Nuo is a kind of ritual drama found in Guizhou among several different ethnic groups. One of its special features is the use of masks, which represent a wide variety of facial expressions and emotions and are thought to enable nuo masters to represent the gods. Up to now, there has been a considerable amount of research on nuo in Chinese and a limited amount in other languages. This is the first full-length English-language study of nuo to consider this kind of art from various perspectives, including its role in society and in popular religion, and the way governments and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have used it politically and commercially.
The author works from an extremely thorough methodology, which is explained at some length. Although she has consulted a wide range of written sources in Chinese and English, the most important part of her methodology is field research. Li stayed in a village called Shenxi for several months in 1993 and revisited it over a period of nearly 20 years, the last occasion contributing to the research in this book being in 2012. The village is in Dejiang county, Guizhou province, and its members belong to the Tujia ethnic minority, which the 2010 census showed had a population of nearly 8.4 million China-wide. Culturally, the Tujia are fairly similar to the Han in most ways and the author suggests that the first known ancestor of Shenxi's village clan was originally Han; in the Ming dynasty he came from Jiangxi as part of a Han army, the village population becoming fully absorbed into the Tujia people.
This excellent book adds to our knowledge in several ways. First, Li deals with the nuo theatre, including the masks, the nuo masters and their social status, and the ritual and performance role it occupies within society. Secondly, this book tells us about the society of the Tujia, including the ways in which people relate to each other. Thirdly, it investigates popular religion, and the ways in which this integrates with the social realities of the Tujia people.
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly of all, Li has researched how the interconnected nuo drama and popular religion have been used politically. Local authorities have encouraged interest in reviving nuo and made it a cultural marker of the Tujia. But there is more to her argument. Nuo has officially been reclassified as a “living fossil” of “primitive culture” and “thereby worthy of preservation” (p. 178). The religion attached to it can be regarded as a “cultural artefact,” no longer a form of superstition. Nuo is a genuine form of ancient culture, but it can be used for modern purposes, such as making money through tourism. What this signifies is that an aspect of Chinese ethnic minority cultural revival that includes religious belief is able to contribute to political legitimacy and modernization. According to the author, this “new role that popular religion plays in modern Chinese politics” is “a phenomenon that has never before been seen in Chinese history” (p. 17). The fact that the author is considering a totally unprecedented matter gives it a high degree of interest and significance.
This particular instance points strongly against two widely held views of the way the CCP is treating non-Han cultures. Some have accused it of deliberately destroying these ethnic cultures. While such a charge applies specifically to ethnic groups that are sometimes held as threatening the state, such as the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, it also applies to other ethnic groups that do not attract nearly as many headlines. But another theory is that the process of modernization is undermining and even destroying ethnic traditional cultures. Lan Li's research puts a very different perspective. She shows that the active support by local government and the CCP for the revival of nuo and Tujia popular religion makes modernization actually help traditional ethnic cultures, not undermine them. Her research suggests that we may need to rethink some attitudes towards the complex relationships between minority cultures, modernization and the state.
The scholarly appurtenances of Lan Li's book are first-rate. The index subdivides major entries to make them more useful and the particular entry sought easier to find. Chinese characters are used everywhere, as appropriate. The bibliography is excellent, showing the author's command of the Chinese-language and English-language literature on her subject. The glossary of terms is a monument of thoroughness.
Although this is a highly specialized book, it is written in a very interesting style and covers topics that will appeal to a range of readers. These include anthropologists interested in Chinese society and history, drama students and ethnologists. This book is rich in new ideas and perspectives, and I recommend it strongly. It is a real contribution to the literature on Chinese ethnicity, drama and religion.
