[
    {
        "id": 210768,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 119,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "102\n\nTHE MINORITIES OF SOUTHERN CHINA: A GENERAL OVERVIEW\n\nNICHOLAS TAPP\n\nIntroduction\n\nIn 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.\n\nMost 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\n\nDr. Nicholas Tapp is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210772,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 123,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "106\n\nNICHOLAS TAPP\n\npersonal ability and support. This has resulted in a general emphasis upon their ethnic affiliation among the intelligentsia of the minority populations, and at the same time led to increased antagonism between representatives of different officially designated minorities, and the type of ‘localism’ official policy seeks to discourage.\n\nAgainst this, however, it must be pointed out that in many areas local prejudices and inherited cultural traditions are still powerful enough to prevent the proper implementation of favourable policies towards the ethnic minorities. Thus, while their economic conditions remain backward in respect to the rest of rural China, the vast majority of peasant cultivators remain unaffected by the political lobbying which may be undertaken on their behalf by their official and party representatives, and at the same time subject to local petty prejudice and suspicion. While relations between the Dai (Tai) and the Hani (Akha) of the Xishuangbanna (Sipsong Panna) are, for example, no longer those of the rulers and ruled, and Dai rice is exchanged for Hani forest products in the market places, contacts between the two groups remain limited and relations cool.2 Similarly, it is still uncommon for the Han to visit the houses of ethnic minority people, even though they may live in close proximity to each other and in interspersed villages. As one intellectual told me, ‘the customs and traditions of the minority nationalities are so different from our own, we are afraid of making a mistake when we visit them’.\n\nNevertheless, there can be no doubt that there has been a great strengthening of the political importance of ethnicity among the national minorities. In many areas, minority members occupy high-ranking and prestigious political positions, although they may not be the ones in whose power actual decision-making lies. The Governor of Yunnan is a Naxi (Norsu), for example, and his Deputy a Dai, and this is common in most of the autonomous areas. Yet, although it is true that central subsidies are allocated for designated minority areas, these allotments are subject to the same trickle-down problems which afflict development aid elsewhere in the world. In my own opinion, however, the Sinicisation process of the minorities is a long-term, inevitable, and continuous process (Wiens 1967; Fitzgerald 1972; Moseley 1973). While in",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
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    },
    {
        "id": 210774,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1986",
        "page_number": 125,
        "title": "RAS-1986",
        "content_text": "108\n\nNICHOLAS TAPP\n\nthemselves as members of a single group; dispersed sections of single minority groups who were either subsumed under the same term but exhibited great cultural differences, or had been endowed with different appellations under which they registered; assimilated sections of national minorities who continued to be recognised by their original names; and originally Han groups who had become recognised, or recognised themselves, as distinctive ethnic groups (Fei 1980).\n\nOut of some 400 names of these groups submitted for recognition by 1953 (nearly three quarters of which came from Yunnan), so far only 55 have been officially designated as ‘national minorities'. This leaves some curious anomalies. Under the Yi, for example, are linguistically classed the distinct nationalities of the Hani, Samei, Sani, Lahu, Lisu and others, resulting in the formation of an overarching ‘Yi' identity over and above individual ethnic affiliations. The officially designated ‘Miao' of Hainan Island (and who also identify themselves as 'Miao') speak a language which is clearly Yao in affiliation (although the Miao and Yao languages are distantly related). A number of Hmong speakers have identified themselves to me as 'Bai Miao' (White Miao), although clearly speaking a dialect of Hmong Njua (Green Miao), which ought therefore to be classified as ‘Qing Miao' (Green Miao). Officially designated ‘Qing Miao' have moreover identified themselves to me as ‘Hmong She', a group which is becoming assimilated to the larger category of Qing Miao, and has no official recognition. Meanwhile the group whom the Chinese know as (ta or xiao) ‘Hua Miao' (Flowery Miao), are classed as Miao along with the Bai and Qing Miao, although they identify themselves as 'A Hmo' rather than \"Hmong' which is the term of self-identification for both Bai and Qing Miao.3\n\nHere, although the Miao languages are certainly related, the official designation of ‘Miao' is in contradiction to local ethnic identifications, with many Bai and Qing Miao denying that the 'Hua Miao' are 'Miao' at all. This is doubly paradoxical, since 'Miao' is a Chinese term originally and still resented by both Hmong and A Hmo, although such resentment may be mitigated in individual circumstances by occasional perceived political advantages: there are cases of Han fathers claiming minority status",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212679,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1991",
        "page_number": 233,
        "title": "RAS-1991",
        "content_text": "BULLETIN\n\nSCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES\n\nPostal and African Studies\n\nEDITORIAL BOARD\n\nJC Wright, Chairman, S K M Allan, D L Appleyard, TH Barrett, G R Hawting, K Hayward, MJ Hutt, S Kaviraj, DO Morgan, A H Morton, N G Phillips\n\nThe Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has been published for nearly 60 years, and is unique in its breadth of coverage. The Bulletin spans the cultures and civilizations of the Near and Middle East, South and Central Asia, the Far East, South-East Asia, and the continent of Africa, from the pre-biblical era to the present day.\n\nSince its foundation in 1917, the Bulletin has contributed scholarly articles on the history, religions, languages and literatures, art, and archaeology of these regions. In addition, over a third of each issue is devoted to reviews and book notices. These provide a reliable guide to new publications, and are used by academic institutions and libraries worldwide for book selection and acquisition.\n\n1995 ORDER FORM\n\nPlease enter my subscription to BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES | Volume 58 (3 issues): £62/US$114 Please note: £ sterling rates apply in UK and Europe, US$ rates elsewhere. Customers in the EC and in Canada are subject to their local sales tax\n\nName......\n\nAddress....\n\nCity/County...\n\nPostcode.\n\nPlease debit my Mastercard/ American Express / Diners / Visa\n\nCard Number:\n\nExp. date:\n\nFor further subscriptions information please contact:\n\nRecent & Forthcoming articles include:\n\nADH Bivar The Portraits and career of Mohammed Ali, son of Kazzem-Beg: Scottish missionaries and Russian orientalism\n\nOXFORD Journals Marketing (X95)\n\nJOURNALS\n\nOxford University Press\n\nWalton Street\n\nOxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom Fax: +44 0 1865 267773\n\nPei Huang The confidential memorial system of the Ch'ing dynasty reconsidered\n\nMehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H Shokoohy Tughlugabad, the earliest surviving town of the Delhi sultanate.\n\nPaul Thieme On M Mayrhofer's Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen\n\nME Yapp Two great historians of the modern Middle East\n\nNicholas Sims-Williams Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen\n\nMichael Brett The way of the nomad\n\nClive Holes Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East\n\nVassili Kryukov Symbols of power and communication in pre-Confucian China\n\nPadmanabh S Jaini Jaina monks from Mathura: literary evidence for their identification of Kusana sculptures\n\nColin F Baker Judaeo-Arabic material in the Cambridge Genizah Collections",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214811,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1999",
        "page_number": 226,
        "title": "RAS-1999",
        "content_text": "191\n\nrelations, points out how in the sense that Europe was constituted through her colonies, as her effective 'Other', the end of colonialism has meant a crisis of identity for Europe as well as for what used to be called the Third World.\n\n15 Bahloul (1996) in Lovell (1998).\n\n16 Wordsworth's discovery of an earlier self in the landscape of his remembered past merits however a rethinking in terms of this early industrial disemplacement from origins and the emergence of formalised notions of childhood.\n\n17 See Judith Okely (1978) and others on the institutionalisation of childhood. It was Wordsworth too who (in 1798) defined poetry as \"emotion recollected in tranquillity'.\n\nI must confess to a certain nostalgia for the time I lived in Hong Kong - and for other places too I have regarded as 'home', from Chiangmai in North Thailand to Nainital in the Himalayan foothills, back to the Cotswolds.\n\n19 What has been referred to as post-modernism is but one aspect of a more general shift towards roots', says Friedman (1999), a return to origins which he sees as contradictory to the demands and interests of a cosmopolitan identity. For me they are both part of a post-colonial reflection on the diasporic experience.\n\n20 This is a paraphrase of the version common in South-East Asia, recorded by Lemoine (1972). The following is a translation of some verses of a version recorded by myself in Yunnan. There is a surprising similarity in the broad outlines of the verse among Hmong from Thailand to China, yet there are also some local variations and differences which follow the teachings of particular Masters.\n\n21 Other work for instance stresses the problematisation of locality itself, its construction by wider discourses embedded in relations of unequal power for particular purposes (Olwig and Hastrup 1997, Lovell 1998).\n\n22 See Schein (1998); also Tapp (1996; 1999; forthcoming). ‘Miao' is a term used for Hmong, but also other groups, in China.\n\n23 Saskia Sassen (1996; 1999) very well charts the changing role of the state with regard to transnational forces and international migration.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x",
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]