Benzhu Belief And Ethnic Identities In Xizhou Sixteen Villages

Recent years, the issues of the relationship between text and context, as well as the cultural order of ethnic identity has bee n discussed more and more frequently. Inspired by Wang Mingke’s idea that the text and the context would complement each other, the author chose a famous anthropology field ——Xizhou, Dali to do a restudy about the local’s connotation and describe strategy of their identity. The Benzhu belief of Bai which was popular there was using as the focal point. After the fieldwork and argumentation, the author put forward that, their identity was implemented in the linked frame of inner and out ethnic group. Its core was that, on the positioning of “center and periphery”, to improve their own status and make it be consensus as far as possible, with the help of existed material and cultural resources. It was the strategy that showed the strong homogeneity between the Benzhu belief space and the real living space in Xizhou Sixteen Vil ages.Firstly, at the level of inner ethnic identity, by choosing and concentrating the most honorable “Benzhu” and in the comparison to the frame of the “Shan Jiao Hai Bian Cun”(It means always under the mountain or near to the Erhai Lake), the Xizhou villagers constructed their town as the regional belief center. The social context, which was corresponding to this, was the fact that Xizhou was the geographic, economic, political and cultural center of Dali area in the long history. To highlights the status of center, Xizhou Villagers emphasized the difference between the villagers surrounded and themselves, and strictly obeyed the boundaries in ritual space.Then, on the level of internal identity, the Benzhu belief in Xizhou showed the characteristics of national culture integration by accepting different cultural elements. Similar to this, “Families with great surnames” in sixteen villages was swinging between the “Han ancestry” and “Bai ancestry” when they were tracing their ancestors’ origin. This phenomenon reflected that in a wider range, the West Town villagers were active to get close to the more advanced power center and had a open cultural mentality.However, the ethnic identities of Xizhou villagers between the two terms above were not fragmented but a whole like nature itself. So, it was showed in the Bai’s traditional festival, which is the closely related with Bai’s belief, that under the effect of both Bai’s tradition and Han’s decency, the Xizhou villagers made a compromise by participating in the pilgrimage rather than the carnival activities that hinted sexuality.All in all, though Xizhou villagers all were suffered from the issues of their origin and ethnicity, their goal was to achieve balance as well as maximize the benefits in culture collide, in stead of the political national identity. Therefore, as living cultural resource, the narrative, rituals, taboos ect. in the belief of Benzhu had been used flexibly in the construction of their identity.