Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
10 - ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: (Un)Authorised Heritage Discourse and Practice in China
- Section 1 (Re)constructions, (Re)inventions, and Representations of Heritage
- Section 2 Creating Identities: Constructing Pasts, Disseminating Heritage
- Section 3 History, Nostalgia, and Heritage: Urban and Rural
- Section 4 Appropriations and Commodifications of Ethnic Heritage
- 10 ‘Even if you don't want to Drink, you still have to Drink’: The Yi and Alcohol in History and Heritage
- 11 ‘Ethnic Heritage’ on the New Frontier: The Idealisation and Commodification of Ethnic ‘Otherness’ in Xinjiang
- Afterword: Historicising and Globalising the Heritage Turn in China
- Index
- Publications / Asian Heritages
Summary
Abstract
This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of a Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. The relationship of newly invented tradition to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. Examining the historical narratives associated with the exposition of a Yi heritage of alcohol, this study reveals that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work. After a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary discourses on Yi heritage, the chapter then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities.
Keywords: Nuosu, Yi, alcohol, Liangshan, drinking song
Introduction: Yi History, Tradition, and Alcohol
It is widely accepted that a significant part of what we think of as heritage or tradition is invented, or at least recreated, according to present-day concerns and ideas. But the relationship of newly invented tradition and its associated discourses to older practice and thought is often obscure in studies that lack historical perspective. This chapter considers the history of alcohol in Nuosu Yi society in relation to the formal codification of an Yi heritage of alcohol-related culture, and the question of alcohol in Yi health. It explores the historical narratives associated with the exposition of an Yi heritage of alcohol, showing that those narratives are woven from a tapestry of threads with histories of their own, and they therefore shape present-day heritage work, as much as the latter seeks to impose its own reconstructions of the past. Following a brief overview of ideas about alcohol in contemporary Yi society, it then analyses historical texts to argue that many of these ideas are remarkably similar to ones that emerged in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century contact between Yi and Han communities. Discussion of alcohol in contemporary Yi society is often characterised by the notion that Yi drinking habits have been disturbed by either commercialisation or contact with Han culture in the recent past.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Heritage Turn in ChinaThe Reinvention, Dissemination and Consumption of Heritage, pp. 261 - 276Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020