Here is a rough draft of a chapter in my dissertation. It shows to my readers how I got involved in yin-yang practice and became interested to conduct the research on the archaic practice.
Chapter 4 Indigenous Scholarship: Ethnographic Fieldwork as Insider and Outsider
Chapter 4 Indigenous Scholarship: Ethnographic Fieldwork as Insider and Outsider
In January 1998, I was in the second semester of my Master’s study at
Southwest Missouri State University (SMSU, now Missouri State University) and I
was taking graduate level classes and some undergraduate classes to fill
deficiencies. In one of the classes, Dr. Karl Luckert played to us students a
video titled “Muslims in China.” It was about field research which he did in
China, and a portion of it pertained to my very hometown. This video intrigued
my interest immensely. I grew up in that region but never thought that a common
practice can be utilized for scholarly research. Inspired by Luckert’s field
research, I decided to do my Master’s thesis on the shamanic yin-yang religious
practices in Fanmagou, my home village in northwest China. Being financially
unable to go to China to collect the research data, I asked a brother of mine,
Zuowen Zhang, to get some materials from a yin-yang, who happened to be a
relative of his – a brother of his wife. About two months later Zuowen sent me
two yin-yang books hand-copied by him and a cassette tape, which had a
52-minute recording of the yin-yang’s recitation of the books. Then in August
1998, I prevailed on my brother to interview the yin-yang on my behalf to obtain
answers to about thirty of my questions. The questions were mostly for clarifications
about healing rituals that a typical yin-yang conducts. My brother completed
the interview and transcribed the answers for me.
With these materials, and with
the knowledge I learned during my Master’s program, I wrote my Master’s
thesis - Yin-Yang Healing Rituals and
Shamanic Practices in the Village of Fanmagou. My thesis supervisor was Dr.
Karl Luckert, and I defended the thesis in December of 1998.
After graduation from Southwest
Missouri State University, I went back to Minnesota State University, Mankato, in
1999, to continue my study in the TESOL program that for a financial emergency I
had needed to leave unfinished. But before I graduated from there I was offered
a graduate assistantship at Frostburg State University and therefore I
transferred to the computer science department of that university. Unfortunately
my education there needed to be discontinued as a result of kidney stones. As
my insurance company refused to pay for what they determined to be a
preexisting condition, I was forced to return to China in January 2001. But I
never stopped communicating with Dr. Karl Luckert, and Dr. Joby Taylor, who also
studied for a time at SMSU.
In 2002, doing research work on
religious practices in China was a sensitive endeavor, particularly when there
is a Westerner in participation; thereby without official documents, nobody
dared to conduct such researches. That is why we approached the government
first. Once the consent was obtained from the government, it was up to the
researchers to find ways to obtain consent and cooperation from the informants.
We obtained our local cooperation much easier than we thought, because almost
all participants are in some ways related to me. Furthermore, five of the seven
yin-yangs are related to each other as cousins, and they as a group are related
to one of my brothers, who is one of the yin-yangs’ brother-in-law. As for the
subject matter of the rituals, the funeral ritual as well as the reburial rites
were performed for my maternal grandmother, and the third-year memorial ritual
was for my uncle—my father’s brother. Therefore we got the consents with no
difficulty at all. In China, this is actually the ideal way of conducting field
research – you have to either be someone sent by the government, or somehow
related to the researched. I was lucky that I had both.
It was during this interview that
I discovered an interesting dichotomy within myself. On the one hand I was an
insider of the yin-yang practice, because I am very familiar with the practice,
and it happens to be the culture in which I grew up. On the other hand, I was
an outsider of the practice, because I found myself looking at it, and listening,
to a description of other practices from a somewhat neutral academic perspective.
Earlier I had never questioned, or thought about the meaning of such practices.
Yet at this moment I asked questions about their meaning and significance, and
even about the effectiveness of the practice. At the same time I was thinking
about how to study the practice correctly and how to introduce it to the
outside world properly and faithfully – to a world that may never have heard
about the yin-yang practice. This “outside world” can be a province in China,
but certainly, it includes most places outside of China. I pondered how to make
such an introduction. Do I simply make a direct report of what I heard and
observed? Or do I make comments to share my personal understandings of the
practice along with my report?
The second strip says, that by
wearing this effective amulet the bearer will be protected by the god of
thunder, with the help of the sun god, the moon god, and by the two combined.
To defeat the horse demons, with the help of the sun god, the cattle demons
with the help of the moon god, as well as the chariot demons with the help of
both of them jointly.
Both the first and the second
amulets began with two heading words, Ling-fu (灵符), which mean “efficacious amulet.” This is a
common marker to achieve the effectiveness when it is seen or heard (when
someone reads it out). The pronouncing of the effectiveness of an amulet is
only one of the examples that are found in daily practice of performative
language (cf. J.L. Austin) in rural northwestern China, where the farmers
believe that things will go your way if you repeatedly speak it. The practice
of performative language will be further discussed when I analyze the nursery
names and the calling back of lost souls and spirits in later chapters.
