Last May, I had an opportunity to travel to Yunnan. I was very excited as it was a place I had long wished to visit. I had visited Xinjiang in the summer of 2005. I was very moved by what I saw and experienced there, and this fed my expectations for my trip to Yunnan.
When I visited Xinjiang, I got to take in my fair share of the region's expansive deserts and luscious mountains. I also got to experience the extremely hot (over 50℃) and dry weather characteristic of deserts and observe the daily lives of the people living there. I experienced, albeit superficially, the Uighur's strong sense identity, distinguishing themselves from the Chinese Han; the changes=modernization (China's great westward development) brought on by the "outside other=Han Chinese" and the exclusion of the Uighur; and the threat on the Uighur identity and the Uighur's resistance to this threat. These issues comprise a facet of the challenges China faces in dealing with ethnic minority groups.
In a nutshell, I was able to experience a natural environment I had never before experienced and make firsthand observations of China's ethnic minority issue when I visited Xinjiang. I hoped that my travel to Yunnan would be a similarly inspiring experience.
Yunnan [雲南] is located in a region in southwestern China that borders the Indochinese peninsula. It covers an area of around 39,000 km2 (1.7 times the Korean peninsula). It has a population of some 45 million, similar to South Korea. Yunnan is famous for Lijiang [麗江], the region's leading fortress, and Shangri-La, regarded as a mystical utopia. Our itinerary was composed of scenic and historical destinations, including Dali [大理], Lijiang, Shangri-La, and Chuxiong [楚雄], as well as stops to observe the customs of ethnic minorities.
Present-day Yunnan, exhibiting a marked difference from Xinjiang
Yunnan did not my meet my expectations. The natural environment and ethnic minorities in the region made for an attractive tour package, but I was not as inspired as I was when I visited Xinjiang. The natural landscape was beautiful but it was neither particularly exotic nor more remarkable than the landscapes of the Korean peninsula. The houses and agricultural grasslands, in particular, did little in imbuing the landscape with exoticism. Excessive industrialization of the environs did not help either.
The difference from Xinjinag was even more pronounced in regards to the ethnic minority issue. In addition to the Han Chinese, there are 25 ethnic minority groups living in Yunnan. These ethnic minorities account for half of Yunnan's population. Among them, the Yi [族], Bai [白], Nakhi [納西], Hani [哈尼], and Dai are the five leading ethnic minority groups of the Yunnan region.
A young Zhuang [藏] man in his mid-20s guided our tour of the Shangri-La area. It is said that that original stronghold of the Zhuang of Yunnan is the Shangri-La region. The man said his family name was He [和]. The Zhuang, which traditionally did not have family names, came to have family names in the modern era, and many seem to have adopted the surname "He"; most famous figures of Zhuang ethnicity seemed to have the family name "Huo."
The young man provided us with a detailed explanation concerning the status of ethnic minorities in Yunnan. His explanation seemed to follow the Chinese government's stance word for word. He stressed that the ethnic minorities were maintaining their distinct identities and living peacefully alongside one another without any conflicts. Interestingly enough, he kept praising the "one country, two systems" scheme proposed by Deng Xiaoping. I wanted to ask him whether his view was commonly held by other Zhuang individuals. However, my curiosity was soon satisfied. He told me he was member-in-waiting for the Chinese Communist Party and that he will soon receive his official designation. He said his father and elder brothers were all party members as well.
Most likely, not all Zhuang or other ethnic minorities of Yunnan are like our guide. Nevertheless, many have said there were absolutely no ethnic minority conflicts in Yunnan. My feeling from the trip was that the ethnic minorities of Yunnan were, to put it succinctly, "desirable" constituents of multiethnic China. It appears as though the system for ethnic minorities envisioned by the Han-centric state power has been actualized in Yunnan. The region's ethnic minorities possess more or less an outward semblance of their distinct identities in their dress, customs, and language; however, that was the extent of their distinctiveness. Moreover, this façade of ethnic identity was being marketed to tourists.
"Desirable" ethnic minorities of China
Needless to say, it is difficult to pass judgment on the entire ethnic minority population of Yunnan from the small number I met on my brief trip. What is clear is that I had a very different impression of the ethnic minorities of Yunnan vis-à-vis the Uighur of Xinjiang. The burning eyes of the Uighur, enflamed by the fear of losing their identity, were as fiery as Xinjiang's powerful sun. Such eyes were nowhere to be found in Yunnan. To put it in more extreme terms, the ethnic minorities of Yunnan appeared to be stuffed specimens put on display for the benefit of paying tourists.
What is the cause of this difference? It seems to be the outcome of a long history of integration and assimilation. The political subordination of ethnic minority groups in Yunnan started as far back as the Qin and Han dynasties [秦漢代], and their political integration was completed by the Tang dynasty [唐代]. Therefore, it is not easy to discuss the region's ethnic minority issue in the same terms as that of Xinjiang or Tibet. In reviewing the history of Yunnan's ethnic minorities, would it be too far a stretch to imagine that the Han Chinese employed a strategy of never letting go of subjugated peoples and slowly and steadily integrating and assimilating them over a long period of time? Would it also be too extreme to imagine that many ethnic groups neighboring China have lost and are losing their identities and to find relief in the fact that Koreans, at least, are not one such ethnic group? Am I making much ado about nothing if I say I am concerned about the call to reclaim Gando and that Korea must avoid any territorial linkages with China? Be that as it may, the trip reminded me, once again, about the multifariousness of China's ethnic minority issue.