The Yi Nationality of Shilin Stone Forest, Yunnan Province, China

A Case Study in Indigenous Tourism

Trevor H.B. Sofield
Chair, Tourism Program Murdoch University Murdoch, WA, Australia November 1999

The Yi are the second largest minority Nationality in Southwest China with a population in 1995 of just over 7 million. Some 3 million live in Yunnan Province with large numbers around Lake Dianchi, Kunming and Lunan. There are numerous branches of the Yi which historically have been identified by different names at different times and this makes it difficult to trace their migrations through southern China accurately. In the 8^th and 9^th centuries they formed an alliance with the Bai people around Dali and established the Nanzhao Kingdom which endured for more than two centuries. Yi scholars devised their own script in the 13^th century and detailed records of their religious beliefs (animist and ancestral worship), traditional medicines and history were recorded. Shamans, suppressed during the rigid application of Maoist ideology, are evident today and are seen as guardians of Yi culture since they are often the only ones who can still decipher the ancient script and who understand Yi religion and traditional medicine. The Yi claim to fame in modern times lies in the fact that they committed themselves to the Communist Party and joined the Long March of Mao's Red Army when it passed through their territory.

Until the 1950s the Yi were a slave-owning society with four clearly defined classes. There were the Black Yi, 7% of the population who owned 80% of Yi land but did not work it. They maintained the purity of their blood lines by forbidding marriage with the lesser three Yi castes. Traditionally Yi noblemen shaved their heads except for a top-knot which was tied into a horn-shaped bulge at the front of their head. The White Yi were second in the hierarchy. They composed about 50% of the population, were not slaves but had no freedom of movement. They had to work in the fields of the White Yi for a fixed amount of time each year. The two lowest classes were the Ajia (33% of the Yi population) and the Xiaxi (10%), both of whom were slave castes, could be freely bought and sold, and had no rights. One of the first tasks of the Communist Party after the 1959 revolution was to dismantle the slave system and transform Yi society into a socialist society of equals under law (one of the few times that the word 'liberation' actually achieved its literal meaning as some 700,000 former slaves were freed).

As with other ethnic minorities the dress of the Yi is distinctive. Men usually wear a black turban and a black woollen, sheepskin or felt cloak with tassels called a charwa which also functions as a blanket. Where the dress of the men is sombre, the women wear some of the brightest and most heavily embroidered clothes in China. Beautifully embroidered red and yellow waistcoats and head scarves are worn as daily clothes, with an apron over white or red trousers or long skirts, also often embroidered. Married women often pile layers of cloth on top of mortar-board shaped hats to act as a sunshade. Large earrings and pompoms complete the effect.

Festivals with religious overtones are important for the Yi, their most important being the Torch Festival on the 24^th day of the 6^th lunar month. This commemorates the occasion in the distant past when a Yi deity sent a plague of locusts to support their protest against an unfair grain tax and the people burned flares and torches made of bunches of reeds to disperse the locusts after having the tax removed. Festival activities include horse racing, bull fighting, wrestling, singing and dancing, the festivities culminating in a night-time torch parade. Women traditionally carry yellow umbrellas and the men drink maize wine out of a communal earthenware jar through very long straws.

The Sani Yi (a distinctive sub-branch of the Yi, who unsuccessfully argued for independent Sani status from the Yi during the Communist nationalities identification process in the 1950s) have been among the first and most active of the minority Nationalities to embrace tourism. Sani people migrated into the Lunan region about 500 years ago and in 1956 the region was incorporated as the Lunan Yi Autonomous County under local Sani Yi CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership. In 1983 however they were subsumed under the Kunming County.

The location of two of Yunnan's most scenic attractions in the midst of the Sani Yi settlements in Lunan have played a major role in their embrace of tourism - the Alu Caves complex and the Shilin 'Stone Forest' about 120 kms south-east of Kunming. Both of these are in karst (limestone) country and the whole area has been classified as 'a first class area of natural heritage' and is a national protected scenic district..

The Alu Caves complex covers three main cavern systems linked by paths and an overhead cable car. They are grand enough to have received a national tourism classification (as distinct from a provincial level or local level attraction) and are labelled as Yunnan's 'Number One' cave. The caverns and stalactite and stalagmite formations are spectacular, and are enhanced by an underground river and lake so that a cave tour includes a boat trip. Opened to the public more than 15 years ago, they received almost half a million visitors a year in their first ten years of operations but in the past few years numbers have dropped below 200,000 per year. In an attempt to increase visitation a large park with numerous themed Sani Yi attractions and facilities was constructed outside the caves two years ago (see accompanying photographs). The caves are controlled by the Alu Sani village and all guides are drawn from this community.

