In recent decades, archeological discoveries have improved our understanding of prehistoric and early historic cultures of southern China. Therefore Erica Fox Brindley chooses the “Yue” of the ancient southern frontier as a foil, as the other, in her innovative and convincing investigation of perception of ethnic self-identity: what did it mean in ancient China to be “Chinese,” or, as she prefers, “Hua-xia” 華夏 or “Zhu-xia” 諸夏 (p. 10). And what is “Vietnamese”?
Brindley's criteria for ethnicity are: a shared myth of descent, a shared association with a specific territory, and a shared sense of culture (pp. 6–7). This definition of ethnicity is distinct from nationality, kinship, and language. Chinese civilization has always been multilingual.
Brindley teases information and implications out of references to “Yue” (also Yi 夷, who included the Yue) that are scattered in works from the Analects to Shiji and Hanshu. (I appreciate the addition of the original texts to the pertinent quotes.) Some Yue cultural markers that Chinese authors have noted are confirmed by archaeology, as the characteristic non-Hua-xia hairstyle of the ancient Yue to which Brindley dedicates an interesting chapter. It emerges that Chinese self-identity has changed over the centuries: In the Analects the shared myth means descent from the idealized Xia and Shang culture (something that can be acquired, p. 119). By the time of the Shiji it is descent from mythical founders of royal lineages (e.g., the royal house of Wu as founded by Zhou Taibo). The various Yue people have not left written testimonies that could provide clues to their self-perceptions, but Brindley sees self-identity expressed in resistance to Han domination in Nan-Yue (as when Zhao Tuo pointedly sits on the floor, southern style, while receiving a Han envoy) and in Vietnam by the revolt of the Trung (Zheng) sisters.
To provide background and context, Brindley summarizes what is known or hypothesized about the Yue from a geographic, historical, archaeological, and linguistic perspective: who were the Yue whom the Chinese perceived? In one sense “Yue” is the ethnonym of the historical Zhou-period people and state; in “Bai-Yue” (Hundred Yue), it is a generic appellation for precursors of Vietnamese, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, probably Austronesians, and possibly others that have become extinct (p. 61), who inhabited the southeast and south. This lumping together of ethnicities is the consequence of geographic and historic circumstances that are different from the northern frontier where China's neighbors are identified by name (Xiongnu, Turks, Wusun, etc.), and not collectively called “Hundred Xiongnu.” Brindley is of course primarily concerned with a third sense: “Yue” as perception, whatever the name has suggested to the Hua-xia over the centuries. The meanings of “Yue” may tend to flow into each other and can occur even in the same passage or sentence (e.g., pp. 27–28), so that at times one has to stop and remind oneself which “Yue” Brindley is actually referring to in a given context.
Brindley follows Sagart in believing that the Zhou-period Yue people were probably pre-Austronesian speakers (p. 55). She also leans toward his controversial Sino-Tibetan-Austronesian and Tai-Kadai theories (pp. 58– 59), remarking that the Austronesianist Robert Blust has not yet explained why he remains unconvinced (p. 51).Footnote 2 The few ancient Yue words that have been transmitted show affinities to Austroasiatic, but hardly to Austronesian. Otherwise nothing is known about the languages spoken along the southeastern coast in Fujian and Guangdong. Austronesians who settled in Taiwan after 3500 BCE probably belonged to the Dapenkeng culture that stretched from Hong Kong up the coast into Fujian and Taiwan. This culture was geographically some distance from the Hemudu culture in what thousands of years later emerged as the ancient state of Yue. There are no known linguistic data connecting Yue with the Austronesians on Taiwan; they share only a universal southern material culture. Language borders do cut through genetically homogenous populations and cultures, and vice versa. Hence it is quite a leap to hypothesize that the Yue people in Zhejiang in 500 BCE spoke an Austronesian language related to that of the 3500 BCE settlers of Taiwan (p. 52).
But these questions are not central to Brindley's arguments. She has made a valuable contribution to the history of ancient China. Her lucid and detailed discussions of history, archaeology, and linguistic theories are a welcome, up-to-date introduction to this important ancient southern frontier.
