Editor’s Note: This is part two of a three-part series exploring Hugh Battye’s book, A Tale of Two Chinas, where he shares the account of his fifteen years living in the mainland. In Part One, Battye shares an excerpt from chapter one and in Part Two, he shares from chapter 17.
A Return to Jishishan
The bus turned the corner and headed down the main street into Chuimatan, the Jishishan county seat, which still managed to maintain a traditional small town feel despite the smart new high-rise complexes rising all around. Most of my journey was now complete: two hours southeast from Lanzhou to Linxia, the prefectural capital and “China’s Little Mecca,” then only a further hour or more, as the journey through the mountains had now been drastically cut through a recently constructed tunnel.
Officially known as the “Bonan, Dongxiang and Salar Autonomous County” due to the presence of those three Muslim minorities, Jishishan was one of the more sensitive minority areas in the region, and as a result was relatively restricted to foreigners. A couple of months previously, after I had visited the county for a few days in order to conduct language surveys among the Bonan minority, word about my trip got back to Lanzhou University’s international student department, and I soon received a phone call asking me to explain what I had been doing there “without permission,” a permission, for such a short trip, that I did not know that I needed. That same week, I bumped into a sociable policeman whom I had met on the Foreign Experts trip to Tianshui a couple of years previously, and who offered me a lift back to the university in his police car. A colleague of his also got into the car, we got chatting and he asked my name. “Oh, you’re the foreigner who went to that minority area without permission.” Not a great start to my research career, but nothing further came of it. There was a common saying among the foreigners in China, that it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission, which I discovered was usually a good principle to go by. The logic followed that trying to get official permission for something—even if it was quite legal and straight-forward—would probably cause the powers that be to worry that something underhanded was going on, and to thereby refuse the request; while, conversely, in the event that an apology for overstepping the boundary was required, nothing much more would likely be said, as the relevant authorities would not want to draw undue attention to any problems occurring under their watch.
The Bureaucratic Maze
In any case, here I was again a number of weeks later, by now the spring of 2013, on an altogether more substantial and potentially interesting mission—to live with a local Bonan minority family for the fieldwork phase of my master’s degree. This time, I came with the relevant paperwork, which, in addition to the standard letter of permission from Lanzhou University, also included an extra letter that I needed to get stamped by the local Culture, Education, and Religious Affairs Bureaus of the county. This extra bureaucratic encumbrance had come about, since, in an unfortunate exception to the logic described above, my friend and fellow-student Charly, who had already found a place to stay in one of the villages with his family, had volunteered to teach for a day in the local primary school the previous year without official approval, and the police’s response had been to tighten things up for him as well as for any other foreigner seeking to live in the county.
My first port of call, then, was to the head of the Culture Bureau, whom Charly had already gained a good rapport with, and who indeed turned out to be generous and helpful. So far so stamped. He then tasked an assistant to accompany me to the other bureaus, and we set off next for the Religious Affairs Bureau, only to be told that the leaders were currently in a meeting. After a while we gave up waiting, and I suggested that we first go to the Education Bureau instead. In this case the relevant official was there, but he refused to stamp the letter unless I first received a stamp from the Public Security Bureau (PSB), as well as the Baomiju. The latter was a word I had to look up, and translates as something like the “State Secrets Bureau”—whether they really have such a bureau in a small county such as Jishishan I still do not know to this day. My assistant from the Culture Bureau expressed his unwillingness to go with me to the police station, in response to which, knowing the importance of guanxi (relationships) in China, I told him that I was sure I would not get a stamp without him. He then suggested we go back to his boss in the Culture Bureau and seek his advice. The latter advised us to skip further attempts at letter stamping, and just go directly to the local police station at Dahejia, the nearest town to where I would be staying, which was about half-an-hour’s drive onwards by minivan, only showing them the letter of permission from the university. His suggestion worked, and at the local police station all went smoothly, with no mention of permission from relevant bureaus. I was finally ready to head up to the village where it had been arranged for me to stay: Dadun, a traditional Bonan-speaking hamlet, and one of the regionally renowned “Bonan Three Villages.” Except, I was to discover, that turned out not to be so straightforward either.