The third strip reads: Thunder’s
order. Firstly, from the upper seat, the jade emperor expels the demons under
heaven. Secondly, the middle seat protects the body and fortifies the
homesteads for all of humankind. Thirdly, the lower seat decapitates the demons
and captures malevolent spirits throughout all the lands.
Among the three amulets, number
three is the most powerful and therefore the most efficacious – the yin-yang
told me; although it does not bear the words “efficacious amulet,” as the other
two do, it bears two seals and is thereby more authentic and more “official.” The two seals are: Leiting Dusi Yin (雷霆都司印, The Seal of the Office of
Thunderbolt) and Lingbao Fashi Yin (灵宝法师印, The Seal of the Lingbao Master).
According to Master Gao, the
three check marks at the top of the third strip stand for heaven, earth and
humanity; but in my later interviews with other yin-yangs, I learned a
different version of the meaning of the three check marks: They stand for the
three founders of Daoism: Yu Qing (玉清),
Shangqing (上清) and Taiqing (太清).
This kind of difference worried me in the beginning, as I thought it makes the
study more complicated; yet after my conversation with Dr. Luckert, I felt much
better – he said that the different versions would make the research more
interesting, broader, and more informative.
These three amulets are supposed
to be put together and folded into a triangle and then, in front of the
kitchen, sealed in a piece of red cloth to be worn by a patient. But before the
amulets were sealed, two words should be written on: “Imperial order” (敕令,
chilling). The length of time the
amulets should be worn is determined by the seriousness of the disease – the
more serious the illness, the longer the time it is needed to wear the amulets.
According to the yin-yang, it can either be 49 days or 100 days. (In the
following year, I learned from Master Meng and two other yin-yangs that some of
the amulets should be worn for an entire year.)
Third, we did our first interview
with Master Ma and Master Meng at my brother-in-law’s house. This 1.5-hour
interview was the beginning of our systematic study of the Huashan branch (华山派) of the yin-yang practitioners. In the subsequent
years, most of our fieldwork trips were made to interview the yin-yangs in this
group of five, or to do participatory observations of rituals presided over by
one or several of them.
From August 2002 to June 2003 I
transcribed and translated the yin-yang interviews, describing some of the
field observations, and made occasional telephone calls to the yin-yangs to get
some questions clarified. At the mean time I exchanged emails with Dr. Luckert,
discussing the procedures of the rituals we observed, and the content of the
texts we obtained.
On July 29, 2003 my maternal
grandmother passed away. Despite the sadness for me and my relatives, this
provided a perfect chance for us to do a complete participatory observation of a
burial ritual, which literally took an entire day. We got video footage, still
pictures as well as field notes.
The following is a list of things
I learned from this participatory observation:
·
Geographical directions and the year (named after
an animal) are both crucial factors in determining burial locations. July 29,
2003 happened to be the first day of the seventh month of the lunar year of the
ram, which means the east-west direction was ill-suited for burying; but
unfortunately my grandmother’s family graveyard is oriented in an east-west
direction. Under such circumstances, the yin-yang determined that my
grandmother should be buried temporarily in a north-south direction tomb for
one year, and then she will be re-buried into the family graveyard the next
year, on her one year’s anniversary.
·
The saying that “the passing away of an old person
who has enjoyed a full-length of life is a happy event” was proven to be true. In
the Xi-Hai-Gu region, people always collectively call the marriage and burial
ritual of a timely deceased old person the Red and White Happy Occasions (红白喜事).
Although to the mourning family the passing away of a member is always a sad
thing, it is very true that if an old person becomes sick, many families tend to
think that it is better for the old person to go, so as to not suffer from
disease. The passing away of my grandmother was not a surprise for the extended
family, as she was 91 years old and was considered to have lived a full life.
There were wailings, of course, but it was partly sentimental and emotional,
and partly ritual. All the female relatives wailed during certain periods of
time, but the rest of the time they acted quite differently. For instance, I
went into the kitchen several times and each time heard them teasing and
laughing, as if they were celebrating something happy. There is no doubt that a
wedding is a happy occasion, but here this funeral also turned out to be a happy
occasion. The happy atmosphere convinced me of the saying, and added to my
knowledge of the tradition of the villagers.
·
The role of the yin-yang is instrumental in burial
rituals. During the time of my observation, I had many brief conversations with
my relatives and other villagers and I learned from them that the death of a
person appears to be only a concern of his or her family, but in fact it is a
matter of the entire village. They said that if a dead is not buried with a
proper ritual, there would be serious and even endless troubles for the
village, the worst of which would be a double death (重丧), which means another villager will die within
three days of the burial of a villager.
