Three faces of Woman Huang : textual anthropology of a story in Lanten Yao culture

Abstract

The story of Woman Huang (Huangshinü) is narrated by the Lanten (a branch of the Yao people) in northern Laos in three genres: storybook, folktale, and ritual text. This story originates in Han Chinese Buddhist culture. It is found narrated by many ethnic minority groups, including the Lanten, whose culture is profoundly impacted by Daoism. The first objective of this research is to interpret different sides of Lanten culture based on a multi-layered analysis of stories. It adopts an anthropological perspective to conceptualize different genres of texts as different “faces” of culture. Each genre displays a relatively independent cultural domain, while intertextuality sheds light on the complexity and multifacetedness of culture, analogous to a heterogeneous “tool kit.” The second objective of this research is to contribute to the theoretical discussions of ethnicity and religion, especially the spread of Chinese religious culture among ethnic minority groups at the periphery. The story of Woman Huang showcases how the Lanten have gradually encountered, indigenized, and incorporated this foreign narrative into their own culture, facilitated by the three genres. Meanwhile, the co-existence of multiple versions of the story indicates that cultural interactions cannot be reduced to models like “Sinicization” or “Daoicization.”

This thesis begins by introducing the field of Yao studies, its theoretical foundations, and data and method. Two chapters are then devoted to studying the Woman Huang stories in Han and other ethnic cultures (especially the Bai). They build essential research tools that enable comparative research at structural and thematic levels. The following three chapters examine the story’s three genres in Lanten contexts, comparing them to the three “faces” of Woman Huang. Each chapter starts with introducing a “key text” collected from northern Laos by the Yao Dao Project Team at the University of Hong Kong. It then conducts inter-genre (i.e., with other key texts) and intra-genre (i.e., with published variants from China and Vietnam) comparisons. To conclude the findings, manuscripts contain a relatively unchanged version of the original story, whereas folktales and ritual texts involve in-depth appropriation and creative reinvention. A diversity of social meanings and functions are embodied in each genre. Put together, these comparisons provide a holistic portrayal of Woman Huang’s three “faces,” reflecting the Chinese, indigenous, and religious aspects of Lanten culture and identity. With the story of Woman Huang, this thesis hopes to bring narratives to the center of ethnic and religious studies on the Lanten culture.