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Fieldwork among the Dong national minorityin Guizhou, China: Practicalities, obstacles

and challengesapv_1420 135..147

Candice CornetDépartement d’Anthropologie, Université Laval, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, 1030, Avenue des Sciences Humaines,

Québec, Canada G1V 0A6.Email: [email protected]

Abstract: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly open to foreigners undertakingsocial science fieldwork; yet obstacles remain. Working with ethnic minorities adds further com-plexities because of the sensitive topics such research may raise. Based on recent fieldwork amongthe Dong in southeast Guizhou, as the first foreign researcher to ask for and gain official permissionto work in the region, this article exposes some of the challenges, both practical and methodological,of conducting research in the PRC. Gaining access to my field site was a long trek through thehierarchic maze of Chinese administration. While reflecting upon this process, I detail my negotia-tions with local authorities. I then examine how I found reliable statistical data, was able to access thevoices of peasants, acted to protect the anonymity of dissident informants, and negotiated workingwith local research assistants once in the field. These aspects, in turn, highlighted the importance ofconsidering positionality in the field. Although each person’s experiences and routes to fieldwork areunique, there are recurrent issues that shape the research process in the PRC. I reflect upon a numberof these here, in the hope that this can smooth the way for future researchers.

Keywords: fieldwork, national minorities (Dong), People’s Republic of China, positionality

Introduction

Social science fieldwork is shaped by opportu-nities, constraints and chance. Clearly, as notedby De Neve and Unnithan-Kumar (2006: 5),‘anthropological fieldwork has never been com-pletely determined by the researcher’. Relation-ships in the field are established according toone’s positionality, including one’s gender, age,ethnicity, social status, education, sexual orien-tation, language ability and social networks; allthese, in turn, determine accessibility to differ-ent informants and data sources (see Sultana,2007). In other words, researchers are part oftheir fieldwork. Because ‘the practice of field-work and the production of knowledge aremutually constitutive in any given fieldworkcontext’ (Reid-Henry, 2003: 185), it is importantto situate the researcher within his or herprocess of fieldwork. Reflecting upon the con-stitutive aspects of fieldwork both elucidates the

organisation of the society one is examining andreveals the limits of one’s fieldwork accordingto varying degrees of integration in the field.

There are important particularities in thePeople’s Republic of China (PRC) that impacton fieldwork and knowledge production. As acountry only recently open to foreign socialscience researchers, obtaining permission to doextensive fieldwork in the PRC is characterisedby a long trek through the hierarchic maze ofChinese administration which immerses thenovice into the complexity of Chinese society.This ‘trek’ reveals structures of power; it bringsforth traditions attached to establishing contactsand building relations; it defines sensitive issueslinked to national minorities and local histories;and it informs the researcher of state expecta-tions regarding the social sciences. Meanwhile,the researcher hires local research assistantswho may both assist and confine the research.What is more, once the researcher is in the field,

Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 51, No. 2, August 2010ISSN 1360-7456, pp135–147

© 2010 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2010 Victoria University of Wellington

doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8373.2010.01420.x

statistical data are frequently inaccessibleor unreliable (Curran and Cook, 1993: 71),access to the voices of villagers and especiallywomen is restricted, and informants who dis-close dissident information must be carefullyprotected.

This article is intended to contribute toa better understanding of the complexitiesinvolved in conducting fieldwork amongnational minorities in the PRC. Based on PhDfieldwork in the village1 of Zhaoxing, Guizhou,which consisted of regular visits between2000 and 2009 as well as long-term fieldworkbetween 2006 and 2007, this article presentsthe obstacles, practicalities and strategies thataccompanied my research among the Dongnational minority in southwest China. I hopethat these insights will be valuable for research-ers working with ethnic minorities withinChina and elsewhere in the Southeast Asianmassif, who may experience similar challengesand constraints. After briefly contextualisingmy research project, I explore the local normsof undertaking ethnology, explaining how theseinfluenced both the procedures I needed tofollow to reach the field and the actual field-work I was able to undertake. Then I discuss theestablishment of relationships and the adminis-trative hurdles to be overcome to obtain officialfieldwork permission. The suspicions arisingfrom the state’s perception of foreign social sci-entists and the awkward intermediary positionoccupied by research assistants are discussed.Finally, I explore the challenges and obstaclesfaced when one actually reaches the field;negotiating with local authorities, establishingrapport with villagers, and protecting dissidentinformants. While presenting the challenges ofdoing fieldwork in the PRC, I also hope to infusethis article with the tremendous pleasure ofundertaking fieldwork in this grandiose country.As Pieke (2000: 131) noted:

doing fieldwork in China has a taste of forbid-den fruit; despite the drudgery of endless nego-tiations and gatekeeping rituals (banquets!),fieldworkers in China relive at least some ofthe excitement of the small child sneakingup to the apple-stand in the neighbourhoodgreengrocer’s.

Contrary to the child who conceals such esca-pades, this article aims to shed light on some of

the intricacies involved in doing fieldwork inthe PRC.

