex and specific local interests, and not necessarily along strict ethnic lines.” See his China’s Last Empire: The Great Qing (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009), 79.

4Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1857.

5See, for example, ZPZZ mzl 2074–15. Chipin wulai is a set phrase often found in Qing criminal investigations. Mark McNicholas calls this a “documentary signpost.” See Mark McNicholas, “Poverty Tales and Statutory Politics in Mid-Qing Fraud Cases,” in Writing and Law in Late Imperial China: Crime, Conflict, and Judgment, eds. Robert E. Hegel and Katherine Carlitz (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007), 155–56.

6Lombard-Salmon, Un Exemple d’acculturation Chinose, 182–97. See also He Weifu, Qingdai Guizhou shangpin, 166–71 and 174–77.

7Lombard-Salmon, Un Exempled’acculturation Chinose, 199–203.

8Ibid, 202. See also He Weifu, Qingdai Guizhou shangpin, 178–83 and 238–45.

9Lombard-Salmon, Un Exemple d’acculturation Chinose, 205–6. See also He Weifu, Qingdai Guizhou shangpin, 224–33.

10ZPZZ mzl 2074: 1–14 and 2075: 1–5.

11ZPZZ mzl 1853: 1–7 and 1854: 1–2.

12ZPZZ mzl 1963: 1–6.

13The Qing sources cited throughout this chapter do not allow the participants in the criminal cases much room to speak. Qing officials either spoke for the accused and the witnesses, or else the court reports heavily edited and filtered the voices of the participants. In order to understand the perceptions and motivations of the participants in each criminal case, the discussion compares the official record of each case, wherever possible, with sources relating to the indigenous Zhongjia religion known as Mo.

14As we shall see, the ringleaders of the Ran Jing case of 1766 were captured in Sichuan, but perpetrated most of their criminal activities in Guizhou.

15ZPZZ mzl 2074–1, QL 8/3/21, Guizhou governor Zhang Guangsi. Huang San hailed from a hamlet near Xilong, subordinate to Sicheng prefecture.

16Ibid. The other men were named Wang Ali, Bu Xiujia, Wei Asan, Luo Long, and Luo Awei.

17Even if they encountered someone who could not speak Nong or Zhongjia, they could always fall back on the local variant of Chinese.

18ZPZZ mzl 2074–1. Duangong is a Daoist-influenced form of magic practiced by several ethnic groups in southwestern China, notably the Qiang of western Sichuan. See Wang Mingke, Qiangzai Han Zangzhijian (The Qiang: between Han and Tibetans) (Liaojing chubanshe, 2003), 253.

19ZPZZ mzl 2074–1, QL 8/3/2, Guizhou governor Zhang Guangsi. See also ZPZZ mzl 2074–2, QL 8/3/26, Anlong regional commander Song Ai; and ZPZZ mzl 2074–15, QL 8/6/10, Guizhou surveillance commissioner (anchashi) Song Hou.

20ZPZZ mzl 2074–1. As noted in chapter 3, even after gaitu guiliu in this region, many rural areas remained under the control of indigenous elites like Wang Li.

21It is not clear when the Zhuang and Buyi began using modified Chinese characters to write their religious texts. Scholars in Guangxi cite a seventh-century stone inscription as evidence that it could have been as early as the Tang dynasty. Some Guizhou scholars, however, insist that the Zhongjia did not begin using Chinese characters until after the gaitu guiliu reforms of the Yongzheng reign, for it was only then that the Confucian education system took root in southwestern Guizhou. This Sinocentric argument runs counter to historical evidence. Confucian schools were established in Guizhou well before the Yongzheng-era reforms. Moreover, these schools were not the only vehicle for teaching Chinese literacy, for the Zhongjia had been interacting with Han Chinese settlers and imperial officials for centuries before the Qing period. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 46–51. The Mo texts bear striking parallels to the Vietnamese chữ-nôm script, which also used Chinese characters to represent the local language. Whereas Mo script was used exclusively for religious purposes, chữ-nôm was used to record vernacular literature. During French colonial rule, chữ-nôm was replaced by Quoc-ngu, the Romanized script still used in Vietnam today.

22As Holm explains, Mo authors sometimes used standard characters for phonetic and semantic readings; sometimes they created entirely new characters to represent words in their native tongue. The texts were incomprehensible to outsiders—and deliberately so. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 47–49.

23ZPZZ mzl 2074–1.

24ZPZZ mzl 2074–1 and ZPZZ mzl 2074–15. Wang Ali and Bu Xiujia were the two men who died resisting arrest. The Yongfeng department magistrate’s name was Wang Yunhao, and the Nanlong prefectural magistrate was Yang Hui.

25See chapter 2.

26The sale of these positions provided the Qing government with an important source of revenue and also created a class of bureaucrats who helped link local communities to state entities. See Charles O. Hucker, A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Reprint; Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc, 1995), 150, 303. See also Chung-li Chang, The Chinese Gentry: Studies on their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955), 5, 7–8, 29–30; and Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 50–54, 114.

27See Donald Sutton, “Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier,” 220.

28Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1868–69.

29ZPZZ mzl 2074–1 and ZPZZ mzl 2074–15. Wang Zuxian claimed that the mine was in Bengjia, a hamlet under the jurisdiction of Nanlong prefecture.

30In the Buyi dialects of southwestern Guizhou, the term bumo (spelled boumo in some English publications) is written , while in the Zhuang dialects of northwestern Guangxi, it is written . In Qing sources, bumo is written baomu () or sometimes baomo (). See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 21–23.

