STUDIES ON ETHNIC GROUPS IN CHINA
Stevan Harrell, EditorSTUDIES ON ETHNIC GROUPS IN CHINA
Cultural Encounters on Chinee's Ethnic Frontiers
Edited by Stevan Harrell
Guest People:
Hakka Identity in Chinee eend Abroad
Edited by Nicole Constable
Familiar Strangers:
A History of Muslims in Northwest China
Jonathan N. Lipman
Lessons in Being Chinese:
Minority Education and Ethnic Identity
in Southwest China
Mette Halskov HansenLessons m Being Chmi
Minority Education and Ethnic
Identity in Southwest China
METTE HALSKOV HANSEN
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS
Seattle and LondonCopyright © 1999 by the University of Washington Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hansen, Mette Halskov.
Lessons in being Chinese : minority education and ethnic identity
in Southwest China / Mette Halskov Hansen
p. cm. — (Studies on ethnic groups in China)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-295-97809-0 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-295-97788-4 (pbk)
1.	Minorities—Education—China, Southwest.
2. Ethnicity—China, Southwest.
I. Title.
II.	Title: Minority education and ethnic identity in Southwest China.
III.	Series.
LC3737.C6S687	1999	98-49028
37O'.95i'3—dc2i	CIP
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Photographs are by Mette Halskov Hansen unless noted otherwise.Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
map i. Yunnan Province
ix
map 2. Sipsong Panna Tai (Dai)
Autonomous Prefecture
x
Introduction
xi
i	/ Education and Chinese Minority Policy
3
2	/ History of Chinese Education
among the Naxi in Lijiang
25
3	/ Education and Ethnic Identity
in Lijiang since 1980
61
vCONTENTS
4	/ History of Chinese Education
in Sipsong Panna
87
5	I Education and Ethnic Identity
in Sipsong Panna since 1980
109
Conclusion
159
Chinese Character Glossary
171
Bibliography
175
Index
199
viAcknowledgments
The content of this book is to a large extent based upon fieldwork carried
out in Yunnan Province in southwest China in 1994-95. My first and fore-
most thanks are therefore directed to the nearly two hundred teachers, stu-
dents, parents, peasants, monks, and cadres in Kunming, Lijiang, and Sipsong
Panna who agreed to tell me their stories and who often went far beyond my
expectations in their friendliness, helpfulness, hospitality, and concern. They
taught me a lot and made my fieldwork possible and enjoyable. It is impos-
sible to name them all here, but there are some people and institutions in
China who deserve special mention. During fieldwork I was accompanied
by three assistants (peitong): Li Yunping, Mu Rongping, and Yila. All were
very young and were given sometimes arduous tasks, such as arranging inter-
views in villages, dealing with high cadres for the first time in their life, and
walking in the mud for hours to reach a village where the teacher might not
even have time to talk. However, they all accepted this with good humor,
and I am grateful for their help and friendship. At my host organization (dan-
wei) in China, the Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities, Wang Ningsheng
and his wife Wang Yunhui were extremely helpful in all matters while also
providing scholarly inspiration and advice. I am grateful to the authorities
of the institute and the Office of Foreign Affairs, represented by Hu Maoxiu,
for accepting my way of doing fieldwork while providing their assistance. I
also especially thank the local governments in Lijiang and Sipsong Panna for
making possible my research in schools and temples. The conclusions I draw,
based upon my own interpretations of the stories told to me in China and
my experiences in schools and villages, may not be accepted by all of the
people mentioned here. Nevertheless, I hope that my presentation and inter-
pretation of data will contribute to the continued discussion in China about
viiACKNOWLEDGMENTS
the education of ethnic minorities and about the minority people’s own per-
ceptions of and responses toward education.
During the process of researching, writing, and revising this book, I have
been fortunate to receive excellent supervision, comments, and critiques from
several people. I am especially grateful to Stig Thoegersen for his detailed
comments, expert suggestions, and continued engagement in the project; to
Mikael Gravers for broadening my narrow local interest in China; and to series
editor Stevan Harrell, two anonymous readers for the University of Wash-
ington Press, and editor Lorri Hagman for their invaluable comments and
suggestions for improvement of the manuscript. A number of other colleagues
and friends in and outside China have provided me with all kinds of schol-
arly, personal, and practical help, encouragement, and inspiration over the
years. I especially want to thank Amei (Yang Xueying), Jackie and Nagib
Armijo-Hussein, Chen Suofen, Greg Kulander, Rune Svarverud, Yinangiao,
Zheng Yuerong, and colleagues and friends at the Centre for Development
and the Environment as well as the Department for East European and
Oriental Studies at the University of Oslo. Endless (and mosdy enjoyable)
discussions with Koen Wellens, his well-informed criticism, and encourage-
ment during fieldwork have been crucial for the whole research process and
the final product of it. Finally, I should like to thank Sine and Nele for putting
up with all the travel and making me see China with new eyes.
Financially the project was made possible by a three-year grant and gen-
erous support for fieldwork from the Danish Council for Development
Research in 1992-96. Material from chapters 3 and 5 has previously been pub-
lished in Rjeld Erik Broedsgaard and David Strand, eds., Reconstructing
Twentieth-Century China: Social Control, Civil Society and National Identity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); and Gerard Postiglione and Regie
Stites, eds., Education of National Minorities in China (New York: Garland
Press, 1999). I thank the publishers for permission to use that material.
Of course all interpretations and conclusions in the book are entirely my
own, as are any mistakes or shortcomings.
viiiMAPI. Yunnan Province
ixmap 2. Sipsong Panna Tai (Dai) Autonomous Prefecture
xIntroduction
As a formal institution of socialization, education is necessarily also
co-responsible for and engaged in sociocultural socialization, i.e., in social-
ization for ethnic membership and for ethnic consciousness. The ele-
mentary school’s social studies curriculum, with its emphasis on national
history, civics and geography, not to mention its rituals (salutes to the
flag, patriotic assembly programs and commemorations of national hol-
idays and great leaders), is essentially an explicit and implicit course in
mainstream ethnic socialization or resocialization. Mainstream educa-
tion is also an arena for the discussion and explication of values and moral
issues, of national virtues and dilemmas, of national accomplishments
and shortcomings, of supra-national dedication, aspiration and concern.
—Joshua A. Fishman
Language and. Ethnicity in Minority Sociolinguistic Perspective
Since the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), many Chinese leaders and intellectu-
als have regarded institutionalized education as a means of integrating, con-
trolling, and civilizing the various peoples who inhabit the border or peripheral
regions of what was the empire, then the Republic, and now is the People’s
Republic of China (prc). Especially since the reform period in the 1980s,
the Chinese government has paid increasing attention to development of
education among the peoples now officially classified as non-Han, the so-
called minority ethnic groups (shaoshu minzu). In spite of government at-
tempts to spread school education after 1949, many minority areas are still
characterized by low levels of school enrollment and educational attainment.
Strengthened school education among the non-Han peoples living in the vast
border regions of China is now put forward as the precondition for successful
xiINTRODUCTION
modernization of their economy. No less significant is the belief that mass
education is the most efficient and extensive medium for promoting, and ulti-
mately ensuring, integration of ethnic minorities into the Chinese state. Via
the state-controlled educational system, the government seeks to transmit
the message of national commitment, love of the ruling Chinese Communist
Party (ccp), and cultural homogeneity. Therefore, patriotic education
(aiguozhuyijiaoyu) is especially high on the state’s agenda for non-Han peo-
ples living in the border areas. It preaches the common history of all ethnic
groups within China since the legendary Yellow Emperor, and the common
political, economic, and cultural interests of all people in the prc. Thus, it
promotes the idea of one “Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu), as a common
denominator for all fifty-six officially recognized minzu (“nationalities”).1
Chinese state education attempts to achieve a high degree of cultural and
political homogenization for several reasons: to make communication possi-
ble among different parts of the country, to ensure the integration of periph-
eral areas into the Chinese state, to promote patriotism and loyalty to the
ccp, and, in a broader sense, to “improve the quality” of or to “civilize” the
presumably more “backward” parts of the population. These include most
of the minority minzu, whose languages, cultural practices, and economic
life are often described in Chinese media and publications as obstructing the
development and modernization of the areas they inhabit. Lessons in Being
Chinese explores how Chinese education attempts to mainstream ethnic
minorities with regard to language, religion, interpretation of history, and,
consequently, ethnic identification. Through the educational system power-
ful interpretations of what it means and implies to belong to a minority minzu
in China are transmitted as facts beyond dispute. The national school sys-
tem’s representations of ethnic entities and ethnicities in China are not open
to discussion or alternative interpretation in the classroom. Minority students
therefore must relate to, consider, or in other ways take into account these
powerful representations of themselves. My main focus is on these repre- i.
i. Throughout the text I use the term minzu rather than the standard PRC translation
“nationalities” in reference to China’s fifty-six officially recognized ethnic groups, includ-
ing the Han and the fifty-five minorities. However, the term minzu in China is often used
to imply only the minority minzu (shcwshu minzu). In such cases I translate minzu as “minor-
ity” (e.g., “minority education” [minzu jictoyu} and “minority school” [minzu xuexiao}).
xiiINTRODUCTION
sentations and on the responses that state education produces in terms of eth-
nic identification: the degree to which education succeeds in forming national
sentiment and eliminating or reducing ethnicity, and why different people
respond the way they do. I have asked, and attempt to answer, three main
questions: What do minority students in China learn about themselves as
members of an ethnic group during their education? Why does standardized
education, aimed at achieving a high degree of cultural homogenization, pro-
duce profoundly different reactions in terms of ethnic identity among dif-
ferent ethnic groups? And what role does education then actually play in
directing and forming ethnic and national identities? I argue that the Chinese
government’s and most educators’ belief in the school as an institution capa-
ble of controlling the transformation of minorities’ cultural values and elim-
inating ethnic identities is exaggerated. For most ethnic minorities in China,
school education is entirely based upon Chinese language and history. It leaves
no room for the transmission of cultural values that might contradict the state’s
interpretation of nationalism, atheism, and the common interests of multi-
ethnic China. However, by denying the significance of the minorities’ own
languages, histories, religions, and cultural values, education sometimes
strengthens focus on ethnic identity.
The central and provincial governments in China have suggested and imple-
mented various methods to increase school attendance and accomplish basic
compulsory education among the minority minzu, such as establishment of
special (mostly boarding) minority schools, experiments with bilingual edu-
cation, introduction of locally edited teaching materials, and easier access for
non-Han students to higher education. Very often, though, government pro-
posals and even regulations concerning special minority education are car-
ried out only half-heartedly, either because they are rejected by local cadres
or because the government fails to provide sufficient economic support.
Frequently, financial difficulties dictate the educational practice in a local area,
and many special programs come to serve primarily as superficial demon-
strations of good-will, such as bilingual education’s affirmation of minori-
ties’ principal rights to develop their own languages. Especially in areas where
most educators are Han and the level of integration is low, many cadres con-
trolling the minority education fear that extensive experiments inevitably will
result in increased ethnic diversity and identities. The general attitude among
these cadres and among many Han teachers and Party and government lead-
xiiiINTRODUCTION
ers is that the Chinese school has a positive civilizing effect on what is so often
regarded as the culturally and economically “backward” (luohou) minorities.
The outcome of an education that succeeds in significantly raising the edu-
cational level of a minority group might well result in an increasing focus on
ethnic identity, formulation of local political demands, and introduction of
alternative forms of education. Even in the Chinese school system, where
most non-Han students have to disassociate themselves from their cultural
heritage in order to be successful, the influence of education on ethnic iden-
tity is to a certain extent unpredictable and depends on external factors such
as the level of the group’s political and cultural integration into the Chinese
state, the degree to which it perceives Chinese school education to be advan-
tageous, local educational history, religion, cross-border ethnic contacts, and
economic development. Obviously, education is only one of many factors
that influence ethnic identity, and it is impossible to isolate it. However, by
looking into the aspects of education that are most directly related to ethnic
identification and categorization, this book discusses the impact of educa-
tion on the changing forms, contents, and expressions of ethnic identity among
ethnic minorities in China.
When promoting the education of minority minzu with the combined pur-
poses of modernizing the economy and ensuring integration and “ethnic amal-
gamation” (ronghe), the Chinese government faces the paradox that successful
minority education sometimes leads to increased ethnic demands. On the other
hand, failed attempts to spread education could cause an ethnic group to sup-
port local alternative education with the consequence of further alienation
from the Han majority and the Chinese state. In either case, the mission of
achieving cultural homogenization and “ethnic melting” through education
is not accomplished. There is, however, a significant difference between the
form and content of ethnicity that develops from (though not necessarily orig-
inates in) education and that which is strengthened among people who are
excluded from education. The spokesmen for a revival of ethnic identity who
have themselves participated in state education are better able to express and
make themselves heard within the context of the state. Their ethnic identity
might have been strengthened through a basically assimilative education, but,
unlike those who have been excluded from state education, they have been
provided with the means to strategically formulate their ethnic demands within
the politically acceptable framework.
xivINTRODUCTION
Lessons in Being Chinese is based mainly upon data collected during field-
work in two autonomous areas in Yunnan Province and among two ethnic
minorities: the Tai (Dai) in Sipsong Panna (Xishuangbanna) Tai (Dai) Auton-
omous Prefecture and the Naxi in Lijiang Naxi Nationality Autonomous
County. These two groups have different histories and experiences of Chinese
education and equally distinct reactions to and perceptions of this education.
Also included in the discussion are the Akha (officially classified as part of
the Hani minzu) and Jinuo of Sipsong Panna, who were previously under
the rule of the Tai king and government. In education and response to edu-
cation, these two groups have much in common because of their historical
relationship to the Tai in the Sipsong Panna area. The Akha and Jinuo pro-
vide an example of a third way of responding to Chinese minority education.
The Chinese government and its civilizing envoys have not been able to
spread and popularize Chinese education efficiently among the Tai in Sipsong
Panna. One important reason is that most Tai fail to see any significant eco-
nomic or social advantage in spending money on school education. Another
reason is that the content and form of state education is in direct opposition
to the traditional Tai Buddhist education of monks and to Tai values in gen-
eral. The Tai in Sipsong Panna historically made up a nation separate from
the Chinese empire (Hsieh 1995), and it was only in the 1920s that the area
effectively became an integrated part of China. The Chinese system of edu-
cation was introduced in 1911, and Chinese schools became widespread in
the area only after 1949. In many respects Chinese education in Sipsong Panna
resembles the education established by colonial powers for indigenous peo-
ples in other parts of the world. The few Tai who pass through the school sy-
stem need to alienate themselves from their cultural heritage (their religion,
language, and history, in particular) in order to be successful. In this respect
education has an assimilative effect, but only on the few. For most Tai, Chinese
education has little direct bearing on their ethnic identity and cultural prac-
tices simply because they do not participate in it. This also means that they
are deprived of the possibility of gaining influence in a political system that
is based entirely upon Chinese language and on cultural values different from
their own. If the government wanted to reverse this tendency, it would have
to make education directly relevant to and clearly advantageous for the Tai,
in which case most local educators would feel that they were supporting the
already-strong Tai ethnicity rather than promoting ethnic amalgamation and
xvINTRODUCTION
unity. Neither the government nor local educators are prepared to run this
risk. As a result, an increasing number of Tai seek instead to extend their own
traditional temple education and their cultural and economic contacts with
other Tai in Thailand. These contacts support them in their religious belief
and prove to them that their language and script are useful in a moderniz-
ing society, even though they are apparendy worthless in the present-day
Chinese state.
The Akha make up the third-largest ethnic group (after the Tai and the
Han) in Sipsong Panna. They were historically regarded as inferior by the
Tai, and today the two groups rarely intermarry or have close social relations.
The same applies to the Jinuo, who, like the Akha, live higher up in the moun-
tains. These groups do not have their own script, and Chinese education has
developed slowly in their villages. However, whereas many Tai tend to reject
Chinese education because it forces them to assimilate to mainstream cul-
tural practices and reject their own language, religion, and history without
offering economic or social advantages, these much poorer minorities from
the mountains may find in Chinese education a way to escape hard labor
in the villages, to occupy more important and influential positions in soci-
ety, and thereby also to reject their historical subordination to the Tai. This
partly explains why the Akha and Jinuo students appear, at least for the time
being, to more easily accept that they learn only Chinese in school and not
their own language, and to accept the school’s representation of them as
members of a backward group. Participation in Chinese education is thus
in some respects a way of combating traditionally low status in the local eth-
nic hierarchy.
The situation for the Naxi is strikingly different. Except in the poorest
villages, education among the Naxi in Lijiang has been successful in that most
Naxi nowadays complete primary school (xiaoxue), and many continue on
to junior secondary school (chuzhong). The number of students in senior sec-
ondary school (gaozhong) and college is as high as the average of the Han
and higher than that of most other minorities. Many high cadres and influen-
tial researchers and teachers today are Naxi, even at the provincial level. Han
and Naxi researchers alike agree that the early establishment of Confucian
education and the long history of Han influence in Lijiang has facilitated this
development. Unlike Sipsong Panna, Lijiang has for a very long time been
an integrated, though peripheral, part of the Chinese empire and in recent
xviINTRODUCTION
history has not constituted a separate nation. The content of education in
Lijiang today—with its focus on Han history and language, nationalism,
and Communist political training—does not deviate from the standard of
the rest of China, and Naxi parents’ complaints about their high educational
expenses and the lack of technical or agricultural training for their children
are similar to those in many rural Han areas. Generally, the state-controlled
education in Lijiang is perceived by the Naxi as “their own,” not as a for-
eign institution imposed to civilize or change them. Success in Chinese
education—whether Confucian, Nationalist, or Communist—in fact consti-
tutes an important part of many Naxis’ ethnic self-perception today. In the
last five years especially, the Naxi have shown a remarkable talent for express-
ing their own increased concern for preserving and reviving ethnic charac-
teristics while utilizing a common Naxi identity to extend their own local
political influence in areas such as education. This tendency is perhaps best
illustrated by the well-trained Naxi Party cadres who are now not only call-
ing for extended research on Naxi history and culture, but are themselves
playing a central role in reviving previously vilified religious rituals. This was
certainly not the Chinese state’s intent in spreading education among non-
Han peoples. The main point here is that successful education of the Naxi
has unintentionally and unexpectedly supported their ability to develop a
stronger common Naxi identity and to formulate their ethnic demands within
the context of the state. Paradoxically, an education denying the value of Naxi
traditions, religion, language, and history, and aimed at facilitating the dis-
appearance of ethnic entities, has provided the Naxi with a voice and a means
to express themselves as an ethnic minority in the People’s Republic of China
without threatening the political system.
RESEARCH
If there is no such thing as a perfect translation or interpretation, there
are still better, worse and idiotic ones.
—Mark Hobart
“Summer’s Days and Salad Days”
The focus on local practices and perceptions of education and on the rela-
tionship between state education and processes of ethnic identity has to a
xviiINTRODUCTION
large extent determined my primary research methods: interviews, partici-
pation in local events, sitting in on classes, and preparatory documentary work.
Fieldwork was carried out between 1994 and 1996 in Sipsong Panna, Lijiang,
and Kunming. During the main part of the fieldwork, between July 1994 and
September 1995,1 conducted 173 formal interviews, sat in on twenty-two classes
in two middle schools (zhongxue), talked informally to many other people,
and participated in local events such as weddings, festivals, family celebra-
tions, competitions in schools, and other school activities.
Formal interviews constituted a significant part of the fieldwork, and analy-
sis of them has been crucial to the interpretations presented here. The inter-
views were formal in the sense that the interviewees were specifically told that
they were participating in an interview and the purpose of the interview. Usually
only the interviewee, my assistant peitong (an officially approved and oblig-
atory assistant provided by my host organization), and I were present. When
interviewees spoke Chinese, interviews were conducted in Chinese. Otherwise
they were conducted in Tai or Naxi through the assistants’ interpretation.
Sometimes villagers would gather to listen, or students who shared the dor-
mitory of an interviewee would be present. Sometimes I interviewed two or
three students or teachers together. Occasionally the interview developed into
an interesting discussion between students, sometimes of different ethnic
groups, or between villagers. Whereas some interviewees were deliberately
selected (headmasters, representatives of education commissions, researchers
who had written about education or ethnicity among Naxi and Tai, etc.), most
were randomly chosen according to the focus of the research: I wanted to
interview schoolteachers, present and former students, parents of students,
people who had never participated in education, and people (for instance
monks) who were part of a learning institution outside the state-controlled
schools. I also wanted to interview people from different age groups, prefer-
ably equally balanced between male and female, and from villages as well as
from county capitals. In spite of my intention to avoid gender bias, I ended
up interviewing more female than male students, parents, and peasants. Male
students were often rather timid talking to me, and even more so with my
local female assistants of approximately their age. The interviews with female
students more often developed into discussions or gossiping among several
students or into dialogues. However, almost all interviewed government and
Party cadres and heads of schools were male, since very few women occu-
xviiiINTRODUCTION
pied these powerful positions. I also interviewed a number of old people to
get an impression of life in the schools before the Communist period began
in 1949. The historical chapters in this volume are to a large extent informed
by the presentations of these interviewees, many of whom had experienced
education in recent years as well as in earlier periods.
The purpose of the interviews with representatives of government depart-
ments was to get information about local government policy and attitudes
toward the education of minorities. When interviewing school headmasters
I tried to get basic information about schools (ethnicity of students and teach-
ers, differences among minzu in terms of enrollment and achievement, and
specific measures for educating minorities) and to let them tell about their
own experiences in education and their own attitudes toward minority edu-
cation. In interviews with all—students, teachers, parents, peasants, old, and
young—I first asked a set of “closed” questions (e.g., age, parents’ occupa-
tions, level of education, participation in specific religious activities, knowl-
edge of spoken and written languages, ethnicity of best friends) and then a
number of “open” questions that prompted the interviewee to tell about school
experiences, attitude toward family, cultural practices at home, religious belief,
relationships with other minzu, hopes for the future, and so on. Each inter-
view lasted between one and a half and two and a half hours, and many of
the interviewees were interviewed several times.
During my fieldwork I sat in on twenty-two classroom hours of politics
and history, as well as some geography and Tai-language training. Teachers
very rarely deviated from what was written in the textbooks, which I could
read for myself. However, it was very informative to observe which topics
and contents the teacher emphasized and which sentences she asked the class
to learn by heart and read out loud. Even after I stopped sitting in on classes,
I continued to participate in special events at the schools, such as speech com-
petitions with the subject of patriotism and various celebrations for which
students wore minority costumes to dance and perform. All of these activi-
ties were important parts of the school as an institution concerned with estab-
lishing the nation as a common denominator and point of identification for
all citizens of the People’s Republic of China.
The task of processing interviews is of course always deeply influenced by
the researcher’s own experiences, analytic abilities, involvement in the proj-
ect, and attitude toward the subject. My goal in interpreting what I was told
xixINTRODUCTION
during the interviews, what I saw and heard during my time in the field, and
what I read in the textbooks was to draw a picture of how state education
directs or influences ethnic identity. Obviously, the interviewees decided which
story to tell in each situation and which things to omit. My role as an officially
approved researcher with an assistant sometimes made people feel relaxed in
the interview situation because they felt sure that what I was doing and ask-
ing was officially approved. But it also sometimes prevented people from
telling me in detail about politically sensitive aspects of religious and ethnic
identity. I consciously chose interviewing, rather than relying on participant
observation alone, because I was particularly interested in the ways people
would choose to tell about their educational experiences (or sometimes lack
of same), the things they had learned about themselves in school, and their
memories of the content of education related to the constructions of the Han,
minority minzu, and the Chinese nation and the rclation^among them. My
own attempt to understand more about, and account for, the relationship
between the powerful Chinese discourse of minzu and local processes of eth-
nic identity is based on my interpretation of these stories. As Mark Hobart
writes, “Sharing language, in the sense of using the same words (or ‘tokens’),
does not entail people extracting the same meanings from them—if indeed
they extract meaning at all—any more than they represent things in the same
way” (Hobart 1987: 36). This insight does not rule out the possibility of pro-
viding interpretations based on thorough data. It merely opens them up to
conflicting views and alternative translations—an acknowledgment of the fact
that no descriptions are exclusively true since one can hope only to tell how
u world is, not how the world is (Goodman 1972: 31).
TRANSCRIPTIONS OF FOREIGN TERMS
Most Chinese terms are transcribed in the standard pinyin form, and their
corresponding characters are listed in the Glossary. Some names of places,
people, and ethnic groups are transcribed in their most widely accepted
Anglicized form (e.g., Tibet, Manchu, Mongol, Sun Yat-sen). Other ethnic
groups are transcribed in ways that best reflect their self-appellation (e.g.,
“Premi” instead of the pinyin form “Pumi”). The most commonly used roman-
ized transcription for the Tai people is “Tai” which is pronounced in the same
way as the Chinese pinyin transcription “Dai.” As with all Tai terms, I pre-
xxINTRODUCTION
fer the transcriptions that are modified on the basis of Standard Thai tran-
scription (and are commonly used in publications such as the Thai-Yunnan
Project Newsletter), and therefore the area in which the Tai discussed in this
book live is called “Sipsong Panna” rather than the Chinese form “Xi-
shuangbanna.” Other Tai terms are transcribed in accordance with those com-
monly used by scholars with a profound knowledge of Tai languages.
Concerning Naxi terms, I use the Chinese term dongba for the name of the
Naxi ritual specialists rather than the Naxi romanized transcription dobbag.
The reason for this is that Naxi intellectuals, as well as Chinese and foreign
researchers, tend to prefer this form, especially in the phrase “dongba culture”
(dongba wenhua).
xxiLessons in Being Chinesei	/ Education and Chinese
Minority Policy
EDUCATION, CIVILIZATION, AND
ETHNIC IDENTIFICATION
Traditional Chinese Confucian ideology was based upon literary and moral
education, and the imperial elite consisted of the scholars most well versed
in literature and Confucian moral doctrines. Chinese people around this cul-
tural and polical center were rendered capable of being civilized through proper
education thanks to family organization, religion, language, and customs that
were close to those of the rulers. The further the cultural distance from the
central Confucian-trained elite, the more difficult it was (though still not
impossible) to achieve civilization based on Confucian values. This has been
referred to as a Chinese “civilizing project” in which a center, claiming to be
on a superior level of civilization, interacts with its peripheral peoples and
attempts to raise their levels of civilization (Harrell 1995a: 4). The ideology
of inequality is legitimized by the conviction that the dominance of the cen-
ter is truly helping the culturally inferior peoples. Confronting Confucian ide-
ology, the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) denied that any cultural group
was superior to others. The Communists granted legal equality to “periph-
eral peoples” who became classified and countable ethnic minorities (shaoshu
minzu} among an overwhelming majority of Han, in a modern nation-state
with fixed borders. The Communist government’s classification project of the
1950s divided all people within the borders of the People’s Republic of China
(prc) into five major stages of modes of production (primitive, slave, feu-
dal, capitalist, and socialist), and, as Stevan Harrell points out, it just hap-
pened that the Han were higher on this objective scale than most of the other
minzu (ethnic groups or “nationalities”) (Harrell 1995a: 26). Since culture was
regarded as a direct reflection of the mode of production, it was scientifically
proven that, economically as well as culturally, the non-Han peoples were
more backward than the Han. In this way the people described as peripheral
3EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
by Harrell are, in another sense and at the same time, central in the Chinese
Communist ideology because it is only through the construction of a less
developed minority group that a contrasting, more developed, or civilized
majority group such as the Han can be constructed (Gladney 1994).
The importance of this objectified scale of development of Chinese minzu
is reflected in its integration into national education, the main arena for repro-
ducing the ideology of cultural inequality. As has been argued by Richard
Jenkins, for instance, ethnic identity, like other social identities, is as much
a product of external processes of definition and categorization as it is an ongo-
ing process of internal definition and group identification (Jenkins 1994). The
external and the internal processes are mutually interdependent, and in the
relationship between state education and ethnicity among ethnic minorities
in China, the external process of identifying ethnic groups—giving them a
name and defining the content of this name—plays a significant role. The
external ethnic definitions transmitted through the education of minorities
influence the people’s own internal processes of formulating and negotiat-
ing ethnic identity. While ethnic identities, as well as other social identities,
are fluid, overlapping, and multifaceted,1 the Chinese government’s version
of ethnic categorization, as transmitted in the state school system, is cate-
gorical and definite. Thus, the study of minority education and ethnicity is
also a study of power relations and the authority to define and categorize
ethnic groups.
One of the striking contradictions in the Chinese education system is the
fact that it preaches the constitutional equality of minzu while impressing on
minority students immense feelings of cultural inferiority. Education is
praised by the government, educators, many intellectuals, and researchers in
China as a means of “improving backward habits” or civilizing the “back-
ward,” and therefore it is maybe not so surprising that the form and content
of this education often contradicts the outspoken message of national equal-
ity. This perception of education as a civilizing institution is closely connected
to the idea of cultural deficiency, which dominates much of the Chinese the-
oretical debate on minority education. In many Western, industrialized
countries as well, theories of cultural deficiencies are commonly used to explain
low school achievement among minorities (Churchill 1985). In China, due 1
1.	See, e.g., Eriksen 1993; Ong 1987; De Lauretis 1986; Williams 1989.
4EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
to the powerful and manifest belief in minority education as a civilizing insti-
tution, this is done very explicitly. It is, for instance, not uncommon to explain
unsuccessful Chinese education of the Tai in Sipsong Panna by pointing to
the damaging influence of religion, the habit of marrying early, and the Tai’s
unfortunate preoccupation with maintaining their own language and culture.2 3 4
This way of explaining low participation in education with deficiencies related
to culture has also been adopted by researchers outside of China. One arti-
cle argues, for instance, that “there are problems related to cultural tradition.
Some national minority groups still believe in magic and superstition”
(Postiglione 1992: 324-25). In China the so-called cultural and linguistic
deficiencies of non-Han peoples in education are mostly regarded and pre-
sented as objective facts, or they are implicitly understood through the very
positive evaluations of cases of cultural change in the direction of the Han.
One example of an objectified statement of unequal cultural relations between
Han and non-Han is: “Since the Chinese are in the majority, spread out widely
throughout the country, because they are most highly developed in science
and culture, and finally, because Chinese characters have the longest tradi-
tion and are used in the widest area, every ethnic group has close ties with
the Chinese” (Zhou Yaowen 1992: 38).5 The argument that the Han have the
most highly developed culture is directly transferred into the discussion of
language, and consequently a commonly heard argument against the spread
of a minority language is that it is “too backward,” it belongs to a lower stage
of evolution, and therefore its vocabulary is unfit for a modernizing society.
Much of the Chinese debate about minority education has been domi-
nated by discussion of bilingual education (shuangyu jiaoyu). The majority
of researchers in China concerned with minority education seem to agree that
developing bilingual education is necessary in many areas. The argument is
that it facilitates the learning of standard Chinese (putonghua,, “Mandarin”),
which in Yunnan and most other provinces is the only language of instruc-
tion, at least at the level of junior middle school and above.+Thercfore, bilin-
2.	See, e.g., Feng Chunlin 1989; Wang Xihong et al., eds., 1990; Sun Ruoqiong et al.,
eds., 1990.
3.	The author has written this text in English and obviously translates “Han” as
“Chinese.”
4.	Among Western sociologists debating the education of linguistic and cultural minori-
ties as well, there has been an inclination toward emphasizing language as the prime marker
5EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
gual education among minorities in China generally is a variant of so-called
transitional bilingualism, which promotes study of the mother tongue with
the purpose of hastening proficiency in the majority language (Churchill
1985: 54-56)- Chinese minorities whose language lacks a script are normally
excluded from the discussion of bilingual education. “They do not have a
script, so how could we carry out bilingual education?” was an argument I
often heard from local educators and cadres. When ethnic groups with dif-
ferent languages are classified in the same minzu, it is impossible to use bilin-
gual teaching material in only one of those languages for all the members of
the minzu. For instance, the people classified as Hani in Sipsong Panna do
not use the romanized script created for their minzu, because it is based on
the Luchun dialect of Hani living mainly in Luchun, Honghe, Yuanyang, and
Jinping. Consequently, there is no bilingual teaching for the people classified
as Hani (mainly Akha, Akhe, and Phusa) in Sipsong Panna, although many
publications mention the Hani as one minzu that has bilingual education.
The development of bilingual education is legitimized in the prc Cons-
titution, which supports the study of minority languages in autonomous
regions. However, very often local educators and government officials reject
political decisions or proposals about bilingual education because they dis-
agree with the argument that bilingual education is necessary and useful or
because they lack financial support and qualified teachers.
“REGULAR EDUCATION”
AND “MINORITY EDUCATION” IN CHINA
In the last four decades there has been a growing concern about the educa-
tion of immigrants and indigenous peoples all over the world; educational
of an ethnic minority group and as a principal symbol of ethnic identity. Partly for this rea-
son, much research on minority education has logically focused on language. See, e.g.,
Megarry et al., eds., 1981; Churchill 1985; Fishman 1989; Skutnabb-Kangas 1981.
Junior secondary school is three years of study (7th-9th grades). Normally students are
between thirteen and fifteen years old, but ages vary in some areas due to starting school
late. Some primary schools in Sipsong Panna had students in the first or second grade who
were between nine and thirteen years old, but most of these students do not manage to con-
tinue on to secondary school. Senior secondary school is three years (ioth-i2th grades),
with students being between sixteen and eighteen years old.
6EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
reports from various countries describe and discuss the aims and results of
local education of so-called linguistic and cultural minorities.5 Most re-
searchers of minority education have focused on form of education, goals,
bilingual education, and (in cases where the focus has been on effects) aca-
demic achievement. Fewer studies have used local research to examine how
the content and form of state education influences members of different minor-
ity groups’ ways of conceiving of their status as minorities, their ethnic
identification, and expressions of ethnicity. This is especially so in China, where
foreign educational researchers have until now largely ignored the specific
problems of education among non-Han peoples.6
The Chinese term “nationalities education” {minzu juwyu) is in fact best
translated as “minority education” because it is normally conceived of in two
ways in China: either as all forms of education directed toward and practiced
among the officially recognized minority minzu, or, more specifically, as the
special educational measures adopted among some of the minority minzu
(such as bilingual education and special curriculum). One of the broadest
definitions of minority education was given by a cadre in the Bureau of
Education in Lijiang County, who said, “All education here is minority edu-
cation because the majority of people living here belong to minority minzu
However, the term commonly covers the specific educational policies for devel-
oping and expanding state education among the minorities. Thus, minority
education has played an important role in government policy toward the non-
Han population in the prc and has become a specialized area of research in
China. Most Chinese studies of minority education in China focus on enroll-
ment, retention and graduation rates of minorities, practices of bilingual edu-
cation, and comparisons between different minority minzu (because they
5.	See, e.g., Carnoy 1974; Smith 1992; Gosth and Abdulaziz 1992; Jaespert and Kroon
1991; Cummins and Skutnabb-Kangas, eds., 1988; Ogbu 1978.
6.	Exceptions are Wurlig Borchiged’s article about Mongolian education (Borchiged
1995), Chae-Jin Lee’s study of education among the Koreans (Lee 1986), Alexander
Woodside’s and William Rowe’s articles about Chen Hongmou’s education of minorities
during the Qing dynasty (Woodside 1983; Rowe 1994), and several papers in an anthology
about minority education (Postiglione and Stites, eds., 1999). Other studies have focused
on more general aspects of minority education policy, e.g., Kwong 1989; Postiglione 1992;
Zhou Yaowen 1992; Xie Qihuang et al., eds., 1991; Feng Chunlin 1989; Chen Hongtao et
al., eds., 1989; Wang Xihong et al., eds., 1990; Sun Ruoqiong et al., eds., 1990.
7EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
concentrate the research on the officially recognized minorities, not on eth-
nic minorities as such). They often offer suggestions for improved policies
directed at increasing these rates. Thus, there is a very close connection between
the ways in which the government has formulated minority education as a
specific part of its minority policy in general, and the ways in which Chinese
researchers tend to approach the issue. The topic of minority education by
definition includes all of the highly diversified one hundred million people
who happen to be officially classified as minorities. The agenda for research
on these peoples is mostly directed at providing evidence of their lack of proper
education and suggesting measures that will enhance their chance of even-
tually being able to participate in the kind of regular education that already
exists among most Han and which, by definition, is superior. The special con-
siderations taken by the government toward defining and practicing a specific
“minority education” thus constitute a real chance for improving and adapt-
ing education to local needs, while at the same time the government sup-
ports a structural inequality between the constructed categories of the
“majority Han” as opposed to the “minority minzu”
Chinese governments prior to 1949 also, in different ways, saw education
as a means of integrating or civilizing peoples living on the geographic periph-
ery of the state. Especially during the Qing dynasty, the Chinese empire
expanded significantly in size and population, and the spread of Confucian
education was part of an ambitious program to unify the empire through
moral and cultural transformation of the non-Han population. The spread
of Confucian education to the periphery of the empire was far from being a
purely idealistic civilizing mission. It was also a means to facilitate imperial
control in areas where agrarian and mineral resources were still not fully
exploited.7 Whereas Confucian learning among non-Han peoples in the south-
west prior to the eighteenth century was confined to sons of local hereditary
chiefs (r««), Qing educators such as the zealous Chen Hongmou (1696-1771)
attempted to extend education to the commoners. Chen initiated seven hun-
dred charitable schools in Yunnan alone between 1733 and 1737 (tmjfg 1992.-.
46). During the Qing many Confucian scholars believed that not only could
Confucian learning eventually provide “barbarian” peoples with proper
knowledge and conduct of behavior, but disregard of education could cause
7.	See Woodside and Elman, eds., 1994; Woodside 1983; Rowe 1994-
8EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
Han people to become uncivilized. This was clearly expressed by a scholar
who stated in 1738 that “if savages cherish learning, they may advance to
become Han; if Han people neglect learning, they may degenerate into sav-
ages” (quoted in Rowe 1994: 423).
Education in the frontier regions of the empire became sharply focused
as the late-Qing government tried to strengthen its control in response to
threats such as the British expansion into Yunnan and Tibet through Burma
and India, and the Muslim ruler Yakub Beg’s secession of Xinjiang. In 1909
the Qing government founded a Mongolian and Tibetan school in Beijing
to train local officials in the modern subjects of political science and finance
in addition to language, geography, history, and so forth (Dreyer 1976:12).
In Yunnan, where at least one-third of the population was estimated to be
non-Han, the Bureau of Education in Border Regions (Yanbian Xuewu Ju),
the first such administrative unit, was set up in 1909 (Liu Guangzhi 1993: 68).
One of the purposes of this bureau was to promote new schools in the bor-
der regions of Yunnan in order to facilitate the integration of these areas into
the empire. By the end of the Qing the bureau had started 128 free “native
simple literacy schools” (tumin jitmyi shizi xueshu) with a total of 3,974 stu-
dents in the province (tmjfg 1992: 48). These schools taught basic knowl-
edge of Chinese characters to non-Han peoples such as the Jinghpaw, Lisu,
A’chang, Akha, and Tai. One Chinese publication estimates that 10 to 20 per-
cent of the students in these schools acquired such knowledge, but we have
no information as to how this figure was reached (tmjfg 1992: 7)? Generally,
the late and weakening Qing empire left the task of promoting education in
non-Han areas such as Yunnan to local administrators and educators.
Therefore local development of Chinese education depended very much upon
the existence of a local elite prepared to create Chinese schools other than
traditional Confucian ones.
The Republican government after 1911 wanted to transmit nationalist com-
mitment via mass education in the hope that it would help to prevent eth-
nic conflicts from destabilizing the state. Therefore, shortly after the founding
of the Republic of China, the new Ministry of Education decided to expand
education of Mongols, Tibetans, and Moslems. The government considered
8.	Between 1912 and 1915 the government changed the “native simple literacy schools”
into normal lower elementary schools.
9EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
these groups to be part of China’s “five races” (which also included the Han
and Manchus), and they were now supposed to be given the education they
had been denied under the Qing (Bailey 1990:142-43). At the same time Sun
Yat-sen strongly emphasized the common features of the Han people
(Hanren), the absolute majority in China:
The Chinese nation totals four hundred million people. Of mixed races
there are only a few million Mongolians, about a million Manchus, a few
million Tibetans, and over a million Mohammedan Turks. These foreign
races do not exceed ten million people. So we can say that the greater part
of the four hundred million Chinese [Zhongguoren] are Han people
[Hanren] with common descent, common language, common religion,
and common customs—one single race. (Sun Yat-sen 1926: first lecture on
nationalism, 4)
Sun Yat-sen argued that due to the assimilative power and highly developed
civilization of the Han, it would be in the interest of the other races along
the periphery of China to be part of the Chinese state, to join the Han against
the imperialists and ultimately assimilate with them.9 Following the sever-
ance of Tibet and Outer Mongolia from Chinese control in 1911, the gov-
ernment established schools in 1913 in Beijing offering instruction in
Mongolian and Tibetan. Apart from these few exceptions, the promotion of
modern schools among non-Han groups was exclusively based on the stan-
dard Chinese language (or Mandarin; jjuoyu), and no specific considerations
were given to the content of education for the numerous non-Han peoples
in Yunnan or elsewhere. In 1931 the Yunnan government made public its first
decrees concerning special education of non-Han peoples in border and moun-
tain areas, including the establishment of special primary schools. Although
this marked the beginning of a period of increasing political concern for the
development of education in border regions, the practical implications of the
various decrees were limited by factors such as political and economic insta-
bility, difficult or nonexistent communications, weak central government, the
Japanese invasion, and fighting between Communists and Nationalists.
The government in Nanjing, led by Chiang Kai-shek after his defeat of
9.	See also, e.g., Dreyer 1976:15-43; Duara 1993; WangTianxi 1988: 80-87.
10EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
the northern warlords in 1928, adopted a highly politicized educational pro-
gram in which inclusion of the Nationalist Party’s (Guomindang) doctrine
was to be mandatory (Cleverley 1991: 59-60). The Nationalist government
regarded the spread of education among non-Han peoples as a means to ease
assimilation with the Han and ensure their loyalty to the state. Education
was in principle entirely based upon the language, culture, and history of the
Han. However, for a variety of reasons the assimilative education policy
did not come up to expectations. Central control was constantly disrupted,
and the financing of education depended mostly on the lower administra-
tive levels. Local teachers were to a large degree left free to teach as they pleased,
and therefore many teachers in lower primary schools employed their local
language for instruction rather than Chinese. Education still reached a rela-
tively small part of the population, and women were still socialized mainly
in the family and the village. In spite of the introduction of vocational schools
in the early twentieth century, by far the most common way of transmitting
vocational skills remained the master-apprentice relationship (Thoegersen
1997: 15)-
During the 1930s and 1940s the war against Japan and the civil war between
the Nationalists and the Communists resulted in serious disruption of edu-
cation in many areas. Cleverley regards it as likely that by 1949 about 85 per-
cent of the total population were illiterate, with an even larger percentage
among women and the rural population (Cleverley 1991: 69). Among the
non-Han population there was great diversity in the degree of literacy and
the number of students in Chinese schools. Some areas resembled rural Han
areas, some had no functioning Chinese schools at all, and some ethnic groups
had a relatively high degree of literacy in their own language due to factors
such as religiously based teaching.
With peace reestablished in the new People’s Republic of China after 1949,
promotion of education became a priority of the new Communist govern-
ment. The ccp wanted to establish a homogenized, socialist-oriented
national education system reaching all corners of China. The most impor-
tant curricular change was that history was rewritten and adapted to Marxist
views of the government. Courses in Nationalist Party doctrine and Sun Yat-
sen’s Three Principles of the People (Sanminzhuyi) for the salvation of the
nation were displaced by political lessons teaching communist ideology.
Concerning policy toward ethnic minorities and the establishment of state
11EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
education among them, it was important for the new government to encour-
age support from the minorities by emphasizing their right to develop their
own languages and incorporate them into education. Because the government
wanted to eradicate so-called Han chauvinism (da Hanzuzhuyi) while pro-
moting “a unified multiethnic country” (tongyi de duo minzujyuojia), it main-
tained that non-Han populations had the right to preserve their own
languages, customs, and religions over a long period of time until all minzu
would ultimately (and naturally) “melt together” (ronghe). Meanwhile, the
non-Han peoples should be “assisted” in developing their “backward” cus-
toms, economy, and political awareness in order to achieve, in unity with the
Han, a developed socialist society. For all these purposes the new govern-
ment advocated intensified education of ethnic minorities with an initial focus
on the education of minority cadres (minzuganbu). Furthermore the gov-
ernment wanted to strengthen primary education among minorities, pro-
mote literacy among adults, and train minority teachers, of whom there was
a shortage.
But first the government needed to identify non-Han peoples. Therefore,
shortly after the founding of the prc, it organized a large-scale program of
team fieldwork in which linguists, ethnographers, and historians were sent
to minority regions to identify all minzu within the territory of China.10 * The
teams were to define all minzu and identify their present stage of social devel-
opment. In principle this was done on the basis of presumed objective cri-
teria for definitions of ethnic groups formulated by Stalin in 1913—common
territory, language, economy, and psychological makeup manifested in a com-
mon culture (Hutchinson and Smith 1994: 20).11 In order to decide how to
implement land reforms, the government also wanted descriptions of the
minzu\ economic and social stages of development based on Engels’s and
Morgan’s theories of evolution. Thus many minzu were described as having
fully or partly developed a “feudal landlord economy.” These included the
Han, some of the Naxi, and all or most of the Zhuang, Hui, Uygurs, Man-
10.	In 1992 the total Chinese population constituted 1,130,510,638 people, with more
than 91 million minority minzu representing 8.08 percent (Zhongguo minzu tongji 1992:53—54-)-
n. Concerning the classification work, see, e.g., Fei Xiaotong 1981; Lin Yaohua 1987;
Diamond 1995; McKhann 1995; and Wellens 1998.
12EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
chus, and others. Groups on the next broad level of evolution, for instance
the majority of Tibetans and those classified as Dai (Tai) and Hani, were
described as having a “feudal serf system.” Lower on the evolutionary scale
were societies that were believed to practice a “slave system,” represented
mainly by the Nuosu (classified as Yi) from Daliangshan. Finally, a number
of ethnic groups in the border regions of Yunnan (e.g., Dulong, Nu, and
Wa) were considered to be living in “primitive society.”
In order to facilitate the integration of the minority minzu, the govern-
ment adopted, in the early period of the People’s Republic, the highly
significant policy of a “united front” that implied cooperation with the bour-
geois, upper strata of the minority minzu. Theoretically, this move was legit-
imized by the special economic and cultural backwardness of the minority
minzu, which manifested itself in low class-consciousness (Dreyer 1976: 94-
95). Through the education of locally accepted religious, ethnic, and politi-
cal elites, the government hoped to be able to pass on ideas of patriotism,
national unity, and socialism. Therefore, an important feature of early minor-
ity education was the establishment of special minority institutes (minzu
xueyuan}'2 which trained minority cadres to work in minority regions as rep-
resentatives of the ccp and government. Through these minority cadres,
and through the vast number of Han who were sent as teachers, soldiers,
and government workers to minority areas, the government gradually spread
the message of its nonassimilationist policy, the new objectified classification
of minzu, and the determination of stages of economic and cultural evolu-
tion. Thus, for the first time in China, the government managed gradually
to consolidate an official version of the relationship between a Han major-
ity' and a group of minority minzu through a widespread, popular educational
system. Ethnic groups all over China learned that they were minority minzu
and younger brothers of the Han, and had equal rights with the Han, but
that most, alas, were less developed than the Han.
By 1950 the government had established forty-five special minority pri-
mary schools and eight provincial minority secondary schools. In principle
12.	Although the term is usually translated as “nationalities institute,” the primary pur-
pose of these institutes is to educate members of minority minzu. Therefore, they are also
often called “minority institutes.”
13EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
the minority students in these schools were guaranteed free education, books,
and school supplies and were subsidized for food and, eventually, housing at
the school. The First National Conference on Minority Education (convened
and led by Zhou Enlai), in 1951, concluded that minority education was to
further develop in line with the national plan, taking into consideration the
special conditions and demands in the different areas inhabited by minori-
ties.13 The conference also emphasized that political and patriotic education
(tuoguozhuyijiaoyu) should be promoted in minority areas. The language pol-
icy adopted in minority regions was one of the special features of so-called
minority education. During the 1951 conference it was made clear that the
content of education and the language of instruction should be adapted to
special needs in minority regions. In Yunnan, for instance, the Bureau of
Culture and Education issued a plan in 1951 for developing education among
minorities. In line with national policy on minority education, the aim was
to make private schools public, start new schools in remote areas, and grant
special financial support to minority students. With regard to the content of
education and language of instruction, the bureau idealistically stated,
In accordance with the spirit of the minority policy, [we will] assist each
minzu in popularizing its language and imbue it with the ideas of our pol-
icy. Where conditions exist we shall use teaching material that combines
the scripts of our brother minzu [xiongdi minzu wenzi\, Chinese charac-
ters, drawings, and pinyin. As for the minzu without a script, we should
use pinyin based on their language and, to the best of our abilities, create
new scripts. In addition to common knowledge, the teaching material
should especially give consideration to minzu history, local customs, and
strengthening of the unity of the minzu [minzu tuanjie\. (Yunnan Province
Bureau of Culture and Education, “Primary School Education of Yunnan’s
Minority Brothers in 1951,” reprinted in tmjfg 1992: 282-84)
With the purpose of promoting literacy among ethnic minorities by sup-
porting education in their own language, in 1951 the Chinese government
set up a national committee that was to suggest guidelines for the develop-
ment of written languages for minorities. Thirty-two minority languages were
13.	Ma Xulun 1952.
14EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
considered, and after years of extensive research, a plan was put forward in
1958 to create eighteen new scripts for twelve minorities.I+ In practice most
local areas were not able to live up to the standard proposed in the quoted
statement by the Yunnan Bureau of Culture and Education, and rapid pol-
icy changes during the 1950s and 1960s often put a stop to the creation of
special teaching material for minorities.
During the early years of the People’s Republic, when the total number
of students and graduates increased significantly, the proportion of minori-
ties in schools also increased. According to the official statistics, 1.4 percent
of college and university students in 1951 belonged to minorities; the figure
was 6.9 percent in 1991. In primary schools 2.2 percent were minorities in
1951, compared to 8.1 percent in 1991 (Zhongguo minzu tongji 1992: 241).
Development of higher education had a relatively high priority during the
time of the Soviet influence in the early years of the prc, and therefore the
highest increase in students was in higher education and middle schools. In
connection with the political conflict between China and the Soviet Union
in the latter part of the 1950s, ccp chairman Mao Zedong (and later, teach-
ers and students) started to criticize the Chinese tendency to copy from the
Soviet educational system. Agricultural production in the prc had so far been
disappointing, and Mao’s solution was to heighten production through mass
mobilization and reorganization of agriculture. He launched the disastrous
Great Leap Forward in 1958, and agriculture was collectivized in People’s
Communes all over China. Mao wanted basic education for the majority-
education that was directly relevant to, and combined with, productive work.
Based on the ideology of “education as revolution” and “revolution as edu-
cation,” educational change was focused on combining study with agricul-
tural or industrial work, strengthening political awareness of students,
achieving comprehensive mass education, and intensifying collectivization
(Chan Hoiman 1992). The government sought to decentralize schools and
establish lower primary education in all villages, higher primary education
in the production teams (dadui), and agricultural secondary schools in the
communes (gongshe). The goal was to be “red and expert,” and often peas-
14.	Finally ten minzu scripts were created for the Zhuang, Buyi, Miao, Dong, Yi, Hani,
Lisu, Wa, Li, and Naxi. Other minzu, such as the Dai, had their script simplified, just as
Chinese characters were simplified.
15EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
ants, workers, cadres, and soldiers acted as teachers. An increased number of
young people were sent to the countryside to learn from the peasants and
transmit their middle-school knowledge to the rural population. Many
young middle-school graduates became teachers in minority areas, and some
of them came to have a lasting influence on education there.
In the summer of 1957 a forum on “minzu work” {minzugongzuo) decided
to organize the struggle against “local nationalism” (difang minzuzhuyi), which
was synonymous with antisocialism (Dreyer 1976:151). In minority areas the
so-called Three Statements (San Lun)—special conditions in border regions,
backwardness of minorities, and special treatment of minorities—came under
fierce attack. Many minority cadres were criticized for promoting “local
nationalism” and harming the “unity of the minzu. ” The use of minority lan-
guages in schools also was attacked. In general, the Great Leap Forward, the
Rectification Campaign (1957-59), and the struggle against “local nationalism”
focused on spreading the Chinese language rather than minority languages.
Facing the economic fiasco of the Great Leap Forward, officials and teach-
ers criticized education for emphasizing quantitative expansion, physical labor,
and politics at the expense of technical knowledge and for lowering the gen-
eral standards of education. Regulation and central control of education was
again accepted by the government, and beginning in i960, new elite schools,
keypoint schools (zhongdian xuexiao), experimental schools, and boarding
schools were started with the purpose of providing superior facilities for the
best students and for children of senior cadres. Minority education policy
again became more open toward the use of minority languages. Although
Chinese language had to be strengthened, teachers were told not to ignore
local minority languages and scripts. For a short time it again became accept-
able to translate teaching material into local languages. On the other hand,
the government’s call for standardization (zhengguihua) of education in 1962
closed down many local “people-run” (so-called minbari) schools, which had
been started without adequately educated teachers, mostly in the poorest
minority villages. Hardly any new standardized schools were opened to com-
pensate for the closed ones, and consequently many rural children lost access
to basic education.
The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) put a stop to the government’s
attempts to develop minority languages, experiment with bilingual educa-
tion, cooperate closely with local elites, and tolerate cultural differences.
16EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
Chairman Mao declared that all ethnic conflict was the result of class conflict,
and the perception of minority minzu as backward peoples who needed spe-
cial consideration and treatment was now severely attacked. One of the slo-
gans of the time was that “the small classroom” should be destroyed in favor
of “the big classroom of society.” Mobilization and participation of the masses
was the core of the revolution, and education now had to be in the hands of
the masses, rather than the elite, and adapt to their needs. This implied a great
deal of change within the educational system, and new entrance criteria for
higher education favored children with “correct” class background, such as
peasants and workers. Studying was again to a larger degree combined with
productive labor; the length of courses was cut; schools were placed under
the administration of revolutionary teachers, students, workers, and peas-
ants; and curriculum was directed toward study of texts by Mao Zedong.
Moreover, whereas many secondary schools and colleges closed down, for
months or years, many new primary schools and attached secondary schools
(fushe zhongxue) were started.
Mao had declared that it was essential that the educated youths (zhishi
qingniari) go to the countryside and receive their second education from the
poor and lower-secondary peasants, and, according to Thomas P. Bernstein,
an estimated twelve million educated youths did go “up to the mountains
or down to the countryside” (shangshan xiaxiung) between 1968 and 1975
(Bernstein 1977: 24-25). Many of them went to minority regions that were
among the poorest in the nation and in which “remnants of feudal society”
were easily detected. Some became teachers in the new primary and secondary
schools. The dominant ideology of the time maintained that minority minzu
were equal to the Han and therefore should be treated equally. This legit-
imized a brutal suppression of all expressions of ethnic identity—of religious
activities, local festivals, and use of local-language teaching material. Whereas
minority' students had previously learned through their education that minori-
ties in the Chinese state had their own cultural and economic characteristics,
which would eventually fade away with the helpful assistance of the Han and
the ccp, they now learned that the time had come to quickly eradicate the
backward customs that separated them from the forefront of the revolution.
In the years following Mao’s death and the fall of the Gang of Four (Jiang
Qing, Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan, and Zhang Chunqiao) in 1976,
China’s new policy of the Four Modernizations (in agriculture, industry,
17EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
defense, and science and technology) profoundly influenced the development
of education, and a number of measures have since been taken to promote
education of minorities. Since state-sponsored education is regarded as a basic
means to achieve economic development while ensuring loyalty to the state
through teaching of patriotism, promotion of schools in minority regions
has been, and still is, high on the political agenda. In 1977 the competitive
examination system was reinstated, and since then institutionalized educa-
tion has again been emphasized as crucial for achieving a technically and eco-
nomically developed nation. Keypoint schools providing selected students
with the best possible education were established at all levels. Selection was
based on an examination system using curriculum-based content that favored
knowledge of standard Chinese language, history of the Chinese nation, and
the policy of the ccp, in addition to technical subjects. Proficiency in a minor-
ity language or substantial knowledge of a field such as local history was irrel-
evant. In 1980 the Ministry of Education and the Commission on Nationalities
Affairs evaluated the state of education in minority areas and made sugges-
tions for future work. They concluded that most of the minority minzu were
“extremely backward” as to level of education, that schools were in a very
bad state, that the percentage of minority students in higher education was
actually dropping, and that the scope of illiteracy was worrisome.15
The government decided that in order to achieve modernization in the
minority regions, it again had to allow for special measures within educa-
tion. Therefore, central and local governments created special primary and
secondary minority schools (minzu xiaoxue and minzu zhongxue), where stu-
dents were subsidized, and earmarked funds for minority education.
Minorities were to be given additional points in examinations to give them
easier access to higher education. Furthermore, governments at different lev-
els tried to strengthen the training of local teachers and reestablish bilingual
education, particularly among Tibetans, Mongols, and Uygurs. Koreans in
Yanbian have themselves established bilingual education even at the college
level (Lee 1986). The Ministry of Education issued several statements saying
that while the study of Chinese would greatly benefit the cultural and tech-
15.	A document called “Suggestions Concerning the Strengthening of Educational
Work among National Minorities” was approved by the Central Committee of the ccp
and the State Council. It is reprinted in Minzugongzuo wmxutm 1986: 274-80.
18EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
nical level of the minorities, those who had their own language and lived in
areas where it was widely used should also be able to learn it in school (e.g.,
tmjfg 1992: 202-3). All governments of autonomous regions had to estab-
lish departments specifically dealing with minority education. The right of
these governments to organize minority education in accordance with local
demands and special conditions was confirmed in a 1984 law on local auton-
omy in minority regions. The autonomous governments of minority minzu
were allowed to decide (based upon general national laws on education) which
kinds of schools they would establish, the length of schooling, whether spe-
cial curriculum was needed, which languages to teach in addition to Chinese,
and how to recruit students. In poor areas, pastoral areas, or areas where
minorities lived widely scattered, the governments were to establish board-
ing and semiboarding primary and secondary schools (Sun Ruoqiong et al.,
eds, 1990: 77).16 To ensure that poor and underdeveloped rural minority areas
would benefit from minority higher education, it was decided in 1978 that
minority students studying in cities should be allocated jobs in their home
counties after graduation.
MINORITY EDUCATION
IN YUNNAN PROVINCE SINCE 1980
Since the beginning of the reform period, the central government has
granted financial support to Yunnan as a border province with an underde-
veloped economy, and a part of these funds is still earmarked for minority
education. According to statistics from 1990,103 out of 127 counties and cities
in Yunnan depended on state financial support.17 Of forty-one special “poor
counties,” 75.6 percent were “minority counties” (tmjfg 1992:109). Although
minorities account for only one-third of the provincial population, they rep-
resent two-thirds of the twelve million people officially declared poor.
Official Chinese statistics concerning illiteracy and level of education of
minorities in Yunnan also point to a generally lower level of education as com-
16.	At a semiboarding school, pupils eat at school during the lunch hour and return
home when school finishes in the afternoon.
17.	See also Yunnan jiaoyu boo, 2 Sept. 1995: 7, for a list of educational expenditures in
Yunnan in 1993.
19EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
pared to the Han and to the Chinese national standard. In 1982, for instance,
45.09 percent of Han in Yunnan above the age of twelve were illiterate or
semiliterate, whereas the figure was 58.53 percent for minorities and as high
as 74.04 percent for minority women. Among Yao and Miao, more than 90
percent of women above the age of twelve were illiterate or semiliterate
(Yunnan jiaoyu sishi nian, 1949-1989:120). Of the Han, 13.53 percent had a junior
secondary school education, as compared to 4.68 percent for minorities (Li
Ping 1989: 74). According to the same statistics, Yunnan Province had the
lowest percentage of university students and the second-lowest percentage
ofpeople educated beyond primary school (Liu Baoming 1993: 44). Statistics
from eight years later, in 1990, show a remarkable drop in the number of illit-
erates or semiliterates, which fell to 25.44 percent of the population above
the age of fifteen (Yunnan tongji nianjian 1991: 821). The city of Kunming
had the lowest number, but Lijiang County was lower than the provincial
average, with only 19.5 percent illiterates or semiliterates, whereas many other
minority counties still had between 30 and 40 percent. In 1990 statistics
showed that as many as 91.5 percent of all minority children in Yunnan had
started school.
The official statistics concerning illiteracy and school enrollment among
minorities must be read with caution. When reporting on the number of chil-
dren in primary schools, schools and local governments sometimes count only
the pupils who start, not those who drop out. People who have once par-
ticipated in a short-term literacy course are often counted as literate, whereas
those who have never been to school but have learned to read the local lan-
guage in a monastery may be registered as illiterates. On the other hand, lit-
eracy in the Chinese language is not always the only measure of literacy:
between 1984 and 1990, literacy campaigns in Lijiang County reportedly taught
10,946 people to read. Only 1,744 of these became literate in Chinese; a major-
ity of 6,062 learned Lisu script (created in the 1950s) and a minority learned
Naxi or Yi scipts (clnac 1995: 41). The illiteracy rate of the Tai (classified as
the Dai minzu) was only 39.38 percent in Yunnan in 1982. This is relatively
low because many who learned the Tai script in monasteries were counted
as literate. Another more important reason for the lower rate compared to
other minzu in Yunnan is that Chinese education is much more developed
among the Tai Na in Dehong than among the Tai Lue in Sipsong Panna. All
are officially classified as members of the Dai minzu and therefore are
20EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
included in the same statistics. Thus, in Sipsong Panna the people classified
as part of the Dai nationality had a 49 percent illiteracy and semiliteracy rate
for people above the age of twelve. In Mengla County alone the figure was
56.8 percent.'8
Official statistics clearly indicate that fewer minority pupils graduate from
primary school and, most important, fewer continue beyond primary school
compared to the Han. Official figures from the 1990 census suggest that
Koreans in China have the highest percentage of graduates at all levels beyond
primary school, and that Koreans, Mongols, and Manchus are the only minori-
ties with more graduates at all levels beyond primary school than the Han
(Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1993: 91).
In 1980 the Yunnan provincial government made plans for the further edu-
cation of the numerous poorly qualified minban teachers who were still work-
ing in many of the primary schools, especially in minority areas, and it
emphasized the need for local governments to establish technical and agri-
cultural vocational education. Special courses were started in all prefectures
to educate minban teachers, and each year a quota would decide how many
of those who passed the examination would become regular teachers. In
1994-95 all minban teachers I talked to hoped to become regular teachers
through this kind of course, both because their wages would almost triple and
because they felt that they had been looked down upon as irregular teachers.
The provincial government also decided to financially support the estab-
lishment of forty minority primary and secondary boarding schools. For sev-
eral reasons, the boarding-school system in minority areas is still regarded
very positively by the government and most local teachers and educators:
the boarding school has more control over students, who cannot easily leave;
students spend more time studying because they live at school; their parents
have no influence on what they do in their spare time; they cannot partici-
pate in time-consuming religious activities; and they use the Chinese lan-
guage more than they would at home. All minority secondary boarding schools
are situated in county or prefectural capitals, where students from various
minority ethnic groups and villages are gathered and subjected to a stan-
dardized education and exposed to cultural values that are often incongru- 18
18.	See Yunnanjiaoyii sisln man, 1949-19S9 1990:120; and Yunnan ShmgXishuangbanna
Zhou Jinghong Xian di san ci renkoupucha shougong huizong ciliao huibian: 27.
21EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
ent with those learned in the family and the village. Because boarding-school
pupils’ scores in examinations are generally higher than those of minority stu-
dents in regular schools, educators and governments praise boarding schools
for their practicality and academic success. Equally important, however, is
the structure of the boarding school, which facilitates transmission of cer-
tain values and social practices to students who live far away from home for
years and creates a sense of commonality and shared experience among stu-
dents from various ethnic backgrounds.
The responsibility for developing and administering schools in Yunnan,
as elsewhere in China, is shared in a hierarchical structure in which town-
ships and administrative villages are responsible for their own local schools
at the elementary levels, and county and prefectural governments adminis-
ter the highest-level local educational institutions. Teachers in villages are paid
by the county, apart from minban teachers, who are paid partly by the local
community, which also finances school buildings and equipment. In Yunnan
minority regions, villages (ziran cun) typically have a lower primary school
(two or four years), administrative villages (xingzheng cun) have a full pri-
mary school (six years), townships (xiang) have a junior secondary school
(chuzhong; three years), and county capitals have at least one senior secondary
school (gaozhong; three years). Since 1993, when the central government
emphasized that the national goal was to achieve nine years of compulsory
education throughout China as announced in 1985, Yunnan has developed a
strategy in the minority regions to gradually attain this goal. According to
this plan, all minority areas must establish six years of compulsory education
by the year 2000, while 70 percent must establish nine years.
At the provincial level there have been special minority classes at Yunnan
University and the Teachers College, but today only one college in Kunming
is specially designed to educate members of minority minzu, namely the
Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities (the institute’s own translation; yin).
In 1951 yin started enrolling students recruited from among Yunnan’s
minorities. The main purpose for the establishment of yin was to train local
minority cadres who could implement government policy in minority areas
and future autonomous regions. Curriculum emphasized socialism, patrio-
tism, unity of the minzu, ccp minority policy, and Chinese language.
Students were recruited from among local religious leaders, the local aris-
tocracy, and secondary schools. Later in the 1950s and early 1960s, “culture
22EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
classes” (wenlma ban) were started to educate “cultural workers,” who were
supposed to improve the cultural level of the presumably backward minori-
ties and to function as minority teachers and translators. Classes to teach
selected minority languages were also started. After a period of severe criti-
cism, periodical disruptions of education, and one-sided emphasis on polit-
ical education during the Cultural Revolution, all classes and departments
were restarted in 1976. Since 1977 examination results have determined
enrollment. In 1979 enrollment was integrated into the national university
entrance examination,’9 and education responded to the demands of the new
modernization policy, so that common university subjects became relatively
more important than short cadre-training courses.
In addition to teaching common university subjects, yin offers, through
the Department of Minority Languages and Literature (Minzu Yuwen Xi),
classes for teachers and translators in Sipsong Panna Tai, Dehong Tai, Jingpo,
Lisu, Lahu, Yi, and Wa languages. The history and anthropology departments
include the history of minority regions in their curricula, and there is a spe-
cial minority research department. However students (and many teachers as
well) tend to regard the technical departments as the strong ones, while the
department teaching minority languages is not highly valued. Many students
in this department fail to enter yin on the basis of their examination results,
but are chosen and sponsored (baosong) by a senior secondary school or a
special or technical school (ghongzhuan) to which they were expected to return
after graduation.
Since the institute began enrolling students based on examination results,
special measures have been taken to ensure that all minority groups are rep-
resented. A maximum of 5 percent Han students from poor border areas are
accepted. In higher education in China a member of a minority minzu is pre-
ferred when scores equal those of a Han. In 1994 approximately 95 percent
of the students and 33 percent of the staff at yin were minorities. Compared
to their total number in Yunnan, the Hui, Bai, and Naxi were best repre-
19.	After the Cultural Revolution’s abandonment of the examination system, the gov-
ernment announced in 1977 that university entrance again had to be based primarily on exam-
ination results. In 1978 tests were standardized, and students participating in the national
exam received the same questions in each subject on the same day (see also Cleverley 1985:
223-25). In the minority institutes, additional criteria for admission remained to ensure that
all minorities would be represented at the schools in spite of low examination results.
23EDUCATION AND MINORITY POLICY
sented at the school. In spite of the special policy of allocating extra points
to selected minority members, the ratio of Tai students has fallen significantly
since the introduction of the examination system.20
The system of job assignment (fenpei zhidu) for graduates is an impor-
tant tool in realizing the political purpose of the institution. The idea behind
establishment of special education for minority people was that graduates
should return to their local areas as transmitters of official government pol-
icy, as competent Communist cadres capable of acting as the indispensable
link between the central government and the local minority population.
Therefore the guiding principle is still “Where they come from, they should
return to” (Na lai na qu), and the majority of graduates are still—with or
without their own approval—sent back to their native places. Because this
has generated growing dissatisfaction among students, the Yunnan govern-
ment decided to release graduates from their obligation to be sent back if
they pay a fee.21
Pu Linlin estimates that as many as 92 percent of students at the Central
Institute of the Nationalities22 in Beijing in 1991 wished to stay in the capi-
tal after graduation, and about one-third of the students at yin wanted to
stay in Kunming (Pu Linlin 1994: 64). This tendency is obviously of con-
cern to many teachers and political authorities in Yunnan who need the minor-
ity graduates as a link between local minority populations and the central levels
of government and to assist in modernization programs in minority areas.
Consequendy, students are often criticized for being more concerned about
their own individual aspirations than about the common good. Clearly, the
problem for political authorities and educators alike is how to teach minor-
ity students to dissociate themselves from their parents’ and grandparents’
worldview, religion, and customs while convincing them to return as civi-
lizers to presumably backward areas.
20.	See Li Li et al., eds., 1991: 129 for a complete scheme of all minzu at yin from 1952
to 1990.
21.	In 1994 students who did not want to be sent to a certain job officially had to pay
between three thousand and four thousand yuan. However, even though some graduates
manage to pay this fee, it is sometimes impossible for them to get household registration
in the city, so that they have to return to their home county anyway. In 1994 only a very
small number of yin graduates had managed to find a job themselves.
22.	Now the Nationalities University (Minzu Daxue).
242	/ History of Chinese Education
among the Naxi in Lijiang
The Naxi and Mosuo people (all normally called Mosuo in Chinese litera-
ture before 1950 and all classified as Naxi since 1954) are descendants of the
nomadic proto-Qiang people. During the Han dynasty (206 B. c. e .—c. e . 221)
they migrated southward to northwestern Yunnan from what is now the bor-
der region of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai and probably reached the Lijiang
plain later during the Tang dynasty (618-907) (McKhan 1995:54). After Qubilai
Khan and his army defeated the kingdom of Dali (the successor of the Nan-
zhao kingdom, which in 835 had broken all connections with the Chinese
empire) in 1253, the different Mosuo chiefdoms also came under central
Mongol authority. During the Mongol Yuan dynasty the system of granting
official status to local hereditary chiefs (known as tusi) was established. Later,
during the Ming dynasty, the tusi family in Lijiang was given the Chinese
name Mu, and, to further distinguish themselves from the commoners, the
royal Mu family decided that commoners should adopt the family name He.
Today the family names Mu and He are still common in Lijiang.
Until the 1950s, when a new road bypassed Lijiang, the town was located
on the important trade route between south China and Tibet. Thriving trade—
combined with the ruling Naxi Mu lineage’s openness toward Tibetan and
especially Chinese craftsmen, artisans, monks, and scholars—helps to explain
the Tibetan and Chinese Confucian influence in the area. In the early eigh-
teenth century the Manchus sent armies to Tibet to fight Mongols who were
trying to get a foothold in this buffer state between India and China. Lijiang’s
strategic situation on the road between China and Tibet was probably one
of the reasons why the Qing government in 1723 decided to transfer direct
power from the native Mu tusi in Lijiang to its own representatives. This pol-
icy of replacing local hereditary chiefs with imperial bureaucrats (known as
25HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
the system of gaituguiliu) was part of the Qing policy to expand the empire
and fully incorporate frontier regions into the Chinese state. Most Chinese
publications on Naxi history and educational history regard the early imple-
mentation ot gaituguiliu in 1723 in Lijiang as a major historical reason for
the relatively high level of education and so-called “cultural development”
of the Naxi today.
The officially classified Naxi minzu (Naxizu) currently consists of 277,750
people.1 This includes the people living in the area of Lugu Lake and the
Yongning basin who are called Mosuo or Yongning Naxi in Chinese, and
Hli-khin or Na(re) in their own language, and who prefer to distinguish them-
selves from the Naxi.1 2 3 The majority of Naxi live to the west and south of the
Jinsha River in the counties of Lijiang, Zhongdian, and Weixi. They call them-
selves Naxi, also transcribed “Na-khi” by Joseph Rock5 and “Naqxi” in the
Naxi Latin script created in the 1950s. My investigation of education and ethni-
city among the Naxi is based upon research conducted in Lijiang Naxi
Autonomous County (Lijiang Naxizu Zizhi Xian) and through interviews
with Naxi living in Kunming, the provincial capital. The Mosuo people of
Yongning are not included here, nor do I consider education or ethnicity
among Naxi in other counties. The majority of Naxi (192,448 in 1994) live
1.	Zhongguo minzu tongji 1992.
2.	For recent studies of the Mosuo, see Knodel 1995 and Shih Chuankang 1993. Another
brand-new publication is Cai Hua 1997.
3.	The most well-known and comprehensive Western study of the Naxi people is pub-
lished in the works of the famous Austrian botanist Joseph F. Rock, who lived on and off
for twenty-five years in Lijiang between 1922 and 1949. He studied historical Chinese
gazetteers; wrote about Naxi (Na-khi) history, society, and religion; and collected and trans-
lated Naxi manuscripts written by ritual specialists, dongba. Rock’s works are widely
acknowledged as pioneering. Recently one of his major sources for the study of Lijiang his-
tory, Lijiang Fu zhi liie (1743) was reprinted and published by Lijiang County. Rock’s stud-
ies have inspired Western researchers such as Anthony Jackson (1979) and Gernot Prunner
(1969) to further explore the history and the manuscripts of the Naxi. Silvia Sutton has writ-
ten an entertaining biography about his life (Sutton 1974). In contrast to Rock’s style, Peter
Goullart, who also left Lijiang in 1949 after living there for almost nine years, wrote a very
personal and romantic book about his life there, Forgotten Kingdom which has recently
been translated into Cfiinese and is popular among many Naxi in Lijiang. None of these
books is concerned with education in Lijiang, but they contribute to the understanding of
the culture and history of the Naxi before 1949.
26HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
in Lijiang Naxi Autonomous County, which was established in 1961. Today
Lijiang County, together with the counties of Ninglang, Yongsheng, and
Huaping make up Lijiang Prefecture (Lijiang Diqu). In 1994,329,160 peo-
ple lived in Lijiang County. The Naxi make up 58.4 percent of this popula-
tion, the Han 17.7 percent, the Bai n.4 percent, the Lisu 7.7 percent, and the
Yi 2 percent. More than half of the population in the county (and prefec-
tural) capital of Lijiang Town (or Dayan Zhen) are Naxi. The development
of tourism (Chinese, Asian, and Western) in recent years has encouraged locals
(not to mention the many incoming people, especially Bai and Han) to estab-
lish small businesses. There is very little industry in Lijiang, and the majority
of the population is engaged in agriculture (or pastoralism) involving a range
of crops grown at different altitudes. People in the highlands above three thou-
sand meters—mostly Nuosu, Lisu, Miao, and Premi (officially classified as
Pumi)—often produce only potatoes and turnips, and they are among the
poorest inhabitants in Lijiang County.
The language of the Naxi is a Tibeto-Burman language that belongs to
the Yi group of the Burman-Yi branch, and Chinese linguists normally dis-
tinguish between the Western and the Eastern dialects spoken by Naxi and
Mosuo respectively. The Naxi have three written scripts: the most famous is
the pictographic dongba script developed and used by Naxi ritual specialists
(dongba) for recording rituals and legends. The dongba script has more than
six thousand characters, most of which are pictographic symbols.4 The other
Naxi script, usually called geba script, is a syllabic phonetic script that was
never widely used. Both scripts were used exclusively among dongba., and
neither was standardized. The third script is the Naxi Latin script, which
Chinese linguists developed in the 1950s in cooperation with Naxi intellec-
tuals. Because ordinary Naxi had never used the dongba script, they were cho-
sen as one of the ten ethnic groups to be given a new script, but the Latin
script never gained widespread use.
4.	Especially since James Bacot’s 1913 publication about the Mosuo, the pictographic
dongba script has caught the interest of many Western researchers, and many manuscripts
in dongba script belong to Western collections and museums. Since 1980 researchers in China,
many of them Naxi, have published articles and books containing new translations of dongba
texts, discussions of the script, and descriptions of dongba rituals. There is a massive inter-
est in dongba culture as a research subject and as a focus for tourism in Lijiang.
27HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
In Chinese descriptions the Naxi are commonly praised for their supposedly
pragmatic attitude toward religion, which allows the coexistence of Daoism
(Taoism), Chinese and Tibetan forms of Buddhism, and shamanistic and
dongba rituals. The Naxi dongba were not organized in temples or monas-
teries, and usually they transmitted their ritual knowledge from father to son.
Most dongba, were farmers who practiced as ritual specialists in connection
with events such as death and marriage and who made ritual sacrifices to
heaven. The influence of the dongba rituals had already declined consider-
ably in the 1940s, when Joseph Rock had difficulty finding practicing dongba.
After 1949 the rituals were banned, and today only a few practicing dongba
remain. About four hundred years after the Ming rulers complimented the
Naxi Mu family for adapting to Confucian values, a publication based on
the Chinese government’s large-scale fieldwork in the 1950s also concluded
that the Naxi were an especially open-minded minzu interested in learning
from “more advanced” groups:
It is characteristic that the Naxi of Lijiang County do not close themselves
off to outsiders, do not blindly oppose everything foreign, and do not stick
to their old ways. They actively try to make progress and are good at study-
ing. Although the Lijiang Naxi have their own traditional culture, they are
extremely eager to learn from other wmwzz/’s advanced cultures. They are
especially energetic in studying the Han people’s culture, (lnzg: 33)
Until the 1950s Chinese school education existed simultaneously with dif-
ferent forms of religious education among the Naxi in Lijiang. The dongba
transmitted their knowledge of rituals through their own script (usually to
one son), but never as formalized or institutionalized education. We still lack
thorough knowledge of the influence of Tibetan culture and education in
Lijiang.5 What kind of education took place in Buddhist monasteries in dif-
ferent periods ? How widespread, or limited, was knowledge of Tibetan script
and texts (of which the Mu lineage possessed a large collection) ? These sub-
jects lie outside the scope of this book, which concerns only institutionalized
Chinese school education.
5.	Apart from He Shaoying 1995, few publications have focused on the impact of Tibetan
culture in Lijiang.
28HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
CONFUCIAN SCHOOLS
Chinese publications about education among the Naxi often accentuate the
early establishment of Confucian education in Lijiang as a decisive explana-
tion of the relatively high number of educated Naxi today.6 It is hardly pos-
sible to determine exactly how relevant and important the history of Confucian
education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Lijiang is to the edu-
cational situation today. Certainly Han influence on the Lijiang plain increased
during the Qing dynasty, and in addition to the sons of the Mu family, an
increasing number of Naxi received education in charitable schools (yixue)
or private Confucian schools (sishu). Only a few Naxi in the Lijiang area were
educated in the three academies for classical learning (shuyucm).
According to historical records from Yunnan, private Confucian schools
were already established in Lijiang Prefecture during the Yuan (1271-1368)
and Ming (1368-1644) dynasties.7 During the Ming, the local Naxi Mu chiefs
expanded their contacts with imperial China and established Confucian pri-
vate schools that were exclusively used for teaching male members of the Mu
lineage. The Mu tusi owned a library containing Confucian classics and a large
number of Tibetan books, and the Mu lineage invited Han scholars from
China’s cultural center to come to Lijiang as teachers, painters, medical work-
ers, and mining experts. Their private Confucian education was organized
in family schools (zuxue), where a clan or lineage hired a teacher to tutor a
very small class of boys from the same clan. These schools received no eco-
nomic support or recognition from the government and had no regulations
to follow concerning the content and form of education.8
Yang Qichang regards the early establishment by the Mu family of pri-
vate Confucian education as the beginning of a long tradition of Han
“advanced” (xianjin) influence on the Naxi and, more importantly, as a
6.	E.g., Yang Qichang 1987; tmjfg 1992; Zhang Daqun 1988b.
7.	See, e.g., Yang Qichang 1987 and lnzg. The amount of published material concern-
ing education among the Naxi is limited compared to that concerning the Tai. This partly
reflects the fact that Naxi are not considered to have specific problems regarding education.
The Naxi in Lijiang have a long history of Han influence, established Chinese education,
and a good record of educational attainment. Therefore most of the published material about
education of the Naxi in Lijiang deals with historical development.
8.	See also Borthwick 1983: 1—38 for a description of the different kinds of premodern
schools in China.
29HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
demonstration of how willing the Naxi have always been to learn from “more
advanced cultures” (Yang Qichang 1987: 29). This view is very common
among both Han and Naxi scholars in China writing Naxi history. It
expresses a deep-rooted belief in the civilizing effect of Confucian education
while establishing “Han culture” (Hanzu de wenhua) as the most developed
and civilized form of culture in China. As early as the Ming dynasty, the mem-
bers of the Mu lineage were praised in a chronicle for their ability to study
and absorb Confucian ethics: “Of all hereditary chiefs in Yunnan, those from
the Lijiang Mu lineage are the foremost in knowledge of The Book of Odes
[Shi jing] and The Canon of History [Shi shu] and in observation of rites and
ceremonies” (quoted in Zhang Daqun 1988c: 78). During the Ming it also
became common practice for each tusi family in Yunnan to send one son to
the Imperial Academy (Guozijian). In 1+04 there were twenty-eight sons
of Yunnan tusi studying and living in Beijing, the imperial capital (TMJFG
1992: 43).
In the year 1700 a Han scholar from Shandong (who claimed to be one of
Confucius’s descendants) was sent to Lijiang Prefecture as a vice-magistrate.
He started Lijiang Prefectural School (Lijiang Fuxue) while forcing the Mu
tusi to “voluntarily” pay for the establishment of a charitable school (Yang
Qichang 1987:29). Yang Qichang emphasizes this event as the first break in
the Mu monopoly on Confucian education. According to all Chinese
sources, it was, however, the introduction of the system ofgaitu guiliu in
Lijiang in 1723 that increased the number of Confucian schools and facili-
tated the spread (although still very limited) of knowledge of the Confucian
classics and Chinese characters. More generally, the local hereditary chiefs’
loss of official power to Qing bureaucrats is believed to have had a positive
effect on the development of education and the cultural level (wenhua shui-
ping) of the Naxi. Gaituguiliu is praised for having contributed directly to
the modern project of creating a Chinese state encompassing territories along
the periphery of the empire and for facilitating successful “unification of the
nationalities.”9
The newly appointed Qing officials gradually took measures to establish
charitable schools and promote the training of teachers for them. Dismissal
of local hereditary chiefs was commonly followed by establishment of a pre-
9.	See, e.g., Yang Qichang 1987; lnzg 1986; and Zhang Daqun 1988b.
30HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
fectural school where natives could participate in Confucian education
together with Han students.10 Guan Xuexuan, an official and scholar from
Jiangxi, was especially influential in expanding Confucian education in
Lijiang. During the first years of the Qianlong period (1736-95) he established
education of teachers for charitable schools in Lijiang Prefecture’s three acad-
emies (in Xueshan, Yuhe, andTianji) and secured economic support for teach-
ers’ salaries. Within a few years he had initiated seventeen charitable schools
in Lijiang. Furthermore, he issued a decree warning officials that they would
be punished if they did not send their sons to Chinese schools and see to it
that commoners did the same (Yang Qichang 1987: 29).
Due to the shortage of schools and lack of central political control, this
kind of edict was hardly possible to enforce, as Yang points out (Yang Qi-
chang 1987: 29-30). After the hereditary chiefs lost their monopoly on polit-
ical control, participation in Confucian education and local exams became
increasingly relevant for upward social mobility at the local level, and the
respect for Confucian education that was common among the Han (even
when it did not lead to higher positions in society) seems to have been grad-
ually taken over by the local Naxi elite. The Mu family, who were already
familiar with Confucian learning and who dressed, married, and buried their
dead in accordance with Han custom, became increasingly concerned with
their male offspring’s level of Confucian education. Most sent their sons to
private Confucian schools, which remained the most important centers for
elementary Confucian learning in Lijiang until the twentieth century.
The new charitable schools constituted the first attempt to include com-
moners in Lijiang in the world of Confucian learning, but, as in the rest of
empire at the time, participation was most likely extremely low. There were
still very few schools, and it would have been difficult for the educators to
reach the majority of Naxi peasants in the eighteenth century and convince
them that their sons needed knowledge of Chinese characters and Confu-
cian ethics. Furthermore, local bureaucrats and officials were not necessar-
ily very enthusiastic or dedicated in their attempts to spread education to
commoners. Between the time ofgaitu guiliu in 1723 and the end of the
Qing dynasty in 1911, seven people from Lijiang passed the highest imper-
ial examination, the/««Zrc; more than sixty took the degree otjuren by pass-
10.	See, e.g., Liu Guangzhi 1993: 36.
HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
ing the provincial examination; and more than 140 passed the preliminary
examinations.11
One of the most well-known Qing advocates of charitable schools was
Chen Hongmou, who initiated seven hundred in Yunnan alone between 1733
and 1737 in order to provide education in rural and peripheral areas (tmjfg
1992: 46). In Lijiang Prefecture there were twenty-two charitable schools
in 1736 and thirty-one in 1895 (clnac 1995: 5). They were funded by rent-
ing out land owned by the schools, and although the schools in principle
were free, students provided economic support for the teachers. The basic
aim of the education itself was, in William Rowe’s words, to “bring about
the understanding of moral principles through familiarization with Chinese
characters” (Rowe 1994: 435). Literacy was promoted first of all for its pre-
sumed capacity to transform culture rather than for its practical values. The
basic primer in the curriculum designed by Chen Hongmou himself for
charitable schools was Elementary Learning (Xiao xue) by the Song Neo-
Confucianist Zhu Xi. However, in Lijiang the charitable-school students
apparently studied the same primers as students in the private Confucian
schools, namely The Trimetrical Classic (Sanzijing), The Hundred Family Names
(Baijiaxing), and The Thousand Character Text (Qianziwen) for beginners.
These were the most common primers in elementary education all over China
from the thirteenth to the twentieth century; for their basic education, chil-
dren were expected to memorize the approximately two thousand characters
in these primers (Woodside and Elman 1994: 553).11 12
The most common form of basic Confucian education in Lijiang was con-
ducted in private Confucian schools, most of which were found among the
Naxi in the town of Lijiang and the surrounding villages. I have not heard
of private Confucian schools among other ethnic groups in Lijiang, and to
my knowledge aH sishu teachers in Lijiang were Naxi. These schools were nor-
mally started by a prestigious, and often poor, learned local in his own home
or in a local temple. Although private Confucian education generally was weak-
ened during the Republican period (1911-49), at least four or five sishu in
11.	Only thejinshi examination, which was taken in Beijing, made one eligible for a
higher office in the imperial administration. See, e.g., Zhu Weizheng 1992 on the imperial
examination system.
12.	See also Rawski 1979.
32HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
Lijiang Town continued into the early 1950s. In the town of Lijiang only one
former sishu teacher (a Naxi) is still alive. He is now ninety years old and
recalled,
I started as a teacher when I was twenty-four [in 1929]. I started a sishu in
our own house, where my father had also taught. I had many students,
perhaps eighty, but after six years the headmaster of the public primary
school in Lijiang asked me to become a teacher there instead. Then I closed
down my sishu and the students went elsewhere to study. It was easier to
be a teacher in a public school. I had to teach fewer hours and taught fewer
students in a day.
In Teacher Yang’s sishu, students were boys between the ages of ten and twenty,
and he usually had between fifty and seventy students at a time. They learned
the reading primers by heart and recited them in class. Some studied for less
than a year, whereas others continued as long as ten years. According to my
interviews, alLttiftzz teachers were local Naxi scholars who used Naxi language
when explaining things to their students, and recited texts in the local
Chinese dialect (mostly called “Hanhua” by interviewees). There were no
courses in mathematics or other nonliterary subjects. However, Teacher Yang
recalls how he, on his own initiative, started to teach texts written in the mod-
ern vernacular written language (baihua) in addition to the common primers
and classics. During the Republican period, with the increase in public schools,
it became harder to make a living as a sishu teacher. Teacher Yang had the
advantage of having learned classical Chinese as well as vernacular in a pub-
lic school, and therefore his school became very popular.
A sixty-nine-year-old Naxi retired teacher, who was a student in two dif-
ferent sishu in the 1930s, recalled,
After two years [in 1935], my parents moved me to Teacher Yang’s sishu
because Teacher Yang taught the “new learning” [xin xue]. They thought
it was useful. There were between fifty and sixty students, and we learned
vernacular as well as classical Chinese [guwen], On the top floor those at
the highest level studied classical Chinese. Downstairs we studied the new
books: “Man, a man, a man sings. ...” All students were boys, and the
wages for the teacher came from fixed presents we had to give at festivals.
33HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
When we gave the presents we had to bow \koutou\ to the teacher and his
wife. Afterwards we always got something to eat. For the Dragon Boat
Festival [Duanwujie] we had to give two silver yuan. It was really a lot of
money—just imagine, you could buy four chickens for that kind of money.
Even though we lack exact information about the number of schools func-
tioning in different periods during Qing, as well as the number of students
and teachers, there is no doubt that Confucian education was well represented
in Lijiang compared to most other non-Han areas of Yunnan (the Bai region
of Dali, bordering Lijiang Prefecture, being one exception). However,
Alexander Woodside reminds us that the number of schools, as reported in
local gazetteers, is not necessarily a useful parameter for measuring the
influence of Confucian education: most charitable schools existed only for a
short time, they often lacked funds, and, although they often were free, most
parents had no incentive to send their children there. In addition, many Qing
officials were against the spread of education to lower strata of society, fear-
ing that literacy might produce local status ambitions and shake the legiti-
macy of the bureaucratic class (Woodside 1992: 30). Local support for the
schools was in no way comparable, for example, to that for Islamic or Buddhist
schools in surroundings where they were part of a local, traditional, religious
pattern. The education of boys in the Buddhist monasteries of Sipsong Panna
is one example of religiously founded education with great popular support.
Through my interviews in Lijiang, I tried to obtain an impression of how
widespread Confucian education was before 1949 and, in particular, what sta-
tus Confucian education had among the Naxi. Not surprisingly, the differ-
ences between the town of Lijiang and the rest of Lijiang County were
immense. In the countryside, peasants were not very motivated to send their
children to school. Still, the Naxi peasants living on the Lijiang plain had
several yixue and sishu, unlike other minorities such as Lisu, Nuosu, Tuo’en,
Miao, and Premi, who lived higher up in the mountains. According to inter-
views with older Naxi from the town of Lijiang and the countryside, Chinese
Confucian education had a high status among the Naxi. Although most peo-
ple did not send their children to school, either because it was too expensive
or because they simply preferred that their sons work at home, the families
who did have a son attending a Confucian school were highly esteemed by
the other villagers. Of course, this was especially so in the town of Lijiang,
3+HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
where the influence of Han language and Confucian culture was most per-
vasive. One retired Naxi headmaster, who had himself been to public mid-
dle school while attending isishu in the evenings and on holidays, told about
the status of Confucian education among the Naxi in the town of Lijiang:
Oh, it was really a burden for a family to have a son in school. But the Naxi
wanted at least one son to go to school, even if the family was poor. When
a Naxi couple got a boy, the mother would carry him on her back when
he was one month old, to go to the market square [in Lijiang Town] to
buy him a book, a pen, and some ink. This was kept until the child was
old enough to start in school. It was an expression of the parents’ hope
that their son would study.
Almost all of my Naxi interviewees above the age of sixty-five agreed that
when they were young, it was prestigious to participate in Confucian edu-
cation. Many recalled their parents’ and grandparents’ respect for local Con-
fucian scholars. At the same time, since most of them came from families
with a tradition of sending at least one son to school, it is possible that they
exaggerated the commoners’ respect for Confucian schools and students—
an exaggeration that might have been further reinforced by the tendency
of Naxi today to present “love of learning” (aixuexi) as a significant Naxi
characteristic.
The relatively few Naxi who underwent Confucian education were famil-
iarized with Confucian family virtues, which were based upon strictly hier-
archic patriarchal power, and they received instruction in rituals concerning
burial, weddings, ancestor worship, and so forth. Their instructors were teach-
ers who were themselves scholarly trained Naxi enjoying prestige among the
formerly royal Mu family and who were respected by the Han imperial rep-
resentatives in Lijiang. It is impossible today to determine the precise
influence that Confucian education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
had on the Naxi and on their relationship to the Han. Even though such edu-
cation probably played an important role in spreading Confucian values con-
cerning burial, filial piety, and ancestor worship, it is clear that the Naxi also
continued to worship their own spirits, speak their own language, and sup-
port their dongba. However, to the Naxi in the town of Lijiang in particular,
and to a much lesser degree in the remoter parts of Lijiang, Confucian edu-
35HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
cation gradually became synonymous with prestigious learning, even when
it did not (as in most cases) provide any political or economic power.
THE FIRST MODERN SCHOOLS
Education in the frontier regions of the Qing empire came into focus in the
early twentieth century when the government tried to strengthen its control
in response to various uprisings and to British attempts to expand into Yunnan
and Tibet through Burma and India. In Yunnan, where at least one third of
the population was estimated to be non-Han, the Bureau of Education in
Border Regions, the first such administrative unit ever, was set up in 1909
(Liu Guangzhi 1993: 68). One of the purposes of this department was to pro-
mote new schools in the border regions of Yunnan in order to facilitate in-
tegration of these areas into the empire, and therefore 128 new, free “native
simple literacy schools” were established there by the end of the Qing dynasty.
Lijiang Prefecture had no such schools, probably because they were con-
sidered unnecessary: first, Lijiang did not border the most politically sensi-
tive areas of British Burma, and second, Chinese education was already
relatively well-developed in Lijiang.'3 After the founding of the Republic,
between 1912 and 1915, the government quickly changed the “native simple
literacy schools” into normal lower elementary schools. Generally, the late
and weakening Qing empire left the task of promoting education on the
periphery of Yunnan to local administrators and educators. Therefore local
development of Chinese education depended upon local elites to create non-
Confucian Chinese schools. In Lijiang such an elite existed, and the course
of educational development, including the problems during the late Qing,
resembled to a large extent the situation in many Han areas.
All Chinese sources agree that the real break with traditional Confucian
education in Lijiang followed the reforms of 1903 and the abolition of the
imperial examination system in 1905. At this time the three former acade-
mies in Lijiang Prefecture were changed into primary and higher primary 13
13.	Schools were started in Yongchang (today’s Baoshan), Dehong, Yongde, Lianma,
Puer, and Lancang Districts. Sipsong Panna was still on the extreme periphery of the empire
and beyond the Qing administration’s practical control. The government started only a few
literacy schools there.
36HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
schools (xitwxuetang), and many charitable schools became lower primary
schools. However, only more thorough research will reveal to what degree
these transformations were of content and form as well as name. We know
that the former Xueshan Academy changed in 1905 into Xueshan Primary
School. The teachers stayed, and by 1907 the school had eighty-six boy stu-
dents and six teachers who had received additional training in modern sub-
jects such as history, geography, and drawing (clnac 1995: 6). In 1907 the
local government also started the first two lower primary schools for girls
(niizi chu xiaoxuetang) and twenty village primary schools offering five years
of study. Some of the schools were started in Buddhist lamaseries (Fuguo,
Zhiyun, and Wenfeng temples) with the lamas as students.
