Nazarbayev's work published in Chinese
    Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev once asked an interesting question, ``Why people are scared out of their wits by terrorism while feel just a little bit afraid when they know the statistics of death in road accidents?'' ``Just like children are usually frightened by mystic darkness frequently described by adults, we are likely to be frightened and disturbed by the unexpected and sudden threats which come from what we called terrorist attacks.'' the president answered.
    Nazarbayev shows his insight and wisdom in his latest book ``The Crucial Decade.'' He is not only a wise man but also a hard-working writer who presents his observation of the world and shares with common people his philosophical thinking and wisdom.
    His book ``The Crucial Decade'' was published in Chinese by China Ethnic Publishing House. Nazarbayev, together with State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, attended the ceremony to celebrate the first publication of the book held in the Kazakhstan Embassy to China in May. ``I would be very happy if the book can help those Chinese who are seeking for the answer,'' Nazarbayev said at the ceremony. (story by Zheng Qian)
    Linguistics workshop opened
    The Third Cross-Straits Workshop on Tibeto-Burman Languages and Linguistics was held in the City University of Hong Kong in April. Organized by Randy J LaPolla, it was the third seminar following the Qiang Language Research Workshop held by Taiwan's Central Research Institute in 1999 and the Workshop of Tibeto-Burman Languages in 2002. The workshop this year focused on the research of phonetics, syntax of Tibeto-Burman languages, linguistics of Chinese-Tibetan, dialects of Qiang language. Eight scholars with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Anthropology Research Institute attended the event.
    Paper states ethnic policy
    The Information Office of China's State Council issued a white paper titled ``Regional Ethnic Autonomy in Tibet'' on May 23. It was the first time for the Chinese Government to issue a white paper to introduce the facts about its ethnic autonomy policy in Tibet. The full text of the document has 12,000 characters, including foreword and five parts about the establishment and development of regional ethnic autonomy in Tibet and the fact that regional ethnic autonomy is the fundamental guarantee for Tibetan people as masters of their own affairs. The white paper points out that Dalai's attack against regional ethnic autonomy in Tibet which was once supported and set up by the 14th Dalai runs counter not only to the reality of present-day Tibet but also to the words he once uttered in all seriousness. As the white paper concludes, ``Regional ethnic autonomy is a basic political system of China.''
    Traffic lights set up for Tibetan antelopes
    It seemed to be an incredible idea to set up temporary traffic lights in Hol Xil to help hundreds of Tibetan antelopes to pass safely the Qinghai-Tibet highway on their way to breeding ground. After receiving a news brief from the State Environment Protection Administration, Sichuan Green River Environment Protection Association decided to put this incredible idea into reality. On May 23, eight volunteers from all over the country went to Hol Xil Nature Reserve to conduct the ``traffic light programme.''
    Before that, some volunteers had found that wildlife tunnels had been built along the newly completed Qinghai-Tibetan Railway. But Tibetan antelopes were hardly able to adapt to these tunnels within such a short period of time, few of them actually passed these tunnels during the migrating season.
    ``If the `traffic light programme' does not work, we are going to promote our idea among local drivers, hoping they will stop their car to give way for the antelopes,'' said the volunteers who will be engaged in the promotion programme and research in Hol Xil.
    Collection featuring tri-river area published
    UNESCO's World Heritage Committee inscribed the tri-river area in southwest China's Yunnan Province on the World Heritage List in Paris in July, 2003. Yunnan Ethnic Publishing House published timely a collection of books featuring the peculiar physiognomy and biological diversity. All the books are written by scholars and writers of Hui, Nanxi, Bai and Tibet nationalities from the tri-river area. The collection include eight books: ``Kissing Beauty -- A Trip to Tri-river'' written by Yang Shiguang, ``Ups and Downs -- A Research Documentary of Tri-river Area'' by Ge Agan, ``The Natural Beauty -- Geology in Tri-river'' by Yang Shiyu, ``Mountains and Rivers -- Exploring the Tri-river'' by Luo Tiancheng, ``The Devine Light -- Tri-river's Cultural Panorama'' by Mu Shihua, ``The Gene Pool -- Biological Diversity in Tri-river Area'' by Fang Zhendong and Li Yiming, ``Colourful Lanping -- South Gate of Tri-river area'' by Yang Xinqi and He Kan, ``A Lasting Romance -- Legends of Tri-river'' by Duan Zhicheng and Shi Xiaoxuan. The collection features the history, geography, biology, natural landscape, geology, folk culture and tourism in the area, and helps readers get a better understanding of the protection of the natural heritage.
    Rescuing the fading Shui writing script
    With an investment of 600,000 yuan, Sandu Shui Autonomous County in Guizhou Province has launched a programme to rescue the written language of the Shui minority which is now in danger of extinction. Experts are going to spend years collecting and sorting out documents covering all aspects of the Shui language.
    Ethnic Shui called themselves ``sui'' and is one of the most ancient ethnic groups in southern China. The history of Shui language dates back to over 3,000 years ago when Jiaguwen inscriptions were taking shape on bones and shells as well as Jinwen markings being developed on ancient bronze objects. Study showed that the Shui script had been spread among the Shui people during the Song Dynasty and preserved a large number of records about Shui's astronomy, calendric system, meteorology and religion, which was a great cultural heritage to China and the world. The Shui language has been listed among the ``Chinese Cultural Relics of Historical and Documents.''
    Since the Shui scripts were spread in handwritten copy, only several hundred characters have remained and few people could translate them. Sandu Shui Autonomous County has embarked on the programme to rescue the vanishing Shui scripts.
    Textbooks for ethnic groups draw attention
    In April, 2004 a workshop about education and textbook reform of China's ethnic minorities drew the attention of experts and scholars of Han, Mongolian, Tibetan, Hui and Uygur nationalities who have been engaged in the research of Chinese ethnic groups' education. Programme officials with the Ford Foundation, United Nations Children's Fund, World Bank and Canadian International Development Agency took part in the workshop. Participants discussed many issues including Chinese preferential policy in ethnic groups education, compilation and publication of textbooks for compulsory education, current conditions, challenges and difficulties in education reform. Besides, experts also shared their successful experience in bilingual education and reform of textbooks.
    Ethnic groups language centre set up in Beijing
    A seminar of Chinese ethnic minority language information technology and language resource centre was held in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Experts made in-depth discussion about the research of Chinese ethnic minority language information technology and development of practical technology in this field. The event collected research papers covering seven languages including Tibetan, Uygur, Mongolian and Korean, and 10-odd technical aspects such as establishment of language resource centre, operating system, printing and publication. On the same day Chinese Ethnic Minority Language Information Technology Research Centre was set up in Beijing, which is an academic department of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
    Intangible heritage under protection
    ``Chinese Ethnic Minority Intangible Heritage Protection'' is compiled by UNESCO's Beijing Office and Chinese Folk Artists Association. The compilation of the book was the fruit of the project ``Preserving China's Ethnic Minority Folk Songs'' which was first launched in December 2000. Researchers had travelled 20,000 kilometres to dig up, collect and sort out traditional folk songs of 10 ethnic minority groups in the country. Based on scholarly research and advanced methods of audio-visual documentation, a team of Chinese musicians and folkloric specialists have interviewed 235 folk singers. To preserve authenticity, the crew recorded the singers up close, using no montage techniques. The fruit of their work is a compilation of 385 recorded folk songs, 42 hours of field recordings, 57 hours of filming, transcriptions of the complete lyrics of all of the songs, a full-colour brochure aimed at young Chinese young readers interested in China's cultural heritage and a 50-minute CD-ROM overview. All the lyrics are printed in Chinese, English and the original languages with transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is helpful for research and cultural exchange. Ethnic folk songs are fading away as a result of modernization and globalization, which, researchers believe, has altered the lifestyles of ethnic minority groups. If efforts are not made to rescue these precious works, more and more folk songs will be phasing out in the world.
    Visual anthropology workshop held in China
    International Conference on Visual Anthropology ``Opening up to the Future'' was held at Yunnan University in March, 2004. About 70 people from Germany, Norway, the United States, Britain, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan have attended the conference and discussed the current situation and future prospects of visual anthropology education, fieldwork, theory of Visual Anthropology, native filming, multi-media and construction of museums. About 30 productions of Visual Anthropology were screened during the conference.

Putting the   World   Together Again
Article By Zhang Haiyang

Reviewing Professor Anthony WalkerÕs Merit and the Millennium: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People,Hindustan Publishing Corporation, New Delhi, 2003.  738 pages of text (with 7 maps and 44 figures) plus 74 p. of over 100 plates, 31 p. of Lahu, Chinese and Tai glossaries, 71 p. of bibliography of cited works in Western and East Asian languages, and 64 p. of index. It is a giant book over 1000 pages.
    The world without Homo sapiens might be more beautiful but meaningless. The world with Homo sapiens seems meaningful but shattered in many ways. Today, it shatteres into segments of nations, ethnos, religions, languages, genders, civilizations and academic disciplines along the more and more ossified lines of demarcation that is difficult to bet across. The bifurcation of modernity vs. tradition, terrorism vs. national security and highland vs. lowland indicates the same disease. The terrorism and it combating represented by Bin Laden and George Bush, and consumerism reinforced by late coming China are the shattering forces. Unless some cultural antidote is identified and employed to reverse this trend, the doom of Homo sapiens in near future is a matter of course.  But, what is the antidote and where can we find them?
    Anthropologists entrust their faith in ethnic minority cultures straddling on the artificial fault lines or between the imagined classifications as the solution.  Thanks to their agencies in the marginalized position, ethnic minority (may we call them indigenous?) peoples and their cultures constitute the antidotes, the bridges and adhesives for putting the shattered world together again.  Those who are not convinced should go immediately to read Professor Anthony R. Walker’s Merit and the Millennium: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People.
    Following the 1960s Oxford Social anthropology tradition stimulated by Evens-Prichard who in his later years strongly inclined toward history and humanities for understanding the system of meaning of the social actors, Professor Walker has admirably rendered the spiritual world and ritual lives of Lahu people in the Southeast Asian mountains ranging “from Lancang to Lanna” between the Han - Thai “high cultures”.
    The major intent of the giant book, as said in the Epilogue (pp734-738), has been twofold: The first is to explain the ideas and practices that he discovered as resident fieldworker in a Lahu village in North Thailand in terms of the wider context of the Lahu-speaking peoples. ‘The second is to demonstrate that the mountain people in this part of the world participate, if only on the peripheries, in the drama of surrounding lowland-based civilizations Ò. (p.738) This giant book that impregnated on 18th June, 1966 but not delivered until 36 years later in 2003 is the Odyssey (or a unique thick description) of 750,000 LahuÕs (including Kucong) spiritual world:
    The first 2 Chapters in Part One as the prologue narrate the location and physical life of a village in north Thailand, and then broaden the focus to all the Lahu people between Han and Tai.
    The next 7 Chapters in Part Two entitled “The diverse strands of Lahu supernatural ideas and ritual practices”represent the main content of the book, ranging from animism and theism in Lahu ontology to calling back souls and dealing with spirits, to garnering merit and practicing sorcery, to Mahayana Buddhism in the Lahu mountains, to temple worship, to Lahu Messiahs and the search for Utopia, to all their embodiments in the cycles of year and of life. The detailed citation of native prayers is the powerful evidence of author’s understanding of the native beliefs that is both diversified and united.
    The rest 2 Chapters in Part Three entitled “The Christian Experience: Cultural Continuities and Discontinuities of the Lahu-Speaking Peoples” in Burma, in Thailand and in Yunnan, China highlight the active interactions of local beliefs with other “universal” religions, and demonstrate the regenerative and connective capacity of the ethnic traditional beliefs and their cultures.
    Besides the valuable objective information and insights of an veteran anthropologist, the book also reflects the evolution of the authorÕs knowledge of the Lahu people, “acquired first through simple observation, then through textual exegesis, and subsequently from a detailed investigation of their historical circumstances in the Chinese homeland”(p.736). Any student in the discipline should benefit from this terse confession.
    This book of 36 years of gestation not only sets up a milestone in the Lahu study, but also reinforces our proposition that ethnic culture is the emancipating force that can release our world from complete shattering. It shows that the key to our predicament is ready made. It needs no invention but recognize that however creative we are, the antidote to our cultural cancer should be sought instead of being invented.  We emphasize this for 2 reasons: The first is that any new cultural invention is like a new virus. Its toxicity is always beyond our knowledge and our immune system. The second is that we have so many traditional and ethnic cultural recourses in stock, to the point that we have been displacing and destroying them in lavish to make way for modernity, due to our ignorant arrogance. A quick and brief reading W. Walker’s book could give us the following enlightenment, all related to the theme of putting the world together again:
     First, anthropology as an amorphous collection of disciplines has to go on to embracing and encompassing other disciplines, especially history and geography to keep our holistic insight.
    Secondly, we need regional and world knowledge as an organic unity to understanding the meaning of a village.Finally, owing to the fact that no recorded human civilization and religion has the history beyond 35,000 years old, it is safe to say that all of them are the descendents, and thus secondary to the deeper rooted ethnic knowledge and beliefs.  Therefore, whenever we feel uncertainty of the world and life, we should reflect ourselves in light of the ethnic cultures at marginal area. Now, in the time of globalization, it was high time for us to do it again.
    After saying all this, I have to admit that I have neither contact nor knowledge with Lahu people so far and this is the first book by Professor Walker that I have ever read. But as a nearly 50-year-old Chinese with some scanty knowledge of the Yi people in Liangshan, I am in a favorable position to connect Professor Walker’s narration of the Lahu supernatural world with my knowledge of the Chinese traditional beliefs, especially those in Southwest China. It confirms our observation that the way of the world has always a unity with diversity and a variety in harmony.  That is the reason why it is sustainable. It is a pity that Professor Walker did not make use of his knowledge and favorable position to probe the connection of Lahu “animo” world with the Yi language-speaking people as a whole for attaining more pervasive convince. It is also a pity that he fails to use the same courage to push the connection of Lahu’s attaining of Mahayana Buddhism with the lost Nanzhao Empire and through it to the predecessor of Tibetan Buddhism, as he has shown in his effort in connecting the origin of Lahu to the ancient Qiang on the deep north of Qinghai-Tibetan Plaeau.