Official Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint. Chieftains into Ancestors describes the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture in the culturally diverse southwestern region of China. Contemplating the rhetorical question of how one can begin to rewrite the story of a conquered people whose past was never transcribed in the first place, the authors combine anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis to build a new regional history – one that recognizes the ethnic, religious, and gendered transformations that took place in China’s nation-building process.

David Faure is Wei Lun Professor of History at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His books include Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China.

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Ho Ts’ui-p’ing is an associate research fellow at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, and an adjunct associate professor in the Institute of Anthropology, National Tsing Hua University. She is the co-editor of State, Market and Ethnic Groups Contextualized.

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