·
[Note: My paternal grandfather died of a severe
diarrhea two days after he helped bury a villager. While all the rest of the
villagers believe that it was a double death, my father does not believe this.
He thinks it was because my grandfather drank some cold tea that was leftover
from the previous night and it caused his diarrhea, and there was no medicine
available to treat the disease at the time. To me, this means that not all the
villagers share the same notion or belief that is prevailing in the area.]
There was no ritual observation
in 2005. In July I invited Master Meng to our apartment and he showed us more
yin-yang books. I interviewed him with more questions regarding the yin-yang
texts that we copied as in all the previous years. With the great help from Dr.
Luckert I collected video footage and still pictures. With the permission of
the yin-yang, Dr. Luckert camera-copied all the books that the yin-yang brought
along.
In August 2005, I paid a visit to
Fanmagou and I interviewed Mr. Gao, who had asked me, in fall 1971, to read an
apology letter to his dead father at the graveyard. The letter had been written
by Master Wang, a half-yin-yang. I obtained audio recordings and field notes.
This interview enables me to see an individual villager’s perspectives on folk
religious practices. One of his remarks is that, “a belief is inherited from
the older generation and it flows to the veins of the next generation like
blood…when a suppression comes from the above [the government, Zuotang note],
the flow seems to become stagnant on the surface, but it never stopped under
the surface.” (Zuotang Zhang, field notes of 2005.) Mr. Gao also shared with me
the psychological effectiveness in his family after I read the apology letter
to his father: “My mother and I felt a great relief and soon things began to
turn positive and the disease and the depression subsided gradually, until it
completely disappeared about half a year later.” (Zuotang Zhang, field notes of
2005.) I visited him as an associate professor from a community college and I could
be considered an outsider, especially when it was a family case of his, not
mine. Nevertheless, his reflections to the time and the feelings brought me
into his inside world, and I was soon an insider doing research, sharing his
personal, emotional world.
In 2006, there was no ritual
observation and there was no interview either. I worked on yin-yang texts. Dr.
Luckert supervised me with English. But in February 2007 I made a partial
participatory observation of my mother-in-law’s mourning ritual. She died on
Feb 9, which happened to be in the Tuwang (土旺) period, during which it is taboo to move the
earth/soil.
So she was mourned for eight days (ordinarily it would be 1-2 days) before she
was buried. I was there for 2.5 days of the mourning. I made good observations
and had long chats with the yin-yang, Master Meng. We got quite a number of
questions answered and clarified. The key question I discussed with him was the
authority of a yin-yang over matters of burial determinations. The villagers
would rather temporarily bury their dead and do a re-burial later than run the
risk of violating the gods; likewise, they would rather keep a corpse for over
a week than to violate the taboo. “It is, however, not a yin-yang’s personal
decision,” said Master Meng, “we yin-yangs as fellow villagers, also would like
the dead to be buried as soon as possible. You know the saying is, Rutu wei’an (入土为安, when
a dead is buried into the earth, he or she will achieve
peace, and the mourning family will get their peace of mind).” (Zuotang
Zhang, field notes of 2007.)
In July 2007, together with Dr.
Luckert I made three fieldtrips. (1) Visited Fanmagou, interviewed MS Wei about
moxibustion, a healing method that is always accompanied with prayers. MS Wei
is a life-long practitioner of half-medicine-half-shamanic healing. Both my
wife and I had been treated by MS Wei when we were small children. MS Wei was
85 when we interviewed her. (2) Interviewed Mr. Zhang’s wife on the calling
back of lost souls and spirits with seven red-paper-cut figures. She
demonstrated how the lost souls and spirits can be called back and collected
while I played the role of the patient. Calling back, or re-collecting the lost
souls and spirits is an very important part in the folk religion in
northwestern China, not only the living people’s souls and spirits should be
recollected if they are lost, the dead people’s souls and spirits also must be
collected, otherwise they will scatter about and become dangerous wandering
ghosts; their souls and spirits cannot be rescued and escorted to a peaceful
yin-world or to heaven if they are not collected. Therefore, after each healing
ritual a patient’s souls and spirits will be called back and put back into the
person with the help of a yin-yang. Treatment of souls and spirits is an
inseparable part of the yin-yang practice. (3) Went to Xixiang Township
in Jingning, Gansu (about 80 km from Fanmagou). Interviewed Mr. Cao, a relative
of mine (Mr. Cao’s father and my grandmother were siblings). He inherited the
family business of paper handicrafts exclusively made for funeral and
memorial rituals. When we interviewed him, he had already closed his paper
handicraft business; but he showed us around their village temple, in which the
paintings of gods were made by his father and by himself. Paper handicraft
sacrifices are indispensable in any burial and ceremonial
rites. An insider’s perspective is that they are daily
necessities for the dead in the other world; an
outsider’s perspective is probably that they are the means by which the
mourners show their regrets that they (the family members, particularly the
sons and daughters) were not able to provide those things while the deceased
relative was still living in the yang-world. These
sacrifices are luxury items – beautiful courtyards with several nice houses,
horses and servants, and hills of gold
and silver. The difference between an insider and an outsider in this regard is that an insider looks at the sacrifices as ordinary
offerings and he or she takes them as common practice which does require
further thoughts and analysis, not to mention questioning about them; an
outsider, however, will ask questions as to why the villagers are doing so and
what functions and significances the sacrifices have.