My research and field site: Tourismdevelopment in the Dong village of Zhaoxing

The village and its Dong population

Zhaoxing, my fieldwork site, is a picturesquevillage located in the Qiangdongnan prefec-ture in the Miao-Dong Autonomous Regionof southeast Guizhou, southern China (seeFigure 1, number 1, in Turner’s introduction tothis issue). The village has three main character-istics: it is a rural township seat; it is inhabitedby the Dong national minority; and it is an areain which tourism is being extensively developedby provincial, county and local governmentrepresentatives in cooperation with a privatecompany. This rapidly changing context,observed over the past 10 years, provides atimely opportunity for examining the processesof tourism development and its multiple impli-cations for villagers of a remote national minor-ity region.

Zhaoxing is administratively a township seat(rural township, xiang: ) with two parallel dis-tinct branches of local government. One branchis composed of a township leader ( xiang-zhang) and vice leaders ( cunzhang)who are elected. The other branch is composedof party representatives (with a party leader,

shuji and vice leaders, zhishu) whoare appointed and who hold greater power andauthority than the township and vice leaders.My research focused on ‘Zhaoxing proper’,composed of some 800 households and a popu-lation of over 4000 people divided into threeadministrative villages (political division, xing-zheng cun: ); Upper Zhaoxing, MiddleZhaoxing and Zhaoxing. Each village has avice leader cunzhang and a zhishu. Traditionalsocial organisation overlaps with the threeadministrative villages, dividing the wholeof Zhaoxing into five hamlets or ‘drum towergroups’, each represented by elders (zhailao

).2

The Dong minority is composed primarily ofsubsistence farmers practising wet-rice cultiva-tion (Geary et al., 2003), which applies to themajority of the population in Zhaoxing. Here,each family has a plot of land for rice cultivation

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and a plot for vegetables and spices. The onlyexceptions are officials drawn from other vil-lages whose land is located in their homevillage, families of primary and high schoolteachers, and newly arrived immigrants (barand hotel owners with or without land in theirhometowns). Prior to 1998, subsistence farm-ing was combined with logging, while morerecently, wages from migration to factoriesand from tourism have become increasinglyimportant.

The Dong are one of the 56 officially recog-nised nationalities ( minzu) in the PCR,comprising approximately three million indi-viduals living in Guizhou, Guangxi and Hunanprovinces. The Dong refer to themselves as theKam (pronounced ‘gum’) and speak the Kamlanguage which is a branch of Kam-Shui, itselfpart of the Kam-Tai family (Geary et al., 2003:30). Their villages feature drum towers andwind-and-rain bridges which are promoted forcultural tourism. Drum towers, each built in thename of an extended family, are taller than thesurrounding village houses and are ornatelydecorated with paintings and carvings. Theyprovide a meeting place in the village wherelocal people gather to talk, gossip, sing, cel-ebrate, listen to stories or entertain guests.Wind-and-rain bridges are also richly deco-rated. The bridges are covered with layered,temple-style tiled roofs, and along the bridges,there are often wooden benches on whichlocals meet to converse. In addition, the Dongare well known throughout China for their spe-cific singing culture, also promoted for tourism(Geary et al., 2003).

Until recently, the region in which Zhaoxingis located was isolated and difficult to access.Guizhou is the second poorest province ofChina, and infrastructures such as roads, rail-ways and airports were limited. On my first visitin 2000 (and on subsequent visits until 2006), ittook at least two days to reach Zhaoxing by busfrom Guiyang, the major provincial town. By2006, an airport opened in the nearby countytown of Liping and the road between the townand the village was paved. Via airplane and bus,it now takes only about five hours to reachZhaoxing from Guiyang. Accessibility will con-tinue to increase with the current constructionof a railway and a highway, both of which passclose to the village.

Tourism development in Zhaoxing

In accordance with the Chinese state’s desire tomodernise and develop remote regions of thecountry, over the past 10 years the provincialgovernment of Guizhou has enthusiasticallyturned to tourism as a means of economicdevelopment (Oakes, 2000; Tan et al., 2001).Specific villages throughout Guizhou have beendesignated to represent particular minoritiesand have been given funds by the NationalTourism Administration (NTA) to developtourism and serve as examples for other villagesof the province (Oakes, 1998). Zhaoxing isone such village: located in a picturesque valleysurrounded by three mountains rising to 1000metres, and featuring five drum towers and fivewind and rain bridges, it is the largest Dongvillage in China.

In the past 10 years, Zhaoxing has beenundergoing significant change. This hasincluded numerous tensions and paradoxes,including the revival of so-called ‘traditions’;clashes over different understandings of mo-dernity; unequal economic development; theimposition of state defined ethnicity; shifts inrelations of power and consequent resistance;increased urbanisation; and a transition from anagricultural economy to one based primarily ona service industry, tourism. All are physicallyaffecting the village and its surroundings, andare impacting upon villagers’ own positionali-ties in the Chinese reality. Assessing how Dongvillagers of Zhaoxing perceive and indigenisethe economic transition led by China’s processof modernisation, in particular tourism sincethe 1990s, is at the heart of my research. Theremainder of this article focuses on the processof conducting this research.

Procedures to reach the field

Establishing relationships: Finding a researchcentre and a host university

Gaining access to the field, let alone actuallyinterviewing villagers and collecting data was,for me, a long road filled with detours. In China,an official research permit is necessary in orderto undertake long-term fieldwork and especiallyto be allowed to conduct tape-recorded inter-views with government representatives. In

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addition to arduous negotiations with Chineseauthorities, this requires being affiliated with auniversity or a research centre (see Pieke, 2000:133; Heimer and Thøgersen, 2006; Thunø,2006: 249, among others). Because of thedifficulties foreign researchers experience ingaining the necessary permissions, long-termextensive research in one field site is still rela-tively uncommon in China (Heimer, 2006).