From 1905 the government decided that each prefecture should set up a
middle school, but due to problems of finance this was impossible in many
poor minority areas. However, in Lijiang Town the prefecture’s first middle
school, Lijiang Prefecture Middle School (Lijiang Fu Zhongxuetang) was
started in 1905 under the Han magistrate Peng Jizhi from Hunan, in coop-
eration with He Gengji, a Naxi who had passed a high imperial civil service
examination and became the first head of the school. Money for opening
the new school came from fines, mainly imposed on the lamas from Dong-
zhulin Lamasery (near Weixi) after they had instigated a riot in 1903 against
a nearby Catholic missionary station.14 Tax revenues from a new annual horse
and mule market provided the income for continuing expenses of the school.
The size of the middle school at this time was small compared to the vast
area it covered. In the beginning the school had two classes: a middle school
class for male students recruited from counties throughout the prefecture15
(five years of study) and a class for primary school teachers (four years of
study). Most of the students were sons of Han officials, leading merchant
families, and officials from the Naxi royal Mu family. The objective of the
14.	According to Chinese historical sources, the lamas had accused the local Christians
and officials of oppressing Buddhism and supporting foreign religion. This caused a popu-
lar uprising by the local population, and the government responded by sending armed forces
to suppress the rebels. Finally, the magistrate of Lijiang Prefecture, Peng Jizhi, investigated
the case and concluded that the government had handled it improperly. He ordered a with-
drawal of government forces but nevertheless fined the lamas (see Li Shizong 1988: 65).
15.	At this time Lijiang Prefecture comprised Heqing, Jianchuan, Zhongdian, Weixi,
and Lijiang Counties.
37HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
school was to provide a regular secondary education based on Chinese and
Western knowledge—an education that would enable the most qualified to
continue studies in higher education and the rest to fill jobs as teachers, local
administrators, and so forth (Li Shizong 1988: 65). Curriculum was arranged
according to national regulations, including a vocational course in mining
technique and courses in psychology and education for the primary school
teachers. There were no special courses on the Chinese classics, or on com-
position of the traditional eight-part essays so crucial in the former civil-
service examinations. Thus, the curriculum was profoundly different from
that of the Confucian academies. Teachers and administrators connected to
the school actively promoted modem and national ideas. In 1907 some of them
started the first newspaper in Yunnan published in the vernacular language,
which reformers promoted as essential for the emergence of a population
with modern scientific knowledge. The new Lijiang Vernacular Newspaper
(Lijiang baihua bao) contained articles about reform, science, and national
policy.
In conjunction with Lijiang’s first middle school, the government also
started Lijiang Prefecture Higher Primary School (Lijiang Fu Gaodeng
Xiaoxuetang). According to He Rugong, only a few “enlightened” (kaiming)
parents from the township of Lijiang sent their sons to this school volun-
tarily. He Rugong recalls the period after the school was started, when the
government required that rural districts send a few boys to the school
according to the number of families. The local population strongly resisted
this regulation, fearing that children at the school would be “pulled away
by the Han” (He Rugong 1988: 97). Furthermore, many Naxi regarded it
as most improper and indecent that children in the school would sit while
the teacher was standing. To make the school more attractive, the adminis-
tration decided to provide pupils with three free meals a day and a set of
clothes for each season.
The local Naxi’s reactions to the modern schools were similar to those of
many Han in rural areas, who also were not easily convinced of the utility of
modern learning and continued to prefer the well-established sishu}6 Still, it
is somewhat surprising that Naxi in Lijiang expressed fear that their sons would
16.	See, e.g., Thoegersen 1994: 38-40.
38HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
be absorbed by the Han in the higher primary school when they were already
used to education based on Chinese language, Chinese classics, and Confucian
ethics. One major reason for the objection may have been that villagers for
the first time were compelled to send boys to the school. Furthermore, the
Confucian schools at this time were apparently to a large degree considered
to be “the Naxi people’s own schools,” where high-status knowledge was trans-
mitted by highly respected local Naxi teachers who instructed in Naxi and
recited primers and Chinese classics in the local Chinese dialect. In the newly
established modern-style schools, many teachers were Han from outside, all
lessons were taught in Chinese, and some of the subjects taught were incom-
prehensible to most of the population.
While modern schools slowly gained ground in Lijiang, sishu education
continued to play a role until the 1950s, as in many Han areas. While grad-
ually (especially since the Republic) more and more pupils began attending
public schools, many (especially those of learned families) continued to attend
a sishu in the evenings and on holidays. One former student from a sishu recalled
being moved by his parents to a public school because his uncle was a teacher
there: “The other pupils stayed in the sishu. Many people still thought that
the only real scholarship [xuewei] was classical studies. The ‘new learning’ was
not really considered worth anything.” Before the Republican period, insti-
tutionalized education still reached only a small part of the multiethnic pop-
ulation of Lijiang Prefecture. In spite of the decrees ordering that charitable
schools be replaced by modern-style elementary schools, many schools were
unable to modernize; teachers were not trained and funds were scarce. The
local population was either not motivated to release sons from duties at home
(there was no question of girls attending school) or preferred the familiar
and highly valued schools for classical learning. Since statistics concerning
population and school enrollment in this period are uncertain, it is impos-
sible to determine the percentage of school-aged boys who attended school.
A rough estimate, based upon population statistics from 1911 and the
recorded number of pupils in primary schools, is that approximately one-
third of school-aged boys attended school. Considering that the majority of
pupils were in Lijiang Town and only a small minority in the surrounding
rural areas, this figure is rather high. I conclude that by the end of the Qing
dynasty, Lijiang already resembled many Han areas with respect to the num-
39HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
ber of schools and students. However, since many boys attended school for
only a short period of time, this does not necessarily indicate a high level of
literacy.17
Christian missionary schools have been described as the first modern
schools in China (e.g., Cleverley 1991). There were quite a few of these in
Yunnan, but they were never very important among the Naxi in Lijiang (or
among the Tai in Sipsong Panna).18 Missionaries had stations in Lijiang
Prefecture, but according to Peter Goullart, they did not play a major role
among the Naxi. Goullart met a missionary couple in the early 1930s who
considered the Naxi (and Tibetans) to be a hindrance to their missionary
efforts. Most of their converts were Lisu, but in Lijiang Town they were mostly
Han from Sichuan (Goullart 1955: 81). There was a missionary primary school
(run primarily by Dutch missionaries) in Lijiang Town during the 1930s and
1940s. I met only one Naxi who had attended this school as a child. He remem-
bered how all students (mainly Bai and Naxi) were taught exclusively in
English according to The Goldfinch Story Book and that several of the pupils
studied in the local sishu during holidays.
REPUBLICAN EDUCATION: THE NATIONAL MESSAGE
AND THE CONCERN FOR EDUCATION IN BORDER REGIONS
By the twentieth century the Naxi had adopted Confucian education as part
of their own culture and daily life. Educational change in Lijiang had largely
followed the changes in the more central parts of the Chinese empire and,
later, the Republic, and locally was the result of interventions by Naxi (rather
than Han) intellectuals, scholars, and bureaucrats. Confucian schools became
the focus of attention for parents who wanted (and could afford) an educa-
tion for one or several sons. Thus, the Naxi accepted to a large extent that
education was equivalent to the study of Confucian texts in Chinese and train-
17.	Evelyn Rawski (1979) has made the most comprehensive study of popular literacy
in China during the Qing dynasty. She refers to significant variations in literacy not only
between rural and urban areas, but also among rural areas. See also Thoegersen 1994 on
school attendance during the Qing and the Republic in the Han Zouping County.
18.	See, e.g., Enwall 1994 and Diamond 1996 on the importance of missionary educa-
tion among the Miao.
40HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
ing in Confucian morality, behavior, and rituals. This may explain why it was
relatively easy for the Naxi to later accept the dominance of new forms of
education based on Chinese language, history, and culture.
Primary and Secondary Schools in Lijiang
The keypoint secondary school in Lijiang today, Lijiang Prefecture Secondary
School (Lijiang Diqu Zhongxue), traces its history back to 1905, when it
was started as the first secondary school in Lijiang Prefecture.’9 This school
underwent tumultuous changes, especially during the Republic, and was at
times divided into several schools. Although changes of administration, fund-
ing, and name occurred, these did not necessarily influence curriculum. A
new teacher education program, initially financed by the provincial gov-
ernment, was started in Lijiang in 1913 to train primary school teachers for
all counties formerly under Lijiang Prefecture. The program taught two
classes of students: one for five years (as recommended in the 1912 educa-
tion plan) and one for six years.19 20 As Li Shizong points out, graduates from
dais school could hardly fill all of the teaching positions in the primary schools
within the immense area of the former Lijiang Prefecture. Consequently,
despite this central teacher education, teaching in many countryside primary
schools continued to be based on memorizing Confucian texts (Li Shizong
1988: 65). Therefore, the government added a special one-year teachers train-
ing course, to which all the counties were expected to send graduates from
higher primary schools. Since the provincial government financed the new
teachers school, county governments decided to use their surplus revenues
for new primary schools in the major townships in Lijiang and for a new
boarding school: the Cooperative Secondary School of the Six Counties
Lijiang, Heqing, Jianchuan, Zhongdian, Weixi, and Lanping (Liu Xian
Lianhe Zhongxue), which replaced Lijiang Prefecture Secondary School.
As the name suggests, the secondary school covered a huge area, and al-
though for a time it coexisted with teacher education, short-lived vocational
19.	Today Lijiang Prefecture includes Lijiang, Ninglang, Huaping, and Yongsheng
Counties, from all of which the school accepts students.
20.	I have not been able to trace the reason for this difference in length of schooling.
It is possible that it lies in variations in the students’ level of primary school education.
41HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
education, and another secondary school established in 1917, education
beyond primary school level was still rare in Lijiang during the Republican
period.
In its beginning, the Cooperative Secondary School was connected to the
teachers school in Lijiang, and, resources being scarce, the school offered only
one four-year class in secondary school education. The head of the school
was educated in Japan, and the curriculum followed the national plan empha-
sizing military exercise. All students paid a school fee, and most in the sec-
ondary school still were from relatively wealthy merchant or government
families. The age of the students was quite high, between fifteen and twenty-
six, comparable to that of some of the teachers (Yang Shangzhi 1988: 80; Liang
Jiaji 1988: 83).
He Rugong was one of the few Naxi who attended the Cooperative
Secondary School. From his descriptions we learn that students and parents
primarily regarded the secondary school as a step (an expensive one) toward
a prestigious—but, for most, unattainable—university degree: “[Students]
thought that it was more difficult to attend a higher school than to reach the
sky, and if you could not go to a university, what would then be the use of
learning English, mathematics, physics, and chemistry?” (He Rugong 1988:
100). Regulations of school life and behavior at the Cooperative Secondary
School were to a large degree modeled on Japanese and European conven-
tions. This was a result of the education and experiences of the people involved
in developing education in Lijiang rather than of any firm control by the cen-
tral government.21 Reflecting the Japanese educational system, all students
participated in military exercises, each with a rusty rifle (most of which were
defective, as He dryly remarks). He Rugong recalls that the school had fixed
rules about how and where to place everything: blankets had to be folded
“like pieces of doufu [bean curd],” dormitories were inspected every day, tra-
ditional long fingernails were not allowed, and students were not to leave
21.	Contacts between the central government and Yunnan were very weak when
Yunnan was ruled by Tang Zhiyao between 1911 and 1928, and central interference into
Yunnan’s political, military, and economic affairs increased only gradually (with resistance
from the provincial government under Long Yun) after 1939 (see Solinger 1977; and Dreyer
1976: 29-30).
+2HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
the school (He Rugong 1988: 99). In his matter-of-fact style, He also describes
how all students were obliged to speak Chinese and were fined for each sen-
tence spoken in Naxi or Bai.22
The Cooperative Secondary School functioned until 1925, when admin-
istrative changes put a stop to the funding of the school by revenues from
the local mule and horse market. Fighting between warlords in Yunnan also
resulted in increased military expenditures, causing many schools to close
down. The last class of the Cooperative Secondary School managed to grad-
uate on private funds before the school finally closed in 1926 and transferred
all of its equipment to the Third Secondary School of Yunnan Province
(Yunnan Sheng Li Di San Zhongxue).23 In the beginning, the Third Secondary
School enrolled one new class a year in a four-year course. A national edu-
cation conference held in Kunming in 1922 decided to change the four-year
secondary school system to three years of junior and three years of senior
secondary school, and in 1931 the school added senior secondary school edu-
cation (Li Shizong 1988: 70).
Funding of secondary school education in Lijiang was unstable due to
tumultuous political and military conditions. After a complete stop of provin-
cial financial support for the school in 1928, mainly due to the fighting among
warlords, the provincial education department decided in 1929 to spend rev-
enues from tobacco tax on education. Between 1931 and 1940 the govern-
ment ensured a separate and fixed budget for education relying on the tobacco
tax revenues (ymjfg 1992: 8). The Third Secondary School in Lijiang bene-
fited from this, as did other provincial schools, when general investment in
education rose. This situation changed again when tobacco tax revenues were
transferred to the budget of the central government. From that time on,
Yunnan relied on support from the central government for education. Several
provincial secondary and primary schools were closed or transferred to the
county level, and special economic support for students from border areas
22.	This kind of direct suppression of minority languages in schools was also common
all over Europe, in the United States, and in the various colonies where nondominant
ethnic groups (often majorities in their own areas) were involved in education. For exam-
ple, in Taiwan, Mandarin, or Standard Chinese, was the only accepted language in schools
until 1988, and in Turkey teaching Kurdish is still prohibited.
23.	This name was changed in 1934 to Yunnan Provincial Lijiang Secondary School
43HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
was canceled (tmjfg 1992:13). Furthermore, runaway inflation, bombing in
the Yunnan-Vietnam and Yunnan-Burma border areas after the Japanese occu-
pation of Vietnam in 1940, and the invasion of Yunnan in 1942 caused most
schools in these areas to close down.24
Before that happened, the central government had established three state-
run teachers schools ( jjuo li shifan xuexiao) in Yunnan—in Zhaotong in 19 3 9,
Dali in 1941, and Lijiang in 1942. These schools recruited mainly minority
students, and graduates were distributed as teachers in Yunnan, Sichuan, (the
former province of) Xikang, and Guizhou border areas. A new County
Secondary School (Xian Li Zhongxue) had been started in Lijiang in the late
1930s, as well as special adult classes and higher primary classes in several dis-
tricts. Moreover, the central government financed elementary schools in the
lower administrative units of bao (Yang Qichang 1987:31).
During the 1920s the ideas of the May Fourth Movement on modern sci-
ence and democracy increasingly influenced the secondary school in Lijiang.
Though Lijiang was quite isolated from central China, several newly recruited
teachers were Naxi who had studied in Beijing and participated in the May
Fourth Movement.25 These young teachers advocated exclusive use of the
vernacular in school, introduced students to modern Chinese writers, and
encouraged some of them to start a study group on modern literature, the
New Lijiang Study Society (Xin Lijiang Dushu Hui).26 The Society explic-
itly aimed at spreading modern literature and science in the border regions
of Yunnan, and the young members (mostly Naxi) painted, wrote, and gave
theatre performances in the schools in Lijiang Town (Li Shizong 1988: 69).
After the news of the Japanese invasion of northeast China reached Li-
jiang in 1931, military exercise and patriotic education of students were given
even higher priority: teachers supported students who wished to go to the
(Yunnan Sheng Li Lijiang Zhongxue), seemingly without administrative consequences.
24.	This included the teachers schools in Jinghong (Cheli) and Menghai (Fohai) in
Sipsong Panna, which closed in 1943.
25.	These Naxi teachers included Fang Guoyu and the He brothers, He Zhijian and
He Zhijun, both of whom later became heads of the school.
26.	The name was later changed to the Border Bell Study Society (Bian Duo Dushu
Hui). The bell (duo) was a kind used in ancient times for official proclamations and in mod-
ern times in other May 4 contexts (e.g., the journal Women’s Bell).
44HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
front, military training was intensified, traditional Naxi and Bai songs were
rewritten into anti-Japanese songs, and students were organized to perform
anti-Japanese plays in villages and at the mule and horse market (Li Shizong
1988: 71). According to Li Shizong, this period was the zenith in the early
history of the secondary school, partly due to the teachers’ and students’ com-
mon interest in uniting against an intruding enemy. Li also points to the high
educational level of the staff, which included several Han scholars invited from
other provinces. Considering its geographic siting in a non-Han area, the
school had a high number of qualified graduates when in 1941 twenty stu-
dents out of thirty managed to pass the examination for higher education,
with two even allowed into a preparatory class for students going abroad (Li
Shizong 1988: 73). Li gives special credit to the strict discipline of the school
for its scholarly success. His comments, together with a few former students’
accounts and memories of the school, illustrate how discipline was enforced:
every evening the names of all the students were called out so that instruc-
tors could comment on each student’s performance, and corporal punish-
ment in the form of thrashing or wliipping was liberally inflicted. In 1936 the
school had introduced a new uniform fit not only for studying but for work-
ing in the fields or raising pigs as well. The short jacket and trousers reflected
the ideology of an education significantly different from the traditional Con-
fucian one—an education that ideally would produce citizens capable of trans-
ferring their scholarly knowledge into a productive society.
During the Republic the number of schools and students in Lijiang
increased steadily. Although written sources tell us very little about how pri-
mary schools in Lijiang changed during this period, many older Naxi have
memories of their time in the “citizen schools” (tfuomin xuexiao)x At the
end of the Qing dynasty in 1911, the county reported thirty-seven primary
schools in Lijiang with more than a thousand students. In 1937 this figure
had increased to 230 schools (clnac 1995:6 and 10). Most of these were lower
27.	In 1923, in accordance with national policy, citizen schools were changed into lower
primary schools (chuji xiaoxue) and higher primary schools ((taojt xiaoxue). The length of
study was supposed to be four plus two years, but in Lijiang until 1938 the higher primary
school offered three years of study. This first extra year of higher primary was meant to pre-
pare students for the real higher primary study. Beginning in 1940 full primary schools in
townships were called zhongxin xuexiao and lower primary schools in villages were baoguomin
xuexiao.
45HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
primary schools spread throughout the villages on the plateaus, and there
were few schools and students among the peoples living in the mountains.
As mentioned before, figures suggest that school enrollment at the begin-
ning of the Republic was at least as high as in many Han counties. Very few
girls attended school in Lijiang at this time. In 1923 the government once
again emphasized that four years of primary school education should be com-
pulsory. However, there was no basis in Lijiang for accomplishing this, and
all older interviewees (and written sources) agreed that primary school atten-
dance was still limited, not the least because extremely few girls ever started
school. When male interviewees were asked about school enrollment in their
village at the time when they themselves went to school, most replied that
almost all children attended school for a few years. However, when asked if
this included girls, the answer was always that no or very few girls went to
school. It seems that the only reason for a couple to send a daughter to school
was a lack of sons: “Almost all children went to school. . . except the girls,
of course. There were two in my class. Parents considered the boys most impor-
tant, and they sent the girls out to marry quite early. Only a family without
sons would consider sending a daughter to school” (Naxi man, about sixty
years old). The national education plan of 1912 had for the first time permit-
ted coeducation of boys and girls in lower primary schools, while requiring
the establishment of middle, vocational, and teachers schools for girls.28 In
1913 the Lijiang government started the first elementary schools for girls,
together with a special girls’ class at the teachers school. Still, very few girls
had the chance to attend these classes. Education among my female inter-
viewees in Lijiang above the age of fifty-five was limited to a few who had
attended short courses for eradicating illiteracy during the Republic or after
I9+9-
Most public primary schools possessed land that provided an income for
the normal annual expenses, and in the countryside most parents gave pres-
ents to the teacher in lieu of wages. It was an economic burden to have a son
at school, because parents had to pay while losing manpower in the fields.
Moreover, because few pupils could continue on to higher primary school,
not to mention secondary school, many parents considered education a waste
28.	See also Borthwick 1983: 114-18 on education of girls in China before 1912, and
Hayhoe 1992 for comments on female participation in education during the Republic.
46HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
of money. From 1914 onward the government outlined the curriculum in pri-
mary schools in Lijiang, and by 1931 standardized teaching materials had been
published.29 However, since most people in Lijiang were poor, students could
often not afford books. The economic burden was one reason why private
schools continued to exist in Lijiang as well as in Han areas all over China:
they were more flexible with regard to length and time of study, and they
offered a possibility of continued studies for those who had not passed the
public examination. The «.?//« also offered supplementary education since pub-
lic school teachers seldom taught the classical Chinese texts, although they
had received some classical training (clnac 1995: 19).
In 1930, following the regulations laid down by the provincial govern-
ment, the Lijiang Bureau of Education again tried to promote four years of
compulsory education and order all primary schools to start a “common peo-
ple’s school” (minzhong xuexiao) for adult illiterates (clnac 1995: 40). All
illiterates between sixteen and forty years of age were obliged to study from
half an hour to two hours a day for at least six months. The most important
subjects, apart from Chinese language, were mathematics and the study of
Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles of the People for the salvation and unity of
the Chinese nation: nationalism, democracy, and livelihood. Many people
apparently participated in the literacy classes, but how much they actually
learned (and remembered) is uncertain. In one Naxi village twelve kilome-
ters from Lijiang Town, in 1934 the people started a common people’s evening
school where adults learned to read and write Chinese; some older villagers
today proudly claim that their village has had no illiterates ever since.
However, many older Naxi, particularly women, told me that although dtey
had attended evening schools, they had quickly forgotten to read and write,
simply because they never used these skills in daily life.
Generally speaking, school education in Lijiang was not very stable dur-
ing the Republic. Many schools temporarily closed down or existed for only
a short period. During the war of resistance against Japan, the government
had less money to spend on education, and, due to the lack of grain, schools
were no longer free to rent out land. After the defeat of Japan in 1945, the
government suggested a new three-year plan for developing border area edu-
29.	More details on curriculum are found in clnac 1995: 14. See also Rawski 1979:
173-80 on the general curriculum.
+7HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
cation, and a short-lived attempt was made to restart former provincial schools
in border areas. However, some estimated 1945 statistics, based on Yunnan
archives, indicate the continued limitation of Republican Chinese education
in these areas. Lijiang’s estimated school attendance of 73 percent was higher
than the provincial average (tmjfg 1992: 52), as compared to 1940, with 60
percent attendance in Lijiang (clnac 1995: n). Both figures seem exagger-
ated, especially considering the low school participation of girls and the fact
that school attendance for children in all of China in 1949 has been estimated
at 25 percent (Cleverley 1991: 69). As for the number of Naxi students and
literates, Peter Goullart reported that during the 1940s, although most Naxi
in Lijiang Town spoke a bit of Chinese, he and his staff had problems finding
assistants who could write Chinese. Goullart was puzzled that some teach-
ers who were highly esteemed in the secondary school, as well as many local
government officials and secretaries, could write only reports and letters
“hardly worthy of comparison with a Chinese schoolboy’s essays” (Goullart
1955: 23). According to a 1931 census from Lijiang, 3.6 percent of the male
population and 0.2 percent of the female population in Lijiang County were
literate (Rock 1947: 173).
Nationalist/Assimilationist Education
In 1913, following the Central Education Conference in 1912, the Lijiang gov-
ernment instructed teachers to teach exclusively in the “national language”
(Mandarin;jww) and to try to reform and change the use of local languages.
However, interviews show that this policy was often circumvented. Most inter-
viewees who had been students in primary schools during the Republic recalled
that teachers taught mostly in Naxi or at least used Naxi for explanations.
Thanks to the education of local primary school teachers since the late Qing
and the fact that many local teachers in Confucian schools had received extra
training before their transfer into modern schools, most teachers in lower
primary schools in the Republican period were Naxi.
Most interviewees remembered teachers instructing in Naxi during at
least the first four years of primary school. However, the few Naxi who con-
tinued into higher primary school recalled being fined for speaking Naxi in
class. In 1922 Lijiang’s three first full primary schools were started, one of them
48HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
in the village of Baisha. By the mid-i94os this school had grown to seventeen
teachers and more than three hundred pupils. Students came from twelve
nearby villages to the higher primary school. A former student estimated that
about one-third of the graduates from his village school continued on to this
higher primary school. Although all of the pupils and teachers were Naxi,
only the Chinese language was allowed in school: “From fifth grade on we
were taught only in the national language. We called Chinese [Hanyu] the
‘national language’ \guoyu\ at that time. The teachers asked questions in
Chinese, and if you answered in Naxi, or if the teacher just heard you speak-
ing Naxi in the school, he would fine you. You would have to pay five fen.”
Former students from Yunnan Provincial Lijiang Secondary School during
the 1930s and 1940s also recalled how all personal conversation among stu-
dents (as well as in class) had to be conducted in Chinese. Yang Shangzhi
remembered a sign hanging in the dormitory when he started as a fifteen-
year-old student in 1930 saying, “Native language forbidden” ( Jinzhi tuyu)
(Yang Shangzhi 1988: 80). Zhao Lu, one of the few Bai students in Lijiang
Secondary School, also recalled how students were punished for speaking
Naxi. In principle the Bai were not allowed to speak their own language either,
but since there were so few of them, two students were permitted to speak
Bai together (Zhao Lu 1988: 90). Other rules clearly displayed the intention
of erasing cultural and linguistic differences among the students while forc-
ing assimilation with the Han. Li Ruoyu reported that in his own time as a
student, the various ethnic groups at the school were instructed to disman-
tle previous prejudices against one another and live harmoniously together
(Li Ruoyu 1988). Apart from insisting that students speak the language of
the Han, the rule of the “three sames” (san tong) demanded that students
“eat the same, live in the same way, and study the same.” What to eat, how
to live, and what to study were taken for granted in a context where mod-
ern education and way of life were seen as the property of a civilizing cen-
ter represented by the Han race. By means of a proper education, the Han
would ultimately improve the customs of the non-Han peoples, assimilate,
and thereby civilize them. In this sense, early modern Chinese education con-
tinued the traditional Confucian belief in the modeling/civilizing effects of
education, even though it broke with the traditional teaching of Confucian
ethics.
49HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
Different decrees issued by the provincial government of Yunnan during
the 1930s supported the national educational strategies of nationalism and
assimilation. Each area still governed by a local hereditary chief was obliged
to send two of his relatives to study at the expense of the government in
Kunming. Increased efforts were to be made to recruit “barbarian” (yz)3° chil-
dren and adults for elementary schools through short courses, and specific
quotas were set for the admission of non-Han students into schools in minor-
ity regions. In principle, the government granted financial aid to parents who
agreed to send their children to school, but in most cases the money never
reached peasant families. Teaching of the Han language was crucial, and the
decree emphasized that local language was allowed in schools only when
absolutely indispensable to helping children understand lessons in the first
year of schooling.30 31
A decree from the provincial government in 1931 advocated the estab-
lishment of special primary schools for non-Han peoples in border regions,
basic local teachers schools, and short-term vocational training. Four coun-
ties, one of them Lijiang, established two-year teacher-training courses, and
between 1931 and 19+0 these institutions educated some two hundred teach-
ers (most non-Han) for primary schools in border and mountain areas (tmjfg
1992: 8).32 Unlike other students, the future border teachers in Lijiang were
completely subsidized by the government. Their curriculum was slightly mod-
erated so that, for instance, they had no English lessons but instead a few
lessons in the Tibetan script that would be more useful when, after gradua-
tion, they started new schools in border and mountain villages (Li Shizong
1988: 70). The central government in Nanjing, led by Chiang Kai-shek,
adopted a highly politicized educational program with the purpose of
strengthening border regions and incorporating them into the Republic of
China. From 1942 primary schools strongly emphasized military training, and
all former students during the Republic whom I interviewed remembered
military training and the civics class (gongmin kej focusing on Sun Yat-sen’s
Three Principles of the People as important parts of the curriculum.
30.	In this decree the termyz was used to describe all peoples living in the border areas
of Yunnan who were not Han.
31.	Documents reprinted in tmfg 1992: 259-76.
32.	The other counties that established special schools were Zhaotong, Puer, and
Yongchang.
50HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
EDUCATION AFTER 1949
The Chinese Communist Party was active in Lijiang beginning in the mid-
1940s. Based in Lijiang Secondary School, it provided students with weapons
and started a Communist study group (Li Shizong 1988: 76). Li Shizong, an
active Communist recruited at the school, recalled a mass meeting in Lijiang
on 1 May 1949 of more than fifteen thousand people. Afterward all classes
stopped, and about one hundred students from the secondary school were
organized to participate in armed conflict against Nationalists who had fled
into border areas, including Lijiang and Weixi. The ccp also prepared peas-
ants for armed struggle and created several peasant literacy classes on basic
Chinese and propagating Communist policy in villages (lnzg 1986: 21). When
the Communists took charge in Lijiang in 1949, the new government wanted
to restart primary and secondary schools. In August the two secondary schools
and the teachers school were combined into one secondary school: Lijiang
People’s Secondary School (Lijiang Renmin Zhongxue), with about seven
hundred students from all counties in former Lijiang Prefecture, and eighty
employees. The school was renamed Lijiang Secondary School (Lijiang
Zhongxue) in 1950 and remained the only full regular secondary school in
Lijiang until 1970. It was reported in 1949 that Lijiang County had 39 full
primary schools and 294 lower primary schools. There were 440 teachers and
more than 13,800 students, virtually all from the Lijiang plain and almost none
from villages in the mountains (Yang Qichang 1987: 31; and clnac 1995:16).
In connection with the project of creating new scripts for scriptless
minority minzu (promoted since the First National Conference on Minority
Education in 1951), the Naxi were selected to receive a romanized script, since
Naxi commoners did not use the dongba script (which had never been used
for recording spoken Naxi). After a research team created a new script, some
simple teaching material was compiled for eradicating illiteracy among adult
Naxi. The script never gained widespread popularity, and today it is difficult
to find any Naxi who know it.” It was taught only in Naxi villages consid-
ered very backward in terms of education and therefore not in Lijiang Town.
Furthermore, Chinese culture and language had high status among many Naxi,
33.	The majority of the Naxi I interviewed below the age of twenty-five did not even
know this script existed.
5iHISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
and Naxi parents who wanted their children to get an education knew that
upward social mobility was bound strictly to learning Chinese. Today another
reason for the lack of interest in the romanized Naxi script is the revival of
the dongba, script and culture since the 1980s.
Thus, despite the creation of the new Naxi script, most schools in Lijiang
in the 1950s continued to use Naxi spoken language only in the lower classes,
Chinese in the higher classes, and Chinese script as the only written language.
Many Naxi emphasized in interviews that although it was not official policy
during the early 1950s, the teachers beyond lower primary school level con-
tinued to prohibit the use of the Naxi language in class. The main change of
curriculum was that civics classes and military training were replaced with
political lessons on Communist policy. Like the Nationalists, the new gov-
ernment was determined to use education to propagate nationalism, and in
1955 the Yunnan Bureau of Culture and Education issued a report that
stressed the special need for “patriotic education” in Yunnan. The report pointed
out that, living in border regions, many minority children lacked a “sense of
the motherland” (zuguoguannian) and did not even know that they were Chi-
nese (Zhongguoren).34 Later, in 1963, the Ministry of Education informed the
leaders of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan Education Bureaus of the urgent
need to stress patriotic minority education, especially along the Burmese bor-
der, where “American spies wearing religious garments are operating secredy.”35
During the 1950s a number of Naxi had been selected to receive short-
term cadre training, preparing them for working in the new Communist local
administration in what was later (in 1961) to become Lijiang Naxi Autonomous
County. Mr. Zhang had graduated from the lower secondary school in Lijiang
Town in 1942, and as a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army, he was recruited
for further minority cadre training in Sichuan:
We learned mosdy about the development of society, about Engels’s and
Morgan’s theories of human evolution. This was useful, because we had
to prepare and participate in land reform work in minority regions. I was
34.	“Report about Minority Education Work in the Coming Five Years in Yunnan,”
reprinted in tmtg 1992: 288-307.
35.	Letter to heads of the Bureaus of Education of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan from
the Ministry of Education, 13 April 1963, reprinted in rMFG 1992: 307-10.
52HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
the only Mosuo at the school. . . they did not call us Naxi at that time . . .
and almost all of the other students were Han. They used to really look
down upon us, so I was a bit embarrassed to be Mosuo. But I quickly real-
ized that the cultural level of many Han was even lower than mine. Some
of them would say in great surprise, “Oh, a minority [shaoshu minzu] who
already knows this or that.”
In 1953 Lijiang County established a special “literacy office” in Lijiang Town
offering short-term (often only two-week) Chinese courses for local town-
ship cadres. Many local teachers in Lijiang also received brief training in ccp
policy in order to adapt school education to the needs and ideology of the
new government and to qualify them to participate in land reform and
“improve the thoughts” (sixianggaizao) of the people. Several teachers were
sent to the new minority institutes and Kunming Teachers College during
die 1950s and 1960s to be trained as local cadres. The minority cadres were
the first (though definitely not the last) in Lijiang to learn about scientifically
demonstrated ethnic differences; names of groups were consolidated in the
practically irreversible naming of minzu, among which the Han were the clear
majority, with more than 90 percent of the population. Moreover, students
learned about Engels’s and Morgan’s theories of evolution applied to the
minzu of China. The newly trained minority cadres returned as teachers, edu-
cators, and administrators all over Lijiang to spread this message of cultural
and economic differences among minzu in combination with propagation
of the national policy of uniting minzu and granting them equal rights in the
new society. The differences among them were perceived as scientifically
explainable, historically determined facts and not based on prejudice.
Communists and Han Chinese were obliged and supposedly prepared to help
the minorities eradicate these differences.
In 1957, just before the launching of the Great Leap Forward, Lijiang
County reported a total of 285 primary schools.36 Non-Han students made
up 92.6 percent, of which 76 percent were Naxi, whereas 79.8 percent of teach-
ers were non-Han, of which 68.5 percent were Naxi (Zhang Daqun 1988a:
61). Because education was relatively well established in Lijiang before 1949,
36.	Of the 285, 240 were lower primary schools and forty higher; six classes for junior
secondary education and twenty for senior.
53HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
the government was able to train and send out local, especially Naxi, teach-
ers and secondary school graduates to start new schools in mountain areas.
Although the number of Naxi attending secondary school was very low—
only 0.51 percent between 1953 and 1956—this was second only to the Hui
among minority groups (tmjfg 1992:162). One of the few students who went
to the secondary school in this period recalled that of the fifty students in his
class, only two were girls.
Graduates from Han areas were continuously sent to Lijiang—and to other
non-Han regions—to start schools, participate in setting up the government,
and represent the ccp. Most of these were Han who regarded themselves
as the vanguard of a civilizing movement and who for a variety of personal
or political reasons wanted to work in a poor minority area. Some of those
who stayed in Lijiang have now advanced to become headmasters, govern-
ment officials, and Party leaders. One of them was Mr. Yang:37
When Mr. Tang Came to Lijiang
When I arrived here in 1958, this place [LijiangTown] was very poor. There
were no roads. There was electricity but no lights in the school or the houses.
We teachers made fires ourselves and lived two or three together in a very
small room. Still, compared to other minority areas, this place was quite
good. I was a graduate of a teachers college, and not many minority areas
had teachers with such an education. When we started here, we were twelve
teachers—two or three locals, but most of us Han from the outside. The
students were peasant children from this village [the outskirts of Lijiang
Town] or children of county and prefectural cadres.
I came here with twenty others, and only three are still here. At that
time it was most glorious to go to the poorest areas. You gained status by
doing so. I wanted to go to Ludian, which was poorer than Lijiang, but
they did not let me. Of course, we also had another way of thinking: “If
there is no lion in the mountains, the monkey is the emperor”! And the
more bitterness you ate, the higher the position you would get as a cadre
or leader. Most of the people who came in the 1950s became teachers or
higher cadres in the county or prefectural government. Now we have fos-
37.	This is a pseudonym, as are the names of other interviewees.
54HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
tered so many minority cadres and teachers here that very few need to come
from the outside.
During the first and the second year here, the local teachers often had
to explain in Naxi. I taught in the higher grades and never spoke Naxi.
[After thirty-seven years in Lijiang, Mr. Yang still is not able to speak or
understand Naxi.] As a rule, we spoke as much Chinese as possible. If you
do not teach in Chinese, it is no good. After about 1962 teachers never
spoke Naxi. By then school education here was more developed, so it was
no longer necessary. More and more Han people came to Lijiang, so more
and more Naxi spoke Chinese. They do not have a script, so we could not
offer bilingual education anyway. We always had two ways of thinking about
this question and sometimes one was stronger than the other. The first is
that in school, children should basically learn Chinese. The other is that
we have to maintain the minority languages and scripts, but since the Naxi
do not have a script this question is not so important here. Of course we
also have to maintain minority traditions and festivals, but learning Chinese
is still number one—otherwise no communication is possible. If the Tai
learn only Tai, how can they communicate? If you leave Lijiang, or Yunnan,
you have to learn Chinese—otherwise, what will you do? Language is a
tool and if you do not know how to use this tool, you have no means of
communication.
Mr. Yang arrived in Lijiang during the Great Leap Forward, when education
was regarded not as an autonomous social sector, but as an integral part of
the continuing revolution. At this time the government aimed at decentral-
izing schools and advocated the establishment of lower primary education
in all villages. Though many villages in Lijiang were unable to establish pri-
mary schools, the number of small, local, minban (people-run) schools
(often with only one teacher) increased.
After 1949 primary school education consisted of six years, divided into
four years of lower and two years of higher primary school. Between 1953
and 1954, and again between 1961 and 1963, some primary schools in Lijiang
were five-year schools. After 1969 all primary school education in Lijiang was
five-year, and in 1979 the six-year system (four plus two) returned (clnac
1995: 14)- In 1956 primary school education was divided into four years of
lower and two years of higher primary school, following guidelines from the
55HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
Ministry of Education in 1955. To my knowledge, all minbcm schools in Li-
jiang at that time were lower primary schools. Due to the shortage of edu-
cated teachers, most new teachers in the villages were minbcm teachers—that
is, they had no proper teacher education and most were graduates of lower
secondary schools, though some had attended higher secondary school and
others only higher primary school. The teachers in the twenty-two new agri-
cultural secondary schools, which were started in the countryside of Lijiang
in 1958, were mainly primary school teachers who had received a few months
of extra training. Agricultural work occupied approximately half of the time
in school, and political studies were prominent. Following the Great Leap’s
demand for industrial development, the government also started a vocational
lower secondary school in Lijiang Town. Here students worked in factories
half of the day (for which they received a small amount of subsistence money)
and studied the other half.
As in the rest of China, most of Lijiang’s peasants were organized into
communes, and by September 1958 the 235 cooperatives had been combined
into twenty-five People’s Communes (lnzg 1986: 75). Interviewees from some
of the poorest Nuosu, Lisu, Miao, and Tuo’en villages recalled that this did
not have much bearing on their lives, because they were extremely poor. Even
when schools were established in these villages, teachers had almost no stu-
dents and had to work full-time in the fields to support themselves. According
to reports, the number of lower primary classes had increased from 371 in
1951 to 630 in 1959. The number of higher primary school classes had
increased from 42 to 179 during the same period. However, the total num-
ber of primary schools had increased only from 354 to 366. The officially
reported number of students in primary schools had increased from 16,198
in 1951 to 26,156 in 1959 (clnac 1995:16). According to interviews, the vast
majority of pupils were still boys, though more girls were attending school
for at least a few years.
Ideologically, the period of the Great Leap Forward and related campaigns
did not leave much room for expressions of or tolerance of ethnic diversity.
Chae-jin Lee has shown how the Rectification Campaign, focusing on “na-
tional unity and political centralization” rather than on “social diversity and
ethnic autonomy,” was carried out among Koreans in Yanbian. Textbooks in
Korean were criticized and abolished for spreading local nationalism, and many
Korean intellectuals and cadres were reproached for being chauvinist toward
56HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
the Han (Lee 1986). The campaign against “local nationalism” was launched
in 1957 and reached Lijiang by the end of 1959, when several minority cadres
were severely reproached for promoting “local nationalism” and harming the
“unity of the minzu" Local teachers were criticized for promoting “local
nationalism” via excessive use of local languages in education. Furthermore,
many Naxi recalled how local festivals such as the important celebration of
Sanduo (the Naxi guardian spirit) and other religious activities in the local
temples were abolished. Others, such as & dongba from a small village in Lijiang
County, recalled that “superstitious activities” such as dongba rituals already
had been forbidden by work teams immediately after the Communist
takeover. During the early 1960s, when the government faced the aftermath
of the Great Leap Forward, policies concerning the education of minorities
again became more open toward the use of minority languages. At the same
time, the government called for a renewed standardization of education. In
Lijiang, as in many other places, this resulted in the closing down of many
minbim schools, most of which were located in the poorest minority villages.
Education for Assimilation during the Cultural Revolution
In 1966 a new Cultural Revolution Work Team (Wenge Gongzuo Dui) in
Lijiang gathered employees of secondary schools to carry out the Cultural
Revolution. Many local students actively participated in this early phase of
the Cultural Revolution, whereas others returned to their villages to partic-
ipate in labor. A few months later, after the ccp’s Tenth Plenum had out-
lined goals for the Cultural Revolution in sixteen points, several hundred
students in Lijiang organized themselves as Red Guards. Most went to Beijing
to see Chairman Mao, and when they returned, they divided into factions.
Together with Red Guards who had come to Lijiang from other places in
China, they struggled against teachers, school and government cadres, and,
eventually, against one another.
At a mass meeting in Beijing in 1966, Lin Biao had launched a mass move-
ment to attack the “four old” elements in Chinese society: old ideas, culture,
customs, and habits. In Lijiang, as elsewhere, this triggered the Red Guards’
destruction of temples, burning of dongba scriptures, smashing of old wall
paintings and traditional instruments, and attacks on monks, dongba, and
everybody else engaged in “feudal superstitious activities.” Due to the gov-
57HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
emment’s relatively open attitude toward the minorities’ cultural character-
istics and practices in the early period after 1949, these now became obvious
targets. In many minority areas, such as Sipsong Panna, people regarded the
assaults on their cultural practices as crude expressions of Han suppression.
In Lijiang, which was well integrated into the state, some people clearly shared
this view, whereas many others believed that excessive left-wing policy in gen-
eral, not Han chauvinism as such, was responsible for the misery. As one Naxi
woman remarked, “So many of the youngsters who came here to smash my
wooden carvings were Naxi. It would have been easier to bear if they had all
been Han from outside Lijiang.”
In the high tide of the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1969, sec-
ondary schools in Lijiang hardly functioned. No new students were recruited,
and remaining students were busy participating in the revolution. Most teach-
ers were sent to the countryside to work in the fields, or to Lijiang Town to
work in the few factories. However, in 1970 primary and secondary schools
entered a boom period all over Lijiang, and the Lijiang Normal School (Lijiang
Shifan Xuexiao) as well as the regular secondary school started to enroll new
students. The former dual system of regular and vocational/agricultural sec-
ondary schools had been criticized, so the majority of new secondary schools
were junior secondary classes “attached” to primary schools in production
brigades. Each commune also started classes for senior secondary education,
which recruited students recommended by the brigades.58 The thirty-six sec-
ondary school classes (in three schools) reported in 1968 had increased to 121
classes (in twenty-five schools) by 1973, and the number of students in sec-
ondary schools in the communes was up by more than 100 percent.59 The
number of primary schools in Lijiang increased by almost 40 percent in four
years, from 467 schools in 1969 (a figure similar to that of 1965) to 669 in
1973, and the number of students increased by 22 percent. This sudden increase
in the number of schools required many new teachers, and since there were
not nearly enough educated teachers, the number of minban teachers almost 38 39
38.	Although every production team was supposed to establish a primary school dur-
ing this time, 2,081 production teams within twenty-seven border counties in Yunnan did
not do so (ymfg 1992: 73). Interviews suggest that the reasons were that the villages in these
production teams were too poor, lacked teachers, and were so isolated that they were less
touched by the policies of the Cultural Revolution.
39.	All figures here are from clnac 1995: 17.
58HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
tripled in this period. The majority of minban teachers in Lijiang today were
recruited during this period. Many of them were happy to become teachers
during the Cultural Revolution, because they did not have to work as hard
as the peasants in the fields to achieve the same amount of work points.40
Most interviewees with experiences from the Cultural Revolution remem-
bered that primary school attendance became much more common because
most pupils did not have to walk far to attend school (because it was in the
production brigade), schooling was completely free, and, above all, children
did not earn work points (each family received a fixed amount of grain per
child), so parents had nothing to lose economically by sending their chil-
dren to school. When directly asked about their own educational experiences
during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, most inter-
viewees paraphrased the present official judgment of these periods as a time
when education was “excessively left-wing,” “too focused on quantity,” and
“wasting time on physical labor.” Yet some put forward a comparison with
present-day schooling, arguing that at that time it was at least free and eas-
ily accessible.
As for curriculum during the Cultural Revolution, primary schools and
junior secondary schools taught mainly “Chairman Mao thought,” mathe-
matics, basic agriculture, revolutionary art, and military training. Normally,
“poor and middle peasants” administered the schools, and it was common
for an old and poor peasant or sometimes a soldier to come weekly to tell
the pupils about the harsh times before Liberation in 1949. In the climate of
disregard for minority languages, Chinese language was promoted for its abil-
ity to transmit the thoughts of Mao and, thus, promote socialist develop-
ment in minority areas. Nevertheless, many interviewed Naxi teachers said
that their method of teaching was to first read a text aloud in Chinese and
then translate it into Naxi.
In senior secondary school, students all over the country were supposed
to study the same theoretical essays by Mao: “On Practice,” “On Contra-
diction,” “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People,”
“Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?” and “Speech at the National
Conference of the Communist Party on Propaganda.” One student who
40.	Regular teachers during the Cultural Revolution were normally paid by the gov-
ernment and were not dependent on work points.
59HISTORY OF EDUCATION AMONG THE NAXI
attended junior secondary school from 1969 to 1971 remembered that one of
the textbooks was edited in Yunnan and concerned Yunnan geography and
basic agricultural knowledge based specifically on conditions in Yunnan.
Agricultural work was an integrated part of education, and most graduates
from junior and senior classes in the communes and brigades returned to work
in the fields or to work and teach in the primary and junior secondary schools.
To spread agricultural education and promote the slogan “Everybody should
be able to go to college,” Lijiang opened an agricultural college (Nongye
Daxue) in 1976. The school had 150 students who studied for two years. They
were chosen from among senior secondary school students in the communes,
to which all were expected to return after graduation. After only four years,
the school was closed down in 1980, when the Cultural Revolution had come
to an end.
603	/ Education and Ethnic Identity
in Lijiang since 1980
In Lijiang, as in other minority areas of China, the end of the Cultural
Revolution brought a renewed political emphasis on the development of
minority education, including special minority schools, the expansion of teach-
ing in minority languages, and the creation of new textbooks for minorities.
In light of the social problems that the Cultural Revolution’s suppression of
ethnic expressions had created, the government also emphasized that patri-
otic education was an important part of education, not the least in minority
areas. Thus, the development of minority education had the dual purpose of
raising the educational level of minorities (thereby bringing about economic
modernization) and ensuring minorities’ loyalty to the state, the ccp, one
another, and the majority Han.
MINORITY SCHOOLS
To meet the government’s goal of securing, standardizing, and expanding
education of minority minzu, the boarding-school system has been promoted
as the most practical and efficient form of education. All autonomous minor-
ity counties and prefectures in Yunnan have now established at least one
“minority boarding school,” usually a junior secondary school that recruits
students from the poorest and most remote areas. In 1981 Lijiang’s first (and
only) minority boarding school, Lijiang County Minority Secondary School
(Lijiang Xian Minzu Zhongxue), was started initially with two classes of higher
primary school. In 1986 the provincial government decided to transfer money
to counties for the establishment of semiboarding primary schools in the poor-
est minority areas. At the same time, the Lijiang County government turned
the minority school in Lij iang into a minority junior secondary school, which,
61EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
since 1987, has recruited students for three years of junior secondary school
education.
