When, as outsiders, we come to think of “China,” we immediately (and usually unwittingly) encounter two challenges. The first is how to sum up the diversity of voices found in such a huge country in this short, singular word, and the second is how to then avoid letting our own natural biases distort our understanding of those voices. My recently published book, A Tale of Two Chinas, seeks to address these challenges by both taking into account the plurality I encountered on my own China journey, as well as aiming to be descriptive, rather than overly prescriptive, with regard to the political and cultural issues that arose on the way. In two words, the book aims to be, as far as possible, holistic and objective.
First, holistic. In the book, I divide the account of my fifteen years living in the mainland into two distinct parts: firstly, my experiences in what I call “mainstream urban China”, specifically focusing on the three northern cities of Tianjin, Xining, and Lanzhou, where I studied Mandarin, taught English, and embarked on a master’s followed by a doctorate in ethnology at a local university. In this first half, tracing my own early China journey, I cover a number of the major political, economic, and cultural themes of the reform period, as well as of Xi Jinping’s current new era. The second half describes what I refer to as “minority rural China” and is based on the time I spent conducting postgraduate fieldwork among Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist communities in the countryside of the central northwest; in this part I engage in more detail with the social, religious, and agricultural landscape of the particular ethnic groups that I stayed among. Finally, while emphasizing the contrast between these two “Chinas” that I experienced, I also note how elements of the two come together in the everyday lives of some of the hard-working minority families and individuals, as they, along with the many millions of other migrant workers, continue to maintain a foothold in more than one camp.
Such an attempt at holism is, of course, by no means perfect, and from a purely ethnic perspective, there are clearly many more than two “Chinas.” Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Communist government has delineated fifty-six distinct ethnicities, including the Han—the official name for the Chinese majority, which makes up about ninety percent of the population—and fifty-five minorities. International researchers have, furthermore, expanded those fifty-five into hundreds of ethnolinguistic groups, claiming that many disparate peoples were, often somewhat arbitrarily, merged together during the ethnic classification process in the 1950s.
In addition, in recent years, the concept of one uniform “Han majority” has also come under scrutiny. Is it really the case that 1.2 billion people out of China’s 1.4 billion are all largely the same? Just taking language and food as examples: as is well known, Mandarin, based on the northern Beijing pronunciation, is far removed from the important dialects of the south, such as Cantonese and Hokkien; while the common expression, “nan tian, bei xian, dong la, xi suan”—the south sweet, the north salty, the east spicy, the west sour—already gives an indication of the degree of variability in culinary taste within the mainland Han community, even before taking the minorities into account. In the words of the late expert in Chinese Islam, Dru Gladney:
Ethnic differences within Han society, while readily accepted as separate cuisines, cultures, and languages outside of China, within China are regarded as local dishes, customs, and dialects. The Cantonese, Sichuanese, and Hunanese are somehow not what they eat.1
Yet at the same time, it is fair to say that much of life and society in China has now been homogenized to a large extent. Official ethnic classification programs serve not only to define what the researchers believe is already there, but by nature also carry elements of creativity and self-fulfilling prophecy. Teach the young people of disparate Chinese communities that they are all part of the same ethnicity, the “Han,” back it up with a strong centralized education system, and they will grow up believing in, and feeling, such homogeneity, passing it on to their children in turn.
Combine this with general modernization, the widespread use of Mandarin, and the proliferation of rapid communication through the internet and social media, and much of Chinese “mainstream urban” life does, on the surface at least, look quite similar. And in relation to minority rural China, while my experiences of Muslim and Tibetan Buddhist communities in the central northwest cannot simply be extrapolated to account for the many minority groups noted above, nor do justice to the variegated rural environments that make up the geography of the nation as a whole—I hope that the focus on one particular region offers somewhat of a “micro” balance to the “macro” observations of the first part, as well as painting some broader strokes depicting the China beyond the familiar urban experience. Overall, by navigating the two major fault lines of modern Chinese society—the city and the countryside, the Han mainstream and the minorities—the narrative seeks to provide the space for a more widely reflective picture of China to emerge.
Second, objective. Of course, as an outsider and a particular Western Christian, I come to the table with my own biases and perspectives which must be taken into account, as they would in any context. But the stakes are higher when it comes to writing about China, where the current geopolitical climate makes it challenging to try to maintain a relatively neutral stance. As one journalist has noted, China commentators are often branded as “hawks” or “shills,” without much room in between.2
Nevertheless, the book does aim at least to take a middle path. Political and religious concerns only surface in the book as they feature within the context of reflections stemming from my personal narrative. Hence, some controversial topics, including, for example, events in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, since they were not a central part of my own experience, are only mentioned in passing, a fact which may disappoint some readers hoping for a stronger line on such issues.
Others, either from, or related to the mainland, may also be less than happy that I do touch, for a foreign readership, on broader “sensitive” issues within China as they arise. They, like many in the mainland, would prefer to apply on the national level the Chinese idiom that family scandals should be kept in-house.3 To them I would answer with Oliver Cromwell, that a good portrait should not only illustrate the attractive features but include, famously, “warts and all.”
Perhaps, however, if I disappoint on both sides, then to some extent the book will have achieved its purpose. For its aim is neither to attack China, nor to defend China, but, as indicated above, to describe China—or rather the Chinas that I experienced, in all their glories, joys, challenges, and struggles. In any case, if, as Solzhenitsyn claimed, the separating line between good and evil lies within each human heart, how much harder to make confident moral assessments on the second most populous nation on earth?4 Such assessments will, of course, still be made, and it is therefore my hope that this book will help to inform readers of whatever persuasion, as they continue to forge their own understanding on the gargantuan, fascinating, and complex entity that is the twenty-first-century People’s Republic of China.
- Dru C. Gladney, Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 306.
- Cindy Yu, “I’d be the Perfect Communist Shill,” The Spectator, August 27, 2022, https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-d-be-the-perfect-communist-shill.
- Jia chou bu ke wai yang (家丑不可外扬), literally, “Family scandals should not be spread outside.”
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “India Overtakes China as the World’s Most Populous Country,” April 2023, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
