The creators and creators of history
In "Qiang Between Han and Tibet", I introduce an ethnic group that lives between Han and Tibet – the Qiang people with a population of only about 200,000. This is an ancient nation, but also a new nation. He is ancient because for more than three thousand years there have been some Western "foreigners", called "Qiang" by merchants or by successive Chinese (ancient Chinese); there is no doubt that their blood and culture, to a greater or lesser extent, have flowed into many of the marginal groups of People in China today known as the Qiang or Qiang and Qiang ethnic groups. From another point of view, this is a new nation. Because the historical memory of the "Qiang" that condenses today, including the memory of the national title of "Qiang", has only become the indigenous knowledge of some people in northwest Sichuan in recent decades.
However, the Qiang are not a peculiar ethnic group. In the preface I mentioned two major themes of historical anthropology, as Silverman and Griffey spoke: "how the past makes the present" and "how the construction of the past is used to interpret the present." These two major themes, in anthropological or historical studies that focus on topics such as "history" and "nation", are almost two unexplored modes of interpretation that illustrate the "origin of nations". In the study of the Chinese nation or the Chinese ethnic minority, this is the dispute between "historical substance theory" and "modern constructivism". According to the "Qiang" study, my view on this is that like all "nations" in the world, the Qiang are the creators of history and the creators of history.
As a historical creation, whether it is the Hehuang Xiqiang of the Han Dynasty, the Xishan Zhuqiang of the Tang Dynasty, the Qiangmin of the first half of the 20th century, or the Qiang people of today, they are all products of history and "history". This history is what I call the history of the edge of China; "history" is the "history" constructed and recognized by people (Han and Qiang) in this history. As creators of history, they also create history and "history". People who are regarded by the Han as "Qiang" or "Qiang" respond to their marginal position relative to han, Tubo, or Tibet with various representations and actions, thus creating various historical facts (e.g., gathering various tribes to confront the Tang Dynasty and Tubo, or becoming Han, Xifan, or Tibet). At the same time, they also created "history" to interpret and construct the ethnic essence of the various groups within them or relative to the Han Chinese. It is also in this kind of history and "history" that "Qiang" has become a drifting and vague edge between Han and Tibet.
I. The History and "History" of the Chinese Margins
The history of the Qiang people and the Qiang people in the minds of ancient and modern China is in fact not the history of a certain ethnic entity, but the history of a "Chinese fringe". The history of this chinese fringe is the current history of the Qiang people and is also part of the history of China. The modern Qiang became a Chinese ethnic minority, not just the invention or construction of the intellectual elite in modern China. Therefore, it is difficult for me to agree with the "theory of historical substance" and the "theory of modern construction".
To understand the Qiang people from the marginal history of China, we can say that there are at least three processes from "Qiang" to "Qiang". First, "Qiang" is the Han concept of Western foreign races and ethnic margins. From the Shang to the Eastern Han Dynasty, the edge of this ethnic group gradually moved westward with the expansion of Huaxia, and finally formed a "Qiang people's belt" on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the Wei and Jin dynasties of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Later, under the influence of the eastward shift of the political and cultural forces of Tubo during the Sui and Tang dynasties, and under the stalemate between the Tang Dynasty and Tubo, most of the population in this Qiang area gradually became Sinicized or "Fanhua" (in the concept of the Han people), so the scope of "Qiang people" gradually narrowed. In the early years of the Republic of China, only the more Sinicized indigenous people in the upper reaches of the Min River were still called "Qiangmin" in the literature.
Second, under the influence of Western "nationalism", modern Chinese intellectuals have readjusted the Chinese fringe (which was also the Chinese fringe at this time) in the remains of historical and cultural memory to construct a new nationality. The Han Chinese became the core of this nationality, and the so-called "four-race barbarians" in ancient times became a frontier minority. The study and writing of Chinese ethnography and ethnic history since the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China shows on the one hand the backwardness and marginalization of these ethnic minorities, and on the other hand, the long-standing brethren and ethnic relations between them and the Han nationality. It is in this context that the historical memory of the "Qiang" is built as part of the "national history"; the culture and customs of the people in the upper reaches of the Min River are also explored and described as "Qiang culture" or "Qiang and Qiang ethnic culture".
The third process is the process of building our ethnic group in the upper reaches of the Min River in modern times. Under the influence of various foreign concepts and historical and cultural memories, as well as in the new economic and political environment, some people in the upper reaches of the Min River and Beichuan gradually accepted or fought to become Qiang. Local intellectuals also study, choose and construct the Qiang history in their minds, and select, construct and boast their Qiang culture in the memory of Han and local society, as well as under the two historical mentalities of "heroic ancestors" and "brother ancestors". Through layers of historical and cultural learning and boasting, the Qiang people have become a nation based on local identity.
To understand "Huaxia" or "Chinese nation" from the perspective of the Chinese fringe, we can also divide this "Chinese fringe history" into three phases.
