ABSTRACT
The study of culturally-elaborated separations and reunions, and the identifications they help produce, should have direct implications for the study of migration in China. It is often assumed that Chinese migrants, having moved, continue to feel strong attachments to ancestral lands and native places. Northeastern China, the region in which Dragon-head is located, has been completely transformed in the last several centuries by migration from other parts of China. This is an historical fact of defining significance and it seems impossible to understand the region without taking it into account. Anthropologists often have difficulty in addressing the history of identification with a place purely through participant-observation fieldwork. A similar observation could be made concerning relationships with ancestral spirits and Chinese deities, whose mobility is also taken for granted and whose movements are a regular source of speculation and concern. In similar fashion, the gods of Chinese popular religion, equally mobile, are invited to and greeted at particular households in Dragon-head.