31ZPZZ mzl 2074–1. Unfortunately, the sources do not describe the magical acts or rituals that Baomu Bai performed, but the repertoire of duangong specialists typically included spells, chants, and dances to ward off evil and cure disease, and sometimes exorcisms.

32Zhou Guomao, “Mojing wenxue: yizhong qite de wenxue leixing” (Mojing literature: a singular type of literature) in Buyizu Mojing wenxue (Mojing religious literature of the Buyi ethnic group) ed. Zhou Guomao, et al. (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 1997), 1. For more on the role of the bumo in contemporary Zhuang and Buyi communities, see Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 21–22.

33For more on Maoshan Daoism, see Isabelle Robinet, “Shangqing,” in The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Volume 2, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio (London: Rout-ledge, 2008), 858–66. See also Anna Seidel, “Taoist Messianism,” Numen, 31, no. 2 (December 1984): 171–72. Meishan, another school of Daoism, is also widely practiced in Buyi and Zhuang communities. Meishan Daoism is especially prevalent among the Yao of southwestern China, Vietnam, and Thailand. The origins of this form of Daoism remain a subject of much debate, but some scholars postulate that it developed in Yao regions of western Hunan. When the Yao moved south into Guangxi and Guizhou, their religious practices took root in Buyi and Zhuang communities. See Eli Alberts, A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China (New York: Cambria Press, 2006).

34Functional specification between the bumo and Daoist priests seems to vary across time and space. The distinction is clear in the old Buyi/Zhuang text, “Recitation on the Search for Water.” When confronted with an epidemic, an ancient Zhuang king was advised to consult both bumo and Daoist priests: “In the middle of the night recite your prayer/Have a Taoist come and conduct [the proceedings]/Invite a boumo to come and plead your case.” The bumo, it seems, was entrusted with communications with the spiritual realm, while the Daoist priest was asked to carry out certain rituals. See Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, 106–8. In some communities, however, the same person might serve as either a bumo or a Daoist priest, as the occasion warranted. See Holm, Killing a Buffalo, 172. When I asked Buyi scholar Yu Luo about the distinction in Buyi communities today, she said that the bumo appear to be most actively involved in life cycle rituals such as births, funerals, and ancestral worship. She added that many Buyi villagers are quick to say that the bumo is “not the same person” as the Daoist priest, but they cannot explain the different roles of these religious practitioners. E-mail correspondence, June 16, 2012 and July 2, 2012.

35Cupellation is the process of applying extreme heat to ores or alloyed metals to separate noble metals like gold and silver from base metals like lead copper and zinc.

36Huang San’s testimony, at least as it is recorded in the Palace Memorials, evinces his unwavering faith in the existence of the “spirit silver.” However, we should take this with a grain of salt. Qing officials, stymied as they were by this case, had a vested interest in portraying Huang San and other participants as foolish rustics, mired in superstition and ignorance.

37Wang Bujiang told officials that the hamlet was called Dongmajia, but this later proved to be a memory lapse or an outright lie. Subsequent testimony from other witnesses indicated that the hamlet’s real name was Mumajia. Huang Zuxian’s real name was Huang Yilao, sometimes written Huang A Lao. In the Zhongjia dialects of eastern Yunnan, the diminutive “Yi” was sometimes used instead of the more commonplace “A.” See ZPZZ mzl 2074–1 and ZPZZ mzl 2074–7.

38ZPZZ mzl 2074–1.

39Ibid.

40Ibid. See also ZPZZ mzl 2074–7.

41ZPZZ mzl 2074–7.

42Ibid.

43ZPZZ mzl 2074–1 and ZPZZ mzl 2074–7.

44ZPZZ mzl 2074–1.

45ZPZZ mzl 2074–1 and ZPZZ mzl 2074–15.

46Ibid.

47These two men, Huang San and Wang Zuxian, were accessories to a crime that officials had resolved to their satisfaction during the Yongzheng reign. See ZPZZ mzl 2075–1.

48According to Brent Huffman, curator of www.ultimateungulate.com, “Guizhou province is just outside of the current range of the bharal, so the species—if present—would likely be quite rare.” E-mail correspondence, March 7, 2012.

49The wanderer was named Wang A’er, and his landlord was Wang Wenjia. See ZPZZ mzl 2074–5, QL 8/4/26, Guangxi governor Yang Xifu; and ZPZZ mzl 2074–6, QL 8/4/30, Guizhou governor Zhang Guangsi and Guizhou provincial military commissioner Han Dong. See also ZPZZ mzl 2074–15.

50ZPZZ mzl 2075–3, QL 8/i4/27, Zuojiang regional military commander Bi Ying.

51ZPZZ mzl 2074–15.

52ZPZZ mzl 2075–4, QL 8/8/6, Yunnan governor Zhang Yunsui.

53The next six paragraphs are based on Zhupi zouzhe, minzu shiwu lei (Palace memorials, minority affairs category), 1853–1, QL 31/3/28, Fang Shijun.

54Zhe Ruo, Li Bao, Luo Puti, and A Liu.

55Zhu Bao and A Liu.

56Dong Zhengyuan was probably not exaggerating his poverty. Daoists were marginalized in Qing China, for the Qing rulers practiced Tibetan Buddhism and promoted neo-Confucianism as the state doctrine. The government also tended to regard Daoism as a source of potential heterodoxy and social unrest, since its clergy tended to live in isolated monasteries, lacked a strong religious structure, and had inadequate financial support. The economic and social constraints must have been particularly acute for Daoists living in one of China’s poorest provinces. See Monica Esposito, “Daoism in the Qing,” in Daoism Handbook, ed. Livia Kohn (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 623–24.

