**4. The Miao and Han**

The Miao are dispersed over a large geographical area in south-central China, with significant numbers in the Hunan and Guizhou provinces. The Miao are not homogenous, which gives rise to variations in ritual and cultural practice. The Miao badai culture is best understood as the foundation of cultural themes, myths, customs, and social practices that share similarities and variations. Variance is due to the centrality of the Miao village in determining the social, cultural, and economic organization and expression and, in turn, spiritual and ritual practice. Many Miao villages remain isolated and autonomous entities shaped by the geography and historical founding of the village. The Miao are pragmatic functionalists who identify and share a culture wellspring. Each village is specific and unique to its history, location, and geography.

The traditional bedrock of Miao society is the *cunzhai* 村 寨 (village). The village is the most critical form of Xiangxi Miao social organization, for it is not only a natural grouping but also an economic community. Some villages have dozens of households; others have hundreds. The affiliations within a village are not organized by blood lineage but rather by clan surnames. People living in a village are treated as brothers and sisters (H. Wu 2010, p. 8).

The Miao migrated southward from central China beginning 2000 years ago and increased in waves to the Xiangxi region six hundred years ago (Diamond 2021 https: //www.encyclopedia.com/places/asia/chinese-political-geography/miao, accessed on 3 June 2021). The Miao, pushed by advancing Han seeking land and opportunities, could not settle until reaching the rugged Wuling Mountains. The region was undesirable, challenging, and isolated, which provided a respite from the advancing Han. They brought their subsistence, agriculturalist, and herding lifestyle, which required a community effort to survive.

Villages are best understood as micro-units of Miao culture, many of which remain organized by a clan or group of families. Each village worships different animals and shapes their "belief and customs to maintain best ecological balance and biodiversity" (L. Wu 2017, p. 82).

Unmolested isolation lasted for three hundred years, and during this time, the village as a social, cultural, and economic unit evolved. The badai became a significant spiritual, cultural, and civic leader for their community.

The Miao people were on the run and defeated. To protect themselves, the badai became a significant conduit of cultural transmission. The Miao people were illiterate, and the badai had to carry out the physical manifesting, making visible and felt the Miao culture. We had to hide our culture from the Han. The Miao developed two faces, a surface face and something behind and beneath. The badai is the one who reveals the two features, the seen and behind" (S. Shi 2016).

Today, isolated villages remain characteristic of the Miao. Cities like Jishou and Fenghuang, which were founded to serve as military, trading, and political centers, have, to this day, Han-majority populations. The Miao essentially remain village-based as extended families or as a grouping of families generationally cooperating to eke out their existence. They can best be understood as subsistence social units organized to sustain a limited capacity of people who survive as farmers, herders, and gatherers who occasionally hunt and trap.

Historically, each village identified an auspicious tree, which they saw as a sign and called "founder." "The villagers regard it as the 'divine tree' of understanding, which can protect the happiness and well-being of the people in the village and is a spiritual sustenance" (Chen and Bao 2021, p. 102). Such large and older trees (generally maple) are still found on the road just outside a village. "Great trees are the symbol of life, death, marriage, ancestors, and descendants. They symbolize almost all aspects of life and reproductive continuity" (Wang 2011, p. 129). They are considered the "guiding spirit" of the village and revered as an ancestor surrounded by stone altars and worshiped (S. Shi 2016). During my field research (2001–2018), I have encountered a wide range of village identities. Each is recognized and organized by what they grow, the geography, economy, and climate, which directly influences dialects and cultural practices.<sup>8</sup> "Human activities and material environment together constitute the overall landscape of Miao villages in Qiandongnan and become the symbol of Miao identity" (Chen and Bao 2021, p. 103).<sup>9</sup>

The cultural complexity of the Miao was shaped in no small part by their historical interactions with the Han, who initially expanded into present-day Miao areas seeking land in the 17th century. Early encounters went quickly from interactions to suppression, war, and colonization.

Governmental mandates imposed on the Miao and other ethnic groups have made for an uneasy relationship with the Han-dominated central government. There were Miao rebellions in 1795–1806 and 1854–1874, with uprisings occurring in 1936 and 1942 (Katz 2017, p. 133) and resistance to governmental policies occurring into the 1950s. All rebellions were about land and control. The Miao were quelled and forced to accept the Qing imperial rule and its inheritors, the Republic of China and then the People's Republic of China.

