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THE MINORITIES OF SOUTHERN CHINA: A GENERAL OVERVIEW
NICHOLAS TAPP
Introduction
In the minority areas of Yunnan, as in much of the rest of the country, there are still small boys spreadeagled on the backs of oxen, little girls perched in apple trees munching apples, old women trudging home across the mountains bearing giant piles of firewood on their backs, and men riding slowly to market in dilapidated pony traps. Since Liberation, however, remarkable changes have taken place both in the relationships between different ethnic groups and in their own internal composition. Due to the kindness of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Kunming, Yunnan, which I attended as a Visiting Scholar in 1986, and through the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who invited me to participate in fieldwork in the Liannan Yao Autonomous County in Northwestern Guangdong during June 1986, and together with an earlier field trip in the summer of 1985, I have been able to visit various ethnic minority areas, interview villagers and collect data on different aspects of their social and economic conditions and religious beliefs. In addition to this I have met and held discussions with many specialists and experts on the minorities in the fields of ethnography, linguistics and history. The following is, therefore, a brief record of these investigations, with some attempt to arrive at a general overall perspective on the changing conditions of these areas since 1949.
Most of the minority villages visited lack proper roads and the water-supply is poor, although they have electricity, if only for a few variable hours per day. Housing structure, while exhibiting strong regional and cultural variations, has been particularly influenced by Han village architecture, and demonstrates wide disparities of wealth. Generally outer walls are of adobe. In poorer areas timber and bamboo are still used, and in better-off areas granite or
Dr. Nicholas Tapp is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.