Abstract Han Jie (韩杰) belonged to the Flower Miao, a sub-group of the Miao in southwest China. When foreign missionaries began to evangelize among the Miao of China in the early twentieth century, they emphasized education and set up numerous schools to teach literacy. Learning literacy was not just an educational achievement, it allowed the Miao to imagine that they could have a better way out and be more than just poor farmers. Han Jie was the first generation of graduates of British Methodist Church schools, and he went on to set up more schools in remote areas, thus spreading literacy among poor Miao. Through contact and communication with different denominations, Han Jie felt that the Miao people needed an independent, self-reliant church;accordingly he poured his energy into increasing the sense of autonomy among the Flower Miao through evangelization and education. This paper examines the influence of Christian introduction to Miao identity and Miao ethnic relations through the biography of Han Jie. I argue that the history of religious proselytization transformed the Miao, their relations with their church ultimately determining their relations with the Chinese state as well. Thus Christian evangelization played a pivotal role in shaping Miao identity under the Nationalist regime of the Republic of China.
{"title":"The Impact of Christian Education on Miao: A Case Study of Han Jie","authors":"Jili Zhu, 朱 佶丽","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2018-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2018-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Han Jie (韩杰) belonged to the Flower Miao, a sub-group of the Miao in southwest China. When foreign missionaries began to evangelize among the Miao of China in the early twentieth century, they emphasized education and set up numerous schools to teach literacy. Learning literacy was not just an educational achievement, it allowed the Miao to imagine that they could have a better way out and be more than just poor farmers. Han Jie was the first generation of graduates of British Methodist Church schools, and he went on to set up more schools in remote areas, thus spreading literacy among poor Miao. Through contact and communication with different denominations, Han Jie felt that the Miao people needed an independent, self-reliant church;accordingly he poured his energy into increasing the sense of autonomy among the Flower Miao through evangelization and education. This paper examines the influence of Christian introduction to Miao identity and Miao ethnic relations through the biography of Han Jie. I argue that the history of religious proselytization transformed the Miao, their relations with their church ultimately determining their relations with the Chinese state as well. Thus Christian evangelization played a pivotal role in shaping Miao identity under the Nationalist regime of the Republic of China.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134211261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Foreign Domestic Helpers account for nearly half of Hong Kong’s total ethnic minority population and are therefore integral to any discussion of diversity in the postcolonial, global Chinese city. In Asia, discourses of diversity have evolved from the juncture of complex historical, political, and cultural factors including colonialism, postcoloniality, traditional and precolonial customs and values, religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as Western-derived liberal-democratic discourses of rights and citizenship. “Diversity” has been identified as one of the core values and attributes of the territory by the Hong Kong Government yet it is not a concept that is carefully interrogated and delineated. This essay examines discourses of diversity via analysis of a varied set of cultural representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers, including a television programme and advertisements, a work of short literary fiction, online erotic fiction, social media, as well as an example of multi-media artwork. Taken together, these representative forms provide insight into the cultural imaginary that shapes private and public discourse and perception. Using an approach informed by both cognitive linguistics and postcolonial studies, the essay focuses on metonymic techniques, for example, doubling and substitution to argue that representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers reveal the anxieties, fears, and desires of the dominant culture. The essay shows that the Foreign Domestic Helper becomes a critical figure around whom linked questions of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in the majority ethnic Chinese population of Hong Kong circulate.