57Again, Zhu Bao and A Liu.

58Zhe Ruo, Li Bao, and Luo Puti.

59The next four paragraphs are based on ZPZZ mzl 1853–2, QL 31/4/1, Aertai. Aertai should not be confused with the similarly named Ortai, who had served as Yunnan-Guizhou Governor-General forty years earlier.

60Qianlong chao shangyu dang (Imperial edicts of the Qianlong reign), Compiled by the Number One Historical Archives, (Beijing: Dang’an chubanshe, 1991), 4: 870, item 2452, Court letter (ziji) to Fang Shijun, QL 31/4/21.

61Ran Lang was also interrogated, but Ran Jing’s confession provides the fullest account. Ran Hua had died of an illness en route. See ZPZZ mzl 1854–2, QL 31/5/12, Fang Shijun.

62Ibid.

63Da Qingluli (Great Qing code) (1740) (Reprint, Tianjin: Tianjin guji chubanshe, 1991), 22: 10–11. These crimes were regarded as much more serious than those committed in the homicide cases discussed earlier because they posed a potential threat to the dynasty. Plotting rebellion counted among the Ten Abominations (Shi E)—the most abhorrent offenses against persons or the state—enumerated in the preamble to the Qing Code. Plotting rebellion was one of the three capital crimes listed among the Ten Abominations, the other two being disloyalty (moupan) and treason (mou dani). Sorcery involving prophecies was also a capital offense, punishable by immediate decapitation; and the same penalty applied to treason. See Philip A. Kuhn, Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 87–88.

64ZPZZ mzl 1854–2.

65William T. Rowe, “Education and Empire in Southwest China: Ch’en Hung-mou in Yunnan, 1733–1738,” in Education and Society in Late Imperial China, ed. Benjamin A. Elman and Alexander Woodside (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 417–57.

66ZPZZ mzl 1963–1, QL 31/4/7, Fang Shijun. Wei Xuewen’s friends were A Shou and Chen Ziyu.

67Once again, “Miao” serves in these records as a generic term for the non-Chinese. Most likely, it refers to the Zhongjia and perhaps other smaller groups living in the Guiding region.

68ZPZZ mzl 1963–3, QL 31/5/4, Fang Shijun.

69Wei Xuewen’s friend, Chen Ziyu, organized these activities.

70ZPZZ mzl 1963–3.

71ZPZZ mzl 1963–2.

72ZPZZ mzl 1963–2 and 1963–3.

73Edict of QL 31/5/13, reprinted in QSL-GZ, 1168–69.

74ZPZZ mzl 1963–6, QL 31/6/6, Fang Shijun.

75Da Qing luli, 23:254. As noted earlier, treason counted among the Ten Abominations.

76The other conspirators included Yang Guochen, Chen Ziyu, A Shou, and three others.

77ZPZZ mzl 1963–5, QL 31/6/6, Fang Shijun.

78Today, it appears that some Hmong villagers in Vietnam have adopted a similar stance on state-mandated education. As Michaud writes, “I suspect many Hmong are not unhappy to limit . . . cultural dilution among their youth. They stick to what really matters: passing on ancestral knowledge through customary education, and limiting formal schooling to what is needed to learn some accountancy and become proficient enough in the national language to ensure good dealings.” See “Hmong infrapolitics,” 13.

79Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 37.

5 / THE NANLONG UPRISING OF 1797

1See, for example, Gongzhong Dang Jiaqing chao zouzhe (Secret palace memorials of the Jiaqing reign), compiled by and held at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, 3:2, 648, JQ 2/1/27, Feng Guangxiong memorial. This collection hereafter cited as GZDJQ.

2Wei Qiluoxu’s real name was Wei Chaoyuan. His nickname, “Seven-whisker Wei” was a reference to his wispy beard. Wang Niangxian’s real name was Wang Acong. She is sometimes called “Immortal Maiden Wang” (Wang Xiangu). For consistency’s sake, I will refer to them as Wei Qiluoxu and Wang Niangxian.

3The Zhongjia had few guns during the early weeks of the rebellion; their arsenal consisted mainly of hunting knives. They acquired firearms later, after raiding Guizhou’s towns and cities. This point will be considered later in the chapter. On the use of magic to neutralize an enemy’s technological advantages, see Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 151.

4Qingdai Jiaqing nianjian Guizhou Buyizu “Nanlong qiyi” ziliao xuanbian (Collected materials on the “Nanlong Uprising” of the Buyi people during the Jiaqing reign), comp. by China Number One Historical Archives, the Southwest Guizhou People’s Committee, and the Guizhou Buyi Studies Committee (Guiyang: Guizhou minzu chubanshe, 1989), 52–55. This collection hereafter cited as NQX.

5The following collections of archival materials were used in this chapter: (1.) Secret palace memorials of the Jiaqing Reign (GZDJQ); (2.) Jiaobu Dang (Record of pursuit and arrest), hereafter cited as JBD; and (3.) Palace Memorial reference copies in the minority affairs category (Junji chu lufu zouzhe minzu shiwu lei) from the Number One Historical Archives in Beijing, reprinted in NQX. A comparison of the published NQX collection against the microfilmed versions at the archives revealed no discrepancies. The NQX references each lufu it reprints. In this chapter, the lufu citations will be provided in parentheses after each NQX entry; Junji chu lufu zouzhe minzu shiwu lei (Grand Council reference copies of palace memorials, minority affairs category) will hereafter be cited as JCLZ mzl.

