3 / Education and Ethnic Identity in Lijiang since 1980
In Lijiang, as in other minority areas of China, the end of the Cultural Revolution brought a renewed political emphasis on the development of minority education, including special minority schools, the expansion of teaching in minority languages, and the creation of new textbooks for minorities. In light of the social problems that the Cultural Revolution’s suppression of ethnic expressions had created, the government also emphasized that patriotic education was an important part of education, not the least in minority areas. Thus, the development of minority education had the dual purpose of raising the educational level of minorities (thereby bringing about economic modernization) and ensuring minorities’ loyalty to the state, the CCP, one another, and the majority Han.
MINORITY SCHOOLS
To meet the government’s goal of securing, standardizing, and expanding education of minority minzu, the boarding-school system has been promoted as the most practical and efficient form of education. All autonomous minority counties and prefectures in Yunnan have now established at least one “minority boarding school,” usually a junior secondary school that recruits students from the poorest and most remote areas. In 1981 Lijiang’s first (and only) minority boarding school, Lijiang County Minority Secondary School (Lijiang Xian Minzu Zhongxue), was started initially with two classes of higher primary school. In 1986 the provincial government decided to transfer money to counties for the establishment of semiboarding primary schools in the poorest minority areas. At the same time, the Lijiang County government turned the minority school in Lijiang into a minority junior secondary school, which, since 1987, has recruited students for three years of junior secondary school education.
The school enrolls one hundred graduates of primary schools a year. It is much more difficult to get into this school than into a regular junior secondary school, though special consideration is given to approximately twenty-five students each year from townships where very few primary-school graduates are able to continue on to junior secondary school. Naxi, Han, and Bai students do not receive extra points. Generally, students for this minzu school need about 142 points to get in, as compared to 90 points for regular junior secondary schools. The school is very popular because students get twenty-three yuan (in 1995) in support every month from the government, it has strict regulations concerning the students’ spare-time activities, and students do not have to cook for themselves. Most importantly, it has a relatively high percentage of graduates continuing on to senior or specialized secondary school, and therefore each year a number of parents attempt to enroll children through the “back door.”1 For the poorest parents it is a heavy economic burden to have a child in the school, because a boarding-school student needs a minimum of one hundred yuan per month for living expenses, and, as in other schools, they have to pay for books. Each class has a small piece of land that it may cultivate to support poorer students. The Naxi constitute the largest group of students, with almost 60 percent, and twenty of the twenty-three teachers are Naxi. Boys make up the vast majority of students, an average of 74.5 percent between 1985 and 1991. This probably reflects the preference of most villagers of all ethnic groups in Lijiang that sons (rather than daughters) receive an education, not the least so when they can afford only one student in the family.
Two other secondary schools arrange special minority classes (minzu ban). These classes in one of these secondary schools are exceptional in China because they are reserved for the students with the highest examination scores, not for students from poor areas, as is common practice in minority schools and classes. Normally, students (including the Han) need 160 points to enroll in this kind of junior minority class (compared to 90 points in a regular junior secondary class) and 470 for the senior minority class (compared to 430 points in a regular senior secondary class). In fact, students admitted to these minority classes have scored higher than is needed for specialized secondary schools, which are generally the most prestigious secondary schools apart from provincial keypoint schools. (Except for highly educated parents, the majority want their children to attend a specialized senior secondary school because they will be guaranteed work after three years of study.) All students in a special minority class live at the school, and minority students receive financial support from the local government (seven yuan per month in the lower minority class and fifteen yuan in the higher one in 1995). The purpose of this class is to educate what the administration calls “especially clever minority students,” so students get the best teachers and the most extracurricular support. According to the administration, approximately 80 percent manage to continue on to higher education. This is an extremely high rate. Because it is very prestigious to be admitted to the minority class, students from the regular secondary school classes have given it the nickname “aristocratic class” (guizu ban). Most students in the class are Naxi, especially from Lijiang Town or Shigu, where the influence of Chinese language is strongest due to the many Han living there and where students have some of the best educational possibilities.
The keypoint secondary school also arranges special minority classes, but these recruit minority students from the poorest and least developed townships of the four counties in Lijiang Prefecture. Lisu and Yi get extra points for admission to this senior secondary school class, and although the Mosuo are officially part of the Naxi minzu, they, too are considered as a separate group when extra points are granted. Many of the graduates from this class return as cadres to their own townships, because only 15 to 20 percent of them pass the university entrance examination. This figure is low compared to the other regular classes in this key point school, from which approximately 50 percent continue on to higher education.2
Most students at the minority secondary school are between thirteen and sixteen years old, and although the Naxi make up the majority of students, all of the other minzu in Lijiang are represented, too. All teaching here, as well as in other secondary schools in Lijiang, is in Chinese, and only rarely do teachers explain in Naxi if students do not understand them. Many teachers regard poor proficiency in Chinese as one of the main problems in the school. Most students speak Chinese only as their second language, and many of their parents are illiterate. Some teachers found that students from the countryside were also in need of cultural training:
Students here belong to different minorities and we teachers have to learn about their customs and habits from home in order to understand them. Still, they were the best students in their local primary schools, so they are quite good at learning. . . . It is also relatively easy to teach them, because they are grateful that they have come to this school. Most students are in Dayan [the town of Lijiang] for the first time. It is difficult in the beginning for them to get used to life here. They are not used to studying, to paying attention to hygiene, to following certain rules. Some have long hair when they come, are very dirty, and wear old rags. (Naxi teacher)
Teachers (most of whom are Naxi) tended to believe that most academic and social problems in the school concerned the minzu from the mountains, such as Yi, Lisu, Miao, and Pumi. Students also mentioned conflicts between ethnic groups from the mountains and the Naxi. Outside of class the Naxi speak Naxi with one another, and there was a tendency among many of them to look down upon the other ethnic groups as more backward.
