Two very different ethnic minority communities—the Naxi of the Lijiang area in northern Yunnan and the Tai (Dai) of Sipsong Panna (Xishuangbanna), along Yunnan’s border with Burma and Laos—are featured in this comparative study of the implementation and reception of state minority education policy in the People’s Republic of China. Based on field research and historical sources, Lessons in Being Chinese argues that state policy, which is intended to be applied uniformly across all minority regions, in fact is much more successful in some than in others.In Lijiang, elite members of the Naxi ethnic group (minzu) have a centuries-old connection with Chinese state educational systems as avenues to social mobility, and have continued this tradition under Communist rule. They participate enthusiastically in the present system, using education to gain official and professional positions. In contrast to the Lijiang area, Sipsong Panna functioned in many ways as a separate kingdom until 1950, with its own script and a separate educational system centered in Theravada Buddhist monasteries. Today, many Tai in that area still prefer monastic education for their sons, and most parents are indifferent to state education.This study finds that standardized, homogenizing state education is in itself incapable of instilling in students an identification with the Chinese state, ironically often increasing ethnic identity. Lessons in Being Chinese enhances our understanding of how state policy toward minorities works in many areas of life, and its conclusions can be extended well beyond the sphere of education. It will be of interest to both anthropologists and educators.
Reading the Fire engages America�s �first literatures,� traditional Native American tales and legends, as literary art and part of our collective imaginative heritage. This revised edition of a book first published to critical acclaim in 1983 includes four new essays.Drawing on ethnographic data and regional folklore, Jarold Ramsey moves from origin and trickster narratives and Indian ceremonial texts, into interpretations of stories from the Nez Perce, Clackamas Chinook, Coos, Wasco, and Tillamook repertories, concluding with a set of essays on the neglected subject of Native literary responses to contact with Euroamericans. In his finely worked, erudite analyses, he mediates between an author-centered, print-based narrative tradition and one that is oral, anonymous, and tribal, adducing parallels between Native texts and works by Shakespeare, Yeats, Beckett, and Faulkner.
�Please don�t cry,� wrote Iwao Matsushita to his wife Hanaye, telling her he was to be interned for the duration of the war. He was imprisoned in Fort Missoula, Montana, and she was incarcerated at the Minidoka Relocation Center in southwestern Idaho. Their separation would continue for more than two years.Imprisoned Apart is the poignant story of a young teacher and his bride who came to Seattle from Japan in 1919 so that he might study English language and literature, and who stayed to make a home. On the night of December 7, 1941, the FBI knocked at the Matsushitas� door and took Iwao away, first to jail at the Seattle Immigration Stateion and then, by special train, windows sealed and guards at the doors, to Montana. He was considered an enemy alien, �potentially dangerous to public safety,� because of his Japanese birth and professional associations.The story of Iwao Matsushita�s determination to clear his name and be reunited with his wife, and of Hanaye Matsushita�s growing confusion and despair, unfolds in their correspondence, presented here in full. Their cards and letters, most written in Japanese, some in English when censors insisted, provided us with the first look at life inside Fort Missoula, one of the Justice Department�s wartime camp for enemy aliens. Because Iwao was fluent in both English and Japanese, his communications are always articulate, even lyrical, if restrained. Hanaye communicated briefly and awkwardly in English, more fully and openly in Japanese.Fiset presents a most affecting human story and helps us to read between the lines, to understand what was happening to this gentle, sensitive pair. Hanaye suffered the emotional torment of disruption and displacement from everything safe and familiar. Iwao, a scholarly man who, despite his imprisonment, did not falter in his committment to his adopted country, suffered the ignominity of suspicion of being disloyal. After the war, he worked as a subject specialist at the University of Washington�s Far Eastern Library and served as principal of Seattle�s Japanese Language School, faithful to the Japanese American community until his death in 1979.
Over the years, Chief Seattle's famous speech has been embellished, popularized, and carved into many a monument, but its origins have remained inadequately explained. Understood as a symbolic encounter between indigenous America, represented by Chief Seattle, and industrialized or imperialist America, represented by Isaac L Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory, it was first published in a Seattle newspaper in 1887 by a pioneer who claimed he had heard Seattle (or Sealth) deliver it in the 1850s. No other record of the speech has been found, and Isaac Stevens's writings do not mention it Yet it has long been taken seriously as evidence of a voice crying out of the wilderness of the American past.Answering Chief Seattle presents the full and accurate text of the 1887 version and traces the distortions of later versions in order to explain the many layers of its mystery. This book also asks how the speech could be heard and answered, by reviewing its many contexts. Mid-century ideas about land, newcomers, ancestors, and future generations informed the ways Stevens and his contemporaries understood Chief Seattle and recreated him as a legendary figure.
China's exploitation by Western imperialism is well known, but the imperialist treatment within China of ethnic minorities has been little explored. Around the geographic periphery of China, as well as some of the less accessible parts of the interior, and even in its cities, live a variety of peoples of different origins, languages, ecological adaptations, and cultures. These people have interacted for centuries with the Han Chinese majority, with other minority ethnic groups (minzu), and with non-Chinese, but identification of distinct groups and analysis of their history and relationship to others still are problematic.Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers provides rich material for the comparative study of colonialism and imperialism and for the study of Chinese nation-building. It represents some of the first scholarship on ethnic minorities in China based on direct research since before World War II. This, combined with increasing awareness in the West of the importance of ethnic relations, makes it an especially timely book. It will be of interest to anthopologists, historians, and political scientists, as well as to sinologists.
What we today call Shinto has been at the heart of Japanese culture for almost as long as there has been a political entity distinguishing itself as Japan. A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine describes the ritual cycle at Suwa Shrine, Nagasaki�s major Shinto shrine. Conversations with priests, other shrine personnel, and people attending shrine functions supplement John K. Nelson�s observations of over fifty shrine rituals and festivals. He elicits their views on the meaning and personal relevance of the religious events and the place of Shinto and Suwa Shrine in Japanese society, culture, and politics. Nelson focuses on the very human side of an ancient institution and provides a detailed look at beliefs and practices that, although grounded in natural cycles, are nonetheless meaningful in late-twentieth-century Japanese society.Nelson explains the history of Suwa Shrine, basic Shinto concepts, and the Shinto worldview, including a discussion of the Kami, supernatural forces that pervade the universe. He explores the meaning of ritual in Japanese culture and society and examines the symbols, gestures, dances, and meanings of a typical shrine ceremony. He then describes the cycle of activities at the shrine during a calendar year: the seasonal rituals and festivals and the petitionary, propitiary, and rite-of-passage ceremonies performed for individuals and specific groups. Among them are the Dolls� Day festival, in which young women participate in a procession and worship service wearing Heian period costumes; the autumn Okunchi festival, which attracts participants from all over Japan and even brings emigrants home for a visit; the ritual invoking the blessing of the Kami for young children; and the ritual sanctifying the earth before a building is constructed. The author also describes the many roles women play in Shinto and includes an interview with a female priest.Shinto has always been attentive to the protection of communities from unpredictable human and divine forces and has imbued its ritual practices with techniques and strategies to aid human life. By observing the Nagasaki shrine�s traditions and rituals, the people who make it work, and their interactions with the community at large, the author shows that cosmologies from the past are still very much a part of the cultural codes utilized by the nation and its people to meet the challenges of today.
The tales included here represent all of Yunnan Province�s officially designated ethnic minorities, and include creation myths, romances, historical legends, tales explaining natural phenomena, ghost stories, and festival tales. The tales are peopled by memorable characters, such as the Tibetan mother who, reborn as a cow, comforts and helps her daughter into her harsh life as a slave girl; the two Kucong sisters who marry snakes; and the bodiless Lahu �head-baby� who grows up to win one of the earth-god Poyana�s daughters in marriage. Chosen for their representativeness, aesthetic appeal, and variety, the stories provide rich examples of the folk traditions of Southwest China.South of the Clouds includes introductions and an appendix which describe the places and people of Yunnan, analyzethe literary and psychological characteristics of their stories, give the sources of the tales, and explain the methodolgy of collecting folk literature in China.
