
About the Project
China is a diverse country home to many ethnic peoples, but it is at the same time considered to be the centre of a homogenous culture and writing system. While research into China’s ethnic minorities has boomed in recent years, from outside China and also within, supported by new trends in scholarship and a renewed state focus on minority issues, the study of the increasingly large body of Chinese ethnic literature is still in its infancy. Chinese minorities, after decades of cultural integration, now write the majority of their literature in Chinese, despite having their own language (and often, their own scripts). For their voices to be heard, they write in dominant language (the language of the Han, Hanyu 漢語), hence they can be classified as “Sinophone” writers. Sinophone studies leads us to the study of Sinitic language, of standard Hanyu 標準漢語, as it is used by ethnic minorities within China.
Tibeto-Burman minorities all have their own native languages that share very little in common with the other half of the Sino-Tibetan language family, Sinitic. The Tibeto-Burman peoples living in the PRC are therefore demonstrably caught between two linguistic and cultural worlds: somewhere between the “Sino” and the “Tibetan”, a situation that is reflected in their writing. As they write in Chinese, they inevitably translate their own language and culture, inserting non-Chinese words and cultural context into the Chinese text. In this case, their native Tibeto-Burman languages are the “source” languages that are being self-translate. While plenty has been written on Sinophone writers in Hong Kong, the United States and across the global Chinese diaspora, comparatively little has been done on such writing by minority groups within China proper, let alone more comprehensive language-based surveys. This project promotes diversity and at the same time publicizes the work of lesser-studied peoples.
It is the aim of this project to show how Sinophone minority authors use Chinese to reflect their own identity, or subtly employ translational strategies to resist the Sinification of their culture, challenging a homogenized notion of “Chineseness” in their writing.
The project has collected usages of Tibeto-Burman words within Sinophone writing by contemporary authors. One main corpus that has been used is the Selected Fiction by Ethnic Minority Writers in the New Period (新時期中國少數民族文學作品選集), a fifty-five volume collection published in mainland China in 2015 that dedicates one volume to each of China’s minorities, although many other publications have been cited alongside this collection.
A wide array of distinct and original voices has been revealed, voices that work to champion their cultural identities, leading to hybridized understanding and, hopefully, a remapping of modern Chinese literature through the lens of cultural translation.
Table 1. Chinese minority groups included in the project
Language subgrouping | Minority group |
---|---|
Tibetan (Bodic) | Tibetan, (Baima), Monpa |
Lolo-Burmese | Lahu, Lisu, Achang, Hani, Jino, Nu, Yi |
Qiangic | Pumi, Qiang |
Sal | Jingpo |
Tani | Lhoba |
Rung | Derung |
Other | Bai, Naxi(Mosuo) |