A critical part of this initial research processis building and maintaining social networksand chains of contact. In summer 2004, Iundertook a three month pre-fieldwork visit toGuizhou province with the goals of findinga research centre with which to be affiliatedand establishing contacts with local scholarswho shared an interest in my topic. This chainof contact started at Université de Montréal(Canada) with my Chinese language professorand his connections with the linguisticsdepartment at Nankai University in Tianjin( ), near Beijing. In Tianjin, I met withtwo professors who redirected me to GuizhouUniversity. I remember walking around thecampus there asking everyone I could, whereI could find ‘the Dong specialist ProfessorShilin’. Eventually, I was pointed in the directionof the Guizhou University Southwest Mino-rity Language and Culture Research Insti-tute ( ).There, I met Western, Han Chinese, andnational minority scholars whose research con-cerned national minorities in Guizhou, many ofwhom were focusing specifically on the Dong.Albeit, though I met and conversed with manyDong specialists, it was only towards the end ofmy fieldwork that I finally met Professor Shilin.As with other foreign researchers working inChina (and elsewhere, see Reid-Henry, 2003),establishing contacts followed a winding routewhich often entailed a mix of helpful initialcontacts and fortuitous meetings.

Among the people I met through the researchcentre were Dr Geary and Professors Wang andLong, who considerably increased my histori-cal, cultural, practical and linguistic knowledgeabout the Dong. Our conversations also shedlight on their own positionalities and how theseinfluenced their views on the Dong nationalminority. Geary, who is Irish and fluent in theKam language, is a linguist aiming to bringbilingual education to Dong children. In this

capacity, he is involved in building schools,training teachers and creating textbooks in theKam language. Furthermore, he collaborated inthe publication of the first description of Dongculture in English (Geary et al., 2003). Wang,director of the research centre, is a Han Chineseanthropologist. He helped me to unveil anddecipher official state discourse and also pro-vided useful comparisons from his fieldworkwith the Miao in Xijiang, nearby. Long is an‘elite member’ (see Litzinger, 2000) of the Dongnational minority working at the Guizhou Uni-versity for Nationalities who contributes toestablishing government policies for the ‘devel-opment’ of his ethnic group. Many of ProfessorLong’s students obtain government positionsupon graduation and his contacts greatly facili-tated my navigation of the official proceduresto do fieldwork. Acting as gatekeepers for myresearch (see Hay, 2000; Heller et al., 2010),these three scholars had important connectionsthat played a determining role in smoothing ordelaying (as I later discovered) proceduresrelated to my fieldwork.

During my pre-fieldwork visit, I accompaniedeach of these three scholars to their respectivefield sites. These visits allowed me to witnesssome of the challenges Dong minorities (andMiao minorities) face as the state attempts tomodernise them. Furthermore, exchanges withthese scholars illuminated the particularitiesof my case study as well as the similaritiesthat different minority people in the provinceshared. These relationships also presented mewith the many different perceptions peoplehave of minorities (see Blum, 2001), in additionto the position that scholars hold in Chinesesociety, which I explore next.

Ethnology in China: Making one’sresearch ‘applicable’

In order to better understand how social scienceresearchers, be they foreign, Han Chinese ornational minority, are perceived and expectedto behave, a brief note on ethnology in China isnecessary. The social sciences in China areseen as serving one purpose: the formulation ofsocial policies. For this purpose, populationsare investigated/researched on a regular basis.Indeed, every 10 years, a large-scale nation-wide census is published including data on edu-

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cation, income, urbanisation, ethnic affiliation,fertility, and so on. The collected data are thenused to legitimise the application of politicallydriven policies. As a result, the researcher facesat least two challenges: first, the authoritieswho seek the applicability and usefulness ofthe research; and second, an over-investigatedpopulation which has become suspicious ofthe claimed benefits of such investigations (seeGros, this issue).

The social sciences in China are seen as anapplied field, and therefore academic research-ers are often placed in an awkward situation.Informants tend to quickly associate a field-worker’s activities with those of the govern-ment, expecting changes, either material or inthe form of new social policies that might affectthem. They thus enter the research process witha mixture of reservations and expectations. AsHansen (2006: 82) observes:

Over the years, many Chinese peasants havediscovered that investigations into their house-hold have a direct economic consequence forthem: loss of illegally cultivated land, childrensent to school, birth control, granting of loans,to mention some common examples. Justifiedor not, due to the state’s long established tra-dition of intruding into the lowest levels ofsociety, the fieldworker (Chinese or foreign) isvested with a special authority and power, andplaced in a recognizable role as a researcher orinvestigator. She is walking in the footsteps ofthe Communist Party.

Meanwhile, in attempting to obtain permissionto undertake research, the researcher sees his orher project assessed by the provincial govern-ment according to its possible contribution tothe national modernising project. Researchpermits must be approved by state authorities,which further associates the researcher withhigh-level government goals in the eyes of thepopulation studied. This population includesnot only villagers, but also local officials sub-jected to provincial policies.

I found that working on the topic of tourismdevelopment among a national minority groupmade it easy for higher level officials to seepotential and direct links with the modernisingproject of the nation. However, this also implied– both to those officials and to my researchsubjects – that I may provide the government

with ideas and data from my research on howto develop tourism. I often felt placed in anawkward situation, balancing the expectationsof the provincial and the county governmentsthat I contribute to their goals of economicdevelopment, while collecting often conflictingperspectives from villagers. For example, whenmy official fieldwork was complete I was sum-moned by the county authorities to participatein a televised interview discussing the recentdevelopment of tourism in the region. Mychallenge was not only to answer in MandarinChinese while being filmed, but moreover,to answer diplomatically. In other words, Iattempted to voice villagers’ concerns regard-ing top-down, imposed tourism developmentwithout seeming to criticise county and provin-cial tourism development procedures.

Obtaining the official research permit from theChinese authorities

The relationships and social networks I had builtin 2004 in Guizhou and had worked to maintainsince then, both helped and created obstaclesfor my negotiations to obtain permission toundertake long-term fieldwork in Zhao-xing.Indeed, when I returned in 2006, it took almostthree months of arduous negotiations to obtainan official research permit. Three obstacles pro-longed the process. First, I was the first foreignerto undertake official research in this region.Second, in order to obtain such a permit, I had tobe registered at a local university, and hence,became the first foreign doctorate studentto register at Guizhou University. Finally, theresearch centre I wanted to be affiliated with –the Guizhou University Southwest MinorityLanguage and Culture Research Institute notedearlier – turned out to be largely funded by afaith-based organisation, the Summer Institute ofLinguistics (SIL International). This organisationof linguists focuses primarily on studying, docu-menting and assisting lesser-known languages,yet their link to Wycliffe International3 speci-fically, and to Christianity in general, causedsuspicion on the part of Chinese authorities.

The process and required documentation toregister as a doctoral student at Guizhou Univer-sity and to apply for a research permit were notclearly established, and authorities at differentlevels had to agree on a set of procedures. As a



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result, once I had submitted the initial requireddocumentation to the Foreign Affairs Office ofGuizhou University (in charge of obtaining theresearch permit for me), other required docu-ments were subsequently added to the list,lengthening the procedure and inevitably delay-ing my fieldwork. Ultimately, the list of requireddocuments included: proof of a medical exami-nation; a range of photographs of specific sizes;a resident permit; a copy of my diplomas (trans-lated from Latin); a copy of my resume; a detailedresearch proposal in Chinese; a photocopy ofmy scholarship papers; proof of registration, aphotocopy of the ethics approval from my homeinstitution, and a letter from the director ofthe Southwest Minority Language and CultureResearch Institute which stated clearly theirresponsibility in supervising my research duringthe entirety of my fieldwork. Because of thereligious character of SIL, the provincial authori-ties asked me to add a written letter attestingto my non-affiliation with this organisation andwith religious movements in general.

Two months after all the documents hadbeen submitted I was told my permit was ready.However, when I visited the Foreign AffairsOffice to collect it, the local official still had notreceived it from the issuing provincial authori-ties. At that stage, I slowly became this ForeignAffairs Office official’s ‘worst nightmare’ (herown words), frequently phoning her or sendingtext messages to find out how my applicationwas progressing and if she had any suggestionsas to how to speed up the process. I am notsure this actually changed anything, but I amconvinced that this official shared my joywhen, three weeks later, I finally obtained myresearcher’s identification card. The deviationsand delays I encountered in attempting toobtain permission to do fieldwork forced me toreadjust my research schedule. I had certainlylearnt to be more flexible, a necessary qualityfor any fieldworker, while I had also beeninitiated into the administrative hierarchy ofthe government research approval bureaucracy(see Thunø, 2006: 249–250).

Working with local research assistants andcoping with their suspicions

While fieldwork in general requires flexibilityand adaptability, this applies also to working

with research assistants. The fieldworker is chal-lenged to consider and make the best of his orher assistants’ skills and positionalities in orderto meet research goals. As is often the casewhen doing long-term fieldwork, it is oftennecessary to work with multiple assistants. Eachassistant has his or her own unique backgroundand each brings different opportunities and con-straints to the field. The assistant’s gender, eth-nicity, social status, economic situation andpersonality all influence the establishment ofthe social encounters through which data arecollected. How research assistants translateand reflect upon informants’ statements, and theassistants’ involvement in the research processitself, have direct impacts on the researcher’sperspective and contribute to shaping theresearch (see De Neve and Unnithan-Kumar,2006: 87; Turner, this issue). In the PRC,whether it is required by the unit one is affiliatedwith or for reasons related to language profi-ciency, working with research assistant(s) isalmost inevitable (Hansen, 2006; Thøgersen,2006).

Although I had one main research assistant,Chloe,4 three other young women acted asassistants at different times during my fieldwork.As a woman, I consciously favoured femaleassistants. First, it enabled sharing the sameroom for accommodation, thereby reducing thecosts of fieldwork and permitted late night workdiscussions. Second, I was more comfortableworking with a woman in order to avoid anycultural misunderstandings about seduction/attraction and to avoid confusion about thenature of our relationship by informants (seeKulick and Willson, 1995).

Initially, during my pre-fieldwork in thesummer 2004, the research centre introducedme to Xiao Lu,5 a Dong native of Zhaoxing. Sheaccompanied me to her hometown and, as wequickly became friends, she provided me withan important opportunity for participant obser-vation and contributed to my integration in thevillage. Thanks to Xiao Lu and her family, Iexperienced fishing in rice paddies, harvestingand planting rice, making sticky rice cakes, vis-iting friends in the village and in neighbouringcommunities, and tending her family’s storeduring market days. In this case, spending timeas a friend with Xiao Lu prior to undertakingofficial fieldwork meant that I was afforded

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many informal interactions that contributed tosetting the stage for subsequent more formalinterviews (see Reid-Henry, 2003: 192).

Xiao Lu later became an important facilitatorof my official fieldwork. When I returned in2006, she had graduated from university with adegree in minority studies (she had been astudent of Professor Long) and had been granteda lower-level position in the Zhaoxing localgovernment. At the beginning of my officialfieldwork, she helped me organise interviewswith local officials and clarified information Igathered. I would turn to her with questionsregarding Dong culture, Kam language, villageorganisation, or practical information on agri-culture, land distribution and the like. However,because of our respective positions in thevillage and as my work progressed, I involvedand informed her less directly in the specifics ofmy research in order to protect both her and myinformants from inquisitive higher officials.

During my pre-fieldwork trip in 2004, I hadalso met Chloe, who became my researchassistant during my long-term official fieldwork.When I returned to Zhaoxing in 2006, Chloewas a master’s student, studying philosophy.She is a Bai national minority, from a smallagricultural village in the mountains of north-west Guizhou. Compared with the Dong, theBai are significantly more sinicised (Blum,2001: 106–173), and Chloe admitted that shecould not speak the Bai language, nor could shethink of any particular characteristics that dif-ferentiated herself and her family from HanChinese.

Chloe was an excellent research assistant.She had grown up in a large, poor family andwas accustomed to harsh living conditions. As aresult, she adapted quickly to life in the field.She was knowledgeable on basic agricultureand could explain to me (a Belgian-Canadiansuburbanite) the seasonal cropping cycles thatorganised village life. Although not Dong, shemade a point of introducing herself as Bai toinformants in order to facilitate more egalitariansocial interactions.6 Her clear memory fornames and the stories told by intervieweesallowed her to gain their trust and respect.However, her background, ethnicity andemployment status combined with her lack offieldwork experience, led her to be very cau-tious initially in her interactions with me.

Suspicion towards foreign researchers isto be expected in the PRC (see Heimer andThøgersen, 2006; Curran and Cook, 1993; Yeh,2006). Indeed, in China, there is a ‘cultureof fear’ and I was often reminded that I wasworking and living in a non-democratic country(see Yang, 1994). In addition to the obstacleswhile obtaining a research permit, ‘this politicsof fear mean not only that access to interviewsand data is far from ideal, but also that all inter-actions and relationships are shaped to someextent by wariness of political trouble’ (Yeh,2006: 97). I was to experience this firsthandduring my fieldwork in Guizhou.

One night, while walking back from theresearch centre in the provincial capital withChloe, she grabbed my arm and whispered:‘someone is watching you!’ I quickly lookedaround the darkened back street before realisingthat her concerns lay elsewhere. She had beenconvened by a provincial official and questionedabout who I was, what I was doing, and whattype of questions I was asking. The official hadinstructed her not to give me access to internaldocuments and statistics, making it clear thatshe was responsible for any of my wrong doings.She further told me of a Chinese scholar whohad been sentenced to jail after collaboratingwith foreign scholars and providing them withunofficial, internal statistics (see Rofel, 1993).Such tactics confirmed to me, asYeh (2006: 104)also notes, that ‘the pressure of “responsibility”is a disciplinary technique of the state’.

Chloe continued to be apprehensive through-out our time in the field and was highly suspi-cious when I asked questions regarding theorganisation of the government or whether ornot she was a party member. There were, I soonrealised, sensitive topics that needed to be post-poned until I had earned her trust to a greaterdegree (see Michaud this issue). It took all myskills of persuasion, a great amount of patience,and numerous visits to her hometown to con-vince her that I was neither a Canadian nor aBelgian spy, but was rather becoming a friend.Even so, it was only towards the end of my stayin China that she opened up and became morecritical of her situation and that of her country.

Chloe’s fear and suspicion shaped how shetranslated interviews and how she accountedfor situations that we witnessed in the village.Yet I saw clear changes in her attitude as our



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relationship evolved over the long course of myfieldwork. By 2009, we could discuss the situ-ation of the village – including how locals werecovertly resisting certain ‘development’ initia-tives – in what I felt to be a more constructiveway, since Chloe had sharpened her critical lenstowards the role of different actors (be it gov-ernment, tourism companies or villagers). Insum, such long-term research cooperationallows moving beyond initial suspicion, but atthe same time demands that the researcher iscareful to protect not only his or her informants,but also his or her research assistants. As Chloewanted me to realise, ‘one cannot simplypublish findings because it could mean the endof another academic career or the punish-ment of respondents’ (Curran and Cook, 1993:79–80).

On two occasions, Chloe was unable toaccompany me to the field. During this time,the research centre found two master’s studentsin anthropology who came together to replaceher. They were quite different from Chloe: bothhad grown up in Guiyang city, both had fathersholding official positions in the provincial gov-ernment and both were Han Chinese. Theirbackground, the social status of their family, andtheir ethnicity clearly marked them as outsidersin the village. Their positionality was revealedthrough actions such as wiping their seat beforethey sat down to interview or eat, wearing cityclothes and shoes, carrying a cell phone and anMP3 player, as well as a general condescendingattitude towards village informants. Reflectingon how to make the best of this situation, I soonrealised they were much more suited to inter-viewing high-level Han officials (interviews thatmade Chloe, a non-Han Chinese, nervous) andI readjusted my interview schedule accordingly.

Working with different research assistantsforced me to consider how different positionali-ties influence the type of data that is collected,including reflecting on my own positionality,which I address below. All told, I consider thathaving varying points of entry to the fieldenriched my research and allowed me to reflecton contrasting attitudes and viewpoints relatedto status and ethnicity. My research assistantseach represented a segment of the population ofGuizhou and provided me with a sample ofdifferent visions and understandings of Chinesesociety.

Collecting data having reached the field

When I finally reached the field, permit in handand accompanied by an officially sanctionedresearch assistant, I faced yet another set ofobstacles and dilemmas. I had to find strategiesto collect the data I wanted despite constraintsimposed by my own positionality and that of myassistant, not to mention those of local officialsand villagers.

Interviewing and negotiating withlocal authorities

Before I left for the village, scholars from theresearch centre at Guizhou University made auseful suggestion: they recommended that outof respect for local authorities, I start my inter-views with the highest local officials. Sincemy research permit was granted by provincialauthorities and approved by county officials,this status allowed me to obtain audiences withthe local township leader, the local party leader,and their assistants. At the same time, this alsoimplied that my presence was, to some extent,imposed on them by higher level authorities.

Yet, beginning my fieldwork by interviewingofficials at different hierarchical levels was goodadvice for a number of reasons. It allowed me tointroduce myself and present my project andresearch goals to the local authorities, while atthe same time showing respect for the village’shierarchical structure. It also made me aware ofthe official discourse towards tourism develop-ment, economic growth, and Dong culture andpreservation, at the outset of my research, per-mitting me to recognise subsequent deviationsfrom it. As I found out much later, initial datacollected in the field, whether from officials orpeasants, is generally official discourse. Follow-ing Yang (1994), by ‘official discourse’ I do notmean that it came from officials, but rather, Ifound a unifying public discourse reflected inthe style of language being used by all my initialinformants, projecting the hegemonic authorityand politics.

Although an official permit opens the gates todata held by officials and the local elites (in thiscase, decision makers in the development oftourism, including private promoters), it canalso be problematic. By the time I began inter-viewing villagers involved in tourism, I knew all

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the high level officials of the village. This had animpact on my interviews. Officials, knowing Iwould later interview villagers, concealed infor-mation they did not want passed on to villagers,such as tourism development policies regardingallocation of land for hotel construction, or newrequirements for entrance tickets for tourists vis-iting the village. Moreover, working down thehierarchical ladder, official subordinate workersI interviewed had often been briefed on myresearch topic and questions by their superiorahead of time. Indeed, I recall an interview withthe vice leader of the township in which hetalked for half an hour on his vision of thedevelopment of tourism in the village before Icould even pose a question.

Furthermore, my identity as a foreignresearcher with links to provincial and countyofficials gave me a position in the village thatwas sometimes manipulated by local authoritiesduring my fieldwork. I was invited to banquetswhen higher-level officials visited the village.I was also asked to participate in the school’scertificate ceremony and, as I mentionedearlier, in a televised interview in the countytown on tourism development. My associationwith relatively powerful officials permittedparticipant observations that contributed tomy understanding of village dynamics andshed light on the positions of power of differentactors in and out of the village. However, italso brought ethical dilemmas and restricted myaccess to certain villagers.

Protecting dissident informants

In 2003, a tourism company from Guiyangsigned a 50-year contract with local andcounty governments acquiring a monopolyon tourism development in Zhaoxing and itssurroundings. Without going into the specificsof this situation,7 it quickly became clear tome that villagers who had briefly but substan-tially benefited from more informal tourismarrangements prior to 2003 were now thosethe most likely to lose out. They would provideme with the most critical – albeit, not neces-sarily balanced – commentaries on tourismdevelopment.

Despite my concerns that my position as aforeign social scientist associated with provin-cial and county authorities and perceived to

be reporting on the village situation wouldhinder gaining information and views fromlocal villagers, it actually led some villagers toparticipate in my research as a way to get ‘theirvoices heard’. Through them I acquired ‘officialdocuments’, including a copy of the contractbetween the tourism company and the govern-ment and two petition letters villagers had sent(one to the provincial government and one tothe national government in Beijing) against thenew, official tourism scheme. I was told thatthese documents were considered ‘internal’ andI was clearly not supposed to have access tothem (see Thøgersen, 2006: 189–205). Readingand discussing these with informants allowedme to understand the reasons for local protests,the resistance expressed in the petition letters,and also the refusal of a growing number ofvillagers to work for the tourism company.

In my written research, as well as in discus-sions with officials, I had to balance my desire(and some villagers’ desire) to voice local con-cerns, supported with evidence of their resis-tance, with the need to protect informants’anonymity. Moreover, I had to consider andacknowledge a wide spectrum of divergentviews villagers had on tourism developmentand avoid promoting certain viewpoints overothers. Additionally, as a researcher, although Icould attempt to articulate the multiple perspec-tives of the Dong villagers on county televisionand through future publications, I had to becautious to ensure that the villagers knew thelimits of my power and involvement in chang-ing their situation or redressing injustices (seeSvensson, 2006). As in any fieldwork, I had tocarefully reflect upon the implications of mypresence in the village and local expectations ofmy research.

Accessing statistical data

A considerable challenge while researching inthe PRC is accessing and obtaining reliable sta-tistical information. Local governments withinChina have a history of manipulating local sta-tistics to hide the number of births (because ofthe one-child policy); to downplay the grainharvest (in order to be eligible for state financialsupport or avoid paying taxes); to demonstratethe success (however unsure) of new policies;and so on. As a result, official documents,



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including basic statistics, are difficult to obtainand may conceal official goals of which we arenot aware (Thøgersen, 2006: 198–199; see alsoHeimer and Thøgersen, 2006: 16). Statisticaldata, hence, need to be cross-checked when-ever possible. For example, when I asked offi-cials about the social characteristics of a village(demographic data such as educational level,household income, number of children, age ofmarriage, and so on), I was always told every-thing was ‘typical and normal’. I was repeatedlytold that the village social situation was ‘thesame as in any other minority village of China’,and I would be provided with figures thatmatched the nationwide state-issued averages.In order to gain a clear understanding of theparticular situation of Zhaoxing, I resolved toask the same statistical questions to officials incharge of different parts of the village (cun-zhang) and to cross check this with local elders.Unfortunately, even these statistics remainedvague averages. I ended up adding additionaldemographic questions to my interviews inorder to get a more accurate picture of thevillage situation; but what proved difficult at thispoint was being able to interview a representa-tive sample of villagers.

Accessing the voices of villagers

My status as a foreigner staying in the villagegave me the opportunity to speak with hotelowners, bartenders, souvenir shop owners andrestaurant owners. However, I found it difficultto reach the population that was not involveddirectly in tourism, particularly householdsstill relying entirely on agriculture. Further-more, compared with state officials and thoseinvolved in the tourism industry, many villag-ers, especially the elderly and women, prima-rily spoke their minority language (Kam) andhad a relatively poor level of MandarinChinese. I, therefore, had to find strategies toovercome these obstacles using my networks,relying on my research assistants, and takingadvantage of my own position and gender. Inorder to access peasant families, I first askedXiao Lu to assist me, since she spoke Kam andcame from a peasant family. She introducedme to some of her friends and acquaintances,sometimes also acting as an interpreter. I alsorelied on Chloe’s capacity to connect with

peasant families, often initiating conversationswith farmers who were tending their fields.Nevertheless, I still had difficulty interviewingvillage women.

Accessing women’s voices

Being a Western woman researcher in Chinacan often be very frustrating. Like LouisaSchein, who also completed fieldwork inGuizhou, I was ‘a white western woman whohad undertaken to live in a part of China noto-rious for being rugged and remote with peopleknown for their “backwardness” ’ (Schein,2000: 26). I was also young (early thirties) anda student, yet this was counterbalanced by acertain social status because of my ‘official’point of entry. Nevertheless, being a womanclearly restricted my ability to access men,reducing my ability to gain a more intimateview of their perspectives since my interactionswith the majority of men in the village was, bynecessity, very formal. Meanwhile, women inthe village tended to keep their distance. WhenI attempted to interview women (even thoseXiao Lu introduced me to), they would oftencall their husband to answer for them, claimingthey ‘did not know much about anything’ andthat their Mandarin was not good enough for aconversation with this outsider.

Not being fluent in the minority languagespoken in Zhaoxing was certainly an importantconstraint for my research since villagers hadto express themselves in their second language,

Figure 1. The author’s daughter getting to know locals inthe field

Source: Candice Cornet, April 2007.

C. Cornet


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Mandarin, creating problems in translation aswell as the official/authoritative positiona-lity associated with speaking the majority lan-guage in a minority situation (see Gros, thisissue). I realised about halfway through myfieldwork that my interviews to date had beenmainly with higher status men (officials, guest-house owners, elders, and souvenir shop,restaurant and bar owners) and a few highstatus women (restaurant owners and govern-ment officials). My inability to speak Kam, mystatus as a researcher and my ‘official contacts’had thus far limited my access to women’sperspectives.

This issue was resolved both unconsciouslyand unexpectedly. At the time of my fieldwork,my daughter was eight months old and wasstaying with my husband who was working inShanghai. I was travelling frequently betweenmy field site and what was then ‘home’. Twiceduring fieldwork, my husband had to travelabroad for work and I brought my daughter withme to the field (see Fig. 1). Although there werean increasing number of foreign tourists visitingthe village, the villagers had never seen sucha small foreigner. Through this experience, Ilearned that ‘children can have a beneficialimpact on the research process, particularly interms of the endeavour to achieve more egali-tarian relationships with our participants . . . ac-companied ethnographers are seen as lessanomalous’ (Cupples and Kindon, 2003: 214).After introducing my daughter to villagers, myrelationship with them changed dramatically.My ‘new’ identity in the eyes of locals hadsuddenly repositioned me in an unanticipatedway (Swanson, 2008).

By bringing my baby daughter to the field, Ihad altered my positionality from that of ascholar linked with the authorities to that of amother far from home, caring for her child.Having my daughter with me certainly delayedmy fieldwork and, as also noted by Starrs et al.(2001: 75), ‘with family along, fieldwork is nolonger just about the researcher and a cluster ofcherished contacts – documents and archives,peoples and places, organisations and outlooks.Suddenly logistics become far more complex’.Yet, this decision also facilitated considerablecontact with village women.