First of all, from the Shang to the Han and Jin dynasties, the edge of the ethnic group in western China, characterized by "Qiang", moved westward with the westward expansion of Huaxia, and finally moved to the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which was the "formation and drift period of the edge of the ethnic group in western China". Secondly, from the Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, in the minds of the Han people, there are fewer and fewer people in the West who can be called "Qiang", and the relative "Fan" is becoming more and more numerous, indicating that the boundaries of the Western ethnic groups in China have gradually deepened and become distinct, which is the "deepening period of the edge of the ethnic groups in western China". Finally, from the late Qing Dynasty to the 1980s, it can be said that it was "a period of qualitative change on the edge of ethnic groups in western China". During this period, through the knowledge of "Qiang", "Qiang History", "Qiang Ethnic Groups", "Tibetan-Burmese Qiang Ethnic Groups" and "Tibetan-Burman Qiang Language Branches" established through linguistics, history, ethnology, etc., the non-Han groups on the old Qiang people's belt became various ethnic minorities and were connected within the Chinese national network. This is also under the nationalism, Chinese intellectuals recalled the memory of the "Qiang people's belt" of the Han and Jin Dynasties, and re-blended and blurred the margins of this Chinese Western ethnic group through new academic writing, thus including tibetan, Qiang, Yi and other "ethnic minorities" into the periphery of the "Chinese nation". This change, along with the self-history and cultural construction of contemporary Qiang, Yi, and so on, has together created the edge of a new China, or more accurately, the edge of the Chinese nation.
Historically, Huaxia has constantly imagined, defined, and described western dissident "Qiang people." These descriptions, as a kind of activation of social memory, also affect the interaction between Huaxia and the "Qiang people". "History" influences, creates, and creates new "histories" (memories and narratives). Although Huaxia constantly describes and records the "Qiang people" in their minds, the "Qiang history" that is complete and has become a model memory of society seems to have appeared only twice in Chinese history. During the Han and Jin Dynasties, the first "exemplary History of the Qiang" from the Chinese point of view was compiled, that is, the Book of the Later Han Dynasty. The Tale of the Western Qiang. After that, until the end of the Qing Dynasty, there were no special chapters on the "Qiang people" and their history in the various chinese canonical histories, that is to say, no "exemplary Qiang history" was written, preserved and circulated by China. The second is the construction of the History of the Qiang people in the study and writing of the "Chinese Ethnic History" at the beginning of the 20th century; based on the research of these fragments, finally in the 1980s, several exemplary "Qiang histories" were completed. This is not just a new exemplary writing of Qiang history, compared to the Book of the Later Han Dynasty. For example, the "Biography of the Western Qiang" is also a new genre creation.
The gap between the above two "exemplary Qiang histories" is nearly 1700 years. This shows that the western ethnic boundaries of "Huaxia", expressed as "Qiang people", have undergone two major stages of change. In the first stage, the edge of this ethnic group in western China was formed between the Later Han, Wei and Jin Dynasties, and the "Tale of the Western Qiang" describes and expresses the boundaries of this ethnic group. In this document, Huaxia imagined and described the descendants of these western aliens who were expelled to the border area by the Huaxia Saint King "Shun", and were also a branch of the Jiang surname, and their Hao chieftain family was also a descendant of a fugitive slave "WuYi Sword" from the Central Plains. In the second stage, in the modern narrative of the "History of the Qiang", the Qiang are the descendants of Emperor Yan and Gonggong, and their descendants are now widely spread among the Han, Tibetan, Yi and all the Southwest Qiang and Qiang ethnic groups in addition to the Qiang. With the help of linguistic, archaeological, physical and ethnological knowledge, close historical relations between peoples were established. Judging from the historical narratives of these ancient Chinese and today's Chinese on the "Qiang", the Qiang people after the Three Miao are the "Yidi" in Huaxia's mind; the Qiang people after the YanDi are the "ethnic minorities" in the minds of Chinese. For the ancient Chinese, "Yidi" was a foreign race outside the border. For today's Han chinese, "ethnic minorities" are marginal and fraternal ethnic groups within national sovereignty and borders. As scholars say: "literary" reflects and constructs "situations". Here, the transformation of "genre" also reflects and creates new "situations".
Alternative "history"
Both the descendants of Sanmiao and the descendants of Emperor Yan are descendants of a "heroic ancestor", and at least since the Han Dynasty, the "our history" or "their history" familiar to Chinese intellectuals has begun with a heroic ancestor.
During the Middle Ages, the political and cultural power of Tibet developed eastward and extended to the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In the eyes of Tibetan scholars and later Tibetan scholars, the tribal populations in this area were also quite barbaric and foreign. Ancient Tibetan texts record the origins of the ancient tribes on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; many authors believe that these marginal tribes and Tubo tribes are the descendants of the earliest "four or six brothers"; among them, a "little brother or bad family" was expelled to the northeast border region and became the ancestor of some "primitive tribes". It is worth noting that for the ancient Tibetans and the ancient Central Plains, the tribal groups on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau were their "marginal or alien races". However, Tibetan scholars and Han scholars have used two different historical narrative modes, "brother ancestors" and "heroic ancestors", respectively, to construct a history of the origin of "different groups". This is the difference in what I call "historical mentality" in this book.
Under the specific "historical mentality", people construct "fundamental history" in the same mode to standardize the ideal ethnic relations and related resource sharing and distribution systems. The Qiang people, in this regard, provide an excellent example for us to understand the "history". The "Brother Ancestor Stories" popular among Qiang villages illustrate the relationship between "history" and ethnic identity in the context of human resource competition. At the same time, the "Brother Ancestor Story" also tells us that the "heroic ancestral history" is not the only "history". It also tells us that not all groups of people use "history" to distinguish between the conquerors and the conquered, between the old inhabitants and the descendants of the new immigrants. In beichuan, Lixian and other areas with deep influence on Han culture, the "stories of brothers' ancestors" may appear as the fathers of these brothers, or mention the migration of brothers in the geographical space of the Han people, or have a linear time in Chinese history. More importantly, it is only the history of the "family", a small branch of a big history (Chinese history). As a result, the ancestors of the brothers of the local "families" came here in succession and came from different geographical spaces; the time and space distinctions in "history" also strengthened the core and marginal distinctions between the groups (families). These microscopic research cases also clearly show how "Sinicization" is carried out through historical memory (narrative) and related literary and psychological changes.
The formation of the Modern Qiang people is mainly the product of the "heroic ancestral history" in the construction of local history. The heroic stories in the Duangong scriptures of the first half of the 20th century, some "heroic travelogues" or "heroic journeys", seem to imply that we have a historical narrative in the transitional stage from "brother ancestor stories" or other "histories" to "heroic ancestral histories". It may be the precursor to heroic epics such as the "Biography of Mu Tianzi" of ancient Huaxia, the "Biography of Jianger" of the Mongols, and the "Biography of Gesar" of the Various Ethnic Groups of Kangzang. Through the gradual development from "Heroic Journey" to "Heroic Ancestral History", human society has gradually evolved from an isolated and equal small regional community to a centralized and ordered large-scale ethnic group and political body. In any case, the imagination of the "my clan" constructed by these local intellectuals in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River in the early modern period with the "Heroic Journey" was blocked by the circulation of other "heroic ancestral histories" before it was completed. In the minds of locals, "ancestors" such as Dayu, Zhoucang, and Fan Lihua can all be used as an "origin" to illustrate the ethnic nature of locals. The power of Chinese character memory and the dominant position of Han culture make them believe that the heroic ancestors of Dayu, Zhou Cang, Fan Lihua and so on are real and credible. What is even more powerful is the completion and circulation of the "exemplary Qiang history". Since then, the stories in the Duangong scriptures have become "religious myths", and the ancestral stories of heroes such as Zhou Cang and Fan Lihua have become "rural legends". The Qiang in "Exemplary History" are the descendants of heroes who were defeated by the Chinese hero Saint King "Yellow Emperor" after Emperor Yan.
However, compared with Emperor Yan and Dayu, since the 1980s, Qiang intellectuals have been more enthusiastic about engaging in the historical and cultural construction of Dayu as the ancestor of the Qiang people. Just as the Qiang people who entered Guanzhong during the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Southern and Northern Dynasties attached the descendants of the Yellow Emperor as their ancestral origins, while ignoring the Chinese historical records that "Qiang was the empress dowager of Jiang surname Yan", the intellectuals of the "Qiang" and "Qiang" in ancient and modern times were unwilling to admit that they were descendants of the "losers". Even if they admit that their own clan is a descendant of Emperor Yan, today's Qiang intellectuals will emphasize another ancient Chinese memory, the "Chinese" called Yan and Huang brothers. Therefore, they believe that the Qiang and the Han are brothers; because the Yan Emperor is in front, the Qiang are still the eldest brothers. In the historical debate about the birthplace of "Dayu", the examples in this book also illustrate how "history" can be debated in this group and become a symbolic capitals for which is the core of the group and which is the edge of the group. In the upper reaches of the Min River and the Beichuan region, the ruins of Dayu exist near the old county towns that served as the political and cultural centers of the local Han people, indicating that "Dayu" was once a historical symbol that promoted the westward movement of the chinese edge. In the process of the nationalization of the Qiang in modern times, or in the process of the local more Chinese people becoming qiang, "Dayu" was attached to them as the ancestor of the Qiang. The change in the symbolic meaning of "Dayu" on this Chinese edge also shows the changes on this Chinese edge and its modern qualitative changes over the past two thousand years.
Another local historical construct is the rewriting and interpretation of the Qiang intellectuals' "Qiangge War" in the 1980s. At the beginning of this is the Han historians' view of the "Battle of Qiangge" as a remnant of the local memory of a real history—this is the "history" of the Qiang people in the northwest who were defeated by the Han Empire and moved south. Qiang intellectuals accepted this "history." But their more meaningful construction is that the hero who defeated the Ge people, "Abba Baigou", has nine sons, and these nine brothers are assigned to various regions to establish villages, and become the origin of the Qiang people today and in the imagination. This imagination of our ethnic blood and geography, that is, the nine brothers and the place they occupy, includes the historical space imagination in the early Duangong "Heroic Chronicle", the linguistic space imagination of the population provided by contemporary linguistic knowledge, and the political space imagination of our ethnic group in the current ethnic knowledge and administrative divisions. On the one hand, this example shows that this version of the Qiangge War story is a mixture of the two historical mentalities of "brother story" and "heroic ancestor". On the other hand, it also explains the essence of the Qiang in the minds of the current Qiang intellectuals and the ideal range of the Qiang. What is more significant is that this kind of construction of our ethnic group concretely and subtly reflects an important feature of modern "national construction" - linguistics, history and ethnology (as well as archaeology and physique), so that our ethnic construction has more tools that can be "used".
