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China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
Zhao Shutun, a narrative folk poem of the Dai people in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China, has a long transmission history of over 700 years in both oral and written forms. But it was not well known in China until after the 1950s when the poem has been re-produced or adapted into the Chinese-language poem, dance drama, and film. This love story has become one of the most recognizable symbols to represent Dai literature and ethnicity in both China’s mainstream society and the Dai communities in Xishuangbanna.
Similar to the transformations of other ethnic folk literature in post-1949 China, the literary, visual, and theatrical re-tellings of Zhao Shutun unfold a complicated process of instrumentalization to reflect the political and social climates of different eras. Through comparatively analyzing the influential adaptations and variants, namely the 1957 poem written by Bai Hua , the 1959 version collected and translated by the Han and Dai intellectuals, the 1982 Chinese-language film titled Princess Peacock （kongque gongzhu） and online versions posted by and circulated among the Dai social media users, the paper studies the dialogical communication between China’s nation-building project, socialist ideologies, individualized political inspirations, and the preservative efforts of ethnicity. Instead of over-emphasizing the hegemonic power of the State and its ethnic politics, the paper focuses on the resilience of ethnic literature like Zhao Shutun and explores the ways it counterbalances radical politicization through its folkness and ethnic distinctiveness.
Jing Li
Gettysburg College