萨顶顶 (Sa Dingding)

These are my notes from her latest album:

Sa Dingding – The Coming Ones

First off: Sa Dingding has an amazing voice and amazing vocal technique. Mountain voice.

Lots of stop and start, shift, change of pace. Tarab? Interruptions, the better to cast a spell. . .

The poor production choices (especially the dated big thwacking electronic beats) are balanced out by the many other brilliant studio touches. This thing is packed with detail.

(1) Lai Zhe Mo Jie - Misty beginnings. Vocal technique reminds me of a more subdued Mauritanian singing or something. Choral part at 3:27. Layers of rhythmic complexity I missed first time around. Worst thing for me is the excessively heavy beat, but it doesn’t ruin the song for me by any means. Her voice just zigzags. It’s triumphant and I don’t need to know what she’s singing about. This is certainly the standout single of the album.

(2) Ru Ying Sui Xing - What to say about a song that starts off sounding a bit like Ofra Haza, but ends up with a Hmong choir singing “Ode to Joy” with an annoyingly bombastic 80s type beat? There are some days I can’t really listen to this. There are other days it’s delightfully ridiculous. I do prefer the portion of this one with the floaty vocals, however.

(3) Chen Ai Zai Ge Chang - Very quiet. Okay, this is pretty uneventful, but okay. This is uneventful but pretty.

(4) Huang Ru Ge Shi - The farm animal noises make me think of Kate Bush. (There's a new excuse for mentioning Kate Bush.) This is another ballad, and we are talking about an actual Chinese pop star remember, so this is pretty sweet, but I think it may still be digestible by western ears. Or maybe I just zone out during much of this album.

(5) Zhi Shang Ai - Some of the electronic sounds here seem a good deal more contemporary than they do on much of the album. Really a bit Ringoesque at points. “Walalalala” Well what can you say? Big heavy thwack beat that I don’t like but tolerate. Rhythm stop around 1:58 and sounds get trippier, as they do at times. 2:16: Droplet sound? (Buddhist impermanence droplet sound?) Lots of attention to details. Your choice whether or not to ride with. 3:54 – now those synth sounds are SR-worthy.

(6) Ai Zai 2012 - Is this the pivot? Easily the hardest song to digest. For once the song is not helping me transcend a sense that Chinese is, well, a bit ugly as a language (to me). On the other hand, there’s something sort of fascinating in how almost exaggerated her enunciation is. Not knowing Chinese, and not even being very used to hearing Chinese, it’s not possible for me to judge conclusively what’s going on here.

(7) Zhuan Shan - Back to more dance feel. Here the distortion on her vocals nicely highlights the sound of the language. This bass is a bit “White Lines” ish no? And the whole thing is riffing off a famous song whose title I’m still trying to figure out. It’s something really obvious—I think from a soundtrack or from theme music of some sort. Soaring!

(8) Qiu Xiang Yue - Ethnic strings. I guess this is pretty airy again. Works for me.

(9) Zhen Zhi Yan - Quiet chanting, singing really. Om Mani Padme Hum. Leads to real chanting, rapid percussion, and extended vocal technique wipeout. When I say her voice can go all over the place, the end of this track is a really good example of some of the more severe places it can go.

(10) Xing Zhe Wu Jiang - And what follows is a poppy almost barber shop quartet (well, barely almost) opening. Very light and bouncy. I almost feel like if you can get into this track, you can “crack” the album.

(11) Tian Lai Zhi Ai - Is she going for Ringoesque symmetry here? This feels closer to the epic scale of the first track than any of the others in between. Thunderous percussion, ethnic instruments. Then her clear vocals in the foreground, with little vocal slides here and there. When I haven’t had enough sleep, this makes me tear up.

Now up on Grooveshark:

http://grooveshark.com/#!/album/The+Coming+Ones/8064053

Lai Zhe Mo Jie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQSM1qwNI3U

Ru Ying Sui Xing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSmZER_VyZA

Huang Ru Ge Shi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGihWV5JTns

Qiu Xiang Yue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXsSox5WAvY

Tian Lai Zhi Ai:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJm2OLdqPlw

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I would like this posted as a new thread:

1, 2, and 5 are real promotional videos.

Really liking "Lai Zhe Mo Jie"!

Thanks for listening. That lead song is good good. I think if you were in the right patient frame of mind you might find things to enjoy throughout the album. From my point of view, the (heavily electronic) sound palate on the album veers from in bad taste to exquisite.

Here's Zhen Zhi Yan, which I didn't catch on Youtube before. This eventually climaxes with her fiercest vocals on the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsNpJynN5Zs

Listened to a couple of clips, her voice is indeed amazing, and I love chanty vocals with electronic beats in general, so this is right right up my alley. Ordered the CD on Amazon, thanks for the recommendation!

Really? I actually think some of it would be too saccharine for you. I would actually have recommended that you (in particular) try checking the whole thing out first. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong and you will like it. I hope so.

On the other hand, as long as you turned up on this thread unexpectedly, have you heard the Zaki Ibrahim album (streamable at bandcamp.com)? That I would expect you to like.

Well, actually, I guess you should like most the Sa Dingding album. Most of the quieter tracks aren't exactly saccharine, but that one in the middle sort of crosses the line a bit. I find the whole thing works well for me as a package, but some others have described it all as a bit kistch.

So yeah, I got this album, and I'm really loving it! Probably my favourite album of 2012, so thank you Rudipherous for introducing Sa Dingding to me! I also ordered her previous album, "Harmony", from Amazon, since you could get it for cheap there. Have you heard that one? This song and video from it are pretty awesome!

Basically, my only complaint with "The Coming Ones" is that none of the other tunes have the manic rhythms and the crazy choral gymnastics of the first two songs. "Lai Zhe Mo Jie" and "Ru Ying Sui Xing" are such an awesome one-two punch for an album starter that the rest of the songs feel a bit too normal compared to them... But when you listen to the other tunes on their own merits, there's plenty of great melodies and cool atmospheres in them too, and obviously Dingding's singing is beautiful throughout.

I'd say this album is more "pop" and less "folk" or "ethnic" than what I expected based on the video clips, it's more Björk or Kate Bush than Ofra Haza, if you want to name a famous comparison. I don't know Chinese at all, but I didn't find her vocal inflections "ugly" or hard to swallow in any way. Certainly there are many other types of "world" music where the linguistics and traditions of local music make the singing sound far more alienating to a Western listener than is case with this album.

The accompanying DVD with the music videos was nice too, but I wish the documentary had had subtitles... Do you know if one can find it anywhere with English subs?

Even if don't end up voting this for my #1 album in the ILM 2012 poll (I'm torn between this, the Voices from the Lake album, and the Neneh Cherry / The Thing collab), "Lai Zhe Mo Jie" is definitely gonna be my number 1 song. I just everything about the song: the way it builds up from a moody new age beginning to a crazy chant with a stomping beat, the acid house bassline and beat, the way Dingding's voice "modulates" in the middle section... Is there some music theory term for that technique, by the way? To me it sounds kinda like the famous autotuned bit in Cher's "Believe", except this one is done (I think?) without electronics.

Yeah, I wish I could convince more people to just check out "Lai Zhe Mo Jie." I'll be voting that track as my number one (along with the album). I am unfortunately not the one for providing technical explanations of music. I am glad you like the album; and relieved you like it, since you went and ordered it so quickly.

I've weirdly not gone back and tried to listen to everything of Sa Dingding's that I can find. I did listen to Harmony and thought it was pretty good but not as stand out. I need to listen to it some more though.

I agree that it's more pop than folk. I think maybe in the Chinese context (or maybe it's just the Wikipedia context) she gets categorized as folk because she uses traditional vocal technique and partially works off traditional folk material. She is conservatory trained, as well, however.

