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The tourism development of the Wa village of Wengding, dubbed “the last primitive tribe” in China by public and private stakeholders in its promotion as a tourist site, is based around a complex of facilities and amenities in the village space, and tourist activities with a tendency to objectify the “primitive” aspect of “traditional Wa culture” and the Wa people themselves. This village on the periphery of the People’s Republic of China is both a locus for the expression of the expectations and representations of visitors – primarily urban Han – about this village community, and the construct of a hierarchized relationship between the Han civilisation and this ethnic minority. After more than a decade of tourism development, the recent measure to displace the village community to a “New Rural Village” in turn exemplifies what the author terms “internal primitivism”, an extreme form of Orientalism.

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1Wengding village has been the focus of a tourist development project since the start of the 21st century. Located some thirty kilometres from the China-Myanmar border, the main original hamlet of Wengding is inhabited by approximately 500 wa paraok speakers. They belong to the Wa (Wazu) ethnic group, one of the fifty-five ethnic minority groups (minzu) officially recognised by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This article will demonstrate how the relationship of hierarchized otherness between the central authorities of the PRC and Han Chinese society on the one hand, and the minority Wa ethnic group on the other, is perpetuated through the orchestration of tourism in the village of Wengding and the recent displacement (2018) of a large proportion of its population into a new complex of households. Firstly, I shall take you through the tour of the village experienced by most of the tourists visiting it. They are predominantly urban Han (the ethnic majority in China), who are encouraged to follow a set route by amenities, and village activities and spaces specifically staged for tourists. This route through Wengding, which will briefly set in context the facilities installed under the supervision of Lincang Tourist Office (the official body responsible for the launch, monitoring, and management of the site) will be supplemented by a study of the expectations and representations of several visitors who were observed and interviewed as they visited Wengding. Secondly, analysis of the registers mobilised by various external agencies (government and travel agencies, the media, etc.) during the process of developing and promoting tourism in Wengding will highlight how tourists’ expectations and official discourse around the Wa ethnic group are aligned. Visitors’ tourist experiences of the village are based on discovering and engaging with the “primitive” quality of some of the cultural practices displayed there. Building on research carried out by Liu Tzu-Kai (2013) on heritage and cultural ideologies implemented in Wengding, studies by Magnus Fiskesjö on the Wa ethnic group more broadly (2012 and 2015), and my own article analysing in detail the construction of Wengding as a tourist venue (Coulouma, 2019), the data produced here will corroborate the fact that conservation policy and tourism development facilities in Wengding play a role in the objectification of the “primitive” aspect of the Wa culture and ethnic group. This characterisation, with its roots in the official identification and classification of populations in China into minority ethnic groups at various stages of development, is perpetuated today in official discourse, in the work of stakeholders involved in promoting and developing tourism on the site – most of whom who are Han – and implicitly in the views of many visitors to Wengding. Tourism development of the village is therefore a reflection of and an agent in the perpetuation of a hierarchical relationship between the central authorities and the Han majority in civil society on the one hand, and the Wa minority on the other. By analysing a new piece of data – the implementation of a major public policy initiative culminating in the forced displacement of the population of Wengding in 2018 – I will take the argument a step further and demonstrate that developmentalist measures of this type are a form of imperialism (understood here as a collective tendency to domination) on the part of the Chinese State towards populations on the periphery of its territory, including the Wa ethnic group, who are particular targets because they long remained outside the sphere of control of the empires which preceded the birth of the Communist Party in China.

2The data used was collected in Wengding over the course of seven months of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between May 2013 and January 2017 for my PhD thesis. I lived with a family in the village for periods ranging from a week to two months, and spent several days observing tourists wandering around and interacting with the village people. By helping to greet tourists and engaging in tourist activities with the villagers, I often got into conversation with visitors. Information about more recent events has been gathered by monitoring the internet and is supplemented by my ongoing correspondence from France with several people from the village.

I. The Tourismification of Wengding

3Tourism is a competitive industry (Connell and Rugendyke, 2008, p. 30), and every destination must create its own images and representations of people and places which are “continuously (re)invented, (re)produced, and (re)created” (Salazar 2009, p. 49; see also Comaroff and Comaroff, 2009) in order to attract tourists. This phenomenon, known as “tourismification” (Salazar, 2009), refers to all the tourism development processes in these locations. In Wengding, the stage-managed site, facilities, and tourist activities are embedded in all the village spaces and life and are ubiquitous and permanent. Tourist and non-tourist Wengding are therefore conflated.

A. Wengding as Seen by Visitors

  • 1 Built between 2012 and 2013, this building houses the ticket office. The upper floors were designed (...)
  • 2 Villagers are all involved in different capacities in tourism development activities, and are somet (...)

