"Suffix" Matt Citizen Interview (Group A): Gardenia Durian interviews Lola

The bustling city of Matt brings together a variety of people and a variety of writing perspectives. When I see an article I like, I will click on the author's homepage and gradually build up my imagination of the author in his written record. @Lola recently wrote a series of "Frontiers, Ethnicities and Religions" , which is very popular in Matt City, and I personally like it very much, so I followed the summary of articles on her homepage and read it all the way.

Lola's writing always brings me an immersive sense of presence, full of details of life and unspeakable emotions. I am often impressed by her keen observation. She said that she was a young man from the frontier area . "A lot of the stories I tell are related to the southwest. It can also happen in other places, but it must not happen like this." She writes about her life, friends, things in her hometown, some Feelings about news hotspots... There are some angles that make me very novel ( singing vulgar folk songs under the goose feather tree ). I happened to meet "Suffix" to accompany you to interview a citizen activity. I took this opportunity to contact her and did a Q&A with the help of the editor-in-chief of @Jeger .

Gardenia Durian:

Hello, Lola! Your latest Frontiers, Peoples and Religions series is very nice. In particular, I feel that Qiqi is a pure enclave of Han culture ("Princess Wencheng entered Tibet", such a story is told to the Han people). I have some thoughts and criticisms from books about the history of global colonization, but because I am a Han Chinese and lived in the mainstream culture as a "majority" since I was a child, I lack intuitive experience of colonization and being colonized. Your article describes the colonial activities of the Han people for thousands of years from the perspective of the colonized area, which shocked me a lot. It is also from your narrative that I saw the position I took unconsciously, and I began to ask myself: How would I feel if I were looking at this from a more marginal angle? Hope to have some more in-depth conversations with you accordingly.

 *post-harvest note*

In fact, Lola himself did not use the word "colonial". After reading her article, I felt a little like White Guilt, so I set up an ideological framework like "colonial" when writing the interview outline.

Lola:

When I received an interview invitation for "Postfix" this morning, I was excited and wondered if it was about myself or about writing a certain series. If so, what kind of questions would I ask, I imagine how I used to be serious and casually throwing things that I couldn't understand, maybe the other party would pour it on me again. This worries me.

But in the end the "problem" came, and as expected, I can only try to describe the things that disturbed me.

Gardenia Durian:

Since you are writing about ethnic groups in the frontier, can you please introduce yourself first? What is your cultural identity?

Lola:

"Young people from the frontier", this is my profile. If I were to introduce myself, I think this is the only answer I can give at the moment. This frontier refers to Yunnan. I was born in the mountains and belong to the Yi nationality.

But in the past two days, I encountered an ID card inspection, and I turned it out and saw the above two words, but I was shocked and felt very strange. I asked myself in my heart, is this me. So you probably know that I don't have any more ideas about "ethnicity" and "cultural identity". I only know that we are a nation called "fire" - I think of when my grandmother used a teapot to cook dumplings by the fire when I was a child. I ate it, but it didn't come out.

People who introduce national culture always say that the Yi people cannot live without fire, but I have already left. Perhaps because of this, I am full of imagination about "fire". The same is to gather people here, the bonfire is an untamed fire, borrowed temporarily, and will soon be returned to heaven and earth; and the fire in the fire pit of the Yi people is Carlos who sleeps in the center of the main room. When people wake up It also wakes up, and it sleeps when people fall asleep.

Gardenia Durian:

What kind of education did you receive when you were growing up? What are the similarities and differences between primary and secondary school education in Handi in the Central Plains?

Lola:

The education I received is no different. Everyone uses a unified nine-year compulsory education textbook. The knowledge of the mainstream society is the majority, and the local knowledge-especially the knowledge of ethnic minorities is very lacking. The overall feeling is to put all the Everyone is "brought into modern civilized society", and the content of "zebra crossing" and "obeying traffic rules" in textbooks feels very unfamiliar.

Gardenia Durian:

Besides Chinese, do you use other languages? What are the current protection measures for the languages and scripts of ethnic minorities at the border?

Lola:

No, our family no longer speaks the Yi language in my mother's generation.

It is for the sake of sinicization, and talking about "protection" now is just talking about a thing that has died out.

