Chinese Business View
December 23, 2008

Today's Chinese Business View reprints an article from Oriental Outlook magazine reporting that that people in Fengxian (凤县), a small city in Shaanxi Province, are rushing to abandon their status as members of the Han nationality and change their registration to Qiang (羌族), one of 55 officially recognized ethnic minority groups in China.

Here are some excerpts:

For many people in Fengxian, this is an exciting piece of news: local Han Chinese whose families have lived in the town for three or more generations can apply to change their registered nationality to Qiang. People who can prove their Qiang heritage also qualify for the nationality change.
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Xie Yongfu moved to Fengxian in his twenties. Though he has lived here for over 40 years, Xie has had hardly met any Qiang people living in the town. He does not know much about Qiang culture and traditions, either.

In May, 2008, however, Xie, who was retired from his original job, found a new one as a Qiang-style group dancer. When night falls, Xie and his fellow dancers form a big circle at the town square and dance to Qiang music. "The government found a coach in Sichuan Province to teach us this Qiang dance," said Xie. In a town with a total Qiang population of about 300, the Fengxian local government is running a campaign with the lofty goal of "saving Qiang culture and remaking a Qiang ethnic hometown."

The news that qualified people can change their nationality to Qiang was reported by local newspapers. In the articles, it was made clear that "the government will continue to carry out its preferential ethnic policy for Qiang people in education and employment." [The "ethnic policy" here ranges from granting permission to have more than one child, to lower standards for college admission.]

For many people, the lure of such an ethnic policy is great. Some former residents of Fengxian who heard the news rushed back to deliver their applications. They are now checking their genealogy in the hopes of finding evidence that they have some Qiang heritage.

Meanwhile, rumors circulated that Fengxian was preparing to apply to become a Qiang autonomous county. [Being a minority autonomous region brings special funds from the central government, among other benefits.]

The people of Fenxian do not deny that their efforts to associate themselves with Qiang culture are primarily in the interest of developing the tourism economy. This is despite the fact that before 2008, it was hard to find an authentic Qiang person in town, much less one who could speak the language.

Fengxian's total population is about 120,000 people. Metal mining, particularly zinc and lead, have dominated the local economy, but the city is seeking other ways of making money.

So over the past two years, Fengxian has invested 650 million yuan in developing local tourism:

Five special "scenic zones" have been built to attract tourists...Along Provincial Route 212, a "scenic corridor" stretches tens of kilometers. On both sides, the buildings are constructed in a traditional style.

...At night, "Asia's highest fountain" gushes out in flashing colors. The local government even spent more than 600,000 yuan building an "artificial moon" and 2,700 "star lights," which makes tiny Fenxian a city with no night. Since 2006, "revitalizing Fengxian through tourism" has become the priority of the local government. According them, "the city should be run as a star hotel."

Their efforts paid off: in 2007, Fengxian received 250,000 tourists and saw 225 million yuan in tourism income. And for the past two summers, hotels were completely booked, something that was once unthinkable.

But according to the local government officials, Fengxian's tourism is meeting a bottle neck. "Culture is the soul of tourism. At first, we focused only on developing ecological tourism, and as a result, the cultural part has been neglected," said Liang Ruili, vice director of the local tourism department.
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Yuan Yongbing, vice chairman of the local Qiang culture association, was surprised to find in the records that Fengxian is an area historically inhabited by the Qiang people, and that local customs and cuisine are close to those of the Qiang people.

The city sent off to Sichaun's Aba region for dance instructors to obtain the pieces of Qiang culture that Fengxian lacked:

To Yuan Yongbing's surprise, the people of Fengxian seemed to have an innate sense of the Qiang dance and could perform the movements and rhythm correctly and naturally.

To find more traces of Qiang culture, the Qiang studies expert Zhang Shanyuan was invited to Fenxian. After his investigation, Zhang noted: "Fengxian is indeed a 'Qiang ethnic hometown'."

While he was in Fengxian, Zhang read its history and talked with elderly locals, and ultimately found four pieces of evidence of Fengxian's Qiang identity: roasted tea (罐罐茶), folk songs, vocabulary from the old Qiang dialect, and funeral customs. "The cultural identification, similarity of customs, and shared origin of these pieces of evidence prove that Fengxian has an exceptional connection to the Qiang ethnic group." In an interview, Zhang said, "That the people of Fengxian were able to learn the Salang dance so quickly, and that they took to it so eagerly, may be a reflection of a genetic affinity."

The city held its first Qiang-themed cultural tourism festival on November 9, to which it invited ethnic Qiang from the Sichuan earthquake zone. It apparently was quite successful: tourism director Liang said, "at this pace, we will achieve our 20 year plan in three to five years."

These plans probably don't include Fengxian becoming an autonomous county. Although some people have suggested that promoting Qiang ethnic registration is driven by a desire to obtain financial support from the state, Fengxian county officials say that to meet national requirements, Qiang residents would have to represent around 30% of the total population. Individual villages could apply for autonomous status on their own, however.

Zhang Shanyuan provided some background on ethnicity changes in other regions:

In 1958, when the first Qiang autonomous county was established in Sichuan, only about 10,000 people were registered as Qiang, since they had intermingled with Han people for years. This rose to 60,000 after the autonomous county was established....

The same thing happened again in 1992 when Beichuan was applying to be a Qiang autonomous county. To meet national population requirements, local ethnic Qiang urged their friends and family to apply to restore their ethnic registration. Requirements were relatively liberal: "If your ancestors lived in the area according to Qiang customs for 20 or more years. If the time requirement was not satisfied, having three generations of Qiang heritage was sufficient." At that time, the Qiang population in Beichuan jumped by about 50,000.

Wu Shuangxing, a official with the local Public Security Bureau, said that Fengxian has had "more than one thousand people apply to change from Han to Qiang" to date.