{"title":"Metonymic Figures: Cultural Representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers and Discourses of Diversity in Hong Kong","authors":"S. Jayawickrama, 萨兰雅· 扎雅卫迦玛","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2017-0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2017-0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Foreign Domestic Helpers account for nearly half of Hong Kong’s total ethnic minority population and are therefore integral to any discussion of diversity in the postcolonial, global Chinese city. In Asia, discourses of diversity have evolved from the juncture of complex historical, political, and cultural factors including colonialism, postcoloniality, traditional and precolonial customs and values, religious and spiritual beliefs, as well as Western-derived liberal-democratic discourses of rights and citizenship. “Diversity” has been identified as one of the core values and attributes of the territory by the Hong Kong Government yet it is not a concept that is carefully interrogated and delineated. This essay examines discourses of diversity via analysis of a varied set of cultural representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers, including a television programme and advertisements, a work of short literary fiction, online erotic fiction, social media, as well as an example of multi-media artwork. Taken together, these representative forms provide insight into the cultural imaginary that shapes private and public discourse and perception. Using an approach informed by both cognitive linguistics and postcolonial studies, the essay focuses on metonymic techniques, for example, doubling and substitution to argue that representations of Foreign Domestic Helpers reveal the anxieties, fears, and desires of the dominant culture. The essay shows that the Foreign Domestic Helper becomes a critical figure around whom linked questions of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in the majority ethnic Chinese population of Hong Kong circulate.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125604470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Drawing on Erving Goffman’s analysis of total institutions and his concept of mortification of the self, the present article deals with the process of identity construction and identity loss among refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. We argue that the slow pace of processing of political asylum applications as well as the harsh restrictions imposed on rights to work and the minimal welfare provisions for refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong operate as means of isolating them from the broader society. Another consequence of these restrictive conditions becomes manifest in the loss of identity experienced by those who have been stuck in Hong Kong for many years waiting for their applications to be processed. Being unable to preserve the sense of identity they had in their countries of origin, they find themselves deprived of the social and institutional resorts necessary to forge a new one.
{"title":"Vanishing Selves under Hong Kong’s Unified Screening Mechanism","authors":"P. Lau, I. Gheorghiu, 刘 佩欣, 尤莉亚· 乔治乌","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2018-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2018-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Drawing on Erving Goffman’s analysis of total institutions and his concept of mortification of the self, the present article deals with the process of identity construction and identity loss among refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. We argue that the slow pace of processing of political asylum applications as well as the harsh restrictions imposed on rights to work and the minimal welfare provisions for refugees and asylum seekers in Hong Kong operate as means of isolating them from the broader society. Another consequence of these restrictive conditions becomes manifest in the loss of identity experienced by those who have been stuck in Hong Kong for many years waiting for their applications to be processed. Being unable to preserve the sense of identity they had in their countries of origin, they find themselves deprived of the social and institutional resorts necessary to forge a new one.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"219 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115205022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Multiculturalism is about co-existence of diverse cultures. Current literature on multiculturalism mostly uses a top-down approach to examine how the governments adopt different policies to manage cultural diversity. However, how the migrants use their own culture including music to enhance integration is often neglected. This paper uses the experience of African migrants in Hong Kong to reveal an alternative account of multiculturalism. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation with African drummers, this paper examines the role of African drum as a means of cultural integration. It raises the concept of “street-level multiculturalism” for analysing how African migrants experience and negotiate cultural difference on the ground. It argues that African drum music promotes intercultural contact by arousing curiosity and creating friendly atmosphere. Africans’ engagement in identity politics is based on their marginal status. Their ability to negotiate their African culture and their Hong Kong experience is a politically conscious process.
{"title":"Street-Level Multiculturalism: Cultural Integration and Identity Politics of African Migrants in Hong Kong","authors":"T. Shum, 岑 俊达","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2018-0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2018-0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Multiculturalism is about co-existence of diverse cultures. Current literature on multiculturalism mostly uses a top-down approach to examine how the governments adopt different policies to manage cultural diversity. However, how the migrants use their own culture including music to enhance integration is often neglected. This paper uses the experience of African migrants in Hong Kong to reveal an alternative account of multiculturalism. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation with African drummers, this paper examines the role of African drum as a means of cultural integration. It raises the concept of “street-level multiculturalism” for analysing how African migrants experience and negotiate cultural difference on the ground. It argues that African drum music promotes intercultural contact by arousing curiosity and creating friendly atmosphere. Africans’ engagement in identity politics is based on their marginal status. Their ability to negotiate their African culture and their Hong Kong experience is a politically conscious process.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127799104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Christianity in China is known to have been influenced by Chinese popular religion. Yet it is less known how much Christianity has influenced other religions in China. This article examines the syncretic trend of the early years of Republican China, which aimed at reinventing Chinese religions. I argue that as early as the 1920s, followers of Chinese religious traditions were appropriating various aspects of Christianity – from its symbols and institutions to its values – for their own ends. This trend was crucial for Christianity to become a part of Chinese religion and society.