4After parking their vehicles in a car park built outside the village and buying a ticket in the reception building,1 visitors make their way to a gate. Built in the winter of 2013-2014, and extended in 2014 to 2015, this huge gate is a reconstruction of the traditional gate leading into Wa villages, but on a much larger scale. Here, visitors are greeted with music by a group of Wending residents. The villagers are paid to spend the day at the gate wearing “ethnic” costumes (minzu fuzhuang), which are specific to the local area or identified as being in the Wa style.2 It should be noted that most villagers today have long since stopped wearing this type of clothing. One person beats a log drum and the others sing and perform a welcome dance. At the same time, a villager collects entrance tickets and another makes a black dot on the forehead of each visitor with one finger. This mark – the mo ni hei, which in Mandarin literally means “to brush you lightly with black” – is made with black ink bought in the town and mixed with an essential oil. Visitors photograph and film the scene. Some try their hand at playing the drum after the performance by the villagers “on duty” that day.

  • 3 The village space is surrounded by three gates in total, which are symbolic village entrance and ex (...)

5Tourists then walk along the approach to the village, a broad stone-paved avenue which leads to another gate predating the tourist development. In local cosmology, it is associated with the gate which marks the boundary of the village area inhabited by the people of Wengding.3 Surrounded by dense vegetation, the avenue leading from the tourist gate to the entrance gate to the village has been decorated since 2014 with rows of tall Y-shaped wooden posts with a buffalo skull (niutou gugua) fixed to the base of each fork. This recently installed feature is a form of allegory of headhunting, recalling trophies which could be found in the past in some Wa villages and which were arranged at the entrance to the inhabited areas partly to deter intruders from entering (Coulouma, 2019; see also Fiskesjö, 2015, pp. 499-500).

6Tourists then arrive at the main upper square of the village. Like all the inhabited areas of the village, it has been paved with small stones as part of the tourist development. Some villagers condemn this measure as it makes walking difficult for the elderly. Visitors spend some time there taking photos of the first houses and the view of the village. Many also photograph themselves in front of the Y-shaped post, which is larger than those lining the approach to the village. It is an explicit reminder of the now abandoned practice of sacrificing buffalo.

Document 1: Arriving at the second gate leading into the village

Document 1: Arriving at the second gate leading into the village

Author’s photograph, 03/11/2014

7They then make their way across the square, stopping off at the shops set up by villagers living in adjoining homes. These sell locally made artisan fabrics and commercially manufactured ethnic costumes. Packets of green and wild tea leaves, and mushrooms and fruit picked in the surrounding forests are also on sale.

Document 2: On the main square, a group of visitors looks at paddy rice drying on a woven mat

Document 2: On the main square, a group of visitors looks at paddy rice drying on a woven mat

Author’s photograph, 27/12/2016

8Visitors then make their way to the first building, in which there are exhibitions over two floors. On the ground floor, there are large boards with photographs and texts presenting the political organisation of Cangyuan district, to which Wengding belongs, and some customs of the Wa ethnic community (wazu xisu). The texts accompanying the photographs praise the economic and cultural development which has taken place in the region under the auspices of government and Chinese Communist Party agencies. On the first floor, agricultural and household implements, which look as if they have been use, are exhibited in some twenty sparse display cases; the only concession to museum practice is a small sign giving the name of the object in Mandarin and Wa.

Document 3: Exhibition of everyday items.

Document 3: Exhibition of everyday items.

Approximately fifteen buffalo skulls hang on the rear wall

Author’s photograph, 26/12/2016

9Visitors then progress to the “Drum house” (mugu fang), a wooden shelter with a thatched roof in which two log drums are displayed on pedestals.

Document 4: A visitor using a rice pounder, with the “Drum House” in the background

Document 4: A visitor using a rice pounder, with the “Drum House” in the background

Author’s photograph, 03/10/2014

10They then move on to the “King’s Palace” (wawang fu), which is now the largest building in the village. Like the “Drum House”, this building was built in the 2000s for a film shoot. Since then, it has been presented as a replica of the headquarters of the last Wa king, who died in 1934, and who was recognised by the governor of Yunnan at the time as the intendant of the Hulu kingdom. On the first floor, an elderly man from the village, paid by the Lincang Tourist Office, invites them to gather round a fire pit and drink tea. If they wish, tourists can put on ethnic costumes in the style worn by the Wa and sit on a solid stone bench which has been placed there for photographs.

Document 5: Interior of the “Wa King’s Palace”

Document 5: Interior of the “Wa King’s Palace”

Author’s photo, 28/09/2014

11On the ground floor of the “Wa King’s Palace” is a shop selling a wide range of manufactured items, a few examples of locally made cloth, wooden crossbows, and arrows. During the peak tourist season, the crossbows can be used at the shooting gallery adjoining the shop. When asked, several men from the village said that bows have not been used for hunting at all since the 1990s.

Document 6: Visitors trying their hand at firing a crossbow in Wengding

Document 6: Visitors trying their hand at firing a crossbow in Wengding

Author’s photo, 02/10/2014

12In front of the “Wa King’s Palace”, three sculptures made from black wood were erected during the tourist development of Wengding in 2006. A nearby sign says that they are “Totem pillars of the goddess” (nüsheng tuteng zhuang). The individual elements of the group are not local to the village, but are replicas of village pillars from another Wa village in Myanmar. With the exception of tourist guides, none of the inhabitants of Wengding, including the elderly people questioned, knew the meaning of the symbols adorning them.

