Podcast Summary: “The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade”

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Professor Anru Li
Guest: Dr. Suvi Rautio
Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Overview

This episode features Professor Anru Li in conversation with Dr. Suvi Rautio, author of The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade (Palgrave, 2024). The episode delves into the remaking of Meili—a Dong ethnic minority village in Guizhou, China—into a model “traditional village” and national heritage site. Through Dr. Rautio’s ethnographic research, the discussion reveals how the concept of “tradition” is continuously invented and negotiated, demonstrating the complex interplay of state, technocratic, and local interests in contemporary China’s heritage and modernization projects.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Motivation and Field Site Selection (03:57 – 11:16)

• Suvi’s ties to China: Dr. Rautio shares her lifelong relationship with China, moving there as a child and returning for study and work, which inspired her research interests.
• Initial fieldwork: Early studies in Fujian’s village, then shifting to Guizhou after recognizing the vibrancy and complexity of heritage schemes there (05:00).
• Guizhou’s significance:
  • Home to 17 ethnic minorities and China’s largest poverty-stricken population.
  • Known for mountainous, landlocked terrain and rural poverty.
  • Local saying: “First thing you open the door in the morning, and your feet are blocked by a mountain.” (08:30)
  • Reference to James Scott’s concept of highland “state-resistant” spaces.
• Meili Village: A Dong village (~1,300 residents), not hollowed out by migration like some others, with young people returning due to economic factors.

2. The Invention and Politics of Tradition (13:01 – 19:37)

• Analytical Framework:
  • Draws on Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983) and their notion of “the invention of tradition” as a modern nation-building tool.
  • Heritage projects are part of the Chinese state's efforts to foster unity and continuity, especially among ethnic minorities.
• Heritage schemes as political and economic tools:
  • Serve nationalistic aims and help manage effects of rural depopulation.
  • Urbanization radically reshaped village life: rural population dropped from 70% (2000) to 35% (2024).
• Criteria for “traditional village” status:
  • History & culture, architectural conservation, intangible heritage, and vernacular layout (Wanzhong).
  • Ambiguous and widely interpreted, with political aims overriding purely cultural or historical measures.
• Statistics:
  • 2012: 648 villages listed (90 in Guizhou).
  • 2024: Over 8,155 traditional villages nationwide.

3. Center and Periphery: Narratives and Power (20:48 – 25:04)

• Historical perceptions:
  • Imperial China’s “center versus periphery” persists in views of Guizhou as other, remote, and marginal.
• Relational identities:
  • For those living in peripheries, their community is the “center”—a self-concept that shapes their resistance or adaptation to outside projects.
  • Quote: “If you live in the peripheries, your world is your center, and that's how you define your own inclusive social orderings.” (22:25)
• Methodological focus:
  • Dr. Rautio analyzes how differing perspectives (“vantage points and scales”) among state actors, technocrats, and villagers inform heritage-making and disputes.

4. The Role of Technocratic Elites and Knowledge Workers (25:50 – 32:59)

• Technocrats’ influence:
  • Urban experts (architects, academics) are essential in designing and legitimizing “heritage” plans, supplying scientific rationale.
  • These scholars occupy an ambiguous space—serving both state interests and, at times, local needs.
  • Suvi’s own complicated involvement: “I was included in the heritage scheme paperwork... It put me in a very ambivalent position.” (25:57)
• Conflicting perspectives:
  • Tension exists between technocrats’ panoramic/objective views and villagers’ lived realities.
  • Attempts to represent local dissent frequently ignored: “I have found that these reports I was writing and the advice I was giving... were being ignored.” (27:22)

5. Materiality, Compromise, and Local Agency (33:56 – 39:52)

• Villagers’ adaptations:
  • Heritage status restricts changes to houses’ “vernacular layout” (wanzhong), frustrating residents wanting modern amenities.
  • Example of compromise:
    • Officials ordered brick fences to be covered in “mud” for an “authentic” look (35:48).
    • Villagers objected, claiming (not entirely accurately) that this was untraditional for the Dong.
    • By using the discourse of “ethnic heritage,” the villagers succeeded in blocking the mud plan.
  • Insightful observation: “Material compromises... resolve disputes and tensions and voice villagers’ needs in the heritage scheme.” (36:53)
• Ambiguity of “authenticity:”
  • Chinese heritage values often differ from Western ones, sometimes valuing imitation and replication as much as material continuity.

6. Gendered Experiences: Masculinity and Women’s Work (40:59 – 58:43)

• Masculinities:
  • Focus on “rural returnee” men like Uncle Long, whose self-worth derives from agricultural labor and self-reliance.
  • These men mock urban experts as impractical outsiders:
    • “Look at them. They think they're like professionals, but all they really do is look at their maps and charts...They won't get anything done really. The problem is that they don't know how to get their hands dirty.” (46:15)
  • The state expects villagers to be “self-reliant,” even as opportunities are structured and often exploitative.
• Women’s labor and commodification:
  • Dong textile crafts (embroidery, weaving) are central to women’s identity; these crafts traditionally serve social and ritual roles (e.g., marriage, funerals).
  • Marketization through state-backed “communes” rebrands craft as “tradition” and entrepreneurship, but real economic rewards elude village women, who often aren’t compensated fairly (50:10).
  • Communal models erode individual recognition: “When [a textile] was displayed at an exhibition, the entire commune's name was on display, not the actual maker, which many found upsetting.” (54:30)
  • Conclusion: Heritage schemes rarely liberate women or transform gender hierarchies; participation and emancipation remain tenuous.