 *post-harvest note*

I heard that the characters of the Yi people are inextricably linked to the hieroglyphs on the Sanxingdui cultural relics in our ancient Shu Kingdom... Ancient Shu had a splendid civilization before the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and it was destroyed by the Qin Dynasty around 300 BC. For thousands of years, it belonged to the Han land, and the Shu land became the granary of the imperial power in the Central Plains.

Gardenia Durian:

In The Enclave of Han Culture, you write:

It can also be seen that from ancient times to the present, the Han immigrants in Yunnan were so keen to participate in the education and imperial examinations of the empire. (…) Among them, Mr. Jia, who was demoted and sent to Yunnan because of a mistake, dreamed of going back to the Central Plains and back to the emperor’s feet.

This makes me want to compare the colonial history of the Han Chinese with the European colonial history of America and Australia. In the first hundred or two hundred years of the colonization, the people in the colony were very similar to "Master Jia", thinking of the royal family in Europe. But soon, the North American colonies did not want to be subject to the British, and they became independent, which led to the independence and liberation movement around the world.

Yunnan, on the other hand, does not seem to have ever fought for independence. How do you feel about this?

Lola:

Without knowledge of colonial history, how Yunnan eventually became the frontier of a country was inspired by the book "Flowing Frontiers: Yunnan and China in a Global Perspective". I was also skeptical about whether Yunnan had ever had an "independence struggle". I searched and saw a question: "Why did Yunnan maintain an independent and semi-independent state for a long time before the Ming Dynasty?" The top answer summary reads: "We should Thank the Ming Dynasty for its policy towards Yunnan, otherwise Yunnan would become the Vietnam of today.”

It sounds slanted, but I want to show that this domination is ancient. There are many tribes in Yunnan, with different beliefs and customs. Perhaps the tribes have been hostile for a long time, and they are isolated from each other due to geographical reasons. Everyone lives in their own way, and it is difficult to gather together and fight for a common belief. Perhaps this is the point. Different from the above example.

Gardenia Durian:

In South America, missionaries were also an integral part of colonial policy. Missionary, in fact, is to extend the cultural ideas of a strong nation to a weaker nation. I think the Confucian Temple and Confucianism in Tengchong and Jianshui you mentioned have a similar effect. At the same time, you also mentioned the spread of Christianity in Yunnan. Can you talk about the influence of Christian and Confucian imperial examinations in Yunnan, the penetration of these two cultures on the local aborigines?

Lola:

Jianshui and Tengchong are two special cities. A large number of Han people have moved in, and the history has also been written by the Han people. This will be exaggerated in the cultural tourism promotion. I also cut into the article through this strangeness.

It's hard for me to talk about "cultural infiltration", but in the article about the Dulongjiang Christians fleeing from Myanmar, I told a story I heard from a friend. Tibetans who believe in religion still take their names from the Bible today. , and then called out the names in Tibetan. Or the descendants of the Dulong wizards, named "Kong Xuewen", and the family completely changed their surname to "Kong".

 *post-harvest note*

Lola This series has received many comments from a political and economic perspective. I originally wanted to interview Lola about political and economic topics; I also observed the topography of Yunnan on Google Earth, trying to confirm the theory of regional development.

But I quickly sensed Lola's resistance to these abstract narratives. She seems to be more concerned with the fate of individuals and specific feelings.

In the article My Religious Experience as a Child , Lola spoke from her own first-hand experience of marginalized, even demonized, minority religious experiences.

Under that post, @Elementary had an unpleasant conversation with her.

Elementary left a message saying that ethnic groups need to understand each other and resolve barriers.

Lola asks: What is the cause of closure, estrangement, and incomprehension?

Elementary used a very academic approach, from the perspective of national needs, to discuss the reasons for this mixed ethnic and religious oppression, and invited Lola to provide her insights.

Lola asked him back, not what the country thinks, what do you think yourself?

Elementary says,

In today’s context, the topic of ethnicity is bound to involve the state. What the state thinks is of course important, because the state’s views on the ethnicity and customs determine what information most people receive. What's more, the concept of nation itself is also made and solidified by the state. Issues at the social level cannot be narrowed down to the level of personal feelings.

Lola doesn't respond anymore.

I read the message over and over again for a long time, trying to understand it from a different angle. Later, I thought of a metaphor that I can barely understand: when you have dysmenorrhea, the people around you ask you to drink more hot water.