In contrast to the Lost Generation of youth in the West, who were disoriented and disillusioned by the First World War and its aftermath, the Chinese youth born between 1895 and 1905 not only believed they had a duty to �save� their nation but pursued their goal through social and political experimentation. The vigorous purpose and optimism of this Found Generation contrasted with the apathy and detachment of their Western counterparts, who followed a different path in coming to terms with the new world of the twentieth century.Just after the First World War, sixteen hundred Chinese young men and women traveled to Europe, most of them to France, as members of the Work-Study Movement. Their goal was to study Western technology and culture and utilize this knowledge to achieve �national salvation,� and they planned to finance their study at European schools by factory work. While in Europe, many of these students became politicized, partly through their exposure to European political ideas such as Marxism, and partly through the social network based on shared experience that transcended what would have separated them in China. One important result of this political activity was the formation of the European Branches of the Chinese Communist ORganizations (ECCO).The Found Generation explores the origins, development, and significance of the ECCO, highlights the differences between it and the Communist home organization, and describes its impact on the Chinese Communist Party. The founders of the ECCO shared values and goals with their compatriots in China, but their experiences and opportunities in Europe molded them in different ways that can be traced in their later careers.On their return to China, many of the young activists–including Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yi, Cai Hesen, Li Lisan, Zhu De, Nie Rongzhen, and Wang Ruofei–quickly assumed powerful positions in Chinese politics, and their influence is still felt today. Levine�s examination of the early experiences of this important cohort of Chinese leaders helps explain their adherence to the Leninist concept of Party discipline and their tenacious hold over central governmental power.The Found Generation is a pioneering study based on original sources (including interviews with several prominent participants in the Work-Study Movement and the ECCO), Chinese studies and memoirs, and Chinese and French periodicals. It provides otherwise unavailable information and analysis about the political leadership of modern China and, by pointing out the differences between the Chinese radicals in Europe in China, it furthers our understanding of the conflicts, motivations, and values of modern Chinese leaders.
Two contemporary poets from Taiwan, Yang Mu (pen name for Wang Ching-hsien, b. 1940) and Lo Ch�ing (pen name for Lo Ch�ing-che, b. 1948), are represented in this bilingual edition of Chinese poetry ranging from the romantic to the postmodern. Both poets were involved in the selection of poems for this volume, the first edition in any language of their selected work. Their backgrounds, literary styles, and professional lifes are profiled and compared by translator Joseph R. Allen in critical essays that show how Yang and Lo represent basic directions in modern Chinese poetics and how they have contributed to the definition of modernism and postmodernism in China.The book�s organization reflects each poet�s method of composition. Yang�s poems are chronologically arrangd, as his poetry tends to describe a narrative line that closely parallels his own biography. Lo�s poems, which explore a world of concept and metaphor, are grouped by theme. Although each poet has a range of poetic voices, Yang�s work can be considered the peak of high modernism in Chinese poetry, while Lo�s more problematic work suggests the direction of new explorations in the art. In this way the two poets are mutually illuminating.Each group of poems is prefaced by an �illustration� that draws from another side of the poet�s intellectual life. For Yang, who is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Washington, these are excerpts from his academic work (written under the name C.H. Wang) in English. The poems by Lo, a well-known painter living in Taiwan, are illustrated by five of his own ink paintings.
Advanced industrial nations face many difficult political and economic problems due to the accelerating pace and evolving character of technological change. In this volume, economists and political scientists discuss analytic and policy issues relating to the current state of technological capability in the United States, Japan, and Western Germany from a historical perspective and as a basis for future technological development. They also examine the problems and the issues involved in competition and cooperation among high technology firms and in evolving a more harmonious trade regime.The essays presented here explore from an international perspective the theoretical underpinnings of policy issues that are shaped by increasing internations competition and by the changing form and character of the international trade regime. Issues are discussed against the background of declining American technological dominance and intensifying competition as well as increasing international cooperation among high technology firms.Specific topics include the internationalization of basic research; the closing gap between basic and applied research; the effect of nation specific interfirm relations and various characteristics of labor markets on technological progress; and the effectiveness of various forms of government research and development assistance (or, more broadly, industrial policy). Three essays present overviews of the technological capability of and major policy issues faced by the United States, Japan, and Western Germany. Others raise major theoretical and policy issues from the perspectives of political science and economics, and address specific policy issues or groups of related issues.