Official rhetoric, and many individual teachers, deny that the backwardness of others justifies one’s own feeling of superiority, but in fact the content and form of education support the Naxi students’ feeling that the other local minorities are more “backward” and “primitive” than themselves. The Naxi are generally best in Chinese due to their long contact with the Han and to their geographical setting with good infrastructure, as compared to the poorer minorities in the mountains. During their education, students are constantly confronted with the fact that knowledge of Chinese is a strength, whereas outside their own village a minority language as a mother tongue is a cultural deficiency. Due to their large number in the minority school, the Naxi students find a forum of common cultural reference where they can speak their own language and celebrate Naxi festivals. Some Naxi students who come from poor areas that are generally considered to be rather backward experience an unexpected interest in and even respect for their local dongba rituals. Although the minority school itself does not teach the culture or history of specific minzu, rural Naxi students arrive (often for the first time) in a town where tourists, local entrepreneurs, museums, and intellectuals express interest in the dongba ritual specialists who remain in only a few Naxi areas today. Furthermore, because most teachers at the school (and in Lijiang in general) are Naxi, Naxi students have an opportunity to talk and ask questions in Naxi outside of class. Perhaps more important, students realize that many Naxi are able to succeed within the educational system. The students from the smaller minorities, on the other hand, experience a stronger break with home because at school they live in surroundings where all classes are in Chinese, all teachers speak Chinese, and most students speak Naxi or Chinese. They can no longer participate in local festivals or religious and family celebrations, since only the common Naxi, Han, or Communist festivals are celebrated as holidays at the school, and to a large degree they have to dissociate themselves from their village background in order to succeed in the educational system.
Naxi at the boarding school, who come to the city from remote rural areas, tend to strengthen their ethnic identity through contact with other Naxi and especially through encountering public expressions of modern Naxi identity in the town of Lijiang. While being away from home to receive an education based on Chinese language, history, and nationalism, they also experience that teachers are Naxi, the local government is Naxi, and “dongba culture” is an aspect of being Naxi that one can feel proud of. Yet some of them also told me that because they knew that they looked poor, and everybody would guess from their dialect that they were from a remote rural area, they were embarrassed to walk around in the town. Despite such concerns, they discovered, through their boarding-school experience, a hitherto unknown dimension of being Naxi, and, unlike many of the other ethnic minorities at the school, they tended to emphasize the positive aspects of Naxi culture rather than negative notions of “backward culture” or “backward economy.”
RURAL SCHOOLS
There are considerable differences between schools in the county and prefectural capital of Lijiang, and the rural schools elsewhere in the county. Generally speaking, the poorest areas also have the poorest schools, the least educated teachers, and the biggest problems concerning attendance, dropout rate, and matriculation. There are still more than two hundred minban teachers in Lijiang, and all of them teach in rural primary schools. Many are single teachers in lower primary schools (two to four years of study), their wages are often only one-third of those of a regular teacher, and they depend upon (often unstable) local financial support. Teachers in mountain villages among the Lisu, Miao, Nuosu, and Tuo’en (the last two both classified as Yi), especially, complain that parents cannot afford to buy books for their children and therefore prefer to let them work in the fields rather than send them to school.3 In most schools in the countryside girls are in the minority, often because parents prefer to support the education of a son rather than a daughter. Some parents complain that when they have to pay up to thirty yuan per semester for tuition and more for books, they consider this a proper investment only if their children will be able to continue on to a specialized secondary school that will at least guarantee them work outside the village after graduation. On the other hand, all parents I talked to know about the compulsory education law. Because children must start primary school at age seven, most parents agree to let their children attend for at least the first four years.
Many of the problems in rural education in Lijiang are related to middle school education, where few students start and even fewer graduate. For example, in one rural junior secondary school in a township near Lijiang Town, about 20 percent of students drop out each year. Almost all students in this school are Naxi (more than 60 percent are boys), and many walk five to six hours home for the weekends. When they return to school, they carry food for the whole week, and at school they have to find firewood for the cooking, which they do themselves. This is also common practice in some of the primary schools in the same township, where pupils between the ages of eleven and thirteen sometimes have to walk several hours to school on Sunday, carrying food for the whole week, and then walk back home on Friday. The government supports these schools only as semiboarding schools, giving seven yuan per student, while in fact they function as full boarding schools and should receive at least three times more. Thus insufficient financial support and student hardship are the common reasons for dropout. Another is the parents’ focus on specialized secondary school education, which causes them to consider junior secondary school a waste of time and money unless they feel certain that their child can go on to the School of Finance (Caizheng Xuexiao), School of Hygiene (Weisheng Xuexiao), or Normal School (Shifan Xuexiao) after graduation and secure a job later.
Many village children in Lijiang also face language barriers, but in this respect Naxi children are privileged compared to those from ethnic groups such as the Tuo’en, Lisu, Miao, and Premi. Most rural teachers are themselves Naxi, and although bilingual education is not explicitly promoted among the Naxi (as it is among some of the Lisu), I often heard teachers explaining in Naxi when I attended classes in rural schools. The majority of rural Naxi secondary school students I interviewed recalled teachers speaking Naxi during the first years of education. Moreover, because many Naxi villages have had schools at least since the 1920s, education is not regarded as foreign or as a Han imposition from the outside, but rather as an integrated part of local village life. To the degree that parents care about which language the teacher speaks to their children in class, most rural parents seem to consider Chinese the only proper language, either because it will increase students’ chances of upward social mobility or because minorities are simply accustomed to the fact that education is Chinese by definition. Most parents agree with teachers that the only reason for teaching in Naxi the first year is to facilitate the learning of Chinese.
Education obviously has less direct influence on ethnic identity among Naxi in the countryside than in Lijiang Town, where most children complete nine years of education and the intellectual Naxi actively attempt to spread their ideas of Naxi identity. However, especially in recent years, the strong interest in the dongba script and rituals and traditional Naxi music and dances, which had been centered in the town of Lijiang, has started to spread into rural Naxi areas. Since these are the places where dongba rituals are sometimes still practiced, where Naxi festivals are still celebrated in the old way, and where people play and sing Naxi music and songs, Naxi intellectuals and foreign researchers are seeking out these areas to collect material. The influence of local Naxi teachers on local Naxi identity is also considerable. Today most teachers have been educated at the Normal School in the town of Lijiang, and they have been confronted with the extensive local and international interest in the dongba script. Many of these teachers express regret that they never learned about Naxi culture in school, and they take the initiative to tell their pupils traditional Naxi stories that they have read in Naxi publications such as the local magazine Yulong Mountain or that they were told by their grandparents. Thus, modern expressions of Naxi identity are also influencing the rural Naxi to an increasing degree and are closely related to the content and scope of education.
TEACHING ETHNIC CATEGORIES AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION
In Lijiang County minority minzu make up 82 percent of the population, of which the Naxi constitute more than 58 percent. Therefore, many educators say that in Lijiang “all education is minority education.” The minority secondary school is not reserved for non-Han, but for minzu from the poorest, most remote areas with the fewest secondary school graduates. However, the content of education in primary and secondary schools in Lijiang, including the minority school, follows the national standardized teaching material, with a short course in Yunnan history in junior secondary school as the only supplement.4 Also Lijiang Normal School, which educates teachers for primary schools all over Lijiang Prefecture, has one course in Yunnan history as the only addition to the national standardized teaching material. The two brief Yunnan history volumes (Yunnan lishi for regular secondary schools and Yunnan difang shi for normal schools) were edited by the provincial Bureau of Education in 1990 after the 1989 student protests in Beijing, which caused the central government to demand strengthened focus on nationalism in education.5 The government’s basic idea behind the support of more local teaching material is that love of one’s native area should be explicitly put into perspective with broader nationalist feelings. With the ultimate goal of promoting “love of the country and the Party,” the government encourages students to “love their native place” as an inseparable part of the Chinese state represented by the Communist Party. Therefore, the Lijiang government is currently preparing a collection of articles about Lijiang history, cultural relics, nature, the Red Army in Lijiang, and famous local people. Within the next few years this volume probably will become supplemental teaching material in primary and secondary schools in Lijiang County. It is likely to be well received among the Naxi teachers who complain that even though they would like to teach their students about Naxi history and culture, they themselves do not know much about it.
One of the important purposes of teaching Yunnan history is to transmit the message that Yunnan, with all its inhabitants, has been an inseparable part of the Chinese empire for two thousand years. Thereby, the government hopes to create among minority students a strong sense of belonging to the modern Chinese Communist state and being a historical part of the Chinese nation. The introduction to one of the history books, quoted here in full, clearly illustrates this intention:
Yunnan is an inseparable part of China. Yunnan local history is an organic part of China’s history. Yunnan is a place where humans originated. On this piece of land, people have lived and labored since ancient times, opened up land, created civilization, and made history with their own hands.
Since Qin founded the fully unified centralized state power, Yunnan has been an administrative unit in this unified multiethnic country. For more than two thousand years, Yunnan has been called an administrative unit. First it was called a county, then a prefecture, and then the Yuan dynasty established Yunnan Province. The political connections between Yunnan and China in dynastic history have changed, so that sometimes Yunnan was directly ruled by the empire, while at other times rule was indirect. However, in spite of different kinds of rule, Yunnan has always been an inseparable part of China.
The great People’s Republic is a unified multiethnic country. Today all minority minzu within the borders of China are members of the Chinese nation [Zhonghua minzu]. Yunnan is the province in our country that is inhabited by most nationalities. It is a miniature of our multiethnic fatherland. Almost all forefathers of each minzu can be traced back to the times before Qin. They all have a very long history.
The purpose of studying Yunnan history is to deepen knowledge of Yunnan; to receive patriotic teaching and education in revolutionary tradition; and to foster feelings of love of one’s local area, love of the people, love of the fatherland, and love of the Chinese Communist Party. Furthermore, the purpose is to protect the unity of the fatherland, strengthen the unity of the minzu, and actively participate in building socialism in Yunnan. (Yunnan difang shi 1992: “Introduction”)
Yunnan history is studied in most secondary schools and normal schools throughout the province and is part of the “patriotic education” that the central government emphasizes as essential for ensuring integration of minorities. The textbooks present a general survey of events in Yunnan’s history profoundly influenced by Morgan’s and Engels’s theories of social evolution, which still dominate much of China’s social sciences. Apart from the focus on Yunnan’s historical incorporation into the Chinese empire, a dominant theme is the close relationship between Han and other minzu. Historical ethnic conflicts are generally interpreted as being essentially class conflicts, sometimes initiated by previous unjust governments’ oppression of ethnic minorities. The books discuss relations between two groups, the Han and “minorities” (i.e., all of the officially recognized minority minzu in Yunnan). Only in the case of major ethnic clashes, such as that involving the Hui in the late nineteenth century, are specific non-Han groups mentioned. Cultural influence and exchange is generally presented as a one-way process in which the developed Han people influence and develop an unspecified group of grateful “minorities.” Thus, two sorts of culture are constructed and presented to the student: advanced Han culture and less advanced non-Han culture. This becomes explicit in the teaching of social evolution of humanity, which is presented as a scientifically proven, and therefore indisputable, theory:
All minzu [in Yunnan] live in different areas, and their economies are not equally well developed. Therefore, on the eve of Liberation, different developmental stages still existed: primitive society [yuanshi shehui], slave society [nuli shehui], serf society [nongnu shehui], and feudal society [fengjian shehui]. And therefore, Yunnan has long been called a “living history of social development.” (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 64)
Students learn that some minorities still possess a worldview and system of values that belong to “primitive society” and that those with a “high cultural level” owe it to strong Han influence, such as that on the Bai during the time of the Dali kingdom (973–1283) (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 43). Large-scale immigration of Han into Yunnan during the Ming dynasty brought advanced agricultural tools and techniques. The dismissal of local hereditary chiefs during the Qing dynasty was greatly beneficial to the minorities because the previous system of granting power to local chiefs had blocked development of production, made society unstable, and prevented progress (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 59). When specific non-Han groups are mentioned it is not for their technical advancement but for their “prosperous minority cultures.” Minority dances and music are used as examples of “mankind’s earliest forms of singing.” In this way, the books contrast a picture of technically and politically advanced Han against primitive but sensitive minorities. Students also learn about the establishment of education in Yunnan, but this is limited to Confucian education and early Chinese modern education, both of which “disseminated advanced Han culture,” while nothing is mentioned about other groups’ forms of education (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 47; and Yunnan lishi 1991: 47).