The Shilin Stone Forest reserve covers more than 350 square kilometres and contains some of the largest limestone pillars in the world, the tallest reaching heights of more than 50 metres. An area of about 100 acres has been highly developed (artificial lakes, paths, souvenir shops, restaurants, paths, pavilions and lookouts, including areas of limestone pillars that are floodlit at night). Hotels, more shops and restaurants, a car park capable of handling more than 100 tour buses at a time, a research institute and other facilities have been built just outside the entrance. Shilin Stone Forest currently attracts more than 1.2 million visitors per year, more than 100,000 of them overseas tourists. The remainder of the reserve is prohibited to visitation other than for scientific research. Interviews conducted by this author during a field trip to Yunnan in September/October 1999 revealed that up to 500 Sani Yi, both men and women, were engaged on a daily basis in providing a range of services for tourists to the Stone Forest, who numbered up to 20,000 per day. During the Summer Torch Festival, now a huge event enacted annually in the Stone Forest, l00,000 visitors have been recorded. Annual incomes from tourism business in the adjacent Sani village of Wukeshu were reportedly as high as Renmimbi 40,000 in 1993, according to one family which owns a guest house there: Swain, 1999).

Tourism to the Shilin Stone Forest raises a number of issues related to ethnic tourism. One relates to ethnic identity and state appropriation of a major symbol of Sani identity. The single most important image of the Stone Forest used by the state to promote tourism is of a distinctive pillar known as 'Ashima' which represents the legendary Sani maiden who was turned into stone while resisting the overtures of a rapacious overlord (see accompanying photograph). This pillar was named by a folklore work team of Yunnan Peoples Cultural Troupe in the 1950s when the CCP was first developing the park for tourism (Swain 1999) and the 'legend' as outlined in tourism literature is in fact an artificial construction taken from many Sani folk story elements about Ashima. Today, Sani guides pose for tourists in front of the pillar, and a thriving business is also carried out by groups of Sani entrepreneurs who hire out costumes of Sani women for tourist themselves to dress up as Ashima, complete with basket on her back, to pose for photos in front of the pillar! The Sani people themselves never called the pillar 'Ashima', although it complements one of the Sani stories that she returns as an echo in the Stone Forest. Four decades later, Ashima commoditization is used for cultural integration by the nation and for cultural identification by the Sani who have embraced the state version of the legend. As Swain notes,

'Road signs by the park proclaim: 'Welcome to Ashima's home town.' Ashima signifies Sani integration into the Chinese political economy with her image and name on everything from cigarette brands to tourist souvenirs. Ashima is both Miss National Unity (minzu tunajie) and Miss Local Colour (difang tese). Ashima is also Sani despite her national co-option and literal calcification' (Swain, 1999,p.5).

The 'new' Ashima has been accepted by the locals who now themselves engage in 'authentic' presentations of her: the resultant commoditisation provides access to the monetised economy through the tourist dollar.

In a similar vein of commercial appropriation, Han tailors from other parts of China (mostly men from Sichuan Province) have migrated into the Shilin area and now mass-produce Sani handbags, children's Sani costumes and embroidered vests and tunics for touristic consumption. Sani themselves participate in the sale of such goods from their roadside stalls. The 'local colour' has been co-opted by others, who are opposite in gender from the authentic Sani makers of such items, for commercial gain.

Swain (1989, 1990, 1999) has documented the involvement of the Sani minority of Lunan Yi Autonomous County in tourism from 1949 to the present time. Originally marginalised by the Communist revolution, the Sani appear to have played no part in the development of tourism to the Yunnan Stone Forest area at Shilin for thirty years (from 1953, when the Government built a hotel on the edge of a designated park, until the early 1980s). At that stage, the government "encouraged private Sani enterprise including Sani-run guest hotels ... and promoted Sani ethnic tourism by using exotic images of Sani women in native dress for diverse product advertisements and by marketing Sani handicrafts in state stores throughout China" (Swain 1989:39). By the 1990s about 1,000 Sani households adjacent to the Stone Forest were actively engaged in tourism, with the males employed in the service and entertainment sectors of the industry and the women acting as guides, producing ethnic art and carrying on "a brisk trade in money changing" at sellers' markets they set up outside the major tourist hotels of Kunming (Swain 1989:40).

