Declining Evenki ‘Identities’: Playing with loyalty in modern and contemporary China

ABSTRACT

Officially recognized as a single ‘ethnic minority’ in the Chinese administrative system, Evenki groups belong to a distinctive geographical and cultural milieu. This case study analyses Evenki expressions of loyalty to state authorities and relation to changing identities in modern and contemporary China. What kinds of ‘loyalties’ did Evenki proffer to their rulers and/or neighbours? How did these flexible loyalties evolve, strengthen, or disappear over the decades? The first section explores how the Evenki’s multiple identities have been shaped over the last two centuries and how their loyalty shifted from one state authority to another and to one or several groups of people. In the second section, the constructed category of Evenki, intertwined with the evolving ‘identity’ formation, will be analysed through the prism of the everyday contemporary practices and discourses witnessed during ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2008 and 2016.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• Evenki
• ‘Identity’
• loyalty
• ethnonyms
• everyday practices

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The People’s Republic of China is officially composed of 56 ‘nationalities’ (minzu): the Chinese nationality of the majority and 55 other groups recognized as minority groups.

2. According to the 2010 Chinese national census.

3. For practical purposes and to avoid any confusion, I use the official contemporary terminology Evenki to refer to the three subgroups (Solon, Reindeer Evenki and Khamnigan Evenki). When one specific subgroup is concerned, I will mention its appellation.

4. Namely, the Oroqen (Elunchun 鄂倫春), the Hezhe (赫哲) and the Evenki, who became three distinct ‘ethnic minorities’ in the PRC, and different Mongol groups.

5. Here, we refer to Manchuria, broadly speaking as it became defined in retrospect by the Qing rulers.

6. The Russian advances led to the conclusion of a series of treaties (the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, the Aigun Treaty in 1858 and the Peking Treaty in 1860) and the demarcation of the Russo-Chinese boundary. Even after the treaties were signed, the Russians attempted to gain more land from the Manchus. For more details related to the establishment of the Amur River (Heilongjiang 黑龍江) as the Sino-Russian Border, see Zatsepine (2007) and Bassin (1999).

7. Although not all native peoples were integrated into the Manchu system, a great number of them were subordinated to Manchu control.

8. Lee (1970, 14) has pointed out that in the early Qing records, the Tungus were identified in terms of the localities in which they lived.

9. The descendants of these border guards nowadays form a small community of 72 residents (according to data provided by the Inner Mongolia Evenki museum) in the Yili and Tacheng Kazakh autonomous prefectures in the north of the Uighur autonomous province of Xinjiang. They are part of the ‘Evenki ethnic minority’, but are most commonly known as Ongkor Solon.

10. The ‘Cabinet of Purple Glory’ (紫光閣 ziguang ge) was a public military museum under the Qing dynasty which displayed paintings and portraits of meritorious officials.

11. The ‘New Manchu’ relied primarily on hunting and fishing, rather than agriculture, for their livelihoods (Kim 2009, 61).

12. This term is also known in Neghidal, Manchu, Ulč, Orok, Nanai, Oroč and Udeghe languages. In Mongolian languages (Buryat, Ordos and Dahur), anda first refers first to an ally by marriage and, by extension, to a friend, a military ally.

13. The region’s name refers to the Gen 根, Derbul (De’erbu’er 得爾布爾) and Haul (Hawu’er 哈烏爾) rivers.

14. For example, Aloči (Shiwei 室偉), Ključevaja (Linjiang 臨江) and Karavannaja (Enhe 恩河) are today ‘Russian ethnic villages’ (Eluosi minzu xiang 俄羅斯民族鄉) where the descendants of former Russian émigrés are settled.

15. Other Khamnigan fled to Mongolia, where some 300 families now live alongside the Buryats (Atwood 2004, 172). Those who stayed in Russia live in the Aga Buryat region. In the three countries where the Khamnigan are established, none formally recognizes them as a separate group.

16. To become a minzu, a group should share a common language, a common territory, a common mode of economic production and a common culture. For a detailed study of the ‘Ethnic Classification Project’, see Mullaney (2011).

17. These are cows, camels, horses, sheep and goats.

18. In the ethnographic literature, they are also known as the ‘Evenki of the Mergel’ (Mo’ergele Ewenke ren 莫爾格勒鄂溫克人), which is the name of the river that flows around their ethnic village.

19. Both the Khamnigan and the Solon have economic ties with neighbouring groups: they rent their pastures to the Chinese, but they also hire Barga pastoral workers to cut the grass, which is one of the most important annual activities.

20. The generic Evenki term referring to the tent or the household is dju. However, people would often use the Russian and Chinese terms.

21. A complete list of the Russian terms used in Evenki language can be found in Gu and Sirenbatu (2011).

22. These Russian terms are transcribed according to Evenki pronunciation. The addition of an initial vowel to Russian words is a characteristic of numerous Siberian languages, including Evenki (personal communication from Alexandra Lavrillier).

23. The common Chinese term for bread is mianbao 麵包.

24. Unlike the Khamnigan and Reindeer Evenki districts in the northern part of Hulunbuir, the lieba in the Argun region is a kind of brioche bread made by the Chinese on an industrial scale: it is mainly sold in the Russian shops of Hailar. In Russian ethnic villages situated in Argun region, a type of soft bread is also made.