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ABSTRACT
This article examines the politics of China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) policy and practice in Xinjiang through a study of the profound transformation of three interlinked Uyghur oral traditions ostensibly safeguarded as UNESCO or national-level cultural heritages: muqam, mäshräp and dastan. Based on fieldwork in Xinjiang and among the Uyghur diaspora, it shows how an intensive process of social reengineering, taking place in the nexus of contested state ICH policies and its ‘War on Terror,’ has transformed complex religio-cultural traditions into simplified and exoticized patriotic ‘song and dance’ performances. While the state defines these staged versions as ‘authentic’ heritage that should not be deviated from, community elders and cultural practitioners see them as ‘fake’; they violate community values and disembed fluid oral traditions from everyday life, which is where they are reproduced and generationally transmitted. The rhetoric of ‘safeguarding’ thus represents a disavowal of its actual effects and the severe restrictions on spaces available for cultural practice in Xinjiang.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. “Uyghur Comedy Videos.”
2. See Leibold, Ethnic policy in China; and Byler, “Spirit Breaking.”
3. Leibold, Ethnic policy in China.
4. See, for example, Stovel, “Effective Use of Authenticity”; and Vecco, “Definition of Cultural Heritage.”
5. Smith, Uses of Heritage.
6. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 74.
7. Herzfeld, The Body Impolitic, 86
8. Zhu, “Cultural Effects of Authenticity.”
9. For a similar reading of ICH regulation elsewhere, see Smith Uses of Heritage.
10. The three native ethnographers I interviewed in 2015 have dedicated their lives to collecting, preserving, and researching Uyghur tradition and cultural expressions. They highlighted that one of the key reasons for their collection and documentation of Uyghur oral traditions was to make future revitalization and comparative research possible. All three scholars disappeared in 2017, presumably incarcerated in ‘re-education centers’ at a time when Uyghur culture came under attack as part of the state’s ‘Peoples War on Terror’ campaign. Fieldwork informants are anonymized.
11. Smith, Uses of Heritage; and Harrell, “China’s Tangled Web.”
12. Blumenfield and Silverman, Cultural Heritage Politics, 18; Wang, “Future Brightens for Cultural Heritage”; and Zhu, “Cultural Effects of Authenticity,” 141.
13. See, for example, Jacobs, “How Chinese Turkestan Became Chinese”; Anagnost, “The Beginning and End”; Gladney, Dislocating China; and Schein, Minority Rules.
14. “Guojia ji fei wuzhi wenhua yichan.”
15. Blumenfield and Silverman, Cultural Heritage Politics, 9.
16. See, for example, Liu, “Re-constructing Cultural Heritage”; Zhu, “Cultural Effects of Authenticity”; and Zhu “Regulating Old Towns.”
17. See, for example, Blumenfield and Silverman, Cultural Heritage Politics; and Maags and Svensson, Chinese Heritage.
18. See, for example, Zhu, “Cultural Effects of Authenticity”; and Zhu, “Regulating Old Towns.”
19. See, for example, Chio, A Landscape of Travel.
20. Peters, “Dancing in the Market.”
21. Harrell, “China’s Tangled Web,” 291.
22. Personal communication with Abdukerim Rahman. For a profile of this esteemed Uyghur scholar, who passed away in August 2020, see https://livingotherwise.com/2018/10/02/abdukerim-rahman-surviving-without-books/.
23. Interview with an ICH official, Kashgar, November 2015
24. Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo fei wuzhi wenhua yichan fa, Article 1.
25. “The Fight Against Terrorism.”
26. “Human Rights in Xinjiang.”
27. “Safeguarding without freezing.”
28. Henrion-Dourcy, “Studying Tibetan Performing Arts.”
29. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, ‘Intangible Heritage,’ 53.
30. Ibid.
31. See Yim, “Living Human Treasures.”
32. See Maags, “Creating a Race to the Top.”
33. Smith, Uses of Heritage, 113.
34. Meng, “Feng Jicai.”
35. See Gladney, Dislocating China; and Mullaney, “Coming to Terms.”
36. Harris, “The New Battleground,” 40–1.
37. For further details of this cultural work see Harris, The Making of Musical Canon; Light, Intimate Heritage; and Mijit, La mise en scène.
38. A narrative attributing the end of Uyghur prosperity to Sufism circulated among native intellectuals in the 1980s.
39. See Harris, Soundscapes of Uyghur Islam.
40. Light, Intimate Heritage.
41. For further discussion on these issues see other articles in this issue: on the secularization of other traditions in Xinjiang see Long and Sárközi respectively; on the regulation of religious affairs see Lavičk.
42. UNESCO, “The Uyghur Muqam.”
43. Yäsäwi (or Ahmad Yasawi) was an early mystic who exerted a powerful influence on the development of Sufi orders throughout the Turkic-speaking world.
44. Huwayda was another Sufi mystic.
45. In Uyghur, to speak of one’s blood boiling is to connote excitement; in the Sufi community, it refers to a state of trance.
46. See, for example, “Cultural Protection and Development.” Other white papers on Xinjiang published in 2015, 2017, and 2019 have made similar claims.
47. Tarim, “Uyghur Helq Dastanliry.”
48. Rahman, “Uyghur Folklore,” 534
49. UNESCO, “Nomination File No.00304.”
50. On the commodification of Meshrep through tourism, see Snider, “A Meshrep in Our Home.”
51. See, for example, the entry on mäshräp (Ch. maixilaipu) on the Chinese online encyclopedia, Baike, https://www.baike.com/wiki/麦西来甫?view_id=gruchz2avplhc.
52. Roberts, “Biopolitics of China’s ‘War on Terror’.”
53. Dawut and Abliz, Uyghur Mäshräpliri.
54. Harris, Intangible Cultural Heritage.
55. UNESCO, “Evaluation of Nominations.”
56. UNESCO, “Report on the Examination.”
57. See, for example, Hamad, “Neng ge shan wu”; and “Dances and Songs of Xinjiang.”
58. See, for example, cqym, “Quancheng baoxiao!”
59. See also Pawan et al. “Uyghur Meshrep Culture.”
60. Harrell, “China’s Tangled Web.”
61. Anderson and Byler, “Eating Hanness.”
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