6These two Zhongjia narratives, “Wang Xiangu” and “Nanlong fanbing ge,” are also included in NQX. Citations for these narratives will follow this format: NQX, page number, “Wang Xiangu” (or “Nanlong fanbing ge”).

7In Buyi oral tradition, narrative poems are epic tales that developed from folk songs. For descriptions of various forms of Buyi folk literature, see Zhou Guoyan et al., eds., Languages and Cultures of the Kam-Tai (Zhuang-Dong) Group: A Word List, 24–32; and Huang Yiren, Buyizu shi, 187–88.

8This indigenous account is a narrative poem in eighteen stanzas, recorded by Buyi ethnographers when they collected “Wang Xiangu.” Sung verses alternate with spoken-word explanations, a typical pattern for this genre. See Zhou, Languages and Cultures of the Kam-Tai, 24–32.

9For reasons that will be explored in the next section, PRC historians have mostly ignored the Buyi narratives.

10James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 87.

11Claudine Lombard-Salmon’s study of eighteenth-century Guizhou only mentions the rebellion in passing. See Un exemple d’acculturation Chinoise, passim. In his essay on the Liu military family of Xingyi (formerly Nanlong), Edward McCord makes a brief reference to the uprising. See Edward A. McCord, “Local Military Power and Elite Formation: The Liu Family of Xingyi County, Guizhou,” in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, ed. Joseph W. Esherick and Mary B. Rankin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 162–90. Wang Niangxian also merits a short entry in a collection of eminent Chinese women. See “Wang Niangxian,” in Lily Xiao Hong Lee, A. D. Stefanowska, and Clara Wing Chung-ho, eds. Biographical dictionary of Chinese women: The Qing Dynasty (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).

12As Stevan Harrell writes, “As representatives of their own minzu, and at the same time participants in this hegemonic state project, [scholars] participate in the two-way process of co-optation; their story gets told, and it is a glorious one, but it is told as a part of the larger story of the Chinese nation as a whole.” Harrell also remarks that in recent years, the strictures on minzu scholarship have loosened somewhat. Although ethnography, ethnology, and linguistics are still devoted to the state projects of nation-building and development, these disciplines are no longer held to such a rigid, normalizing paradigm. See Harrell, Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 45, 55.

13The preface to NQX states that Han ren signifies Han landlords. See NQX, 4. The authors of Guizhou tongshi (A comprehensive history of Guizhou), however, allow the original phrase tian jiang mie Han ren to stand without qualification, leaving open the possibility that the rebels attacked Han residents without regard to their class background. It is worth noting that Guizhou tongshi is a more recent book (published 2002), and its authors are not Buyi. See He Renzhong, ed., Guizhou tongshi. Di san juan, Qingdai de Guizhou (A comprehensive history of Guizhou, part 3, Qing dynasty Guizhou). (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 2002), 300.

14The rebels typically attacked villages inhabited by ordinary Han peasants. Several rebel confessions indicate that the Zhongjia were enticed to join the insurrection with promises that they could get rich by plundering Han villages.

15For many years, after Mao Zedong himself decreed that class struggle was the motive force of history, Chinese scholars had to treat “ethnic contradictions” as a sub-type of class contradictions. One scholar of the Nanlong Uprising allows that the rebellion arose from ethnic contradictions (minzu maodun) as well as class contradictions, but “ethnic contradictions” are never clearly defined. See, for example, Wu Changxing, “Qianxi Nanlong Buyizu qiyi baofa yuanyin” (A brief analysis of the reasons for the outbreak of the Nanlong Buyi Uprising), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 71–78. See also Yan Yong and Fan Lixia, “Lun Nanlong qiyi shehui beijing, jingyan jiaoxun ji lishi yiyi” (Discussing the social background, experience, lessons, and historical significance of the “Nanlong Uprising”), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 229–39.

16See Chen Dingxiu, “Nanlong qiyi yuanyin” (A brief analysis of the origins of the Nanlong Uprising), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 58–65, and Wu Changxing, 71–78. Several scholars refer to the Nanlong Uprising as a peasant rebellion (nongmin qiyi). See, for example, Huang Yiren, Buyizu jianshi. Interestingly, Huang Yiren simply calls it “the Buyi people’s rebellion and struggle” (Buyizu de qiyi douzheng). See his Buyizu shi, 198.

17Not even the Buyi scholars who collected and edited the indigenous narratives have much to say. They note that many events described in the narratives diverge from “historical facts” (that is, the events presented in the archival record and local gazetteers) but these scholars neglect to explain where and why these divergences occur.

18Tian Yuan, “‘Wang Xiangu,’ ‘Nanlong fanbing ge,’ qianxi” (A brief analysis of “Wang Xiangu” and “Song of the Nanlong Resistance”), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 286–90.

19Huang, Buyizu shi, 188.

20Jin may be on shaky historical ground here. The editors of NQX probably added these references to multi-ethnic participation to serve the same political aims expressed in Jin’s article. There is no evidence to suggest that the Nanlong Uprising was a pan-ethnic rebellion. The Qing documents and the two indigenous narratives all indicate that the overwhelming majority of rebels were Zhongjia. As we shall see later in this chapter, the rebel leaders did enlist the help of a local Han outlaw, but he was one of just a few documented participants from outside the Zhongjia ethnic group.

21Jin Anjiang, “Cong Nanlong qiyi kan jindai Buyizu diqu de minzu guanxi” (Looking at modern ethnic relations in Buyi regions since the Nanlong Uprising), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 115–16, 119.

22Perhaps these scholars were also reluctant to delve too deeply into the folk traditions of their own ethnic group, lest they betray support (real or perceived) for indigenous beliefs deemed inimical to socialism.

23Leng Tianfang, “Zongjiao yu ‘Nanlong qiyi’” (Religion in the ‘Nanlong Uprising’),” Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 130–38.

24As David Atwill suggests in his work on nineteenth-century Yunnan, local resistance viewed over a long period of time reveals a sustained, logical response to external pressures. In the case of Yunnan, these pressures were “state and new-Han power groups that threatened Yunnanese cultural solidarity and economic livelihood.” See Atwill, “Trading Places: Resistance, Ethnicity, and Governance in Nineteenth-Century Yunnan,” in Dragons, Tigers, and Dogs: Qing Crisis Management and the Boundaries of State Power in Late Imperial China, Robert J. Antony and Jane Kate Leonard, eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 242.

25Communities within Nanlong were divided into hamlets (xiang), each named after the four cardinal directions. These districts were further subdivided into hamlets. Dongsa was part of the “Northern District,” or Beixiang. The headmen in charge of these districts were directly responsible to imperially appointed local officials.

26Mo priestesses were renowned for their ability to predict the future and dispel evil spirits. According to one scholar, they did not always require the special training required of their male counterparts. Some of the priestesses acquired their powers after long illnesses. Also, they usually did not learn the scriptures used by the bumo. See Zhou Guomao, ed. Yizhong teshu de wenhua dianji: Buyizu Mojing yanjiu (A unique type of ancient texts: research on the Mojing religious literature of the Buyi ethnic group) (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin chubanshe, 2006), 3.

27Some sources refer to “crossing the darkness” as zouyin. The terminology suggests Daoist influences in Zhongjia popular religion, as does the use of terms such as “immortal.” See Li Rubiao, “‘Nanlong qiyi’ de zongjiao wenti” (The question of religion in the ‘Nanlong Uprising’), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 142. See also Wang Fangheng, “Nanlong qiyi zhong de wushu wenti” (The question of sorcery in the Nanlong Uprising), Buyi xue yanjiu 3 (1991): 147. The Northern Zhuang of Guangxi employ similar rituals called “crossing the passes” (guoguan) to cure children’s illnesses. See Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, 14.

28Xingyi fuzhi, 46: 19a–19b.

29NQX, 143, Document #129 (JCLZ mzl JQ 2/8/24, Confession of Wang Niangxian).

30Xingyi fuzhi, 46: 19b.

31Based on David Holm’s description, it seems that Wei Qiluoxu was a “ritual master” or shigong (), a broad descriptor for shamans, sorcerers, and exorcists who used a repertoire of magical and theatrical practices to drive away evil spirits. See Killing a Buffalo, 22–23.

32NQX, 143, Document #129 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/8/24, Confession of Wei Qiluoxu). Here, the Zhongjia are referred to as “Miao,” a generic term Qing officials often used for non-Han residents of southwestern China, without regard to their actual ethnicity.

33Wei Qiluoxu was a social bandit in the most basic sense of the term; his aim was to steal from the relatively wealthy and redistribute among the very poor. For a discussion of social banditry in early twentieth-century Hunan, see Elizabeth Perry’s essay, “Predatory Rebellion: Bai Lang and Social Banditry,” in her Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Social Protest and State Power in China (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2002), 108–33.

34NQX, 43–44, Document #58 (JCLZ mzl JQ 2/2/17), joint confession from Wang Asan, He Jima, Wei Aza, and Wang Jibao, four rebels captured during the early days of the suppression campaign. See also GZDJQ, 3:2, 713a–714, JQ 2/2/6, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

35NQX, 143, Document #129 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/8/24, Confession of Wei Qiluoxu). See also Xingyi fuzhi, 46: 17b. I have translated “Yunnan cheng” as Kunming, the Yunnan provincial capital.

36Wei Qiluoxu and Wang Niangxian never actually married; Wang Niangxian was already betrothed to a man in her village. According to Zhongjia custom, she and her husband lived separately for the first three years of their marriage. In any case, Wei Qiluoxu’s allegiance was instrumental to his larger ambitions. As Elizabeth Perry notes, the scope of a bandit leader’s control depended upon the kinds of outside coalitions he was able to forge. Such coalitions furnished protection for plundering purposes, and also served as “as stepping stones to a wider world of power and fame.” See Perry’s chapter, “Predators and Protectors: Strategies of Peasant Survival,” in her Challenging the Mandate of Heaven, 21.