The school enrolls one hundred graduates of primary schools a year. It is
much more difficult to get into this school than into a regular junior secondary
school, though special consideration is given to approximately twenty-five
students each year from townships where very few primary-school graduates
are able to continue on to junior secondary school. Naxi, Han, and Bai stu-
dents do not receive extra points. Generally, students for this minzu school
need about 142 points to get in, as compared to 90 points for regular junior
secondary schools. The school is very popular because students get twenty-
three yuan (in 1995) in support every month from the government, it has strict
regulations concerning the students’ spare-time activities, and students do
not have to cook for themselves. Most importantly, it has a relatively high
percentage of graduates continuing on to senior or specialized secondary
school, and therefore each year a number of parents attempt to enroll chil-
dren through the “back door.”1 For the poorest parents it is a heavy economic
burden to have a child in the school, because a boarding-school student needs
a minimum of one hundred yuan per month for living expenses, and, as in
other schools, they have to pay for books. Each class has a small piece of land
that it may cultivate to support poorer students. The Naxi constitute the largest
group of students, with almost 60 percent, and twenty of the twenty-three
teachers are Naxi. Boys make up the vast majority of students, an average of
74.5 percent between 1985 and 1991. This probably reflects the preference of
most villagers of all ethnic groups in Lijiang that sons (rather than daugh-
ters) receive an education, not the least so when they can afford only one stu-
dent in the family.
Two other secondary schools arrange special minority classes {minzu ban).
These classes in one of these secondary schools are exceptional in China because
they are reserved for the students with the highest examination scores, not
for students from poor areas, as is common practice in minority schools and
classes. Normally, students (including the Han) need 160 points to enroll in
this kind of junior minority class (compared to 90 points in a regular junior
secondary class) and 470 for the senior minority class (compared to 430 points
1.	In 1991,45 percent of graduates continued on to higher or specialized secondary edu-
cation; in 1994, 76 percent did so.
62EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
in a regular senior secondary class). In fact, students admitted to these minor-
ity classes have scored higher than is needed for specialized secondary schools,
which are generally the most prestigious secondary schools apart from
provincial keypoint schools. (Except for highly educated parents, the major-
ity want their children to attend a specialized senior secondary school because
they will be guaranteed work after three years of study.) All students in a spe-
cial minority class live at the school, and minority students receive financial
support from the local government (seven yuan per month in the lower minor-
ity class and fifteen yuan in the higher one in 1995). The purpose of this class
is to educate what the administration calls “especially clever minority students,”
so students get the best teachers and the most extracurricular support. Ac-
cording to the administration, approximately 80 percent manage to continue
on to higher education. This is an extremely high rate. Because it is very presti-
gious to be admitted to the minority class, students from the regular secondary
school classes have given it the nickname “aristocratic class” (guizu ban). Most
students in the class are Naxi, especially from Lijiang Town or Shigu, where
the influence of Chinese language is strongest due to the many Han living
there and where students have some of the best educational possibilities.
The keypoint secondary school also arranges special minority classes, but
these recruit minority students from the poorest and least developed town-
ships of the four counties in Lijiang Prefecture. Lisu and Yi get extra points
for admission to this senior secondary school class, and although the Mosuo
are officially part of the Naxi minzu, they, too are considered as a separate
group when extra points are granted. Many of the graduates from this class
return as cadres to their own townships, because only 15 to 20 percent of them
pass the university entrance examination. This figure is low compared to the
other regular classes in this key point school, from which approximately 50
percent continue on to higher education.2
Most students at the minority secondary school are between thirteen and
sixteen years old, and although the Naxi make up the majority of students,
all of the other minzu in Lijiang are represented, too. All teaching here, as
well as in other secondary schools in Lijiang, is in Chinese, and only rarely
do teachers explain in Naxi if students do not understand them. Many teach-
2.	I did not obtain this school’s official statistics. It is possible that these figures, which
were revealed to me in an interview, are exaggerated.
63EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
ers regard poor proficiency in Chinese as one of the main problems in the
school. Most students speak Chinese only as their second language, and many
of their parents are illiterate. Some teachers found that students from the coun-
tryside were also in need of cultural training:
Students here belong to different minorities and we teachers have to learn
about their customs and habits from home in order to understand them.
Still, they were the best students in their local primary schools, so they are
quite good at learning. ... It is also relatively easy to teach them, because
they are grateful that they have come to this school. Most students are in
Dayan [the town of Lijiang] for the first time. It is difficult in the begin-
ning for them to get used to life here. They are not used to studying, to
paying attention to hygiene, to following certain rules. Some have long
hair when they come, are very dirty, and wear old rags. (Naxi teacher)
Teachers (most of whom are Naxi) tended to believe that most academic and
social problems in the school concerned the minzu from the mountains, such
as Yi, Lisu, Miao, and Pumi. Students also mentioned conflicts between eth-
nic groups from the mountains and the Naxi. Outside of class the Naxi speak
Naxi with one another, and there was a tendency among many of them to
look down upon the other ethnic groups as more backward.
Official rhetoric, and many individual teachers, deny that the backward-
ness of others justifies one’s own feeling of superiority, but in fact the con-
tent and form of education support the Naxi students’ feeling that the other
local minorities are more “backward” and “primitive” than themselves. The
Naxi are generally best in Chinese due to their long contact with the Han
and to their geographical setting with good infrastructure, as compared to
the poorer minorities in the mountains. During their education, students are
constantly confronted with the fact that knowledge of Chinese is a strength,
whereas outside their own village a minority language as a mother tongue is
a cultural deficiency. Due to their large number in the minority school, the
Naxi students find a forum of common cultural reference where they can speak
their own language and celebrate Naxi festivals. Some Naxi students who
come from poor areas that are generally considered to be rather backward
experience an unexpected interest in and even respect for their local dongba
64EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
rituals. Although the minority school itself does not teach the culture or his-
tory of specific minzu, rural Naxi students arrive (often for the first time) in
a town where tourists, local entrepreneurs, museums, and intellectuals
express interest in the dongba ritual specialists who remain in only a few Naxi
areas today. Furthermore, because most teachers at the school (and in Lijiang
in general) are Naxi, Naxi students have an opportunity to talk and ask ques-
tions in Naxi outside of class. Perhaps more important, students realize that
many Naxi are able to succeed within the educational system. The students
from the smaller minorities, on the other hand, experience a stronger break
with home because at school they live in surroundings where all classes are
in Chinese, all teachers speak Chinese, and most students speak Naxi or
Chinese. They can no longer participate in local festivals or religious and fam-
ily celebrations, since only the common Naxi, Han, or Communist festivals
are celebrated as holidays at the school, and to a large degree they have to
dissociate themselves from their village background in order to succeed in
the educational system.
Naxi at the boarding school, who come to the city from remote rural areas,
tend to strengthen their ethnic identity through contact with other Naxi and
especially through encountering public expressions of modern Naxi identity
in the town of Lijiang. While being away from home to receive an education
based on Chinese language, history, and nationalism, they also experience
that teachers are Naxi, the local government is Naxi, and “dongba culture” is
an aspect of being Naxi that one can feel proud of. Yet some of them also
told me that because they knew that they looked poor, and everybody would
guess from their dialect that they were from a remote rural area, they were
embarrassed to walk around in the town. Despite such concerns, they dis-
covered, through their boarding-school experience, a hitherto unknown
dimension of being Naxi, and, unlike many of the other ethnic minorities at
the school, they tended to emphasize the positive aspects of Naxi culture rather
than negative notions of “backward culture” or “backward economy.”
RURAL SCHOOLS
There are considerable differences between schools in the county and pre-
fectural capital of Lijiang, and the rural schools elsewhere in the county.
65EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
Generally speaking, the poorest areas also have the poorest schools, the least
educated teachers, and the biggest problems concerning attendance, dropout
rate, and matriculation. There are still more than two hundred minban teach-
ers in Lijiang, and all of them teach in rural primary schools. Many are sin-
gle teachers in lower primary schools (two to four years of study), their wages
are often only one-third of those of a regular teacher, and they depend upon
(often unstable) local financial support. Teachers in mountain villages among
the Lisu, Miao, Nuosu, and Tuo’en (the last two both classified as Yi), espe-
cially, complain that parents cannot afford to buy books for their children
and therefore prefer to let them work in the fields rather than send them to
school? In most schools in the countryside girls are in the minority, often
because parents prefer to support the education of a son rather than a daugh-
ter. Some parents complain that when they have to pay up to thirty yuan per
semester for tuition and more for books, they consider this a proper invest-
ment only if their children will be able to continue on to a specialized sec-
ondary school that will at least guarantee them work outside the village after
graduation. On the other hand, all parents I talked to know about the com-
pulsory education law. Because children must start primary school at age seven,
most parents agree to let their children attend for at least the first four years.
Many of the problems in rural education in Lijiang are related to middle
school education, where few students start and even fewer graduate. For exam-
ple, in one rural junior secondary school in a township near Lijiang Town,
about 20 percent of students drop out each year. Almost all students in this
school are Naxi (more than 60 percent are boys), and many walk five to six
hours home for the weekends. When they return to school, they carry food
for the whole week, and at school they have to find firewood for the cook-
ing, which they do themselves. This is also common practice in some of the
primary schools in the same township, where pupils between the ages of eleven
and thirteen sometimes have to walk several hours to school on Sunday, car-
rying food for the whole week, and then walk back home on Friday. The gov-
ernment supports these schools only as semiboarding schools, giving seven
yuan per student, while in fact they function as full boarding schools and
3.	According to the Bureau of Education, the Lisu township of Liming is among those
with the most severe problems. Approximately 75 percent of children start school, but more
than 20 percent drop out.
66EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
should receive at least three times more. Thus insufficient financial support
and student hardship are the common reasons for dropout. Another is the
parents’ focus on specialized secondary school education, which causes them
to consider junior secondary school a waste of time and money unless they
feel certain that their child can go on to the School of Finance (Caizheng
Xuexiao), School of Hygiene (Weisheng Xuexiao), or Normal School (Shifan
Xuexiao) after graduation and secure a job later.
Many village children in Lijiang also face language barriers, but in this
respect Naxi children are privileged compared to those from ethnic groups
such as the Tuo’en, Lisu, Miao, and Premi. Most rural teachers are them-
selves Naxi, and although bilingual education is not explicitly promoted
among the Naxi (as it is among some of the Lisu), I often heard teachers
explaining in Naxi when I attended classes in rural schools. The majority of
rural Naxi secondary school students I interviewed recalled teachers speak-
ing Naxi during the first years of education. Moreover, because many Naxi
villages have had schools at least since the 1920s, education is not regarded
as foreign or as a Han imposition from the outside, but radier as an inte-
grated part of local village life. To the degree that parents care about which
language the teacher speaks to their children in class, most rural parents seem
to consider Chinese the only proper language, either because it will increase
students’ chances of upward social mobility or because minorities are sim-
ply accustomed to the fact that education is Chinese by definition. Most par-
ents agree with teachers that the only reason for teaching in Naxi the first
year is to facilitate the learning of Chinese.
Education obviously has less direct influence on ethnic identity among
Naxi in the countryside than in Lijiang Town, where most children complete
nine years of education and the intellectual Naxi actively attempt to spread
their ideas of Naxi identity. However, especially in recent years, the strong
interest in the dongba script and rituals and traditional Naxi music and dances,
which had been centered in the town of Lijiang, has started to spread into
rural Naxi areas. Since these are the places where dongba rituals are some-
times still practiced, where Naxi festivals are still celebrated in the old way,
and where people play and sing Naxi music and songs, Naxi intellectuals and
foreign researchers are seeking out these areas to collect material. The
influence of local Naxi teachers on local Naxi identity is also considerable.
Today most teachers have been educated at the Normal School in the town
67EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
of Lijiang, and they have been confronted with the extensive local and inter-
national interest in the dongba, script. Many of these teachers express regret
that they never learned about Naxi culture in school, and they take the ini-
tiative to tell their pupils traditional Naxi stories that they have read in Naxi
publications such as the local magazine Tulong Mountain or that they were
told by their grandparents. Thus, modern expressions of Naxi identity are
also influencing the rural Naxi to an increasing degree and are closely related
to the content and scope of education.
TEACHING ETHNIC CATEGORIES AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION
In Lijiang County minority minzu make up 82 percent of the population, of
which the Naxi constitute more than 58 percent. Therefore, many educators
say that in Lijiang “all education is minority education.” The minority sec-
ondary school is not reserved for non-Han, but for minzu from the poorest,
most remote areas with the fewest secondary school graduates. However, the
content of education in primary and secondary schools in Lijiang, including
the minority school, follows the national standardized teaching material, with
a short course in Yunnan history in junior secondary school as the only sup-
plement.4 Also Lijiang Normal School, which educates teachers for primary
schools all over Lijiang Prefecture, has one course in Yunnan history as the
only addition to the national standardized teaching material. The two brief
Yunnan history volumes (Tunnan lishi for regular secondary schools and
Turman difang shi for normal schools) were edited by the provincial Bureau
of Education in 1990 after the 1989 student protests in Beijing, which caused
the central government to demand strengthened focus on nationalism in edu-
cation.5 The government’s basic idea behind the support of more local teach-
ing material is that love of one’s native area should be explicitly put into
perspective with broader nationalist feelings. With the ultimate goal of pro-
moting “love of the country and the Party,” the government encourages stu-
+. A few Lisu schools teach Lisu script, whereas experiments teaching Naxi romanized
script in a few villages have now stopped.
5. To my knowledge, all secondary school students in Lijiang receive eight to ten hours
of teaching in Yunnan history in junior secondary school, and it is normally part of their
history examination.
68EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
dents to “love their native place” as an inseparable part of the Chinese state
represented by the Communist Party. Therefore, the Lijiang government is
currently preparing a collection of articles about Lijiang history, cultural relics,
nature, the Red Army in Lijiang, and famous local people. Within the next
few years this volume probably will become supplemental teaching material
in primary and secondary schools in Lijiang County. It is likely to be well
received among the Naxi teachers who complain that even though they would
like to teach their students about Naxi history and culture, they themselves
do not know much about it.
One of the important purposes of teaching Yunnan history is to transmit
the message that Yunnan, with all its inhabitants, has been an inseparable part
of the Chinese empire for two thousand years. Thereby, the government hopes
to create among minority students a strong sense of belonging to the mod-
ern Chinese Communist state and being a historical part of the Chinese nation.
The introduction to one of the history books, quoted here in full, clearly illus-
trates this intention:
Yunnan is an inseparable part of China. Yunnan local history is an organic
part of China’s history. Yunnan is a place where humans originated. On
this piece of land, people have lived and labored since ancient times, opened
up land, created civilization, and made history with their own hands.
Since Qin founded the fully unified centralized state power, Yunnan has
been an administrative unit in this unified multiethnic country. For more
than two thousand years, Yunnan has been called an administrative unit.
First it was called a county, then a prefecture, and then the Yuan dynasty
established Yunnan Province. The political connections between Yunnan
and China in dynastic history have changed, so that sometimes Yunnan
was directly ruled by the empire, while at other times rule was indirect.
However, in spite of different kinds of rule, Yunnan has always been an
inseparable part of China.
The great People’s Republic is a unified multiethnic country. Today all
minority minzu within the borders of China are members of the Chinese
nation \Zhonghua minz.u}. Yunnan is the province in our country that is
inhabited by most nationalities. It is a miniature of our multiethnic father-
land. Almost all forefathers of each minzu can be traced back to the times
before Qin. They all have a very long history.
69EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
The purpose of studying Yunnan history is to deepen knowledge of
Yunnan; to receive patriotic teaching and education in revolutionary tra-
dition; and to foster feelings of love of one’s local area, love of the people,
love of the fatherland, and love of the Chinese Communist Party. Further-
more, the purpose is to protect the unity of the fatherland, strengthen the
unity of the minzu, and actively participate in building socialism in Yunnan.
(Yunnan difang shi 1992: “Introduction”)
Yunnan history is studied in most secondary schools and normal schools
throughout the province and is part of the “patriotic education” that the cen-
tral government emphasizes as essential for ensuring integration of minori-
ties. The textbooks present a general survey of events in Yunnan’s history
profoundly influenced by Morgan’s and Engels’s theories of social evolution,
which still dominate much of China’s social sciences. Apart from the focus
on Yunnan’s historical incorporation into the Chinese empire, a dominant
theme is the close relationship between Han and other minzu. Historical eth-
nic conflicts are generally interpreted as being essentially class conflicts, some-
times initiated by previous unjust governments’ oppression of ethnic
minorities. The books discuss relations between two groups, the Han and
“minorities” (i.e., all of the officially recognized minority minzu in Yunnan).
Only in the case of major ethnic clashes, such as that involving the Hui in
the late nineteenth century, are specific non-Han groups mentioned. Cultural
influence and exchange is generally presented as a one-way process in which
the developed Han people influence and develop an unspecified group of
grateful “minorities.” Thus, two sorts of culture are constructed and presented
to the student: advanced Han culture and less advanced non-Han culture.
This becomes explicit in the teaching of social evolution of humanity, which
is presented as a scientifically proven, and therefore indisputable, theory:
All minzu [in Yunnan] live in different areas, and their economies are not
equally well developed. Therefore, on the eve of Liberation, different devel-
opmental stages still existed: primitive society [yuanshi shehui], slave soci-
ety [nuli shehui], serf society \nongnu shehui], and feudal society [fengjian
shehui]. And therefore, Yunnan has long been called a “living history of social
development.” (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 64)
70EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
Students learn that some minorities still possess a worldview and system of
values that belong to “primitive society” and that those with a “high cultural
level” owe it to strong Han influence, such as that on the Bai during the time
of the Dali kingdom (973-1283) (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 43). Large-scale
immigration of Han into Yunnan during the Ming dynasty brought advanced
agricultural tools and techniques. The dismissal of local hereditary chiefs dur-
ing the Qing dynasty was greatly beneficial to the minorities because the pre-
vious system of granting power to local chiefs had blocked development of
production, made society unstable, and prevented progress (Yunnan difang
shi 1992: 59). When specific non-Han groups are mentioned it is not for their
technical advancement but for their “prosperous minority cultures.” Minority
dances and music are used as examples of “mankind’s earliest forms of singing.”
In this way, the books contrast a picture of technically and politically advanced
Han against primitive but sensitive minorities. Students also learn about the
establishment of education in Yunnan, but this is limited to Confucian edu-
cation and early Chinese modern education, both of which “disseminated
advanced Han culture,” while nothing is mentioned about other groups’ forms
of education (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 47; and Yunnan lishi 1991: 47).
In other subjects, especially secondary school politics and history, the com-
mon national teaching material also emphasizes patriotic education and social
evolution. The primary school course in ideology and morals (sixiangpinde)
focuses on proper moral behavior, which includes love of the country, flag,
ccp, and national anthem. The Yunnan Bureau of Education has edited a
booklet meant for supplementary reading in ideology and morals that
includes stories of heroic people (such as the famous revolutionary hero Lei
Feng)6 and the Communists’ achievements in Yunnan. In a chapter called
“Yunnan: The Home of National Harmony,” children learn the names of
the twenty-six minzu living in Yunnan, who before Liberation “did not trust
each other” and fought against each other in this area where “production
6. In 1989, after the crushing of student demonstrations, the central government
launched a national campaign for studying Lei Feng in schools all over China. The life of
this pla soldier, described in his fictitious “diary” created by the pla, had been the center
of a mass campaign in the early 1960s. Lei Feng was praised and studied for his unfailing
devotion to his country', the revolution, his comrades, and Chairman Mao.
7iEDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
and economy was utterly backward” (Sixiangpinde 1991:19). But then came
Liberation:
After Liberation all minzu in our country became equal. Socialist ethnic
relations based upon equality, unity, and mutual aid were established. The
country also granted special consideration to minorities. The formerly
oppressed minorities became masters of the country. . . . The Party and
the country were deeply concerned about the minorities in the border
regions. They sent minzu work teams to the minority regions to help them
develop trade, education, science, culture, and hygiene. . . . The Party’s
minority policy promoted unity of the minzu, so that former “enemies”
[yuanjia\ became “relatives” \qinjia]. All of the minzu in Yunnan lived in
harmony and united to help each other and to develop and protect the bor-
ders of the fatherland. (Sixiang pinAe 1991: 19-20)
In a following exercise pupils must memorize the names of the twenty-six
minzu in Yunnan. They also have to fill in two key words from the text, namely
that all minzu in China are “equal” and that they must “unite.” The Han are
not directly mentioned since the text speaks only about the Communist Party
helping the minority minzu, who are depicted as backward and helpless peo-
ples. Indirectly the Han appear as the majority, representing the Party, not
(as a group) backward, and not in need of the same kind of help.
In secondary school the teaching of evolution and ethnic categories is
intensified. Students learn, for instance, that “if we look at the whole coun-
try, the Han minzu constitutes the vast majority. Generally speaking, their
level of development is also the highest, so with regard to equality and unity
of minzu, the Han people carry the gravest responsibility” (Sixiang zhengzhi
1993, first year of junior secondary school, vol. 1: 57). In the second year of
junior secondary school, students study in detail Morgan’s and Engels’s stages
of social evolution. Below a picture of Beijing man from the Stone Age, they
see a picture of contemporary men belonging to the Jinuo minzu (from
Sipsong Panna) who are dividing meat into equal portions for villagers—a
so-called remnant from primitive society. The book’s rather dull descriptions
of the stages of human social evolution are sometimes given life through exam-
ples of contemporary minorities whose methods of production and social
organization are characteristic of particular evolutionary stages. For instance,
72EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
the Yi in Liangshan are put forward as examples of how the extremely back-
ward developmental stage of “slave society” still existed at the time of
Liberation. Tibet is used as an example of a “feudal serf society” that existed
until Liberation.
In classes on ideology and politics (sixiang zhengzhi) in the third year of
senior secondary education, many more examples are put forward to illus-
trate the point that all of China’s minzu have belonged to the same Chinese
nation \Zhonghua minzu} since the time of Qin (221-206 b.c.e.) and that
most represented different (low) stages of development before 1949. It is also
repeatedly stated that minority areas are still culturally and economically back-
ward, although they have an abundance of unexploited natural resources. With
their higher level of development, the Han are obliged to help the minori-
ties to develop. This, it is claimed, will even help the Han themselves because
of die wealth that the harvesting of natural resources in minority areas will
bring to the whole country (Sixiang zhengzhi 1993, third year of senior sec-
ondary school: 131-33).
Students may read one thing in textbooks and hear it from their teachers,
but remember quite another. When I asked Naxi students or graduates what
they had learned in school about their own minzu, most immediately
answered, “Nothing” (Mei you xue}. When asked more specifically if teach-
ers sometimes taught about the Naxi, although not according to textbooks,
many recalled that Naxi teachers sometimes told Naxi stories or a bit of Naxi
history, such as why most Naxi are called either Mu or He. Many had also
heard that the Naxi were always “good at studying” and at “learning from
Han culture.” All agreed that they had never learned anything about the Naxi
from textbooks. When asked about what they had learned generally about
the different minzu in China, virtually all mentioned descriptions of social
evolution. All students without exception were well aware that minorities
represented the most backward stages, and most believed this to be an indis-
putable fact, since it was never discussed in class but simply presented as the
truth.
At present there are divergent opinions among educational administra-
tors, teachers, and intellectuals in Lijiang as to whedter students should learn
more about local culture, language, and history. One of die secondary school
headmasters in Lijiang, a Naxi himself, expressed his point of view in this
way:
73EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
At that time [before the 1980s] there was no teaching material about the
development of the various minzu. Now there are some books on this topic,
but because there is no general agreement about matters such as how to
present “dongba, culture,” it would be impossible anyway to teach about it
in school. We teach from a broad perspective, and to stress the history or
culture of certain minzu would be damaging for the unity of the minzu.
We teach about the five-thousand-year history of the Chinese nation.
Naxi themselves do not agree on this subject, but many cadres, teachers, and
intellectuals now think that Naxi ought to learn at least something in school
about their own culture and history. There is very little interest in teaching
about the other ethnic groups in Lijiang, probably because they are minori-
ties there and do not have a strong intellectual elite. Most government officials,
cadres, teachers, and educational administrators in Lijiang are Naxi them-
selves, and all tend to emphasize “dongba culture” as the most outstanding
and valuable aspect of Naxi identity and culture.
The Naxi minzu is a rare example of a small minority that is mentioned
briefly in the Yunnan history booklets cited above. Lijiang is used as an exam-
ple of an area where the transference of local power in 1723 to Qing bureau-
crats resulted in economic development (Yunnan lishi 1991:40). In the Yunnan
history book for the students at Yunnan’s normal schools, the “dongba reli-
gion” of the Naxi is mentioned. This book explains that in accordance with
the various stages of development, different “primitive religious beliefs” pre-
vailed among the nationalities, and some, including the Naxi, had their own
unique religion (Yunnan difang shi 1992: 68).
THE ROLE OF EDUCATION FOR NAXI IDENTITY TODAY:
“IN EDUCATION WE NAXI ARE THE BEST”
Because of our geographical situation, we Naxi have always found it very
easy to adopt cultures coming from the outside. With the Tibetans to
the north and the Bai and Han to the south, we have been under strong
influence from these cultures. We do not have a Naxi university, so we
have to adapt well to Han culture [Han wenhua], and therefore we, of
all the fifty-five minority minzu in China, have the most university stu-
dents. (Forty-year-old teacher)
74Pupils from the Naxi and Tuo’en ethnic groups in a village primary' school in Li-
jiang. Like several other primary' schools, this one receives government support
as a semiboarding school, although it functions as a full boarding school. Pupils
whose families live a half day’s walk from the school stay during the week, bring-
ing and cooking their own food.
Many' small village schools have only one or two teachers, who simultaneously
teach several grades of primary' school. Here the class is divided into two grades
facing separate blackboards.Premi village primary school in Lijiang. Among die Premi, as well as the Naxi,
there is officially no bilingual education. However, many local teachers use Naxi
or, as in this school, Premi as their language for instruction during die first few
years of primary education. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
The Mao Zedong poster in this teacher’s training school classroom reads, “Have
pride and self-respect; improve yourself and stand on your own feet.”Tai participant in a patriotic speech competition in Sipsong Panna.Several monasteries in Sipsong Panna have started to teach novices mathemat-
ics, standard Thai, and Chinese in addition to traditional Buddhist subjects. This
blackboard presents Thai, Chinese, and Tai equivalents of Arabic numerals.
Novices in front of a monastery in Sipsong Panna. (Photo by Koen Wellens)Students in the dormitory of a secondary boarding school in Sipsong Panna. All
Tai female students wear Tai clothing, whereas Akha female students are ashamed
of the traditional Akha costume, which they (and the Tai students) associate with
“backwardness” and poverty.Rural lower primary school in an Akhe village in Sipsong Panna. Chinese work
teams installed basketball courts in most villages in Sipsong Panna and other mi-
nority areas in the 1950s. According to one Han cadre who himself participated
in such a project, courts were to serve as playgrounds, places for storing grain,
and (most important) public spaces where work teams could gather villagers to
inform them about the ccp’s policy and reform work. (Photo by Koen Wellens)
Buddhist monastery and pagoda in Damenglong, Sipsong Panna.Pupils between the ages of seven and fifteen in a village primary school with only
one teacher in a Khmu village in Sipsong Panna. Like the Tai, the Khmu are Bud-
dhists, but because they have no monk to teach their novices in the small village
monastery; the few novices in the village attend primary' school instead. (Photo
by Koen Wellens)Tai participants in a major festival in Damenglong, Sipsong Panna. (Photo by
Koen Wellens)EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
Today the Naxi have a relatively high percentage of graduate and under-
graduate students compared to most other minzu in China. In 1993, 0.643
percent of Naxi had graduated from college (benke, four years) compared to
a national average of 0.543 percent. Among the Han, 0.558 percent were col-
lege graduates, the Mongols 0.757, the Koreans as much as 2.271, the Manchus
0.624, and the Hui 0.591. All of these minzu are known in China for having
a high level of Chinese education. In comparison only 0.107 percent of the
Dai minzu were college graduates.7 Although technically some of the small
minorities have a higher number of college graduates than the Naxi, this is
often because each minority minzu is entitled to have members educated at
a higher level no matter how small the minzu is and no matter how low the
educational level of graduates from senior secondary school. When comparing
Lijiang with Sipsong Panna, is it clear that school enrollment and gradua-
tion percentages are not only higher in Lijiang, but surpass those in most
other areas in Yunnan. In 1988 for instance, when 94.5 percent of school-aged
children in Yunnan were enrolled in primary school, 86.5 percent were
enrolled in Sipsong Panna Prefecture, 78.3 percent in Menghai County (in
Sipsong Panna), and 96.4 percent in Lijiang County.8 Most Naxi students
who continue beyond junior secondary school are from the town of Lijiang,
and the vast majority of Naxi students who continue into higher education
are graduates of the two best regular secondary schools in the town of Lijiang.
Due to the early establishment of Confucian education in Lijiang and the
relatively successful spread of modern education in Lijiang, the Naxi are often
described in Chinese media and publications as a minzu with a “high level
of education,” a minzu that has proven “willing to learn from more advanced
cultures.” This characterization has come to occupy a significant position in
Naxi identity, even to a certain degree in the countryside, where education
is less developed. It has even become an ethnic marker in the consciousness
of many Naxi, who consider it a typical Naxi feature, a sort of inherited incli-
nation toward “love of learning” or “love of culture” (ai wenhua). In rural
Naxi villages many people explained that, unlike many other ethnic groups
(notably those higher up in the mountains), the Naxi are very interested in
7.	From Zhongguo tongji nianjian 1993: 91
8.	Based on Yunnan jiaoyu sishi nian, 1949-3989 1990: 32-37.
75EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
learning and that only economic limitations prevent more of them from receiv-
ing an education.
Most Naxi are very proud of the Naxi researchers, teachers, and Party and
government officials who have positions in Kunming or other places in China.
In spite of the fact that they are intellectuals whose way of living, customs,
and occupation are profoundly different from those of most Naxi, they have
nevertheless come to symbolize (even among many rural Naxi) the Naxi as
a numerically small ethnic group capable of developing and manifesting itself
in China. Many Naxi peasants and teachers in rural areas criticize the gov-
ernment in Lijiang Town for not paying enough attention to the rural situ-
ation in Lijiang. This, however, does not prevent many of them from talking
about the intellectual Naxi as a Naxi subgroup (rather than as government
representatives) who demonstrate the minzu’s intellectual capability and open-
ness toward “advanced culture.” Many intellectual Naxi, even those who live
outside of Lijiang and have no plans to return there, express concern about
economic development in Lijiang. Some of them have established the Society
for Naxi Culture (Naxi Wenhua Xuehui) as a network mainly for Naxi intel-
lectuals, those in high administrative positions, and business leaders. One of
the purposes of the society is to influence and direct economic and cultural
development in Lijiang, but most Naxi peasants are not aware of the exis-
tence of this rather exclusive group.
Since 1991 the Lijiang government has enforced the national policy of pop-
ulation control. Now all minzu in Lijiang with an urban household regis-
tration (chengshi hukou) may have one child, whereas peasants and other people
with rural registration (nongye hukou) may have two. However, it is quite com-
mon for rural families to have more children. Since 1981 there have been poli-
cies in effect to control the number of children, and many Naxi in Lijiang
Town have only one or two children. This seems also to have strenghtened
parents’ focus on their children’s education. The wish of many Naxi parents
to have at least one child continue into higher education is the most obvi-
ous reason why so many younger Naxi parents in Lijiang Town have decided
to speak only Chinese at home. Since the only possible way to a higher edu-
cation is through the Chinese language, many parents hope to facilitate their
child’s upward social mobility by teaching him or her Chinese from birth.
The general attitude in the town of Lijiang is that “the children learn Naxi
anyway on the street among their friends, so we had better prepare them for
76EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
school as early as possible.” This also explains why many Naxi intellectuals
who are themselves occupied with Naxi history and culture, or who have
strong opinions about the need for protecting and developing Naxi culture,
find it necessary to teach their children Chinese only.
Although the main reason for teaching children Chinese at home while
most parents speak Naxi with each other seems to be pragmatic, based on
the form and content of Chinese school education, many interviewees
emphasized what they saw as a common Naxi characteristic, “love of learn-
ing,” as their reason for educating their children in Chinese. Since the Naxi
“loved learning,” and learning in schools happened to be Chinese learning,
they were more motivated to bring up their children in the Chinese language
than were most other minorities.
The Naxi’s focus on “love of learning” as a specific ethnic characteristic is
in my view closely related to the teaching of social evolution and to the per-
vasive conceptualization in China of minorities as backward. In one partic-
ular aspect the Naxi escape the label of being backward, namely in their
historical adaptation of and to Chinese education. Thus, the focus on “love
of learning” establishes the Naxi as a minzu fairly close to the Han on some
levels of civilization while distinguishing them from the minorities in the
mountains (and, to a certain degree, from the the Mosuo subgroup of the
Naxi, who are not considered to share this characteristic).
Clearly the perception of “love of learning” as a typical Naxi feature is most
widespread among Naxi with a higher education. It is mainly through edu-
cation that the concept of “backward minorities” is impregnated in the minds
of the students, often instilling feelings of cultural inferiority. The concept
of backward minorities is one that is extremely difficult to escape in the Chinese
context, because it not only saturates many levels of society, but is presented
in schools as scientific, objective truth. Students are not encouraged to develop
a critical approach to the content of school education and its textbooks, and
therefore they rarely express doubt about the truth of what is written. In this
way the official categorization of minorities as basically backward is repro-
duced in die minds of many educated minority members. They internalize
to a certain degree this external interpretation of the content of their ethnic
identity, so that the categorizers’ definition becomes “true” and becomes part
of their identity as a minority minzu.
A more positive side to the Chinese categorization of the Naxi has been
77EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
the conception of them as a minority “willing to learn,” which has existed at
least since the Qing dynasty, when the royal Mu family was praised by Chinese
bureaucrats for its openness toward Confucian education and culture. It has
been repeated in publications of all kinds about the Naxi. It has also become
a strategy in the Naxi’s attempt to establish an alternative picture of them-
selves as a group that may have been backward at the time of the Communist
takeover, but was so inclined toward learning that it always had the poten-
tial for development. In this regard, the more positive aspect of the Chinese
categorization of the Naxi has come to play a significant role in the remak-
ing of Naxi identity.
Naxi teachers in institutions of higher learning in Lijiang and Kunming
in particular have turned out to be very influential in spreading the concept
of the Naxi as an ethnic group that loves learning. Many Naxi students in
Kunming mentioned that through the influence of Naxi teachers, they had
come to change their perceptions of themselves as Naxi and of the Naxi as a
group. Their teachers had not opposed the general theory of social evolution
for all ethnic groups, but had presented alternative understandings of the pre-
sumed backward elements of Naxi culture. One of the positive features was
“love of learning”; another was “'dongba culture,” which was presented as a
strength, not as an example of “superstition” or “backwardness.” Especially
in recent years, alternative interpretations of cultural features previously con-
sidered backward have transformed and strengthened Naxi identity (see also
Chao 1996).
THE DONGBA: FROM SUPERSTITION TO CULTURE
Anyone who travels to Lijiang (and many Chinese, Asian, and Western tourists
now do so) inevitably encounters a wide range of local expressions of Naxi
identity. Apart from local architecture, old women’s blue costumes, and tra-
ditional dongjing musical performances, the visitor is certain to notice abun-
dant representations of dongba script in the town of Lijiang. In the 1990s many
shopkeepers started to paint dongba characters on their signs, several Naxi
now paint and sell calligraphy with dongba characters, well-known Naxi artists
incorporate dongba pictures into modern paintings, the local bookshop has
a whole shelf reserved for publications about the Naxi and dongba, and two
78EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
dongba, museums are open for visitors. In the ongoing process of recreating
and formulating a modern Naxi identity, various aspects of dongba—their
script, rituals, recorded stories, and myths—have been combined and
reworked into the concept of “dongba culture.” Dongba culture has become,
at the same time, a commodity and tourist attraction, and an effective means
of pushing the Naxi minzu up the evolutionary ladder by showing that they
have “civilization” and “culture” (wenhua). As argued by Emily Chao, “Sim-
ilar to the process by which the Han have designated themselves as modern
and scientific in contrast to the traditional, superstitious, and backward minori-
ties, the creation of a ‘civilized space’ within a category ‘Naxi’ was an oppo-
sitional process that inherently drew on the marginalization of Hxufemaleness,
illiteracy, and superstition” (Chao 1996: 234). Both inside and outside China
an unprecedented interest in dongba script and rituals has developed in recent
years, starting from the mid-1980s, when Lijiang opened up to foreigners.
Many Naxi in the town of Lijiang agree that the tourists and researchers from
outside Lijiang and China have stimulated and encouraged the Naxi’s own
interest in dongba script.
By 1949 there were dongba practicing only in the rural areas of Lijiang.
We have no figures on the exact number, but, according to interviews, many
Naxi villages at that time had a dongba or would invite one from a neigh-
boring village. After the Communist takeover dongba's activities were pro-
hibited as expressions of feudal superstition (mixiri), and, partly for this reason,
there are few dongba today. The Institute of Dongba Cultural Research9
(Dongba Wenhua Yanjiu Suo) in Lijiang was started in 1981 as a branch of
the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences with the purpose of promoting dongba
research and translating dongba texts. The institute has employed a few dongba
to assist in projects such as translation work and reconstruction of rituals.
One dongba started to learn dongba rituals and script from his father when
he was fourteen years old. At that time there were two dongba families in his
village. He recalled,
In 1949, when I was twenty-eight years old, it was forbidden to practice
dongba rituals, so I stopped. Nobody asked me to come any more. Then
9- This is the institute’s own translation.
79EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
in the 1980s people again started to invite me as a dongba,, and later I was
invited to Lijiang to work. My wife and kids were very much against my
starting to practice again. Now they are not against it any more—they accept
it because so many people are interested in it. . . . Previously dongba ritu-
als were called “superstition”; now they are “culture.”
The fact that “dongba superstition” has turned into “dongba culture” is man-
ifested in the way more and more Naxi intellectuals describe the dongba as
no longer representatives of feudal culture or peasants’ superstitious belief,
but as “the Naxi’s own intellectuals” (Naxizu de zhishifenzi). Dongba culture
has become central to Naxi identity as it is expressed publicly in China today.
Dongba rituals are still performed in some Naxi villages, but that does not
necessarily imply that the concept of a dongba culture plays a significant role
in Naxi peasants’ ethnic identity. In the early 1980s, after the end of the Cultural
Revolution and with the renewed acceptance of religious and ethnic expres-
sion, it was mainly a relatively small group of Naxi intellectuals in Kunming
who started to promote research into dongba activities and to focus on dongba
culture as a specific feature of the Naxi as an ethnic group and a minority
minzu in China. In the last ten to fifteen years this has gradually spread to
other strata of the Naxi community in Lijiang and is developing rapidly.
Dongba rituals are no longer merely objects of research. Recently some intel-
lectual Naxi with official positions have even started to invite dongba to per-
form rituals at home in connection with family events, and some have initiated
projects in which the modern use of dongba culture is combined directly with
education in an attempt to spread knowledge of the dongba, to develop Naxi
ethnic pride based on dongba culture, and to reject the construction of the
Naxi as backward.
The Dalai Minority Culture and Ecology Village
Dalai is a small Naxi village some kilometers out of Lijiang Town. During
the Qing dynasty the village had a private Confucian school, and when the
Republic was established in 1911, a local public primary school took over all
school-based education. The school was rather popular in the early 1930s and
had about forty pupils, including a few girls. Before the 1950s there were two
dongba families in the village, but the last dongba died in the late 1970s. In
80EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
1934 the local teachers started a “common peoples’ school” where adults par-
ticipated in Chinese literacy courses in the evening.
In 1995 the village was the center of a celebration honoring the Naxi’s
guardian spirit, Sanduo. k dongba was invited by prominent Naxi scholars
and bureaucrats to perform a traditional ritual for the villagers and for dongba
researchers from Japan. The event was an interesting mixture of photo-
graphing, filming, and making serious offerings to and honoring Sanduo.
It was also part of a larger local project initiated by Mr. He, a former Naxi
official who had returned to his village after retirement. The guiding idea
behind Mr. He’s Minority Culture and Ecology Village (Minzu Wenhua
Shengtai Cun) was to promote “traditional Naxi culture,” which he found
was threatened by modernization. Mr. He’s vision was to create a synthe-
sis of old values and modern techniques, to combine “the Confucian Ana-
lects, dongba [practices], Communist propaganda, and computers” (He
Wanbao 1995: 2). One of his major ideas, restarting a locally based “com-
mon people’s school,” the Peasants Evening School, a private initiative inde-
pendent of government financial support, has already been realized. A small
library was opened in connection with the evening school. Local peasants
may freely attend the school, which arranges not only courses on agricul-
tural techniques, animal breeding, and use of fertilizer, but also in Naxi
romanized script and dongba characters. As Mr. He remarked, “The most
important thing about this evening school is that people learn things they
can really use in society.” Naxi romanized script is taught because it is easy
to learn and is used in collecting and recording local stories, myths, and
songs.
When the school was just started in 1994, approximately seven locals
attended the courses on dongba script taught by a dongba, as compared to
around forty who took courses on agricultural techniques. The organizers
expected a slow revival of dongba rituals, since a few younger dongba were
being trained in neighboring villages, and more and more families planned
to revive the tradition of inviting a dongba to perform rituals associated with
life events such as death, marriage, and illness. The evening school has no
connection with the regular primary school in the village. Only one of the
two primary school teachers, both of whom are from nearby villages, had
heard about the new evening school, which she considered a good initiative
because “in this school [the regular primary school] children never learn any-
81EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
thing about Naxi history or culture. We also never learned anything, so we
do not know anything about it now.”
Naxi Dongba Cultural School of Lijiang
The Naxi Dongba Cultural School (Naxi Dongba Wenhua Xuexiao),10 an-
other recent major local project, is directed both toward strengthening the
role of “dongba culture” in the common Naxi identity and toward promot-
ing the utilization of its economic potentials. This school was started in Li-
jiang in early 1995 in order to offer short-term education to people in Lijiang
County who had at least graduated from junior secondary school. The first
class enrolled forty students (all Naxi from the vicinity of Lijiang Town), who
paid two hundred yuan for the course, during which they would learn to read
and write one thousand dongba characters; learn about dongba history, ritu-
als, and art; and study basic English for the purpose of future employment
in the growing local tourist business. Some of the students were unemployed
youth, some were primary school teachers, and some worked at local muse-
ums or travel agencies. Some wished to find work in the tourist industry,
whereas others were simply interested in learning more about dongba.
Approximately half of the students completed the course. The faculty was
enthusiastic about the project and had visions for further development of the
school. They hoped to raise money for a class of about fifty fourteen- to fifteen-
year-old students from the poorest mountain areas, including those who had
not continued their studies because their parents could not afford it. The plan
was to build dormitories for these students, who would study for two years.
A fund-raising leaflet described the project:
Our purpose is to save "dongba culture” via living people, expand our minzu
culture \minzu wenhuaf stimulate our minzu spirit [minzu jingshen]. and
promote local economic development. After a period of practicing teach-
ing, we want gradually to enroll more students, so that the school will turn
into a cradle for qualified people who study and carry on “dongba culture.”
It will also become an international study institution for “dongba culture”
and a center for dongba art We are trying our best to achieve this great goal.
10. The English name is the school’s own translation.
82EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
Some of the people connected to the school also expressed hope that it would
be possible to start a dongba course in one of the established universities. As
one person said, “The Tibetans, Koreans, and Mongols have their own uni-
versities, so why not we Naxi? Previously most Naxi thought that only Han
culture was interesting and developed. Now many realize that we have a cul-
ture and a tradition with its own value.”
Both of the schools described here are interesting because they show how
intellectual Naxi engage in local economic development in Lijiang through
the establishment of alternative education that incorporates (or is even built
upon) the teaching of local Naxi culture and history, which is lacking in reg-
ular state education. Initially directed by a relatively small group of Naxi intel-
lectuals, the concept of dongba practices as feudal “superstition” has evolved
into that of a “culture,” carrying implications of script, art, history, and civ-
ilization. Whereas “superstition” is perceived as a burden of backward peo-
ple, “culture” is regarded as a force, a proof of civilization, and a justifier for
demands of local influence and control of economic and cultural develop-
ment. The concept of dongba culture as a unique Naxi ethnic marker under-
mines the powerful construction of the Naxi as a backward minority. It
establishes the Naxi as a minzu with wenhua and solves the dilemma of how
a minzu characterized by its “love of learning” and positive attitude toward
“advanced cultures” nevertheless remained backward and resisted assimila-
tion with the Han: dongba practices were not “superstition” but were a “cul-
ture” that was valuable as a refined expression of Naxi society. This culture
was different from that of the Han and of other minzu in the area and else-
where in China. The Naxi “loved learning from the advanced Han,” but they
also had their own characteristics. They had their own “culture” and even
their own “dongba intellectuals.”
Dongba ritual practice, only one of several religious practices among rural
Naxi, for a long time did not even exist in the town of Lijiang. Nevertheless,
the Naxi have succeeded in turning the various aspects of the dongba into a
modern Naxi symbol. When directly asked, most Naxi today mention
“dongba" or “dongba culture” as a major “Naxi feature.” This is not because
dongba culture, as such, plays an important role in most Naxi villages, but
because the educated N axi elite’s formulation and strong voicing of Naxi iden-
tity is spreading into the countryside, where the same elite is regarded with
respect and approval, as were the Confucian educated elite before them.
83EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The reason the Naxi have been so successful in turning public attention toward
dongba as a culture and a strength, rather than as a form of superstition is, I
believe, closely related to the relatively high educational level oftheNaxiand
their own belief in “love of learning” as a Naxi characteristic. The educated
Naxi elite consists of a comparatively large number of people, many of whom
hold prestigious and influential positions in Kunming or Lijiang. They are
employed at all levels of government in Yunnan Province and Lijiang County,
and considering the relatively small number of Naxi, many are influential teach-
ers and researchers. Many come from families where the fathers and grand-
fathers were students in Confucian private schools, and they value education
very highly. They have a well-developed network through groups such as the
Society for Naxi Culture and so are able to organize themselves and express
demands within the politically acceptable national framework.
Their level of Chinese state education has enabled the Naxi to establish
local, alternative education that will most likely have more far-reaching con-
sequences at the local level than will the more exclusive Society for Naxi
Culture. Thanks to their own education, the Naxi who initiated these pro-
jects know how to play by the rules, so that this education is not regarded as
a threat to regular state education but is supported by the local autonomous
government and most heads of state schools in Lijiang (most of whom are
Naxi). Even so, the creation of the new alternative schools in Lijiang repre-
sents a reaction against state education that almost completely ignores non-
Han culture, language, and history and fails to show that minorities in China
have more to offer than picturesque costumes, dancing, and singing. In fact,
state education involuntarily supports—perhaps even creates—a focus on eth-
nic identity. Minority members can never escape their label as minorities,
because they are officially classified as such and learn in school that the
classification relies on objective, scientific proof. Neither can they escape the
label of backwardness, because they learn that this, also, is a scientifically proven
fact. Finally, through an education that ignores local history, language, sto-
ries, and religion, they indirecdy learn that much of what they have experi-
enced and learned at home is without value in the broad context of the People’s
Republic. Although this creates feelings of stigmatization for some educated
minority people, education has, for the Naxi, been instrumental in the devel-
8+EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
opment of a stronger and forcefully expressed ethnic identity. This has been
made possible by their relatively high percentage of educated members, their
shared belief that “love of learning” is typical of Naxi, and the promotion of
dongba script by their intellectual elite.