I didn't mean her vocal technique was ugly or particularly challenging to western ears (with rare exceptions). I just personally find Chinese phonemic patterns unpleasant, so it was more to do with the language than the singing. (Chinese is still on my very imaginary short list of languages I would like to learn some day.)

The Neneh Cherry album backing was too out (in a fire music way) for my taste these days, but I can see why people would like it. (Granted, my second favorite album of the year was avant-jazz from Matthew Ship Trio, Elastic Aspects, but it was more of a chamber jazz sort of affair.)

Why not go post something about Sa Dingding on the poll campaigning thread? (It can be our secret.)

the first time this thread went around I tried the first and third videos and wasn't sold, but the Ode To Joy mashup on 'Ru Ying Sui Xing' really hit me this time and then the next song in the youtube queue was 'Zhen Zhi Yan' and it was over, I just ordered this

'Ru Ying Sui Xing' is traditional Chinese but it reminds me of Elizabeth Frasier! Which brings to mind those amazing songs the Cocteau Twins wrote and produced for Faye Wong.

which are finally online since the last time I looked maybe ten years ago. ok probably more interesting than amazing, but at the time Frasier had seemingly staked out her own planet so completely that it was very striking to hear anyone else sound so natural singing her songs, and illuminating that that person was singing in Chinese

Wikipedia says that Dingding is of mixed Han and Mongol ancestry, and sings in languages including Mandarin, Sanskrit, Tibetan, as well an imaginary self-created language to evoke the emotions in her songs. I assume the last part applies to bits like the chant at the end of "Lai Zhe Mo Jie", or at least it doesn't sound like Chinese to me.

She sounds pretty amazing from the descriptions. Writes her own songs, makes her own clothes, has her own language. (The latter is obviously just sort of.) I think one reasons all the idealization of the mountains, the plains, and rural communities in general rings true in her videos, is that it reflects her actual biography.

Taught herself Sanskrit and Tibetan? Despite the facts of geography, I don't think those languages are closely related to Mandarin. (Could be wrong, I don't know much about linguistics.)

Incidentally, in the first post, the notes were made in hopes of putting together something more coherent eventually, but I gave up and just posted the notes. That's about the level of album "review" I am capable of.

Anyway, Milton, if you haven't heard the whole thing yet, I think you'll be delighted by some of the surprises on this album.

I love this. Thanks a lot for this thread.

I showed this to my Chinese friend after seeing it in the campaigning thread and she had this to say:

"It's funny you found this, she was in a national singing competition in China 11 years ago, and I distinctly remember calling the tv station and voting for her.

She's from Shandong, same place Pu Songling's from. But her mother is from Inner Mongolia. She made this song in 2004 before she changed her name, what do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNR8CbFt8Mw

Her name used to be 周鹏 (Zhou Peng) and now it's 萨顶顶 (Sa Dingding). The song you found is called 来者摩羯 (This Person's Capricorn). The tradition they show is from Tibet. She sings a lot of songs in Tibetan now."

This thread is tantalizing me. The Coming Ones is not on Spotify; only Harmony is, but I'm listening right now and if the new album is head and shoulders above this then dang it's something I need to hear.

ok, couldn't wait for the copy to arrive, downloaded

usually this kind of 90's-era electronic production is an automatic deal-breaker for me. and it's interesting, because basically this is exactly the kind of production style that accompanied all those world fusion electronica acts, so this comes on at first like a double hangover if you lived through things like Deep Forest / Enigma / Loop Guru / Transglobal Underground the first time around

except that her singing is so distinctive, and the songwriting is so on it, that if you listen longer than 10 seconds you go through the looking glass and realize this is the exact opposite of the tourism / sample pillaging that date those records (and why her 'Ode To Joy' rip comes across as such a bizarre moment, this is what it sounds like to be appropriated).