Document 7: “Totemic pillars of the goddess”

Document 7: “Totemic pillars of the goddess”

Author’s photograph, 28/12/2016

13Visitors then enter the lower village via narrow steps leading to the central square. Here, they take a few photos of the pillars in the centre, browse the shops around the square, and speak to women weaving in the courtyards of their homes, if they are working there. Following a westerly course, they then reach the “Head posts” (rentou zhuang) where some fifteen bamboo stakes have been stuck in the ground. They are topped with small woven baskets, some of which contain a carved wooden effigy of a human head. This is an unambiguous reference to the head-hunting practised by some Wa groups until the mid-twentieth century.

Document 8: Some of the “Head posts” are topped with a basket containing a carved wooden effigy of a human head

Document 8: Some of the “Head posts” are topped with a basket containing a carved wooden effigy of a human head

Author’s photograph, 29/08/2014

14Moving east, the tourists arrive at a water source below the village, before walking uphill to a guest house built in 2014 whose terrace has a view over all the houses in the village. This building was constructed in 2014 for a film shoot, and has since been rented to a village family which has turned it into a guest house. As was the case with the “Wa King’s Palace”, various films shoots in Wengding have played a role in shaping the village landscape.

Document 9: Guest house south-east of the village, overlooking the houses

Document 9: Guest house south-east of the village, overlooking the houses

Author’s photograph, 30/12/2016

  • 4 According to the villagers, a grove where the main guardian spirit of the village dwells.

15Visitors can access another level which offers a panoramic view of the whole village, before moving on to the high point of the tour – a promontory bordered by substantial trees from which are suspended several bucrania. Finally, to the south-east of the road overlooking the village, there is a sign pointing to steps leading to the Forest of the Deity.4 I noted that very few tourists ventured there.

16Most visitors only spend a few hours in the village, but some nevertheless choose to have a meal there or stay overnight. Purchasing a few items as souvenirs of the trip to Wending rounds off the tourist experience.

Document 10: Wengding from the high ground

Document 10: Wengding from the high ground

Author’s photograph, 30/12/2016

B. Tourist Expectations and Representations

17Wengding attracts a very diverse range of tourists, and on several occasions I observed practices and heard comments which differed from those presented here. The most common visitors are couples and families, predominantly Han Chinese from the district or province. Since 2010, larger numbers of visitors from the major Chinese metropolises in the East are visiting Wengding, with an acceleration of this trend since the autumn of 2017 when the district airport was built. Interactions between villagers and tourists differ according to the individuals or groups involved on both sides. Some times of day are more favourable than others and interactions and discussions therefore vary. Nevertheless, my analysis based on the observations and discussions I recorded is representative of the majority of visitor’s views about Wengding and the lifestyle of its inhabitants.

18In comments recorded, the most frequently occurring descriptions of the village, the villagers, and their way of life are: primitive (yuanshi), ecological (shengtai), primitive ecology (yuanshengtai), pure (chunjie), unpolluted (wei wuran), preserved (baocun), backward (luohuo), tribe (buluo), friendly (youhao), warm (reqing), and simple (chunpu). These various attributes are not usually mutually exclusive, and several may be combined in comments directly addressed to villagers or in response to questions from the researcher. The Chinese word yuanshi is by far the most frequently word used by visitors to Wengding to describe village society. On 1 October 2015, I asked a group of seven people for their reactions to the visit. Five of them began by telling me: “It’s very primitive here”, one said “It’s very ecological, very primitive”, and the third said: “although some things have already been commercialised, others are still quite original. The village has nevertheless preserved the culture of this ethnic group, and also its traditions”. Four of them also used the word “simple” (chunpu) to describe both the villagers and their customs (minfeng). A survey of posts on Chinese visitors’ personal blogs shows the recurring use of the word “primitive”. For example: “The village of Wengding preserves the primitive architectural style and the primitive traditions and customs of the Wa” (personal blog, Sina Weibo 2013). In their account of a trip to Wengding, this internet user emphasises the architectural preservation of the houses, but also the notion that the local society itself is primitive (yuanshi), an asset which underpins the reputation of the village as a tourist site, as I will discuss in more detail later on. Below are two further examples of conversations I had with visitors. On 5 November 2014, a visitor who was curious about my presence in the village, approached me. He asked me what I was doing there and when I replied that I was carrying out anthropological research, he exclaimed cheerfully: “Coming here to look at these primitive things is perfect!” On another occasion, I was sketching the “Drum House” when some Chinese tourists asked me if I was getting used to the food and life here, and asked: “Aren’t you afraid as a young woman on your own here?” Lastly, in 2015, when the explanatory sign close to the “Head posts” was removed, visitors struggled to understand the purpose of these stakes and a tourist asked a young village woman: “Are the stakes with heads real?” (comment recorded 11/07/2015). Overall, these comments reveal that the perception of local life is that it is still exactly the same as in the past, or even in very early times – untouched by “civilisation” and progress, devoid of any complexity, simple, and pure, although potentially dangerous as the Wa are still renowned as former head-hunters.

