“FIFTY-SIX stars, 56 flowers, brothers and sisters of the 56 ethnic groups belong to one family,” goes a popular song of the 1990s. Zhang Gang remembers that when he first heard the patriotic ditty he felt baffled. “Am I not part of that family?” Mr Zhang asked himself.
China declares that it has precisely that number of indigenous ethnic groups (by far the biggest of them is the Han, which makes up 92% of the population). But Mr Zhang, a 57-year-old former soldier, regards himself as belonging to none of them, even though his citizenship and ancestry make him indisputably Chinese.
In the living room of his flat in Zhijin county in the southern province of Guizhou (to protect him, this article does not use his real name, nor identify his town), there are signs that Mr Zhang’s culture is different from that of Han people living in the area. Against one wall is an altar where he worships a god called Wuxian: a...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2sUc2OO
EmoticonEmoticon