Republican leader Sun Yat-sen prescribed: 'We must facilitate the dying out of all names of individual people inhabiting China, i.e., Manchus, Tibetan, etc. ... uniting them in a single cultural and political whole.' Place names in non-Han areas were renamed in Chinese, and people were encouraged to adopt Han surnames. Miao women had their topknots cut off and their pleated skirts shredded by Republican troops; women in Guizhou recalled having their red headdresses removed and fastened to dogs' heads. Meanwhile, the opening of roads to minority areas brought cholera and more aggressive tax collection. Han immigration and appropriation of minority lands were supported by the governmen<sup>t</sup> (Schein 1989, p. 72)

The PRC established autonomous areas for several minority ethnic groups in 1951, purporting "home rule." During the Cultural Revolution, the Miao were persecuted for expressing their "superstitious" and "harmful" customs, which sent many badai underground and had a chilling effect on cultural expression.

There were many hardships during the communist takeover and the Cultural Revolution; the Miao people ate grass, roots, and tree bark. Those who believed in ghosts and spirits were persecuted. My family's ritual materials were destroyed.

Others secretly hid anything suggesting they were badai. My grandfather and father were persecuted in the 1940s and 1970s and called professionals of superstition and shamed by the community. I trained at the risk of political and personal life. It was a difficult time, and I would learn at night because to become a badai requires person-to-person teaching. It is an apprenticeship, learning by doing. Now the climate has changed and is more accepting. But certain kinds of persecution continue. Four books of mine were published—but I was the second author, the governmen<sup>t</sup> assigned another writer as a censor. My other materials were not allowed to be published (S. Shi 2016).

The single most destructive force affecting Miao culture and its spiritual practice was the Cultural Revolution, an event from which it may never recover. Rural development and anti-poverty programs have gone far to quell ethnic tensions, but resentments and distrust remain. Ultimately, time and the progression of modern technology, social media, tourism, and a burgeoning cash economy transformed Miao culture, bringing it closer to the Chinese government's values and objectives.

The influx of Han settlers into the Miao region in the 18th and 19th centuries initiated an informal cultural exchange, resulting in an adjustment of Miao spiritual practice. In particular, the badai culture interpolated Han spiritual practices, mythology, cosmology, and deities. Most prominent was the introduction of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, as well as the *Yijing* or *Book of Changes,*<sup>10</sup> which was adapted and interpolated into badai practice in the Fenghuang area. The Miao adapted regalia, ritual objects, deities, and organization, which were highly developed and characteristic of the Han.

Miao cosmology is very similar to Chinese cosmology. Chinese folk religion divides the cosmos into three interconnected realms: heaven, the world of the living, and the underworld. Here, heaven is equal to the upper realm; the world of the living is equal to earth, and the underground is equal to the spirit world. Indeed, in most of the eastern and southeast Asian areas, this three-part view of the universe is common (H. Wu 2010, p. 35).

In creating a syncretic spiritual belief, the Miao did what so many other world cultures have done. They responded to a changing social and political condition through spiritual adaptation. Their syncretic spirituality evolved in a manner that persists to this day and can be viewed as a theatrically performed expression of their historical journey and evolution. Syncretic adaptation was key to the Miao ability to process humiliation and subjugation by providing a means to assert agency. It was a means to take ownership, transform, empower, and mitigate the trauma of defeat. This assertion will vividly reveal itself in reference to calling on martial implements, such as swords and flags, and protectors in the form of generals and soldiers to do battle on their behalf—all of whom are of Han origin.

"Interestingly, some Han settlers adopted Miao cultural lifestyles during the 18th and 19th centuries. In the changing frontier of western Hunan, the main flow of influence can go either direction" (Sutton 2003, p. 109). The Han settlers were taken by the Miao lifestyle and welcomed into the Miao community. Today, several hundred years after Han settlers arrived, certain villages are known as "Han Miao" in recognition of their historical origins, acculturation, and subsequent Miao "otherness" (Cheung 2012, p. 152).

The six badai gathered to re-create the zhuiniu ritual exemplified the rich, varied, and syncretic Miao culture, making it difficult to assess and document the ritual. "They are not culturally homogenous, and the differences between local Miao cultures are often as grea<sup>t</sup> as between Miao and non-Miao neighbors" (Diamond 1996, p. 473).