An Unexpected Welcome—and an Uncomfortable Negotiation
A ten-minute minivan ride from Dahejia, up dusty lanes through cultivated fields and thin woodland, took me to the primary school at the centre of Dadun. Crossing the lane, I inquired at my pre-arranged host’s house, but since he was in the process of renovating it, I was redirected to his nephew up the road. At my new premises, a standard countryside siheyuan house which is formed by bungalow-style residences surrounding a central open courtyard, I was greeted by Mayan, the nephew’s wife, and shown to my room. I was immediately struck by how hotel-like it looked, with a red carpet laid above the usual hard-brick floor and a computer with broadband internet, something that was rare in the villages at that time. I made a quick rapport with the couple’s eight-year-old son, Ma Biao, together with his friend, who were both very excited about the fact that this new “foreign uncle,” intrinsically adept at technology, would be able to help them download a motorbike game on the computer. My distinct failure to achieve the desired result, however, seemed just as quickly to bring me down a peg or two in their estimation.
After a while, I was called over by my hostess to the main room for the evening meal, and invited to sit on their kang, a raised platform made of bricks or stone which can be heated from underneath, and which is used for eating, sleeping and social occasions. Tucking into a bowl of square noodles which Mayan had prepared, and, at the same time engaging in conversation with both her and her mother-in-law, I felt satisfied that all was going smoothly. A bit later on, her husband, who, I discovered, happened to work at the local police station—a bit of a running theme with me—returned home, and after some initial small talk, I spoke up.
“Your uncle mentioned that I just needed to discuss the rent with you.”
And it all went downhill from there. He started by mentioning the price of hotels in Dahejia Town, before adding that hotels with broadband would be even more expensive, and that a good hotel in a more important town further away would be worth 288 yuan (about £29 at that time) a night.
“So, you tell you me what you think the price should be.”
“Well, I was actually thinking of around 500 yuan (£50) per month,” I replied awkwardly.
That did not go down well, and we ended up in a very uncomfortable, and unanticipated, bargaining situation, during which he insisted he would not go lower than 150 yuan (£15) per night. From my point of view, I was right in the middle of the Chinese countryside, and about a 45-minute walk from the nearest shower—the price he was asking for could have enabled me to rent a very large flat in one of the nicest parts of Lanzhou. From his point of view, he was providing a service and hoping to make some money. With hindsight, I realized that my offer was too low, since the package would have included three meals a day, and, from their perspective, there was also, of course, the not insignificant inconvenience of having a random foreigner living with you twenty-four seven. Even so, and despite the fact that bargaining is fairly common in China, a mismatch of nine to one did represent a somewhat embarrassing disconnect. I soon retired to my “hotel room” and a fitful night’s sleep.
When Expectations Collide
The next morning, after breakfast, we went back up the lane to speak with his uncle. I had already decided my bargaining position, that I would not go higher than 1,000 yuan (£100) per month, but in the end there was no further negotiation. When we arrived, it was clear that the uncle already knew about the situation, and he immediately began relating to me how university groups would often come to his house for short stays, be treated well, and pay a good rate. Since this connection too had been set up through a professor in my department, they had likely expected that I would be sponsored by the university or the government. I apologized for the misunderstanding and asked him if I could look around the village for other places to stay, to which he consented. We left on good terms, and I realized that the whole situation could be put down to a misalignment of expectations. As a foreigner I was looking for the authentic “cultural experience,” whereas the villagers are more concerned that their guest receives a “comfortable experience.” To a certain extent, the ethnographer, by their presence, always spoils the experiment, but in China the “experiment” is not necessarily the main point. More important is that the minority or the region in question shows off its best side and gives the visitors a positive encounter, and that relationships are built or maintained with the relevant organizing institutions. My hosts, therefore, were imagining a short, instructive visit where I would be treated as a special guest, and contribute accordingly, all in contrast to my attempt at the more genuine anthropological article.
