MCLC: myths of social cohesion

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: myths of social cohesion
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (8/18/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/19/world/asia/in-china-myths-of-social-cohes
ion.html

In China, Myths of Social Cohesion
By ANDREW JACOBS

KASHGAR, China — They come for the camel rides, the chance to dress up
like a conquering Qing dynasty soldier or to take selfies in front of one
of the most historic Islamic shrines in Xinjiang, the sprawling region in
China’s far northwest.

But the busloads of Chinese tourists who converge on the Afaq Khoja
Mausoleum each day are mostly interested in a single raised crypt amid the
dozens of tombs ensconced under the shrine’s soaring 17th-century dome. It
is the one said to belong to Iparhan, a Uighur imperial consort, who,
according to legend, was so sweetly fragrant that she caught the attention
of a Chinese emperor 2,700 miles away in Beijing — and was either invited
to live with him or dragooned into the palace as a trophy of war.

“The love between her and the Qianlong emperor was so strong, after she
died, he sent 120 men to escort her body back here for burial,” one guide
explained, eliciting nods and knowing smiles from the crowd. “It was a
journey that took three years.”

But with the group out of earshot, a local resident offered up a starkly
different version, describing Iparhan as a tragic figure, little more than
a sex slave who was murdered by the emperor’s mother after she repeatedly
rejected Qianlong’s advances.
 
“The story that most Chinese know is completely made up,” said the man, an
ethnic Uighur, who asked that his name be withheld for fear of angering
the authorities. “The truth is she isn’t even buried here.”

In the six decades since coming to power, China’s Communist Party has
devoted enormous resources to composing historical narratives that seek to
legitimize its rule and obfuscate its failures. The disastrous famine that
claimed millions of lives last century is said to have been caused by bad
weather, not Mao’s misguided policies. Chinese history books often blame
the United States for starting the Korean War, not the Communist troops
from North Korea who, most historians agree, first invaded the South.

When it comes to China’s ethnic minorities, the party-run history machine
is especially single-minded in its effort to promote story lines that
portray Uighurs, Mongolians, Tibetans and other groups as contented
members of an extended family whose traditional homelands have long been
part of the Chinese nation.

Alternate narratives are far less cheery. They include tales of
subjugation and repression amid government-backed efforts to dilute ethnic
identity through the migration of members of China’s dominant group, the
Han.

Chinese historians rarely veer from the officially sanctioned scripts;
Uighur and Tibetan scholars who have insisted on writing about the
disagreeable aspects of Communist rule have seen their books banned and
their careers destroyed.

James A. Millward, a professor at Georgetown University who studies
China’s ethnically diverse borderlands, said the drive to shape history,
while not unique to China, was zealously practiced by each succeeding
dynasty in an effort to malign an emperor’s predecessors and glorify his
own rule.

But the Communists have also sought to use history as a tool against
separatist aspirations and to legitimize their efforts to govern
potentially restive populations.

“The ability to control historical narratives and airbrush out problematic
truths is a powerful tool but it also reveals the party’s insecurity over
certain aspects of the past it would rather the world forget,” Professor
Millward said.

In Xinjiang, as Uighur resentment over Chinese rule boils over
Into increasing bloodshed, this propagandistic approach to history has
taken on greater urgency. Over the past year, at least 200 people have
been killed here, some of them Han murdered by what the government calls
“terrorists,” but many of them Uighurs shot by security forces under murky
circumstances.

At times like these, it would seem that Iparhan is just the salve that
China needs. Although the story of Iparhan, known to the Chinese as
Xiangfei, or Fragrant Concubine, was first popularized in the early 20th
century, party-backed historians have made significant alterations. Most
seek to turn her into a vehicle for conveying enduring amity between Han
and Uighurs, whose Central Asian culture, Muslim faith and Turkic language
set them apart from the Han.

Earlier versions of the story cast Xiangfei as a defiant beauty, captured
by the Qing during battle, who kept daggers in her sleeve and remained
chaste to the end, when she was either killed by palace eunuchs or forced
to commit suicide.

But that narrative has been supplanted by a happy-ending tale of romance
that celebrates the emperor’s efforts to win her affections by building a
miniature Kashgari village outside her window in Beijing and showering her
with the sweet melons and oleaster of her homeland.

These days, Xiangfei is the subject of poems, plays and television shows
as well as the namesake of a chain of roast-chicken restaurants, a brand
of sun-dried raisins, and, not surprisingly, a line of perfumes.

Rian Thum, a professor of Uighur history at Loyola University New Orleans,
said that in addition to suggesting longstanding affections between Han
and Uighur, the mythicized Xiangfei served to reinforce the image of
Uighur women as exotic, strong-willed and slightly dangerous. “The fact
that Uighurs are sexualized and exoticized by so many Han Chinese makes
the Xiangfei story very appealing,” he said.

Party propagandists have been especially drawn to female protagonists,
often royal consorts, who were bit players in grand power struggles
involving warring states on the fringes of the ancient Chinese empire.

In Inner Mongolia, the vast grasslands that form a buffer between China
and Mongolia, it is Wang Zhaojun, a lovelorn Han dynasty consort who
supposedly offered herself to a “barbarian” Mongolian prince to cement an
alliance between the two peoples. In Tibet, it is Wencheng, a
seventh-century Chinese princess who, according to popular lore, was a
matrimonial peace gift to a bellicose Tibetan king.

To the consternation of many Tibetans, Princess Wencheng is frequently
portrayed as having pacified Tibet and introduced from China advanced
farming practices, weaving and even Buddhism and the Tibetan alphabet.
Some historians question whether she even existed.

The story of Princess Wencheng is a familiar one to Chinese youngsters,
and her persona has come to dominate Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, in the
form of an operatic extravaganza that, according to promotional materials,
“celebrates the enduring friendship between the two peoples.”

Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan writer who saw the show soon after it opened
last year, said she was troubled by the overriding message that painted
the Tibetan people as savages who needed civilizing.

“We used to think the story of Princess Wencheng was cute, but she has
become such an over-the-top work of propaganda that we can’t help but be
offended,” Ms. Woeser said.

Many Uighurs also find the popularized story of Xiangfei galling, although
their ire is often focused on the Afaq Khoja Mausoleum — a hallowed Sufi
shrine and burial place for a clan that once ruled the Kashgar region —
and its transformation into a prop for a Chinese fable. Archaeologists,
they note, long ago identified the grave of a concubine named Xiangfei
outside Beijing.

Some of the resentment also stems from the government’s decision to turn
what was an important site for pilgrimages into a tourist attraction
devoid of religious meaning. These days the site is managed by a Chinese
company that charges an entry fee.

Professor Thum said the government had largely succeeded in shaping both
Han and Uighur understandings of the shrine, especially its association
with the rebellious Khojas, who fought off the Qing occupiers and
established a short-lived independent state in the mid-19th century.

“To their credit,” he said, “the government took a symbol of Uighur
resistance to Chinese rule and turned it into a vehicle for a message they
want to get out.”

Patrick Zuo contributed research.