Asian Ethnicity, 2015
Abstract: In the historical transformation of the state, benzhu worship in the Erhai lake basin,
northwest Yunnan, an esoteric Buddhist practice developed in the period of Nanzhao
Kingdom, has been continually reconstructed by the state and local agencies. As a result,
social boundaries between the Han Chinese and the ethnic ‘others’ living in this multiethnic
southwestern frontier of China have been constantly remade. This paper, through
a review of the state’s interpretations and local agencies’ negotiations and contentions of
the meaning and practice of the worship, is mainly intended to revisit the social and
cultural consequences incurred by the transformation of the state, and highlight, among
other things, how local agencies, average villagers in particular, have cautiously yet
ingeniously exercised their agency since the 1950s by appropriating or recasting national
and international discourses on ethnicity and diversity to serve their own ends.