having more trouble with 'Harmony', the drum loops are really getting in the way, but even here it sticks out, I love traditional Chinese instrumentation and it matters when it's being played and not looped from Ocora LPs

some of these sounds do sound looped actually... but not from LPs

usually this kind of 90's-era electronic production is an automatic deal-breaker for me. and it's interesting, because basically this is exactly the kind of production style that accompanied all those world fusion electronica acts, so this comes on at first like a double hangover if you lived through things like Deep Forest / Enigma / Loop Guru / Transglobal Underground the first time around

Yup. Normally those things are a turn-off for me. She has actually collaborated with Deep Forest, but I think that was a one-off.

except that her singing is so distinctive, and the songwriting is so on it, that if you listen longer than 10 seconds you go through the looking glass and realize this is the exact opposite of the tourism / sample pillaging that date those records (and why her 'Ode To Joy' rip comes across as such a bizarre moment, this is what it sounds like to be appropriated).

Again, I agree with pretty much all of this, and you've put it well. Part of why I like it so much is that it pushes me past my resistance to some of those qualities I find off-putting.

I guess I didn't need to quote half your post.

This is pretty cool! Thread needs a spurious Grimes comparison if it's going to take off though.

you just covered us there, so hopefully she doesn't have to come up again ever

>She has actually collaborated with Deep Forest, but I think that was a one-off.

out of everyone I mentioned, I probably almost have a soft spot for Deep Forest precisely because they moved on from sampling to real life collaboration, some of which are occasionally interesting despite their choice in drum loops. I found the song, it's called 'It Won't Be Long', and it's almost too much until she floors it in the final 30 seconds and saves everything.

ha, 'Harmony' was produced by Marius de Vries, one carefully chosen degree of separation from Bjork. the official videos from this album are too slick for my tastes but the live clips with her on youtube are incredible.

Not saying this is really good, but it's worth a laugh maybe:

To live outside of time is to be free. Have a nice day!

(The newsletters I used to get from TOPY said roughly the same thing.)

Really coming around to this; vaguely pleased Tuomas is on-board as this is occupying the place Barbara Panther was in 2011. Don't have a lot to add to this thread as of yet, though

(and why her 'Ode To Joy' rip comes across as such a bizarre moment, this is what it sounds like to be appropriated)

is OTM.

holy crap this is amaaaaazing

I agree. It's not going to place in our poll, despite my best efforts. I bet Tuomas didn't even vote. (I am too fixates on this damn poll.)

It's difficult to know how to talk about it in a way that will encourage people to listen. "You know, it's New Agey Chinese pop with techno sort of beats on some tracks, and some kind of Buddhist/pastoral theme judging by the videos, but it's really good!"

Yeah, sorry, I was busy and forgot to vote in the poll.

I've been listening to Harmony a lot lately, and I'd say it's almost as good as The Coming Ones. It has a bit more poppy and polished sound, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. "Ha Ha Li Li" is an amazing tune, though it's shame they had to also include a Paul Oakenfold remix of it with some totally unnecessary extra vocals by some British bloke. I guess the remix was meant to sell her to Western audiences, but it's so much worse than the original version, and the album should just end with track 10.

I also bought a weird Chinese 3 CD compilation of Sa Dingding tunes from Amazon... I'm not sure if it's a pirate version or something, can't find any info on it on the internet, and the credits are all in Chinese. It has Harmony in its entirety, but I think the rest of the comp is older material... It includes more traditional tunes with strings and acoustic instruments, as well as more synth poppy tunes with dance beats, and her singing is a bit more restrained than on Harmony and The Coming Ones. I'll try to write something about this stuff when I've listened to it more.

Also, I found another 3 CD compilation on the net, which seems to have totally different material than the comp I bought. I guess Dingding has had a lot of China only releases that aren't available in the West?

Probably. I didn't know anything about her before this past year, so I can't help too much on this, but it seems like she is only intermittently marketed in the west.

Next time we go to Chinatown (nyc) I am going to look for a physical copy of The Coming Ones.

her first CD after her name-change to Sa Dingding, 'Alive', came in the mail last night. the production has even more of the feel of a mashup -- there's a real clash between the arrangements for traditional chinese instruments and the 90's-era electronica production, with things getting cut-up on the grid and sample-stuttered around. her whole concept is coming on fairly strong, but I agree with Tuomas that her singing is much more restrained and apart from the title track not that much grabbed me

There are more synths meshed in with the folk instruments on 'Harmony', and it feels less like a mashup, more like a hybrid. It is polished to a degree that gives me some deep fight-or-flight responses and there are some tracks on it that I will never ever let myself like -- totally different feeling than when I'd get to a generic Shiina Ringo track, or when I'd sit there trying to convince myself that it was ok to sit all the way through some of those mid-90's Peter Gabriel records, I just can't submit to this. But -- this is the album where her voice really gets crazy, the good tracks are amazing, and it's got 'Xi Carnival':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emVNDi4PLDs

Yes, based on my listening through some of her past material (less systematically than you and Tuomas), I think her sound is getting better overall. At least it would be difficult to argue that her voice isn't stretching out more over time (not that that automatically would equal better, obviously, but for me it's a big plus in this case).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7u2inBX94

sure

I wish "The Coming Ones" had English translations of the lyrics like "Harmony" has, I'd love to know what the songs are about.

Anyway, the live version is pretty interesting, it abandons the harder electronic drums of the albums version, which has the effect that the juxtaposition of the aggressive percussion and the stereotypically "beautiful" melody of Ode to Joy is kinda lost. (Though the original version in Beethoven's 9th has some pretty driving/aggressive moments too; I don't think Dingding's intention for using it was ever any criticism via cultural cannibalism, rather than simple reappropriation in a new, cool context.)

tuomas very roughly it's like this

a butterfly, flying beside you
falling on your beautiful fingertip
graze it with your most loving kiss
like the joy of a cool breeze

a flower petal, falling gently on your cheek
its perfume caught in your hair
watch it with your loving eyes
watch the one you love the most in the world singing
a happiness that transcends time and space
a gift to all living things

fake ethnic minority dance troupe singing ode to joy:

joyous goddess
pure beauty
magnificent sunlight shines on the earth
our hearts are full of passion
when we arrive at your holy place
your strength can bring us all together
under your glorious light all men become brothers

hold my hand and sing happiness... happiness

now i'm not sure that was one of the untranslated songs you wanted to know about

i find sa dingding boring and borderline offensive, veering into full-on offensive now that i've seen that video above of her performance.

The live performance I posted, like a lot of her live performances, is too Las Vegas for my taste. I still think alongside the corniness there's some kind of brilliance in the music.

I can't even take that clip as seriously as a cirque de soleil commercial

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/entertainment/images/attachement/jpg/site1/20120720/001ec97909631172f75c10.jpg

^ wtf

i guess i have a bit of a problem with han chinese performers appropriating elements of tibetan art and music (and art and music from other ethnic minorities in china) and displaying them stripped of their meaning, cultural significance, or political baggage, or just perpetuating the line that ethnic minorities are carefree singers in colorful outfits. her performances look a bit too much like cctv galas and their crews of han chinese dressed as miao and uighurs and dong and tibetans singing praise for the status quo. i think it really sucks to rep for an eastern han chinese woman whose presenting an exoticized generic ethnic other identity, especially when the situation for the peoples whose music and art she's borrowing from is so fucked up.

it's a soundtrack for all the yuppies taking their holidays among the noble, simple, colorfully dressed peoples of yunnan and tibet.

ha ha, wow

well it's the age old tradeoff when getting assimilated into the mainstream, the vortex simultaneously validates & integrates, and neutralizes and zeroes out your deepest values - gives her whole project even more of a Deep Forest vibe, beyond just the frequently cheesy production of the music

I have a high tolerance for kitsch, and so the inexplicable / awkward aspects here are part of the appeal (of the three or four songs of hers that i can handle, or at least as much as i can handle the Carpenters). But i also don't doubt that your post explains a lot of the darker reasons why this all feels so awkward.

Possibly if I had a better grasp on the political situation I would have more trouble allowing myself to enjoy The Coming Ones.

Does it make any difference that she is of Han and Mongolian ethnicity and that she identifies as a Buddhist? That she spent a few years of her childhood with her Mongolian grandmother?

Or does that just make her a Mongolian Uncle Tom? I also have to admit, I've basically been taking the various stories about her background and her travels and the making of this album, at face value, when it could just be PR/propaganda. I wish I knew how she is actually received by Tibetans or other ethnic minorities.

I also tend to be less judgmental about artists coming from societies which don't appear to have much room for expression. So, yes, I will tend to hold an artist from a self-described democracy to a higher standard (especially where the country does appear to have some degree of openness). Although if this is really all in the service of China's ruling elite, she could still instead be doing something different, even if it doesn't express some sort of opposition. There is some underground music out of China, after all. So maybe I'm making excuses too willingly.

Maybe I should be reading the: 滚着滚着 rolling china + sinosphere 2013

i think my biggest issues are:

1) how her performances cleave very well to the prc's official ideas about ethnic minorities and their less official history of presenting the culture of ethnic minorities: tibetan, mongolian, miao costume and music bundled up in a neat package marked "generic ethnic," a package which is incredibly nonthreatening and glosses over contemporary realities surrounding the varied experiences of those peoples.

it's not blatantly in "service of China's ruling elite" but obviously informed by the chinese elite's conception of ethnic identity, which is deeply informed by han chauvinism. this is a fairly new theory, which sees a central chinese race and exactly no more no less 56 ethnic minorities.

2) i think claiming mongolian ancestry is cool but i know that inner mongolia and its peoples have been pretty thoroughly sinicized and it's a majority han chinese province and i know that she claimed to be a nomad but that she moved to shandong when she was six. i think it's telling that she doesn't claim linguistic ability in any of the dozens of minority languages spoken in inner mongolia.

she notes on her official english biography that she attended "Academy of Arts in Beijing" (which would be 中央美术学院) but all her chinese-lang biographies say 解放军艺术学院 people's liberation army college of art (this is a scarier sounding place and not really a party hack factory more than any other place, but it's interesting that she scrubbed the name from english biographies).

she's adopted a name that calls to mind sinified versions of ethnic minority names.

but i want to say, it's clear that her privilege has allowed her voice to be heard while those of the ethnic minorities of inner mongolia and southeastern china and tibet are not.

3) ethnic minorities in china are in fashion (especially bloodless recreations of them for han consumers, recreations that don't agitate for a separate state, self-immolate, press for language and religious freedoms, try to preserve their traditional way of life, or... you know....) so, while the tibetans in lhasa roast themselves and uighurs in kashgar have their old city bulldozed and the ethnic minorities of southwestern china live in conditions straight out of the 18th century, han chinese consume cultural products like wolf totem by jiang rong about a han chinese man who travels to inner mongolia and through the discovery of ethnic cultural practices discovers how to be a real man, or the tibet code series; travel magazines feature pieces on traveling to discover ethnic minority life in yunnnan or xinjiang, while those places are developed by han tourism companies into amusement park mockeries of a traditional way of life, which ends up displacing the people they are ostensibly celebrating; it's not hard to find a tacky 少数民族色彩 ethnic minority flava shops selling incense, walk in and it's chinese pop music flavored with what some producer imagines tibetan folk music sounds like.

i think her profile among western music people (CHINA'S BJORK) is amazing and i sort of feel like she's the equivalent of some cheezy american western writer providing germans with LIFE OF THE RED MAN cowboys and indians books.

also, me questioning her nomad credentials is silly. whatever. i find her claims a bit silly.

i'd like a clip of her speaking sanskrit or tibetan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=228-YGQZGMo

pre sa dingding phase

already covered here, though, right?

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/JS72pTbEb_w/

this is sick. i wish she never turned new age fake tibet.