{"title":"Christianity and Religious Syncretism in Early Twentieth-Century China","authors":"Xiaoxuan Wang","doi":"10.1515/cdc-2017-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cdc-2017-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Christianity in China is known to have been influenced by Chinese popular religion. Yet it is less known how much Christianity has influenced other religions in China. This article examines the syncretic trend of the early years of Republican China, which aimed at reinventing Chinese religions. I argue that as early as the 1920s, followers of Chinese religious traditions were appropriating various aspects of Christianity – from its symbols and institutions to its values – for their own ends. This trend was crucial for Christianity to become a part of Chinese religion and society.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126344306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In spite of the growing attention given to minority Uyghurs in China, there has been little focus on gender issues in relation to the Uyghur migration to inland cities since the 1980s. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic research from 2012 to 2013, this article focuses on the lifeworlds of highly educated Uyghur women and their aspirations in the megacity of Shanghai. A combination of local gender norms, patriarchal Islamic ideologies, and state policies that aim to promote the emancipation of women have influenced the current status, conditions, and gendered identities of Uyghur women. Added to these are the shifting demands of an environment marked by rapid socioeconomic change in urban China that sees Uyghur women on the move. Tracing the migration story of Uyghur women through a case study of Xumar, a woman who pursued university education and then worked in Shanghai, I demonstrate the dilemma of staying or returning with which they constantly wrestle as they attempt to balance the normative Uyghur cultural values and their experiences of urbanism and cosmopolitanism in Shanghai. These factors all inform their understandings of what it means to be a Uyghur woman. Looking at the shifting ideas of gender among highly educated Uyghur women, this research contributes to understanding changes of Uyghur identity in relation to migration on the one hand, and reflects the ambivalence and complexity of Uyghur migration experiences on the other. Personal narratives of migrant Uyghur women shed light on the subtleties of the gender roles, arguments for and against returning home, and their later resignation to (arranged) marriages. The migration experiences gained by the women offer them a better understanding of themselves and of the demands and expectations of their cultural heritage. The urban aspirations of highly educated Uyghur women, this article argues, are produced by structural, cultural, and social factors that rely on dominant discourses of migration, minority, gender, age, class, and place.
{"title":"Gender and Urban Aspirations: The Case of Highly Educated Uyghur Women in Shanghai","authors":"Sajide Tursun","doi":"10.1515/cdc-2017-0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cdc-2017-0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In spite of the growing attention given to minority Uyghurs in China, there has been little focus on gender issues in relation to the Uyghur migration to inland cities since the 1980s. Based on fifteen months of ethnographic research from 2012 to 2013, this article focuses on the lifeworlds of highly educated Uyghur women and their aspirations in the megacity of Shanghai. A combination of local gender norms, patriarchal Islamic ideologies, and state policies that aim to promote the emancipation of women have influenced the current status, conditions, and gendered identities of Uyghur women. Added to these are the shifting demands of an environment marked by rapid socioeconomic change in urban China that sees Uyghur women on the move. Tracing the migration story of Uyghur women through a case study of Xumar, a woman who pursued university education and then worked in Shanghai, I demonstrate the dilemma of staying or returning with which they constantly wrestle as they attempt to balance the normative Uyghur cultural values and their experiences of urbanism and cosmopolitanism in Shanghai. These factors all inform their understandings of what it means to be a Uyghur woman. Looking at the shifting ideas of gender among highly educated Uyghur women, this research contributes to understanding changes of Uyghur identity in relation to migration on the one hand, and reflects the ambivalence and complexity of Uyghur migration experiences on the other. Personal narratives of migrant Uyghur women shed light on the subtleties of the gender roles, arguments for and against returning home, and their later resignation to (arranged) marriages. The migration experiences gained by the women offer them a better understanding of themselves and of the demands and expectations of their cultural heritage. The urban aspirations of highly educated Uyghur women, this article argues, are produced by structural, cultural, and social factors that rely on dominant discourses of migration, minority, gender, age, class, and place.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"238 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115949690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Death rituals have played an important role in Chinese society for thousands of years. This article, based on ethnographic data collected in a village in Chongqing in southwestern China, reconstructs the sequence of preburial, funeral, and postburial rituals performed by the villagers. Then it discusses the belief system associated with these rituals, which includes traditional Chinese cosmology, the nature of ancestors, and the roles of feng shui. It concludes that the death ritual in this village helps people adjust to life in fast-changing, modern rural China.
{"title":"Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors as Reflected in Death Rituals in a Chinese Village","authors":"Gang Chen","doi":"10.1515/cdc-2017-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/cdc-2017-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Death rituals have played an important role in Chinese society for thousands of years. This article, based on ethnographic data collected in a village in Chongqing in southwestern China, reconstructs the sequence of preburial, funeral, and postburial rituals performed by the villagers. Then it discusses the belief system associated with these rituals, which includes traditional Chinese cosmology, the nature of ancestors, and the roles of feng shui. It concludes that the death ritual in this village helps people adjust to life in fast-changing, modern rural China.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"114 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122365005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract This article uses the “gift paradigm” to understand the social mechanism of the revival of popular religion in developed rural areas. In eastern Zhejiang, peasants burn “Buddha paper [money]” (fozhi) Although fo literally means “Buddha,” in the local dialect of Zhejiang it is better understood as a generic term for “deity,” including Buddha. – Trans. as a gift when making vows and praying to deities. They consider the fulfillment of their prayers repayment by the deities. The reciprocity between human and deity forms a chain of return gifts, with the household as the unit and the year as the interval, which is permeated with affection and morality. In recent years the economic growth of rural economies in eastern Zhejiang has synchronized with social diversification. Village upper classes, which are the most sensitive to risk, have become the main bodies of faith consumption, purchasing masses of Buddha paper or even hiring people to chant scriptures. Their potlatch-style gift display has led to imitation by other classes. Different classes have gone into intense competition over the degree of intimacy with the deities. The competition for symbolic capital is the driving force of the constant expansion of popular religious activities in this area. The rapid growth of Buddha paper consumption has made it impossible for household providers who offer ritual services to meet the demand. They therefore convene older people to form scripture-recitation groups to enlarge their supplies. The use of scripture chanting (nianfo, literally “reciting Buddhist texts”) results in a redistribution of superfluous wealth in villages to their middle and lower classes, via acquaintance networks. Everyday practices of eastern Zhejiang villagers show that popular religious activities in their society have a self-contained logic that has brought about an expansion in the competition for intimacy with deities. Society, on the other hand, has achieved integration in the circle of gift exchange between human and deity. Although the holistic view of the “gift paradigm” is the key to unlocking this popular religion revival, both the “power paradigm” and the “society paradigm” of gift exchange are indispensable in understanding the nature of the relationship in local popular religion.
{"title":"The Competition for Gifts: The Social Mechanism of the Revival of Popular Religion – An Ethnographic Study of Fu Village in Eastern Zhejiang","authors":"Yuan Song, Ge Jia, 袁 松, 葛 佳","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2016-0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2016-0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article uses the “gift paradigm” to understand the social mechanism of the revival of popular religion in developed rural areas. In eastern Zhejiang, peasants burn “Buddha paper [money]” (fozhi) Although fo literally means “Buddha,” in the local dialect of Zhejiang it is better understood as a generic term for “deity,” including Buddha. – Trans. as a gift when making vows and praying to deities. They consider the fulfillment of their prayers repayment by the deities. The reciprocity between human and deity forms a chain of return gifts, with the household as the unit and the year as the interval, which is permeated with affection and morality. In recent years the economic growth of rural economies in eastern Zhejiang has synchronized with social diversification. Village upper classes, which are the most sensitive to risk, have become the main bodies of faith consumption, purchasing masses of Buddha paper or even hiring people to chant scriptures. Their potlatch-style gift display has led to imitation by other classes. Different classes have gone into intense competition over the degree of intimacy with the deities. The competition for symbolic capital is the driving force of the constant expansion of popular religious activities in this area. The rapid growth of Buddha paper consumption has made it impossible for household providers who offer ritual services to meet the demand. They therefore convene older people to form scripture-recitation groups to enlarge their supplies. The use of scripture chanting (nianfo, literally “reciting Buddhist texts”) results in a redistribution of superfluous wealth in villages to their middle and lower classes, via acquaintance networks. Everyday practices of eastern Zhejiang villagers show that popular religious activities in their society have a self-contained logic that has brought about an expansion in the competition for intimacy with deities. Society, on the other hand, has achieved integration in the circle of gift exchange between human and deity. Although the holistic view of the “gift paradigm” is the key to unlocking this popular religion revival, both the “power paradigm” and the “society paradigm” of gift exchange are indispensable in understanding the nature of the relationship in local popular religion.