China’s New Socialist Countryside: Modernity Arrives in the Nu River Valley

249 Pages·2013·8.51 MB·English

by  Russell Harwood

Studies on Ethnic Groups in China
Stevan Harrell, Editor
studies on ethnic groups in china
Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers,
edited by Stevan Harrell
Guest People: Hakka Identity in China and Abroad,
edited by Nicole Constable
Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China,
by Jonathan N. Lipman
Lessons in Being Chinese:
Minority Education and Ethnic Identity in Southwest China,
by Mette Halskov Hansen
Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power
in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861– 1928,
by Edward J. M. Rhoads
Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China, by Stevan Harrell
Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers, edited by Morris Rossabi
On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural Survival on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier,
by Åshild Kolås and Monika P. Thowsen
The Art of Ethnography: A Chinese “Miao Album,”
translation by David M. Deal and Laura Hostetler
Doing Business in Rural China: Liangshan’s New Ethnic Entrepreneurs,
by Thomas Heberer
Communist Multiculturalism: Ethnic Revival in Southwest China,
by Susan K. McCarthy
Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands:
The Premi of Southwest China, by Koen Wellens
In the Land of the Eastern Queendom:
The Politics of Gender and Ethnicity on the Sino-Tibetan Border,
by Tenzin Jinba
Empire and Identity in Guizhou: Local Resistance to Qing Expansion,
by Jodi L. Weinstein
China’s New Socialist Countryside: Modernity Arrives in the Nu River Valley,
by Russell Harwood
China’s new soCialist Countryside

China’s new soCialist Countryside
Modernity arrives in the nu river valley
russell harwood
university of washington press / seattle and london
This volume includes, with permission, a revised version of material
from Russell Harwood, “Negotiating Modernity at China’s Periphery:
Development and Policy Interventions in Nujiang Prefecture,” in Elaine
Jeffreys, ed., China’s Governmentalities: Governing Change, Changing
Government (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 63– 87.
All photographs are by the author unless otherwise noted.
© 2014 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
Composed in Minion Pro, typeface designed by Robert Slimbach
17 16 15 14 13  5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
University of Washington Press
PO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USA
www.washington.edu/uwpress
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harwood, Russell.
China’s new socialist countryside :
modernity arrives in the Nu River Valley / Russell Harwood.
pages cm. — (Studies on ethnic groups in China)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-295-99325-6 (hb : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-295-99338-6 (pb : alk. paper)
1. Rural development—China—Nujiang Lisuzu Zizhizhou.
2. Rural population—China—Nujiang Lisuzu Zizhizhou.
3. Nujiang Lisuzu Zizhizhou (China)—Social conditions.
4. Nujiang Lisuzu Zizhizhou (China)—Economic conditions.
I. Title.
HN740.N85H37 2013
307.1'4120951—dc23  2013027329
The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—
8
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48 1984.
Contents
Foreword by Stevan Harrell ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Equivalents and Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 3
1 / Life at the Periphery of the Chinese Party-State
An Introduction 41
2 / Nature Reserves and Reforestation
The Impacts of Conservation Programs upon Livelihoods 71
3 / All Is Not as It Appears
Education Reform 110
4 / Migration from the Margins
Increasing Outward Migration for Work 159
Conclusion 185
Notes 191
Glossary of Chinese Terms 201
Bibliography 207
Index 223
Foreword
Stevan Harrell
Nujiang Prefecture is one of the most remote, most sparsely populated,
and least-known parts of China. Until very recently, people of the Lisu,
Nu, Drung (Dulong), Tibetan, and other small ethnic groups have lived
subsistence livelihoods in its deep valleys between precipitous mountain
ranges, practicing farming, herding, and forestry. The prefecture stretches
for 400 kilometers along the Nu River, for which it is named, and it takes
at least six hours to drive along the main highway from the prefectural
capital at Liuku to the seat of the northernmost county at Gongshan. From
there to the really remote northwestern parts of the prefecture, across the
Gaoligong mountains to the Dulong valley, there was not even a road until
1999, requiring the Drung people who live in that valley to make a three-
day walk just to reach the county seat. Even now, a vehicle journey takes
six hours along a dirt road that is narrow, winding, dangerous, and often
icy, even in June. Later in the summer, when drivers no longer have to
drive gingerly across ice, they still have to drive through waterfalls.
Why should we care about so small and peripheral a place as Nujiang?
China calls itself a developing country, and not for the usual reason that
“developing” sounds nicer than “poor.” China is no longer poor by any
standard, but it continues on a decades-long, erratic, but relentless mission
of development. Very important goals of this developmental project are to
bring modern prosperity to the whole country, to convert even the remot-
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