ABSTRACT

We sat with our backs against the warm stone walls of the Caiguan village head's house, facing the winter sun of central Guizhou's plateau country, each of us dazed from too much mid-day rice wine. I was, nonetheless, determined to complete the interview before sleep overtook us, or before another altercation at the gambling table inside the house—where the wine still flowed freely— interrupted us. I kept pressing the village head and dixi troupe leader with questions about income from tourists and economic benefits for villagers, trying to assess the extent of Caiguan's cocoonment in tourism's colonial web. My informants were very unsure about income and such things. They fished around for figures which might make me happy, but none of the numbers they came up with made sense. We grew increasingly exasperated with each other. The troupe leader, finally, was fed up. “Look,” he blurted out, “what do we care about economic benefits? We're just farmers, and China is a communist country, isn't it? We don't do this to make money. It's our culture! We do it to promote China.”