Hearths, Mythologies, and Livelihood Choices: Exploring Cultural Change under Poverty Alleviation with the Nuosu-Yi of Liangshan

Abstract

In late 2020, the Chinese Communist Party triumphantly declared an end to (absolute) poverty in the country. As one of the most poverty-stricken areas of China, Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province came into the spotlight both domestically and internationally. International media reports, some of which embedded fragments of the author’s expert opinion, launched a discursive counter-offensive. Furthermore, both sides incorporated anecdotes told by local ethnic Nuosu-Yi individuals. Interested in discursive hegemony rather than informants’ voices, however, both somewhat conveniently failed to grasp the complex interplay between the everyday lives of Nuosu-Yi and the state-driven poverty alleviation campaign. Focusing on the creative livelihood strategies and choices reflected in the everyday practical and ritualistic treatment of the traditional Nuosu-Yi hearth, the present article ethnographically analyzes the tension between various (re)presentations of poverty and the Nuosu-Yi cosmology that is animated to absorb them and facilitate preservation and/or reinvention of Nuosu-Yi lifeways.