"Han Chinese consume cultural products like wolf totem by jiang rong about a han chinese man who travels to inner mongolia and through the discovery of ethnic cultural practices discovers how to be a real man, or the tibet code series; travel magazines feature pieces on traveling to discover ethnic minority life in yunnnan or xinjiang, while those places are developed by han tourism companies into amusement park mockeries of a traditional way of life, which ends up displacing the people they are ostensibly celebrating"

I am fascinated by this; can u direct me to further reading on these trends (online or in print, wherever)

here's some stuff

In 1986, a new six-story building had been constructed to supplement the mildewed older structure that used to house the city's No. 1 Guest House. Kaili was, after all, the capital of the Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Southeast Guizhou province in China's southwest.... The new hotel was dubbed the Nationalities Guest House. ... A representative sampling of different minorities, subgroups, and costume styles had been chosen and each employee was to wear her distinctive headdress at all times.

...

A glamorous set of exotic maidens, adorned in colorful garb, serenaded [domestic male tourists] with ethnic song. Gender and Internal Orientalism in China

The term "Miao" is an arbitrary, official Chinese classification of widely dispersed and diverse groups, and has little ethnographic reality. ... Yet Schein shows how the term has gained a certain cachet among the elite minority performers, artists and musicians on whom the book focuses, and among nostalgic Han urbanites disturbed by rapid modernization.... ... The image of the minority, now being reproduced as Schein shows, by some minorities themselves, becomes in turn feminized, an emblem of Chinese traditions counterposed to Western modernity, and a sign of ethnic distinctiveness. from a review of louisa schein's Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China's Cultural Politics

As some Western scholars have argued, the colorful portrayal of minorities in China is often derogatory and colonial. The widespread definition and representation of the “minority” is often exotic and “primitive.” In turn, the dominant Han majority, the 92 percent of the population that is typically what the rest of the world typically thinks of as “Chinese,” is contrasted as modern and homogeneous. At China’s Ethnic Minorities Theme Park, It’s a Small World After All ny times

this book looks at "established modes of representing ethnic minorities" and what those modes have looked like and how they have been consumed: Nation, Ethnicity, and Cultural Strategies: Three Waves of Ethnic Representation

good writing on wolf totem:

So while nomads are dismissed as China’s most backward element by Beijing minority nationalities policy, according to Wolf Totem China must now look to them since “the most advanced people today are descendents of nomadic races. … What is hard to learn are the militancy and aggressiveness, the courage and willingness to take risks that flow in nomadic veins”.

...

By reversing the Civilization/barbarism distinction to value Mongolian nomads over Han civilization, Jiang certainly is offering a fresh perspective. Indeed, a few years before the novel was published, cultural theorist Wang Hui lamented that in the PRC there was “not a single Chinese postcolonial critique of Han centrism from the standpoint of peripheral culture” (China’s New Order, 2003:170). Wolf Totem’s “Rational Exploration” of Civilization and Barbarians.

Now that China’s eastern seaboard is packed to the gills with people, congested roads, and belching factories, it seems that we can all locate our nostalgia in Mongolia and Tibet (protests and their violent quashing aside, tourism in the Dalai Lama’s homeland is on the rise). At least in this regard urbanites the world over can be united. Coming Distractions: Wolf Totem

Several of the locations of the minority films have since become major destinations for minority tourism, which have had a significant impact on life in minority areas. Minority culture tends to be exoticized in other forms of visual culture aside from film, such as advertisements that depict "colorful" minority peoples in stark contrast to the Han majority. These processes of constructing the exotic raise issues concerning "authenticity." More important perhaps than authenticity of representation however, are the ways that individuals perceive the changes undergone by minority peoples in the areas surrounding these cinematic settings. Many foreign and Han tourists look for the most exotic, remote, and traditional ways of life, which are aligned with images of the minority in visual culture. To a large degree, these representations play into a fantasy, one that fortifies the majority-minority barrier in China. "Happy Dancing Natives" Minority Film, Han Nationalism, and Collective Memory

i been to the ethnic minorities theme park, twas fucked up