Lamu Gatusa

Last updated

Lamu Gatusa (Gaofeng Shi) is an associate professor at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, in Kunming, Yunnan, China. [1] He is also a writer, and a three-time winner of China's Minority People Literature Award.

His studies have focused on his own ethnic group, the Mosuo, [2] [3] and especially their folk song traditions. In the early 1990s, carrying a large, old Japanese tape recorder, he went into the Mosuo mountain villages to collect folksongs and published the only book about Mosuo folk songs in China. In 1997 he finished the translation of a shaman's recitation of the entire oral history of the Mosuo people, which it took him two months to record. In 1999, he published a book called "Mosuo Daba Culture," in which he collected and translated important oral literature of Mosuo indigenous religion Daba Religion. In recent years, Lamu's works have shifted towards critiquing the tourism and modernization of Mosuo culture. He has published the article "Mosuo People Do Not Live in the Western Exotic Fascination" and nine other articles in academic journals.

Lamu has also collaborated with TV programs or ethnographic documentaries on Mosuo culture: "The Story of the Kingdom of Women", "Stories of Shangerila", "The Path to Heaven" and "Sun Rises, and Sun Sets."

He is a member of the Chinese Writers' Union and the Chinese Minority Nationalities Writer's Union; and is a co-founder of the Lugu Lake Mosuo Cultural Development Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to both preserving and increasing awareness of the Mosuo culture.

Related Research Articles

Ethnic minorities in China are the non-Han population in the People's Republic of China (PRC).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dai people</span> Ethnic group of Asia

The Dai people are several Tai-speaking ethnic groups living in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture of China's Yunnan Province. The Dai people form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by the People's Republic of China. By extension, the term can apply to groups in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Myanmar when Dai is used to mean specifically Tai Yai, Lue, Chinese Shan, Tai Dam, Tai Khao or even Tai in general. For other names, please see the table below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mosuo</span> Chinese minority people

The Mosuo, often called the Naxi among themselves, are a small ethnic group living in China's Yunnan and Sichuan provinces. Consisting of a population of approximately 40,000, many of them live in the Yongning region, around Lugu Lake, in Labai, in Muli, and in Yanyuan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nakhi people</span> Ethnic group in China

The Nakhi or Nashi are a people inhabiting the foothills of the Himalayas in the northwestern part of Yunnan Province, as well as the southwestern part of Sichuan Province in China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bai people</span> Sino-Tibetan ethnic group of Southwest China

The Bai, or Pai, are an East Asian ethnic group native to the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province, Bijie area of Guizhou Province, and Sangzhi area of Hunan Province. They constitute one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China. They numbered 1,933,510 as of 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pumi people</span> Ethnic group native to China

The Pumi people are an ethnic group. They form one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dongba symbols</span> Naxi pictographic writing system

The Dongba, Tomba or Tompa or Mo-so symbols are a system of pictographic glyphs used by the ²dto¹mba of the Naxi people in southern China. In the Naxi language it is called ²ss ³dgyu 'wood records' or ²lv ³dgyu 'stone records'. The first artifacts with this script on them originate from approximately 30 AD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lijiang</span> Prefecture-level city in Yunnan, Peoples Republic of China

Lijiang, also known as Likiang, is a prefecture-level city in the northwest of Yunnan Province, China. It has an area of 21,219 square kilometres (8,193 sq mi) and had a population of 1,253,878 at the 2020 census whom 288,787 lived in the built-up area (metro) made of Gucheng District. Lijiang is famous for its UNESCO Heritage Site, the Old Town of Lijiang, which contains a mixture of different historical architecture styles and a complex, ancient water-supply system.

Chinese folklore encompasses the folklore of China, and includes songs, poetry, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, and the supernatural. The stories often explain natural phenomena and distinctive landmarks. Along with Chinese mythology, it forms an important element in Chinese folk religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Korean literature</span> Literature produced by Koreans

Korean literature is the body of literature produced by Koreans, mostly in the Korean language and sometimes in Classical Chinese. For much of Korea's 1,500 years of literary history, it was written in Hanja. It is commonly divided into classical and modern periods, although this distinction is sometimes unclear. Korea is home to the world's first metal and copper type, the world's earliest known printed document and the world's first featural script.

