118 Part II: Outsiders
These people, who did not have systems of writing, who did not know the
Confucian texts, and who were not centrally organized, were viewed by the
Han Chinese as lacking civilization and even culture. For the Chinese, literacy
was the key trait of civilization. If people could read, then they could read the
texts of Confucius and other scholars, and this would transform them into civi-
lized, virtuous people. The Chinese word for culture, wenhua, is also the word
for writing, suggesting “literary transformation,” something like “the molding
of the person by training in the philosophical, moral, and ritual principles
which constitute virtue” in the Confucian system (Harrell 1995). Chinese
descriptions of tribal people invariably mention—disparagingly—use of knots
on string and notches on wood to record facts and numbers; what could be
more “uncivilized” than that? The Chinese saw it as their civilizing mission to
bring Chinese control, and with it Chinese culture, to them. You can see this
rationale in Chinese gazetteers of late Ming and Qing times that attempted to
classify different types of barbarians in the Yunnan-Guizhou area. One such
classification distinguished Sheng Miao from Shu Miao—literally, “Raw
Miao” and “Cooked Miao.” “Raw” seems to have meant unassimilated Miao
resisting pacification and state control, while Miao who were more sinicized
were “cooked.” (The Miao had a word for the Han Chinese, too: sua, which
means “strange.”)
As the Chinese state was pursuing an active policy of conquest and pacifi-
cation in southwestern China during the early eighteenth century, they met
great resistance from the Miao, an episode that has become known as the
“Miao Rebellions.” This resistance lasted into the nineteenth century and is
what prompted migration of many Miao into Vietnam and Laos. This political
effort of pacification was accompanied by renewed efforts to classify and
describe the local populations in a series of publications known as the “Miao
Albums,” which consisted of paintings or block prints with descriptive texts
that tended to highlight the loveliness of the women—though of easy sexuality
and provocative dress—and the aggressiveness of the men. For instance, the
Hei Sheng Miao are described as treacherous and aggressive people who were
conquered once and for all in 1736 but only after half of them were killed a
decade earlier.
The process of bringing the southern regions under state control involved
moving more and more Han Chinese into the area as administrators and settlers
and also “using barbarians to control barbarians.” Some Miao (presumably of
the “cooked” variety) were appointed as local officials (tu-si) over their own peo-
ple, with responsibility for collecting and presenting annual tribute to the Chi-
nese court. In the late nineteenth century a Miao became viceroy of Yunnan,
and in the 1930s a Miao was the military governor of Yunnan Province.
Ethnology became a recognized social science in China in the first part of
the twentieth century as an arm of government policies of assimilation and
control. The Miao were described as of a low cultural level, their religious
beliefs viewed as mere superstitions, and there was little effort to understand or