19In tandem with the authentic and primitive aspect of the village, another recurring theme in tourist comments is the villagers’ intrinsically ecological lifestyle. “You see, the chicken we eat [in China], the animals are all fed on meal. When you come here, you can see that their chickens are raised outdoors, so they can’t possibly be fed on meal. That’s why we like to come to these places with a primeval (or primitive) ecology. […] What we are actually looking for are local specialities”. This comment made by a holidaymaker, recorded on 29 December 2016 when she was sitting on a terrace built by a couple from the village in front of their home, is one such example. After ordering several dishes from her hosts, and specifying that she and her husband wanted to eat the villagers’ food and not the usual tourist fare, she added: “It’s really ecological here!” Like her, many visitors to Wengding cherish a sort of nostalgia for the original ecological relationship which the local society would have preserved (Liu 2013, p. 166). However, and rather strikingly, although they come to Wengding to discover a lifestyle close to nature, ecology is something practised by other people and does not apply to them. It is not unusual to see tourists dropping litter on the paths and in the drains running alongside them, despite efforts made at a local level to collect it. In Wengding, highlighting the ideal ecological aspect of local society is primarily associated with stereotyping the Wa ethnic community as frozen in an imagined or imaginary era in which villagers live in symbiosis with their environment, rather than with a type of ecotourism. Furthermore, although tourists’ comments reveal a certain respect for the ecological values allegedly upheld by the local society, values relating to homes and wood-fire cooking in fact reflect a form of heritage awareness. For example, one tourist said: “This is truly the last place in China to be so well preserved” (comment recorded 30/09/2014), and another tourist remarked: “In the whole of Cangyuan, in the whole of Lincang, and the whole of China, this is the only village like this, and that’s why we have to preserve it [...]” (06/07/2015). Furthermore, many people are surprised to see that the villagers have televisions, mobile phones, hot water tanks, and washing machines – a fact which is at odds with the image of this location that they have in mind and which is fuelled by tourism marketing and staging of Wengding.

20However, observation of tourist behaviours in the village reveals a strong trend for experiencing the essence of “Wa culture”, and for interactions which, although filtered by photography, are generally intrusive for villagers. Tourists enjoy trying on new, brightly coloured costumes which are consider to be typical of the Wa people, but more often prefer older-looking clothing, such as more simply-made faded nettle fibre jackets, which they then purchase for a few dozen yuan. While Han clothing is considered to be a marker of civilisation in Chinese tradition (Bray and Will 1994, p. 785), these items symbolise the primitive nature of the Wa. They are touched, tried on, photographed and desired by tourists and provide an opportunity to take home a little piece of this exotic “otherness”. Similarly, when they visit the shop on the ground floor of the “Wa King’s Palace”, they are particularly interested in the crossbows and bows displayed on a table. Upstairs, many are keen to try on traditional costumes, as if they were dressing up, and to photograph themselves with the clothing and accessories (spears, swords, bows, etc.) provided.

21On 14 November 2017, I observed a party of tourists in the central square with a village guide. As she was explaining the meaning of the village pillars, the tourists were taking it in turns to photograph themselves with her. Despite the opportunity to discover the village through the commentary of a local Wengding guide, the tourists seemed less interested in her explanations than in taking advantage of her presence to capture photos with a local village woman (dangdi ren). They all enjoyed touching one of the symbolic features of the village, a large white stone which the guide told them brings good luck. Many of the tourists are therefore keen to engage with the “Wa culture” presented to them. In addition to this experience, visitors to Wengding are in all probability also trying to see an “elsewhere”, and more especially the Other, and to take home photographs and objects which will prove that they have come into contact with the “primitive” people of China. Photographing villagers in close physical proximity, with little or no prior interaction with them, is therefore a common practice which captures this encounter for posterity. I have also observed that some visitors have no qualms about going into courtyards, gardens and even inside houses, in the absence of any demarcation between tourist spaces and domestic living spaces.

II. From Official Categories Objectifying the Primitiveness of the Wa to State Imperialism?

A. Official Registers: Primitivism and Ecology

22Overall, comments recorded and interactions observed demonstrate that visitors to Wengding embrace the State and tourist industry discourses about this village and the Wa ethnic minority. The term for an ethnic group, minzu in Mandarin, was used during the Chinese Republic (1912-1949). Although over one hundred distinct ethnic groups were described in Yunnan local monographs at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Chiang Kai-shek’s government supported the idea of a single people – the “Chinese people” – zhonghua minzu in Mandarin (Mullaney 2011, p. 2). At the same time, the term minzu was used by Chinese ethnologists and linguists in their research to describe the different ethnic groups in the country which made it distinctive (ibid.). The Communists then adopted this argument and upheld the equality of different minzu (ibid.). After the national census of 1953-1954, the Communist government addressed the proliferation of recorded endoethnonyms by launching a programme of “ethnic classification” (minzu shibie). Chinese historians, ethnologists and linguists taking part in this project established a general classification table of peoples in China “according to the type of society and its development stage” (Lemoine, 2010, p. 141). Based on these classifications, central government then determined the development policies required to lead them to socialism (Gros 2012, p. 101). Thirty years later, the work carried out by these teams culminated in the identification and classification of fifty-six nationalities, including the Han majority, who were numerically superior to the fifty-five other ethnic minorities (shaoshu minzu). Although the objective of these teams was to produce a list of “possible or imaginable” minzu, the process of making these nationalities a reality as categories, “products of politics” (Keyes 2002, p. 1171) and “imagined communities” (Anderson 1983) is still ongoing. The Project played a role in establishing “an ethnic hierarchical institution, a fundamental component of China’s political structure” (Yang, 2009, p. 742). During the ethnic identification process and under the control of the central
State which governed and dictated the terms of the classification (Mullaney 2011, pp. 11, 42-65), researchers positioned the different groups studied on a developmental scale defined according to an evolutionary paradigm based on the social and production characteristics of groups: primitive, slave, feudal, capitalist, and socialist.