History and the modern products of "history"
In the Middle Ages, the Westward Chinese Ethnic Group and the Cultural Edge and the Eastward Tubo or Tibetan Buddhist Cultural Edge intersected at the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; this history, as well as the various "historical" and "cultural" constructions, displays and expositions of the various "histories" and "cultures" produced by the classification of ethnic groups in China under the influence of this history, have created an ethnic identity system in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River and the Beichuan region since the end of the Qing Dynasty. This is the ethnic system of "one scolding and one scolding" that I introduce in this book. Here, we are exposed to the problem of "Sinicization" or "ethnic identity and the process of change". The study of historical ethnography of Qiang society and the anthropological exploration of related "history" and "culture" provide concrete and detailed examples for the problem of "Sinicization" or "Origin of the Han Nationality". "Sinicization" is not the result of, as many scholars have said, Huaxia is as tolerant as the sea, and "Yidi is in Huaxia, then Huaxia is"; "Sinicization" is not caused by Baiyi's admiration for Chinese culture. The symbols or processes of "Sinicization" are not accomplished through changes in language, culture, and blood, such as learning Chinese, dressing in chinese, or marrying and marrying in China. Judging from the history of the chinese fringes and the historical ethnography of the upper reaches of the Min River and the beichuan indigenous people in modern times, I believe that "Sinicization" should be regarded as an important way of origin and formation of China. Alternatively, the more inclusive noun describing this phenomenon should be "Huaxia".
The ethnic system of "scolding and cursing" tells us that, first of all, Huaxiaization is not only caused by the tolerance of Chinese identity, but on the contrary, it is the discrimination of ancient "Huaxia" against "barbarians" that promotes the entire process of "Huaxiaization". Secondly, more importantly, the process of "Huaxiaization" does not occur between "Huaxia" and "Barbarians", whose culture and social identity can be distinctly distinguished, but between people whose culture, living customs and social identities are very similar. In the areas where the process of Huaxiaization is taking place, it is actually quite vague who is "Han" and who is non-Han. Third, in addition to the involvement of government forces, the local resource distribution and sharing system between neighboring groups, social classes and genders is the main background for the change of "Huaxia" identity. Below, I will explain these phenomena in more depth.
We briefly recall the process of how the white grass and green pieces of residents in beichuan became Han chinese or Huaxia in modern times, as mentioned in this book. After the local residents of the Ming Dynasty accepted the rule of the imperial court, the Han immigrants and the Han culture and historical memories they brought with them gradually penetrated into the villages of Baicao and the upper reaches of the Qingbian River. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, a vague Han and non-Han fringe was formed here: everyone thought they were Han Chinese, but they thought that the upstream village crowds were "barbarians". Through the display and boasting of cultural symbols and historical memories at one end (those who call themselves Han), and the imitation and attachment of those who are regarded as "barbarians" at the other end, more and more Beichuan people since the Ming and Qing dynasties call themselves "Han Chinese". In addition to emphasizing that the family is a certain family from "Huguang", they all worship Dayu to attach themselves to the Han people. However, those who call themselves "Han Chinese" and insult the upstream "barbarians" are still regarded as "barbarians" by people downstream or in towns. It is worth noting here that the entire process of identity and cultural change is carried out through "imitation, attachment" and relative "distinction and boasting" between neighboring groups. Attachment arises from a desire to imitate; the climber hopes to obtain a certain identity, benefit and security through imitation.
This is like the mimesis of the biological world, where many animals imitate others or others to escape aggression. The attachment motive is also equivalent to what Kilar calls "mimetic desire"; between close and hostile individuals or groups, the pursuit of a superior position of existence (being) produces the imitation of one party to the other. The desire to cling to cultural and ethnic identities arises from the social and cultural gap that is created, imagined or constructed between the clinger and the possessed. Either because of the political conquest and domination of the "barbarians" in ancient China, or because of the Han people's contempt for the body, cultural customs and history of the marginal "barbarians", it may have caused the motives of the inferior to climb. In contrast to imitation and attachment, the "anti-imitation and attachment" caused by the fear of each other's "imitation and attachment" - that is, the self-proclaimed "Han" people use their own culture to exhibit and boast to the "barbarians", thus creating a "distinction" between "my group" and "dissidents". This is similar to what Bourdieu called the strategy of defining, boasting, and manipulating "tastes" among social class groups in order to create social distinctions. In the ethnic phenomenon, it is not only the "taste" in the customs of life that is evaluated, but also the "history of origin", ethics and morality, and so on. In the upper reaches of the Min River and Beichuan in the first half of the 20th century, many "Han Chinese" boasted of their superior ancestral origins, regular living customs and exemplary human morality, and mocked or imagined the inferior ancestral origins of the "barbarians" and some strange customs, and used this to distinguish which was the core and which was the marginal, the descendant of the conquering ruler, and the descendant of the conquered or the ruled.
