The folkloric, the spectacular, and the institutionalized: touristifying ethnic minority dances on China's southwest frontiers

Abstract

This article examines the upsurge of producing ethnic minority dance spectacles for tourists in contemporary Yunnan, southwest China. This new wave, along with the shift from the folkloric to the spectacular and professional, indicates a distinct scenario of transformation as the productions of these performances are shaped by the intriguing collaboration among capitalist tourism enterprises, regional governments, and art professionals who are engaged in the state-promoted institutionalization of ethnic minority dances. This article questions what scripts underlie this collaboration and how the collaboration itself structures the artistic presentations and the politics of representation on the stage. Through a case study of Mengbalanaxi, a large-scale ethnic minority dance show in Xishuangbanna, this article argues that this trend transforms the produced dance spectacles into regional–cultural brands under the state and local governmental discourses of cultural industry and regional development. It also forms a powerful channel of institutionalizing ethnic minority dances outside the mainstream art institutions as well as on a larger scale. The re-configured dance presentations on the stage promote a nuanced narrative of the embodied ethnic cultures, transmitting and simultaneously re-shaping the tourist imaginary of China's national other in this era.

Keywords:

• tourist performance
• dance
• ethnicity
• China
• Yunnan
• representations

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the artists, administrators, and my informants in Jinghong, the Daizuyuan Travel Agency, Yang Qing, Dubi Hanting, Ai Qing, and Gettysburg College for their generous help. Special thanks also to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

Notes

Its Chinese title, Mengbalanaxi Chaoji Gewu Xiu, means ‘Mengbalanaxi Super Song and Dance Show’. Yet, its program book does not list any song performances. In my viewing experience, the show presented one or two songs performed by local singers between formally designed scenes (acts). Before the show starts and upon the permission of the weather, a half-hour participatory event in front of the theater is organized in which some performers and tourists dance together. This article only discusses the formal dance programs presented inside the theater.

Established under the leadership of the Chinese state and the provincial government of Yunnan in 1953, ‘Xishuangbanna’ is called ‘Sipsongpanna’ in Dai (Tai Lue) language, meaning ‘12 flatlands or administrative districts’. This article uses pinyin (Romanized Mandarin pronunciation system) to spell the non-English names or vocabulary unless specially denoted.

There are extensive and widely circulated news and publicity reports on these shows in China's official and mainstream media, such as the websites of the Xinhua News Agency, the CCTV, and Chuxiong Ribao (Chuxiong Daily): http://www.yn.xinhuanet.com/ynnews/zt/2002x/lishui/_03.htm, http://www.cctv.com/travel/special/hdzm/20050620/101097.shtml, http://www.cxdaily.com/display_news.asp?ID=7484, and http://www.cxdaily.com/display_news.asp?ID=20828.

Recognized as a result of China's economic reforms, touristic consumerism, which arrived in China in the early 1990s, is also regarded as a wider social and cultural phenomenon involving the interactions among the state, market, culture, and technology (Wang, 2004).

For example, echoing the critical reflections on ‘authenticity’ in tourism research in general (Bruner, 1994; Cohen, 1988), previous scholarship has strived to show an increasingly nuanced understanding of the ‘dislocation’ of this art form. Rather than simplistically criticizing dance transformations on stage as corrupted or ingenuine to a postulated original, the emergent, variable, and fluid nature of ‘authenticity’ is recognized and the changes are explored as a site of artistic hybridity (Daniel, 1996; Kole, 2010; Xie & Lane, 2006), which are not necessarily experienced as an intrusion by tourists or locals (Bruner, 2001; Picard, 1996).

Scholars have also approached the value-laden (re-)presentations generated by touristic dance performances as an illustrative site of exoticism and the otherness-producing nature of the tourism industry (Balme, 1998; Davis, 2001; Desmond, 1997). But the strategic and heterogeneous local internalizations of the touristified variants have also been documented to indicate alternative concepts of cultural ownership (Latrell, 2008; Xie, 2005) and the negotiation of place-ethno identities (Guerron-Montero, 2006; Malefyt, 1998).

The oral and written variants of this poem have been popularly circulated in the Dai regions for centuries. It became familiar to China's mainstream society mainly through its mandarin translation edition in 1956, a dance drama titled Zhao Shutun and Nanmunanuo (first performed in 1963) and a mandarin film titled Princess Peacock (1982). While these mainstream reproductions of the poem are greatly shaped by their respective social–political contexts in socialist China, the commonly shared story plot includes that Dai prince Zhao Shutun fell in love with and married the peacock fairy; the peacock fairy was prosecuted by the court when the prince went to war but escaped; and the prince endured great hardship to search and bring back his wife.

In 1996, the Yunnan provincial government formally put forward the development scheme of ‘bringing Yunnan's ethnic cultures to the nation and the world and developing Yunnan into a great province of ethnic cultures’ (Yang, 1998).

See the news report of Xishuangbanna Bao (Banna Daily) (27 April 2004): http://www.bndaily.com/Templates/NewsTemplate.asp?NewsID=%209341.

For the complete document, see http://www.cnta.com/html/2010-11/2010-11-5-14-45-98681.html.

Retrieved April 27, 2011, from http://www.yn.xinhuanet.com/ynnews/zt/2002x/lishui/_03.htm.

Among which, Mr He Lishan, the chief art director and also a national A-level choreographer-director of the China National (Oriental) Song and Dance Troupe, has produced numerous state-sponsored ‘galas’ that celebrated the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the Chinese New Year, and the closing of the 2008 Beijing Olympics (Mengbalanaxi program book).

The legends on the origin of the Water-Splashing Festival comprise numerous variants with divergent themes, especially regarding the reasons for killing the villain. However, the version that Mengbalanaxi refers to, which promotes the interests of the masses and upholding righteousness (even at the sacrifice of consanguinity), has been popularized as the most authoritative one through both scholarly research and the mainstream media since the 1950s (Gao, 2006; Yang, 1990; Zheng & Yang, 1986).

Theravada was transmitted into Yunnan and Banna through today's Sri Lanka and Burma, the time of which is still a scholarly debate. It has been the predominant religion in the Dai history since at least the twelfth century (Liu, 1993; Yan, 1987).

This image is also highlighted in the minority dance spectacle produced by the Manting Park, a state-run tourism enterprise and a major attraction in central Jinghong. The climax of its primarily featured dance, ‘The Light of Tālapattra Leaves (Beiye Zhiguang)’, is produced through the convergence of golden wood plates into a wall of Theravada scriptures. Choreographer Li mentioned that this dance can best represent the Dai culture (Interview, 30 July 2010).

Interview with Mr Li on 3 August 2010.