Ethnic ChinaLit

It began back in 2008 with Penguin investing heavily—$100,000 is the rumored price—to purchase Jiang Rong’s tale set in Inner Mongolia, Wolf Totem. This year two newly translated novels have joined China’s “borderland fiction” category: Fan Wen’s Une terre de lait et de miel, located in the gateway to Tibet straddling Yunnan and Sichuan, and Chi Zijian’s Last Quarter of the Moon, which features the reindeer-herding Evenki whose lives revolve around the Argun River that demarcates the Sino-Russian border.

Penned in Chinese, these novels are the creations of Han authors who have consciously chosen to set their tales among non-Han peoples who have historically resided at the fringes of the Middle Kingdom. Ran Ping’s Legend of Mongolia (蒙古往事), a fictionalized biography of Genghis Khan that was short-listed for the Mao Dun Literary Prize in 2008, also falls into this category, but it has not been translated into a European language.

Of course, there are popular novelists of various ethnicities who choose to write about their people using Chinese. Part-Tibetan Alai, author of King Gesar (格萨尔王) and Red Poppies (尘埃落定), comes to mind, for instance

But what about writers who not only speak two languages native to China, but write in both? How does their ability to move seamlessly between two tongues impact their choice of themes and their “narrative voice”? Two such authors have recently come to my attention, one who writes in Tibetan and Chinese, and another who has mastered Uyghur and Chinese.

Fortunately for you—if you read French—7 of Pema Tseden’s short stories originally in Tibetan (3) and Chinese (4) have just been released in one volume from Editions Philippe Picquier, Neige. Filmmaker and writer Tseden (པད་མ་ཚེ་བརྟན།) is a pioneer in the use of Tibetan, the first mainland director to ever shoot a film entirely in his native tongue (Old Dog). Read the rest of this entry »

Some 340 projects proposed by 251 China publishers are set to benefit from some pretty hefty funding—a total of US$57m—via the 2013 China Publication Fund (2013 国家出版基金), according to a March 26, 2013 Xinhua report (340 项目). For the first time since such funding came on stream in 2007, all 12 of China’s western-most provinces have approved projects on the list, including Tibet with 9 worth over US$2.7m. For a complete list of all 340 projects in Chinese, click here.

I list some approved projects concerning the culture, history and literature of non-Han peoples:

A government-sponsored project to publish translations of pre-1949 Xinjiang-related texts during 2012-2020 has been launched with the February 27^th announcement (首批) that the first sixty volumes will soon be available in print (albeit in small numbers and high-end editions) and in digital format.

Dubbed the “Xinjiang Archives” (新疆文库), it will consist of originals and translations in Chinese, Uyghur, Kazakh, Mongol, Kyrgyz and Xibe. Targeted domains include works of philosophy, sociology, history and geography, literature and technology.

As usual with wordy PR announcements from China’s state-run organs, it’s not clear just how much of this is genuinely “new” or easily accessible to the public.

The Xinjiang Archive web site (www.xjwenku.com) lists data about most of the 88 original documents that will appear in the new collection (出版书目), but most carry rather old publication dates. It may be that this new collection features updated, edited versions of originals that had gone out of print, so making them available in digital format would be much appreciated by scholars worldwide. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2013, it’s not easy to locate what I’d consider a good overview of Uyghur writing on the Chinese Internet.

Home to perhaps 10 million Uyghurs, the 1.6m sq km Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region accounts for almost one-sixth of China’s territory and borders Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.  The Chinese government is hyper-sensitive about most anything “Uyghur,” particularly their religion (Islam), and the language, which has Turkic roots unrelated to Han Chinese.

Even so, I’ve found two articles in Chinese which are fairly informative, if dated. One by 祖姆拉提 · 克尤木 that focuses strictly on Uyghur literature in Xinjiang during 1949-2005 (新疆维吾尔文学),  and another by 阿扎提·蘇勒坦 that looks at a broader topic, ethnic literature in Xinjiang (新疆民族文学五十年) since the founding of the autonomous region in 1955.