The "Han Chinese" and "barbarians" mentioned above are not people with a long distance in social space, they may live in neighboring upstream and downstream villages, and may even live in the same village. The social distinctions that Bourdieu calls the evaluation of taste, as well as what Kilar calls the desire to imitate, also occur among groups in society that are close to or in constant contact with each other. In this marginal area, the socio-cultural gap between the "Han Chinese" and the "barbarians" is not necessarily an objective fact, nor is it necessarily very clear. Indeed, the mutual discrimination, boasting and attachment of people through the discourse of "culture" and "history" do not often occur between groups that are culturally, ethnically, geographically and socially distant (such as Chinese and non-Chinese, scholars and villagers). Instead, they often occur between closer groups and form a chain reaction of mutual discrimination, boasting and imitation, and clinging. The lines between these close groups are rather blurred. Blurring of boundaries creates an identity crisis on one side, thus creating or emphasizing distinctions through boasting. The other side, because it cannot bear discrimination, or under the influence of cultural boasting, accepts a cultural and historical value (what is a noble culture, what is the noble ancestral origin), and loves and appreciates the culture of the boaster, so it imitates and clings to change the ethnic identity to escape discrimination and persecution. This kind of "blurred Chinese fringe" caused by mutual imitation and discrimination is often divided into areas with "familiar fans and raw fans" in the observation and description of Han intellectuals. These areas are one of the key areas of the "origin of China"; these processes are also one of the important processes of "the formation of China".
Return to the village society of the upper reaches of the Min River in the first half of the 20th century. In a village population, the subjective consciousness of "ethnic groups" often exists between the head and his people, between men and women, and between neighboring families. The local officials and leaders emphasized their "Han" ancestral origins, exhibited their Han gentry cultural customs, and discriminated against and defiled the blood and cultural customs of their people. Men suspect that the "roots" of women married from outside are unclean, and worry that the "barbarian" customs they may bring with them will pollute local norms. In the fourth chapter of this book, I explain that in the upper reaches of the Min River and the Beichuan region, in the past, women were often considered to have "barbarian" blood, or "poison cats" and other demonic inheritances. In this way, the woman in the village, or a certain woman, becomes the embodiment of the "barbarian" in people's minds or subconscious. Therefore, the "barbarians" in the minds of the villagers are "aliens" from afar, "aliens" from neighboring upstream villages, and may also be "aliens" whose blood relatives in this village are polluted by barbarians. Finally, in a family with male members as the core, the closest "dissident" to a man is the woman in the family. Although among the Qiang and Tibetans in the upper reaches of the Min River, it is generally believed that women have "magic" or "pollution power", they generally do not blame or discriminate against women in their families. As a result, a small number of women in the village are regarded as "poison cats" by everyone (including other women), and become the scapegoats of the villagers' fear and hostility towards layers of external "aliens".
Contrary to the villagers' fear and hostility towards layers of "outsiders", the concept of "my clan" in the villagers' minds extends from "family" to the "Erma" that includes a ditch or several ditches; in recent decades, the scope of this "my clan" has been extended to the "Qiang" and "Chinese nation". This concept of our clan from the inside out is also expressed in the stories of various brothers and ancestors who unite layers of people. Therefore, "compatriots" and "aliens" are not two distinct groups; compatriots are also aliens, and aliens can also become compatriots. Because of their closeness and similarity, "brothers" are a metaphor for friendly cooperation based on the feelings of their compatriots; on the other hand, because their compatriots are too similar and close, "brothers" also metaphors for hostility and threats to each other.
The above discussion also explains why in this book, I expand the "ethnic group" to refer to the various levels of blood and quasi-blood identity groups, and focus on analyzing the nature of their "boundaries" at each level, emphasizing the interaction and interaction between the "boundaries" inside and outside the layers. In the study of Western social anthropology, scholars have pointed out that in the past decade or so, some researchers have shifted their research focus to "identity" or "nationalism" and abandoned the original concept of "ethnicity", which is also due to their belief that "ethnic essence" fails to encompass the interaction between groups of diversity. Indeed, not only that, but in the study of a particular society, scholars often conceptualize the terms "kinship," "ethnic group," or "ethnicity" to refer to specific human or quasi-kinship groups. However, the example of the upper reaches of the Minjiang River shows that the concepts of "kinship", "ethnic group" and "ethnicity" recognized by scholars are not obviously different for many villagers, and there is no absolute distinction between "my ethnic group" and "alien". Is it the special social background and historical mentality of the villagers in the upper reaches of the Minjiang River that cause this phenomenon? In a way, it is. But in other human societies, people are often unable to distinguish between "my race" and "aliens" in their consciousness or subconscious, and distinguish between our love and hate for our relatives, compatriots, and enemies. Therefore, the hatred between the people close to them may be transferred to the distant "aliens"; the frustration and fear obtained from the distant "aliens" may also be angry at the close people, which is why the "scapegoat phenomenon" or the "poison cat phenomenon" is so common in this world.
Iv. Reflections on the Edge of China: A Human Ecological Perspective
Whether it is exemplary history (Qiang history) and ethnic groups (Qiang, Chinese nation), or "brother ancestor stories", alternative history and the "Erma" identity of the residents of various ditches, the existence and change of these "histories" and "human social segments" have a most basic human ecological background - human resource allocation, sharing and competition. The Qiang people, who live in the world of the ditch, also give us precious enlightenment at this point. In a ditch, in order to share and compete for survival resources, they use the "history" of their brothers and ancestors to unite and distinguish the "ethnic groups" at all levels in the ditch. "Brethrenship" is a metaphor for cooperation, distinction and confrontation among the populations, but in any case, in this historical memory, the local population has no distinction between the descendants of the conquerors and the conquered, nor between the old inhabitants and the new immigrants—everyone is the descendant of several brothers who came at the same time. No individual or group of individuals can have or claim a superior position in the distribution of resources because of "history".
