Dancing Fools; Politics of Culture and Place in a “Traditional Nationality Festival”  

Oleh:

Mueggler, Erik

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Modern China vol. 28 no. 1 (Jan. 2002), page 3-38.
Topik: Politics of Culture and Place in a “Traditional Nationality Festival”
Fulltext: 3MC281.pdf (141.22KB)

Isi artikel

In 1987, the Nationalities Commission of Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture,Yunnan province, established a “traditional festival” in an outlying district and dubbed it, awkwardly, the Clothing Competition Festival (saizhuangjie). Two years later, the event having proved a success, the commission celebrated it in amagazine article as an exuberant, aesthetically exciting, and politically innocent revival of “minority nationality customs”: The fifteenth of the first month is the Clothing Competition Festival of the Yi of Zhizuo district, Yongren County. On this day, early in the morning, crowds wearing festive clothing flow from every direction toward the clothing competition ground. Old people wear newclothing in the ancient style, young men dress up dashingly, and girls appear gaudy and gorgeous in clothing they have meticulously embroidered themselves. The people gather to the pleasing tone of the gourd-pipe to sing and dance, chat of auspicious events, celebrate the bumper harvest, compare beauty, and compete to showtheir wit, all to their hearts’ content. “Compare clothing until the sun sets, dance until the moon is high.” At last year’s Clothing Competition Festival, people wore altogether more than a thousand sets of every kind of traditional nationality clothing, and eight were judged masters at embroidery. At the same time, there were riflery, crossbow archery, horse racing, mountain climbing, and other such national sports activities. [Gao Dingfeng and Yang Yunzhong, 1989: 121]

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