Chinese history has always been written from a centrist viewpoint, largely ignoring the local histories that were preserved for generations in the form of oral tradition through myths, legends, and religious ritual.

Chieftains into Ancestors describes the intersection of imperial administration and chieftain-dominated local culture. Observing local rituals against the backdrop of extant written records, it focuses on examples from the southwestern Hunan, Guangxi, Yunnan, and southwestern Guangdong provinces. The authors contemplate the crucial question of how one can begin to write the history of a conquered people whose past has been largely wiped out. Combining anthropological fieldwork with historical textual analysis, they dig deep for the indigenous voice as they build a new history of China’s southwestern region – 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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