The Buyi people (布依族), largely based in southern Guizhou province but also present in Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi and Vietnam, face a dilemma. On the one hand, they work hard to maintain their culture — both out of pride and to attract visitors to their region. On the other, they want to maintain the government and popular perception of the Buyi as part of the Chinese civilization, a notion that in turn undermines the exoticism sustaining their tourism.
Placing the Buyi’s situation within a local history of ethnicity, Yu Luo documents their attempts to shape a brand that’s different enough but not too different from neighboring groups. The child of a Buyi father and a Han mother, Luo draws on insider and outsider perspectives to analyze how locals rework ritual beliefs, artistic performances, and cultural landmarks to navigate their inward search for identity and outward desire for market success.
Author Yu Luo is the Suzanne Wilson Barnett Chair in Contemporary China Studies and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Puget Sound.
The full title of the book is Ethnic Branding in Contemporary China: Buyi and the Paradox of Difference.
Ethnic ChinaLit 