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"109 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114515224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Over the past several decades, the Hmong communities scattered around the world and their co-ethnic Miao ethnic group in China came into close contact. This paper explores the nature and dynamics of this encounter as well as the connections and ties that have been rediscovered and reestablished between the Hmong in diaspora and the Miao in China, two groups long separated by time and distance, and the impact and implications this entails. Based on three-month fieldwork in the Hmong/Miao communities across Southwest China and Southeast Asia, this paper examines the ever increasing movement of people and materials, as well as symbolic flows on the one hand, and connections and linkages between different localities on the other hand. It discusses how this new fast-changing development contributes to a new translocal imagination of Hmong community, re-territorialization of a new continuous Hmong space, a Hmongland encompassing Southwest provinces of China and northern part of Southeast Asian countries, and what it means to the Hmong/Miao people in the region. It further discusses how the emerging translocal imagination of the Hmong/Miao community will produce unique translocal subjects and how it interacts with the nation-states they belong to.
{"title":"Bridging Hmong/Miao, Extending Miaojiang: Divided Space, Translocal Contacts, and the Imagination of Hmongland","authors":"Weidong Zhang, 张伟 东","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2016-0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2016-0002","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Over the past several decades, the Hmong communities scattered around the world and their co-ethnic Miao ethnic group in China came into close contact. This paper explores the nature and dynamics of this encounter as well as the connections and ties that have been rediscovered and reestablished between the Hmong in diaspora and the Miao in China, two groups long separated by time and distance, and the impact and implications this entails. Based on three-month fieldwork in the Hmong/Miao communities across Southwest China and Southeast Asia, this paper examines the ever increasing movement of people and materials, as well as symbolic flows on the one hand, and connections and linkages between different localities on the other hand. It discusses how this new fast-changing development contributes to a new translocal imagination of Hmong community, re-territorialization of a new continuous Hmong space, a Hmongland encompassing Southwest provinces of China and northern part of Southeast Asian countries, and what it means to the Hmong/Miao people in the region. It further discusses how the emerging translocal imagination of the Hmong/Miao community will produce unique translocal subjects and how it interacts with the nation-states they belong to.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"423 2-3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123433718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Since the mid-1990s, Singapore’s Chinese religious landscape has seen the rapid development and popularisation of Netherworld spirit medium (tang-ki) cults based around the channelling and worship of two Underworld deities, Tua Ya Pek and Di Ya Pek. Emphasizing Earthly morality and post-mortal punishments in the Underworld, the tradition has developed a distinctive ritual and material culture. The Temple of Mysterious Virtue illustrates this culture, is broadly representative of successful tang-ki temples where both Underworld and Heaven deities are channelled in a multi-ethnic environment, and where orthodox Taoist priests and tang-ki mutually reinforce each other’s legitimacy through ritual cooperation.
{"title":"The Temple of Mysterious Virtue – 29th anniversary celebrations, December 27 2013 – Jan 31st 2014, Singapore","authors":"Fabian Graham, Fabian Graham","doi":"10.1515/CDC-2016-0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1515/CDC-2016-0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the mid-1990s, Singapore’s Chinese religious landscape has seen the rapid development and popularisation of Netherworld spirit medium (tang-ki) cults based around the channelling and worship of two Underworld deities, Tua Ya Pek and Di Ya Pek. Emphasizing Earthly morality and post-mortal punishments in the Underworld, the tradition has developed a distinctive ritual and material culture. The Temple of Mysterious Virtue illustrates this culture, is broadly representative of successful tang-ki temples where both Underworld and Heaven deities are channelled in a multi-ethnic environment, and where orthodox Taoist priests and tang-ki mutually reinforce each other’s legitimacy through ritual cooperation.","PeriodicalId":285588,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Diversity in China","volume":"46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129450863","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}