Many of the intellectual Naxi have themselves participated in the national
project of defining minzu and disseminating theories of social evolution, but
they have nevertheless begun to react against the perception of themselves as
members of a group that is backward by definition. In this sense they are
reacting to an external definition, an ethnic categorization, of what it implies
to be Naxi. In other words, they do not (unlike the “Mosuo branch” of the
Naxi) reject what Richard Jenkins has called the nominal aspect of ethnicity
(the name or the boundary of the group), but they do reject the content of
this name and seek to reinterpret it (Jenkins 1994). Since the nominal ethnic
categorization was based upon an already existing social category with which
most Naxi (excluding the Mosuo) already identified—they did not doubt
that they were Naxi—this identity has been further strengthened. At the same
time, it has become vitally important for Naxi intellectuals to redefine the
content of the external ethnic categorization that was the public and official
version of their experience as an ethnic group.
Education played several roles in the remaking of Naxi identity. First of
all, it was one of the most significant media through which the officially
sanctified categorization of the “backward minorities” and the definite minzu
boundaries were communicated. Therefore, it was the educated Naxi who
most strongly came to regard the Naxi minzu as “backward” and who expe-
rienced a strong contradiction between this and their perception of them-
selves as an ethnic group with a special potential for learning and development.
Many experienced personal conflict because of the contradiction between the
Naxi’s success in education and their individual classification as members of
a backward minority. Success in education, partly resulting from a high degree
of integration into the Chinese state and nation and the adoption of the
Chinese language and cultural values through lengthy contact with the Han,
was in itself a factor that enabled the Naxi to reinterpret the content of the
constructed ethnic categorization in a way that is acceptable in the present
political climate in China. In dtis way ethnicity was remade partly through
the reinterpretation of the original content of an external categorization.
Of course education alone does not explain why the recent strong expres-
85EDUCATION IN LIJIANG SINCE 1980
sions of ethnicity among the Naxi have neither met with political sanctions
nor been regarded as a threat to state sovereignty. The Naxi are a very small
ethnic group, they have no ethnic relations across national borders, and they
have absolutely no aspirations to political independence. Their expressions
of ethnicity, to the degree that they are directed by instrumentalist motives,
seek to define the Naxi as a group that has adopted a lot from Han (Confucian)
culture and language but has maintained its own culture. This also justifies
further control over local resources and political decision-making, all clearly
within the context of the Chinese state.
864	/ History of Chinese Education
in Sipsong Panna
The term “Tai” commonly refers to peoples in Thailand, Laos, Burma, south
China, north Vietnam, and northeast India who speak a Tai language, where-
as “Thai” refers to citizens of Thailand. One of the fifty-five officially recog-
nized Chinese ethnic minorities is the Dai minzu, which comprises several,
but not all, Tai-speaking groups in China (the Zhuang and the Dong minzu,
for instance, speak Tai languages as well). The Dai category consists of dif-
ferent Tai people whom the Chinese called Baiyi prior to the ethnic classi-
fication in the 1950s. To distinguish among the different Baiyi, the Chinese
applied names such as Dry Baiyi (Han Baiyi), Colorful-Waist Baiyi (Huayao
Baiyi), and Water Baiyi (Shui Baiyi). These categories are still used by some
Chinese, and some Tai also use these terms when speaking Chinese. The Dai
minzu comprises Tai groups such as the Tai Nua, Tai Beng, Tai Duan, and
Tai Lue (Liie/Le). The Tai Lue are also called Xishuangbanna Dai or simply
Xidai in Chinese, but they usually call themselves simply Tai, unless they need
to distinguish themselves from other Tai groups. In 1992,1,025,402 people
in China were classified as part of the Dai minzu. The majority live in Yunnan
Province, where they are the fourth-largest minority (together with the
Zhuang), constituting 2.73 percent of the total population (1990) and 8 per-
cent of the minority population (Yunnan tongji nianjian 1991: 96).
Chinese researchers distinguish four major Tai (Dai) dialects and scripts.
The written language of the Tai Lue in Sipsong Panna is developed from a
script closely related to Sanskrit (Pali script).1 The script and spoken language
of the Tai Lue and the other major Tai group in Dehong County (called the 1
1.	See Gombrich 1995 [1988].
87HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
Tai Mao, Mao Shan, Chinese Shan, and Tai Nua) are mutually unintelligi-
ble. Today there are Tai Lue living in Laos, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam,
but the majority still live in Sipsong Panna.2 Anthony Diller estimates that
between five hundred thousand and one million people speak Tai Lue dialects
(Diller 1994:12). In the 1950s, when the Chinese government promoted the
development of new scripts for minorities, the Tai Lue script was simplified
and standardized. This “new Tai”(xz'» Daiweri) was used in schools, newspa-
pers, and other local literature until the local government decided to revive
and standardize the “old Tai” script (loo Dcmven) in 1987. This policy was
reversed in 1996, when the government again returned to “new Tai.” None
of the other minorities in Sipsong Panna who speak different languages has
a script. The Akha are officially classified as part of the Hani minzu, for whom
a script was created in 1957, but this script was based on the Luchun dialect
and is not used by the Akha in Sipsong Panna.
Sipsong Panna Tai [Chinese: Xishuangbanna Dai] Autonomous Prefecture
was established in 1953 and comprises the counties of Menghai and Mengla
and the city of Jinghong, where the prefectural government is seated.3 Of the
798,086 people who live in the prefecture, almost 36 percent (278,955 people)
belong the Dai minzu, while the second-largest group, the Han, constitutes
26 percent. It was only after 1949, when the ccp took complete control of
Sipsong Panna, that Han immigration on a large scale commenced.4 Thus
the fact that the Han in Sipsong Panna today make up nearly one-third of the
population, and more in the capital of Jinghong, is a recent development. The
other major minzu are the Hani with 19 percent, Lahu with 6 percent, Bulang
and Yi with 4 percent each, and Jinuo with 2 percent.5 These minzu comprise
peoples who have historically lived in Sipsong Panna with the Tai and use var-
ious self-appellations, such as Akha, Akhe, Jinuo, Lahu, Sanda, Phusa, Blang,
and Khmu. The Tai historically inhabited the most prosperous plains in this
subtropical region, while before 1950 other groups lived higher up in the moun-
2.	See also Lebar et al. 1964: 206-14.
3.	When the Communists took over Sipsong Panna at the end of the Republic, there
were four counties: Cheli (linghong), Fohai (Menghai), Nanqiao (Mengzhe), and Zhenyue
(Mengla).
4.	See Hansen 1999a on Han Chinese migrations to Sipsong Panna after 1949.
5.	All figures are from the prefectural Bureau of Statistics and are based upon a 1993
census.
88HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
tains and rarely interacted socially with the Tai, who regarded them as infe-
rior kha (slaves).6 As in the case of the Tai Lue in Ban Ping village in Thailand
described by Michael Moerman in 1966, the primary ethnic distinction made
by the Tai in Sipsong Panna was between hill and lowland people, parallel-
ing the dichotomy of jungle and state. The groups exchanged commodity
goods, such as Tai salt and rice for Akha cotton and noodles. Silver pieces
had been exchangeable for goods since the seventeenth century, but com-
modity exchange was still important in the 1940s (ChenHan-Sengi949:54).
Theravada Buddhism became widespread in Sipsong Panna during the
fourteenth century and is still the dominant religion today. Most Tai villages
have a small Theravada temple and monastery, but, like other Tai Lue in Laos,
Burma, and Thailand and the Siamese (Central Thai), the Tai Lue in Sipsong
Panna also respect spirits (phi), such as household, personal, village, and meeng
(“local principalities” governed by local Tai princes) spirits.7 In China the Tai,
Blang, A’chang, and Khmu in Sipsong Panna, Simao, Lancang, Dehong, and
Baoshan are Theravada Buddhists.
Sipsong Panna is a subtropical region with a rainy season and fertile land,
especially on the plains where the Tai live. According to official statistics, more
than 80 percent of the population are peasants, and the most important crops
include wet-rice, sugarcane, coffee, hemp, tea, fruit, and not the least rub-
ber, which is cultivated on state farms established in the 1950s. The non-Tai
ethnic groups live higher up in the mountains in villages that are generally
more poor and where living conditions are harsh. Large forest areas have been
logged to plant rubber trees, and this has often resulted in disputes between
the Han employees at the state farms and the local Akha, who depended on
hunting in the jungle. The area is still rich in teak, sandalwood, medicinal
plants, and (dwindling numbers of) wild animals. Especially since the early
1990s, the tourist industry has been booming, as has foreign trade after the
opening of the borders with Burma and Laos. Most tourists are Han, but
international visitors from Taiwan and especially Thailand are on the increase.
6.	Kha is a common Tai derogatory term for proto-Indochinese groups who speak var-
ious Mon-Khmer languages and live in the hills and highlands of Yunnan, Burma, Thailand,
Vietnam, and Laos. The term probably means “servant,” “attendant,” or “slave” (Satyawadhna
1990: 75-76).
7.	See also Moerman 1966 on spirits in Lue communities in Thailand, and Tanabe 1988.
89HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
Some Thai financially support the development of Buddhism in Sipsong
Panna, and many seem to be on a nostalgic search for remnants of an “orig-
inal” Tai culture. The most important festival of the Tai is New Year (now
popularly known in China as the Water Splashing Festival), which traditionally
started on the sixth day of the sixth month of the Tai calendar and contin-
ued until the sixth day of the seventh month.8 Today the festival is celebrated
for three days, during which hordes of tourists flock to Jinghong. Splashing
water on one another is now allowed only on one official day. For tourist
purposes, the local park (and even ethnic theme parks in other parts of China)
arrange their own small Water Splashing Festivals as well as other staged exotic
rituals, such as those of the Wa people.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TAI IN SIPSONG PANNA
According to the recorded history of the Tai Lue, Chao Bhaya Cheeng was
the king, the chew phaendin, who in 1180 first established the Tai kingdom
called the Golden Palace of Jing Rung.9 He was the ancestor of the follow-
ing chao phaendin, who possessed the highest level of power in Sipsong Panna
until the Chinese government abolished royal titles in 1950. Under the chew
phaendin and the central government were the princes (chew panna and chao
meeng), who ruled in twelve subdistricts calledpawwa and subdivisional meeng.
The princes, whose positions were also hereditary, ruled relatively indepen-
dently in their districts.10 The chao meeng ruled together with the chew guan,
who were heads of the local governments, but whose positions were not hered-
itary. Villages also had other local headmen who were not members of the
chew class, but whose positions were legitimized by the prince. The chew meeng
were allowed to communicate directly with the Chinese government and to
accept official Chinese titles. Attempting to secure control over the local
princes’ activities and government, the king had his own “middlemen” who
8.	For a study of the Tai calendar, which starts in the year 638 of the Western calendar,
see Gao Lishi 1992:102-12.
9.	On the history of the Tai in Sipsong Panna, see Hsieh 1989 and 1995; Jiang 1983;
Gao 1992; and Chen Han-Seng 1949.
10.	See Deiizu jianshi 1986: 181 for a scheme of the hierarchical governing of the king-
dom of Sipsong Panna, and Daizu shehui lishi diaocha: Xishuangbanna 1985, vol. 2: 31-43
for a more detailed study of the political system of the Tai.
90HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
lived in privileged villages outside chao meeng rule in order to keep an eye on
the princes (Hsieh 1989: 111).
It is still a matter of dispute whether Sipsong Panna was an independent
kingdom and state before the twentieth century and from what point it must
be considered part of the Chinese state. Shih-chung Hsieh has argued that
little attention has been paid to the state of Sipsong Panna because it was
never recognized as a state by the leading imperial powers (Hsieh 1995: 302).
The kingdom of Sipsong Panna was one of four small Tai kingdoms (Sipsong
Panna, Lan Zhang, Keng Tung, and Lan Na) whose governments and pop-
ulations had frequent and extensive contacts with one another. All of these
neighboring states were designated as regions under administration of the
Chinese empire, but their only obligations were to pay tribute to China and
not attack the empire. With the creation of the modern nation-states in the
twentieth century, they became part of four different states: Lan Na became
part of Siam (later Thailand), and Lan Zhang first became part of the French
colony of Indochina, then of the state of Laos. Keng Tung was first colonized
by the British and then became part of Burma. And finally, Sipsong Panna
was incorporated into the Chinese state, except for Meeng Wu and Wu De,
which were occupied by France in 1895, annexed to French Indochina, and
therefore later became part of Laos (Chen Han-Seng 1949: 4).
In the capital in Sipsong Panna, the king ruled together with a central
government in which the local princes were represented at meetings. Ac-
cording to Hsieh, the kingdom of Sipsong Panna formed an effective and
centralized government at least until the twentieth century. It was not a pro-
tectorate of China or Burma, and it had absolute rights in military and for-
eign affairs, economic activities, and internal governance (Hsieh 1995:304).
The kingdom also had its own recorded laws (in Tai script) concerning, for
instance, criminals, penalties, and commoners’ obligations toward the chao
(Jiang 1983: 434-37). The Chinese imperial system during Yuan and Ming of
appointing local hereditary chiefs (fust) as local rulers was also employed in
Sipsong Panna, but imperial authority was only nominal. Apart from sixp«»»a
that the Tai king agreed to leave for direct rule by Chinese magistrates after
revolts in 1728, the successive chao phaendin and the chao meeng remained
the Tai rulers in the rest of Sipsong Panna. They also kept their officially ap-
pointed posts as tusi until Sipsong Panna was declared liberated by the Com-
munists in 1950.
91HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
After the establishment of the Republic in 1911, the Chinese administra-
tion in Sipsong Panna expanded, and the area was divided into districts admin-
istered by Chinese magistrates. On lower levels of administration, the
common bnojin system was introduced as in other places in China. This was
a hierarchic system in which one unit, the bno, consisted of ten jin, while one
jin was made up of ten families. The local heads of bno and jin in Tai areas
were normally Tai, and the system was intended to connect the magistrate’s
office above with the local level below. The Republican government also
encouraged Chinese peasants and soldiers to settle in Sipsong Panna, and in
1940 it granted special privileges to Chinese peasants from Siam who wanted
to grow tobacco in the area. During this period of increasing Chinese dom-
inance, the establishment of Chinese schools became for the first time part of
a strategy to integrate Sipsong Panna and its population into the Chinese state.
The chno phnendin had lost much of his former power, and the local popula-
tion was subjected to heavy tax burdens due to the double government sys-
tem (Chen Han-Seng 1949: 25). In spite of several incidents of protest against
Chinese rule and economic exploitation during the time of the Republic, there
were no large-scale united revolts against the impositions of Chinese rule.
In 1944 the king of Sipsong Panna, Chao Mhoam Lhong Khong Gham,
died and his stepson, Chao Mhoam Gham Le, became the last king.11 At that
time Chao Mhoam Gham Le (with the Chinese name Dao Shixun) was only
fifteen years old and studied in a secondary school in Sichuan. Therefore, two
brothers of the previous king were successively appointed as prince regents
and given Chinese official status (Commission for Work with Historical
Accounts of Sipsong Panna Tai Autonomous Prefecture, ed., 1987: vol. 1:
99-100). Members of the royal class and the Tai government of Sipsong Panna
were deeply split by the political and ideological struggle between the Chi-
nese Nationalists and Communists. Some of the chno, among them the regent
prince, supported the Nationalists, who had allowed coexistence of the Tai
political system and the Chinese administration, while other prominent chno
supported the Communists. One of the most famous Communist support-
ers was Chao Tsengha (Zhao Cunxin), who was chairman of the external cab-
inet of the Tai government and who became the prefect of Sipsong Panna
after the Communist victory. By 1950, when Sipsong Panna was declared “lib-
n. Many Chinese insist that the prince never actually became king.
92HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
erated,” many Tai had fled to Thailand and Burma, where some took refuge
with leading Chinese Nationalists.
The Communists adopted a successful strategy of cooperation with parts
of the Tai upper strata, thereby avoiding large-scale revolts against the final
abolition of royal titles and the traditional Tai government and political sys-
tem. Chinese names of places and counties in Sipsong Panna based on the
Tai’s own names were adopted. In spite of protests from some members of
the other ethnic groups in Sipsong Panna, the new local government was a
Tai—not a Hani or Tai/Hani—autonomous government and the Tai name
of the kingdom was adopted as the name of the new autonomous prefec-
ture, which was established in 1953. Most likely this was an important part
of the Chinese government’s strategy to avoid major conflicts with the Tai
in the early stages of the p rc . Many of the leading chao from the former Tai
kingdom received government positions in the new autonomous prefecture.
The last king never returned to live in Sipsong Panna, but continued to enjoy
high prestige among the Tai. He obtained a position in the Chinese People’s
Political Consultative Conference in Yunnan, and his descendants were given
very good employment and educational opportunities. While the government
adopted a cooperative attitude toward the chaophaendin, chao mieeng, and other
important members of the central Tai government, local headmen maintained
or even increased their authority in the villages when the chao lost local power.
It was only in 1956, when campaigns for land reform were launched all over
Sipsong Panna, that their power and authority were broken as well.
SCHOOLS DURING THE REPUBLIC: BUYING STUDENTS
Unlike in Lijiang, Confucian education never gained widespread influence
in Sipsong Panna. Only members of the royal family participated in limited
private Confucian education and one scholar mentions that there were two
private Confucian schools in Mengla County by the end of the Qing in 1911
(Zou 1992: 1). Education of male novices (pha'p however, in the local
Buddhist monasteries (wat) was widespread and common among the Tai and
Blang. When the Nationalist government created new districts and subdis-
tricts in Sipsong Panna in 1911, it also set up the first Chinese schools. These
schools were meant for children of both locals and Han immigrants. Through
the teaching of Chinese, the government hoped to break the authority of the
93HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
chao class and the influential Buddhist monks who conducted all education
of Tai boys in the monasteries. Only some members of the ruling chao class—
those who had contacts with the imposed Chinese rulers, and some of whom
had private Chinese teachers as well—understood and spoke Chinese. The
lack of knowledge of Chinese was regarded as a major obstacle for the impo-
sition of Chinese rule, and already in 1912 the head of the Chinese govern-
ment of Simao and Puer reported to the provincial government about the
urgent need for developing Chinese education in Sipsong Panna (Xiao 1993:
125). After this the Nationalist government started primary “citizen schools”
at the boo administrative levels. In 1935 a “simple normal school” (jianyi shi-
fanxuexiao) was started in Fohai (Menghai), and in 1946 the first secondary
school was established in Cheli (Jinghong).
In 1921 the Yunnan provincial government issued regulations for expand-
ing border education in the hope that this would promote the integration
of these areas and consolidate Chinese control. The new regulations had to
be followed in all border regions where the majority ethnic groups were non-
Han and where the cultural level was regarded as utterly backward. The goals
of promoting education in border areas were very ambitious: all citizens
between the ages of six and fifty who did not know Chinese were obliged to
attend “border education” (bianjingjiaoyu); by 1943 education should be uni-
versal among all peoples in border areas; and between 1931 and 1937 all areas
should establish primary, secondary, and simple normal schools, mainly to
teach the Chinese language (Jiang 1950: 285-86). With regard to minority stu-
dents, the Chinese administration in Sipsong Palma was obliged, in princi-
ple, to refrain from claiming tuition fees, to provide financial support for food
and clothing, and to exempt Tai families who sent one or more children to
school from paying the household tax.
However, the new schools had to be financed through the tax system, and
the existence of the double government (Tai and Chinese) created heavy eco-
nomic burdens on the population. There were taxes and fees for nearly every-
thing—houses, leprosy prevention, the militia, magistrate’s services, the chao
government, slaughter, and so on. Among the heaviest burdens, according
to Chen Han-Seng’s study, were taxes that financed education: the general
education tax for the establishment and maintenance of the schools, and the
tax that supported boys attending Chinese schools. According to Chen, these
94HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
two taxes constituted as much as 35 percent of the total household tribute
(Chen Han-Seng 1949: 47-49).
Since few Tai voluntarily sent their children to the Chinese schools, a quota
system was introduced forcing each medium-sized village to send at least one
boy to school in the nearest larger village. This rule was very unpopular among
the Tai, and in 1936 it sparked a revolt in Cheli. The government maintained
the quota system but allowed the villages to choose whom to send away to
school. This became an economic burden for Tai villagers, who started to
pay boys from Han, Akha, or other local groups to fill their quota and go in
their stead. Some poor Tai families would rent out a son to attend the unpop-
ular Chinese school for fifty yuan and some unhusked rice (Chen Han-Seng
1949: 23). Most older interviewees recalled the Republican schools as very
unpopular, and agreed that it was common to pay poor Tai—or, more often,
Akha or Han—to attend them. One of the few interviewees who had him-
self attended a citizen school in Simao recalled,
Everybody had to pay for the Nationalists’ citizen schools and each small
district was told how many students it had to send to the school. Our dis-
trict had to provide six or seven students. I was sent, and the whole village
paid my family for that. The Tai were the rulers and they sometimes paid
other ethnic groups to go to the school. Nobody wanted to send their chil-
dren to the school. They preferred that they worked at home, and people
always said that children would turn Han if they went there. They feared
that their children would become like the Han and maybe leave the village
and the family. They feared assimilation [tonghua\. If children cried, par-
ents would threaten them by saying, “The Han are coming!” and imme-
diately the children would stop. Whenever Han people came to the
villages, even in the 1950s, children would run away in fear.
Jiang Yingliang, the well-known researcher who was a magistrate in Cheli in
1945 and a member of a research group that had to prepare a plan for chang-
ing the local administration, points to additional reasons why Chinese edu-
cation failed in this period: most schools were not started on the Tai plains
but higher up in the mountains, where most Han lived in fear of malaria;
the Tai students did not get the preferential treatment they were entitled to,
95HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
and although the royal family supported Chinese education in public, it was
in fact against it. Therefore, most students in the new schools were Han, many
schools operated only on paper in order to get financial support, and, finally,
in 1942 all schooling stopped in Sipsong Panna due to Japanese bombing of
the area (Jiang 1950: 288-89).
Only among the royal family and the families of officials in the Tai gov-
ernment seat and palace (Xianyigai) of Jinghong did it become common to
send children to the new schools. I interviewed one former student of the
primary school connected to the palace, Mr. Dao.12 Mr. Dao’s father had been
a high-ranking member of the central Tai government, and in 1933 Dao started
in the primary school where about thirty boys and girls (many of them Han)
studied Chinese. All teachers were Han except for one Tai official who taught
Tai script. Like most other Tai boys at the time, Mr. Dao became a novice in
the temple after he graduated from the school. In 1941 he was one of the few
Tai who continued on to secondary education at the simple normal school
in Menghai, where most students were local Han or Hui. All teachers were
Han, and students studied for one year.
Jinghong was the area of Sipsong Panna where Chinese education was
most developed in this period, though still very limited. According to official
statistics from 1938, there were fourteen schools with a total of 696 students
(Xiao 1993:126). We do not know which ethnic groups the students belonged
to, but all information points to a majority, or at least a large proportion, of
Han students. In accordance with the Nationalist government’s wish to pro-
mote education in border regions, Yunnan Province started one of its spe-
cial border area schools, Southwest Border School (Xinan Bianjing Xuexiao),
in Jinghong in 1947. This school consisted of a primary and a secondary school
for educating minority cadres loyal to the Chinese state. Students were re-
cruited mainly from the chao class, because the Chinese government needed
the cooperation of the nobility and the local administration in order to gain
the trust and loyalty of the common population. The school enrolled two hun-
dred students, but due to serious political and financial instabilities, it func-
12.	Members of the royal family and the central Tai government normally adopted the
Chinese name Dao or Zhao, whereas Tai commoners have no surnames. Male Tai names
start with Ai, and female names with Yi. Several interviewees said that when they went to
school before 1949 the (Han) teachers would give them the “scholarly name” of Dao even
if they did not belong to the chtw class.
96HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
tioned for only a short time (Xiao 1993:126-27). One of the few (incomplete)
statistics on school attendance in Sipsong Panna during the Republic shows
a generally very low number of students. In 1945, when Lijiang was reported
to have 73 percent of children attending schools, the whole of Sipsong Panna
had 1$ percent and Fohai (Menghai County) only 1 percent (tmjfg 1992: 52).
A few American missionaries also worked in the area between 1913 and
1944. They did not succeed in converting many locals, who were firm believ-
ers in Buddhism and their own spirits. However, the chao phaendin and the
Tai government agreed to rent some land for the missionaries to set up a hos-
pital and school. The missionaries had language problems and indeed
difficulty persuading people to convert, so they brought in a small group of
Tai from outside Sipsong Panna who had already been converted and relied
on them to spread the Christian message to the local Tai. There were around
thirty to forty students in the school, which taught the Tai language in addi-
tion to English (Zha 1993: 142-49).
THE COMMUNIST PROJECT
OF SPREADING SCHOOL EDUCATION
After the prc established control in Sipsong Panna in 1950, it sent large num-
bers of mostly Han cadres, teachers, and work teams to the area. By estab-
lishing friendly contacts with the locals, they were to disseminate knowledge
of the ccp and its policy, set up a new government, initiate land reform, recruit
adult students for cadre training, and start new schools. Special research teams
conducted the economic and political investigations that later served as the
basis for accomplishing land reform and provided the new Chinese govern-
ment with its first thorough knowledge of the social and political system
among the Tai in Sipsong Panna. Researchers concluded that socioeconom-
ically, Sipsong Panna was mostly a “feudal manorial landlord system”
(fengjian hngzhu zhig a low evolutionary stage. Their finding of remnants
of “primitive society” (in the form of collectively owned land in villages) and
“slave society” convinced researchers that the mode of production among
the Tai was more backward than that of the Naxi (and of course the Han).13
13.	See xdzg 1986: 23-27; Daizu shehui lishi diaocha: Xishuangbanna 1985, vols. 1-10.
97HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
Especially in a border area such as Sipsong Panna, where knowledge of
the Chinese language was so limited, where the former ruling class still pos-
sessed symbolic authority, and where Buddhist temples were the centers not
only of religion but also of education, it was essential that the new Chinese
government quickly foster loyal cadres who could act as connecting links
between commoners and the government. For the same reasons, it provided
special treatment for members of the upper class who did not flee the coun-
try (which quite a few did). Many of them received positions in the
autonomous government established in 1953, when all previous royal titles
and positions were abolished.
After 1950 an increasing number of Chinese migrants, most of whom were
Han, came to Sipsong Panna. In spite of the trouble they encountered, most
of these cadres, teachers, and workers on newly established state farms were
convinced that their presence greatly benefited the Tai and the other minzu
in the area. They saw their mission as developing, civilizing, and integrating
this outpost of the prc. One of them expressed very clearly the general point
of view of Han immigrants at this time:
Already in the 1960s the Tai were quite civilized \kaihuci\. They welcomed
us and wanted to learn Chinese. Many Han were sent from all over China
to help develop Sipsong Panna. If we Han had not come, this place would
not have developed. The Tai welcomed us because they realized that we,
as a more advanced [xianjin] minzu, could help them develop this place.
I believe that Sipsong Panna is the place in China where education has devel-
oped most rapidly because the sudden influence of Han culture was so
strong.
Communist work teams [gongzuo dui) traveled all over Sipsong Panna and
selected representatives from villages who would receive a short-term edu-
cation, usually at the Normal School in Menghai (which moved to Jinghong
in 1956) but sometimes at the Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities in
Kunming. In villages, work teams usually chose a younger man who had been
a monk and therefore knew Tai script. If somebody knew a bit of Chinese,
this was also regarded as an advantage. Most of the young men who received
short-term cadre training would return as local administrators at the village
level. Members of the royal family in Jinghong and the central Tai govern-
98HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
ment who agreed to cooperate with the new Chinese government received
government positions, but in the countryside, work teams normally chose
poorer peasants, rather than so-called landlords and headmen, to receive cadre
or teacher education. However, in the first seven years of Communist rule
in Sipsong Panna, until land reform started in 1956, work teams and Chinese
cadres generally adopted a policy of cooperation with the village headmen.
By doing so they were able to persuade the local population to participate
in mass meetings and to let their children attend school. By 1956-57 most of
the highest chao meeng had already been moved to Jinghong in order to break
their local authority, which might obstruct the work teams’ policies.
In 1953 the new prefectural government gathered all primary school teach-
ers in Sipsong Panna for a one-week course in Tai script. Additionally, a spe-
cial minority class was started in the Normal School to train teachers who
knew enough Tai to communicate and teach the Tai script in schools. The
hope at this time was that the introduction of the Tai language in schools
would eventually cause people to abandon their tradition of sending boys to
the monasteries. At this time there were twenty-three primary schools and
one normal school in the whole of Sipsong Panna. Eighty percent of the stu-
dents were non-Han. The first regular junior secondary schools were estab-
lished in 1958 in each of the three counties (Jinghong, Menghai, and Mengla),
and the first Blang and Jinuo primary schools were established in 1956.
In the first years of the People’s Republic, Tai script was taught in many
of the new primary schools in Tai villages and in the special minority class at
the Normal School. Schools sometimes invited monks to teach Tai, because
few teachers were able to do so. In the beginning the Tai script used in schools
was the same as that used in monasteries. No other minority languages were
taught, and in all non-Tai villages in Sipsong Panna the children learned only
the Chinese language and script. The “old Tai script,” as it was called by the
Chinese, was not standardized, and in the early years of the prc there was
a great demand for Tai books. Afew village schools experimented with teach-
ing one class of Tai pupils in Chinese only and teaching another basic Tai before
turning to Chinese studies. The teachers from that time whom I interviewed
did not doubt that the students in the Tai class performed best in school. One
of these schools resumed the experiment in 1993 and even used some of the
teaching material in “old Tai” from the early 1950s.
In spite of these early attempts to establish education in old Tai, it was
99HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
quickly decided to make a simplified version of the Tai script in line with the
new government’s wish to simplify Chinese characters and to create new scripts
for minorities. In 195+ a few Tai who knew Chinese well and were proficient
in the Tai script were asked to propose a simplified form of Tai script, the so-
called “new Tai script.” They also created a simple dictionary and some teach-
ing material. The Panna Newspaper, written in new Tai, was started in 1957.
Publication was suspended between 1966 and 1972, and between 1993 and
1996 the paper was printed in the old Tai script. Thus, by the mid-1950s three
writing systems were taught to the Tai in Sipsong Panna: Chinese in all schools,
new Tai in some schools, and old Tai in all monasteries. The locals’ attitudes
toward the new script were divided, as they are today. Some Tai argue that
the simplified script is much easier to learn and therefore more practical, while
others argue that since Buddhist texts and traditional Tai stories taught in
the monasteries are in the old Tai form, children are cut off from their own
tradition when they learn the new form of Tai. With the recent increase in
contacts across Sipsong Panna’s borders, some argue that the old Tai is advan-
tageous for learning standard Thai.
If you have learned the old Tai script, it is very easy to learn the simplified
version, whereas those who know only the new Tai script maintain that they
are completely unable to read the old script. This is of course quite similar
to the situation of readers who have learned only simplified Chinese charac-
ters. However, there is a gender-specific dimension to the difference between
new and old Tai. Because only Tai boys studied in the local monasteries, they
were also the only ones who learned old Tai. Those Tai girls who learned any
Tai script at all always learned new Tai. The new and simplified Tai script that
was taught in the schools was created to eradicate illiteracy, but it had the
side effect of actually dividing the Tai, who no longer had one common script
that at least most boys would study. Today a whole generation has learned
only the new Tai script (and/or Chinese) in school and is unable to read old
Tai, unless they are male and have had the opportunity to learn it in a
monastery.
One of the Tai who participated in editing the first Tai teaching material
was Zhao Xi,I+ who was born in 1933 and was a novice for nine years. He was
14.	Like most other names of interviewees in this book, this is a pseudonym.
IOOHISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
just about to become a monk when he decided to return to secular life in 1951
because the new government offered to give him a free education in the
Normal School. Zhao’s story gives a good picture of how the work teams
propagated communism, the difficulty of starting new Chinese schools, and
Tai commoners’ attitudes toward the new administration in the early 1950s.
ZhaoXi’s Story
I was a student in the Normal School from 1951 to 1952 in a special class
for Tai. All students had to know Tai script, so most of us were former
monks. We learned Chinese and studied the policy of the Communist Party
and the new principles. We also studied geography—China’s geography.
We did not know that China [Zhongguo] was not a foreign country
[waiguo]. For us Burma, Thailand, Laos, and China were all foreign coun-
tries, but in the villages people did not even know that there was a border
between them and Burma or Laos. In the Normal School we learned that
Sipsong Panna was part of China. [Then in 1954 Zhao was sent to be a
teacher in a Tai village:] In the evenings the work team showed films from
the Soviet Union about socialist society, about how the Soviet Union used
machinery in agriculture and how education was necessary to achieve this
kind of development. Therefore, many people wanted to try to go to school.
They themselves built a thatched house for the school building.
On the first day of school, more than two hundred people attended the
classes. They were between eight and nineteen years old. Some had been
novices before, and some were still novices. There were more than fifty in
each class. After a very short time, students did not show up anymore. They
preferred to work in the fields, some married, the novices had no time for
school work, and for some it was too far to walk. Every evening we teach-
ers visited families to talk to the parents about this. We helped if some-
body was sick, we arranged for old people to take care of cattle while the
children were in school, and so on. Since I had been a novice myself, I under-
stood the conditions in the temple. I knew that during the daytime, the
novices did not study the Buddhist sutras. Therefore, I told the monks that
the things they taught the children did not contradict what we taught them—
that the teachings complemented each other. I told them that the Com-
munist Party was not against their form of education or against their religion.
101HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
We also arranged activities such as ball games, singing, dancing, and so on
to make the school more attractive. And nobody had to pay for anything—
oh yes, only the few who were richer than the others, otherwise it was all
free. Not like today, when it is so expensive to have a child in school. . . .
Society changed very, very slowly here. In the 1950s everybody still con-
sidered the chao phaendin, the meeng, and thepzh [local headmen] to be the
highest authorities. It was very important that people saw that the new
government worked together with the local Tai leaders. That proved to them
how important their local leaders were.15
The initiation of land reform in 1956 in Sipsong Panna politically marked
the beginning of a period when powerful Party leaders considered the local
minorities ripe for organized struggle against their former leaders. Unlike
Central China, where struggle against landlords was supposed to be like a
hurricane (jifeng baoyu), in the border areas redistribution of fields and depri-
vation of local landlords’ power was adopted as a “peaceful consultation” Ihe-
ping xieshang). The advantages of the reforms were carefully explained to the
ruling class, who were to be treated leniendy and allowed to keep some fields
(xdzg 1986: 84-90). The struggle against local headmen was often carried
out as a so-called “back-to-back struggle” (bei dui bei douzheng) in which the
peasants did not face the headman direcdy, in order to avoid harming the
“unity of the minzu” By 1957 land reform was completed, but had been resisted
direcdy in at least one short-lived revolt by one of the former chao meeng in
cooperation with Nationalists on the Burmese side of the border (Hsieh 1989:
214).
The period of land reform between 1956 and 1957 was presented by some
interviewees as a brief “high tide” of Chinese education in Sipsong Panna.
One mentioned that people were excited about the prospect of dividing fields
among themselves and therefore cooperated with the work teams and teach-
ers who wanted them to send their children to school. Other reasons were
that people were freed from paying taxes if they let their children attend school.
Some parents also thought that sending their children to school could pre-
vent their own family from being criticized in the same way as other local
headmen and landlords. However, apparendy few people were convinced of
15.	Extracts from 1994 interview.
102HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
the relevance of the content of the Chinese education, and many children
quickly dropped out of school again.
The policy of conducting “peaceful consultative reforms” was firmly crit-
icized in 1958 as an expression of a revisionist policy of cooperation with feu-
dal lords and granting border areas special treatment. In the same year, the
Great Leap Forward was launched and People’s Communes were set up all
over Sipsong Panna. The period from the land reform movement onward
was marked by a number of political campaigns. The reidentification of classes
during the “additional teaching of democratic reform” (minzhugmge buke)
in 1958 and the “four clean-ups” (siqingyundong) in 1964-65 caused a large
number of Tai to flee the country. Former Tai leaders were criticized at mass
meetings, all contacts across international borders were prohibited, and many
monks and novices returned to secular life in response to antireligious policy.
The palace of the chao phaendin, the Tai government building, and the nearby
major temple of Sipsong Panna were completely ruined in 1957, and the area
was converted to a state-owned rubber plantation.16 Mr Zhao Xi recalled,
It was all chaos! It was even more chaotic than the Cultural Revolution,
which was carried out mainly in the cities. All contacts across the [inter-
national] borders, which had always been very common in Sipsong Panna,
were forbidden. A lot of people were branded as spies because they had
family members across the border. We could not marry Tai on the other
side of the border any longer, or even write letters. Already in 1962 there
were only a few monks left, and a lot of temples were destroyed. A lot of
people escaped to other countries.
During this time the government also became more conscious of the con-
tent of the teaching material in minority languages. For instance, in 1959 the
central government decided that all teaching material in minority languages
should be direcdy based upon ideological teaching of “socialism, commu-
nism, and patriotism” (ymjfg 1992: 201). Although the Tai tradition of send-
ing boys to the monasteries was criticized, many boys still became novices
16.	This state farm is still functioning today. The temple is a complete ruin; its stones,
pillars, and other materials as well as those from the palace have been used by the state farm.
The government has now started to reconstruct the palace area as a tourist attraction.
103HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
for a time. For this reason, schools were dominated by female pupils. Before
1958 some schools tried to solve this problem by arranging special “novice
classes” (heshang ban), in which novices were taught at a special time of the
day or even inside the monastery. However, most teachers from this time
recalled that Chinese education was still not popular. Students often came
only every second or third day, or dropped out after a few months or years.
Religious influence was especially strong south of the Mekong River, and
school attendance was low. The Normal School had problems convincing its
Tai students to complete their studies; one student from 1956-59 recalled that
about half of the students in his class dropped out before graduation. Gen-
erally speaking, the number of students in schools was inversely proportional
to the number of novices in temples. In times when religion was severely sup-
pressed, school attendance also was strongly encouraged (or even enforced),
so the number of novices fell while school enrollment rose. Thus, figures show
that school attendance was relatively high in Sipsong Panna in 1958 and dur-
ing the Cultural Revolution, and fell again when the political pressure to attend
Chinese schools lessened. For instance, in Mengla County in 1955, in 15 schools
with 950 students, the enrollment rate was 13.8 percent. In 1958 in 40 schools
with 3,310 students, the enrollment rate was 50 percent. This fell to 28 per-
cent in 1962, increased to 62 percent with the start of the Cultural Revolution
in 1966, and increased again to 92 percent in 1975 (Li Guangpin 1992: 127).
In the whole of Sipsong Panna in 1950 there were 11 schools with 390 stu-
dents and 22 teachers. In 1957 the number of schools had increased to more
than 100, with more than 9,000 students, and in 1964 there were 400 schools,
more than 35,000 students, and more than 1,000 teachers (Zhou Houkun
1992: 148). According to interviews, enrollment figures are exaggerated
because schools and village authorities tended to over-report and did not sub-
tract the many students who quickly dropped out. In line with decisions of
the Yunnan provincial government concerning education in border regions,
most of Sipsong Panna’s schools at this time were part-time schools where
students worked in the fields in the afternoon, or “simple reading schools”
(jianyi xuexiao) where they studied only minority script, Chinese script, spo-
ken Chinese, and mathematics (tmjfg 1992: 186). Until 1958, when each of
the three counties in Sipsong Panna started a junior secondary school, the
only post-primary school was the Normal School. From 1965 to 1968 there
was also one “part-work part-study” school and an agricultural school.
104HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
However, the figures clearly show that the Chinese government put a lot of
effort into establishing schools to spread knowledge of subjects such as Chinese
language, culture, and history in order to integrate the people of Sipsong
Panna into China and ensure the authority of the state.
Although Chinese education spread steadily throughout Sipsong Panna
since the 1950s, it did not manage to pull the Tai boys out of the monaster-
ies. The increased number of schools should be seen in relation to the large
number of monasteries and of novices and monks studying Buddhist texts
in the Tai language. In 1950, compared to the 11 Chinese schools and 390 stu-
dents, there were 574 temples, 930 monks, and 5,550 novices registered. For
the first time Tai girls were able to get a school education, but for most Tai
parents, the prospect of having a child educated in a Chinese school was not
economically or culturally attractive and was considered irrelevant to daily
life. Nevertheless, the government, the work teams, and an increasing num-
ber of enthusiastic teachers (mainly from outside Sipsong Panna) managed
to multiply the number of Chinese schools by ten within the first seven years
of Communist rule, and for the first time in Sipsong Panna increasing num-
bers of Tai pupils in villages attended Chinese schools at least for a short period
of time. However, the most dramatic increase in school attendance took place
in periods when policy became very restrictive and antireligious. This forced
large numbers of monks to return to secular life and prevented many boys
from becoming novices. During these times more children attended schools
because they had no alternative and because local cadres stressed the need
to send children to Chinese schools. Buddhist training in the Tai language
was regarded by the Chinese government as a direct obstruction to the devel-
opment of the only real and proper form of education—that in Chinese
schools.
PROHIBITION OF MONASTIC EDUCATION
DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION
According to my interviews, the number of monks and novices fell dra-
matically as early as 1957, perhaps as much as 50 percent.17 After the launch-
17.	I have no exact figures; the interviewees estimated this on the basis of their own
knowledge of the large number of monks who returned to lay lives.
105HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
ing of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, all novices and monks were com-
pelled to discard their yellow robes and to resume a secular life, and many
monks fled the country. Buddhist images and temples all over Sipsong Panna
were smashed, and books written in Tai script were burned. Only a few tem-
ples were saved, because some people were able to convince Red Guards
that they were useful for purposes such as storing grain. Some important
books in Tai script were saved by people who buried them in the woods.
For almost fourteen years no Tai novices were trained, and teaching of the
old Tai script was conducted only in families where the father or grandfa-
ther secretly taught children to read.18 The Tai reacted with tacit acceptance;
most seem to have swallowed their anger and accepted the conditions. “We
were angry, but there was nothing to do \shengqi, mei banfa\!” said one Tai
man in his fifties.
In the initial phase of the Cultural Revolution, national policy demanded
that border areas be treated with caution, but this view was quickly criticized,
and struggles began in minority areas against rich peasants, landlords, mem-
bers of the aristocracy, and monks. In Sipsong Panna large numbers of revo-
lutionary work teams, students, and teachers arrived to carry out the revolution.
Since most members of the local government belonged to the chao class, many
of them were paraded on Nationalities Street, sent to the villages to work as
peasants, and replaced by Han officials.19
One of the fiercest border-region campaigns was that to “politicize the
frontiers” (zhengzhi bianfang) in Sipsong Panna between 1969 and 1971.
Former stages of the Cultural Revolution in border areas had been severely
criticized for upholding the revisionist ideas that these areas needed special
treatment and that minorities were in some respect different from the Han:
Yunnan is being polite at the frontiers, practicing revisionism at the fron-
tiers, engaging in excessive peacefulness at the frontiers. This excessive peace-
fulness is just an excessive step toward capitalism. You are afraid that people
will flee. Why be afraid of that? If bad people run away, let them do so. The
18.	Although education in monasteries was, and still is, reserved for boys, quite a few
girls have learned in their homes to read and write Tai.
19.	See Hsieh 1989: 231-33 on the fate of chao during this time.
106HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
border areas engage only in culture and production. They have left class
struggle and policy in order to engage in culture and production. How is
that possible! (1968 report, quoted in Yunnan minzugongzuo, 40 nian: 216)
The campaign brought a second round of establishing People’s Communes
in the border regions and provoked large-scale and violent struggles against
so-called rich peasants, landlords, aristocracy, and “spies” among minorities.
Due to the government’s former strategy of cooperating with religious lead-
ers and the nobility in minority areas, there remained many “remnants of feu-
dal society.” These were ferociously attacked and smashed in these areas.
Sipsong Panna was no exception.
The Cultural Revolution was carried out most directly in Jinghong,
where schools closed down and teachers (almost all Han) went to Simao to
participate in revolutionary education for three months. Some students stayed
in the secondary school to participate in the struggles; others returned home
to their villages. In the countryside, primary schools continued to function,
and new junior (and a few senior) secondary schools were started in pro-
duction teams and communes after 1970. Many Buddhist and other texts in
Tai (old and new) were burned, and the teaching of Tai in schools was pro-
hibited. As in Lijiang and the rest of China, all teaching was now in Chinese,
and the most important subject was the ideas and sayings of Mao Zedong.
Some Tai interviewees who were teachers in small villages at that time recalled
that they were not allowed to teach Tai script, but that they often used spo-
ken Tai to explain. Otherwise, pupils would not understand. Most teachers
were Han who came, or were sent, in large numbers from other places in
China to “carry out revolution” or “learn from the peasants.”
There were many pupils in schools during the Cultural Revolution when
all religious activities were suppressed, but the number began falling imme-
diately after the policy relaxed after 1979. According to Zou Zhenxie, as many
as 102,017 students attended primary schools in Sipsong Panna in 1975 (Zou
1992: 3). In A Survey of Sipsong Panna Tai Nationality Autonomous Prefecture
it is argued that 12,444 students started in primary schools in 1970, but 44
percent dropped out before graduation in 1975 (xdzg 1986: 147). Although
my interviews confirmed that most children under eighteen attended school
for short periods of time during the Cultural Revolution, the first figure is
107HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA
remarkably high considering that the entire population of Sipsong Panna was
less than five hundred thousand at this time. Probably many schools over-
reported enrollment and did not calculate those who dropped out.
The extremely repressive policy of the Cultural Revolution has been
strongly criticized by the Chinese government since 1979. In publications and
official reports about Sipsong Panna, the policy of this period is condemned
for having harmed the “unity of the minzii” by suppressing religion, Tai script,
and monastic education. Yet Han cadres and teachers engaged in education
have always regarded the Buddhist education of boys in Sipsong Panna as
the main obstacle to the development of Chinese education. Only the
oppressive policy of the Cultural Revolution managed to abolish this kind
of education, to stop the development of Buddhism and the spread of the
Tai script, and to enroll large numbers of Tai students in Chinese schools.
No Chinese cadres, teachers, or educators in Sipsong Panna would say that
the policy of the Cultural Revolution was in any way a good policy.
Nevertheless, it did bring about some of the changes that the central gov-
ernment and most Chinese cadres desired for Sipsong Panna: increased
influence of Chinese language and culture and decline of Buddhist and Tai
traditions.
1085	/ Education and Ethnic Identity
in Sipsong Panna since 1980
By the end of 1982 most People’s Communes in Yunnan’s border areas had
been abolished, and the peasants had contracted land under the new respon-
sibility system. Many peasants in Sipsong Panna (and elsewhere) kept their
children out of school to work in their new fields, and the new political atmo-
sphere allowed for a more relaxed attitude toward religious practices. While
the number of temples and novices in Sipsong Panna has steadily increased
since 1982 in what some have called a “religious fever” (zongjiao re), the gov-
ernment established new minority schools, Tai classes, and special “novices
classes” in order to attract more students.
THE REVIVAL OF BUDDHIST EDUCATION
Since the fourteenth century it has been common practice for Tai parents to
send their sons to local Theravada temples to study the Buddhist sutras in
Tai script. In many temples novices also read other material, such as tradi-
tional Tai stories and the history of the chao phaendin. Both the Nationalist
and Communist Chinese governments have regarded this tradition as an
obstruction to the spread of Chinese culture, language, and political rule,
because it hindered the establishment of a successful Chinese educational sys-
tem in Sipsong Panna. Monasteries were centers of education and religion,
and virtually every Tai village had its own monastery, monks, and male novices.
Novices studied for some years, after which most returned to secular lives.
Some continued their Buddhist training and became monks when they were
twenty years old. Normally monks enjoyed high prestige in the village, and
elderly Tai today claim that it was very difficult for a man to get married if
he had not been a novice.
109EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
Lay Buddhists, monks, and novices were all part of the scingha, the entire
following of the Buddha:1 “The Buddha conceived of the pursuit of Nibbana
[Nirvana] by layman and monk as fully complementary and reciprocal—the
layman pursuing the goal in such a way as to provide the material necessi-
ties of life to the monk and the monk giving of himself to the layman by way
of maintaining and manifesting the inspiring ideal and teaching and guid-
ing the layman” (Lester 1973: 47). The role of the Buddhist laymen in the vil-
lages of Sipsong Panna was identical to that of the Tai in Ban Ping village in
Northern Thailand, who earned merit by avoiding wrong actions, attend-
ing the temple, and bringing offerings to the temple, its monks, and novices
(Moerman 1966:140). Before being accepted as novices in the local temples,
Tai boys in Sipsong Panna went through a period of pre-study, in which they
still did not live in the temple but often frequented it, studied Tai language,
and prepared to become novices within a year (in the fourth month of the
Tai calendar). Offen a small group became temple boys together, mosdy with
support from their parents, who had a share in the merit their son would
gain by becoming a novice. For the parents’ afterlife it was essential that at
least one son had been a novice. Each boy had a personal benefactor who
supported his ordination. This person served as a kind of adoptive father and
was responsible for instructing the boy about his life in the temple and mak-
ing the necessary arrangements. At an important ordination ritual in the tem-
ple, the boys (who were mosdy between seven and ten years old) became
novices, received new names, and started wearing the yellow robe. All vil-
lagers contributed financially to the celebration in the temple, and most had
parties at home as well. In the village the boys now enjoyed higher status
and respect through their connection to the temple.
Between 1957 and 1980 this practice declined and even disappeared com-
pletely between 1966 and 1979 due to the repressive policy of the Chinese
government. However, especially since 1982, religious expressions have
returned to Sipsong Panna and with them the practice of training boys in
the monasteries. In the part of Jinghong that is north of the Mekong River,
1.	Though sangha may refer to all followers of Buddha, both lay and monastic, it often
refers only to the monastic followers (Lester 1973: 48). According to Richard Gombrich,
the term is ambiguous and commonly refers to those who are ordained (Gombrich 1995
[1988]: 2,18-20).
noEDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
Han influence and antireligious policies have been most persistent, and here
only a few temples have been rebuilt, few boys today become novices, and
school attendance is comparatively high. In other areas of Sipsong Panna,
especially in the southern part of Jinghong and Mengla and the whole county
of Menghai, the upsurge in religious activity has been strong.
According to several interviewees, the so-called “religious fever” began in
1982, when people finally dared to believe that they were free to restart their
religious practices. However, because a whole generation had not studied in
temples and monks had either fled the country or resumed lay life, the Tai
faced the practical problem of finding monks who could teach the new novices
in the local temples that they had started to rebuild, mostly with their own
money. Most Tai families have relatives in Thailand or Burma, and, mainly
through contacts with them, many villages were able to invite foreign monks
to Sipsong Panna. The gradual improvement of the Tai peasants’ economy
also made possible the increasing number of temples, monks, and novices.
In 1982 there were 145 temples, 36 monks, and 655 novices in the whole of
Sipsong Panna. Twelve years later, in 1994, there were 435 temples, 509 monks,
and 5,336 novices.2 The largest increase took place between 1982 and 1984,
according to the Sipsong Panna Prefecture Bureau of Religions.3
In the first years of the religious upsurge, when many villages still did not
have a monk, novices were often alone in the monasteries with nobody to
teach them and without any idea of how to lead a Buddhist life. Often an
elderly villager who had been a monk or novice earlier in his life would try
to guide the boys. Today there are still some poorer villages without a learned
monk to teach their novices, and in some villages peasants complain that their
monk is insufficiently educated. Thus, there are today considerable differ-
ences among villages. To the disapproval of many foreign and local monks,
novices in these temples often spend their time smoking, playing pool, and
enjoying their free time.
In the numerous villages where foreign monks (mostly from Thailand or
Burma) serve as educators or where local monks have been properly trained
2.	Temples have to report the number of novices to the Bureau of Religions, which keeps
statistics on the numbers of monks, novices, and temples.
3.	In 1987 the county government in Mengla “urged” all thirty-four foreign monks in
the county to leave Sipsong Panna, in accordance with the prefectural government’s policy.
inEDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
as teachers, villagers express satisfaction with the situation. Most of those
I talked to were happy to send their boys to the monastery and had high
esteem for the monk. However, some parents explained that even if they
would like their children to go to a Chinese school, they had no way of forc-
ing boys who preferred the monasteries. I did not find this explanation very
convincing, since most of the boys were only seven to ten years old when
they became novices. Teachers, however, confirmed that this was an expla-
nation commonly heard from parents. Probably it was a tactful way for some
parents to excuse themselves for not insisting on keeping the boys in school
when facing representatives of the Chinese educational system. Although I
always tried to make the purpose of my interviews clear to interviewees, some
villagers thought that I represented the Chinese school system and feared
criticism for not sending boys to school. Some later told me that they had
thought that I, a university graduate, would regard their temple education
as backward and useless. These parents’ reluctance to force their children to
attend school illustrates that—even though most Tai have accepted the
Chinese schools as part of village life and are mostly happy to have a school
in their neighborhood—they do not consider such education essential. Most
villagers I talked to felt that children should try the school for a few years,
and if they did not like it or were not good enough, they might as well stop.
If they had a good monk in the village, parents considered Buddhist educa-
tion at least as good as Chinese school education in terms of learning how
to read and write. More importandy, they regarded it as essential for moral
training and for earning merit for their sons and themselves. The practice of
sending boys to receive Buddhist education is a tradition built on religious
belief and is a habitual practice for many Tai. It is a significant component of
Tai ethnic identity and a practical way of transmitting Tai script, history, and
cultural values. In comparison, the Chinese school in Sipsong Panna is a poor
competitor.
However, due to the previous repressive policies of the Chinese govern-
ment, a whole generation of men and fathers have not been novices them-
selves. Many consider it less important for boys today to become novices or
find it sufficient for boys to study in the temple for a few months. Sometimes
these men are urged by village elders to send their sons to the monasteries,
and generally mothers tend to be more strongly in favor of upholding the
112EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
tradition. Again, one of the most important factors determining local sup-
port for temple education is the quality of the teaching monk. A Tai mother
of two sons remarked,
[Concerning her sixteen-year-old son:] He attended the village school for
two years. He passed the examination to the higher primary school [from
third to sixth grade in a school three kilometers away], but he did not want
to continue there. All his friends were to become novices, so he wanted
that as well. Even if we had wanted him to go to school, we had no way.
Now he has been a monk for three years. [Concerning the son of twelve:]
He went to school for two years in the village and did not pass the exam-
ination to continue into higher primary school. He tried again, but failed.
Then die teacher suggested that he should go instead to the monastery to
learn Tai script, which is also very good. Education is very good, and it
does not matter if it is in the school or the monastery. The monk we have
now is very good. He has a lot of knowledge, and it is good for us to have
him here. I hope our older son will first become a monk in four years [when
he is twenty]- Then he can be a monk for four or five years, and then he
can return to lay life and become a peasant. When they are twenty they are
grown up and want to marry.
This mother came from a village that had invited a young monk from Thailand,
who had also begun teaching Thai to all interested villagers and who planned
to invite a Tai to teach Chinese to the novices. His understanding of the sit-
uation in the village corresponded to that of most of the parents I talked to:
“There will be more and more novices in this village because now they can
really gain knowledge here in the temple. When a monk can provide the chil-
dren with knowledge, the parents are very happy to send them to the
monastcrv. If they do not learn very much, parents will instead encourage
them to go to school.” In this village the school recruited new pupils evert'
second year, and after two years of study the children participated in an exam-
ination that determined whedter they could continue on to the primary school
in the administrative village three kilometers away In the summer of 1994
nineteen pupils graduated after two years of study in this village school, twelve
continued on to the full primary school, six boys became novices and
113EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
dropped out of school, and one boy dropped out without becoming a novice.4
The only teacher in this school belonged to the Yi minzu and spoke and under-
stood only Chinese. All children in the school spoke Tai and only a little
Chinese. There was no possibility of learning Tai in school during these first
two years.
In several monasteries, monks now teach mathematics, Thai language, and
(more rarely) Chinese. The most important temple in Sipsong Panna, Wat
Pa Jie Maharajatan in Manting Park, has recently begun offering higher edu-
cation for novices and monks who are sent back to village temples after com-
pleting studies. In this way the temple has attempted to diminish the
antagonism between school and monastery education. One monk expressed
the problem thus: “In the temple, children do not learn modern knowledge.
In school, they do not learn how to be a good human being.” The temple in
Manting was rebuilt in 1989 and reopened in 1990. In 1995 a huge building
with teaching facilities was inaugurated, financed mainly by sponsors from
Thailand but also with support from the prefectural government. In 1990
about twenty monks from Wat Pa Jie Maharajatan were in Thailand study-
ing in Buddhist monasteries, and by the end of 199+ almost half had returned
to start teaching in the temple. It was hoped that the capacity of twenty-five
novices could be expanded to two or three hundred within the next few years.
Most novices (Tai and a few Blang) came from poor villages, and many of
them had parents who either could not afford or were not particularly inter-
ested in letting them continue in regular schools. In the temple they got a
free education of one or three years, after which they were sent to village tem-
ples as monks. According to one of the monks in the temple, this was the
first attempt in Sipsong Panna to set up a comprehensive Buddhist training
that included the study of modern subjects:
The influence of religion in Sipsong Panna is definitely less than before
1957. In total there might be more monks now, but they study for a shorter
period of time and are less qualified. Therefore, we want to increase the
teaching of knowledge within the monasteries. Before, there was no
Buddhist school [Fojiao xuexiao], Now we are starting one, a real temple
4.	Among those from this particular village who continue on to the full primary school,
only a few graduate. The rest drop out after a few years.
114EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
school [simian xuexiao]. Here novices can go to school while studying
Buddhism.
Apart from Buddhist studies in Tai script, the novices were taught Chinese
by a Tai with a teacher’s education, using Tai as the language of instruction.
The government had given permission for establishment of the new school,
insisting that Chinese should be taught with national teaching material. Thus,
the novices studied Chinese-language materials intended for the first three
years of primary school. One class had already graduated in Thai studies, and
the temple planned to offer English classes when one of the monks returned
from college. Students were also eventually supposed to receive education
in mathematics, geography, and local history based upon Tai texts.
All monks and novices I talked to were very excited about the new school
that would bridge the gap between Buddhist teaching and the demand for
knowledge in modern subjects and Chinese language. Very few boys in
Sipsong Panna who have been novices for more than a few months manage
to get an education beyond the primary school level. There are several rea-
sons for this: their level of Chinese is insufficient, it is difficult for them to
attend school while studying in the monastery, they earn no credits for learn-
ing to read and write their own language, some parents consider it a waste
of money to pay for a school education that does not lead to a job or further
education, and many are not motivated to get a Chinese education at all.
Therefore, the higher Buddhist education in the temple in Manting is a wel-
come alternative for the small percentage of novices who get a chance to study
there.
In the early 1980s, religious activities in Sipsong Panna were centered on
rebuilding temples and restarting the tradition of temple education from
scratch. In the last few years, encouraged by increasing contacts across the
international borders, attitudes toward temple education have been slowly
changing. Even though most Tai in the mid-1980s wanted to educate at least
one son in the temple for religious purposes, many had been influenced by
the extensive government propaganda that insisted that only Chinese schools
could promote economic modernization. Buddhist education and modern
(i.e., Chinese school) education were presented as mutually exclusive.
Through their contacts across the borders, more and more Tai people in
Sipsong Panna learned that in Thailand there is a closer connection between
115EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
schools and temples, monks sometimes participate in common teachers train-
ing courses, teachers in elementary schools may take a special course in teach-
ing Buddhism, and larger temples offer courses for girls and boys who are
not novices—and Thailand nevertheless has a developed economy. Thus, a
number of interviewed Tai from south of the Mekong River questioned the
thesis of the mutual exclusiveness of modern and Buddhist education.
CHINESE ATTITUDES TOWARD TEMPLE EDUCATION
Generally speaking, most Han cadres, teachers, and researchers in and out-
side Sipsong Panna continue to express negative views of the influence of
Buddhist education on the Tai. A few researchers elsewhere in Yunnan
(mostly belonging to minority minzu themselves, but also some Han)
expressed a much more open view of temple education than did most local
cadres and teachers in Sipsong Panna. Many local Tai schoolteachers and gov-
ernment officials trained in Chinese schools share the negative view, although
elderly officials and teachers who have themselves been monks tend to be
more positive. The most concrete criticism of temple education is that it
employs backward teaching methods; because of the monks’ low educational
level, too many novices are illiterate after they leave the temples; and it pre-
vents girls from learning to read and write. Some of the most highly edu-
cated Tai monks are attempting to solve these problems. Because Tai girls
traditionally were never taught in monasteries, most monks feel that it would
be impossible to extend education to girls and that female education is not
their responsibility. Recendy, however, some monks have tried to arrange
courses in Tai or Thai for all villagers, including females. Other commonly
raised objections against monastery training are far more extensive and directed
toward the heart of temple education. It is said, for instance, that temple edu-
cation obstructs modernization by preventing the spread of Chinese culture:
But the Buddhist temple education is a religious, theological education,
the purpose of which is to teach people to stand aloof from worldly affairs,
detest life, and escape the present to jump out of the sea of bitterness and
into Nirvana. It wants people to seek a passive life, not an active life. It
gives people the knowledge of how to follow the way of Buddha, but not
the strength to understand and change the world. . . . This kind of edu-
116EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
cation fosters, to a large extent, people who follow religion, the feudal rul-
ing clique, and traditional culture. Their function is to defend feudal and
religious rule. This is a force that restrains and blocks development for Tai
society and culture and which faces a conflict with the historical tide of
modernization. (Sun Ruoqiong et al., eds. 1990: 266)
This text on minority education goes on to argue that the only way to promote
modern education in Sipsong Panna is to penetrate the traditional outlook of
the Tai, who tend to prefer the well-known, old-fashioned education. Forbidding
temple education is no solution; instead, ways must be found to convince
people that only in Chinese schools will their children be brought up to adapt
to the modernizing world. Buddhism, on the other hand, is held responsi-
ble for bringing up a population of self-centered and xenophobic people:
From the perspective of cultural psychology, the ancient and once splen-
did Buddhist culture has caused the religious Tibetans and Tai to create a
feeling of cultural superiority that puts themselves in the center. This atti-
tude of superiority is partly an expression of highly cherishing the concepts
and behavior of their own nnnzu\ culture, and partly an expression of
despising and excluding odter cultures. (Ibid.: 268)
Recently, this objectification of so-called Tai psychological characteristics has
been criticized by a few Chinese researchers who are not dealing specifically
with education (see, e.g., Liu Yan 1993: 279). Zhang Shiya (1992) has made
a general and theoretical study of religious education in southwest China,
and, although he does not discuss education in Sipsong Panna in detail, he
is generally much more positive and analytical toward religious education
than are most Chinese researchers of Buddhist education in Sipsong Panna.
Many remain profoundly worried that Buddhism is obstructing the Tai’s pos-
sibilities for development. The people within Sipsong Panna who are most
negative toward temple education and see no potential in it are the Han who
occupy high positions in school administration, headmasters, older teachers
in administrative posts, and Han cadres in the government education depart-
ments—people with great influence on local forms of education. They tend
to see Buddhist education as the main force preventing boys from having a
Chinese education, and they rarely acknowledge problems within the Chinese
117EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
educational system itself. Many are worried that the Tai might become “even
more backward” than the minorities living in the mountains, who have always
been considered to be most backward by the incoming Chinese and the Tai
themselves.5
Many Tai teachers and cadres, especially those living in Jinghong City, share
this critical view of the institution of temple education. The Tai who have a
Chinese education themselves would never let their sons participate in
Buddhist education, because it would prevent them from moving upward
in Chinese society. However, they tend to be more open toward the idea of
cooperation between schools and temples. In the early 1950s some monks
were invited to teach in the new schools, but during the resurgence of reli-
gious activities since 1980, cooperation between monasteries and schools has
been extremely limited. Usually monks and teachers are in contact with each
other only when teachers go to monasteries to inform monks that novices
must go to school, or when monks go to schools to obtain permission for
novices in school to participate in temple activities. There is a strong conflict
of interest between monks and teachers, which was expressed very clearly in
a junior secondary school in a small town where the resurgence of religion
has been very strong. In this school thirteen out of fifteen teachers were Han,
whereas 40 percent of the students were Tai and only 10 percent were Han.
When I visited the school, one of the most important Buddhist festivals in
the township was under way, and Tai people came from all over the neigh-
borhood to celebrate for two whole days. However, the students in the school
had no time off. The teachers’ attitudes toward this religious event were
expressed clearly by a teacher who firmly stated, “This has nothing to do
with us!”
A few highly educated Han and Tai in Sipsong Panna have a more posi-
tive view of temple education, mainly because they regard it is an opportu-
nity for boys who cannot pass the examinations within the school system.
However, with recent attempts by scholarly monks in Sipsong Panna to set
up higher education for novices, a more respectful attitude toward temple
5.	Although these government officials would paraphrase the official policy when talk-
ing in their office with other cadres walking in and out, many were more radical in their
opposition to temple education when talking in private. A few (retired) cadres were, on the
contrary, more positive when talking privately.
118EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
education seems to be slowly developing among some Tai with a higher
Chinese education, who (mostly privately) acknowledge that Buddhist edu-
cation has not prevented Thailand from modernizing, and that it is therefore
wrong to blame the tradition of educating novices for slow economic devel-
opment among the Tai in Sipsong Panna. By claiming that Buddhist educa-
tion is changing, they indirectly reject the common Chinese view of temple
education as static. However, it is beyond dispute that temple education today
is an obstacle to the spread of Chinese education and thus Chinese culture,
language, nationalism, and knowledge of Chinese history. This is the main
reason why Chinese authorities, including cadres and teachers, are firmly
against it.
RESPONSES TO “RELIGIOUS FEVER”:
SPECIAL “NOVICES CLASSES” AND REGULATIONS
Between 1980 and 1983 the government in Sipsong Panna faced a situation
in which school attendance was less than 60 percent and the drop-out rate
very high, especially south of the Mekong River. This was a result partly of
the resumption of sending boys to the temples, and partly of the new sys-
tem of contracting fields, which caused parents to keep their children home
to work. Some schools were almost empty, some had only female pupils, and
most boys dropped out after a few years. A number of measures were intro-
duced to force parents to send their children to school, and today the edu-
cation departments, teachers, and school administrators still discuss how to
increase the number of graduates at all levels. Almost 90 percent of children
start school in Sipsong Panna today, but only 55.5 percent complete five years
of study (Sipsong Panna Prefecture Education Commission 1992: 2).6
Although 67 percent of novices enrolled in school in 1994, few stayed there
for more than a few years.
After the start of “religious fever,” the government sent teachers, cadres,
and representatives from the government-sponsored Buddhist Association
6.	Primary school education in Sipsong Panna is six years, but in the countryside it usu-
ally is divided into four years of lower and two years of higher primary school. An exami-
nation after four years determines whether children are qualified to continue on to higher
primary school.
119EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
to Tai villages to persuade parents to send their children to school. It was
emphasized that boys were allowed to become novices only after graduation
from primary school, but in practice this rule proved impossible to enforce.
The government decided to make the local township governments respon-
sible for finding methods to increase the school enrollment rate (ruxue lii)
and the retention rate (gonggu Iti) in the villages. Generally, it was decided
that monks could wear their yellow robes in school, take a few days off for
special Buddhist activities, and start school even after the usual age of seven.
Today the rule is that novices are obliged to start school before they are twelve.
They are also allowed special treatment in boarding schools, where, for
instance, they share rooms with other novices or get upper bunks so that
they do not have to sleep under the bunk of a layman. One Tai teacher
explained,
In the 1980s the novices did not want to go to school, so in 1987 the cen-
tral government started to pay attention to this problem, and the govern-
ment ruled that novices were obliged to go to school. In spite of enjoying
wide religious freedom, the monks also have to follow the laws of the state,
so they started to send their novices to school. Now they do come to school,
but they do not study. They think it is enough to be in the temple, and
they think they are like adults because of the high status they enjoy in their
villages. Of course they all learn to read old Tai pretty well, but anyway
they use it only for reading the Buddhist texts.
One of the most controversial experiments was carried out in Mengzhe
Township in Menghai County, one of the areas where the religious influence
is strongest. In 1980 only 71.5 percent of children started school there, so in
1987 the local government decided to set up a special “novices class” inside
the main temple to teach novices Chinese and mathematics. In 1988 the class
consisted of sixty novices between the ages of nine and nineteen from sur-
rounding villages. The experiment lasted only two years. Although researchers
and educators in Kunming spoke very positively of it, the local administra-
tion decided to abandon it because teaching was impossible when novices
returned to lay life, and age differences made it impossible to accomplish the
original, ambitious plan of teaching each student for five or six years.
120EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
Menghai is a poor county and lacked financial support for the experiment.
Some local people also suggested that local monks might have been poorly
motivated.
A few other experiments with special novices classes within schools were
carried out in the mid- and late 1980s, but today there are no such classes in
Sipsong Panna in temples or schools. Novices in schools are distributed among
the regular classes and follow the regular curriculum. The temple that ran
the experiment is located next to the village primary school, yet the monk I
talked to did not know how many of the temple’s thirty-six novices went to
the school. He assumed that the novices were in a special class in the school,
but in fact they were not. Out of seventy-two pupils in the school, seventeen
were novices. According to one of the three teachers, novices study for only
a few years. As in many village schools in Sipsong Panna, all three teachers
were Han, and only one understood a litde bit of Tai. All students were Tai
and understood very little Chinese during their early years in school.
Teachers who have novices in their classes often complain that they are
impossible to teach and run away as soon as they encounter problems. If one
or two drop out, the rest quickly follow. One teacher explained: “The
novices enjoy high status in the local society, and therefore they do not lis-
ten to the teachers. They listen only to the monks. When they are in the
monastery, parents also do not interfere. Teachers are afraid to scold or demand
anything from the novices, because then they are even more likely to run away
from school.” Economic pressure has proved to be the most efficient way of
forcing parents and monks to send boys and novices to school, but it is still
rare for a township government to decide to fine parents for not sending their
sons to school. Mengzhe Township has high numbers of novices, monks, and
temples. Approximately one thousand new pupils start school every year, but
because only about 50 percent complete primary school, some administra-
tive villages in Mengzhe began fining parents who do not send their children
to school. One village decided that if parents want a son to become a novice
(around the age of seven or eight), they must pay a deposit of fifty yuan to
the village administration. If the boy graduates after six years of primary school,
the parents get the money back. If a son manages to pass the examination to
junior secondary school, the parents get an extra reward, but this rarely hap-
pens. Teachers now have to report to the county Bureau of Education every
121EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
year about the number of novices in their village, how many of them go to
school, and how many have dropped out during the last year. Approximately
50 percent of the novices in Menghai County today go to school.7
Currently there are eighty novices studying in Mengzhe Central Primary
School (Mengzhe Zhongxin Xiaoxue),8 and in village schools all over Sipsong
Panna novices participate in the same classes as other pupils. However, beyond
the primary school level, very few novices or monks attend school. Of the
few boys who have been novices and manage to pass the examinations for
further studies, most return to lay life before continuing their studies. How-
ever, there are exceptions, especially from Mengzhe Township, where in recent
years some novices have continued on to secondary education and a few (fewer
than five) have gone on to higher education.
REGULAR SCHOOLS, TAI CLASSES,
AND MINORITY SCHOOLS
The provincial and central education departments have accepted that Sipsong
Panna will achieve only six years of prefecture-wide compulsory education
by the year 2000. Only the three county seats and a few townships in Sipsong
Panna have already achieved this. In 1990 minority minzu represent 73.1 per-
cent of the population and 76 percent of primary school students in Sipsong
Panna. However, beyond primary school the proportion of non-Han stu-
dents drops: in junior secondary school 58 percent are minorities, in senior
secondary school 31-37 percent, in vocational schools 70.78 percent, and in
specialized secondary schools 59.9 percent. In primary schools 60 percent of
teachers belong to minority minzu, compared to only 35 percent of all
Sipsong Panna’s teachers and school administrators (Sipsong Panna Prefecture
Education Commission 1992:2).
7.	According to an interview with officials at the Menghai County Bureau of Education
in 1994.
8.	Each township has a zhongxin xiaoxue, which is a full primary school where pupils
living in the township and the best pupils from surrounding villages can study for the last
two years of primary school. Unlike the village schools, these central primary schools fol-
low all regulations concerning curriculum. Their teachers are generally better educated, and
they often have fewer students per teacher than do village primary schools. They often have
boarding facilities for the students from the villages, who bring and cook their own food.
122EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
Regular Schools
The best regular schools in Sipsong Panna, in terms of educational level of
teachers and the number of students who continue on to the next level, are
the keypoint primary and secondary schools in Jinghong and schools located
on state rubber plantations (state farms). The Bureau of Education does not
administer the schools on state farms (nongchang), which have their own
administration and policies on recruiting students and teachers. Since about
85 percent of the people living and working on state farms are Han immi-
grants and their families, most students in these schools are Han. Seventeen
percent of the population in Sipsong Panna is connected to state farms, and
most of the minorities on the farms (approximately 15 percent of the farm
population) have been recruited outside of Panna or among the Akha.9
The biggest of the ten state farms is Jinghong State Farm, where more
than thirty thousand people live. It has a full primary and secondary school
with more than 1,700 students. The schools have 103 teachers, of whom one
is Tai and the rest are Han. Normally students are recruited from within the
state farm, but students from outside are allowed to enter if they pay four
hundred yuan extra per year in primary school and seven hundred yuan in
senior secondary school (in 1994). According to the headmaster, “very few”
students in state farm schools are non-Han. The administration would not
give exact figures, but other interviews showed that only occasionally does
a Tai or other local non-Han from outside the farm enroll. This happens in
cases where parents have a connection to a farm or when an outside school
has an agreement with a state farm to send one or two of its best students to
the state farm’s school after graduation from primary school. State-farm
schools have no lessons in Tai, which is considered completely irrelevant since
there are no Tai students. As in other schools, there is no question of offer-
ing Tai lessons to non-Tai students, even though the Tai constitute the major-
ity in Sipsong Panna and it is a Tai Autonomous Prefecture.
The two local keypoint schools, which have the best educational facilities
and financial support outside the state farms, also have the highest percent-
age of Han students and teachers. Both schools were started in the mid-1950s
and have had an increasingly high percentage of Han students, due to the
9.	See also Hansen 1999a.
123EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
growing number of Han cadres in the capital, Jinghong. Students today need
280 points out of 600 to be admitted into a keypoint secondary school, as
compared to 200 points for the other regular secondary school in Jinghong.
Members of minority minzu get 10 extra points. All representatives of the
secondary school’s leadership and 78 out of 84 teachers are Han. In 1992 the
school had 1,370 students, of which 227 were Tai and 830 were Han. Most
minority students are the children of cadres in Jinghong, and many of the
students classified as Dai have one Han parent. Mainly because of advantages
within the educational system, all over China most children of mixed Han-
minority marriages are registered as members of the minority minzu of the
non-Han parent. In Sipsong Panna most children of interethnic marriages
have a Han father and a Tai mother. From an educational point of view, they
have the advantage of being brought up speaking the Chinese language while
being able to exploit the favorable admission rules for minority students. Only
a few of the non-Han students manage to continue on to higher education;
in 1993 and 1994 not a single Tai graduate from the keypoint senior secondary
school passed the university entrance examination. An administrator at the
school explains this in terms of a common cultural deficiency of the Tai:
Han students generally work much harder than the Tai. The Tai are not
like us Han, who find education extremely important. The Tai children are
not good at “eating bitterness” [chi ku]. Their economy is rather good, they
are satisfied with life, and they do not want to work hard for something.
This is not like the Jinuo and the Hani, who are used to “eating bitter-
ness.” This is a Tai autonomous prefecture, and this problem has always
existed. We are discussing what to do about it, how to help the Tai stu-
dents. We want to make more efforts in our “family work” [jiating
gongzuo], where we talk to parents and try to persuade them to support
their children’s going to school.
When the school was started in 1957, it had one special class for Tai students
who learned new Tai, but this was quickly cancelled. Today there are no lessons
in Tai, and the administration has no plans for restarting Tai classes, which
are considered to be relevant only in villages where children do not know
Chinese: “All of our students understand Chinese. We have no language prob-
lems and do not need to start any Tai lessons” (Han administrator).
124EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
A common attitude of teachers and administrators at the best Chinese
schools is that the teaching of Tai language is necessary only to facilitate the
learning of Chinese. It has no value in itself, nor is there any reason that Han
students living in the Tai autonomous prefecture should learn the Tai lan-
guage. It has no prestige, no practical function at higher levels of education,
and teachers and cadres in Sipsong Panna often say that “Tai language is use-
less when crossing the Mekong River.”
Tai Classes
Primary schools in Sipsong Panna may decide to offer classes in Tai language,
and school teachers in Tai villages are encouraged by the Bureau of Education
to use Tai to explain Chinese terms and sentences that students do not under-
stand. In reality this is seldom practiced, due to the shortage of Tai teachers.
This problem exists in other minority villages in Sipsong Panna as well where
most teachers do not speak the local language. In principle, the Bureau of
Education wants to appoint local primary school teachers who speak the lan-
guage of the local pupils. However, such people still are in short supply, and
so is outside funding to train more Tai teachers. The issue of bilingual edu-
cation is normally addressed only in relation to the Tai, because other local
ethnic groups—such as the Akha, Blang, and Jinuo—do not have scripts. Al-
though a considerable number of them know Tai, they never participate in
the Tai lessons in schools.
In the mid- and late 1980s several primary schools offered teaching in Tai
language, but most stopped after a few years. Today many full primary schools
in Tai administrative villages and county seats offer Tai lessons, but only to
a very limited degree and for a small percentage of students. The major rea-
sons for this are the poor financial situation of many schools, the shortage of
Tai teachers versed in Tai script, and, not least, disagreement within the gov-
ernment and among school staff on the need for and utility of Tai lessons.
Most primary schools that offer Tai lessons have one class of students who,
in addition to studying the regular curriculum, participate in one or two hours
of Tai per week for the last one to three years of primary school. In 1986 the
prefectural government decided to abandon the use and teaching of new Tai
and return to a standardized version of old Tai. This created problems be-
cause a whole generation of Tai had learned only new Tai in schools. Girls
125EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
and women who had attended schools or literacy courses since the mid-1950s,
and boys and young men who had grown up when few were able to become
novices and learn old Tai in the temples, had all learned new Tai or Chinese.
The local newspaper, which had always used new Tai, started using old Tai
in 1993. According to one of its editors, many people were against this because
they were not able to read old Tai, and the journalists themselves had prob-
lems adapting to it. On the other hand, many of the Tai who had been against
the reintroduction of old Tai in schools seemed by the mid-1990s to be grad-
ually changing their opinions because of the increasing contact with Thailand,
Burma, and Laos. Therefore, it was surprising that in 1996 the government
decided once again to return to new Tai. Because, as before, teaching mate-
rial had to be rewritten, all Tai classes seem to have been interrupted during
the 1996-97 academic year, waiting for the new teaching material. Obviously
this move will add to the confusion resulting from teaching two versions of
the script, and traditional Tai will again be taught only to male novices in the
monasteries.10
When the government decided to return to old Tai in 1986, new teaching
material for Tai classes in primary schools had to be edited, and this was based
on the first old Tai teaching material created in the early 1950s. All schools
that offered teaching in Tai during my fieldwork in 1994-95 used old Tai.
However, the majority of students in secondary schools had learned new Tai,
if indeed they had learned Tai at all. Often teachers and even headmasters at
schools were not aware that their own school had started teaching old Tai,
and many teachers and cadres seemed to believe that Tai education was much
more widespread than in fact it was. This was partly a reflection of a com-
mon tendency of teachers and administrators (especially the non-Tai) to regard
bilingual education as unimportant. Some had never paid attention to the
actual level and scope of Tai teaching in the area, while others believed (or
wanted me to believe) that Tai teaching was very widespread as a result of
the official policy of supporting Tai education in schools. The majority of pri-
10.	It is still unclear what the consequences of the new decision will be. Informal talks
with locals in 1996 suggested that some Tai teachers felt very confused about the decision.
The only explanation I was given was that new Tai is easier to learn and to use for computer
programming than is old Tai.
126EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
mary schools that teach Tai arrange one special Tai class. Pupils usually may
decide themselves if they want to participate, and although Han and other
minzu are allowed to attend these classes, they never do. Most Tai from these
classes graduate with an examination that gives them extra points for the
entrance into junior secondary school." The keypoint primary school in
Jinghong City has had so-called “bilingual classes” (shuangyu ban) since 1978.
Most of the sixty pupils in the two Tai classes in 1994 came from the nearby
village ofManjinglan, and only a few were from Jinghong. The Han students
(42 percent of all pupils) never participated. The children in the “bilingual
class” learn Tai for two hours a week from the third to the sixth year of pri-
mary school. According to the headmaster, “The bilingual class is not so
important here, because there are so many Han, and the Tai quickly learn
Chinese.” A number of other primary schools started teaching Tai in the mid-
1980s, but many of these classes stopped after a few years due to the lack of
teachers or because a few hours of Tai did not prevent boys from going into
the monasteries.
Most of the Tai students in secondary and higher education who came
from the northern part of Sipsong Panna or from Jinghong had never
learned Tai in school, whereas the majority of those from village schools and
from south of the Mekong River had learned some Tai (either in school or
at home). Some used it for writing letters and taking notes in class, but most
of those who had not also been novices found that they had never learned
to read and write Tai properly, or they had quickly forgotten it because they
seldom used it after primary school.
One of the few primary schools that experimented with real bilingual edu-
cation was situated in an administrative village in Jinghong. Here children
in the bilingual class learned only Tai for the first year. In the second year
they started to learn Chinese taught in Tai. From then on more and more
teaching was conducted in Chinese, but children continued learning Tai
throughout the six years of primary school. The first bilingual class started
in 1989 and the second in 1994, and beginning in 1995 the school hoped to
11.	Out of three hundred possible points, participation in the Tai classes and exami-
nation contribute between ten and thirty extra. Regular subjects contribute up to one hun-
dred points at the examination.
127EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
start a new Tai class each year. However, this experiment was interrupted in
1996 with the decision to return again to new Tai, and it was unclear whether
the school would find financial support to continue the bilingual classes at
all. Only two out of ten classes in 1994-95 were bilingual Tai classes, but the
normal classes also received two hours of Tai per week from the third year
onward. Ninety-eight percent of the students and half of the teachers in this
school were Tai. Most of the Tai I talked to in the six villages in this district
were very positive toward bilingual education, including those whose own
children did not participate in it. The county Bureau of Education still con-
sidered these to be experimental classes, and there was strong disagreement
on whether to continue and expand them.
The only school beyond the primary level that teaches Tai in Sipsong Panna
is the Normal School, which offers one bilingual Tai class a year, the purpose
of which is to train teachers to instruct in the Tai language and to teach Tai
script in primary schools. At the Normal School 28.7 percent of students (and
18 percent of teachers) are Tai. When the first Tai classes after the Cultural
Revolution started in 1984, all students had to participate. According to one
of the teachers and to administrators, however, students did not attend these
classes. They considered it a waste of time and too difficult when they did
not know spoken Tai. In response, the school substituted a bilingual Tai class
(first in new Tai, then in old Tai in 1990-97, and again in new Tai thereafter).12
The textbooks for the study of Tai language were edited in the prefecture.
They contained texts about the history of Sipsong Panna, the chronology of
the chao phnendin, Han and Tai traditional stories, and instructions on writ-
ing letters, applications, and so on. Students themselves could not choose
between the bilingual Tai class and regular classes, but all who were admit-
ted to the bilingual class had to understand spoken Tai when they started.
The attitude of students and graduates from the bilingual Tai classes toward
their education was generally very positive, and several hoped to be able to
start up evening courses in Tai for adults in the villages where they would be
sent as teachers after graduation. Although most students criticized the tra-
dition of sending boys to the monasteries, they maintained that the novices
at least had the advantage of learning Tai script: “It is both good and bad
12.	Some students and teachers from the regular classes suggested that all students at
the Normal School ought to learn spoken Tai, but so far this has not been implemented.
128EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
that most boys become novices. The bad thing is that they often stay at the
monasteries and do not go home to help, that they are too sluggish and do
not learn enough. On the other hand it is difficult to learn Tai in school, and
in the monastery they at least have the chance to learn it” (Tai female stu-
dent). The only other institution in China where the Tai language is taught
beyond the primary school level is the Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities,
which has a four-year university course in Sipsong Panna Tai (and in Dehong
Tai).I? Most of the Tai from Sipsong Panna who graduate from this depart-
ment are sent back to Panna as teachers, translators, or employees of the gov-
ernment, local television station, or newspaper. Some find work in private
companies, which tend to pay higher wages.
Whereas most interviewed people in Sipsong Panna agreed on the use-
fulness of the Tai course at the Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities and the
necessity for the bilingual class at the Normal School, they disagreed on the
issues of bilingual education and of the teaching of Tai in regular primary
and secondary schools. Teachers, school administrators, and members of the
Bureau of Education in the three counties and the prefecture were roughly
divided between a majority who saw the teaching of Tai as a temporary neces-
sity, and a minority who wanted expansion and improvement of Tai-language
instruction in primary schools, in examinations, and in secondary education.
The main arguments for maintaining but not expanding Tai lessons in pri-
mary schools were that they were considered necessary only until Tai under-
stood and read Chinese, and that they provided a means of persuading Tai
parents to send their children, especially their boys, to participate in Chinese
education. Therefore, some administrators emphasized that the goal of the
bilingual Tai class in the Normal School was not to spread the knowledge of
Tai language and culture, but to facilitate its gradual, natural, and voluntary
disappearance:
The final goal is to make all people in China speak Chinese \jmtonghua\.
So the final goal of the bilingual class is to make everybody in Sipsong Panna
speak our mother tongue. They can use Tai to explain in schools when nec-
essary, but the idea is certainly not that everybody should learn Tai script
13.	Most students in the Tai department at yin also take two years of standard Thai
which has become very popular because of the increasing business contacts with Thailand.
129EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
or that Tai language should be spread further. There are too many languages
in China—it would be impossible to teach them all. Teachers in primary
schools may themselves decide when it is necessary to speak Tai. They have
to teach Tai script, but not to all the pupils. (Han Chinese teacher and admin-
istrator in a secondary school)
Some cadres feared that because the Tai were concerned about learning their
own script, they risked becoming “more backward” than the minorities from
the mountains, who had always been considered the most backward. They
saw the rapid development of Chinese education among the small Jinuo
minority, in particular, as proof of the educational advantages and civilizing
effects of teaching more Chinese and less Tai. Another common argument
was that the Tai language was simply not useful in a modernizing society:
“You see, it would be impossible anyway to teach everything in Tai. Take for
instance this fountain pen. The Tai do not have a word for ‘fountain pen,’
and this is even more so the case in modern science. So the Tai language is
too backward to use as a medium for teaching” (Han teacher). One of the
monks I interviewed, who also had a Chinese education, agreed that the Tai
language had not modernized, but argued that this was due to previous repres-
sive government policies. He expressed the fear that Tai would turn into a
purely religious script unless serious attempts were made to expand its teach-
ing and use in schools. In this respect he put into words what several other
Tai intellectuals and monks expressed indirectly:
Tai script has become too backward. For years old Tai was forbidden and
people were forced to learn the revised script. But new Tai is useless and
impractical. Even if you have learned it you cannot read the old texts. Because
the Tai script was said to be a “feudal reactionary script” \fengjian fcmdong
wen], it did not have any chance to develop. Today only a few use it for
writing, and it is very confusing to find out how to write or translate new
words like “television,” for instance. In this way it risks becoming a script
used only for religious purposes and for telling the old stories.
A small but growing number of Tai teachers, cadres, and students had started
to raise (mosdy in private) the question of introducing the Tai language into
130EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
secondary schools, expanding its use in primary schools, and making the study
of Tai history and culture part of the common school curriculum and exam-
inations. They criticized the fact that parents were forced to send their boys
to the temples if they wanted them to learn Tai, and some believed that schools
would be much more attractive to the common people if they were based on
the Tai language and included Tai history and literature in the curriculum.
Others had a more practical point of view and argued that schools would
become relevant and successful among the Tai peasants only when they taught
useful knowledge of agriculture in the Tai language, or guaranteed gradu-
ates attractive job opportunities. Some of the more pragmatic Han cadres
felt that teaching the Tai language in schools should be extended mainly so
that parents would not send their boys to the temples.
In the meantime many peasants continue to send their boys to the monas-
teries, although this does not necessarily imply that they are directly against
their children’s receiving a Chinese education. However, due to the lack of
cooperation between monasteries and schools and to the rejection of
Buddhism and Tai language, history, and culture inherent in the Chinese edu-
cational system, Chinese schools are less attractive. This is, of course, further
influenced by the fact that parents must pay for school, children sometimes
must travel far to attend school, and many parents consider it a waste when
their children do not continue in the school system, do not get a job, and
end up as peasants who have not learned anything about peasantry during
their years in school.
Boarding and Minority Schools
Since 1980 the central Ministry of Education has required that boarding and
semiboarding14 schools be promoted in mountainous and border areas in order
to solve the problem of low attendance and high drop-out rates and to make
sure that students attend full-time, standardized schools. As in the rest of
China, the boarding-school system is praised in Sipsong Panna today not only
for being a practical and economic solution in a poor rural area, but also for
14.	In a semiboarding school, students may stay at the school for lunch. Each student
gets financial support of seven yuan per month.
ITEDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
preventing students from dropping out of school and for making them do
their homework. In addition, several Han cadres and educators in Sipsong
Panna are very direct in describing the boarding-school system as an effec-
tive way of changing Tai customs and the “traditional way of thinking” (chuan-
tong de sixiang). Most educators in Sipsong Panna were sincerely concerned
about developing Chinese education among the Tai and saw the boarding
system as the only way:
The minority children’s surroundings have to be changed if we are to man-
age to educate them. When they come here, they learn more, see new things,
and develop their culture. Therefore it is good to have a boarding school
for them in the city. It is much better for the children to develop here. If
you do not change their environment, they do not change, but continue
their habit of sending boys to the temples and living in the old way. (Han
headmaster at a minority school)
There are four minority secondary schools in Sipsong Panna, and all students
at these schools live there. In addition, some boarding students from rural
areas attend regular secondary schools. Several full primary schools offer board-
ing facilities for higher primary students from villages.
Students of all ethnic groups whom I talked to at the minority schools
looked, for the most part, positively on the boarding system, although for
reasons other than those mentioned above. They were happy that they did
not have to participate in work at home and therefore had more time to study.
They found it hard to be able to visit home only once every six months, but
had established close friendships with other students and were happy for the
support they got from teachers in their spare time. During their education,
many changed their perceptions of their religion, of other ethnic groups in
China, and of their Tai identity.
All minority schools have rules about how many students should be Tai,
and each year a number of students from all local minzu must be accepted,
even though their points are not high enough. These schools are popular
mainly because students get financial support from the government. However,
because it is still a financial burden for many families to have a child in sec-
ondary school, they often find it a waste if children do not manage to con-
132EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
tinue on to higher education or to a specialized secondary school that guar-
antees a job.'5
Students from regular middle schools tended to look down upon minor-
ity schools as second-rate, and many teachers complained about die difficul-
ties of teaching in these schools, where less than 5 percent of students are
Han and the vast majority come from villages where knowledge of Chinese
is limited. Many students from the other schools held the erroneous view
that, unlike themselves, students in the minority schools took special courses
on the different minzu in Sipsong Panna and on Tai language. The minority
schools in Sipsong Panna follow exacdy the same standard curriculum as the
regular secondary schools. The differences lie in the method of recruiting stu-
dents, the special support for the schools, the fact that all students live at school,
and of course the fact that minority minzu from rural areas constitute the
vast majority of students. The minority schools were criticized by some teach-
ers and cadres for isolating minorities and thereby preventing them from adapt-
ing to Chinese language and being influenced by “the more advanced” Han.
On the other hand, if more minority students were to attend the regular sec-
ondary schools, admission rates would have to be lowered, special language
considerations would have to be adopted, and economic support would have
to be granted to these students. Most cadres in Jinghong and the other county
capitals want their own children to get the best possible Chinese education
to ensure their further studies and job opportunities. They would be unlikely
to accept what they would regard as lowered standards for the sake of more
minority students from the villages, and there is no question of introducing
Tai language in these schools, because it would only make studies more difficult
15.	The Prefectural Minority School (Xishuangbanna Zhou Minzu Zhongxue) has the
best facilities and the most financial support, and has received donations from Japan. In
recent years, state support for the school was reduced so that in 1994 parents had to pay
about fifty yuan per month for food and living expenses. In all minority schools (as in reg-
ular schools) students have to pay for books, clothing, and medicine, and since 1995 stu-
dents in all senior secondary' schools have had to pay twenty' yuan per month for tuition.
Financial support for boarding-school students varies, but since 1992 each school has divided
the money according to students’ academic effort, participation in cleaning up, obedience,
etc. In secondary' boarding schools, on the other hand, students may' get from seven yuan
(for students with the lowest support in a minority school) to fifty yuan (for students with
the maximum support in a specialized secondary school).
133EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
for the non-Tai students. Therefore, the system of special minority schools
with no special curriculum is likely to continue.
CREATING BACKWARDNESS:
TAI CULTURE IN SCHOOL EDUCATION
Except for the Tai in the bilingual class at the Normal School, minority stu-
dents in Sipsong Panna study the same textbooks as the Naxi and most other
students in the rest of China. Together with other students in Yunnan, they
also study Yunnan history, and some classes in secondary education in
Sipsong Panna study the recent, locally edited Geography of Sipsong Panna,
(Xishuangbanna dili). When asked directly what they have learned about their
own ethnic group’s history, literature, and religion in school, most students
in Sipsong Panna, like those in Lijiang, answered without hesitation,
“Nothing.” However, when they talked more generally about what they knew
about the different minzu in China, and when I read their textbooks and lis-
tened to some of their classes, it was clear that they do learn about their own
minzu. However, most of what they learn is presented indirectly and tends
to convey a negative image of their own cultural heritage. For instance, the
fact that Tai language and literature do not have any place in secondary edu-
cation transmits to students the message that they are not important sub-
jects, not relevant for modern education or even in opposition to it.
Like Naxi students, the Tai are imbued, through their school education,
with the official construction of the fifty-six minzu in China and, not least,
their respective levels of development. The Tai students often realize for the
first time that their classification as Dai links them with Tai people in other
parts of China with whom they have no contact and of whom they know
nothing. All of the Tai students I talked to were (sometimes painfully) aware
that they belong to what is considered a backward minority group. Some
found a certain comfort in the fact that the other minorities in Sipsong Panna
were considered even more backward because they had no script or “real”
religion and were poor. Before entering school, Tai students from villages
had not been used to interacting with the minorities from the mountains,
and many of them tended to regard these groups as inferior to themselves.
This view is to a certain extent confirmed when they encounter the official
textbook descriptions of the social evolution of the minzu. The following
13+EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
dialogue is from a class on politics for the second year of junior secondary
school in 1994. The subject was “the era of civilization” (wenming shidai).
Approximately half of the students were Tai. The other half belonged to var-
ious other ethnic groups in Sipsong Panna such as Akha, Blang, Jinuo, and
Lahu, who have generally been described in Chinese publications as occu-
pying the low evolutionary stage of “primitive society” at the time of the
Communist takeover in 1949. These non-Tai students belong to minorities
without a script:
teacher: What is the characteristic of a “primitive society”?
class (in unison): It has no script.
teacher: Right. Therefore mankind in primitive society had not yet
entered the era of civilization. At the time of slave society, mankind
entered the era of civilization. Before the time of slave society, peo-
ple had no culture [wenhua], no science [kexue], The most impor-
tant characteristic of the era of civilization is the existence of script.
