Fieldwork Connections: The Fabric of Ethnographic Collaboration in China and America

4. Yinchang: My First Fieldwork, 1987–88

4 YINCHANG: MY FIRST FIELDWORK, 1987 – 88 bamo ayi W hen I was a graduate student, I traveled many times to Yi areas in the outskirts of Kunming, in Wuding, and in my own homeland of Liangshan to conduct field research. Of these trips, the longest was from September 1987 to January 1988 in Kaiyuan and Yinchang townships of Xichang City—in order to research and gain an understanding of the ritual life and texts of the Yi in the mountain villages there, and at the same time to make preparations for my upcoming doctoral dissertation. In mid-September 1987, my father, who was then serving as Party Secretary for Xichang City, arranged for Ma Zhengfa, a culture and education cadre who was familiar with the local situation, to take me to Kaiyuan Township to begin my research. Ma Zhengfa thought that I had returned from Beijing to do nothing more than come to the countryside to experience what it was like. When he saw that I really wanted to do research, he proposed that I go to Yinchang, which was sixty some kilometers farther to the northwest. He said he couldn’t come with me, and I didn’t much want to let him come either; because of his sense of responsibility to my father, he was more concerned with my health and safety than with my fieldwork, and could have become an impediment to my research. Ma Zhengfa notified Jjike Hoqie, a teacher in a locally 31 map i. Central and northeastern Liangshan Qiong Lake GANLUO YUEXI MEIGU JINYANG BUTUO ZHAOJUE XIDE XICHANG PUGE GANLUO YUEXI MEIGU JINYANG BUTUO ZHAOJUE XIDE XICHANG PUGE J i n s h a R A n n i n g R Z h a o j u e R 0 25 km 0 15 mi Tuomugou Yinchang Kaiyuan Manshuiwan Tebulo Mishi Daqiao Puchang Tuomugou Yinchang Kaiyuan Manshuiwan Tebulo Mishi Daqiao Puchang Meigu Yanyuan Xichang Panzhihua Meigu Yanyuan Xichang Panzhihua 0 50 km 0 30 mi LIANGSHAN PREFECTURE PANZHIHUA CITY LIANGSHAN PREFECTURE YUNNAN YUNNAN PANZHIHUA CITY 32 bamo ayi •C CI IT TY Y π F Fi ie el ld d s si it te e sponsored literacy class in Yinchang, to come get me and take me up to the mountains. The two of them earnestly informed me of the di‹culties I would face doing research in Yinchang—there was no road, you couldn’t get vegetables, you’d have to eat potatoes all the time, there was no place to bathe, and so on. My time in Tumugou had made me no stranger to any of these things, and I had worked in Xichang for two years, but had never been to Yinchang . I knew that Yinchang was the remotest, poorest, most purely Yi place in Xichang Municipality. I was very determined not to go to Yinchang for a few days and then pull out. I went home and announced that this time I was going to “fight a protracted war” in the mountains, and that I wouldn’t return home until after the Nuosu New Year. Mother complained up and down about my picking such a distant, roadless, high, mountainous place. She was afraid that if I fell ill there would be no clinic, and gave me more medicine than I had ever taken in my life; she was also afraid I would freeze, and got me a little padded jacket, an army overcoat, sweaters, and wool long underwear. Father said that going to the villages was just like going home, and that nothing would be particularly shocking. He pulled about ten bottles from his liquor cabinet and got some cigarettes and candy, just as if I were actually going home to visit relatives. So, weighted down with big and little packages and feeling full of pride and enthusiasm, I embarked on the tall country bus—a Liberation-brand truck exposed to the searing sun—with Jjike Hoqie, heading for Yinchang. We alighted at the headquarters of Baru District, in which Yinchang was located. Because of the flying yellow dust on the dirt road, we were coated with dust from our eyes to our hair. From there to Yinchang it was still over fifteen kilometers, and the villagers who had come down the mountains to go to market jostled to be the first to help us carry our luggage. After eating something at a roadside restaurant and taking...