  • 5 See, for example, the video The Wending Wa Ethnic Tribe, Yunnan produced by Discover Yunnan (2015).

23The village of Wengding has been dubbed “the last primitive tribe in China” (zhongguo zuihou de yuanshi buluo; or sometimes alternatively “one of the last primitive tribes in China” zhongguo zuihou yige yuanshi buluo). Since 2006, this expression has been adopted by all of the stakeholders involved in promoting the village as a tourist site: government agencies, and private businesses (travel companies, transport companies, etc.) alike. It is used in a variety of advertising media to name and describe the village: brochures, tourist maps and guides, online tourist advertising and also audiovisual media,5 popular science magazines, and newspaper and academic articles (see, for example Fan and Zhang 2011).

Document 11: The wooden building constructed at the tourist entrance to Wengding

Document 11: The wooden building constructed at the tourist entrance to Wengding

The wooden building constructed at the tourist entrance to Wengding is decorated with some fifteen buffalo skulls and red painted Chinese characters spelling out “Wengding, one of the last primitive tribes in China”

Author’s photograph, 28/12/2016

24This phrase adopts the terminology used for the first time by the journalist Gao Hong in an article entitled “The Far-distant Wa Mountains” which was published in a mass circulation Chinese magazine in the year when the village was added to the list of intangible protected Yunnan cultural heritage sites.

25In Mandarin, the term yuanshi refers to the idea of origins, of something which is unchanged, original, primitive or primordial. The first character, yuan, can be translated as source, first, primitive. When it is combined with the character shi, which means to trade or begin, it is used to refer to primary forest or primitive forms of social organisation based on the social and production characteristics of groups according to an evolutionist paradigm still employed in China to classify population groups in the country. Although the term tribe (buluo), was used more specifically in the mid-twentieth century by British explorers in Burma to describe the village structure of Wa communities in the central Wa region, it is now used in China to designate and distinguish population groups in the country which are still considered to be in a backward developmental state (luohou) according to this evolutionist approach.

26Stakeholders in the development of tourism in Wengding – Tourist Offices in Cangyuan and Lincang, the culture department of Cangyuan administrative district to which the village is attached, academics conducting research and providing consultancy, tourist and advertising agencies, and the media – play a key role in shaping tourists’ expectations and experiences in Wengding, and their wider view of Wa society. They convey what is in fact akin to the ideological construct of an ahistorical Wa identity. By omitting in their presentation of the village the processes around tourism development and the preservation of certain practices, they are attempting to confer the seal of continuity on them. Village society and the lifestyle of its inhabitants therefore appear to have remained unchanged since time immemorial and untouched by the evolution of Chinese society. This is demonstrated by the following two texts – an information sign at the entrance to the village, and an online advertising post on a travel website:

“Because [Wengding] is currently the best preserved village, many cultural traditions – such as the primitive religion of the Wa ethnic nationality, their production customs and lifestyle, etc. – and their architectural styles are well preserved. It is a living museum of the traditional culture and history of the Wa nationality and a location for film shoots and TV series. This is the last ethnic Chinese tribe to make the transition from a primitive society to a socialist society. In the village, the traditional thatched houses of the Wa ethnic nationality are fully preserved and the totems, village pillars, ritual house, sacred forest, drum house and traditional Wa family craft workshops are very well preserved. The area surrounding the village is well preserved and the natural landscapes are magnificent. Village folklore is simple, rich ethnic customs have been handed down from one generation to the next and the original ecological culture has been protected right up to the present day.” (Opening sentences of an introductory sign at the entrance to the village, author’s translation).

“In Wengding, you will feel as if time has stood still. Houses with perfectly preserved thatch and cattle skulls hanging all around will reveal the mysteries of the Wa ethnic nationality, and it is a living museum of the entire culture and history of this ethnic nationality.” (Extract from an article published on a travel website: Xu 2016).

27As is shown by these two texts, the village is presented to tourists online, in advertising, and on information boards when they arrive in the village, as an opportunity to travel back in time to a distant past; the inhabitants still live in the archaic natural way and their superstitions (mixin) and cultural practices – ancient or current without distinction – are presented as proof. The use of this terminology in Wengding not only pushes the image of an exotic, primitive society to the extreme (Liu 2013, p. 172), but also integrates the village and its inhabitants into the “ethnic hierarchical institution” of the Chinese nation when placed in a national political and social context (Yang 2009, p. 742).

28A parallel aim since 2004, has been to highlight Wengding as a proto eco-village (yuan shengtai cun). The nature of the environment and the lifestyle of these villagers are described as being “fundamentally ecological”, framed in essentialist terms, and defended. They thereby offer a framework in which to imagine a society living closer to nature and in a harmonious relationship with it (Liu 2013, p. 173). For Liu Tzu-kai, this “ecological ethos” strikes a chord with the widespread environmental debate in urban centres and among city dwellers. The overall appearance of the village, with its wooden houses surrounded by mountains covered in forests – which is partly the result of conservation policies (Liu 2013; Coulouma 2019) – accentuates the image of a village society protected from the hustle and bustle and pollution which afflict the major urban centres where the majority of tourists live, nestling in an unspoilt natural world with which the villagers live in symbiosis.

29This primitivist and ecological discourse is echoed to some extent in the “romantic idealisation of the primitive (timeless wisdom, an authentic life close to nature, respect for the environment, etc.)” of dominant western commentary on the Pacific region during the colonial era, and by early anthropologists, as is highlighted by Alain Babadzan (2009, p. 85). But although the depiction of a village community shielded from the excesses of modern life by its relationship with nature and ecology emerges in visitor comments, this does not take precedence over the notion of a primitive society with archaic customs which is frozen in time, and in a “backward evolutionary state”, an image which is more reminiscent of the notion of primitiveness used by westerners in the thirteenth century to refer to non-western civilisations (Taylor, 2000 cited by Chabloz 2009, p. 411). In the PRC, this type of concept, which is a recurring feature of comments made by tourists visiting Wengding, is based on official registers and categories evident in the various projects implemented in Wengding by local authorities under the supervision of central authorities, and in the approaches employed.

B. From the Need to Preserve a “Primitive” People to the Need to Develop Them

30The approaches used to implement tourism development in Wengding nurture the representations of identity of predominantly Han visitors, which are based on the dichotomy between primitiveness and civilisation. The absence of any mention in advertising for the village and on information boards onsite of the preservation processes and the decisions made around staging the village – notably the density of buffalo skull pillars, the use of the phrase “China’s last primitive tribe” to describe the site, and more generally the terms “primitive”, “primitive ecology”, “tribe” and “totem” to characterize the village and the features and practices which are elevated to symbols of “Wa culture” – all contribute to the objectification of its primitiveness. This is also in alignment with the overarching concept of a fundamentally hierarchical relationship between centralised PRC government institutions and peripheral regions of the country and their inhabitants. Measures taken to develop this industry at a local level bring the Wa and Han closer together, while preserving the symbolic distance between the primitiveness of the former and the civilisation of the latter (Coulouma 2019). As highlighted by Stéphane Gros in his book on the Drung province of Yunnan, “the construction of a certain image of societies on the cultural and economic fringe implies a dialectical relationship in which the image of the Other serves to bolster one’s own self-image. The depiction of the “primitiveness” of minorities therefore endures because it enhances the representation of the Han as modern (cf. Gladney 1994)” (2012, p. 105). The author refers here to an article by anthropologist Dru Gladney, who has demonstrated that the construction of representations of minority ethnic communities in China belongs to a process of binary construction of “imagined” national identities, drawing on the concept of “imagined communities” developed by Benedict Anderson (1983). As Timothy Leicester highlighted, “through this process, ethnic minorities are elevated to the status of an “internal Other” which is both an object of desire and image which reassures and enhances observers’ sense of superiority” (2008, p. 235). Ethnic tourism projects (minzu lüyou in Mandarin) are expanding in China, echoing representations and relationships which exist historically between the centre and peripheral areas. They meet the ever-growing need of domestic and predominantly urban Han Chinese tourists for leisure and discovery opportunities – a phenomenon that Élisabeth Allès has described as “popular internal orientalism” (2011, p. 250). She draws on the concept of internal orientalism introduced by Dru Gladney (1994) and developed by Louisa Schein in her research relating to the Miao people (1997) to describe this demand and the tourist industry’s response under the supervision of the central Chinese authorities and their local representatives at various levels. The characteristic features of tourism development projects in peripheral provinces and the cultural and heritage policies targeting populations who live there are fuelling this demand. The type of tourism developed in the Wa village of Wengding fits into this particular context. Tourists experience this difference, and this Other, in a very real, tangible, visible and sensory way, while sharing with the villagers an official attachment to the institution of the Chinese state. Their discourse and representations of the village are nurtured by the supervised experience of the facilities in the space, and activities which “rely on public imaginations and expectations of Wa primitiveness in opposition to urban, non-ethnic space as civilized.” (Liu 2013, p. 177). Tourism development of village space in Wengding is therefore akin to what I would call internal primitivism, i.e. an extreme form of orientalism. Primitivism is accentuated by the almost total absence of explanatory information in tourist facilities installed in the village referring to practices which have ceased, or are not indigenous to the local area – thus creating an “historic distortion” and a reification in the treatment and occasionally “grotesque” display (Fiskesjö 2015, pp. 498, 510) of elements identified as unique to the Wa by public and private stakeholders in the tourism development project. The particular image of a reified and objectified primitive Wa culture fostered by tourism development among visitors to Wengding, legitimises the “Wa ethnic group” classification and the ideology underpinning the unified Chinese multi-ethnic state system. The idea of the need to support the development (kaifa or fazhan) of this ethnic group, taking Chinese Han civilisation as a model, can then draw on the allegedly archaic nature of the lifestyle of these people.

