Recently I've been looking at hanminzu.com, a website which promotes Han ethnic identity. It is interesting to see that on it there is a large section about Han traditional clothing (汉服), since costume is one of the ways in which minorities in China are commonly distinguished from the Han. They wear the funny clothes, the Han dress normally.
I remember the new subway line 4 in Beijing had (perhaps still does have) an accompanying advertising series in the stations which featured portraits of people from around China. The minorities wore 'traditional' costume, while the Han were dressed in office or casual wear. What is more, while every portrait bore the name of the person and their location in China, the Han ones gave their profession but not their minzu, while the minority ones gave their minzu but not their profession. The Han have careers while the minorities have 'minority-ness'.
These 'family portraits of all 56 ethnic groups' have been doing the rounds. While the artsy lighting is new, there is much that is familiar here to anyone who has watched Chinese TV or browsed through Chinese National Geographic-type publications. As expected, the minorities are wearing their nice pretty costumes, even if the Bonan, Hui and Dongxiang men aren't really getting into the multicoloured spirit of things. Of course, their white hats and dark jackets hint at the many problems that lie behind the neatness of the "China = 56 nationalities" equation. Take the Hui, for example: since they are only really distinguished from the Han by their Muslim heritage, they don't lend themselves to the simplistic colourful costume/ethnic difference paradigm that is so common in representations of ethnic identity in China.
It's interesting to see the Han making an appearance, though. I initially thought they wouldn't get a look in, much as the Han zone at the Beijing Nationalities Park ( 中华民族园) was still 'under construction' when I last went. So what are they wearing? There seem to be quite a few qipao in evidence; some suitably old-school proletarian clothing for the chap on the far left; what look like the clothes you wear in Citizen Kane's newsroom for the man in front of him; and a great retro-chic polkadot skirt for the little girl. I'm personally very glad to see buxie (traditional cloth shoes) poking out from quite a few trousers, as I regard them, along with printing, gunpowder and pasta (discuss), as one of the finest Chinese inventions.
I can imagine the photographer asking the minorities to 'wear those traditional clothes, you know, the ones off the TV'. I can't imagine him saying the same to the Han family. The lack of an agreed 'traditional' dress for the Han here is again much as expected (see Beijing subway adverts). One might point out that while the minorities are made 'other' by their exotic dress, the Han family, who must be made to fit in with the genre of this photoessay, are here made other by their old-fashioned dress: 'time-exotic', perhaps, where the minority families are 'place-exotic'. The exotic minorities are figured as inherently backward (backwardness being the flipside of pretty clothes and exciting dances), whereas the Han family must become backward by donning the clothes of generations past.
So while this photo project claims to be a celebration of 'Harmonious China', it is really testament to the continuing importance of ideas of social evolution, found in the writings 19th Century ethnologists such as Lewis H. Morgan, for the way in which minorities, and their relation to the Han, are viewed in China. Of course these ideas, entering China via Marx, are mixed up with traditional Chinese ideas of civilization vs. barbarism (inside and outside the Great Wall).
I'm interested, then, to see the traditional 'Han' clothing on hanminzu.com. I'm not going to stir up a hornet's nest by suggesting that these clothes, to the untrained eye, rather suggest the Korean 'traditional' costume. (yes, yes, I'm sure the Koreans got the idea from China). What I think is interesting is that there is a dress that is seen (by some) as explicity Han and traditional, and that people are wearing it and taking photos of people wearing it.
I must now declare that, as an Englishman, national costumes make me feel uneasy. Much of this feeling must stem from once seeing (by accident, on TV) a Miss World competiton in which a Scottish Lass was dressed very-Scottishly (apologies Hugh Trevor-Roper) in a kilt, while the English Rose was dressed as one of those royal guards with half a bear on their head. At the time I felt a bit jealous that England didn't have a national costume, though I've since recovered. (simplistic parallels between English identity in the UK and Han identity in China, anyone?)
Ultimately I think the aim of national unity (minzu tuanjie) would be better served if the depiction of minorities was more nuanced than funny costumes/energetic dances. However, if funny costumes are going to be around for a while, I think it's probably a positive thing if the Han wear them too. It seems a bit less patronizing than the vision of big brother Han, furthest down the road of social evolution, looking back in bemusement at the minorities, still mired in backwardness. Bring on the traditional Han dance revival.
No comments:
Post a Comment