Many women were curious to meet mydaughter with her blond hair and blue eyes.

These encounters generated numerous informalconversations and chances to interact, and sud-denly we had a number of common affinitiesand shared a ‘common ground’ (Sultana, 2007:378). Even though the level of spoken Mandarindiffered among the women visiting (generallyaccording to age), there was always someonepresent to facilitate conversation by translatingfrom Dong if necessary, most often a younglocal woman or Xiao Lu.

In addition, by showing my vulnerability as amother, and by temporarily shifting my focusfrom fieldwork to my child, I engaged in inter-actions that necessitated a great amount oftrust on my part (not just, as is often the casein research, on the research participant’s side).I had to find someone to look after my childwhile I was conducting interviews and thiscertainly was quite a stressful experience.However, looking back, there is I believe nogreater sign of respect towards ‘the Other’ thanaccepting that his/her way of life and way ofraising children – including food, drink, sleep,play, hygiene and so on – be applied to one’sown child, even if only temporarily.

This change in my positionality was a turningpoint in my research, yet it would be arrogantand unrealistic to assert that through my child’spresence I had become an ‘insider’. I was, andalways will be, a foreigner, both educated andricher than locals, and thus comparable to theforeign tourists visiting the village. Neverthe-less, this experience deepened my understand-ing of local reality since my daughter facilitatedgreater rapport and people tended to recogniseme as quite different from ‘those tourists’(see Cupples and Kindon, 2003). I was given theopportunity to learn about women’s realitiesand their perspectives on the changes theirvillage was facing. Interestingly, knowingwomen in the village also facilitated my inter-actions with men, since men could now inviteme to their house because I knew their wives,sisters or daughters, and potential jealousieswere thus avoided.

Conclusion

Reflecting on one’s fieldwork, from the pre-ludes of administrative complexity and thebuilding of official networks, to the com-plexities of interviewee and research assistant



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interactions, provides insight into the construc-tion of fieldwork based knowledge. Fieldworkmust be considered ‘a critical journey, inwhich the ethnographer engages with infor-mants, assistants, friends and collaborators,and gets involved in a myriad of encountersand events’ (De Neve and Unnithan-Kumar,2006: 87). The field as such becomes aprocess rather than a locality, in which theresearcher is ascribed and takes on differentroles that allow the gradual acquisition ofinsights. Detours, delays and blunders (seeGros, this issue), as well as varying levels ofcooperation, unease and suspicion by localscholars, officials and research assistants allcontribute to this experience.

As the PRC and other socialist countries openup to foreign researchers, discussions about theobstacles, challenges and strategies associatedwith such fieldwork conditions must continue.These need to address the ethical dilemmasand awkward situations we face as we negotiateaccess to the national minorities who so oftenare silenced in the fast-paced endeavour ofthe state to modernise, while bringing ethnicminorities within state ‘development’ pro-grammes. As I have described, doing officialfieldwork ascribes one with a specific status.Coupled with gender, age, education, languageability, ethnicity and whether one has a child,this composite identity leads to positions thatsimultaneously open doors just as others mayclose because of wariness, fear, and governmentcontrol or restrictions. Consequently, field-workers must constantly juggle their goals, theirpositionality, and the realities they face in afundamentally negotiated process (Bradshaw,2001).

Acknowledgements

I acknowledge the financial support of Fonds deRecherche sur la Société et la Culture (FQRSC)and Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada (SSRHC) as well as theBourse de Mobilité (Quebec Government).I furthermore thank Sarah Turner, StéphaneGros, Christine Bonnin, Jean Michaud, BernardBernier, François-Olivier Chené, Steeve Daviau,Laura Schoenberger and the anonymousreviewers for comments on earlier drafts of thisarticle.

Notes

1 Administratively a township composed of three villages,Zhaoxing is considered by locals and outsiders to be onelarge village in cultural and social forms, and I will callit such here.

2 According to a Chinese anthropologist from GuizhouUniversity, this power differential is typical, yet theremay certainly be exceptions or different cases within thetremendous number of villages and townships in China.The division into drum tower groups, however, is par-ticular to the Dong national minority in which eachdrum tower represents a clan (see Geary et al., 2003).Zhailao, or elders, are elected by members of the drumtower group and must be over 60 years old. Their statusis recognised up to the township level but not beyond.They resolve conflicts, act as intermediaries with thegovernment and members of their drum tower groups,and are responsible for the protection of the forest(zhailao interview, 19 April 2007).

3 Wycliffe International is dedicated to translation of thebiblical scripture in all languages.

4 Chloe is my research assistant’s foreign name and shehas accepted that we use it in publications.

5 Lu ( ) is the family name of 98% of Zhaoxing villagers;Xiao ( ) means little, hence, I would call almost allvillagers that were younger than me ‘Xiao Lu’.

6 For discussions on the historical and recent relationshipbetween the Han majority and the Dong (as well asother minority nationalities in Guizhou), see: Lombard-Salmon (1972), Berlie (1998), Oakes (1998) andHerman (2007).

7 See Cornet (2009) for some preliminary data on thedevelopment of ethnic tourism in Zhaoxing and theissues it raises.

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