  • 6 Xiaozhen (literally little towns) are innovative platforms which incorporate “characteristic indust (...)
  • 7 One of the villagers explained to me that financial compensation was offered for his land by the ho (...)

31Within the framework of the Chinese policy of “Construction of new rural villages” (xin nongcun jianshe), work on the New Village of Wengding (Wengding xinzhai) began in 2012 under the aegis of the district government. It was funded by the China Eastern Airlines holding company, which had made a commitment in 2003 to “poverty alleviation” (fupin kaifa) and to the “Construction of new rural villages” in the autonomous Wa district of Cangyuan and in the autonomous Lahu, Wa, Bulang and Dai district of Shuangjiang, under the supervision of the central government State Council. According to an executive of this company interviewed by the Liberation Daily, “expanding tourism is the most effective way for these two districts to reduce poverty and increase wealth (Liang 2016). A Cangyuan Tourism Office internal document states that the aim behind the construction of the New Village of Wengding is to “gradually adapt the Wa village to the expansion of tourism and to improve the living conditions of its inhabitants”. The project was therefore aligned with the development of tourist activities on the site. Since it was included in the project to create the “Calabash town” (hulu xiaozhen), 6it was eligible for a 4A tourism attraction rating. As was the case for the development of the “old” village, this process did not directly involve the people in either the project plan, or the architectural design of the houses and their overall spatial organisation. The project required the appropriation of 4 hectares of arable land to build a complex of “modern” houses (xiandai) into which villagers were invited to move in 2013. While the New Village was still being constructed, the local authorities began to offer the new houses for sale to villagers, but none of them accepted. Every time I returned to Wengding, the villagers told me that they were coming under increasing pressure to buy. Between the spring of 2014 and the winter of 2016, moving was a recurring topic in discussions among villagers, with tourists, and with me. In these two years, it was the main bone of contention between the local authorities and the village community, which held out against the project until the spring of 2017. In their conversations, the inhabitants of Wengding put forward several reasons for their refusal to move, their uncertainty, their incomprehension, and even their anger. The three main points were: the requisitioning of plots of land belonging to several families from the village, without compensation7; the fact that between 2012 and 2015 the local authorities asked villagers to buy houses and placed significant pressure on them to move there, but left them feeling that they had been “swindled” (pian) as a number of defects were identified (leaks, poor levelling, etc.); and lastly, the ethical and cosmological problems associated with moving, as the villagers emphasised that it was dangerous to abandon ancestral grounds where the fragile equilibrium between humans and non-humans had to be maintained through community rituals (interviews conducted on 23/09/2014 and 29/12/2016).

32On 29 December 2016, a new development, initiated by the district authorities, accelerated the process. The villagers were all invited to gather in front of four desks, where they were greeted with registration lists and boxes of numbered paper slips. The secretary general of the party and the village committee announced the reason for the gathering: the authorities had eventually decided to give the houses to the villagers and in order to speed up the removal process, one person from each household would draw at random the number of the new house which would be given to their family. Although each family now owned a house, none of them moved until the following autumn. In December 2017, however, one of the village women with whom I correspond regularly told me that the community was coming under increasing pressure. The district authorities were threatening every household with the withdrawal of financial aid for maintenance work to homes and alleyways and the termination of technical support for the village’s electrical and water supply network, while still allowing them to stay there. Faced with this threat, approximately 90 of the 103 families in the village of Wengding decided to move to the New Village between May and August 2018.

Conclusion

33Created in 2004 by the Communist Party of China and the autonomous district of Cangyuan (Duan 2006), the Wa ethnic community carnival, known as Monihei (like the mark applied to the foreheads of visitors when they arrive in Wengding), is organised every year in early May in the tourist towns and villages in this district and the district of Ximeng. The festivities push the experience of primitivism to their peak, as the main activity for participants is to smear each other with mud. According to Fiskesjö, this festival “implicitly yet unmistakably plays on the notion that the Wa are dirty” (2015, p. 520 note 11). The invention and promotion of these types of activities and spaces reinforce the representation of gradations of difference between Han society and the Wa, and legitimise the line taken towards the Wa by the central powers and dominant Chinese society. In a dialectic of exclusion and inclusion, differentiation between Wa culture and Han culture plays on an internal primitivism rooted in a long history of assimilation of peripheral areas, and continues to produce scholarly and popular thinking accompanied by representations which expand and reinforce the idea of a multi-ethnic, but unified, Chinese nation. In this nation, and more specifically in academic and political discourse around the diversity of its population, each ethnic minority is entitled to the same rights, but is still measured against a developmental scale. This ideology underpins the tourist industry, which disseminates and reinforces it. The forced displacement of the Wengding village community at the instigation of local and central government reveals a sovereign mode of governance and demonstrates the current nature of the hierarchical relationship between the central authorities and the population in peripheral areas, including the Wa, the last “primitive” people in need of civilisation. The objectification inherent in this characterisation nurtures this relationship while calling for development initiatives which state mechanisms alone can provide – as is demonstrated by the “New Rural Villages” policy which has targeted Wengding and its inhabitants, among others.

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Bureau de coopération sur les investissements du district de Cangyuan (2017), « Annonce d’investissement dans le bourg de caractère Wengding calebasse du district autonome wa de Cangyuan » [沧源佤族自治县翁丁葫芦特色小镇招商公告], available at: www.cangyuan.gov.cn/show-22-12525-1.html

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Notes

1 Built between 2012 and 2013, this building houses the ticket office. The upper floors were designed to be used as a hotel, but did not receive any guests until 2017.

2 Villagers are all involved in different capacities in tourism development activities, and are sometimes paid. Approximately a dozen families have created guest rooms and offer catering services to tourists. A large part of my thesis focused on the strategies implemented by villagers to cope with the tourismification of their living space.

3 The village space is surrounded by three gates in total, which are symbolic village entrance and exit points through which people and also spiritual entities can pass. The gate used by visitors entering Wengding, situated north-north-east of the village, is the largest of these three gates.

4 According to the villagers, a grove where the main guardian spirit of the village dwells.

5 See, for example, the video The Wending Wa Ethnic Tribe, Yunnan produced by Discover Yunnan (2015).

6 Xiaozhen (literally little towns) are innovative platforms which incorporate “characteristic industries and services” and boast “cultural, tourist and community functions” (Wu et al. 2018). Every year, new xiaozhen are created across China. The Calabash Town includes several other sites outside the village of Wengding itself. The call for investment totalling three million yuan was launched in July 2017. It is intended cover the cost of developing 3 km2 of land around the ancient and new village of Wengding, featuring the construction of a “typically Wa leisure centre”, a “tourist facilities centre”, a “Chinese medicine treatment and wellbeing centre” and a “cellar-distillery” (Commercial network of Chinese municipalities and districts 2017). For further details about this project, see also the note published by the Cangyuan District Office of Cooperation on Investment (2017).

7 One of the villagers explained to me that financial compensation was offered for his land by the holding company responsible for construction, but that the money was retained by the district authorities (comment recorded on 14/07/2015).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Document 1: Arriving at the second gate leading into the village
Crédits Author’s photograph, 03/11/2014
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 716k
Titre Document 2: On the main square, a group of visitors looks at paddy rice drying on a woven mat
Crédits Author’s photograph, 27/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 736k
Titre Document 3: Exhibition of everyday items.
Légende Approximately fifteen buffalo skulls hang on the rear wall
Crédits Author’s photograph, 26/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 520k
Titre Document 4: A visitor using a rice pounder, with the “Drum House” in the background
Crédits Author’s photograph, 03/10/2014
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
Titre Document 5: Interior of the “Wa King’s Palace”
Crédits Author’s photo, 28/09/2014
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 544k
Titre Document 6: Visitors trying their hand at firing a crossbow in Wengding
Crédits Author’s photo, 02/10/2014
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 696k
Titre Document 7: “Totemic pillars of the goddess”
Crédits Author’s photograph, 28/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,4M
Titre Document 8: Some of the “Head posts” are topped with a basket containing a carved wooden effigy of a human head
Crédits Author’s photograph, 29/08/2014
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 912k
Titre Document 9: Guest house south-east of the village, overlooking the houses
Crédits Author’s photograph, 30/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-9.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 584k
Titre Document 10: Wengding from the high ground
Crédits Author’s photograph, 30/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-10.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 728k
Titre Document 11: The wooden building constructed at the tourist entrance to Wengding
Légende The wooden building constructed at the tourist entrance to Wengding is decorated with some fifteen buffalo skulls and red painted Chinese characters spelling out “Wengding, one of the last primitive tribes in China”
Crédits Author’s photograph, 28/12/2016
URL http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/docannexe/image/4376/img-11.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 786k
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Référence électronique

Sarah Coulouma, « From the Tourismification of a Village to the Displacement of its Population: Expressions of a Hierarchical Relationship Between the Chinese State and the Wa Ethnic Minority », Via [En ligne], 16 | 2019, mis en ligne le 30 mars 2020, consulté le 18 février 2025. URL : http://0-journals-openedition-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/viatourism/4376 ; DOI : https://0-doi-org.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/10.4000/viatourism.4376

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Auteur

Sarah Coulouma

Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IrAsia, Marseille, France

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Traducteur

Université Bretagne Occidentale

http://www.univ-brest.fr/btu

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