From this perspective of human ecology, we review the history of the chinese margins. History, expressed in terms of "stories of brothers and ancestors", seems to have been ubiquitous among people in China and some of its marginal areas. In the ancient Chinese historical records, traces of "brothers' ancestor stories" can be seen everywhere. For example, we can find in the "Chinese" that the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor were two brothers, which shows that at that time (the Eastern Zhou Dynasty), there were still some intellectual elites who wanted to connect the kingdoms of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor with "brotherly relations" rather than the relationship between conquerors and conquerors. However, at this time and later, various "heroic ancestor" discourses became popular among the Chinese states, and the Yellow Emperor gradually gained a special status of "ancestor"; the Yan Emperor, who was earlier than him, was regarded as an ancient emperor defeated by the Yellow Emperor in most pre-Qin literature. In the Han and Jin Dynasties, when the edge of China extended to the edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Bashu people who were included in this edge and became Huaxia still used a "story of nine brothers" to unite the local ruling family with the Central Plains Huaxia.
Nevertheless, the "Records of History" written by Sima Qian in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty set a model for the writing of Chinese history. This exemplary history is the "heroic ancestor history" - in the main chronicle and family of the "History", the ruling class of a country and a family originates from its "heroic ancestors". That is to say, the "Records of History" not only summarizes the diverse and chen Discourse of the Yellow Emperor since the end of the Warring States period to the beginning of the Han Dynasty, making the Yellow Emperor the common ancestor of Huaxia (strictly speaking, only the ruling class of China), but also creates a "literary category" with "heroic ancestors" as the backbone, that is, the so-called "correct history". Since then, "history" has been separated from the myths and legends that Sima Qian called "his words are indecent". Since then, the "Brother Ancestor Story" has lost its place in history and has become a rural legend. Linear or cyclical history, the history that begins with the heroic Saint King, and the history that mainly records and recalls the activities of some people in society, becomes the "correct history". For example, the "history" of the Bashu people on the fringes of China during the Han and Jin Dynasties mentioned above, and from then on, the "history" that began with "the Yellow Emperor as his son Changyi married the daughter of the Shushan clan, gave birth to a son Gaoyang, and sealed his branch to Shu for the emperor..." Therefore, "history" not only distinguishes between Huaxia and non-Huaxia (people and domains), but also distinguishes between the domains of Huaxia what is under the jurisdiction of the Yellow Emperor's lineage, what is sealed by the Yellow Emperor's zhishu, and what is conquered by the Yellow Emperor and his descendants; among the people of China, who (the ruling family) becomes Huaxia by the blood of the Yellow Emperor, and who (Li Min) becomes Huaxia because of "enlightenment". With these distinctions, Huaxia has become a first-order system of resource sharing, distribution and competition. Nevertheless, the historical mentality of the people who unite the people with "brotherly relations" still exists in various "ethnic minority legends" and the oral family genealogy of Han chinese villagers.
Among the marginalized groups in China, the first to accept or attach to the "heroic ancestors" of China is often its upper rulers. In doing so, they strengthen their superior position in the allocation of local resources. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the rulers of Wu, Yue, Chu, Qin and other marginal states in China were all "Huaxia ancestors" of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and became Huaxia. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Qiang people in Guanzhong often claimed to be descendants of the Yellow Emperor's descendants "Youyu Clan" and "Xia Hou Clan", thus also becoming Huaxia. Since the Ming and Qing dynasties, many toasts in southwest China have often called themselves "Nanjing" or "Huguang", and through the "family name source" in their Han family genealogy, they have directly or indirectly become "descendants of the Yellow Emperor", thus using this ancestral "history" to turn their people into descendants of Chinese conquerors. His people also often adopted the Han surname, and their Chinese ancestors were obtained from the memory of the "source of ten thousand surnames" of the Han people. It can be said that in the development of the "Chinese Periphery", due to the adoption of the "heroic ancestral history" of Huaxia, more and more marginal groups and spaces have been included in the resource sharing and distribution system of "Huaxia". Within this system, the "heroic ancestral history" and other historical discourses further order the sharing and distribution of resources among the internal (gender, region, class, occupation) population.
The westward expansion of the "Chinese fringe" basically reached the geographical limit of the existence of The Economic Ecology and Social Structure of China during the Eastern Han Dynasty and the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Since then, Huaxia has not only maintained and closed this edge by force, but also strengthened this edge by describing the alienity of the marginal space (the barbaric miasma land) and the marginal crowd (the sense of otherness). Since the Middle Ages, the border defense strategy of the Central Plains Dynasty has generally been to place a series of military forts and heavy troops in the "Qiang people's belt" to defend against the invasion of "Tubo" or "Xifan". From the upper reaches of the Min River to the Ya'an region, or further down to northern Yunnan, this line was often the western frontier defense line of the Chinese Empire. Because Huaxia strongly maintains and monopolizes The resources of China, the tribes and villages in the mountains on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (roughly the Kangzang region) can only compete internally for limited valley and grassland resources, or under the Chinese tribute system, they can only exchange obedience for the gifts of Huaxia. Except for the Tubo period, it was difficult for the people on the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to form a large-scale political and military body in history, and to compete for resources from China by means of coercion and invasion. This is quite different from the nomadic tribes in northern Xinjiang that often gather as large nomadic empires to threaten and plunder the Central Plains. Correspondingly, the "heroic ancestor history" is also popular in the northern nomadic regions; in the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the "brother ancestor story" is the blueprint for the historical memory of various ethnic groups.