In other subjects, especially secondary school politics and history, the common national teaching material also emphasizes patriotic education and social evolution. The primary school course in ideology and morals (sixiang pinde) focuses on proper moral behavior, which includes love of the country, flag, CCP, and national anthem. The Yunnan Bureau of Education has edited a booklet meant for supplementary reading in ideology and morals that includes stories of heroic people (such as the famous revolutionary hero Lei Feng)6 and the Communists’ achievements in Yunnan. In a chapter called “Yunnan: The Home of National Harmony,” children learn the names of the twenty-six minzu living in Yunnan, who before Liberation “did not trust each other” and fought against each other in this area where “production and economy was utterly backward” (Sixiang pinde 1991:19). But then came Liberation:
After Liberation all minzu in our country became equal. Socialist ethnic relations based upon equality, unity, and mutual aid were established. The country also granted special consideration to minorities. The formerly oppressed minorities became masters of the country. . . . The Party and the country were deeply concerned about the minorities in the border regions. They sent minzu work teams to the minority regions to help them develop trade, education, science, culture, and hygiene. . . . The Party’s minority policy promoted unity of the minzu, so that former “enemies” [yuanjia] became “relatives” [qinjia]. All of the minzu in Yunnan lived in harmony and united to help each other and to develop and protect the borders of the fatherland. (Sixiang pinde 1991: 19–20)
In a following exercise pupils must memorize the names of the twenty-six minzu in Yunnan. They also have to fill in two key words from the text, namely that all minzu in China are “equal” and that they must “unite.” The Han are not directly mentioned since the text speaks only about the Communist Party helping the minority minzu, who are depicted as backward and helpless peoples. Indirectly the Han appear as the majority, representing the Party, not (as a group) backward, and not in need of the same kind of help.
In secondary school the teaching of evolution and ethnic categories is intensified. Students learn, for instance, that “if we look at the whole country, the Han minzu constitutes the vast majority. Generally speaking, their level of development is also the highest, so with regard to equality and unity of minzu, the Han people carry the gravest responsibility” (Sixiang zhengzhi 1993, first year of junior secondary school, vol. 1: 57). In the second year of junior secondary school, students study in detail Morgan’s and Engels’s stages of social evolution. Below a picture of Beijing man from the Stone Age, they see a picture of contemporary men belonging to the Jinuo minzu (from Sipsong Panna) who are dividing meat into equal portions for villagers—a so-called remnant from primitive society. The book’s rather dull descriptions of the stages of human social evolution are sometimes given life through examples of contemporary minorities whose methods of production and social organization are characteristic of particular evolutionary stages. For instance, the Yi in Liangshan are put forward as examples of how the extremely backward developmental stage of “slave society” still existed at the time of Liberation. Tibet is used as an example of a “feudal serf society” that existed until Liberation.
In classes on ideology and politics (sixiang zhengzhi) in the third year of senior secondary education, many more examples are put forward to illustrate the point that all of China’s minzu have belonged to the same Chinese nation [Zhonghua minzu] since the time of Qin (221–206 B.C.E.) and that most represented different (low) stages of development before 1949. It is also repeatedly stated that minority areas are still culturally and economically backward, although they have an abundance of unexploited natural resources. With their higher level of development, the Han are obliged to help the minorities to develop. This, it is claimed, will even help the Han themselves because of the wealth that the harvesting of natural resources in minority areas will bring to the whole country (Sixiang zhengzhi 1993, third year of senior secondary school: 131–33).
Students may read one thing in textbooks and hear it from their teachers, but remember quite another. When I asked Naxi students or graduates what they had learned in school about their own minzu, most immediately answered, “Nothing” (Mei you xue). When asked more specifically if teachers sometimes taught about the Naxi, although not according to textbooks, many recalled that Naxi teachers sometimes told Naxi stories or a bit of Naxi history, such as why most Naxi are called either Mu or He. Many had also heard that the Naxi were always “good at studying” and at “learning from Han culture.” All agreed that they had never learned anything about the Naxi from textbooks. When asked about what they had learned generally about the different minzu in China, virtually all mentioned descriptions of social evolution. All students without exception were well aware that minorities represented the most backward stages, and most believed this to be an indisputable fact, since it was never discussed in class but simply presented as the truth.
At present there are divergent opinions among educational administrators, teachers, and intellectuals in Lijiang as to whether students should learn more about local culture, language, and history. One of the secondary school headmasters in Lijiang, a Naxi himself, expressed his point of view in this way:
At that time [before the 1980s] there was no teaching material about the development of the various minzu. Now there are some books on this topic, but because there is no general agreement about matters such as how to present “dongba culture,” it would be impossible anyway to teach about it in school. We teach from a broad perspective, and to stress the history or culture of certain minzu would be damaging for the unity of the minzu. We teach about the five-thousand-year history of the Chinese nation.
Naxi themselves do not agree on this subject, but many cadres, teachers, and intellectuals now think that Naxi ought to learn at least something in school about their own culture and history. There is very little interest in teaching about the other ethnic groups in Lijiang, probably because they are minorities there and do not have a strong intellectual elite. Most government officials, cadres, teachers, and educational administrators in Lijiang are Naxi themselves, and all tend to emphasize “dongba culture” as the most outstanding and valuable aspect of Naxi identity and culture.
The Naxi minzu is a rare example of a small minority that is mentioned briefly in the Yunnan history booklets cited above. Lijiang is used as an example of an area where the transference of local power in 1723 to Qing bureaucrats resulted in economic development (Yunnan lishi 1991: 40). In the Yunnan history book for the students at Yunnan’s normal schools, the “dongba religion” of the Naxi is mentioned. This book explains that in accordance with the various stages of development, different “primitive religious beliefs” prevailed among the nationalities, and some, including the Naxi, had their own unique religion (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 68).
THE ROLE OF EDUCATION FOR NAXI IDENTITY TODAY: “IN EDUCATION WE NAXI ARE THE BEST”
Because of our geographical situation, we Naxi have always found it very easy to adopt cultures coming from the outside. With the Tibetans to the north and the Bai and Han to the south, we have been under strong influence from these cultures. We do not have a Naxi university, so we have to adapt well to Han culture [Han wenhua], and therefore we, of all the fifty-five minority minzu in China, have the most university students. (Forty-year-old teacher)
Pupils from the Naxi and Tuo’en ethnic groups in a village primary school in Lijiang. Like several other primary schools, this one receives government support as a semiboarding school, although it functions as a full boarding school. Pupils whose families live a half day’s walk from the school stay during the week, bringing and cooking their own food.