All the above visits were either
video recorded or photo recorded. I also wrote down some notes afterward.
In 2008 there were two main
activities in July and one in August.
In July, together with Dr.
Luckert, I visited Jingning, Gansu, and purchased at a corner of the street an
undedicated yin-yang seal (for Dr. Luckert); I chatted with the seller about
the functions of the seals. He explained to me all the yin-yang seals he was
selling. This filled in the gaps of the information I was not
able to obtain from the yin-yangs. Our plan of interviewing some of the local
yin-yangs was ruined, because a loudspeaker announced the presence of a
foreigner in a hotel and warned the residents of safety issues – we knew such a
precaution was related to the Beijing Olympic Games and the “foreigner” that
was mentioned in the warning was, of course, Dr. Luckert – his height makes it
impossible to go about without being noticed. This assumption was verified when
a young policewoman came to our hotel room to check Dr. Luckert’s
travel documents—which, of course, we needed to explain to her from the bottom
up. This small incident reminds me, as well as Dr. Luckert, that the
concept, or definition of an outsider, can be very inclusive. Both Dr. Luckert
and I were outside visitors to Jingning, but his Caucasian appearance
made him an obvious outsider, not only to the heartland of northwestern China,
but to the entire country. When China was determined to host the Olympic Games successfully,
it became worried about potential trouble-makers from the outside, about which
it knew that it knew not enough. This definitely is the extent of an outsider
problem that reaches beyond academic research.
When we returned to Guyuan,
we invited Master Meng to our hotel. He brought with him two more yin-yang
books for us to copy and a stack of tablets of gods that are usually invited
during rituals; we camera-copied all the materials and I interviewed Master
Meng about the materials which are used in different rituals. I already had a
list of these materials, but it had been incomplete.
In August 2008, a few days before
I returned to Xinjiang to teach, I was informed by the yin-yang Master Meng
that there was going to be a house-cleansing ritual in Fanmagou – I immediately
took a taxi but it was too late for me to get a camera; luckily I was able to
record some of the voices with a friend’s cellphone, and the next day I had a
chance to dine together with the yin-yang, and I was given the opportunity of
having a chat-like interview with him afterwards, for about an hour.
In May 2009 I was admitted to
UMBC, but my Internet communication with the school was cut off due to an
Uighur rebellion in Xinjiang. Much of my time was devoted to communicating with
Dr. Joby Taylor at UMBC, using Dr. Karl Luckert as relay station who happened
to be in Xian and Nanjing at the time. E-mail connection between the United
States and these cities remained open. The remaining time was devoted to
studying the yin-yang texts which by now have grown to a sizeable mountain.
There was no yin-yang interview in
2010. Dr. Luckert and I flew to China and worked on a University of Ningxia project,
in Yinchuan. I then went to Fanmagou to visit my ageing father. I used the
opportunity to interview two villagers in Fanmagou, Mr. Zhao and Mr. Li, who
used to perform healing rituals when a yin-yang was not available. Two days
later, I did a group interview with five villagers, including my father, about
healing practices over the past five decades. This is the longest and the most
complete of my recording efforts. It contains the people’s opinions and
comments on yin-yang practices. One week before I returned to the US I
interviewed my sister-in-law whose son died in an accident and her house had
been ceremonially “cleansed,” twice, and her son’s tomb site had been changed
once—due to the fact that one of her fellow villagers had been constantly haunted
by the dead.
[1] In 1988, Prof. Li and Dr.
Luckert became partners for doing joint field research in Ningxia and beyond.
Together they travelled to fourteen provinces in China, and they co-published Myth and Folklore of the Hui…. (State
University of New York Press, 1994). Dr.
Luckert had similar publishing projects underway on Uighur and Kazakh
traditions, arranged with three other Chinese professors from other
universities in China. He invited Professor Li twice for research work in the
United States. Back in China, Dr. Luckert was made an Honorary Professor of the
University of Ningxia. Apart from a one-page composition, of photographs of my
uncle’s third-year anniversary ritual,
and a two-paragraph linkup with Yangshao Stoneage culture, pages
297-298, in his upcoming book Stone Age
Religion at Göbekli Tepe…., 2013, Dr. Luckert has published nothing of the
research that I and he have done together. He has concentrated on the
production of our field videos for teaching purposes.
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