Swain (1989:33) has argued that for ethnic tourism development by minorities to be sustainable there needs to be a land ownership base coupled with some politically sanctioned power. In an analysis of ethnic tourism in Yunnan, she explored the articulation of state political economy, tourism capitalism and local ethnic group economy in promoting ethnic group maintenance. Without the active support of the state (through China's 'Law on Regional Autonomy of Minority Nationalities 1984' and their gazetted reserve land rights) she considered that the expanding role of the Sani minority community in controlling tourism businesses and the local economy would not have been possible. Swain developed a model for indigenous tourism development which specified the active and legitimising role of the state (1989:37).

Swain's model for indigenous tourism (1989) also emphasised the necessity of some politically sanctioned power if that tourism development is to be sustainable. Swain does not use the term 'empowerment' in her analysis of the Sani minority in Yunnan Province in China although she does touch upon aspects of power relationships between the state and minority communities. This is similar to and in common with other authors who have analysed indigenous tourism and minority communities involved in tourism, such as Altman and the Australian Aborigines (1989), Hall and the NZ Maori (1996).

Incorporated into Swain's model is the notion of the nation state as the key actor required to create an environment conducive to ensuring that the community has the capacity to act upon its decisions and sustain them. In the particular case of the Sani people it was legislation which created land rights and granted limited political autonomy. The 1984 Law on Regional Autonomy of Minority Nationalities provides a mechanism for empowering a local community to make decisions in its own right, rather than as a unit subsumed within a generally applicable and uniform tourism development regime.

Swain's analysis demonstrates the way in which the minority community has been able to move into Sani-controlled tourism ventures in a significant way even though at times there is a contradiction of policy in terms of state regulations, ethnic rights and the need to counter 'museumification' of Sani culture by the Yunnan Province's tourism marketing authority. This latter occurs, she suggests, because of the paradox between conservation and change in the process of development, the standardisation of ethnic culture controlled by the state for tourist consumption with staged 'authentic' events, and with tourists themselves having expectations of their ethnic hosts being 'quaintly non-modernised' or 'museumised' (1989:37). A 'restructuring of political relationships' occurred as the state, which once suppressed minority cultures as uncivilised during the Maoist regime, became the promoter of cultural forms while also validating ethnic group awareness and legal rights (Swain, 1989:38).

A paradox remains however as the modern Chinese state needs to integrate minority groups into the political and economic infrastructure of majority society - yet 'local colour' as it is termed in Chinese, is essential for successful ethnic tourism and cultural difference needs to be supported (Swain 1989; Sofield & Li 1998). 'Control that the Sani may have in tourism is contingent upon the national political climate' (Swain 1989:38). If the concept of empowerment is applied to Swain's analysis the conclusion to be drawn would be that the devolution of a certain degree of power from the state to the minority group has produced an element of cooperation in tourism development between the Sani and the state which constitutes a rationale for continued ethnic identity, indigenous rights, economic independence and cultural diversity, i.e. sustainability.

* * * * * * * * * * *

References

Altman, Jon 1989 Tourism dilemmas for Aboriginal Australians. Annals of Tourism Research, 16(4):456-476.

Hall, C. Michael 1996 Tourism and the Maori of Aotearoa, New Zealand. In Tom Hinch & Richard W. Butler (Eds.) Tourism and indigenous peoples (pp.155-175). London: International Thomson Publishing Company.

Sofield, T.H.B. & Li, F.M.S. 1998 China: Tourism development and cultural policies. Annals of Tourism Research, 25(2)

Swain, Margaret Byrne 1989 Developing ethnic tourism in Yunnan, China: Shilin Sani. Tourism Recreation Research, 14 (1):33-40.

Swain, Margaret Byrne Kuan-yin Pilgrimage. Review essay. Annals of Tourism Research, 19:161-167.

Swain, Margaret Byrne 1999 'Cosmopolitan Tourism and Minority Politics in the Stone Forest' Paper presented at the International Conference on Anthropology, Chinese Society and Tourism, Kunming, 28 Sept-3 Oct 1999.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -