A scandal of Olympic proportions has been uncovered. Here is the report from the Times Online:
As they paraded cheerfully into the Bird’s Nest stadium in their brightly coloured cultural costumes, the 56 smiling children were described as coming from China’s 56 ethnic groups.Their different hats, dresses and robes may indeed have represented the diversity of the world’s most populous nation. But an official from the children’s dance troupe revealed yesterday that the youngsters did not.
There were no Uighurs, no Zhuangs, no Huis, no Tujias, no Mongols and definitely no Tibetans. Indeed, in the latest in a series of manipulations that have soured memories of the spectacular opening ceremony, all 56 were revealed to be Han Chinese, who make up more than 90 per cent of the country’s 1.3 billion people.
I’ve been to quite a few ethnic shows in my time, including some in China itself. I’m shocked and appalled to think that some of the performers may not have been the real deal!
13 responses so far ↓
1 Dark Knight // Aug 17, 2008 at 3:59 am
Think of it as SYMBOLISM, no one cares whos inside those cloths, except you
2 WP // Aug 17, 2008 at 5:39 am
not surprise, lots of Han prostitutes dressed in Dai costumes in Banna!
3 JG // Aug 18, 2008 at 12:35 am
A Washington Post Columnist in the Aug 16 Sunday Post is similarly shocked and, at the same time, substantially threatened. Her greatest concerns appear to be the unconscionable lip-synching of a real, attractive child with the words of an off-stage unattractive child and the despotism inherent in getting all those drummers to line up that precisely for that long a time. The message seems to be that we should fear a country with that sort of raw will power coupled with that kind of disregard for integrity and a preference for the cute over the substantial. Shocking indeed.
4 Hla Oo // Aug 18, 2008 at 1:11 pm
I saw the Olympic opening ceremony in Sydney closeup. It was a clear celebration of joy and freedom and culture and public participation. But when I saw the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony on TV, it just simply shocked me as a massive show of disciplined manpower like the marching parades in Kremlin Red Square sans ICBMs and roaring tanks.
I bet half of the PLA participated in the opening ceremony while the other half guarded the whole China in red alert!
5 roger casas // Aug 19, 2008 at 12:04 am
so, Andrew and JG, just to make things clear, do you think we should just stop criticizing this kind of stuff because the anti-communist and anti-Chinese Western media and politicians are trying to use it to keep poor China on her knees, or only because it has become a habit there and elsewhere?
WP, nice analogy, it says much about “ethnic policy” in China
6 Andrew Walker // Aug 19, 2008 at 10:22 am
Hi Roger, my view is that most (all) public displays of ethnicity involve a significant degree of invention, artifice, creativity and performance. Trying to draw rigid lines between authentic and inauthentic displays will ultimately take us back to DNA. I’m not sure we want that. I find WP’s implied distinction between inauthentic Han prostitutes and authentic “Dai” a bit too chauvinistic for my liking. Why can’t Han girls be Dai too (just like Leach’s Kachin who were Shan when it suited them)? And, don’t forget, prostitutes are’t the only ones who use ethnicity as a marketing tool. Plenty of academics have been dining out on it for years!
7 roger casas // Aug 19, 2008 at 5:55 pm
thanks a lot for your response, Andrew
i agree with you about the unnecessariness (and impossibility?) of drawing rigid lines between authentic and the inauthentic displays; i was born and have lived for a long time in the Basque Country, and there was a lot of talk about DNA going on there; sadly, some of the people (fortunately not all) who have engaged in “deconstructing” Basque nationalism seem to have no problem with swallowing the equally disturbing idea of “Spain”
anyway, accepting that difficulty, as well as the fact that the whole event is ideological and manipulative, and the ethnic classification itself a mess, you could easily agree that the least that non-Han peoples could expect of it all is that the representative of their group in the opening ceremony was one of their own -and I mean one individual registered within one of the 55 non-Han groups, as seen in the ID card every Chinese citizen must have
beyond the “shocking” nature of the parade, what I find interesting is to see how the Chinese government don´t have any inconvenient in showing the totally external an instrumental character of the official ethnic classification; I didn´t watched the ceremony (as it has happened for all of the 3 or 4 last Games, you have to pay me for that…), but from some funny picture I´ve picked from the internet I would say that the whole symbolism of the event is simply aimed at showing how the non-Han peoples are willing to become part of the Chinese nation and to have the Han state take them by the hand towards economic development
but there is also the part the “minorities” play regarding the Han majority, something Dru Gladney dealt with graciously in that famous 1994 paper of his, “Representing nationality in China: refiguring majority/ minority identities”; in this sense, I believe to compare Han prostitutes faking as Tai with the dynamics between Kachin and Shan identities described by Leach is at least arguable -it not only neglects power relations between the Han and the Tai (and other ethnic groups in the area) but also within the business itself
i hope we will have a chance to discuss about this more in depth in the future, Andrew; for now I just say want to say that I certainly wouldn´t dare digging too much into the “authenticity” of ethnic identities in China or anywhere else, but the essentialism of the state categorization, i think that one is pretty easy to identify and shoot at
and talking about identities, in almost 7 years living in Asia I haven´t been able to get rid of that fundamental marker of Spanish ethnic identity called siesta; your message prevented me from enjoying it today I will never forgive you for that…
thanks again and best
8 Leif Jonsson // Aug 20, 2008 at 8:59 am
At the opening ceremony of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta (in the other Georgia), one after another country was represented or expressed by two people dressing and dancing to the 19th century image (still not expired) of a folkloric couple. That is, all except the US reps, who were in denim-etc. cowboy and -girl outfits dancing to John Mellencamp’s Rockin’ in the USA (a late 20th century song, whereas the rest was squarely 19th c.). These shows are for fun and dazzle, and dip into various deep (unconscious?) notions of “peoples”. If one is to take this stuff at face value, then in 1996 only the US was expressed as a modern “culture”, the rest had DNA that said “19th century (meaning timeless)”. I did not copy the opening ceremony, but at the time of watching it I was pretty sure that the dance before the national troupes was “lifted” (pretty wholesale) from a Shan peacock dance.
