Religious Revival in the Tibetan Borderlands ─ The Premi of Southwest China

Revival of religious practices of all sorts in China, after decades of systematic government suppression, is a topic of considerable interest to scholars in disciplines ranging from religious studies to anthropology to political science. This book examines contemporary religious practices among the Premi people of the Sichuan-Yunnan-Tibet area, a group of about 60,000 who speak a language belonging to the Qiang branch of Tibeto-Burman. The author's ethnographic research in two cross-border Premi communities and analysis of historical documents reveal multiple advocates and rationales for the revival of both formal Tibetan Buddhism and indigenous practices centered on ritual experts called anji.

Most Premi are poor subsistence farmers and herders in the foothills of the Himalayan Plateau. Although their living standards improved after the economic reforms that began in the 1980's, many still find it hard to participate in the expansive economic growth that has now reached the major cities of southwestern China. At the same time, the old socialist system, with very basic but free social security, has all but collapsed. Revitalizing their anji tradition is a direct result of the ideological relaxation of the post-Mao era, but it is also connected to recent changes in the political, economic, and social reality in rural communities all over China. Wellens argues that the variety in the shape the revitalization process takesuas it affects Premi on the Sichuan side of the border and their counterparts on the Yunnan sideucan only be understood in a local cultural context.

This full-length study of the Premi, the first in a language other than Chinese, makes a valuable contribution to our ethnographic knowledge of Southwest China, as well as to our understanding of contemporary Chinese religious and cultural politics.

Koen Wellens Is a researcher in the China Program of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo.