Baijie and the Bai Gender and Ethnic Religion in Dali, Yunnan

Abstract

Contemporary scholars and tourism officials of the Bai nationality in the Dali region of Southwest China's Yunnan Province present their village god (benzhu) worship as part of Bai ethnic religion and use the goddess Baijie as a paradigmatic example. In recent years Baijie has become an increasingly prominent face of Bai culture and religion in the Dali region and in China. Baijie's public face is not only ethnic but also gendered, as she appears as a paragon of feminine virtues. My research in villages that worship Baijie as their benzhu shows that most people involved in her worship--primarily older women--discuss Baijie in gendered terms but not ethnic terms. Furthermore, male and female villagers participate in her worship in different ways and to different degrees. This reveals the danger of uncritically accepting official discourse on ethnic religion, as rhetorics of ethnicity mask diversity within officially designated ethnic groups. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]