In 1997 I arrived on China’s southwest borders planning to spend a year researching ethnic minority folklore. The only problem, as I discovered when I arrived, was that there wasn’t any.

Instead, government culture bureaus and Chinese entrepreneurs had turned the region into an adults-only playground for tourists –most of them male Chinese urbanites traveling in groups. Sipsongpanna, Yunnan was peopled with dancing women in tight ethnic sarongs, swaying palm trees, exotic fruits, peacocks. Perhaps equally important were plentiful and inexpensive alcohol, drugs, gambling, jade, and sex workers. While many tourists visiting southern Yunnan province came for the illegal pleasures, they spent their days attending performances staged for Chinese and foreign tourists – living dioramas in state-run “ethnic theme parks”, dances in “ethnic dining halls”, reconstituted “living ethnic villages”, and the like.

But these performances were not just the product of commodified tourist schtick, as they might have been elsewhere. They were also official policy: direct outgrowths of the government’s intervention over decades in creating, pruning and regulating public expressions of minority ethnic identity.

Anthropology News

In 2002, I left the academic track and took a position at Human Rights Watch as a China researcher. Almost immediately, I was overwhelmed by the fast pace of the job.

Fast-Paced Campaigns

I began the job in the summer, expecting this would give me time to unpack my boxes and settle in. But on the first day, my new boss rushed into the office to say that according to news reports, Yahoo! had just signed an agreement to aid government censorship in China. She asked me to draft a press release. I had never done that before, but wrote something and sent it to her. Now, back to those boxes, I thought.

Asian Wall Street Journal

MANDALAY, Burma -- Despite the military junta's authoritarian rule, the Moustache Brothers are keeping a Burmese tradition alive -- scathing political satire. Lu Maw, Lu Zaw and Par Par Lay, better known as the Moustache Brothers, say that their form of a-nyeint folk performance is as old as the city of Mandalay. It's too bad the ruling generals don't share their sense of humor.

Asian Wall Street Journal

February 20, 2006

As if China's peasants didn't have enough woes. Now, they have to contend with local officials who hire thugs to enforce their will and silence opposition.

Far Eastern Economic Review

November 2005

Earlier this month, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture makes his first official to visit Tibet, on a mission aimed at documenting the truth, or otherwise, of persistent reports of torture of Tibetan prisoners. As in Tibet, in the wake of the devastation wrought during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), a second generation of ethnic activists all along China’s borders has begun to quietly pick up the pieces, finding their old relics and putting together fragments of traditions that were hidden in the villages. But since Tibetans’ efforts to excavate their past and shape their future is linked to independence movements, they have received much harsher treatment than other ethnic groups—including some that are similarly reviving cross-border Buddhism.

Amazon.com

Columbia University Press

Barnes and Noble

Tuesday, November 14 - Los Angeles
Dutton's Books, Beverly Hills
7 pm
Book reading

Thursday, November 16 - San Jose, CA
American Anthropological Association annual meeting
4-5:45 pm
Panel discussant, "Engendering Textual Authority"

Asian Wall Street Journal

August 25, 2005

This summer, I took a research team to Beijing to document police abuse against petitioners for an upcoming Human Rights Watch report. In pairs and small groups, over the course of two weeks, the victims straggled into our various meeting rooms, hidden around the city. Some were on crutches after beatings in detention, while others had lost fingers to torture. Many had the blank gaze acquired over long months of imprisonment. Together, they formed a river of internal refugees fleeing state violence. In thick local dialects, they recounted experiences of police violence, including attacks by local police who came to Beijing to prevent them petitioning.

Asian Wall Street Journal

July 4, 2005

AIDS still poses a fundamental challenge to China's top-down, hierarchical system, even if Chinese officials deserve praise for finally beginning to confront the epidemic with a raft of new public statements and policies. In order to fight HIV/AIDS, Beijing must give up its stranglehold on civil society, and let a hundred organizations bloom.

Asian Wall Street Journal

By Sara Davis and Mickey Spiegel

February 18, 2005

China's grim 19th century style mines -- many of them little more than holes in the ground -- claimed yet more lives this week. A gas explosion ripped through the Sunjiawan coal mine in the northeastern province of Liaoning on Monday, killing at least 210. And a blast at an illegal coal mine in Fuyuan County in the southwestern province of Yunnan claimed at least five more lives Tuesday. They were just the latest casualties in a familiar story of mining accidents, which routinely claim the lives of dozens of young miners every month. China must begin to supervise these companies and the international community must ensure that they do.

South China Morning Post

March 20, 2004

The National People's Congress closed its session this month by ratifying a constitutional amendment promising "to protect and safeguard human rights".

International Herald Tribune

August 25, 2004

At the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games on Sunday, Athens will pass the Olympic flag to China and officially begin the countdown to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But while China uses the Olympic flag to polish its international image and attract global investment, local officials in China continue to cover up one of the world's worst AIDS epidemics.