Chinese Ethnic Minorities and their Oral Poetry: A Perspective from Ethnopoetics

Ethnopoetics involves in the conducting of translation experiments on oral poems of native ethnic groups, converting its relevant oral texts into written forms. The theory of ethnographic poetry begins in the 1970s and was translated and introduced to China in the early 21st century. However, most ethnic minorities in China do not have textual writings. Their oral creations from primitive society to modern society such as epics, long poems, narrative poems, ballads, and folk songs are mostly in form of oral poetry. The collection and translation of oral poems of ethnic minorities in China began in the late 1950s, that demarcated the beginning of ethnopoetics in China. In this article, the reasons behind the collection and translation of Chinese ethnic minority oral poems will be analysed. The restoration process of ethnopoetics and the connections between the collections and the translations, and the issues on whether translation is consistent to Chinese ethnic minority oral poems will also be further elaborated. The history of Chinese ethnic minorities oral poetry traces back to a long history and consists of a variety of themes and contents. Therefore, the restoration process of ethnopoetic research on the relationship between oral culture and written culture not only have gained the attention from the Chinese academic community, but also shown strong interests by the Western academic research community and worldwide.

Geographic inequality and ethnic stratification in China, 2000 to 2010

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to extend current knowledge by focusing on three geographic factors (minority-Han residential segregation, rural-urban disparities and regional differences) and their effects on educational and occupational outcomes of Chinese ethnic minorities from 2000 to 2010.Design/methodology/approachData from the 2000 and 2010 Chinese decennial censuses were used, and both descriptive and multivariate analyses were conducted.FindingsResults revel that there were regional differences in terms of educational segregation between minorities and the Han. It was also difficult for minority groups that were residentially segregated from the Han and mainly located in rural areas or western/southeastern regions to obtain high-level education. When minority groups were residentially segregated from the Han, they tended to have higher levels of occupational segregation from the Han; while minority groups with larger percentages of rural residents tended to have smaller percentages of people obtained high-status occupations. Despite China’s rapid social and economic development, ethnic disparities in education did not significantly change, and ethnic gaps in occupational attainment were widened from 2000 to 2010.Social implicationsGeographic sources of ethnic conflicts in China should not be overlooked, and future researchers should also conduct studies on Chinese ethnic minorities at individual or household level.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the literature in two major ways: first, all Chinese minority groups were included in the analyses to clarify intra-ethnic differences; second, data from two Chinese decennial censuses and longitudinal statistical modeling were used to investigate the effect of time on ethnic stratification.