The "heroic ancestral history" represents a product of historical mentality that solves the problem of resources by external expansion and internal class differentiation. The "Story of brother ancestors" represents a kind of historical mental product that solves the problem of resources by internal distribution and competition. Therefore, "brotherhood" is not a sign of harmony among the local ethnic groups. On the contrary, due to the extreme scarcity of resources, the various ethnic groups that claimed to have ancestral relations with their brothers, as well as their "barbarians" and "Han Chinese" in their vicinity, were often trapped in endless mutual plunder and vendetta.
V. Marginal Reconstruction of Modern China: From "Barbarians" to "Ethnic Minorities"
After understanding the human ecological significance of the above history of the marginal ethnic groups in western China, we can also have a new understanding of the "ethnic minoritization" of the marginal areas of china in modern times. First of all, the contemporary "Chinese nation", which includes Both Han and non-Han, is not the only solution considered in the construction of the Chinese nation in the late Qing Dynasty, and the elite of the revolutionary party advocated the establishment of a purely Han state. Later, because of the "vassalage" of the modern Western powers under the system of tribute to China, or the land and resources of the border areas under the direct and indirect jurisdiction of China, they showed their ambitions and covetous actions. Stimulated and competed, Chinese intellectuals constructed a Chinese nation that included the traditional "Huaxia" and its "marginality." Under the new concepts of "China" and "Chinese nation", the traditional "China" and its "periphery" are now united; the "frontiers" with blurred boundaries in the past and the foreign races on them have become ethnic minorities within the "boundary" of a country with clear boundaries.
The exposition and exemplary "History of the Qiang" in modern times, and the qiang's becoming one of China's ethnic minorities, can be regarded as a representation of the reconstruction of the western Chinese margins, and are also a modern product of a long-term history of the Chinese fringes. Under modern nationalism, the "Edge of Drifting China" in the Middle Ages, which has gradually faded due to the rise of Tubo since the Middle Ages, the "Qiang people's belt" of the Han and Jin Dynasties, and the earlier "Drifting Chinese Edge" of the Shang to Han Dynasty with Qiang as a symbol, have been rediscovered and constructed by Chinese intellectuals. Linguistics, physique, archaeology, ethnology, and modern historiography are all used to stitch together this people and its history. As a result, the edges of the ethnic groups in western China, which have been severely reduced by the concept of "Fan" since the Middle Ages, are now being mixed and blurred by concepts such as "Qiang" and "Qiang", "Qiang", and "history". Although after the identification and division of ethnic groups, there are Tibetans, Qiangs, Yi and so on. However, through the construction of history, language and bloodline (physique) between the "Qiang" and "Qiang and Qiang ethnic groups", the Tibetan, Yi and Southwest Qiang ethnic groups and between them and the Han nationality can be said to be "you have me, I have you".
In the past, the "barbarians" in China's mind have since become China's "ethnic minorities". This transformation is of considerable significance to the ecology of human resources; it can be said that it is a readjustment of the resource allocation and sharing system of the traditional Huaxia and the chinese periphery. In the case of the western edge of China described in this book, in the past two thousand years, due to China's strong maintenance of its western resource boundaries and local unique geographical ecology, it has caused widespread conflict and violence among people in the eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; these phenomena have decreased significantly after "nationalization". Local people often describe to me the bloody violence of the past and the fear of people about it. They said, "That's because people in the past didn't know that we were a people." Under the identity of the contemporary Qiang, "national feelings" have resolved the violent conflicts between the people in various ditches and villages, or between the "barbarians", "Erma" and "Han" in the past. Today, the crowds of villages in the upper reaches of the Min River are no longer cunning "Han Chinese", greedy "barbarians" or a handful of isolated "Erma", but have become proud Qiang people. The various preferential treatment and subsidies of the state for ethnic minorities have also partially compensated for the economic gap between the core and the marginal.
