Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results (review)

By its title, one might think that this book is a study, perhaps by an anthropologist, on the problems of doing field research in China. Or one might expect to find in it a theoretical engagement with the debates on ethnographic writing in general. In fact, it is not about ethnographic writing but is rather a collection of comments, or "assessments," if one prefers, on studies of Chinese popular culture. One may name one's progeny as one pleases, but the title of this volume does run the risk of misleading its potential readers.

This is a collection of papers that were originally presented in Hong Kong at the 1998 conference after which the book was named; these papers were primarily reports or comments on two newly published Chinese series. One of these series was on ritual, theater, and folklore studies (edited by Wang Ch'iu-kuei of the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan) and the other on traditional Hakka studies (edited by John Lagerwey of the EFEO in France). The original research on which the contributions to these series were based was, typically, a combination of short field trips and readings of regional publications on popular culture or religion. The chief purpose of this book is to introduce to a wider audience these new studies of Chinese popular culture and religion as seen and lived at the most basic levels of society. The book is divided into five sections following two introductions, of which one (by Wang Chiu-kuei) deals with Chinese ritual and ritual theater more generally, while the other (by Hou Jie) takes up Mulian drama as an example of current research and source materials. The first section, on Southwest China, includes four essays, three of which are based on material from Sichuan, and the other, consisting of three reports, deals with Yunan and Guizhou. The second section is also on the Southwest but focuses on minorities in, respectively, Sichuan (two essays) and Guizhou (one essay). The third section, on Eastern China, covers the Anhui, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian, and Shanghai regions. The North China section includes two essays, on Shanxi and Liaoning. The last section consists of reviews of the traditional Hakka society series. There is little point in critiquing these reviews and reports without access to the original research and publications; I will simply offer a few remarks on the collection as a whole.

Local life in China presents a very diverse universe, with many different shapes and colors, and the content of this volume rightly reflects this view. Offering generally positive comments on the original research and publications that they discuss here, the contributors seem to share two conceptual considerations in their evaluations. First, studies like these should focus on the popular forms of cultural and/or religious activity, which means that one must pay close attention to the details of everyday experience in local life. If the subject is Taoism, for example, the discussion should not be limited to points of doctrine but include observations on its reception and practices. This is definitely a strong point of this book. Second, there is a clear emphasis on the local character of these cultural forms, an aspect that is not easily and commonly represented in national displays of cultural practices. These forms have to be discovered through the kind of original research on everyday experience at the local level that is discussed in this volume, and this is another important emphasis of this collection.

However, it is unfortunate that the collection is limited to brief commentaries; this does not permit the reader to grasp the full extent and scope of the original research. One gets the impression that there is a huge amount of material, as rich as it is original, behind these brief reviews. Also unfortunately, the collection does not read smoothly, due...