Searching for a Place to Belong
My subsequent walk around the village took me to the mosque, from where I was directed to inquire at another house, the owner of which promptly sent me on to the home of the village secretary to first ask for his permission. Since the secretary was not there, his father gave me his mobile number, and over the phone he agreed that I could live there. However, on my return, the owner revealed that it was not actually convenient after all (clearly, directing me to the secretary was an attempted face-saving exercise on behalf of the owner, who would have preferred not to have turned me down directly if possible). I then went back and asked if I could live in the mosque itself with the students, a request which was also turned down. Meanwhile, another contact I knew from previous visits to the area had phoned me, indicating that his uncle, who worked at the village primary school, would take me for 2,000 yuan per month. But when I arrived at the school, the uncle too told me that it was not actually convenient. My contact then suggested I try the school chef, who was offering something in the order of 2,500 yuan for three meals per day, or 2,000 for two meals. But by the end of our conversation—during which the chef gave me a try at rapidly flicking the dough off the batch into the pot to form the square noodles he was preparing, an art that I never got the hang of then or subsequently—he had also insinuated that, since his wife would not always be there to help, it wouldn’t really work. As I left the school I passed the big sign near the exit to encourage the children as they left at the end of the day:
平平安安回家去
Ping ping an an hui jia qu
Safely, safely, return home.
At that stage I wondered if that was not exactly what I was supposed to do. But on arriving back at Dahejia, I decided to first check into a hotel there, and sleep on the situation. The hotel, as it turned out, only cost me 88 yuan per night.
Finding a Home in Ganhetan
The following day, I walked the forty-five minutes from Dahejia up to Ganhetan, another of the “Bonan Three Villages,” to see if there were any prospects of a place to stay there. After initial inquiries near the central mosque met with little success, I decided to stroll up to the top of the village and back. As I was walking up, I met a kindly-looking old man standing on the side of the road, and mentioned that I was seeking somewhere to stay, upon which he agreed to have me on the spot. He invited me into his siheyuan, where I also received a warm welcome from his wife, and together they brought me across the courtyard and showed me a room in the far corner. It had just been recently renovated and certainly looked reasonable, if somewhat sparse, as well as cold for a lack of sunshine. I agreed to live there, at what by now I had realised was a more sensible rate of 1,000 yuan per month. However, not being the most observant of individuals, it only dawned on me just after I had left the room, that I had not noticed any lighting at all. I went back in to check, and, sure enough, it turned out that there was not only no light, but no electric wall sockets either. When I pointed this out to them, they instructed me there and then to go and buy the wires, extension lead and bulb from the town myself. I duly obliged, but by the time I returned later on, complete with electrics, they had decided that that room was not the best place for me to live in anyway, and were already preparing another one, adjacent to their own. The new room, in the end, turned out to be much more homely, with a white and turquoise cupboard-chest of drawer’s combination which I used for a desk, and a large kang which heated so effectively that I had to roll over to the sides to keep from roasting at night. And, most importantly, it had a light.
One Final Hurdle
So it was that I settled in with “Ga” Ma Zhanshan1 and Maryam, together with their grandson, Ma Jun, his wife Raziya, and their baby son Mubarak. My dealings with officialdom, however, were far from over, and a few days later we received an eight-person police visit to the siheyuan while we were having dinner. My attempt at brushing the officer in charge off with the letter of permission from the university failed, as he promptly asked me to also produce the letter to the bureaus. I reluctantly pulled out the latter with its solitary stamp from the Culture Bureau, while admitting that the Education Bureau had refused to give me one. He seemed satisfied with my explanation but went on to ask whether I knew the laws of China, telling me to keep away from researching on religion. However, during the course of the conversation that stricture gradually evolved into “unless I got a stamp from the Religious Affairs Bureau.” The next day I returned to Chuimatan, and, together with another assistant from the Culture Bureau, went to seek out Religious Affairs. This time we found an unsuspecting new recruit in one of the smaller offices, who was absorbed in a game of basketball on TV. Not wishing to disturb him too much from his leisure activity, we asked if he would just quickly be so kind as to stamp this letter in front of him. I was finally all set up.