Many small village schools have only one or two teachers, who simultaneously teach several grades of primary school. Here the class is divided into two grades facing separate blackboards.
Premi village primary school in Lijiang. Among the Premi, as well as the Naxi, there is officially no bilingual education. However, many local teachers use Naxi or, as in this school, Premi as their language for instruction during the first few years of primary education. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
The Mao Zedong poster in this teacher’s training school classroom reads, “Have pride and self-respect; improve yourself and stand on your own feet.”
Tai participant in a patriotic speech competition in Sipsong Panna.
Several monasteries in Sipsong Panna have started to teach novices mathematics, standard Thai, and Chinese in addition to traditional Buddhist subjects. This blackboard presents Thai, Chinese, and Tai equivalents of Arabic numerals.
Novices in front of a monastery in Sipsong Panna. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
Students in the dormitory of a secondary boarding school in Sipsong Panna. All Tai female students wear Tai clothing, whereas Akha female students are ashamed of the traditional Akha costume, which they (and the Tai students) associate with “backwardness” and poverty.
Rural lower primary school in an Akhe village in Sipsong Panna. Chinese work teams installed basketball courts in most villages in Sipsong Panna and other minority areas in the 1950s. According to one Han cadre who himself participated in such a project, courts were to serve as playgrounds, places for storing grain, and (most important) public spaces where work teams could gather villagers to inform them about the CCP’s policy and reform work. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
Buddhist monastery and pagoda in Damenglong, Sipsong Panna.
Pupils between the ages of seven and fifteen in a village primary school with only one teacher in a Khmu village in Sipsong Panna. Like the Tai, the Khmu are Buddhists, but because they have no monk to teach their novices in the small village monastery, the few novices in the village attend primary school instead. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
Tai participants in a major festival in Damenglong, Sipsong Panna. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
Today the Naxi have a relatively high percentage of graduate and undergraduate students compared to most other minzu in China. In 1993, 0.643 percent of Naxi had graduated from college (benke, four years) compared to a national average of 0.543 percent. Among the Han, 0.558 percent were college graduates, the Mongols 0.757, the Koreans as much as 2.271, the Manchus 0.624, and the Hui 0.591. All of these minzu are known in China for having a high level of Chinese education. In comparison only 0.107 percent of the Dai minzu were college graduates.7 Although technically some of the small minorities have a higher number of college graduates than the Naxi, this is often because each minority minzu is entitled to have members educated at a higher level no matter how small the minzu is and no matter how low the educational level of graduates from senior secondary school. When comparing Lijiang with Sipsong Panna, is it clear that school enrollment and graduation percentages are not only higher in Lijiang, but surpass those in most other areas in Yunnan. In 1988 for instance, when 94.5 percent of school-aged children in Yunnan were enrolled in primary school, 86.5 percent were enrolled in Sipsong Panna Prefecture, 78.3 percent in Menghai County (in Sipsong Panna), and 96.4 percent in Lijiang County.8 Most Naxi students who continue beyond junior secondary school are from the town of Lijiang, and the vast majority of Naxi students who continue into higher education are graduates of the two best regular secondary schools in the town of Lijiang.
Due to the early establishment of Confucian education in Lijiang and the relatively successful spread of modern education in Lijiang, the Naxi are often described in Chinese media and publications as a minzu with a “high level of education,” a minzu that has proven “willing to learn from more advanced cultures.” This characterization has come to occupy a significant position in Naxi identity, even to a certain degree in the countryside, where education is less developed. It has even become an ethnic marker in the consciousness of many Naxi, who consider it a typical Naxi feature, a sort of inherited inclination toward “love of learning” or “love of culture” (ai wenhua). In rural Naxi villages many people explained that, unlike many other ethnic groups (notably those higher up in the mountains), the Naxi are very interested in learning and that only economic limitations prevent more of them from receiving an education.
Most Naxi are very proud of the Naxi researchers, teachers, and Party and government officials who have positions in Kunming or other places in China. In spite of the fact that they are intellectuals whose way of living, customs, and occupation are profoundly different from those of most Naxi, they have nevertheless come to symbolize (even among many rural Naxi) the Naxi as a numerically small ethnic group capable of developing and manifesting itself in China. Many Naxi peasants and teachers in rural areas criticize the government in Lijiang Town for not paying enough attention to the rural situation in Lijiang. This, however, does not prevent many of them from talking about the intellectual Naxi as a Naxi subgroup (rather than as government representatives) who demonstrate the minzu’s intellectual capability and openness toward “advanced culture.” Many intellectual Naxi, even those who live outside of Lijiang and have no plans to return there, express concern about economic development in Lijiang. Some of them have established the Society for Naxi Culture (Naxi Wenhua Xuehui) as a network mainly for Naxi intellectuals, those in high administrative positions, and business leaders. One of the purposes of the society is to influence and direct economic and cultural development in Lijiang, but most Naxi peasants are not aware of the existence of this rather exclusive group.
Since 1991 the Lijiang government has enforced the national policy of population control. Now all minzu in Lijiang with an urban household registration (chengshi hukou) may have one child, whereas peasants and other people with rural registration (nongye hukou) may have two. However, it is quite common for rural families to have more children. Since 1981 there have been policies in effect to control the number of children, and many Naxi in Lijiang Town have only one or two children. This seems also to have strenghtened parents’ focus on their children’s education. The wish of many Naxi parents to have at least one child continue into higher education is the most obvious reason why so many younger Naxi parents in Lijiang Town have decided to speak only Chinese at home. Since the only possible way to a higher education is through the Chinese language, many parents hope to facilitate their child’s upward social mobility by teaching him or her Chinese from birth. The general attitude in the town of Lijiang is that “the children learn Naxi anyway on the street among their friends, so we had better prepare them for school as early as possible.” This also explains why many Naxi intellectuals who are themselves occupied with Naxi history and culture, or who have strong opinions about the need for protecting and developing Naxi culture, find it necessary to teach their children Chinese only.
Although the main reason for teaching children Chinese at home while most parents speak Naxi with each other seems to be pragmatic, based on the form and content of Chinese school education, many interviewees emphasized what they saw as a common Naxi characteristic, “love of learning,” as their reason for educating their children in Chinese. Since the Naxi “loved learning,” and learning in schools happened to be Chinese learning, they were more motivated to bring up their children in the Chinese language than were most other minorities.
The Naxi’s focus on “love of learning” as a specific ethnic characteristic is in my view closely related to the teaching of social evolution and to the pervasive conceptualization in China of minorities as backward. In one particular aspect the Naxi escape the label of being backward, namely in their historical adaptation of and to Chinese education. Thus, the focus on “love of learning” establishes the Naxi as a minzu fairly close to the Han on some levels of civilization while distinguishing them from the minorities in the mountains (and, to a certain degree, from the the Mosuo subgroup of the Naxi, who are not considered to share this characteristic).
Clearly the perception of “love of learning” as a typical Naxi feature is most widespread among Naxi with a higher education. It is mainly through education that the concept of “backward minorities” is impregnated in the minds of the students, often instilling feelings of cultural inferiority. The concept of backward minorities is one that is extremely difficult to escape in the Chinese context, because it not only saturates many levels of society, but is presented in schools as scientific, objective truth. Students are not encouraged to develop a critical approach to the content of school education and its textbooks, and therefore they rarely express doubt about the truth of what is written. In this way the official categorization of minorities as basically backward is reproduced in the minds of many educated minority members. They internalize to a certain degree this external interpretation of the content of their ethnic identity, so that the categorizers’ definition becomes “true” and becomes part of their identity as a minority minzu.
A more positive side to the Chinese categorization of the Naxi has been the conception of them as a minority “willing to learn,” which has existed at least since the Qing dynasty, when the royal Mu family was praised by Chinese bureaucrats for its openness toward Confucian education and culture. It has been repeated in publications of all kinds about the Naxi. It has also become a strategy in the Naxi’s attempt to establish an alternative picture of themselves as a group that may have been backward at the time of the Communist takeover, but was so inclined toward learning that it always had the potential for development. In this regard, the more positive aspect of the Chinese categorization of the Naxi has come to play a significant role in the remaking of Naxi identity.
Naxi teachers in institutions of higher learning in Lijiang and Kunming in particular have turned out to be very influential in spreading the concept of the Naxi as an ethnic group that loves learning. Many Naxi students in Kunming mentioned that through the influence of Naxi teachers, they had come to change their perceptions of themselves as Naxi and of the Naxi as a group. Their teachers had not opposed the general theory of social evolution for all ethnic groups, but had presented alternative understandings of the presumed backward elements of Naxi culture. One of the positive features was “love of learning”; another was “dongba culture,” which was presented as a strength, not as an example of “superstition” or “backwardness.” Especially in recent years, alternative interpretations of cultural features previously considered backward have transformed and strengthened Naxi identity (see also Chao 1996).
THE DONGBA: FROM SUPERSTITION TO CULTURE
Anyone who travels to Lijiang (and many Chinese, Asian, and Western tourists now do so) inevitably encounters a wide range of local expressions of Naxi identity. Apart from local architecture, old women’s blue costumes, and traditional dongjing musical performances, the visitor is certain to notice abundant representations of dongba script in the town of Lijiang. In the 1990s many shopkeepers started to paint dongba characters on their signs, several Naxi now paint and sell calligraphy with dongba characters, well-known Naxi artists incorporate dongba pictures into modern paintings, the local bookshop has a whole shelf reserved for publications about the Naxi and dongba, and two dongba museums are open for visitors. In the ongoing process of recreating and formulating a modern Naxi identity, various aspects of dongba—their script, rituals, recorded stories, and myths—have been combined and reworked into the concept of “dongba culture.” Dongba culture has become, at the same time, a commodity and tourist attraction, and an effective means of pushing the Naxi minzu up the evolutionary ladder by showing that they have “civilization” and “culture” (wenhua). As argued by Emily Chao, “Similar to the process by which the Han have designated themselves as modern and scientific in contrast to the traditional, superstitious, and backward minorities, the creation of a ‘civilized space’ within a category ‘Naxi’ was an oppositional process that inherently drew on the marginalization of Naxi femaleness, illiteracy, and superstition” (Chao 1996: 234). Both inside and outside China an unprecedented interest in dongba script and rituals has developed in recent years, starting from the mid-1980s, when Lijiang opened up to foreigners. Many Naxi in the town of Lijiang agree that the tourists and researchers from outside Lijiang and China have stimulated and encouraged the Naxi’s own interest in dongba script.
By 1949 there were dongba practicing only in the rural areas of Lijiang. We have no figures on the exact number, but, according to interviews, many Naxi villages at that time had a dongba or would invite one from a neighboring village. After the Communist takeover dongba’s activities were prohibited as expressions of feudal superstition (mixin), and, partly for this reason, there are few dongba today. The Institute of Dongba Cultural Research9 (Dongba Wenhua Yanjiu Suo) in Lijiang was started in 1981 as a branch of the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences with the purpose of promoting dongba research and translating dongba texts. The institute has employed a few dongba to assist in projects such as translation work and reconstruction of rituals. One dongba started to learn dongba rituals and script from his father when he was fourteen years old. At that time there were two dongba families in his village. He recalled,
In 1949, when I was twenty-eight years old, it was forbidden to practice dongba rituals, so I stopped. Nobody asked me to come any more. Then in the 1980s people again started to invite me as a dongba, and later I was invited to Lijiang to work. My wife and kids were very much against my starting to practice again. Now they are not against it any more—they accept it because so many people are interested in it. . . . Previously dongba rituals were called “superstition”; now they are “culture.”
The fact that “dongba superstition” has turned into “dongba culture” is manifested in the way more and more Naxi intellectuals describe the dongba as no longer representatives of feudal culture or peasants’ superstitious belief, but as “the Naxi’s own intellectuals” (Naxizu de zhishifenzi). Dongba culture has become central to Naxi identity as it is expressed publicly in China today. Dongba rituals are still performed in some Naxi villages, but that does not necessarily imply that the concept of a dongba culture plays a significant role in Naxi peasants’ ethnic identity. In the early 1980s, after the end of the Cultural Revolution and with the renewed acceptance of religious and ethnic expression, it was mainly a relatively small group of Naxi intellectuals in Kunming who started to promote research into dongba activities and to focus on dongba culture as a specific feature of the Naxi as an ethnic group and a minority minzu in China. In the last ten to fifteen years this has gradually spread to other strata of the Naxi community in Lijiang and is developing rapidly. Dongba rituals are no longer merely objects of research. Recently some intellectual Naxi with official positions have even started to invite dongba to perform rituals at home in connection with family events, and some have initiated projects in which the modern use of dongba culture is combined directly with education in an attempt to spread knowledge of the dongba, to develop Naxi ethnic pride based on dongba culture, and to reject the construction of the Naxi as backward.
The Dalai Minority Culture and Ecology Village
Dalai is a small Naxi village some kilometers out of Lijiang Town. During the Qing dynasty the village had a private Confucian school, and when the Republic was established in 1911, a local public primary school took over all school-based education. The school was rather popular in the early 1930s and had about forty pupils, including a few girls. Before the 1950s there were two dongba families in the village, but the last dongba died in the late 1970s. In 1934 the local teachers started a “common peoples’ school” where adults participated in Chinese literacy courses in the evening.
In 1995 the village was the center of a celebration honoring the Naxi’s guardian spirit, Sanduo. A dongba was invited by prominent Naxi scholars and bureaucrats to perform a traditional ritual for the villagers and for dongba researchers from Japan. The event was an interesting mixture of photographing, filming, and making serious offerings to and honoring Sanduo. It was also part of a larger local project initiated by Mr. He, a former Naxi official who had returned to his village after retirement. The guiding idea behind Mr. He’s Minority Culture and Ecology Village (Minzu Wenhua Shengtai Cun) was to promote “traditional Naxi culture,” which he found was threatened by modernization. Mr. He’s vision was to create a synthesis of old values and modern techniques, to combine “the Confucian Analects, dongba [practices], Communist propaganda, and computers” (He Wanbao 1995: 2). One of his major ideas, restarting a locally based “common people’s school,” the Peasants Evening School, a private initiative independent of government financial support, has already been realized. A small library was opened in connection with the evening school. Local peasants may freely attend the school, which arranges not only courses on agricultural techniques, animal breeding, and use of fertilizer, but also in Naxi romanized script and dongba characters. As Mr. He remarked, “The most important thing about this evening school is that people learn things they can really use in society.” Naxi romanized script is taught because it is easy to learn and is used in collecting and recording local stories, myths, and songs.
When the school was just started in 1994, approximately seven locals attended the courses on dongba script taught by a dongba, as compared to around forty who took courses on agricultural techniques. The organizers expected a slow revival of dongba rituals, since a few younger dongba were being trained in neighboring villages, and more and more families planned to revive the tradition of inviting a dongba to perform rituals associated with life events such as death, marriage, and illness. The evening school has no connection with the regular primary school in the village. Only one of the two primary school teachers, both of whom are from nearby villages, had heard about the new evening school, which she considered a good initiative because “in this school [the regular primary school] children never learn anything about Naxi history or culture. We also never learned anything, so we do not know anything about it now.”
Naxi Dongba Cultural School of Lijiang
The Naxi Dongba Cultural School (Naxi Dongba Wenhua Xuexiao),10 another recent major local project, is directed both toward strengthening the role of “dongba culture” in the common Naxi identity and toward promoting the utilization of its economic potentials. This school was started in Lijiang in early 1995 in order to offer short-term education to people in Lijiang County who had at least graduated from junior secondary school. The first class enrolled forty students (all Naxi from the vicinity of Lijiang Town), who paid two hundred yuan for the course, during which they would learn to read and write one thousand dongba characters; learn about dongba history, rituals, and art; and study basic English for the purpose of future employment in the growing local tourist business. Some of the students were unemployed youth, some were primary school teachers, and some worked at local museums or travel agencies. Some wished to find work in the tourist industry, whereas others were simply interested in learning more about dongba. Approximately half of the students completed the course. The faculty was enthusiastic about the project and had visions for further development of the school. They hoped to raise money for a class of about fifty fourteen- to fifteen-year-old students from the poorest mountain areas, including those who had not continued their studies because their parents could not afford it. The plan was to build dormitories for these students, who would study for two years. A fund-raising leaflet described the project:
Our purpose is to save “dongba culture” via living people, expand our minzu culture [minzu wenhua], stimulate our minzu spirit [minzu jingshen], and promote local economic development. After a period of practicing teaching, we want gradually to enroll more students, so that the school will turn into a cradle for qualified people who study and carry on “dongba culture.” It will also become an international study institution for “dongba culture” and a center for dongba art We are trying our best to achieve this great goal.
Some of the people connected to the school also expressed hope that it would be possible to start a dongba course in one of the established universities. As one person said, “The Tibetans, Koreans, and Mongols have their own universities, so why not we Naxi? Previously most Naxi thought that only Han culture was interesting and developed. Now many realize that we have a culture and a tradition with its own value.”
Both of the schools described here are interesting because they show how intellectual Naxi engage in local economic development in Lijiang through the establishment of alternative education that incorporates (or is even built upon) the teaching of local Naxi culture and history, which is lacking in regular state education. Initially directed by a relatively small group of Naxi intellectuals, the concept of dongba practices as feudal “superstition” has evolved into that of a “culture,” carrying implications of script, art, history, and civilization. Whereas “superstition” is perceived as a burden of backward people, “culture” is regarded as a force, a proof of civilization, and a justifier for demands of local influence and control of economic and cultural development. The concept of dongba culture as a unique Naxi ethnic marker undermines the powerful construction of the Naxi as a backward minority. It establishes the Naxi as a minzu with wenhua and solves the dilemma of how a minzu characterized by its “love of learning” and positive attitude toward “advanced cultures” nevertheless remained backward and resisted assimilation with the Han: dongba practices were not “superstition” but were a “culture” that was valuable as a refined expression of Naxi society. This culture was different from that of the Han and of other minzu in the area and elsewhere in China. The Naxi “loved learning from the advanced Han,” but they also had their own characteristics. They had their own “culture” and even their own “dongba intellectuals.”