In fact, it's easy for me to play the role of telling people to drink more hot water. If I'm not careful, I might debate along the lines of Elementary. Later, I added a message. Although it was a reply to Elementary, I actually said it to myself:

I think a lot of what you said is true, but this article is full of pain and sadness, and I can't bear to stand here and talk about big things like national policy. You could say it's a social issue, yes, it needs to be discussed on a social level. But sadly, China is not a place where we discuss at a social level, criticize an unfair system, and promote it to change.

Therefore, it is also important to record the pain experienced by the individual here. Sometimes there may be no need to hurry to look at events from a higher angle and try to summarize some historical laws. Stay with the pain for a moment.

I told myself not to rush to sum up the "laws of history". Listen first. Feel it first.

In the Q&A that followed, I tried to chat with Lola about everyday topics.

Gardenia Durian:

In addition to your personal daily records and articles published on Matters, what interesting topics have you been planning recently? If you don't think about making money and making a living, and you can have team support, what topic would you most like to do?

Lola:

I recently came to a completely unfamiliar city, and I will probably start looking for new topics from here. When I answered this question, it happened to be sunny, and it seemed like I was going out quickly.

This is how I write now. But if there's one thing I want to do most, it might be to write stories about women.

Gardenia Durian:

You have visited many places in Yunnan. Where would you like to live if you could choose? Why?

Lola:

I have sworn to tell my friends that I want to live in Tengchong or Dali, but I hesitated when I actually encountered this problem. But after thinking about it, there is still no new answer. I simply choose Tengchong, which I have left. I miss it at the moment.

I thought there would be many reasons, such as beautiful mountains and rivers, but it actually fell on paper, and I couldn't say why. Almost instinctively, I broke into this city alone without hesitation, and it accommodated me as much as possible.

Gardenia Durian:

A variety of flowers and trees are often mentioned in your articles. Please describe your ideal garden for us! Now it doesn't matter if you don't have a yard yourself, imagine the yard you made by yourself, what does it look like?

Lola:

I've been thinking about this question for three days, and I still can't answer it. When I saw a huge puddle under construction downstairs, it felt like it had washed away the imagination in my mind-maybe it was borrowed from elsewhere, it just Looking at me so hideously, mocking me, and mocking those imaginations about the yard. So the most reasonable state of this courtyard is probably like this, it is like a wound that grows in spring and grows in autumn and heals automatically.

Gardenia Durian:

What is your ideal life situation?

Lola:

Haha, right now, I reunited with my long-separated lover, went out of the airport to hit the road, and went to a barbecue at midnight. What else do we have? No, there is no way to say.

 *post-harvest note*

Why do I feel an unspeakable sadness when I read it to the end?

The question-and-answer format by mail limits the flexibility of the conversation. If it's a live chat, I'll change the subject halfway through and chat about something else based on her mood.

It's a pity that Lola declined my request for re-harvesting.

Perhaps as a person who has never been marginalized, I cannot personally understand her feelings. I can only try my best to feel what she is going through as much as possible through the words she left me. In the end, what I presented to the officials of Matt City was just such a Q&A + an "interview" made up of my own brain.

Lola has been in Matt City for three years and has published more than 250 works. She is a member of @新 Sexy Magazine and has the "Matt City Architect" badge. She wrote in the Matt City achievement list : Met great friends.

Here's the series so far in Frontiers, Peoples, and Religions:

(1) My religious experience as a child
(2) Thank God for coming to church in the rain
(3) Pure enclave of Han culture
(4) Burmese brides in the "Marriage Fraud Case"
(5) If you can’t sing the national anthem, you’re not Chinese

"Suffix" Interview and Writing Camp｜ Special thanks

Interviewee: @Lola
Interview editors: @Jeger, @陈凯西

postscript

1. Interviewing a citizen is really a good activity! As @cauliflowerDenken said in How to use Email to interview , the interview is to exchange each other's values. If it is far away from their respective homepages and message areas, it is easy to fall into the state of talking to themselves. This interview really gave me a deeper understanding of my mindset when looking at problems, and a deeper understanding of Lola's very different perspective from mine. That's something you won't get just by reading her articles.
2. Lola mentioned that she had tried traditional Chinese characters, but she was more used to using simplified characters in the end, so I respected her habit, and I also used simplified Chinese characters for the interview. But the editors of "Suffix" use traditional Chinese... In the end, I decided to accept both traditional and simplified input methods on my system, just as I decided to accept English phrases in Chinese articles without translation. Perhaps my final cultural identity was this hodgepodge of expressions.