In primitive society, people used knots, carvings on wood, and so
forth to remember tilings. Genuine script developed from picto-
graphic script. Therefore we have the following stages: from no script,
to knots and carvings, to pictographic script, and finally to genuine
script. Then, why was there no division between physical labor [tili
laodong] and mental labor [naoli laodong] in primitive society?
class: Because there was no script.
The Tai students learn that the other minzu in Sipsong Panna were more back-
ward than themselves at the time of Liberation, but they also learn that they
belong to a group more backward than the majority. They learn that (together
with such groups as Tibetans and Uygurs) they were still at the stage of “feu-
dal serf society” ifengjian nongnu zhidu) in 1949 and that today the area they
inhabit is still considered economically and culturally backward.16 This was
put very directly by a junior secondary school teacher in 1994 who was lec-
turing on the unequal economic development in China to a third-year class
16.	See also chapter 5 in connection with education in Lijiang. On the different stages
of the evolution of the minzu, see, e.g., Sixiang zhengzhi 1993: 119-21 for the third year of
senior secondary school.
135EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
in a junior secondary school. Although the economy was the main subject,
it was implicitly understood that cultural development was always directly
related to the level of economic development. It was also obvious that groups’
respective levels were directly connected to political and administrative hier-
archies. Thus, the provincial capital would definitely be more “developed”
than, for instance, a village. The teacher made the point that “backwardness”
is a relative term:
teacher: Is there a gap between our Panna [Sipsong Panna] and
Kunming?
class [shouting]: Yes.
teacher: Right. Our Panna is very backward. Is there a gap between
Jinghong City and Menghai County?
class: Yes.
teacher: Right. Menghai is more backward. Is there a gap between
Menghai County and the small villages?
class: Yes.
teacher: Right. We all know which is most backward.
The methods of teaching leave no room for discussion or questioning of text-
book interpretations of minzu and cultural development. The most common
way of teaching is to follow the book strictly, with students answering ques-
tions by repeating sentences from the book, usually in unison. As mentioned
earlier in connection with the Naxi, the classification of minzu is presented
as a scientific truth, and students learn it by heart without questioning the
origin and validity of the criteria for classification. Their previous concep-
tions of the various local ethnic groups were not as strict and definite as those
they now come to perceive as scientifically proven and final.
At the same time, students learn about the Chinese government’s mi-
nority policy, which advocates equality of the minzu and equal rights to
economic development and education. They learn how the government
established autonomous minority regions to ensure minorities’ rights to self-
determination, and how the government even helped certain minorities “to
jump over some stages of history in their development” (Sixiung zhengzhi
1993: third year of senior secondary school, 127). The language in the books
136EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
is generally positive and presents a picture of the minzu as part of “one fam-
ily” that makes up a common nation or nationality—the Zhonghua minzu—
to which all minzu have contributed: the Han mainly with science, and the
minorities mainly with songs, dances, and medicinal herbs (e.g., ibid.: 123).
Indirectly the positive language and the interpretation of relationships
among the minzu make it clear and unquestionable that not only the Chinese
government, but also the advanced Han as a whole, have helped the more
backward minorities to develop. Before Liberation the Mongols with all their
leather were not able to produce leather shoes, the Tibetans with all their
timber could not make matches, some minorities still practiced slash-and-
burn agriculture, minority areas had no institutions of higher education, and
areas such as Tibet did not have one public road. However, the text contin-
ues, “today the differences between the levels of cultural and economic devel-
opment in the minority areas and the Han areas are decreasing” (ibid.: 130).
The Tai students, like those in the rest of China, do not have any specific
courses in religion, but teaching about religion is part of the political lessons.
Because most Tai students (with the exception of some in Jinghong City)
have been brought up as Buddhists, it is not surprising that antireligious teach-
ing in the schools seems to have affected many Tai students’ and graduates’
self-esteem and perception of their own religion, history, and customs.
Many Tai students found a certain relief in the fact that they are described as
having a “real” religion that is acceptable in China and not just “superstition,”
which is more “backward” and not publicly tolerated. Unfortunately for the
other minorities in Sipsong Panna, their religious practices are not consid-
ered to be related to one of the world religions and may easily fall under the
category' of “superstition.” In junior secondary' school, pupils learn that super-
stitious people believe in gods (shen) and spirits (gui) that “do not really exist”
(Sixiang zhengzhi 1993: first year of junior secondary' school, 67). Superstition
(unlike China’s “five major religions” of Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Prot-
estantism, and Daoism) is “a result of human ignorance” (yumei wuzhi) in
earlier human society, when peoples’ ability to reflect upon things was devel-
oping but they were not capable of producing scientific knowledge (ibid.:
67). According to the political material taught in school, superstition pre-
vents the development of modern science and keeps people in ignorance and
poverty'. In senior secondary school, students read about the characteristics
137EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
of “primitive religion” (yuanshi zongjiady but it remains unclear what the
actual difference is between this and “superstition.” According to the book
Ideology and Politics (Sixiang zhengzhi; 1993) the characteristics of religion
are use of religious texts, teaching of doctrine, use of a church or temple build-
ing, and existence of priests or monks. These are not regarded as character-
istic of “primitive religion,” which has more in common with “superstition.”
All of the Akha, Blang, and Jinuo students I talked to were very embarrassed
about the religious practices in their villages, which they themselves called
“superstition.” The Tai students, on the other hand, were very conscious that
theirs was a world religion accepted by the government.
The students are presented with a very simple, basically Marxist analysis
that describes religion as a social phenomenon that evolved in the class soci-
ety and functioned as a means of suppressing the working people, who used
it to escape poverty and misery. Therefore, religion in the long run is doomed
to disappear in the socialist society where the exploiting class has been erad-
icated and where science, political consciousness, and human cognition con-
tinue to develop (Sixiang zhengzhi 1993: third year of senior secondary school,
139). On a general level, the political teaching material explains, religion in
socialist Chinese society is no longer directly connected to a small, exploit-
ing class except in the few cases where members of minorities advocate seces-
sion from China and use religion for this purpose (ibid.: 147-48). It refers
to the constitution, which guarantees freedom to believe or not to believe
in religion and—of greatest relevance for the Tai—which maintains that reli-
gion is not allowed to interfere with or obstruct the national education sys-
tem. Thus, the students study the Communist interpretation of why religions
still exist in the socialist society, how they will eventually disappear, why the
government allows freedom of religion, and what this freedom implies.
Students learn nothing about the teachings of the various religions, and when
asked what they have learned about their own religion, most Tai students
answer “nothing” or that “religion is free in China.”
The government has realized the potential of tourism in Sipsong Panna,
and this has resulted in the establishment of a one-year “tourism class” at the
prefectural minority school, where students learn a bit more about their own
area. Students are junior-secondary-school graduates who pay tuition (1,442
yuan in 1994) to learn minority dances, additional Chinese, a bit of Thai,
botany, travel psychology (liiyou xinlixue), norms of behavior (xingwei
138EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
jyuifan), etiquette (liyi), and hygiene. Most graduates from this class become
staff in the new tourist hotels or tour guides for the numerous groups that
visit the area for a few days. Ironically, one of the things the students learn
is “customs of the Tai,” which one Tai girl from this class described as “very
useful because otherwise we would not know what our own customs and
culture are.”
THE NATIONAL MESSAGE:
“MOTHERLAND, I LOVE YOU FOREVER!”
Since the early 1980s patriotic education has been given high priority in the
minority areas on the borders of the People’s Republic. As in the rest of China,
it has been reinforced after the crushing of the demonstrations in Tiananmen
Square in 1989 and the government’s subsequent campaign against “counter-
revolutionary rebellion.” Nationalism has become a dominant theme in official
Chinese rhetoric, media, and education. It has become a means to strengthen
China vis-a-vis the international community' and to erode actual or poten-
tial internal ethnic conflicts. In Yunnan Province, where one-third of the pop-
ulation belong to minority minzu, the government has put great effort into
spreading and extending patriotic education, especially in higher education
and in the areas closest to international borders. Since Sipsong Panna bor-
ders on Burma and Laos, and the ethnic groups there have strong and his-
torically close ethnic and cultural relationships across the borders, patriotic
education is vigorously promoted in the area:
Our prefecture is a “border minority area” with a border nearly one thou-
sand kilometers long. With further reforms and an opening to the outside
world, all kinds of corrupt capitalist thoughts and pornographic garbage
might sneak into the prefecture in the wake of economic exchange. It is a
reality of our prefecture that this may adversely affect young people.
Combining this fact with the [Confucian] spirit of “putting morality first
and giving all kinds of education their right position,”'7 we have launched
patriotic education as the essence of our ideological and political work. We
have closely combined the students’ way of thinking with the realities of
17.	Daode wei shou^e yu dao wei.
139EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
society; we have combined patriotism with the conditions of the country,
province, prefecture, and county; we have combined patriotism with love
of socialism and love of the Chinese Communist Party. By doing so we
have achieved striking results. (Sipsong Panna Prefecture Education
Commission 1992: 5)
After the crushing of the democracy movement in June 1989, the local gov-
ernment held several large meetings for all the secondary school students in
Sipsong Panna to inform them about what had happened in Beijing and to
make clear that political and ideological work would now be strengthened
among them. Most students had heard only rumors about the demonstra-
tions in addition to the official versions, and few had heard objective reports
about what had taken place. Apart from being told of the campaign to study
Lei Feng and other revolutionary heroes, all schools and teachers were
informed of the need to strengthen patriotic education as the main element
in political and ideological work. The introduction of a course in Sipsong
Panna geography in secondary schools was a direct result of the central guide-
lines for conducting patriotic education in minority areas, which advised that
“love of the local area” was fundamental for “love of the country.” Therefore,
the book Geography of Sipsong Panna also has a short chapter about the his-
tory of Sipsong Panna, in which it is repeatedly emphasized that Sipsong Panna
has always been part of the Chinese state. Furthermore, it describes the cli-
mate, natural resources, and development since 1949 and has a special sec-
tion about the tourist spots. This book (taught for a total of ten lessons during
the six years of secondary school) is the only material about their own area
that students in some (not all) of the regular secondary schools study. Thus,
the most important reason why teaching about local conditions is gaining
ground in the educational system today is its role in patriotic education.
Patriotic education is incorporated into politics and history classes, and
in recent years the government has arranged special “speech competitions,”
with patriotism as the topic. When I was in Sipsong Panna, the secondary
school students took part in a competition for the best patriotic speech in
standard Chinese (as opposed to the local Yunnan dialect). A number of local
competitions were set up in secondary schools, and the winners from each
school in the prefecture competed against one another. The other students
also wrote essays about patriotism, and many blackboard messages in schools
140EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
had patriotism as their theme. Since it was just after the 1994 Asian Games
in Japan, many of the patriotic speeches concerned China’s greatness as
reflected in its number of gold and silver medals. Otherwise, speeches and
short essays were much alike in their highly emotional way of repeating the
official, nationalist rhetoric of textbooks, such as, “I love my own China. Some
people from outside have asked me if I am a Korean or Japanese just because,
being an Aini minzu [hr], my skin is dark. I answered, ‘I am a pure
Chinese! [dididaodaodeZhon^uoreny” (female Akha participant in the com-
petition). A central element in patriotic education is that all minzu should be
convinced that they belong to, and together make up, the Chinese minzu,
the Zhonghua, minzu. Furthermore, it is promulgated that all minzu have con-
tributed to the history and development of China and that therefore “the Han
can never depart from the minorities, the minorities never from the Han,
and the minorities never from each other.” Thus, the nationalistic content in
education focuses on the common history and common political/eco-
nomic/cultural interests of all people within China. Common symbols are
the mythical Yellow Emperor; the Olympic sports heroes; and the national
flag, emblem, and anthem:
teacher: What is the subject today?
class: The national flag, the national emblem, and the national
anthem.
teacher: What should all citizens do?
class : Love the national flag, love the national emblem, and love the
national anthem.
teacher: The national emblem symbolizes the union of all people
under the leadership of the great Communist Party. How should
we treat our national emblem?
class: We shall all love and respect our national emblem.
teacher: We have to love our fatherland and love socialism. Can
love of the fatherland and love of socialism be separated?
class: No.
(1995, junior secondary school)
In published directions on how to conduct patriotic education among
minorities, it is often emphasized that teachers should take care to avoid Han
141EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
chauvinism and avoid giving the minorities the impression that they are back-
ward.'8 In order to prevent minorities from turning against China and
becoming “local nationalists,” they should be convinced of their contribu-
tion to and role in the socialist Chinese state as minorities. Thus, by promoting
the creation of local teaching material the government attempts to address
the contradiction between official propaganda and policy, which praise
minzu equality, and the minorities’ practical experiences, which demonstrate
the low valuation of their own languages, histories, and religions. Within the
educational system there is a clear conflict between the government’s wish
to show how minzu contributed equally to the history of China, and pre-
sentations of the alleged scientifically proven backwardness of minorities. The
last is needed to construct a developed Han majority vis-a-vis the less-devel-
oped, childlike minorities—a counterimage that legitimizes paternalistic
help to improve so-called backward customs. That Tai students seem to be
more influenced by the construction of themselves as members of a back-
ward group than by superficial statements about their contribution to
Chinese history and society suggests that the government’s own presenta-
tions of minorities to a large extent undermine its nationalistic propaganda
among them.
TAI STUDENTS’ ETHNIC IDENTITY: THE CONFLICT
BETWEEN FAMILY AND SCHOOL EDUCATION
Most Tai students in Sipsong Panna have learned at least some Tai script in
primary school, so that they can recognize consonants and vowels. Only a
few have learned enough to be able to read and write Tai fluently. Apart from
the students in the bilingual class at the Normal School, the only course about
Sipsong Panna is a brief Sipsong Panna geography course, which is taught
only in some secondary schools. As compared to the Naxi, the Tai, because
of the small percentage of Tai teachers, have heard much less about their own
history, stories, traditions, and language from individual teachers in school.
Students from other ethnic groups in Sipsong Panna have learned even less
about their own history and culture, and only a small minority of them has 18
18.	See, e.g., Xie Benshu et al., eds. 1994; and Yunnan Province History Society et al.,
eds., 1990.
1+2EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
ever been taught in their own language. With very few exceptions, these stu-
dents expressed regret about this. Nevertheless, whereas many Naxi intel-
lectuals were critical about the absence of curriculum that is directly relevant
to their understanding of their own culture, the Tai students at higher levels
of education were less concerned about this. Compared to the Naxi, who
often explicitly expressed pride in their cultural heritage, many Tai students
beyond the level of junior secondary school were ashamed and critical of the
“backward habits of their family,” the “tradition of sending boys to temples,”
and the “low level of education among Tai.”
There is, however, one aspect of ethnicity that Tai students repeatedly men-
tioned as a source of pride, namely their script. One reason for this might be
that their school education allows them to view their script as a proof of “rel-
ative development” and “literary tradition.” Their religious practices, on the
other hand, are presented as “obstructing modernization,” their belief in spir-
its is labeled as “superstition,” and the history of the chao phaendin and the
independent state of Sipsong Panna is not likely to be part of the curriculum
at all. Thus, while many Tai students at higher levels of education attempted
to disassociate themselves from the cultural practices of their Tai families in
the villages, they retained the Tai script as an accepted ethnic marker. In his
study of Tai history' and ethnicity, Shih-chung Hsieh found that the institu-
tion of the Tai king, the chat) phaendin, was the most crucial factor in Tai eth-
nic identity and solidarity (Hsieh 1995)- My fieldwork convinced me that the
chao phaendin’s role in the ethnic identification of the Tai has been profoundly
challenged during the last forty years, when the Tai increasingly have been
forced to identify themselves in relation to the Chinese rather than to other
Tai people south of Sipsong Panna. The chao phaendin, who has been phys-
ically absent from Sipsong Panna for die last fifty-odd years, has cooperated
with the Communist government and has not attempted to maintain his
influence in the Tai community. Furthermore, school education presents the
Tai students widi an interpretation of history that minimizes the role of the
chao phaendin and makes clear that a Tai identity focusing on the previous
king would run counter to the interests of the Chinese state. All of the stu-
dents I talked to knew that historically Sipsong Panna was ruled by the chao
phaendin. Many knew that the chao phaendin was in Kunming (although some
thought he was long dead), but most had no idea why he was in Kunming
and not in Sipsong Panna. To the younger generations of Tai today, the chao
143EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
phaendin does not seem to play a significant role in their identification as Tai.
Whereas the chao phaendin (and other living chao as well) still enjoys very high
status among the Tai, I found that it was mainly among monks and Tai over
the age of fifty that the chao phaendin was a major symbol of Tai identity. For
most Tai it primarily was language, script, and religion that identified them
as Tai in China and in contrast to the Han.
All Tai students were interested in learning their script, and they often
emphasized that they would have participated in training in their own lan-
guage even if it was not part of the examination. The majority realized that
learning standard Chinese was indispensable for increasing their chances of
further education, but at the same time they maintained that learning Tai ought
to be part of school education. Students from the other ethnic groups with-
out a script felt that learning Chinese was the most important task and that
studying a local language would be a waste of time. Partly for this reason,
local teachers generally praised ethnic groups such as the Akha and Jinuo for
being more open than the Tai toward the Han and for putting more effort
into learning Chinese and succeeding in school. Unlike the Tai, the Akha and
Jinuo regarded school as the only way to escape poverty and backwardness.
Many local minorities in Sipsong Panna know some colloquial Tai, but thought
that learning Tai script would be merely an extra burden. It would not help
them within the educational system or in getting a job later on. In this respect
there was a conflict of interest between the Tai (one-third of the population)
and the other minorities (one-third of the population combined), and on
these grounds many cadres argued that the Tai language has no place in sec-
ondary education or in any of the non-Tai villages (villages in Sipsong Panna
tend to be ethnically homogenous).
Compared to the Naxi intellectuals and students I talked to, the Tai who
had attended Chinese schools at a higher level were generally much less explicit
and demanding in their wishes to strengthen the position of Tai culture within
education. In contrast to the Naxi, the Tai intellectuals have no “Society of
Tai Culture,” they have very few researchers, and they have less influence at
decisive administrative and political levels. Except for the few students who
were novices or monks, they tended to disassociate themselves from their
cultural heritage and upbringing in their villages to the point of expressing
embarrassment about their religious practices and the poor knowledge of
i44EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
Chinese in their villages. It is mainly in the course of their education beyond
primary school that they experience a contradiction between the things they
learn during their childhood in the Tai villages and the content of school edu-
cation. In their families, religion constitutes a significant part of village life,
the only language employed is Tai, novices and monks enjoy high status, and
most of them have heard stories of the Tai king and his kingdom from par-
ents and grandparents. In school all of these aspects of Tai village life are repu-
diated as being worthless or even an impediment to modernization and the
students’ own careers. Most students therefore feel that they have no choice
but to disassociate themselves from village traditions.
Whereas students in the bilingual classes at the Normal School (approx-
imately forty students per year) and in the Tai classes at the Yunnan Institute
of the Nationalities (approximately fifteen students per year) are well trained
in their own script, the only Tai students in secondary and higher education
who have a profound knowledge of their own language and history are those
few male students who also are novices or monks. One of the things teach-
ers and monks agree on is that it is a very heavy burden to be a novice while
also attempting to perform sufficiently well in primary school to pass the qual-
ifying examination for secondary school. Therefore, the few student novices
who do succeed and wish to continue into secondary or higher education
are normally very hardworking and highly motivated to study. All monks today
are aware of the law of compulsory education in China, and many of the bet-
ter educated among them want their novices to learn mathematics, history,
and other languages in addition to Tai. Some monks now support novices
in higher Chinese education, in the hope that they will return to the temple
afterward as qualified teachers. However, other monks support their novices’
going to school mainly because they have no other options, and they would
rarely force them to stay in school against their will. The novices in school
have to follow two full study programs. The knowledge they gain in the tem-
ples is by and large irrelevant in the Chinese school.
The few novices who had made it into secondary education had all
attended a central primary school during the last two years of their studies,
and they did not get extra points at the examination. Although they agreed
that it was very difficult to pass the examination, none expressed regret at
having been a novice, and all spoke with affection about the education they
i45EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
received in the temple. They emphasized that all of their knowledge of Tai
language, history, religion, and literature had been acquired in the temple or
from their grandparents, not in school. They considered it a great advantage
to have learned Tai script so well, and they used it for taking notes in school,
for transcribing Chinese and English words, and for writing letters home.
Some novices who had continued into secondary education had met with
resistance from their grandparents, other elderly villagers, and some of the
monks, whereas their parents were generally happy that they had continued
in school:
The old people in our village do not want us to become like the Han
[Hanhua], nor do they want us to learn modern things. . . . After I had
studied for three years in the monastery, I was curious to learn new things
about the world and other languages. . . . Therefore, I wanted to go to
school. But I felt at home in the monastery. I like reading the Buddhist
sutras, so I also wanted to remain a novice and perhaps become a monk.
Although some of the monks were against my going to a Han school, they
still wanted me to remain a monk while attending school.
The few novices and monks who continued into secondary education
encountered contradictions between their religious belief and the content of
education in the Chinese schools. They were also faced with a basic indif-
ference toward their religion in daily life at the boarding school. They came
from an environment where their lives were centered around temple activi-
ties to a school that ignored the Buddhist festivals held in all Tai villages and
that basically regarded their religious activities as a waste of time and a hin-
drance to development. During secondary education the monks and novices
learned that in China all minzu have the right to have their own religious
beliefs. But at the same time they were taught that religion teaches people
to escape life and prevents them from modernizing their economy. Still, the
novices and monks in secondary and higher education whom I have talked
to denied that school education had in any way influenced their opinion of
their religion. Their previous temple education and continued ties with other
novices and monks made them less inclined than the other students to devi-
ate from previous beliefs and opinions about their own cultural background:
“During my education all teachers taught according to Marxism and dialec-
146EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
tical materialism. I always disagreed with their viewpoints on religion and
history. I have learned a lot of new things, but I do not agree with everything
and I have not changed my mind about my own religion” (twenty-year-old
monk and student). And in the words of another student and novice, “Before
starting in school we already knew what it meant to be a Tai and believe in
Buddhism. No school can ever change this.” However, since Chinese schools
have a negative attitude toward religion, and Tai language has no place in the
Chinese educational system beyond primary school, many monks who want
an education prefer to obtain it in Thailand, where “they really appreciate us
monks,” as several told me. Every year ten monks receive official scholarships
to study in Thailand, but in fact a much larger number leave—some to visit
family members and some to do business. Monks may go freely to Thailand,
and ever)' year several monks and older novices from Sipsong Panna man-
age to raise private financial support toward education in Thai temples.19
Therefore, for boys, Chinese education is no longer the only alternative to
education in the temples in Sipsong Panna, and with the improved economy
and increasing contacts with Thailand, more novices and monks will prob-
ably look for educational opportunities there. Many parents regard the tem-
ple education in Thailand as a higher (sort of secondary) education after
training in the local monastery.
Obviously, the novice and monk students were very positive toward the
institution of temple education, but among the other students this topic often
sparked heated discussions. During my interviews it became increasingly clear
that young students in junior secondary school were much more sympathetic
toward the customs of their own family and other villagers than were stu-
dents in senior secondary school. This was especially so in regard to religion.
A question that never failed to arouse laughter, giggling, and lively discus-
sion was whether a female student would prefer her boyfriend to have been
a novice and whether she would let any future son become a novice:
girl A: I would prefer my husband to have been a novice, because
then he could teach our children Tai script.
girl B: I would also rather marry a novice.
19. When monks want to go to Thailand, they need permission from the Bureau of
Religion. Since 1994 this permission has been relatively easy to obtain.
1+7EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
girl c: Sure, I would prefer to marry somebody who had been a
novice. We Tai believe in superstition [sic I ], and if a boyfriend has
not been a novice, he might say nasty things and behave badly.
all: Certainly! It is best to marry a man who has learned something
in the temple.
interviewer: What if you have a son?
girl b : My son has to be a novice!
INTERVIEWER: Why?
girl A: Boys should be novices. They can study at the same time—
it’s no problem.
girl b : Or he can become a novice after he finishes primary school.
Many boys do that.
(Three thirteen-year-old Tai girls,
first year of junior secondary school)
girl A: I do not want a boyfriend who has been a novice, because
that would mean that he has not been to school for a very long time
and therefore does not know enough. Still, I would prefer a Tai to
a Han, as long as he has not been a novice.
girl B: That is not true, as of course a novice can go to school as well.
Now novices can also continue into middle school and even col-
lege. I think it is good to have a boyfriend who has been a novice.
They learn a lot and they know Tai script.
girl c: Ido not care if he has been a novice or not. The most impor-
tant is that he has studied in school. If he has not been to school I
definitely do not want him. He could learn Tai script and read the
Buddhist scripts in an evening school.
(Three Tai girls, first year of senior secondary school)
Generally students were very realistic in their attitude toward temple edu-
cation and their own school education. They were all very much aware of
the fact that Tai language, culture, and history play no role whatsoever in
success within the educational system. While saying that they would wel-
come more Tai training in schools, they emphasized that schools would never
expand Tai education as long as it was useless for obtaining higher educa-
tion, for the Chinese state as a whole, and therefore also for their own ambi-
148EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE I 9 8 O
tions. A sixteen-year-old female student remarked, “How could I have a
boyfriend who had been a novice? Then he would not have been a good
student in school, would he? The most important thing is to study, and, as
it is now, the things you learn as a novice are of no use in school. Therefore
it is damaging to your school education if you spend time being a novice.
You simply won’t get a good job!” Another female student was conscious
of the role the school played in reducing the importance of Tai language and
knowledge:
A boy can be a novice and also go to school. I think that is the best way.
They get more knowledge if they are novices for a period of time and they
learn our own language. . . . We Tai have become more and more like the
Han \yue laiyue duo Hanhua], especially here in the city. We often try to
become like the Han. There are many more Han than Tai, and therefore
they will never become like the Tai \Daihua\. Furthermore, we study Chi-
nese and Han culture in school. They do not learn our language and know
nothing about our customs.
The majority of female students in junior secondary school were positive
toward temple education, whereas most older female students firmly stated
that they did not want a boyfriend who had been a novice and that they would
certainly never let their son become one. Male students tended to be more
positive toward temple education. All had friends and close relatives who were
or had been novices, and many had to make what they thought was a difficult
choice between school and monastery. Again, the youngest male students were
most positive toward temple education. Of course, age-related differences,
such as level of reflection and the ability to express one’s own thoughts,
between students in junior and senior secondary school explain some of the
variety in response. However, the students’ increasing repudiation of their
own cultural background could also be partly explained by their long-term
stay in boarding schools, which prevented them from participating in village
life, and by the curriculum.
The majority of Tai students who graduate from higher, specialized sec-
ondary or higher education have lived in city boarding schools since they
were thirteen years old, sometimes even since they were eleven (since higher
primary school). For six or seven years (in secondary school) and an addi-
i49EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
tional three or four years (in college or university), most visit their families
only once every six months, they speak Tai only with fellow Tai students, and
they stop participating in religious activities. In order to succeed within the
school system, students need to disassociate themselves from their religious
background, their language, the things they have learned from elderly peo-
ple about Tai history, and their own assumptions that they belong to a dom-
inant group with valuable traditions. Only when putting aside what they have
learned at home and realizing the overwhelming importance of learning
Chinese, studying Chinese history, criticizing backwardness, propagating the
Zhonghua minzu, and repeating the nationalist/patriotic messages will they
have a chance to continue in the educational system. Therefore, most Tai intel-
lectuals and students who have ambitions to continue into higher education
are more preoccupied with adapting to the cultural values supported by
schools and propagated in the broader context of Chinese society than with
struggling to win a place for Tai culture within this system. The conflict
between family and school is much more intrusive than for the Naxi and
requires a choice from the students. This also helps to explain why the num-
ber of Tai students who manage to study beyond junior secondary school is
still so small.
To a certain extent the hopes of many officials and school administrators
of changing the cultural habits of the Tai by placing them in the “new sur-
roundings” of boarding schools have been fulfilled. Students do start to have
doubts about their religious background and play down the role and
significance of their own experiences in their Tai villages, their history, and
their language. Therefore, the Chinese-educated intellectual Tai have no con-
tacts and no feelings of shared interest with the other strata of educated Tai,
the monks. Many of the Tai students and intellectuals feel stigmatized and
express embarrassment about their cultural heritage to the point of rejecting
it. However, some students, particularly those past their mid-twenties, have
recently started to express regret and discontent at not having had the oppor-
tunity to study their own language properly or to develop a modern Tai
vocabulary, and at having been taught that Buddhism is incompatible with
modernization. They have started to question the thesis that the Tai are a xeno-
phobic, slowly developing people. However, these are a small group of indi-
viduals without scholarly or official positions to enable them to raise and push
these questions within the Chinese political system.
150EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
ACCEPTING THE LABEL OF BACKWARDNESS?
AKHA AND JINUO IN CHINESE SCHOOLS
Although minority schools are sometimes criticized for isolating minorities
and preventing them from raising their academic level through close contact
with Han students, they do have some positive effects on Tai students’ eth-
nic self-esteem. Outside class students mostly speak Tai with Tai classmates,
with whom they also share their religious upbringing. In boarding schools
most Tai students for the first time in their life make friends with youth from
the other minorities. The Tai are aware that many teachers find the minori-
ties from the mountains to be more hardworking and conscientious in school
than themselves. This does not seem to diminish their sense of superiority
resulting from the historic Tai dominance in Sipsong Panna. With very few
exceptions Tai students also admitted that in spite of having Akha, Jinuo,
Blang, or Lahu friends in the school, very few would marry one of them.
Even if they wanted to, their parents would not accept it. As one eighteen-
year-old female Tai student said, “If I fell in love with an Akha and wanted
to marry him, my parents and grandparents would definitely object to it, but
then. ... I never could fall in love with an Akha.”
The first school for the Jinuo minzu (approximately eleven thousand peo-
ple, most of them living on Jinuo Mountain) was started in 1956, and it was
also during the mid-1950s that the first primary schools were started in Akha
villages, mainly with Han teachers from outside Sipsong Panna. These teach-
ers did not speak the local language and met with many problems. The Akha
and Jinuo were suspicious of the newcomers who settled in their villages and
tried to convince them to build schools. They were very poor and saw no use
in letting their children attend school rather than work. Hunting became
another issue of dispute when farmers and cadres from farther inland in China
were sent to Panna to start rubber-producing state farms. Before planting
rubber trees, the new farmers needed to cut down vast tracts of jungle, and
because the Akha and the other ethnic groups in the mountains depended
on the jungle for their hunting, this often resulted in clashes between locals
and incoming Han farmers. This did not work in favor of the Han who tried
to start new schools.
Gradually though, Chinese primary schools became common in many Akha
and Jinuo (and other) villages. Today most Akha and Jinuo children attend
151EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
primary school for the first four years. But then most need to pass an exam-
ination to continue on to the fifth grade (around age eleven), and they have
to go to a higher primary school in a nearby village, often walking several
hours to and from school every day or staying at a boarding primary school.
It is also very difficult for them to follow an education based entirely on
Chinese language, and as a result many drop out after a few years. Only in
those Akha and Jinuo villages where teachers are local and speak the local
language do they explain in the children’s own mother tongue. It is, how-
ever, hard to get teachers who are able to do this. There are not enough Akha
with a teacher’s education, and most teachers who are sent to a poor village
try to get a transfer to a more developed village or township as soon as pos-
sible. Some of the Akha students I interviewed emphasized that the Akha vil-
lages might be less developed and less attractive than Tai villages, but “at least
the Blang villages were even more backward.” In this way, it seemed that every-
body was able to find somebody whom they considered worse off than them-
selves and whom they could consider to be more backward. As one Akha
said, to the great amusement and agreement of other students present, “I do
not want to be a teacher in the poorest places, in a Blang or Lahu village, for
example. . . . Just imagine, they know even less about science and have less
knowledge than we Akha do!”
During the Chinese government’s minzu fieldwork project in the 1950s,
researchers reached the conclusion that the Jinuo and the Akha in Sipsong
Panna could to different degrees be characterized as belonging to so-called
“primitive societies” (although some Akha areas were described as having
developed private land ownership). Most of the Akha and all of the Jinuo
were described as being influenced by a sort of primitive communism, in
which people shared everything, practiced slash-and-burn agriculture, prac-
ticed a form of “primitive nature religion,” and the Jinuo lived in large clan
houses with as many as one hundred family members. Through the teach-
ing of the theory of social evolution, so vividly adopted by the Communists,
existing local ethnic hierarchies in Sipsong Panna were in some respects
cemented and confirmed. In the broader context of the entire People’s
Republic, groups from other areas were of course added to the hierarchy,
and the Han were found at the top of the evolutionary ladder, but at the
local level the form and content of education confirmed the Tai’s historical
experience and memory of who were rulers and who were subjects, who was
152EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
associated with the state and who with the jungle, who were Buddhists and
who were not.
Tai, Akha, and Jinuo boarding-school students live, eat, and study in the
same place and have much more social interaction across ethnic affiliation than
most of their parents or grandparents ever did. Many of them make friends,
but at the same time they often express strong opinions about one another’s
customs and cultural practices—opinions that are influenced by the content
of die Chinese education. One of the things that Akha and Jinuo students often
mentioned to me as typical of the relationship between Tai and other local groups
was their different attitude toward language. Most Akha who have not been
to school, and especially those over thirty, can speak or at least understand Tai.
However, when I asked students if Tai also understood the Akha language,
they always laughed or looked at me with curiosity. “Of course the Tai do not
speak Akha,” I was told. Many students said that, in fact, many more Han
than Tai learn Akha—not those Han employed on the rubber plantations or
working as cadres, but Han who live and work in Akha villages, especially those
who have married Akita women. I often heard Akha and Jinuo students say
that whereas Akha are interested in learning other languages, the Tai are not.
Another issue that often resulted in discussions (sometimes rather heated
ones) between Tai and other students was religion. The reason for this, I
believe, was that due to their Chinese school education, which emphasized
how religion and superstition obstruct modernization, students felt that it
was very important to disassociate themselves from religious practices in their
villages. Because they were aware that superstition was regarded as worse
than religion—as more backward, more obstructive toward development—
it was always important for them to fight back when members of other eth-
nic groups attacked their superstitious practices. One of the discussions I
overheard in this connection demonstrated this very clearly. I was interviewing
three Akira girls, and slowly, as often happened, other students came by to
watch and listen. The Tai audience became provoked by some of the things
the Akha said, and a discussion developed among them.20 One Akira girl said
that a major difference among the Tai, Akira, and Han was that the Tai were
especially “eager to perform superstitious activities.” She said that because
20. The discussion was in Chinese because the Tai and the Akha did not understand
each other’s languages.
153EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
the Tai believe in Buddhism, “they have a lot of superstitious activities.” This
made one of the Tai jump to her feet and announce that since the Tai believe
in Buddhism, their religious activities are precisely religious activities and not
superstitious ones, and that in fact it is the Akha themselves who practic super-
stition. Another Tai girl then asked the Akha in the room to tell about their
own superstitions, and one Akha girl started to tell, clearly embarrassed, about
the nipha (female shaman) in their village. She told about how the nipha tried
to cure sick people and how she could see in her dreams which girls from the
village should become her students. The Tai students corrected the girl dur-
ing her story; for instance, when the Akha girl said, “The nipha- knows about
medicinal herbs,” a Tai girl said, “She only knows a little, though.” The dis-
cussion went on for some time, until one Tai loudly exclaimed, “This is really
superstition,” and the discussion was taken over by the Tai, who exchanged
horrified memories of how they had seen a nipha perform her rituals on tele-
vision. The Akha clearly felt bad about this, and several tried to say that their
father or uncle or someone else in the family did not believe in the nipha any-
more, whereas most admitted that their mother still insisted on calling for
the nipha in times of sickness. The discussion more or less ended when one
Akha concluded that “women are much more superstitious than men. Men
are more open, I do not know why!”
On other occasions, too, I found it striking how eager many Tai students
and intellectuals were to defend their own position against the minorities
from the mountains—to stress their history as a dominant ethnic group with
a script, a religion and a recorded history (of which they in fact knew very
little). The dominant Chinese discourse on the historically unequal relationship
between the minority minzu and the Han—with their objectified position
as the most developed and modern ethnic group, and therefore in charge of
major political decisions—seemed to have a profound influence on Tai in the
educational system. They felt under pressure from the propagation of athe-
ism, modernism, and development, which to a large extent force them to
disassociate themselves from learned valued and beliefs, from their socialization
as Tai. They felt that they were in fact “backward” compared to what they
had learned about the Han. At the same time, many of them found it impor-
tant to defend their position against the Akha and Jinuo, whom teachers often
praised for being more engaged and sincere in their studies than the Tai. In
fact, the Akha have a quite low percentage of students in school compared
15+EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
to the Tai, mainly because many Akha villages are poor, isolated, without elec-
tricity, and sometimes without enough food. Often less than io percent of
Akha children in a village primary school continue on to fifth grade. Still,
teachers in schools all over Sipsong Panna and most cadres engaged in edu-
cation say that the Akha and Jinuo perform better than the Tai in school—
or rather, that they come from less but achieve more. One headmaster of a
minzu minority school expressed a prejudiced view commonly heard among
teachers:
Tai students are very intelligent, but they are not as industrious and good
at studying as the minorities from the higher mountains. The Tai have a
better economy, they have an easier life, they do not need to work so hard.
I have faced this problem for twenty years now. The Akha, for instance,
have a very hard life and are not so intelligent. Therefore, they are very eager
to study hard, to learn, to escape such a hard life. Generally speaking, the
Tai are more lazy. The minorities from the mountains learn the Han lan-
guage faster dian the Tai do. They mix more with the Han, whereas the
Tai live more concentrated together and have their own script. They think
that their own language and script are really good. They think they do not
need to learn Chinese. The Akha realize the need for and advantages of
learning Chinese.
Many Han teachers told me that by rejecting Chinese state education, the
Tai “risk becoming even more backward than the minorities from the moun-
tains.” The fact diat the Akha and Jinuo are praised by Han teachers and cadres
for being willing to work hard and try to perform well in school provides
them with status and the possibility of being regarded as “almost” more devel-
oped than the Tai. The Akha and Jinuo have no alternatives to the Chinese
education, and they have few educated members, yet they are represented by
teachers as hardworking, diligent people who are more open toward cultural
change than are the Tai. This appraisal is possible because they seem to accept
the presentation of tiiemselves as backward and welcome the state’s attempt
to educate and civilize them in the Chinese school system. The Akha and Jinuo
students and graduates apparendy (at least for the time being) find it easier
to accept that they learn only Chinese in school and not their own language,
and that they are considered a backward group. If Akha or Jinuo students do
155EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
not perform well in school, they tend to blame themselves and the backward
conditions in their villages, whereas the Tai are more likely to blame the school
system for not teaching their own language and for making it impossible for
boys to study at the monastery and school at the same time. The Akha stu-
dents I talked to were also much more embarrassed about their family and
village than were the Tai. Some even told me that they were jealous of the
Tai girls’ traditional costume, which they considered much more beautiful
than those worn by the women in their own villages—costumes that sym-
bolized poverty and backwardness to themselves and to the Tai.
By accepting both the school’s construction of their own ethnic group as
backward and the need to discard their cultural habits and the importance of
learned values, educated members of groups such as the Akha and Jinuo may
in fact manage to challenge their own peripheral and subordinate position
within the local ethnic hierarchy. In this respect, their assimilation may be
regarded as a political strategy.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Chinese authorities have encountered huge problems in their efforts to estab-
lish state education in Sipsong Panna. As in other minority areas of China,
the basic goal is literacy in Chinese, so that the local population can partici-
pate in political administration and in modernizing the economy. Ideologically,
the education of minorities is perceived as uniting the people of China in an
atmosphere of ethnic brotherhood, as playing down and ultimately eradi-
cating ethnic differences while promoting Chinese language, culture, and his-
tory. Education in the post-Cultural Revolution era must demonstrate,
especially to minority minzu in border areas, that only participation in mod-
ern school education based upon Chinese language and history, socialism,
patriotism, and atheism will bring about the desired economic development.
Minority languages are granted a place in the educational system only when
they facilitate the learning of Chinese or when doing so is considered an
inevitable necessity to persuade people to attend the schools. Local history
and culture are incorporated only to the degree that they help promote the
supra-national identity of the Zhonghua, minzu.
Due to scarce resources and limited national financial support at the local
level, the lack of teachers with a knowledge of Tai language, and disagree-
156EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
ment among cadres on the issue of bilingual education, most Tai children
receive all of their primary education in Chinese, which few speak when they
start school. The language problem is one important reason for the low per-
centage of Tai with a secondary or higher education. Some researchers, local
teachers, and cadres argue that the introduction of Tai courses in more schools
will not only make it easier for Tai children to learn Chinese, but will also
result in more Tai boys attending school instead of participating in temple
education. However, sporadic Tai training in school would not eliminate the
fundamental contradiction between the content and form of the Chinese
school system and the Tai people’s cultural religious practices. Neither would
it convince rural Tai parents that future employment, an improved econ-
omy, or higher local status would result from their children’s advancing in
the Chinese school system. Indeed, many Tai girls with a junior (sometimes
even a senior) secondary education manage to find jobs only in the tourist
industry—jobs that are despised by many Tai.
Intellectual Tai with a higher Chinese education constitute a very small
part of the Tai population, and they are much more passive and aloof than
Naxi intellectuals in their expressions of ethnic identity. They tend to distance
themselves from aspects of Tai cultural identity that are in direct conflict with
their Chinese education. Tai who have received a longer Chinese education
focus most on language, less on religion, and not at all on the king and the
kingdom when expressing their Tai identity. Because a Tai edmic identity cen-
tered around the king and the history of the kingdom would oppose and offend
Chinese propaganda about the Zhonghua minzu and its historically legitimized
power in Sipsong Panna, this particular aspect of Tai ethnicity is probably the
most sensitive and politically unacceptable. Furthermore, the direct collision
of Tai temple education with Chinese education makes the religious aspect
of their ethnicity problematic for Tai intellectuals to defend. Tai script, on the
other hand, plays an important symbolic role as proof of a “high culture” and
as a transmitter of religion, history, and traditional Tai literature. However,
it also has a practical value in the villages, where many parents want their chil-
dren to know the script that they themselves have at least a modest knowl-
edge of. This means that a focus on Tai script and language in fact also runs
counter to the promotion of Chinese education, which emphasizes the need
to abandon one’s own language in favor of Chinese. Thus it seems that for
die minority of Tai who participate beyond secondary level, Chinese educa-
157EDUCATION IN SIPSONG PANNA SINCE 1980
tion to a certain extent causes them to abandon their religion, accept the con-
struction of themselves as members of a backward group, disregard their his-
tory as a kingdom, and support the thesis of the uselessness of the Tai language.
However, a number of factors have begun to pull Tai intellectuals and stu-
dents in the opposite direction. Increasing contacts with Thailand and Burma
have shown them that their language is useful outside Tai villages. Many express
the wish to continue their studies in Thailand. Furthermore, they find in
Thailand proof that Buddhism does not necessarily exclude economic devel-
opment. As a consequence, some younger Tai students and intellectuals have
started to see new potential in their own language and religion, and some
are developing a new, growing solidarity with Tai peasants and monks.
Very few Tai go through the educational system at all, and most drop out
after primary school or at least junior secondary school. For the vast major-
ity of Tai living in the villages, Chinese school education has little impact on
ethnic identity and cultural practices. To increase the influence of school edu-
cation, the government would probably have to change the form and con-
tent of school education to make it direcdy relevant to the Tai’s language,
religious beliefs, and economic conditions. But many cadres and teachers fear
that this would defeat the ideological purpose of school education in that it
would support the already strong Tai identity rather than attempting to break
it. Running counter to the government’s intentions, the Chinese educational
system in Sipsong Panna excludes many Tai. The resulting low level of Chinese
education makes the Tai largely incapable of strongly and efficiently formu-
lating and promoting their own cultural, political, and economic interests
within the context of the Chinese state. At the same time, by insisting upon
an educational system that excludes all aspects of Tai culture and diminishes
its value, Chinese policy involuntarily strengthens ethnicity among the vast
majority of Tai who do not participate in this education. Realizing that their
language and religion are the main reasons for their exclusion from Chinese
education, many seek alternatives that support, rather than reject, their way
of life by turning toward monks, improving temple education, and strength-
ening connections with other Tai and Buddhists outside China. Those who
participate in long-term Chinese education and become affected by its assim-
ilative intentions tend to become stigmatized, and therefore they, too, wel-
come alternative explanations—such as those derived from cultural contacts
in Thailand—of their culture as valuable and useful.
158Conclusion
Through the state educational system, the Chinese government transmits
its ideology of the nation and of the relationships among the peoples in China
who have become categorized into static ethnic groups. Education of minori-
ties plays a central role in implicitly reproducing notions of cultural inequal-
ity while explicitly promoting the “unity of the minzu. ” Students learn the
names of the officially recognized minzu, as well as what it implies to belong
to a minority minzu or to the majority, as indisputable, scientific facts. Thus,
the classroom is an arena where processes of ethnic identification become
highly relevant when minority students inevitably are confronted with the
government’s monopolizing interpretation of their identity. Equally impor-
tant for students’ self-perception as members of minority minzu are issues
that remain unspoken, that are not communicated in school because they are
considered irrelevant to state school education. Thus, a study of the impact
of Chinese minority education on ethnic minorities’ ethnic self-perceptions
and identities has to take into account the fact that most non-EIan students
experience that their language, history, religion, and customs are considered
useless (or at least less significant) knowledge in the Chinese school system.
The influence of state education on the process of ethnic identification among
different ethnic minorities is obviously ambiguous, and it is impossible to
isolate education from other factors contributing to this process. Chinese state
education is important for the government’s hegemonic project to modern-
ize society and define the Chinese nation, and as such it plays a definite role
in the current resurgence of ethnic identities all over China. The perspective
in this book has been local, focusing on Chinese education among two minori-
ties and on its role in directing the form and content of their ethnic identity.
I have tried to analyze what minority students in China learn about them-
i59CONCLUSION
selves as members of an ethnic group during their education and thus what
role education plays in directing and forming ethnic and national identity in
China today.
All over China education is highly standardized in terms of curriculum in
primary and secondary schools, length of study, extracurricular activities, and
so forth. Some students have additional teaching in their own language, but
the content of education rarely deviates from the national standard. Teachers
know which books to use and what to teach. They rarely have the opportu-
nity and are hardly ever forced to select other teaching materials. Students
belonging to different ethnic minorities in China and living in the periph-
eral areas of the Chinese state are thus presented with a definite set of inter-
pretations and perceptions of themselves as members of minority minzu. These
are often confirmed by shared experiences obtained through this education.
