Redefining religious space and negotiating identities in a Tai Lue community in Southwest China: a case study of the Mengjinglai monastery in Sipsongpanna

Abstract

This research aims to study a redefining of religious space and negotiating identities in Tai Lue community, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, PRC China. The research which took place in Mengjinglai village, southern Xishuangbanna (or Sipsongpanna in Thai), I did fieldwork, observing community life in a village and its Buddhist monastery, and interviewing key informants. Also I used a documentary research method to examine relevant documents. My study finds that for the Tai Lue, or Dai Minzu in Xishuangbanna, the space of the community temple is not only a space that they practice on their religious traditions and activities but also it is a space for transmitting Tai language, called Tham script, and education (learning Buddhism and other subjects). Through the teaching on Tham script for the younger generation, the village’s Buddhist temples have become a space for inheriting and disseminating Tai culture. This Tai culture and Buddhist tradition have long been shared and exchanged in the upper Mekong region. Theravada Buddhism in Sipsongpanna in particular historically, spread from Chiang Mai, in present northern Thailand via Kengtung (Shan State of Myanmar). Moreover, the research finds that a village temple in Tai Lue community, is a venue for the villagers to practice on traditional rituals and the temple is therefore a space to carry on their collective memory. In addition, Tai Lue’s village temple is a space of inter-village interactions that is formed by the performance and mobility of "Chang Khup" (Tai traditional singer), usually taking place in a Tai community Buddhist festivals, called Poi. Followed to a moral and value of Theravada Buddhism, Tai Lue villagers connect their belief, in making merits for the ultimate goal of life, to Nippan, with the practice on public welfare activities, in exchange with the blessings they will receive from a monk. As a result, the village temple unintentionally turned into a space of public welfare practice. In the final chapter, my research finds that the rise of the ethnic tourist industry and social-economic changes in Sipsongpanna, the Tai Lue village temple, being studied, has been transformed into a space for "invented tradition". But this inventing process of local Tai culture and Buddhism in the context of ethnic tourism in Sipsongpanna has to be understood as a local process of negotiation and interaction between the tourism company, the villagers, the village’s Buddhist temple and local officials. The invention of Tai culture and tradition for sale, makes it possible for the Buddhist monks and the villagers to see their village temple as a space to maintain and continue their local history, customs and traditions through the repetition of ritual forms they conduct and changes in the meaning of the symbols in ritual practice. Through ritual practice conducts for tourism they can maintain a connection with the past, although this is possible through the presentation of a different version of "local history".