International Center for Cultural Studies

20240306｜The Re-invention of Mongolness at the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands

2024-03-06

Speaker 講者：Ute Wallenböck博士（Assistant professor, Department of Chinese Studies, Masaryk University 捷克馬薩里克大學中國研究系助理教授）
Host 主持人：Allen Chun 陳奕麟（Research Fellow, International Center for Cultural Studies, NYCU 國立陽明交通大學文化研究國際中心專任研究員）

📌日期Date：3/6/2024
📌時間Time：4:30-6:30pm
📌地點Venue：HC103, HSS Building 3, Guangfu Campus, NYCU 陽明交大光復校區人社三院HC103教室

Abstract 講座內容：
Contemporary Henan Mongol autonomous county in Qinghai province is a small Mongol enclave located within the Tibetan cultural area of Amdo at the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. The arrival of the first Mongol settlers was in the 13th century, and with the establishment of the Khoshut authority over the Kokonor region under Gushri Khan, the Mongols gained power all over the region until 1723. By then, the Kokonor region came under the administration of the Qing court but under the power of local Tibetan rulers – except the area of the Hequ grassland which remained in the hands of the Mongols until the incorporation into the modern Chinese state in 1954.

Due to the long-term mutual contacts between Tibetans and Mongols - a milieu was created in which unique local customs, language patterns, and social communities have emerged; the origins of which lie in encounters between Tibetan and Mongol culture that share certain features to form a new distinct culture. With the twentieth century, the underlying Mongolness was no longer assumed but began to be reaffirmed, so hyphenation began to emerge among groups in order to emphasize their Mongolness to others. Since the 1980s, the Henan Mongols are beneficiaries of the party state’s civilising projects to retain their distinct identity by re-inventing their “Mongolness.” Hence, the speaker is pursuing the question of the identity construction of the people of contemporary Henan County by looking at the multiple factors influencing their Mongolness. The findings are based on information she has collected during various long-term stays and research trips in Henan County since the late 1990s, which were supplemented by cross-checking printed sources, such as official records, local history materials and inner-party materials in Tibetan and Chinese.

青海省的今日河南蒙古自治縣是位於青藏邊境地帶安多藏區內的一個小型蒙古飛地。第一批蒙古定居者於13世紀抵達，隨著固始汗在國土區域內控制高原地區的確立，蒙古人在該地區獲得了權力。直至1723年，高原地區受清朝政府管理，但由當地藏族統治者掌控，除了河曲草原地區一直保持在蒙古人手中，直到1954年並入現代中國國家。

長期以來藏族和蒙古族之間的交往創造了一個獨特的地方習俗、語言模式和社會群體的環境；其起源在於藏族和蒙古文化之間的相遇，共享某些特徵以形成新的獨特文化。隨著二十世紀到來，蒙古性的基礎性假設不再被認為理所當然，而是開始被重申。因此，為了向他人強調他們的蒙古性，連字符開始出現。自1980年代以來，河南蒙古人成為黨國文明項目的受益者，通過重新塑造他們的「蒙古性」來保持他們的獨特身份。因此，講者通過考察影響當代河南縣人民蒙古性的多種因素來追求對當地人民身份建構的問題。這些發現基於其自20世紀90年代末以來在河南縣的各種長期逗留和研究旅行中收集的信息，這些信息得到了印刷資料的交叉核實，如官方記錄、地方史料和藏漢黨內資料。