中文导读
随着《爱我中华》在大江南北广为传唱，“56个民族”观念早已深入人心，而实际上，这一划分存在诸多争议。自1979年起不再有新的民族被承认，一些待识别民族被强行并入现有民族，例如穿青人、开封犹太人、摩梭人等等。分布于贵州织金的穿青人，自1980年代就开始多方努力以期获得民族认同，至今仍在艰难前行。
The Communist Party has a rigid view of what constitutes an ethnic minority
“FIFTY-SIX stars, 56 flowers, brothers and sisters of the 56 ethnic groups belong to one family,” goes a popular song of the 1990s. Zhang Gang remembers that when he first heard the patriotic ditty he felt baffled. “Am I not part of that family?” Mr Zhang asked himself.
China declares that it has precisely that number of indigenous ethnic groups (by far the biggest of them is the Han, which makes up 92% of the population). But Mr Zhang, a 57-year-old former soldier, regards himself as belonging to none of them, even though his citizenship and ancestry make him indisputably Chinese.
In the living room of his flat in Zhijin county in the southern province of Guizhou (to protect him, this article does not use his real name, nor identify his town), there are signs that Mr Zhang’s culture is different from that of Han people living in the area. Against one wall is an altar where he worships a god called Wuxian: a porcelain jar contains offerings of grain and pieces of gold and silver. Veneration of Wuxian distinguishes people who call themselves the Chuanqing (literally “Wear-blacks”, after the colour of their traditional garb). There are about 700,000 of them, mostly in mountain villages in and around Zhijin. But they officially do not exist as an ethnic minority.
China’s approach to ethnicities was inspired by the Soviet Union’s. Like the Soviets, Mao wanted to give the impression that his country was a happy family of different peoples. After seizing power in 1949 he promised that minority-dominated areas would be granted “autonomy”. Each group would be represented in the national parliament. But this involved deciding which groups to include. A census conducted in the early 1950s, which allowed respondents to describe their ethnic identity in any way they liked, produced more than 400 categories. As Tom Mullaney of Stanford University argues, the government feared that would make it impossible for the legislature’s ethnic mix to reflect that of China: with so many minority delegates, the body would need far more than its planned 1,200 seats.
So researchers were dispatched to look more closely. The Chuanqing, they concluded, did not count: they were deemed to be a Han clan that had migrated to Guizhou centuries ago. By applying exacting standards for ethnic status, officials came up with a new number: 38. By 1979 this had increased to 56. Since then, no further groups have been recognised, and the government has made it clear that none will be. The party’s relentless propaganda about ethnic harmony has so effectively drilled the number 56 into people’s minds that few stop to wonder how it was arrived at and whether everyone feels included.
Some, like the Chuanqing, do not. Among them are the Kaifeng Jews, numbering a few hundred people in the central province of Henan, who believe they are descendants of Jews who settled in China hundreds of years ago. Bizarrely, many such people are categorised as belonging to the Hui, China’s third-largest ethnic group, whose members are mostly Muslim. Another unapproved minority is the Mosuo, a matriarchal group of around 40,000 people. Most of them live in Yunnan province, which borders on Guizhou. Its members are designated as Naxi, a culturally distinct ethnicity.
In the early 1980s a group of ethnic Chuanqing officials conducted research into their group’s characteristics and submitted it to the government, hoping for recognition. Their efforts were ignored. But leaders in Guizhou worried that the Chuanqing might take to the streets to press their demands. To appease them, the provincial government made some concessions: it decided to let them use the name of their group on their government-issued ID cards, which among other things specify the holder’s ethnicity. It also granted the Chuanqing preferential treatment in admission to universities, as other minorities are given. Unlike other minorities, however, they were usually allowed to enjoy this benefit only in Guizhou.
A flower yet to bloom
In recent years, however, officials in Guizhou have become more wary of attempts to affirm Chuanqing identity. They have pushed members of the group to change their ethnic designation to one of the permitted 56. But in Zhijin county, where one-quarter of the population are Chuanqing, a government survey found that only about half were willing to do so.
In Zhijin, very few people speak the Chuanqing dialect any more. Traditional houses, built using wattle and daub, are rare (even rarer are ceremonial outfits, like the one pictured). But a retired Chuanqing official says he still hopes his people will be accepted as the 57th ethnicity. Even if they are not, in his mind they are still a distinct community. “Ethnic groups are formed naturally,” he says. “They do not need to be recognised by any regime.”
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July 15th 2017 | China | 800 words