Dongba ritual practice, only one of several religious practices among rural Naxi, for a long time did not even exist in the town of Lijiang. Nevertheless, the Naxi have succeeded in turning the various aspects of the dongba into a modern Naxi symbol. When directly asked, most Naxi today mention “dongba” or “dongba culture” as a major “Naxi feature.” This is not because dongba culture, as such, plays an important role in most Naxi villages, but because the educated Naxi elite’s formulation and strong voicing of Naxi identity is spreading into the countryside, where the same elite is regarded with respect and approval, as were the Confucian educated elite before them.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The reason the Naxi have been so successful in turning public attention toward dongba as a culture and a strength, rather than as a form of superstition is, I believe, closely related to the relatively high educational level of the Naxi and their own belief in “love of learning” as a Naxi characteristic. The educated Naxi elite consists of a comparatively large number of people, many of whom hold prestigious and influential positions in Kunming or Lijiang. They are employed at all levels of government in Yunnan Province and Lijiang County, and considering the relatively small number of Naxi, many are influential teachers and researchers. Many come from families where the fathers and grandfathers were students in Confucian private schools, and they value education very highly. They have a well-developed network through groups such as the Society for Naxi Culture and so are able to organize themselves and express demands within the politically acceptable national framework.
Their level of Chinese state education has enabled the Naxi to establish local, alternative education that will most likely have more far-reaching consequences at the local level than will the more exclusive Society for Naxi Culture. Thanks to their own education, the Naxi who initiated these projects know how to play by the rules, so that this education is not regarded as a threat to regular state education but is supported by the local autonomous government and most heads of state schools in Lijiang (most of whom are Naxi). Even so, the creation of the new alternative schools in Lijiang represents a reaction against state education that almost completely ignores non-Han culture, language, and history and fails to show that minorities in China have more to offer than picturesque costumes, dancing, and singing. In fact, state education involuntarily supports—perhaps even creates—a focus on ethnic identity. Minority members can never escape their label as minorities, because they are officially classified as such and learn in school that the classification relies on objective, scientific proof. Neither can they escape the label of backwardness, because they learn that this, also, is a scientifically proven fact. Finally, through an education that ignores local history, language, stories, and religion, they indirectly learn that much of what they have experienced and learned at home is without value in the broad context of the People’s Republic. Although this creates feelings of stigmatization for some educated minority people, education has, for the Naxi, been instrumental in the development of a stronger and forcefully expressed ethnic identity. This has been made possible by their relatively high percentage of educated members, their shared belief that “love of learning” is typical of Naxi, and the promotion of dongba script by their intellectual elite.
Many of the intellectual Naxi have themselves participated in the national project of defining minzu and disseminating theories of social evolution, but they have nevertheless begun to react against the perception of themselves as members of a group that is backward by definition. In this sense they are reacting to an external definition, an ethnic categorization, of what it implies to be Naxi. In other words, they do not (unlike the “Mosuo branch” of the Naxi) reject what Richard Jenkins has called the nominal aspect of ethnicity (the name or the boundary of the group), but they do reject the content of this name and seek to reinterpret it (Jenkins 1994). Since the nominal ethnic categorization was based upon an already existing social category with which most Naxi (excluding the Mosuo) already identified—they did not doubt that they were Naxi—this identity has been further strengthened. At the same time, it has become vitally important for Naxi intellectuals to redefine the content of the external ethnic categorization that was the public and official version of their experience as an ethnic group.
Education played several roles in the remaking of Naxi identity. First of all, it was one of the most significant media through which the officially sanctified categorization of the “backward minorities” and the definite minzu boundaries were communicated. Therefore, it was the educated Naxi who most strongly came to regard the Naxi minzu as “backward” and who experienced a strong contradiction between this and their perception of themselves as an ethnic group with a special potential for learning and development. Many experienced personal conflict because of the contradiction between the Naxi’s success in education and their individual classification as members of a backward minority. Success in education, partly resulting from a high degree of integration into the Chinese state and nation and the adoption of the Chinese language and cultural values through lengthy contact with the Han, was in itself a factor that enabled the Naxi to reinterpret the content of the constructed ethnic categorization in a way that is acceptable in the present political climate in China. In this way ethnicity was remade partly through the reinterpretation of the original content of an external categorization.
Of course education alone does not explain why the recent strong expressions of ethnicity among the Naxi have neither met with political sanctions nor been regarded as a threat to state sovereignty. The Naxi are a very small ethnic group, they have no ethnic relations across national borders, and they have absolutely no aspirations to political independence. Their expressions of ethnicity, to the degree that they are directed by instrumentalist motives, seek to define the Naxi as a group that has adopted a lot from Han (Confucian) culture and language but has maintained its own culture. This also justifies further control over local resources and political decision-making, all clearly within the context of the Chinese state.
In 1991, 45 percent of graduates continued on to higher or specialized secondary education; in 1994, 76 percent did so.
I did not obtain this school’s official statistics. It is possible that these figures, which were revealed to me in an interview, are exaggerated.
According to the Bureau of Education, the Lisu township of Liming is among those with the most severe problems. Approximately 75 percent of children start school, but more than 20 percent drop out.
A few Lisu schools teach Lisu script, whereas experiments teaching Naxi romanized script in a few villages have now stopped.
To my knowledge, all secondary school students in Lijiang receive eight to ten hours of teaching in Yunnan history in junior secondary school, and it is normally part of their history examination.
In 1989, after the crushing of student demonstrations, the central government launched a national campaign for studying Lei Feng in schools all over China. The life of this PLA soldier, described in his fictitious “diary” created by the PLA, had been the center of a mass campaign in the early 1960s. Lei Feng was praised and studied for his unfailing devotion to his country, the revolution, his comrades, and Chairman Mao.
From Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1993: 91
Based on Yunnan jiaoyu sishi nian, 1949–1989 1990: 32–37.
This is the institute’s own translation.
The English name is the school’s own translation.