Sixth, the rethinking of the Chinese nation
In the preface to this book, I mention two contemporary historical discourses about the "Chinese nation" and the "Chinese ethnic minority"—"historical substance" and "modern constructivism." Here, based on the book's views on the "Chinese nation", we can put forward some comprehensive comments on these two theories, as well as rethink the past and present, scholarship and reality of the "Chinese nation". We can think about this in two ways. First, in academics, are the "nation" and "history" advocated by scholars intellectually correct or sufficient? The second is whether the "national" and "historical" knowledge they construct helps to create or promote resource equality, sharing and social harmony. Academically, the definition of "nation" advocated by the "historical substance theory" is questionable. Anthropological ethnic studies over the past three decades have shown that neither "ethnicity" nor "ethnicity" can be defined by objective physique, language, and culture. The "history of nations" based on this definition of nationality, the history of a national entity's continuation over time, is therefore often questioned. There are internal differences between the blood, culture, language and "identity" of a group of people, and in historical time, there are the migration of blood, culture, language and "identity", and there are also the migration of new blood, culture, language and "identity". What exactly is the "national entity" that continues throughout history? The academic lack of "historical substance theory" lies mainly in the fact that "text" and "representation" are regarded as "historical facts" and "ethnographical truths", ignoring the essence of social memory of "historical texts" and the nature of "cultural representations"—that is, ignoring the historical and social situations in which they arise and exist. Finally, due to the lack of critical cognition of human ethnic phenomena, in the relevant "historical" and "cultural" academic constructions, new knowledge is difficult to reflect the essence of ethnic phenomena, and cannot reflect the researchers' own cultural and identity biases. Because researchers are unable to recognize their own political and cultural subjectivity biases, their national history and national cultural construction further marginalize the "other". Therefore, in terms of ethics, the exemplary "Chinese Ethnic History" and "Chinese Ethnic Minority History" under the "Historical Substance Theory" lack the ability to reflect on and correct the reality.
The "modern constructivism" under postmodernism emphasizes the distinction between them and "ethnic groups" in the view of "nations" or "nationalities", believing that the latter is naturally formed, and the former is a product of modern nationalism and the imagination and construction of the intellectual elite of modern nationalities. Such a view does not show that whether it is ethnic groups, nationalities, or nationalities, they are all part of the phenomenon of human "ethnic groups" in a broad sense; from the perspective of human ecology, families, ethnic groups, nationalities, and nationalities all involve the allocation and competition of resources and the construction of "history" under related power relations. Therefore, in the view of history, the "modern constructivism" only pays attention to the history and "history" of modern national construction, and ignores the ancient basis of modern construction and the human ecological significance of "modern construction" in this long-term historical change. Secondly, like the "theory of historical substance", the "modern constructivism" also ignores the subtle processes that occur in historical evolution that occur at various "margins" and the history of "marginal" changes caused by this process. In terms of ethical and humanistic values, it is undeniable that the "modern constructivists" have indeed made their contributions in deconstructing the "national myth" against the "chauvinism of the Han nationality" and highlighting the marginal status of the current ethnic minorities. However, it is only seen near, not far away, which also makes this kind of exposition only deconstructed and lacks long-term and comprehensive historical reflection. For example, the "modern constructivists" only point out the inequality between the core and marginal ethnic groups in the modern "Chinese nation", but do not see the long-term wars and conflicts that occurred along the edges of the "Chinese nation" before the establishment of the "Chinese nation". Nor has it been seen that the groups excluded from the margins of China often have mutual hatred and plunder between ethnic groups due to lack of resources, as well as the exploitation and violence between classes and genders within the society of the population due to resource competition.
In this book, I understand the Qiang people from the history of the Chinese margins, and the Qiang people and the Qiang people to understand the history of the Chinese margins. On the one hand, the contemporary Qiang people are indeed a modern construction under nationalism. On the other hand, the existence of the Qiang people has its own historical basis or continuity before modern times. However, what continues in this history is not a "nation", but an ethnic process that occurs among marginalized people in China, under the multi-level social division (gender, region, class, politics and culture) and related power relations. More importantly, the long-term history of the chinese marginal human ecology perspective allows us to reflect on the human ecological significance of the construction of modern Chinese nationalities, understand the current situation of Ethnic Minorities in China, and plan to improve or plan a more ideal environment for sharing human resources.
From this point of view, the expansion and development of the Chinese territory and the Chinese people from the Zhou Dynasty to the Han and Jin Dynasties, as well as the maintenance of the Chinese border from then until the end of the Qing Dynasty, were sacrificed by the "foreign races" excluded from this border. Therefore, in the construction of the nationality in modern China, the unity of China and the periphery of traditional China to become the "Chinese nation" can be said to be a new attempt in the long history of human resource competition in this region - the integration of interdependent regional groups in the ecosystem of the vast East Asian continent into a country and nation that share resources. In this regard, the blueprint for the establishment of a pure Han state by some revolutionary elites in the late Qing Dynasty was not a good choice. Similarly, there are the following differences between the eastern and western halves of Eurasia – the West is a country that values human rights and freedom for a few rich and powerful people along the Atlantic coast, while the interior is a country and ethnic group that is often involved in religious, racial and economic resource wars and internal gender, class and ethnic persecution; the east coast is a "pluralistic" China, which uses economic subsidies to alleviate poverty and deprivation in the inland areas and maintain order between ethnic groups with state power. We do not believe that the system in the western half of Eurasia is superior to the system under the Chinese nation in the eastern half.
At this point, I hope that readers will understand that this book is not only the history and ethnography of an "ethnic minority", but more importantly, it is also a history and ethnography of China or the fringes of China. Huaxia or Chinese this group grows and changes because of the passage and change of its edges; and the passage and change of the Chinese fringes also contain changes in the human resource sharing and competition system. It can be said that the creation of the "Chinese nation" in modern times has its historical and "historical" foundation. Whether it is the current Qiang, Han or Chinese nation, they are all creations of history, and these groups are also the creators of "history".