Qiangic is a group of related languages within the Sino-Tibetan language family. They are spoken mainly in Southwest China, including Sichuan and northern Yunnan. Most Qiangic languages are distributed in the prefectures of Ngawa, Garzê, Ya'an and Liangshan in Sichuan with some in Northern Yunnan as well.

Naxi, also known as Nakhi, Nasi, Lomi, Moso, Mo-su, is a Sino-Tibetan language or group of languages spoken by some 310,000 people, most of whom live in or around Lijiang City Yulong Naxi Autonomous County of the province of Yunnan, China. Nakhi is also the ethnic group that speaks it, although in detail, officially defined ethnicity and linguistic reality do not coincide neatly: there are speakers of Naxi who are not registered as "Naxi" and citizens who are officially "Naxi" but do not speak it.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lugu Lake</span> Lake in northwest of Yunnan plateau

Lugu Lake is located in the northwest of the Yunnan plateau, with the middle of the lake forming the border between the Ninglang County of Yunnan Province and the Yanyuan County of Sichuan Province. The formation of the lake is thought to have occurred in a geological fault belonging to the geological age of the Late Cenozoic. It is an alpine lake at an elevation of 2,685 metres (8,809 ft) and is the highest lake in the Yunnan Province. The lake is surrounded by mountains and has five islands, four peninsulas, fourteen bays and seventeen beaches.

Dongba Culture Museum is a museum in Lijiang City, Yunnan, China which deals with the Dongba culture of the Naxi (Nakhi) people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashma</span>

Ashma or Ashima is a long narrative poem of the Sani people, who are centred in southwest China, in the area of Kunming, Yunnan Province. During the 1950s, as the Chinese government undertook a classification process for its non-Han minority nationalities, the Sani applied for independent status, but they were turned down and are now classified as part of the Yi people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mosuo women</span> Ethnic group in China

The Mosuo are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet. Dubbed the 'Kingdom of Women' by the Chinese, the Mosuo population of about 50,000 live near Lugu Lake in the Tibetan Himalayas 27°42′35.30″N100°47′4.04″E.

The Bible has been translated into many of the languages of China besides Chinese. These include major minority languages with their own literary history, including Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian and Uyghur. The other languages of China are mainly tribal languages, mainly spoken in Yunnan in Southwest China.

The Zhuang have a rich variety of customs and culture.

The Columbia Anthology of Chinese Folk and Popular Literature is a 2011 book edited by Victor H. Mair and Mark Bender and published by the Columbia University Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yunnan Ethnic Village</span>

The Yunnan Ethnic Village is an ethnographic village and theme park that displays the various folklore, culture, and architecture of 26 ethnic groups in Yunnan Province, China. The park's major goal is mainly to display some aspects of Yunnan's ethnicity, cultural diversity, and heritage. Located in the southwest suburbs of Kunming next to Dianchi lake, Yunnan Ethnic Village covers an area of 89 hectares including 31 hectares of water. It is classified as a AAAA-class tourist attraction.

References

  1. Mark O'Neill (August 19, 1995). "Girls Are Prized in One Chinese Tribe; Muosuo Women Head Their Families -- And Do All the Work". Washington Post . p. 269ff. Retrieved 24 October 2010.
  2. Lamu Gatusa (2007). Naxi xue lun ji 纳西学论集 [Analects of Naxi Studies]. Beijing: Nationalities Publishing House. ISBN   978-7-105-08468-5.
  3. Yang Erche Namu; Christine Mathieu (2004). Leaving Mother Lake: A Girlhood at the Edge of the World. Back Bay. p. 294. ISBN   978-0-316-73549-0 . Retrieved 24 October 2010.