Students learn that almost all of the minority minzu were more “backward”
in terms of economy and culture than the majority Han at the time of
Liberation. They learn that the Communist Party then helped them to
develop so that all minzu in China became united in a multiethnic, socialist
society. They became part of the Chinese family of brother minzu. This unity
was made possible not merely because of the Communist Party. The more
profound and comprehensive reason, they learn, is that all minzu in fact have
a common history, are descendants of the Yellow Emperor, and thus have
shared identity as part of the “Chinese nation,” the Zhonghua minzu. Students
also learn that within the framework of the Chinese state and constitution,
all minzu in the “New China” have equal rights to develop their languages,
maintain their cultural traditions, and believe in their own religions. More
indirecdy, though not less powerfully, Chinese education fosters in many stu-
dents a perception of themselves as members of a “backward minority” sim-
ply because it denies the usefulness (sometimes even the existence) of the
minorities’ own languages, histories, religions, forms of education, customs,
marriage practices, values, ethics, and so forth. Sporadic attempts to intro-
duce brief volumes about “minority culture” (minzu wenhua) outside the com-
mon curriculum in local schools are insufficient to change this tendency. True
bilingual education (not merely one or two hours per week of voluntary extra
teaching in the minority language) is one of the methods that might increase
students’ acceptance of the value of their own language. However, this effect
is often neutralized when the mother tongue, the minority language, is real-
160CONCLUSION
ized to be worthless for continued education. The possibility of continuing
on to secondary and higher education is completely dependent on the stu-
dent’s level of Chinese, not on her ability to speak or write a minority lan-
guage. Bilingual education probably facilitates the learning of Chinese, but
when presented as a necessity only in villages where minority children do not
speak Chinese well enough to attend “regular school,” it is understandable
that many students come to regard it as a method employed for the “most
backward,” not for the value of the language itself. In the province of
Yunnan, where twenty-five minority minzu (one-third of the population) live
mainly in rural areas, this is very often the case.
Chinese state education promotes cultural homogenization in order to fa-
cilitate communication, to ensure the integration of minority areas into the
Chinese state, to promote patriotism and loyalty to the ccp, and, in a broader
sense, to “enhance the cultural quality” (tigao wenhua suzhi) — to civilize—
the more “backward” groups. Although rural Han are also sometimes de-
scribed in these terms, there is inevitably an ethnic dimension to the description
when it is applied to minority minzu whose “backwardness” is often explained
as a result of cultural deficiencies. Often the languages, cultural practices, and
economic life of ethnic minorities are described in texts, media, and oral com-
munication as obstructing the development and modernization of the areas
they inhabit. Belief in the civilizing and homogenizing effects of education
in China is still very strong, as it was among many officials and educators
promoting Confucian education among the “barbarians” on the periphery
of the Chinese empire, especially during the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). But
the degree to which present-day education actually manages to homogenize
the population remains a question. The research presented here suggests that
one result of an education directed at achieving cultural homogenization may
well, at least in the long run, be fragmentation and increased focus on eth-
nic identity. While reducing cultural differences in order to adapt to the
demands in the state education system, those under the heaviest pressure to
assimilate may react with increased focus on ethnic identity. This is a process
evident among ethnic groups all over the world and is part of a global process
of modernist homogenization that often results in ethnic and cultural frag-
mentation (e.g., Friedman 1990 and 1991)- As an institution with the built-
in purpose of mainstreaming cultural behavior and directing national
sentiment and loyalty toward the state, state education plays a vital role in
161CONCLUSION
this process in China. Thus comparison of different ethnic groups’ responses
to state education in China sheds light on how and why a standardized edu-
cation system, intended to reduce or eliminate ethnic identities, can produce
the opposite effect.
Naxi children in Lijiang and Tai and other children in Sipsong Panna study
the same textbooks. The methods of teaching in both areas are very similar,
as is the structural arrangement of minority education and boarding schools.
However, although Chinese education has been quite successful among the
Naxi, it has failed to reach the majority of the Tai, and Naxi and Tai local
responses to Chinese state education are profoundly different from each other.
Whereas Naxi intellectuals utilize education to promote a Naxi identity, many
Tai with a Chinese education are culturally stigmatized and Tai peasants with
no Chinese education cannot raise ethnic, political, and economic demands
within the state. Through Chinese standardized education, a powerful dis-
course on what it means to be a member of a minority minzu and of the
Chinese nation is transmitted. For several historic, cultural, and political rea-
sons, this has been received differently among the two groups and has pro-
duced different reactions in terms of ethnic identification.
During the Qing dynasty, private and charitable Confucian schools
became the prime institutions of learning among the Naxi in Lijiang. The
Naxi elite who participated in this education gradually adopted it as their
own, and most teachers and students in these schools were Naxi. Chinese/
Confucian-educated scholars and teachers enjoyed high status in the Naxi
community, especially around Lijiang Town. In a Ming dynasty chronicle,
the ruling Naxi lineage already was praised for its ability to study Confucian
ethics, and Lijiang was completely integrated into the Chinese empire dur-
ing the Qing Dynasty. After initial suspicion toward the modern Chinese
schools established in the early twentieth century, the Naxi gradually came
to accept them as the most important local institutions of learning and as the
ladder to influence and prestige. Today the Naxi minority is still singled out
in Chinese sources as a group of people who have proven to be willing and
able to learn from “more advanced” minzu. Many Naxi have come to think
of themselves as belonging to a group characterized by its “love of learning,”
and in spite of many serious financial problems in schools in rural Naxi areas,
most Naxi parents want at least one child (preferably a son) to obtain an edu-
cation beyond primary school. They regard Chinese education as their own,
162CONCLUSION
and most teachers, principals, and cadres in local bureaus of education (as in
local government in general) are indeed Naxi themselves. The Naxi elite who
received a Chinese Confucian—and later Communist—education seemed for
a long time to adopt as much as possible of the dominant cultural values of
the Chinese center. Educated Naxi participated actively in the state’s civiliz-
ing projects (Harrell 1995a) as carried out among the peoples living on the
state’s geographical, cultural, and political periphery. Education was a
significant element in this project, and due to the fact that it denied the val-
ues of local Naxi customs, religion, history, and language, many Naxi came
to feel embarrassed by their own ethnic affiliation. Existent or potential feel-
ings of cultural stigmatization were sometimes reinforced by the state’s polit-
ical suppression of ethnic identity during different periods of the 1950s, 1960s,
and 1970s and by its insistent demonstration of the backwardness of minor-
ity minzu.
Since the 1980s members of the Naxi intellectual elite have become
spokesmen for a renewed focus on Naxi identity. This is taking place in a chang-
ing political climate that allows some expression of ethnic identity and in a
modernizing society that is more open toward the outside world than before
and informed about the processes of ethnic fragmentation elsewhere. A rel-
atively high percentage of Naxi are intellectuals, cadres with positions in the
local and provincial governments, teachers, and researchers. Many of them
are reacting against their own stigmatization by seeking to express their iden-
tity as Naxi within the framework of the Chinese state. Intellectual Naxi enjoy
high prestige in the Naxi community, as did Naxi with a Confucian educa-
tion in the past. Today intellectual Naxi are utilizing their Chinese education
to reformulate the content of the external categorization of themselves. They
have reshaped their previously vilified “dongba superstition” into celebrated
“dongba culture,” and they are using their high level of Chinese education to
expand their own influence in schools, alternative education, exhibitions, and
research contacts in their native area of Lijiang. This project is gaining ground
in the local community outside the small intellectual circles, and many Naxi
peasants today talk with pride, rather than shame, about the time when they
still had a dongba in their village. Even Naxi students in secondary and higher
education tell of how they had been ashamed of the backwardness of their
own minzu, but now feel sorry for other local minorities whom they con-
sider to be much more backward than the Naxi, having fewer educated mem-
163CONCLUSION
bers and lacking “a culture of their own” (meiynu ziji de wenhua), as several
students expressed it. Belief in the existence of different degrees of civiliza-
tion has not been abandoned as such, but by using their knowledge of the
Chinese language, their high positions gained through participation in state
education, and their acquaintance with the Chinese educational and politi-
cal system, the Naxi have successfully established themselves as a group with
their “own culture” {ziji de wenhuag less backward than previously assumed.
Although education in itself obviously does not explain the Naxi’s renewed
emphasis on ethnic identity and their reformulation of the content of their
external categorization as a minority minzu, it certainly influences the process
and directs the way in which their ethnicity is expressed. A relatively successful
education (good participation and graduation rates) has provided the Naxi
with the necessary tools (such as language, degrees, cadre positions, and the
possibility of being taken seriously in political life) to establish and express
themselves competently as a group in China. They are able to utilize the edu-
cational system for promoting their own position as a minority minzu, to
create alternative education, and even to slowly influence—and possibly even-
tually change—the very content of state education. Chinese education, con-
ducted in various forms during hundreds of years in Lijiang, has facilitated
the integration of the Naxi into the Chinese state and helped them adapt to
Chinese/Confucian, Nationalist, and Communist ethics and values. In this
process they reduced a number of cultural differences and adapted not only
to the Chinese state’s pressure for cultural assimilation but also to general
global demands for cultural homogenization in a modernizing world. When
the political climate in China allowed it, the educated Naxi elite reacted against
the pressure to homogenize, by increasingly emphasizing characteristics that
they defined as specifically Naxi, as core characteristics of a Naxi identity. Due
to their historically close relationship with central China and their success-
ful participation in state education, this concern with ethnic identity is in many
ways less controversial than that encountered among the Tai. Naxi identity,
however strongly expressed, does not oppose the Chinese supraidentity of
the Zhonghua minzu so vigorously promoted by the government. The Naxi
elite find ways and room for expressing their identity as a minority minzu
within the acceptable political framework, and, partly for this reason, the mod-
ern Naxi elite’s identity may be able to slowly transform state institutions,
such as education, from the inside. Therefore, the seemingly controlled and
164CONCLUSION
well-organized way of expressing Naxi identity today might, in the long run,
have consequences for Chinese society that are more far-reaching than they
immediately seem.
The situation among the Tai in Sipsong Panna is profoundly different.
Their first encounter with Chinese schools took place after 1911, when the
Republican government established the first primary and short-term teach-
ers training schools in the area. But the Tai already had their own institutions
for learning, the monasteries, which most boys attended for a few years, learn-
ing to read the Buddhist sutras in their own script. The Chinese schools in
the area had their own Chinese teachers, who taught in Chinese, understood
little Tai, and taught subjects considered irrelevant by most Tai at the time.
In Sipsong Panna, Chinese education resembled colonial style education in
other parts of the world in the sense that it was imposed on the Tai by an
external political power mainly attempting to expand its own cultural, polit-
ical, and economic spheres of control. Today Chinese education is more wide-
spread in Sipsong Panna than ever before, and the custom of sending boys
to the local monasteries is changing, though not really declining, so that boys
are novices for a shorter time and attend Chinese school for at least a few
years as well. Still, the local authorities engaged in spreading Chinese edu-
cation encounter a wide range of problems when trying to persuade Tai par-
ents to send their children to the schools and to make sure that they stay there.
They have not succeeded in stopping the Tai’s practice of sending boys to
the monasteries, and Buddhism is again developing vigorously in the area in
step with the improved economy of the Tai and their increased contacts with
monks and relatives in Thailand.
The relatively few Tai from Sipsong Panna who do get an education beyond
junior secondary school tend to dissociate themselves from their village’s cul-
tural heritage. In only a few primary schools do Tai children learn Tai, and
this is useless (some say a hindrance) anyway for continuing on to secondary
or higher education, where all teaching is based upon the Chinese language.
In addition, their religion, their history as a kingdom, and their myths, sto-
ries, and songs are worthless in state schools and may even be interpreted as
running counter to the schools’ and government’s promotion of the com-
mon Zbonghua, minzu identity and the common history of China as a unified
nation. This produces in many Tai students and graduates a feeling of cul-
tural stigmatization—it makes them express embarrassment at their own back-
165CONCLUSION
ground, the religious practices in their families, the poor knowledge of Chinese
in Tai villages, and the low number of Tai graduates beyond the level of junior
secondary school.
Unlike the Naxi, the Chinese-educated Tai intellectuals tend to play down
their ethnic identity and stand aloof from whatever they associate with Tai
identity and culture. They find little space within the Chinese educational
system for an ethnic identity that almost inevitably risks becoming politically
sensitive, due to its strong connection with religion, alternative schooling in
monasteries, and the history of the Tai as the rulers of a kingdom. It is difficult
for them to succeed within an educational system that gives almost no con-
sideration to their own language and demands that most students leave their
village surroundings at the age of thirteen to live in a boarding school based
on moral values and cultural practices significantly different from those they
have been brought up with. This, I believe, is one of the reasons why Chinese
education still has little bearing on the lives of most Tai—either they simply
do not participate in it or they let their children attend school for only a few
years. As a result, most Tai are unable to formulate their own political, eco-
nomic, and cultural interests within the context of the Chinese political sys-
tem. Unlike the Naxi, they do not have a strong (Chinese-trained) elite that
is able to promote their interests as a minority group in China. One of the
main arguments used by the government to persuade the Tai to send their
children to school is that it is the only way to modernize the economy and
improve living standards. This is not convincing for those who have contacts
with relatives and friends in Thailand, because they realize that modern edu-
cation in other parts of the world does not necessarily imply rejection of
Buddhism or other religions. Leading monks in Sipsong Panna are cooper-
ating with monks in Thailand and Burma to improve and expand the
Buddhist education of boys in Sipsong Panna, and many rural Tai welcome
this as a positive way of combining modem education and Buddhism for their
sons. Because the only educational option open to Tai girls remains the state
schools, parents who have only daughters tend to be more interested in the
Chinese schools than are parents with sons.
If the purpose of state education in Sipsong Panna is to direct loyalties
toward the state and promote the supraidentity of the Zhonghua, minzu while
diminishing local ethnic identity and eradicating major cultural differences,
it does to a large extent succeed among those Tai who participate—at least
166CONCLUSION
for the time being. However, the majority of Tai do not attend Chinese school
for more than a few years, partly for the very reason that the schools ignore
and even reject their history and their own cultural and economic life. In the
aftermath of the cultural and political suppression during the Cultural
Revolution, many Tai have revitalized religious practices and developed con-
tacts with Tai in other countries as a direct result of renewed economic and
cultural contacts across the borders with Burma, Laos, and Thailand. State
education fails to provide most Tai with tools to express themselves as a group
and as individuals in the Chinese state. The few experiments in Sipsong Panna
with extended bilingual education, combined with the data collected during
my fieldword, suggest that only an education taking Tai language, culture,
and history seriously; cooperating closely with monasteries; providing stu-
dents with knowledge of direct relevance to the daily economic life of rural
Tai; and providing real training for jobs will attract more Tai to Chinese sec-
ondary schools. Although some Chinese researchers and cadres have reached
the same conclusion, most still fear that this kind of education will spark a
stronger focus on Tai ethnic identity and thus run counter to one of the fore-
most cultural purposes of state education, namely homogenization. One could
argue that by keeping the majority of the Tai outside the schools, the edu-
cational system indirectly fosters a strong ethnic identification that is just not
formulated within the framework of the state and therefore poses a greater
political threat.
The Chinese concept of “minority education” implies education that is
specifically directed towards the ninety million people who officially do not
belong to the Han majority. They are “national minorities,” and in the Chinese
debate on minority education there is a tendency to regard them as one rel-
atively homogenous group of people in need of more or less uniform spe-
cial considerations within education. It is widely believed in China that
standardized education will acculturate these people—with their various lan-
guages, religions, family structures, customs, and economic lives—to the
degree that their ethnic identities will be of only minor significance in the
Chinese state and society. Thus, the Chinese government and many cadres
engaged in education continue to trust that by emphasizing a common
Chinese language, history, and culture, while largely ignoring ethnic and cul-
tural differences, standardized education can replace local ethnic identities
with national sentiments of unity. Education may incorporate the teaching
167CONCLUSION
of local languages to the degree that is deemed necessary for achieving pop-
ular participation. It is feared, however, that a relaxed attitude toward cen-
tralized control of curriculum might result in increased focus on ethnic identity
and local political demands.
My research concerning Akha and Jinuo responses to Chinese education
has been less comprehensive, and my conclusions in that respect are there-
fore only preliminary. It appears that, due to the historically low position of
the non-Tai in Sipsong Panna, some minorities from the mountains find in
Chinese education a way to refute the prejudice against them that is still preva-
lent among Tai students and peasants. The number of Akha and Jinuo who
participate and succeed in education is still relatively low due to poverty and
a lack of proper schools in their villages, but they are nevertheless praised by
cadres and teachers for being more industrious than the Tai and more inter-
ested “in learning from more advanced minzit"—that is, the Han. This praise
of the Akha and Jinuo clearly has an impact on students’ self-perception, and
although the school education demonstrates to them that in the Chinese con-
text they are regarded as even more backward than the Tai, many seemed to
accept this image of themselves as backward more easily than did most Tai.
They are used to being looked down upon by the Tai, know that the area
they inhabit historically was ruled by a Tai king and government, and may
see in Chinese education a means of combating their traditional low status
and limited power. Many Akha villages celebrate when a student continues
on to secondary—and especially higher or specialized secondary—school, and
there seems to be a more determined attitude among the Akha and Jinuo
students not to return to their villages as peasants after graduation. Thus, a
local, historically inherited, ethnic hierarchy can play an important role in
determining responses to state education, and some groups apparently see
assimilation as a strategy for changing their own position within the local
community, government, and administration.
In sum, the evidence demonstrates that belief in the Chinese state educa-
tional system’s ability to control ethnic identity is not justified. The stan-
dardized educational system cannot by itself instill in students an identification
with the state, nation, and ccp that eliminates the importance of their feel-
ings of ethnic affiliation. By diminishing the cultural and political values of
minorities’ own languages, customs, and histories, while at the same time
transmitting hegemonic interpretations of what it implies to be a minority
168CONCLUSION
minzu in the Chinese nation, the educational system in fact risks producing
among ethnic minorities an increased emphasis on ethnic identity and cul-
tural differences. Local factors such as the historical relationship with central
China, ethnic connections across borders, religion, language, and personal-
ities of individuals make possible a wide range of responses to the standard-
ized education. Standardized state-controlled education is in no way capable
of eradicating the importance of these factors, but it plays a role in deter-
mining the direction and form of ethnic identity processes. Most groups who
adapt well to Chinese state education have been well integrated into the state
for a long time and are relatively well adapted to the dominant culture. They
are thus able to utilize succesful participation in the educational system to
express ethnic demands within the framework of state institutions and the
media. They may be able to use their Chinese education to bring about new
forms of institutionalized learning that give more room for expression of the
group’s own interpretation of its history and culture. In comparison, those
minorities who fail to adapt to the school system and tend to have fewer highly
educated members from the state schools have often historically experienced
a stronger form of cultural and political peripheralization within the state.
When these people engage in activities such as ethnic and cultural relation-
ships across the borders, their ethnic identification and expressions may conflict
with the political interests of the state. Contacts based on an ethnic or reli-
gious sense of community across the political borders of the prc may con-
stitute a positive alternative for an ethnic group that experiences a high degree
of cultural and political peripheralization in the Chinese state. However,
groups with no such international ethnic or religious contacts have fewer alter-
native ways of expressing themselves and finding support for cultural prac-
tices that are incompatible with the political, ideological, and educational
systems in China. Cultural homogenization is not necessarily achieved by
insisting upon a strictly standardized education that leaves no room for cul-
tural values and practices that are not officially promoted by the government.
169Glossary
ai wenhua ft X ft,
ai xuexi ft ft ft
aiguozhuyi jiaoyu ft § ft. ft
ft ft
baihua ft
Baijiaxing ft ft ft
Baiyi ft
Baizu ft ;ft
bao jft
bao guomin xuexiao ft @ ft ft ft
baosong ft ft
bei dui bei douzheng ft ft ft ft
ft
benke ft ft
Bian Duo Dushu Hui ft ft ft ft
ft
bianjing jiaoyu ftftft ft ft
Caizheng Xuexiao jft ft ft ft
Cheli Junmin Xuanweisi ft ft ft
ft t M ft
chuantong de sixiang ft ft ft ft
ft
chuji xiaoxue ft ft ft ft
chuzhong ft ft
da Hanzuzhuyi ft ft ft
± ft
Daihua ft
dadui ft ft
Daizu # ft
Dayan Zhen ft ft
difang minzuzhuyi ft ft ft ft
ft ft
dizhu ft ft
dongba ft ft
dongba wenhua ft ft ft ft
Dongba Wenhua Yanjiu Suo ft ft
ft ft ft ftr
dongjing ft] g
duanwujie ft ft- ft
fengjian fandong wen ft" * ft ft
ft
fengjian lingzhu zhidu ft ft ftftft
fJ ft
fengjian nongnu zhidu ft' M ft
ft
fengjian shehui ft ft ft ft
fenpei zhidu ft R ft
Fojiao xuexiao	ft ft
fushe zhongxue ft ft: ft ft
171GLOSSARY
gailiang tuyu H. A if
gaitu guiliu ± 1/3 $£
gaoji xiaoxue A A A A
gaozhong w A
gonggulii U |
gongmin ke A R >
gongshe 3±
gongzuo dui X A A
gui
guizuban jy ftt
guoli shifan xuexiao Hl A W $£
A
guomin xuexiao (s) A 'fx
guoyu g >
guozijian g A
guwen A A
Han A
han Baiyi A § X
Hanhua (become like the Han)
O
Hanhua (Han language) ijS)
Hani A A
Hanren 'jZ J\
Hanyu AC if-
Hanzu de wenhua A jfc $ ft
heping xieshang A A A- A
heshang ban	$£
huayao Baiyi $ O M
jianyi shifan xuexiao fsj Jy j/iji A
A
jianyi xuexiao jtj Jy A A
jiating gongzuo M A A
jifeng baoyu ,< M < ff
jinshi A
Jinzhi tuyu * it A i§-
juren A
kaihua A A
kaiming A A
kexue A A
lao Daiwen A AX
Lijiang Baihua Bao O & O
Lijiang Diqu B A ife g
Lijiang Diqu Zhongxue B yi A g
A A
Lijiang Fu B A Iff
Lijiang Fu Gaodeng Xiaoxuetang
5	U O I A A t
Lijiang Fu Zhongxuetang IB yi
A A 1
Lijiang Naxizu Zizhi Xian B A
® O $ #
Lijiang Renmin Zhongxue ffl A A
6	A ¥
Lijiang Shifan Xuexiao ffij A (lip A
A -ft
Lijiang Xian Minzu Zhongxue B
A i O A A
Liu Xian Lianhe Zhongxue A A
luohou A
mei you xue AAA
Mengzhe Zhongxin Xiaoxue
A X" A A
Miaozu M
minban A
minzhong xuexiao JA A A A
minzhu gaige buke (1; i iA-
172GLOSSARY
minzu ft
minzu ban ft ft
Minzu Daxue ft ft ft ft
minzu ganbu ft ft A ft
minzu gongzuo ft I
minzu jiaoyu ft ft # ft
minzu jingshen ft ft * ft
minzu tuanjie ft ft Ml ft
minzu wenhua ft ft X ft
Minzu Wenhua Shengtai Cun ft ft
x ft ft ft #
minzu xiaoxue ft A ft ft
minzu xuexiao ft A ft A
minzu xueyuan ft ft ft ft
Minzu Yuwen Xi ft ft ft X ft
minzu zhongxue ft A ft ft
mixin ft ft
muxizhi A ft ftj
na lai na qu ft ft ft ft
naoli laodong ft ft A ft
Naxi ft ft
Naxizu ft ft
Naxi Dongba Wenhua Xuexiao ft
ft ft ft X ft ft ft
Naxi Wenhua Xuehui ft ft X ft
ft ft
nongchang ft ft
nongnu shehui ft ft ft ft
Nongye Daxue ft ft ft ft
nuli shehui ft ft ft ft
niizi chu xiaoxuetang ft ft ft ft
ft ft
peitong |e|
putonghua ft lit ft
Qianziwen ft ft X
qinjia ft ft
ronghe ft
ruxue lit ft ft ft
sanlun X ft
san tong X RJ
Sanminzhuyi X ft A ft
Sanzijing X ft &
shangshan xiaxiang ft ft
ft
shaoshu minzu ft ft ft ft
shen ft
shifan xuexiao ft ft ft ft
shuangyu ban ft ft ft
shuangyu jiaoyu ft ft ft ft
Shui Baiyi ft jg ft
simiao xuexiao ft ft ft ft
siqing yundong X ft ft ft
sishu ft
sixiang gaizao ft. ft ft
sixiang pinde ft ft ft ft
sixiang zhengzhi ft ft ft ft
tili laodong ft ft ft ft
tonghua f?| ft
tongyi de duo minzu guojia ft —
ft ft ft ft S ft
tumin jianyi shizi xueshu i ft ft
ft ft ft ft £
tusi i ft
waiguo ft @
Weisheng Xuexiao X ft ft ft
wenge gongzuo dui ft ft X ft ft
17;GLOSSARY
wenhua 7L ft
wenhua ban ft ft 3ft
wenhua shuiping ft ft ft ft
wenming shidai ft 9! ft
xian li zhongxue ft ft ft ft
xiang
xiangtu jiaocai ft i M 'tft
xiaoxue ft ft
xianjin
xiaoxue tang ft ft ft
xin Daiwen Iff * XL
Xin Lijiang Dushu Hui uj ft li-
ft 4
Xinan Bianjing Xuexiao ft ft ft
xingzheng cun ft #
xin xue ft
xiongdi minzu wenzi ft| X ft
X $
Xishuangbanna Daizu Zizhi Zhou
M M M 1=1 ftl
Xishuangbanna Zhou Minzu
Zhongxue W ft ft ft ft ft ft
ft ft
xuewei ft Ji
Yanbian Xuewu Ju ft ft |ij-
yi <
yixue ft
yumei wuzhi M Xs ft3
yuanjia ft
yuanshi shehui ft ft ft ft
yuanshi zongjiao ft ftft ft
Yunnan Sheng Li Jianyi Shifan
Xuexiao ft	ft. W ft ft
^L ft ft
Yunnan Sheng Li Di San Zhong Xue
ft ftM ft ft ft
zhengfeng yundong ft ft, ft ft
zhengguihua JE JJ?, ft
zhengmian jiaoyu ±E W ft ft
zhengzhi bianfang ft ft ft ft
zhishi qingnian ft ft ft ft
zhongdian xuexiao ft ft ft ft
Zhongguo ft IS
Zhongguoren ft § ft
Zhonghua minzu ft ft {ft
zhongxin xiaoxue ft (ft ft ft
zhongxin xuexiao ft (ft ft ft
zhongxue ft ft
zhongzhuan ft ft
zhou J’lj
ziran cun E=1 ft ft
zongjiao reftft ft
zuguo guannian ft IS ft ft
zuxue ft
174Bibliography
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198Index
A’chang, 89
agricultural schools, 60,104; establishment
of, 21; during the Great Leap, 56
aiguozhuyijiaoyu. See patriotic education
Akha (Hani): classification of, xv, 6;
relation to Tai, xvi, 89; responses
to Chinese education, xvi, 144, 168;
script, 6; level of development (of
Hani), 13; population (Hani) in Sip-
song Panna, 88; autonomous govern-
ment and, 93; boys in Tai schools, 95;
on state farms, 124; script and, 125;
primitive society' and, 135,152; Chinese
education and, 151-56; relation to Tai,
151,153; religion, 154
Akhe, 6
attendance, school, 75; methods of
increasing, xiii; in Lijiang, 39, 48,
53-54,58; in Sipsong Panna, 104,
105,107,119,122; of novices, 119
autonomy law of 1984,19
Bacot, James, 27H4
Bai, 23, 45, 62; population in Lijiang, 27
baihua. See vernacular language
Baisha, 49
Ban Ping village, 89, no
baojia system, in Sipsong Panna, 92
Bernstein, Thomas P, 17
bilingual education, 7,160; development
of, xiii, 5-6; after 1980,18; among
Naxi, 67; in Sipsong Panna, 125-31;
among Tai, 156-57; value of, 161
Blang, 88,114,152; script and, 125; primi-
tive society and, 135
boarding schools: establishment of, 16;
views on, 21-22,132; in Lijiang since
1981, 61; in Sipsong Panna, 131-34,149-
50; Tai language in, 150; Akha and, 153;
Jinuo and, 153. See also minority schools
Book of Odes, 30
Buddhist monasteries: Chinese schools
and, xv, 165-66; education of novices
in, 93, 94,105-6, no-16; Tai language
in, too; Great Leap Forward and,
103-4; Cultural Revolution and, 105-8;
revival since 1980,109-16; prevalence
in Sipsong Panna, 111; parents view on
education in, 112; Chinese schools and,
115, 118; rules concerning education in,
119-22; Tai students’ views on, 147-49
Bulang. See Blang
Burma, 36, 88, 89,101,126,158,167; monks
from, in
cadres: views on Tai, 130; views on
education, 133-34
campaigns: against “local nationalism,”
16,57; Rectification Campaign, 16,56;
Three Statements” (San Lun), 16; Lei
Feng, 71, 71H6, 140; “four clean-ups,”
103; reidentification of classes, 103;
to “politicize the frontiers,” 106-7;
against “counterrevolutionary rebel-
lion,” 139
Canon of History, 30
199INDEX
Central Education Conference (1912), +8
Chao Bhaya Cheeng, 90
Chao, Emily, 79
Chao Mhoam Gham Le, 92
Chao Mhoam Lhong Khong Gham, 92
Chao Tsengha, 92
chaopaendin, 90, 91, 92, 93, 97,109,128,
1+3-45, 157,168
charitable schools, in Lijiang, 30,31, 32
Cheli. See Jinghong
Chen Hongmou, 8, 32
Chiang Kai-shek, 10-n, 50
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 3, 51,
109,168,
Chinese language. See Mandarin
Chinese nation: as common denominator
for all minzu, xii; taught in schools, 69,
73,137; promotion of, 141,164; local
history and, 156; Tai and, 157-58,166-67
citizen schools, 45, 457/27; in Sipsong
Panna, 95
civics classes, 50
classification of minzu (minzu shibie),
xii»r, 3-4,12-13; influence on intellec-
tual minorities, 77; taught in schools,
136; Jinuo and Akha, 152
Commission on Nationalities, 18
common people’s schools, in Lijiang, 47
compulsory education; length of, 22; in
Lijiang during Republic, 47; in Sip-
song Panna, 122
Confucian education, 8-9; imperial elites,
3; civilizing effects of, 3-4, 30; impact
in Lijiang, 29-30, 34-36, 75, 80-82;
modern education versus, 49; in Sip-
song Panna, 93. See also sishu
Cooperative Secondary School, 41,42,43
cultural deficiency, theories of, 4-5
Cultural Revolution: and minority educa-
tion, 16-17; secondary schools attacked
during, 17; and educated youth (zhishi
qingnian), 17; in Lijiang, 57-60; cur-
riculum during, 59-60; in Sipsong
Panna, 105-8
curriculum, 160; 1949 changes, n-12;
during late Qing, 38; in Lijiang, 47,
52; during Cultural Revolution, 59-60;
and teaching on religion, 137-39; and
patriotic education in Sipsong Panna,
139-42
Dai (Daizu). Tai
Dalai Minority Culture and Ecology
Village, 80-82
Dali, 44
Dali Kingdom, 25
Dao Shixun. See Chao Mhoam Gham Le
Daoism, in Lijiang, 28
democracy movement, 140
Diller, Anthony, 88
dobbaq. See dongba
Dong, 87
dongba-. script, 27, 51, 52, 67, 81, 85; ritual,
28; Confucian education and, 35; cul-
ture, 52, 65, 74, 78-84,163-64; Cul-
tural Revolution and, 57-58; Great
Leap Forward and, 57; Naxi students’
attitudes toward, 64-65; in Dalai
village, 80
dongjing (music in Lijiang), 78
Dongzhulin Monastery, 37
dropout rate, from school: among Lisu,
66«j; reasons for, 66-67; in Sipsong
Panna, 119; among Akha and Jinuo,
152; among Tai, 158
Dulong, 13
educated youth. See Cultural Revolution
Elementary Learning (by ZhuXi), 32
Engels, Friedrich, 12, 52, 53, 70, 72
ethnic groups. See minzu
evolution, social, 78, 85; theories of, 12;
teachung about 52-53, 70-73,134-37
examination system (after 1977), 18
feudal society, 70,135
fieldwork: in Sipsong Panna, xv; in Li-
jiang, xv. See also research methodology
finance of education, xiii, 156,157
First National Conference on Minority
Education, 14, 51
Fishman, Joshua A., xi
200INDEX
Fohai. See Menghai
Four Modernizations, 17-18
“four old” elements, attacked in Lijiang,
57-58
gaitugmlur. Qing policy on, 25-26; in
Lijiang (1723), 26,30, 74
Gang of Four, 17
Geba, 27
gender: girls in Lijiang schools, 46,56, 66;
and language use, 100; girls’ education
in Sipsong Panna, 105,116; Tai lan-
guage and, 125-27; Tai girls’ views
on Buddhist education, 147-49
Geography of Sipsong Panna, 134,140
Gladney, Dru C., 4
Goldfinch Story Book, 40
Goullart, Peter, 2622.;, 40, 48
Great Leap Forward, 55, 56,59,103-4:
education during, 15-16; in Lijiang,
53-56; in Sipsong Panna, 103-5
Guan Xuexuan, 31
Guizhou, 44
Han, 38,53; development of, 3,5,12; rela-
tion to minorities, 3-4, 49, 70, 71, 72,
142, 161; chauvinism of, 12, 58,142;
students, 20, 75, 95, 96,133; influence
in Lijiang 27, 29, 31, 35, 77, 86; sishu
in Han areas, 39; Christian converts
in Lijiang, 40; migration to minority
areas, 54-55, 88, 97, 98,107,124; in
minority schools in Lijiang, 62; repre-
sentations in education, 73, 79,137;
influence in Sipsong Panna, 88, in,
149; on state farms, 89,123; teachers
in Sipsong Panna, 96,151; views on
education in Sipsong Panna, 108, 127;
view of Buddhist education, 116-19
Han dynasty, 25
Hani (Hanizu). See Akha
Harrell, Stevan, 3, 4
He Gengji, 37
He Rugong, 38, 42
He Shaoying, 28125
hereditary chiefs. See tusi
Hobart, Mark, xvii; xx
homogenization, cultural, 169; as goal
in education, xii, xiii, xiv, 161
horse and mule market, 37
Hsieh, Shih-chung, 91,143
Hui, 12, 23,54, 75
Hundred Family Nantes, 32
Ideology and Morals, taught in primary
schools, 71-72
Ideology and Politics, taught in secondary
schools, 73-74,138-39
Imperial Academy, 30
imperial examination system: in Lijiang,
31-32; abolition in 1905, 36
India, 36
Institute of Dongba Cultural Research, 79
Japan: Sipsong Panna bombed by, 96;
Asian games in, 141
Jenkins, Richard, 4, 85
Jiang Yingliang, 95
Jinghong (Cheli), 88, 94, 96,127; revolt
in, 95; schools in 1938, 96; during
Cultural Revolution, 107; religious
revival in, in
Jinsha River, 26
finshi exam, 31
Jinuo: view of Chinese education, xvi;
relation to Tai, xv, xvi, 151; in text-
books, 72; population in Sipsong
Panna, 88; script and, 125; education
among, 130,151-56; primitive society
and, 135,152; responses to Chinese
education, 144,168;views on language,
153
job assignment, 19, 24
juren exam, 31
Keng Ttmg, 91
keypoint schools: establishment in early
1960s, 16; reestablishment after 1977,
18; and minority classes in Lijiang,
63; in Sipsong Panna, 124; bilingual
education in, 127
Khmu, 88, 89
201INDEX
Koreans, 83; bilingual education among,
18; student population, 21, 75; text-
books for, 56-57
Kunming Teachers College, 53, 88,135,152
Lan Na, 91
Lan Zhang, 91
land reform, in Sipsong Panna, 99,102
Laos, 88, 89, 91, ioi, 126,167
Lee, Chae-jin, 56
Lei Feng, 71, 7W, 140
Li Ruoyu, 49
Li Shizong, 41
Lijiang Bureau of Education, 47
Lijiang County: concept of minority
education in, 7; illiteracy in, 20;
establishment of, 27; production in,
27; Confucian education in, 30-36; in
Republican period, 43,45-46, 45/227;
primary schools in (from 1922), 48-49;
education in (1949-76), 51-57; number
of schools and students in, 51,53-54;
education during the Cultural Revolu-
tion, 57-60; minority schools in (since
1981), 61-65; minority population in, 68
Lijiang County Minority Secondary
School, 63-65, 68
Lijiang County Secondary School, 44-45
Lijiang Normal School, 58
Lijiang People’s Secondary School, 51
Lijiang Prefectural School, 30
Lijiang Prefecture, 37/215, 41/2/7
Lijiang Prefecture Higher Primary
School, 38
Lijiang Prefecture Middle School, 37
Lijiang Prefecture Secondary School, 41
Lijiang Secondary School, 51
Lijiang Vernacular Newspaper, 38
Lin Biao, 57
Lisu, 34, 56, 63, 64, 66, 67; script, 20, 68;
population in Lijiang, 27
Long Yun, 42/221
Ludian, 54
Manchus, 12, 21, 75
Mandarin (standard Chinese): as lan-
guage of instruction, 5, 50; in Lijiang
schools, 48, 49; in Naxi families,
76-77; promoted in Sipsong Panna,
129-30; promoted in schools, 156-57
Mao Zedong, 57; essays used in school, 59;
teaching about, 107
May Fourth Movement, 44
Menghai (Fohai), 88, 94, 96, 97,120,121
Mengla, 21, 88, 93, in
Mengzhe: classes for novices in, 120-21;
monks and students in, 121
Mengzhe Central Primary School, 122
Miao, 20, 27, 34, 56, 64, 66, 67
minban schools: closing down of, 16, 57;
during Great Leap Forward, 55
minban teachers, 21, 22,56, 58, 59, 66
Ming dynasty, 25, 29, 30
Ministry of Education: on minority edu-
cation, 18,18/25,19; patriotic educa-
tion and, 52; promotion of boarding
schools, 131
minority cadres, training of, 12, 53
minority classes, 22, 62-63,167-68
minority institutes, 13, 53. See also Yunnan
Institute of the Nationalities
minority languages: teaching material in,
16,103; suppressed in schools, 43/222;
new scripts for, 51-52
minority schools: Chinese concepts of,
7-8,131-32; in 1950,13-14; establish-
ment of, 18-19; in Lijiang, 61-65;
in Sipsong Panna, 132-34. See also
boarding schools
minzw. represented in education, xii-xiii,
4, 53 , 72,134, 136-37,159,160,162;
modes of production among, 3;
constitutional equality of, 4; and
Stalin’s criteria for ethnic groups, 12;
Chinese nation and, 73, 74; admission
rules for minority, 75,124; Chinese
discourse on, 154. See also classification
of minzu
minzu shibie. See classification of minzu
missionaries, 40, 97
Moerman, Michael, 89
Mongols, 18, 21, 75, 83
202INDEX
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 12, 52,53, 70, 72
Mosuo, 25, 26, 53, 63, 77, 85. See also Naxi
Mu family, 25; education among, 29,30,
31; praise during Qing, 78
Nanjing, 50
nationalities. See minzu
Naxi: Han influence among, xvi-xvii;
student population, xvi, 75; revival
of rituals, xvii; level of development,
12; history of, 25; number of, 26, 27;
language, 27 39, 48-49, 51-52, 64;
Confucian education among, 29-35,
36-37,162; fear of Han assimilation,
38, 39; responses to education, 74-78,
162-65; intellectuals, 76-78, 83, 84, 85,
162
Naxi /IflHjyZza Cultural School of Lijiang,
82-83
New Lijiang Study Society, 44
mpha, 154
novice classes (heshang ban)-. before 1958,
104; experiments with, 119,120-21
Nu, 13
Nuosu, 13, 27, 34, 56, 66. See also Yi
patriotic education: teaching of, xii, 70, 71;
promotion of, 14,18, 52,139-42
Peng Jizhi, 37, 377/14
people-run schools. See minban schools
People’s Communes, 56,103,107,109
Phusa, 6, 88
population control, 76
Premi, 27, 34, 64, 67
primary schools: age of students in,
6«4; length of, 67/4, 22,55-56,119;
student population in, 15; Tai novices
in, 145-46
primitive society, 70, 71; teaching about,
135,138; Akha and, 152; Jinuo and, 152
production teams, 587/38
Pu Linlin, 24
putonghua. See Mandarin
Qing dynasty, 161,162; views of educa-
tion, xi; founding of Mongolian and
Tibetan school, 9; founding of Bureau
of Education in Border Regions, 9;
founding of native literacy schools,
9; relation to Tibet, 25; and education
in frontier regions, 36; praise of Mu
family, 78. See also Confucian education
Qubilai Khan, 25
Rawski, Evelyn, 407/17
Red Guards, 57
religious fever (zongjiao re), 109, ill, 119
Republican period: nationalist educa-
tion, 9-11, 50; theory of the five races,
9-10; language policy, 10,11; assim-
ilation of minorities, 11; education in
Lijiang, 32, 40-51; length of educa-
tion, 43; coeducation of boys and girls,
46; administration in Sipsong Panna
92; education in Sipsong Panna, 93-
97
research methodology: interviews, xviii-
xx; classroom research, xix; textbooks,
xix. See also fieldwork
Rock, Joseph, 26, 267/3, 28
Rowe, William, 32
Sanda, 88
Sanduo, 57, 81
sangha, no, iiot/i
scripts, minority, creation of, 14-15
secondary schools: age of students in,
67/4; length of, 67/4, 22; teaching of
theories of social evolution in, 72-73;
teaching about religion in, 137-39;
Tai novices and monks in, 146-47;
language in, 161
serf society, 70
shamanist, 28
Shigu, 63
Sichuan, 44
j
Sipsong Panna Prefectural Minority
School, 1337/15
Sipsong Panna Prefecture: history of,
xv, 88-90, 90-91; inhabitants of, 88;
geography, 89; school attendance in,
104-5, 119, l2T revival of Buddhist
203INDEX
Sipsong Panna Prefecture (continued)
education in, 109-16; number of
monks and temples in, in; school
enrollment in, 120; regular schools
in, 123-25; patriotic education since
1989,139-42
Sipsong Panna Prefecture Bureau of
Religions, in
sishu, 40, 47, 39; in Lijiang, 29, 32-34, 35,
38. See also Confucian education
slave society, 70
Society for Naxi Culture, 76, 84
Southwest Border School, 96
Soviet Union: impact on Chinese educa-
tion, 15; propaganda about, 101
standard Chinese. See Mandarin
state farms: disputes with minorities, 89,
151; established in Sipsong Panna, 98;
schools on, 123; Jinghong State Farm,
123
Sun Yat-sen, 9,10,11,47, 50
Tai: participation in Chinese education,
xv-xvi, 75; level of development, 13,
97; names, 9612/2; definition of 20-21,
87-88; illiteracy among, 20; history
of, 88-89, 90-93; calendar, 90, 90ns;
Nationalists vs. Communists, 92-93;
education during the Cultural Revolu-
tion, 105-8; revival of Buddhist edu-
cation among, 109-16; cadres’ and
teachers’ views on Buddhist education,
118; ethnic identity of students, 142-50;
teachers, 1+2-43; views on minorities
from mountains, 151-53; responses to
education, 165-67. See also chcutpaendm
(king); Tai language
Tai language, 77-78; Chinese education
and, 99-102,125-31,13+, 157-58; sim-
plification of script, 100; burning of
scripts during the Cultural Revolution,
106-7; textbooks in, 128; students’
view of, 1++; students’ command of,
145; bilingual education in 156-57
Taiwan, +3»22
Tang Zhiyao, +2»2t
tax system, in Sipsong Panna, 94-95
teachers: training of, 41, 44,44»2+, 50,
53, 99; in Lijiang during the Cultural
Revolution, 58; view of minorities
from mountains, 6+; praise of Akha
and Jinuo, 155; view of Buddhist
education, 121
Thai language, 113
Thailand, 88, 89,101, no; monks from,
in, 113; Sipsong Panna monks in, 114,
147; religious and modern education
in, 115-16,119; contact with Sipsong
Panna, 126,158,167
Theravada Buddhism, 89
Third Secondary School of Yunnan
Province, 43
Thousand Character Text, 32
“three sames,”49
Tianji, 31
Tibet: influence of in Lijiang, 25, 28;
Britain and, 36
Tibetans, 83; level of development of, 13;
bilingual education among, 18
tourism: education for, 82; in Lijiang, 27,
27724, 65, 78, 79; in Sipsong Panna, 89,
90,138-39,157
transcriptions, xx-xxi
Trimetrical Classic, 32
Tuo’en, 34, 56, 66, 67
tush, during Yuan, 25; in Lijiang, 25; in
Sipsong Panna, 91; studies in Beijing
Uygurs, 12,18
United Front policy, 13
vernacular language (baihua), 33
Vietnam, 88
vocational education, n, +1
Wa, 13
Wat Pa Jie Maharajatan, 11+
Water Splashing Festival, 90
Weixi, 26, 51
work teams, 98,105
204INDEX
Xikang, 44
Xishuangbanna. See Sipsong Panna
Xueshan, 31, 37
Yang Qichang, 29, 30, 31
Yang Shangzhi, 49
Yao, 20
Yellow Emperor, xii, 141,160
Yi, 20, 27, 63, 64, 88
Yuan dynasty, 29
Yuhe, 31
Yulong Mountain (journal), 68
Yunnan: decrees on border and minority
education, 10,14,50, 94; minority
education since 1980, 19-24; state
support to, 19; students in 19-20, 75;
illiteracy in, 20; administration of
schools in, 22; contacts with central
China (1911-28), 42^2?; schools during
Qing, 36; warlords, 43; Japanese oc-
cupation of, 44; patriotic education
since 1989,139-42; bilingual education
in, 161
Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, 79
Yunnan Bureau of Culture and Education,
52
Yunnan Bureau of Education, 71
Yunnan History, taught in schools, 68-71,
134; content of teaching material, 69-
71; and patriotic education, 70
Yunnan Institute of the Nationalities,
98; curriculum in, 22-23; establish-
ment of, 22; enrollment in, 23-24;
Han students in, 23; languages taught
in, 23; Naxi students in, 23; Tai stu-
dents in, 24,145; Tai language in,
129
Yunnan Provincial Lijiang Secondary
School, 43»23, 49
Yunnan Teachers College, 22
Yunnan University', 22
Zhang Shiya, 117
Zhao Cunxin. See Chao Tsengha
Zhao Lu, 49
Zhaotong, 44
Zhongdian, 26
zhongdian xuexiao. See keypoint schools
Zhonghua minzu. See Chinese nation
Zhu Xi, 32
Zhuang, 12, 87
Zou Zhenxie, 107
205LESSONS IN BEING CHINESE
Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China
METTE HALSKOV HANSEN
I wo very different ethnic minority communities—the Naxi of the
Lijiang area in northern Yunnan and the Tai (Dai) of Sipsong Panna
(Xishuangbanna), along Yunnan’s border with Burma and Laos—
are featured in this comparative study of the implementation and
reception of state minority education policy in the People’s Republic
of China. Based on field research and historical sources, Lessons in
Being Chinese argues that state policy, which is intended to be applied
uniformly across all minority regions, in fact is much more successful
in some than in others.
In Lijiang, elite members of the Naxi ethnic group (minzu) have a
centuries-old connection with Chinese state educational systems as
avenues to social mobility, and have continued this tradition under
Communist rule. They participate enthusiastically in the present
system, using education to gain official and professional positions. In
contrast to the Lijiang area, Sipsong Panna functioned in many ways
as a separate kingdom until 1950, with its own script and a separate
educational system centered in Theravada Buddhist monasteries.
Today, many Tai in that area still prefer monastic education for their
sons, and most parents are indifferent to state education.
This study finds that standardized, homogenizing state education is
in itself incapable of instilling in students an identification with the
Chinese state, ironically often increasing ethnic identity. Lessons in
Being Chinese enhances our understanding of how state policy toward
minorities works in many areas of life, and its conclusions can be
extended well beyond the sphere of education. It will be of interest
to both anthropologists and educators.
Mette Halskov Hansen is a post-doctoral research fellow at the
Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.
STUDIES ON ETHNIC GROUPS IN CHINA	)
University of Washington Press
Seattle and London
Cover: Students in a village primary school
in Lijiang (photo by author)
ISBN 0-295-97788-4
IIIIIIIIIIIKIIIIII
9 780295 977881