7. Cultural Performances and Social Unraveling (58:43 – 67:34)

• Singing as Contested Heritage:
  • Singing, especially “Dong Big Song,” brands Dong identity and earns international recognition (e.g., UNESCO).
  • State and market pressures standardize and commodify singing, changing its form and meaning; younger, prettier choir members are prioritized, displacing older women.
  • Competitions spark conflict, highlighting undercurrents of violence and rivalry:
    • “I was often struck by just how much violence and aggression was on display. Violence did also come on display through song competitions...” (61:47)
  • Key insight: Rather than fostering unity, heritage schemes sometimes create new battlegrounds within communities.

8. Ritual, Memory, and the Heart of Tradition (67:43 – 72:27)

• Death rituals as living tradition:
  • Preparing for and enacting funerals (e.g., feeding the soul-carrying spider, marking graves) is core to Meili’s culture—far more so than static “heritage objects.”
  • Ritual ensures intergenerational continuity and embodies “tradition” as a lived, evolving practice.
  • Suvi’s interpretation: “For the residents of Meili, tradition is lived through ritual... Ritual creates and upholds a feeling of collective effervescence and a sense of loyalty...” (71:00)
  • Final analytical move: Contrasts top-down, panoramic/state views of tradition with the villagers’ own, experience-based understanding.

9. Conclusion: Remaking the Nation (72:47 – 74:14)

• Heritage as politics of memory and national unity:
  • The state shapes heritage to “block out unwanted shadows of the past,” fostering an sanitized narrative of national continuity.
  • Under Xi Jinping, this politics of memory is more aggressive, insisting on a singular, “univocal” identity.

10. Future Research (74:29 – 77:20)

• Suvi Rautio’s current project:
  • Investigates how political recruitment of history and the politics of remembering/forgetting shape today’s China, with a personal turn to her own family’s history as foreign-born intellectuals in Maoist Beijing.

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On the stakes of tradition:
  “Heritage schemes really put a lot of effort... to create a shared sense of collectivity, so that ethnic minorities feel like they belong with the Han rather than separate. And that's a very new political tactic in more recent years.” — Suvi Rautio (13:48)
• On center and periphery:
  “If you live in the peripheries, your world is your center, and that's how you define your own inclusive social orderings.” — Suvi Rautio (22:25)
• On the ambivalence of technocratic knowledge:
  “I was included in the heritage scheme paperwork... It put me in a very ambivalent position.” — Suvi Rautio (25:57)
• On resisting state plans:
  “The village leader could have just said the mud looks cheap and ugly and we hate it. But instead, they employed political concepts so that... they were able to use verbal cues that resonated with ethnicity, tradition and authenticity.” — Suvi Rautio (36:53)
• On changing masculinity:
  “He carried pride in the tough labor that he does... His enthusiasm, also was a way of him suggesting that I wasn't just a guest... but his eagerness to put me to work signals his attitudes towards labor and being a productive individual.” — Suvi Rautio, on Uncle Long (43:48)
• On women’s craft labor: “When they produced, let's say, a pillow cover, the money got distributed across everybody in the commune, regardless of how many people actually made the pillow cover...” — Suvi Rautio (54:00)
• On the lived meaning of tradition:
  “For the residents of Meili, tradition is lived through ritual... Ritual creates and upholds a feeling of collective effervescence and a sense of loyalty...” — Suvi Rautio (71:00)
• On the politics of heritage:
  “Heritage sites have become battlegrounds of contested meaning around tradition. These contested meanings are deeply intertwined with the CCP's motivations to display a carefully selected area of its heritage as a means to celebrate the unification of a multi ethnic nation state and to distort and conceal any breaks in its continuity.” — Suvi Rautio (73:05)

Important Segments (Timestamps)

• [03:57] — Dr. Rautio’s personal trajectory and entry into Guizhou
• [13:01] — The “invention of tradition,” state policy, and the heritage economy
• [20:48] — Center/periphery, marginality, and shifting vantage points
• [25:50] — Technocratic elites, experts, and positionality in heritage schemes
• [33:56] — Materiality, compromise, and villagers’ negotiation strategies
• [40:59] — Rural masculinity, labor, and class tensions
• [50:10] — Women’s craft labor and the commodification of tradition
• [58:43] — Singing, competition, and intra-village conflict
• [67:43] — Ritual, memory, and the true heart of tradition
• [72:47] — National remaking, memory politics, and heritage as statecraft
• [74:29] — Dr. Rautio’s future research directions

Memorable Moments

• The story of villagers swaying officials’ decisions by invoking “authentic Dong” traditions—even when not strictly true (36:53).
• Dr. Rautio’s vulnerability in reflecting on her conflicted position as both participant and observer (28:08).
• The vivid description of death rituals, weaving together kinship, land, and ongoing relationships with the dead (68:40).
• Irony and conflict in singing competitions: the very “tradition” promoted by the state causing division, not harmony, in village life (58:43).

Tone and Style

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Rautio’s tone is reflective, nuanced, and empathetic, moving fluidly between critical analysis of policy, evocative ethnographic description, and candid self-reflection about her research journey and positionality. The host, Professor Li, invites deep dives into both conceptual and concrete aspects, ensuring that the conversation bridges theory and lived reality.

Final Thoughts

This episode provides a layered, eye-opening exploration of how “tradition” is ceaselessly recreated amid shifting political, social, and economic landscapes in rural China. Through intricate ethnography, Dr. Suvi Rautio reveals both the compromises and contestations at the heart of China’s heritage project, illuminating how state-driven narratives of continuity profoundly shape—and sometimes fracture—the lives and identities of those they seek to represent.