Tea forest in the making: Tea production and the ambiguity of modernity on Chinaas southwest frontier

• Published in: Geoforum 2013-06, Vol.47, p.178-188
• Main Author: Hung, Po-Yi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0016-7185
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.01.007

The simultaneous but incompatible desires for both atraditiona and aadvancementa have produced the aambiguity of modernitya in the areas of minority nationalities (shaoshu minzu diqu) on Chinaas southwest frontier. This paper, in accordance, directly addresses the ambiguity of modernity through the investigation of the tea landscape in Yunnan. This essay builds on Aihwa Ong and Stephen Collieras aglobal assemblagea framework to analyze the relationship between the aglobal forma of modernity and the situated assemblages of aambiguity of modernitya in southwest China. Data are based on ethnographic research in the village of Mangjing, located in Jingmai Mountain, a renowned tea mountain in Yunnan. Most of the villagers in Mangjing are one of the minority nationalities of China, Bulang. I discuss the state-led project in transforming the modern tea plantation for arestoringa a landscape deemed as aancient tea foresta (guchalin) in Mangjing. In addition, I address Bulang villagersa and government officialsa multiple responses to the transformation of tea landscapes. I argue that the transformation of tea landscapes has been the practice to turn the aglobal forma of modernity into the shifting aassemblagesa amongst tradition, modernity, science, and nature. The ambiguity of modernity has emerged from the shifting assemblages, providing both the state and Bulang villagers more leeway to symbolically and physically (re)produce meanings for the tea landscapes to meet the contingent market demand for tea. The transformation of tea landscapes, however, has become another process to perpetuate Bulang villagersa social status of being alow qualitya as Chinaas minority nationalities.