Anxiety of food nationalism: Dilemmas of bordering in the Vietnam-Taiwan tea trade (original) (raw)
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Frontiers as dilemma: the incompatible desires for tea production in southwest China
In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the mechanism to create a leeway for the state to ‘tailor’ different meanings of frontier to meet the contingent market demands. I use tea production on China’s southwest frontier as an example to demonstrate that dilemma is not an end result, but a mechanism to rearticulate the relationship among frontier, the state and the market economy. Specifically, I argue that dilemmas on China’s southwest frontier have been forged by the Chinese state with its incompatible desires between ‘modernisation’ and ‘primitiveness’ of the tea landscapes in Yunnan, a province on China’s southwest frontier. Meanwhile, the incompatible desires and the resulting dilemmas on China’s southwest frontier have further mobilised the state to flexibly rework its power to reconstruct the frontier to meet contingent market demand. Based on the shifting meanings of tea landscapes, the state has flexibly ‘shuttled through’ the dilemmas between development of modernisation and preservation of primitiveness on the frontier.
The simultaneous but incompatible desires for both ‘‘tradition’’ and ‘‘advancement’’ have produced the ‘‘ambiguity of modernity’’ in the areas of minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu diqu) on China’s south- west frontier. This paper, in accordance, directly addresses the ambiguity of modernity through the inves- tigation of the tea landscape in Yunnan. This essay builds on Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collier’s ‘‘global assemblage’’ framework to analyze the relationship between the ‘‘global form’’ of modernity and the sit- uated assemblages of ‘‘ambiguity of modernity’’ in southwest China. Data are based on ethnographic research in the village of Mangjing, located in Jingmai Mountain, a renowned tea mountain in Yunnan. Most of the villagers in Mangjing are one of the minority nationalities of China, Bulang. I discuss the state-led project in transforming the modern tea plantation for ‘‘restoring’’ a landscape deemed as ‘‘ancient tea forest’’ (guchalin) in Mangjing. In addition, I address Bulang villagers’ and government offi- cials’ multiple responses to the transformation of tea landscapes. I argue that the transformation of tea landscapes has been the practice to turn the ‘‘global form’’ of modernity into the shifting ‘‘assemblages’’ amongst tradition, modernity, science, and nature. The ambiguity of modernity has emerged from the shifting assemblages, providing both the state and Bulang villagers more leeway to symbolically and physically (re)produce meanings for the tea landscapes to meet the contingent market demand for tea. The transformation of tea landscapes, however, has become another process to perpetuate Bulang villag- ers’ social status of being ‘‘low quality’’ as China’s minority nationalities.
The China Quarterly
While most ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand are Thai citizens now, their everyday lives are a site where we can witness the political power entanglement of China, Taiwan and Thailand. With this in mind, this paper aims to look into the relationship between global China and overseas Chinese from the perspective of the ethnic Chinese in the northern borderlands of Thailand. The purpose is not just to disclose the multiplicity of global China in people's everyday lives, but also to complicate the picture of overseas Chinese as portrayed in top-down grand narratives about global China. I argue that the ongoing re-Sinicization in South-East Asia and the territorial geopolitics among China, Taiwan and Thailand have opened a conceptual space for the ethnic Chinese in northern Thailand to flexibly articulate themselves within the changing geopolitical economy. I use tea production and related Chinese-language education programmes, two separate but intertwined cases, to address these ...
Encounters in Zomia: Dynamics of Ethnic Relations in the Pu'er Tea Trade in Southern Yunnan, China
NUS Press Pte Ltd: China-an International Journal, 2021
This article examines the dynamic interactions between the people of the plains and the people in the highlands as they respond to dramatic economic transformations in Menghai county in Yunnan’s southern Xishuangbanna prefecture. In particular, it focuses on the encounters between Han tea merchants, Dai intermediaries and upland ethnic minorities by examining the Pu’er tea trade. The structural relationship between the non-local Han, and the local highland dwellers and lowland Dai changes as the brisk tea market climbs into the mountains. The author argues that the commercial interactions among the three groups are complex, hierarchical and dynamic. Their encounters with the modern tea market have reshaped internal and external ethnic relations in Menghai, Xishuangbanna. Simultaneously, there is an increasing sense of pride in their mountainous homeland among the highland ethnic minorities.