37GZDJQ, 3:2, JQ 2/1/27, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

38One account suggests that Zeng Tingkui committed suicide by stabbing himself in the abdomen. See Xingyi fuzhi 46: 19a–20a. According to Feng Guangxiong, however, Zeng fell ill during the Lunar New Year and was bedridden when the rebels attacked. When Zeng learned that Nanlong was under siege, he immediately ordered local military personnel to protect the city. Several days later, just before Zeng died, he again ordered civil officials, local gentry, and local militia to protect the city. Feng was quick to assure the court that Zeng had not been negligent or careless in any way. One wonders, however, if Feng was trying to cover for his subordinate’s failure to take firmer action against Wang Niangxian’s followers–or his own (Feng’s) failure to report early activities to Beijing. See GZDJQ 3:2, 714b–717a, JQ 2/2/6, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

39In this regard, the Nanlong Uprising might be considered a consequence of what William Rowe calls “governance on the cheap.” At its peak, the Qing standing army, including both banner troops and the Chinese Green Standard Army, employed fewer than a million men to defend China’s territory, and to protect and pacify a population of four to five hundred million. See Rowe, China’s Last Empire, 32. The small size of the armed forces army kept military expenditures to a minimum, but it also created the potential for simultaneous rebellions in different parts of the empire.

40More than thirty-one thousand troops from Yunnan and Guizhou had been transferred to the Hunan front, leaving only a few thousand to deal with the Zhongjia. See NQX, 59. For an analysis of the Hunan Miao Uprising, see Donald Sutton, “Ethnic Revolt in the Qing Empire: The ‘Miao Uprising’ of 1795–1796 Reexamined,” Asia Major 3rd series, vol. 17, 1 (2003): 105–51. See also Daniel McMahon, “Identity and Conflict on a Chinese Borderland: Yan Ruyi and the Recruitment of the Gelao During the 1795–97 Miao Revolt,” Late Imperial China Vol. 23, No. 2 (December 2002): 53–86.

41Le Bao’s tenure in Yunnan and Guizhou was peripatetic, to say the least. Soon after his appointment to the governor-generalship in 1795, he was ordered to coordinate the Miao suppression on the Hunan-Guizhou border. He briefly returned to Yunnan in 1796, only to be ordered back to the Miao front when Hubei-Hunan governor-general Fukang’an died. After Le Bao secured a major victory in Hubei, the court ordered him to fight the Zhongjia in southwestern Guizhou. Shortly after the Zhongjia campaign ended in November 1797, Le Bao was appointed governor-general of Hubei and Hunan and continued to lead armies against the White Lotus rebels. See Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1943), I: 444.

42GZDJQ 3:2, 610, JQ 2/1/18, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

43JBD, JQ 2/1/26.

44GZDJQ 3:2, 648, JQ 2/1/27, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

45As Donald Sutton rightly observes, “ . . . acculturation does not mean assimilation, that is, a change of identification. See his “Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier,” 220. David Atwill has also suggested that comments like “yu qimin wuyi” represented “the highest possible compliment” from Chinese intellectuals or Qing officials. See his The Chinese Sultanate, 32

46Sang’s motivations for joining the rebellion are not entirely clear. When Qing armies recaptured Nanlong in August 1797, he was too injured to make a confession. In any case, Le Bao labeled him a “treacherous Han” (Han jian) for aiding and abetting Wei Qiluoxu. GZDJQ 5:1, 269–72, JQ 2/8/23, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

47NQX, 53 Document #63 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/3/2, Jiang Lan memorial).

48GZDJQ 4:2, 832a–833b, JQ 2/7/2, Jiang Lan memorial.

49GZDJQ 3:2, 714b–717a, JQ 2/2/6, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

50During the Qing Dynasty, Anshun served as Guizhou’s military nerve center; the provincial military commander was normally stationed there.

51GZDJQ 3:2, 714b–717a, JQ 2/2/6, Feng Guangxiong memorial.

52NQX, 49–51, Document #62 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/2/27, Feng Guangxiong).

53Ibid. For the death of Cui Lin, see Anshun fuzhi (Gazetteer of Anshun prefecture) 1851,44: 18a.

54JBD JQ 2/2/27.

55NQX, 52–55, Document #63 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/3/2, Jiang Lan memorial).

56JBD, JQ 2/3/2.

57The rebels had probably seized these guns from a Han village. Their weaponry varied from battle to battle, depending on what they had been able to steal in recent raids.

58GZDJQ 3:2, 839–40, JQ 2/2/23, Feng Guangxiong and Zhulonga memorial.

59GZDJQ 3:2, 838, JQ 2/2/23, Feng Guangxiong and Zhulonga memorial.

60JBD, JQ 2/3/5.

61NQX, 61–62, Document #70. Feng was especially concerned about Weiyuan (a key point on the eastward road to Hunan), and about Guzhou in southeastern Guizhou, which had been the locus of a major Miao uprising during the 1730s.

62Ibid.

63GZDJQ 4:2, 99–100, JQ 2/3/16, Le Bao and Feng Guangxiong memorial.

64NQX 72–75, Document #75 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/4/8, Le Bao memorial).

65NQX, 80–82, Document # 78 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/4/18, Le Bao memorial).

66NQX, 86–88, Document # 81 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/5/1, Le Bao memorial).

67The Mabie is a small tributary of the Hongshui River.

68NQX, 99–100, Document # 89 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/5/11, Le Bao memorial). As discussed below, a highly exaggerated account of the rebels’ victory at Mabie appears in the indigenous narrative “Wang Xiangu.”

69Wang Dengrong and Wang Tianlan.

70The rebel commander at Yangchang was Wang Azhan.

71NQX, 106–108, Document #94 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/5/23, Le Bao memorial). As noted earlier, Da Wang Gong was Wei Qiluoxu’s second-in-command.

72GZDJQ 4b: 642–645, JQ 2/6/18, Jiang Lan memorial and GZDJQ 4b: 688–90, JQ 2/6/29, Jiang Lan memorial.

73NQX, 119–121, Document # 102 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/7/9, Le Bao memorial).

74NQX, 141–144, Document #112 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 2/9/2, Le Bao memorial).

75For Xingyi, see JBD, JQ 2/8/20. For Zhenfeng, see JBD, JQ 2/10/20.

76JBD, JQ 2/10/6.

77In Buyi oral tradition, narrative poems are epic tales that developed from folk songs. For descriptions of various forms of Buyi folk literature, see Zhou Guoyan, “An Introduction to the Kam-Tai (Zhuang-Dong) Group of Languages in China,” 29.

78NQX, 255–56, “Wang Xiangu.”

79Ibid., 257–58.

80Ibid., 258–59. Here, the hands of PRC scholars may be at work. A discussion of social banditry, which reflects a lack of class consciousness, is omitted in favor of magic, thereby demonstrating that the Zhongjia needed the guiding hand of the Communists to lead them to scientific modernity.

81Ibid., 260.

82Ibid., 260–61. Here, Wang Niangxian speaks out against a longstanding grievance in Guizhou. The provincial treasury provided money for the requisition (caimai) of grain, firewood, and other raw materials from Zhongjia and Miao producers, but the local officials responsible for procuring these goods rarely paid for them. See Jenks, Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou, 52.

83NQX, 261–62, “Wang Xiangu.”

84Ibid., 264.

85The term kejia here should not be confused with the Kejia (“Guest people” or Hakka) of southeastern China. The Zhongjia often referred to Han Chinese as “kejia” or guests. Indeed, migrants throughout China were often called “kejia.” See NQX, 265, “Wang Xiangu.”

86NQX, 266, “Wang Xiangu.”

87Ibid., 267–68.

88Ibid., 268.

89Ibid., 269.

90Ibid., 270.

91Ibid., 270.

92Ibid., 270–71.

93Faith in this type of magic was common in other rebel movements. During the Saya San Rebellion of 1930–32, for example, Burman monks told recruits that they knew magical formulas that would turn twigs into war horses. See Adas, Prophets of Rebellion, 153.

94NQX, 272, “Wang Xiangu.”

95Ibid., 272.

96Ibid., 273.

97Ibid., 273–74.

98“Song of the Nanlong Resistance” appears to be an antiphonal song, or a song in which two performers (or groups of performers) sing alternately, one answering the other. Antiphonal singing is common among many Tai groups of southwestern China and Southeast Asia, often featured in festivals and courtship rituals. See Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, 14.

99NQX, 294, “Nanlong fanbing ge.”

100 The rhyme and symmetry of these Chinese verses suggests the hand of a post-1949 editor. NQX, 293, “Nanlong fanbing ge.”

101 Ibid., 293–95.

102 Ibid., 296.

103 This general is identified in the narrative as Jia Jiangjun. The compilers of NQX suggest that this was a local nickname for either Chang Shan or Zhulonga.

104 NQX, 296–97.

105 Ibid., 299, “Nanlong fanbing ge.”

106 Before this point, the poem includes an episode describing the imperial rewards bestowed upon Le Bao and Jia Jiangjun, as well as the posthumous awards for the Qing officials killed in battle. This scene serves as an indirect way of boasting about the prowess of the Zhongjia rebels. That is, the Zhongjia rebels were worthy foes who exacted a heavy toll on the Qing troops.

107 NQX, 300, “Nanlong fanbing ge.”

108 Ibid., 303.

109 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 81.

110 For the reforms in western Hunan, see Daniel McMahon, “New Order in Hunan’s Miao Frontier,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 9:1 (Spring 2008).

111 NQX 195–99, Document #139 (JCLZ mzl, JQ 3/3/23, Feng Guangxiong and E’hui).

112 ZPZZ mzl 1916–1, JQ 5/6/27, Jueluo Langgan ().

6 / A LEGACY OF FRAGILE HEGEMONY

1For a discussion of one such strategic marriage, see James Millward, “A Uyghur Muslim in Qianlong’s Court: The Meanings of the Fragrant Concubine,” The Journal of Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (May 1994): 427–58.

2See Giersch, Asian Borderlands, 3–5, 91–96.

3Millward, Beyond the Pass, 197. See also Hostetler, “Qing Connections to the Early Modern World: Ethnography and Cartography in Eighteenth-Century China.” Modern Asian Studies 34, no. 3 (2000): 630–31; and Perdue, “Military Mobilization,” 785, 788.

4Millward, Beyond the Pass, 199. Evelyn S. Rawski has also demonstrated that Qing court culture incorporated many traditions from the Manchus, Mongols, Uighurs, and Tibetans. See her The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

5One product of the demand for information on Guizhou was Aibida’s Handbook of Guizhou (Qiannan shilue). Aibida compiled this book for his own reference and for the benefit of future administrators while serving as Guizhou’s governor in the early 1750s. He condensed information from local gazetteers and other contemporary geographic writings into a single, handy volume, organizing his material according to geographic region. Each of the thirty-two chapters is devoted to the political history, economy, climate, and population of a single administrative unit. Aside from its practical function, the handbook carried considerable symbolic value. To refer to the concepts introduced in chapter 3, the volume functioned as a catalogue of the state spaces the Qing had delineated within Guizhou. The very act of committing geographic information to paper signaled that these sections of Guizhou had become part of the world known to—and under the jurisdiction of—the Qing state. In 1847, Guizhou Governor Luo Raodian revised the book and published it as Qiannan zhifang shilue. Interestingly, the handbook saw little use during the eighteenth century. The original copy was misplaced sometime after Aibida’s tenure and only rediscovered in the 1820s.

6Information in local gazetteers was organized topically, with each chapter subdivided according to geographic region. A chapter on local products, for example, would list all the crops grown in each geographic region. Likewise, a chapter on administrative history would list the information region by region. The disadvantage of this system was that one had to consult several chapters to find all the necessary information about a given place. Aibida simplified matters by organizing all the information on a given region into single chapters.

7See Laura Hostetler, “Introduction: Early Modern Ethnography in Comparative Historical Perspective” in Deal and Hostetler, The Art of Ethnography, 159–60, 166–67.

8Deal and Hostetler, The Art of Ethnography, 15.

9Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, 159–60, 166–67.

10Hostetler, “Introduction: Early Modern Ethnography,” xli.

11Hostetler, Qing Colonial Enterprise, 206.

12As Laura Hostetler writes, “In essence, those who do the depicting define the peoples described. . . . [The] goal of the colonizer, or imperial authority, is precisely and unabashedly to learn about, or rather construct, the identity of those to be ruled. Such knowledge simplifies the task of governance.” See Hostetler, “Qing Connections to the Early Modern World,” 649–50.

13Hostetler, “Chinese Ethnography in the Eighteenth Century: The Miao Albums of Guizhou Province” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1995), 218, 222.

14Perdue, “Military Mobilization,” 788.

15In other words, they had no “emancipatory visions,” as Jean Michaud might call them. See Michaud, “Hmong infrapolitics,” 1866.

16This is in keeping with James Scott’s comments on the hidden transcript: “By definition, the hidden transcript represents discourse—gesture, speech, practices—that is ordinarily excluded from the public transcript of subordinates by the exercise of power. The practice of domination, then, creates the hidden transcript. If the domination is particularly severe, it is likely to produce a hidden transcript of corresponding richness. The hidden transcript of subordinate groups, in turn, reacts back on the public transcript by engendering a subculture and by opposing its own variant form of social domination against that of the dominant elite. Both are realms of power and interests.” See Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 27.

17As James Scott explains, “To continue the same routine means to go under in any case and it once again makes sense to take risks; such risks are in the interest of subsistence.” See James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1976, 26.

18David A. Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 240, 255, 257, 279.

19Scott, Seeing Like a State, 3, 343.

20Or, as Scott puts it, “The progenitors of such plans [for simplification] regarded themselves as far smarter and [more] farseeing than they really were, and at the same time, regarded their subjects as far more stupid and incompetent than they really were.” Seeing Like a State, 343.

21Clifton Crais calls this “a historical conversation between the rulers and the ruled.” See Crais, “Chiefs and Bureaucrats in the Making of Empire: A Drama from the Transkei, South Africa, October 1880,” American Historical Review vol. 108, no. 4 (October 2003): 1037.

22Perdue, “Military Mobilization,” 788.

23Here, I understand a civilizing project in terms of Stevan Harrell’s definition—an inherently unequal interaction in which one group, the civilizing center, claims a superior degree of civilization and undertakes to elevate the civilization of a peripheral group. See his “Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 3.

24Harrell, “Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” 36; see also McMahon, “Restoring the Garden,” 335–36.

25Scott, Seeing Like a State, 184.

26Nicholas Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel, and Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 105–6.

27Millward, Beyond the Pass, 199–201; Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography, 239–40.

28The distinction here is between nation and ethnic group. It carries very important implications for politics in China today because Tibet and Xinjiang will likely never be pacified unless the CCP recognizes that the PRC is multinational and not just multicultural.

29According to Pamela Kyle Crossley, the Manchus, Mongols, Han, Tibetans, and East Turkestanis earned their status by virtue of their contributions to the creation and development of the Qing state. See her “Manzhou yuanliu kao and the Formalization of the Manchu Heritage,” Journal of Asian Studies vol. 46, no. 4 (November 1987): 780. See also Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography, 242.

30Teng, Taiwan’s Imagined Geography, 242–43.

31Ibid., 245, figure 34.

32Ibid., 246.

33Beatrice S. Bartlett, Review of The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial Institutions, in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 61, no. 1 (June 2001): 176–78.

34Sutton, “Ethnicity and the Miao Frontier,” 229.

35Daniel B. Wright, The Promise of the Revolution: Stories of Fulfillment and Struggle in China’s Hinterland (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 51–60.

36BBC News Online, Monday 26 March 2001 (http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/719.html).

37The New York Times, June 30, 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/world/asia/30iht-30riot.14086300.html?_r=1).

38Caohai’s winter wetland is a gathering ground for several species of endangered migratory birds, including the black crane.

39Melinda Herrold, “The Cranes of Caohai and Other Incidents of Fieldwork in Southwest China,” Geographical Review, Vol. 89, No. 3 (July 1999): 440–48.

40Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant, 32–34.

41As noted earlier, this is one of the central concerns in Yu Luo’s PhD research at Yale University.

42Timothy Oakes, “Selling Guizhou: Cultural Development in an era of Marketization,” In The Political Economy of China’s Provinces, eds. H. Hendrischke and C. Y. Feng, (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 65.

43Tim Oakes, “Cultural Strategies of Development: Implications for Village Governance in China,” The Pacific Review 19, No. 1 (March 2006): 23–28.

44Oakes, “Selling Guizhou,” 65.

45See Louisa Schein, Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China’s Cultural Politics. (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 8.