To me, someone who may be alleged of “dining out on ethnicity”, the whole Olympics thing is and has been about embodying nationality. All the athletes supposedly embody their nations’ greatness, prowess, endurance, etc. They are as much an act as are the 56 kiddos but we are completely used to it when it comes to sports. The feigned shock rests on an idea of natural people, something that shows up in a different way in the testing of athletes for possible drug use. If ethnicity and nation are somehow natural (ahistorical, genetic, etc.), then we can all join the journalist in dismay at having been somehow duped.
9 roger casas // Aug 21, 2008 at 1:47 am
Leif, i agree the Olympics are always about nationalism –period; however, the own absurdity of your conclusion regarding the display of the ceremony in Atlanta simply demonstrates how that example cannot be applied to the Beijing show
i also agree ethnicity and nations are not “natural, ahistorical and genetic” entities, but this idea does not help explaining what happened in the opening ceremony or what happens in everyday life in minority regions in China –because if it is Western journalists and academics “who dine on ethnicity” who maintain this essentialist position towards ethnicity and nation, does that mean that the Chinese government, as shown in the opening ceremony display, have a non-essentitalist, completely state of the art view of ethnicity and the nation as something contingent, constructed, localized, etc.? i don´t think so…
10 Leif Jonsson // Aug 21, 2008 at 10:08 am
rc: maybe each of us is trying to pack too many things into a concise blog format. Do tell what you found so absurd. My remark at the end, the comparison with tests for EPO and such, was meant to suggest that the category “natural” is highly problematic. The shock that the ethnic kiddos were not genuinely ethnic (whatever that means) seems to rest on the assumption that governmental classifications of identity are (or are not) somehow the real thing. I simply wanted to suggest an affinity with our occasional shocks regarding athletes (tour de france, the olympics, professional baseball, college sports, and so on) that rest on unstated assumptions about the real thing. Athletes train and are on specialized diets etc., ethnic shows are usually by trained performers and some of them offer the viewing audience special ethnic foodstuffs. Ethnic shows, like sports, are a kind of play, where the participants (contestants, performers, audience, referees) suspend the rules of everyday life for a temporary configuration of rules, relationships, and rewards that lasts as long as the game is on. Whether it is “mere play”, a higher level of seriousness, or a combination of the two is up for grabs (analytically speaking). Any Olympic contest may test people’s ability to suspend their disbelief (or prejudice) regarding the units of social life and how they connect. What happens if, say, Iraq beats the USA in wrestling? Or if Thailand and Cambodia work out their animosity through a friendly game of takraw? What happened when the East Timorese runner competed in the previous Olympics, wearing shoes donated by Australia (because E.T. couldn’t afford such luxury)?
The “absurdity” regarding a comparison with the opening show in Atlanta may simply be that the conventional self-presentations of modern nations are as contrived as the 56 Beijing kiddos (no one asked; where these genuinely a cowboy and -girl?). We are apparently not disturbed by folkloric essences, whereas there is a long lineage of “Western” distrust regarding “China’s March toward the Tropics” and related themes. What “China” does with/to its “minorities” already takes for granted the state’s cosmology and classifications, and is already prepared to have a problem with it. The minorities at the Beijing ceremony are a stunt that as such is always the privilege of a host country for these games. I’d rather have fun with the Olympics (analytically and otherwise) than get locked in some sparring match over nationalism and other similar lightning rods. If the dance at the Altanta opening ceremony was more or less a Shan peacock dance, how did it get there?
11 roger casas // Aug 21, 2008 at 7:38 pm
i´m sorry, Leif, i cannot reply concisely to all that; i´ll take some time to think about some ideas more carefully
12 KV // Aug 21, 2008 at 8:20 pm
To me, as the original post was ofcourse sarcastic for good reason, if one wants to draw with bigger brush…The Chinese “unity” thing is no different from the Thai “unity” publicity stunts. One Thailand/China, Many Ethnicities. That is all pure whitewash as the other ethnicities are clearly driven over in every other aspect…Just thinkin’ out loud as this ethinicity thing was presented also in Shanghai Museum and I couldnt help to think how artificial it is, from the level that any Chinese can even in their dream quote how many ethnicities there are, reminding more of forced learning than true interest in the other ethnicities…
13 WP // Aug 27, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Sorry for not being a good blogger,
I am not sure whether Ardrew correctly read my text. Anyway that is not a point.
If there is some meanings that would be implied from my text, when I hit my keyboard, and expose ed it “not surprise, lots of Han prostitutes dressed in Dai costumes in Banna!,
it would be something like, in China thesedays the state power is so flexbile, perhaps just like the flexible accumulation of the capitals in this age, it could allow Han become the Others, of course ‘within’, and also it could also take a blind eyes to see Han prostitutes dress in [a minority] Dai costumes. For whatever it, the State, needs to persue, seduce, dig, and suck!
I have to say that the issues on ethnicity, at least in a way that you have tried to say here, A.Andrew, is far from my concerns.
the better word, or way to deal with this, perhapos, if I havr to elaborate my text a little more, should be some thing about cultural identities and poltitics of essentialism.
WP
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