Here are some factoids cited from the latter essay—all based on the 1955-2005 period—that offer a glimpse of literary “output” of the various non-Han peoples in Xinjiang:

See below for my table listing a selection of Uyghur authors and their works. Read the rest of this entry »

Several interesting issues and factoids have emerged from the recent 9th China Nationalities Forum (第九届民族文学论坛) held in Xinjiang’s Kashgar, according to Liu Daxian (刘大先) in his Dec 12 round-up of the event (九届):

• China may be celebrating Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature, but “We Uyghurs have not yet been able to read his works,” lamented an award-winning Uyghur author (亚生江·沙地克), in a reference to the fact that relatively little literature is being translated into—or out of—Uyghur. “In Uyghur creative literary circles, we are talking to ourselves.”

• “In reality, there are actually two systems of Chinese literary criticism: one called ‘the Han language system’ (or ‘Hanzi system’), and one ‘minority ethnic literature system’,” emphasized Xinjiang Normal University’s Professor Wang Youfu (王佑夫). “This is an undeniable fact. China literary criticism history texts now in use in higher education are actually histories of Han Chinese literary criticism.”

• Prize money for China’s most prestigious awards for minority ethnic literature, the Junma Ethnic Literary Awards (骏马奖), has now skyrocketed to 100,000 renminbi—up from just 3,000 when they were first handed out in 1999. Read the rest of this entry »

In No Ban on Uyghur Dress (behind paywall) Li Jing at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reports:

Muslim head coverings and long beards are “kind of passé”, a deputy police chief from Xinjiang’s Kashgar prefecture said this week when explaining why authorities discouraged such practices among Uygurs, who make up 40 per cent of the region’s population.

But Kurex Kanjir, a Uygur who is also a member of the Xinjiang delegation to the Communist Party’s

Kashgari headgear

18th national congress, said there was “absolutely no ban” on Uygurs wearing traditional Islamic dress.

Some Uygurs and human rights groups have blamed policies enacted by the region’s Han-dominated government – which they say suppresses religious freedom – for sparking riots in the autonomous region.

Residents of the southern Xinjiang city of Hotan said a policy of discouraging women from wearing traditional black Islamic robes was one of the main triggers for a deadly attack on a police station in July last year that resulted in the deaths of at least 18 people.

“We have never said people cannot wear traditional ethnic dress,” Kurex Kanjir said on the sidelines of the congress on Sunday. “But we are now in a civilised society and we hope to use modern culture to guide a somehow backward culture. It is something not to be forced, but something to be achieved through guidance.”

His remarks follow a row triggered last year by a notice issued by a local government in Xinjiang that asked Uygurs, who are mostly Muslim, not to wear Arab dress, grow beards or cover their faces with veils.

The controversial notice was issued by the authorities in Yining’s Dunmaili district in December in a bid to “dilute religious consciousness”, a euphemism for the simmering ethnic tensions in restive southern Xinjiang. Nearly half of the city’s population is Uygur.

The notice, first posted on the district’s official website, was deleted following media reports. A spokeswoman for the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region said at that time that she was not aware of the policy.

Neat title (我的西域，你的东土) for a 473-page tome about the far west of China by a gutsy, if sometimes over-heated Han Chinese who certainly did his fieldwork. The “West Land” of the title conjures up images of the Silk Road, the Taklamakan Desert and Turkic tribes, all part of the Chinese empire. “East Country,” however, is a taboo term in today’s PRC, a homophone for the abbreviation of the short-lived East Turkestan Republic, whose legacy still gives Beijing splittist migraines. Both of these terms refer, of course, to what is known in the PRC as Xinjiang.

The title implies an even-handed, and therefore very politically incorrect stance on the “Xinjiang question.” To the best of my knowledge, the book is available only in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and has not been translated out of the Chinese.

“No one has ever. . .deciphered Xinjiang and the Uyghurs like this,” shouts the cover blurb. Author Wang Lixiong (王力雄) did travel widely in Xinjiang on several long sojourns during 1999-2007, often in the company of local Uyghurs, but that is hardly impressive. Arguably, it is the time he spent in jail—being interrogated for photocopying secret government documents about Xinjiang, and the friendship he strikes up with his cellmate, a Uyghur political detainee—that sensitized him to the plight of the Turkic minorities in Xinjiang.

After a tough time in detention during which he almost killed himself and at one point agreed to work as an informer in exchange for his freedom, Wang left jail and resolved to research Xinjiang and write a book about what he saw on the ground, as well as record his political discussions with Mokhtar, his former cellmate and an articulate spokesperson for Uyghur intellectuals.

Rather than write a book review, I’ve translated two brief excerpts. Mind you, it’s not illegal to be a practicing Muslim in Xinjiang. Well, not exactly. Check out Mosque Etiquette Primer and The 23 Illegals just so you understand the challenges involved. . .

The 6 Don’ts & 3 Limitations

(六不准，三限制)

The 6 Don’ts:

1. Government cadres, students and youths under 18 are not permitted to take part in any religious activities in the mosque
2. Do not promote jihad or instigate disputes among ethnic groups
3. Do not carry out propaganda aimed at dividing ethnic groups
4. Do not read or distribute books, magazines, or printed matter promoting jihad
5. Do not interfere with normal administrative work
6. Do not engage in religious activities that involve other districts.

The 3 Limitations:

1.  Friday prayers are limited to half an hour
2. Namaz [5 daily prayers] should be performed according to the original style and format, and these should not be altered
3. Youths under 18 may not enter the mosque.

These instructions were, according to author Wang Lixiong, found at the entrance to the Aitika Mosque in Keriya, Xinjiang (克里雅的艾提卡清真寺) during a visit there in 2003.

This text is my translation of an excerpt from the 473-page Chinese original, My West Land, Your East Country (我的西域，你的东土) by Wang Lixiong (王力雄). Page 158. Published by Locus Publishing of Taiwan (大块文化).

The 23 Illegal Religious Activities 

(非法宗教活动 23 表现)

1. Forcing others to believe in religion
2. Forcing others to fast
3. Operating a madrassa on one’s own
4. Holding a traditional marriage ceremony
5. Condoning prayer by students
6. Using tradition to interfere in modern daily life
7. Organizing a hadj outside of the official channel
8. Exacting a traditional tithe from believers
9. Establishing a religious venue without permission
10. Hosting religious activities without a government certificate
11. Religious activities involving several districts
12. Printing and distributing materials materials for promotion of religion
13. Accepting foreign donations for religious end-uses
14. Going abroad to participate in religious activities
15. Proselytizing without permission
16. Criticizing patriotic religious devotees
17. Infiltration by foreign religions
18. Instigating disputes between different sects
19. Promoting a cult
20. Circulating statements that dispute official policy
21. Congregating to march or demonstrate
22. Establishing anti-revolutionary bodies
23. Other activities that harm social order.

These instructions were, according to author Wang Lixiong, posted at the entrance to a middle school in the countryside near Subashi, a “lost” city in Taklamakan Desert near Kucha. He visited there during 2006. Drawings of the illegal activities were accompanied by text in both Chinese and Uyghur.

This text is my translation of an excerpt from the 473-page Chinese original, My West Land, Your East Country (我的西域，你的东土) by Wang Lixiong (王力雄). Page 232. Published by Locus Publishing of Taiwan (大块文化).

The 10th Junma Ethnic Literary Awards (骏马奖) have been announced. Open to works published in the PRC during 2008-11 by members of ethnic groups other than the majority Han, the competition is a politically correct affair co-organized—predictably—by the state-sponsored Chinese Writers Association, which claims more than 1,000 non-Han writers among its 8,000+ members, and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. One of the judges is the omnipresent Li Jingze, editor-in-chief of People’s Literature (人民文学) and the new quarterly of Chinese literature in translation, Pathway (路灯), and also a long-time judge for China’s most prestigious literary competition, the Mao Dun Literature Prize (矛盾文学奖).

Here’s the list of the winners: