Assessing Heritage, Tradition, and Identity：Anthropological Research among the Jurchen People of Wanyan Village.

Abstract

This dissertation traces the Chinese governmental project, Chinese Ethnics Identification Pro-ject (CEIP), of classifying the minorities’ social identity into a binary. Nevertheless, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) government hated to admit this binary expression since it left a delusion to stress a horizontal equality among the ethnic minorities of equality status in Chi-nese policy. My research is also pertinent to investigating nation-state monopolies of legality and practices across the world as disenfranchised minorities argue for equal rights, privileges, and self-representation. Between 2011-2014 I conducted five visits and covered 15 months of fieldwork in the village of Wanyan, Jingchuan County, Lanzhou City and Gansu Province. I conducted in-depth in-terviews with villagers and observed their daily life during my stay with several households. In order to assess the identity, heritage and tradition among the Jurchen people in Wanyan village, the historical past and present of these Jurchen will be thoroughly analyzed to con-struct memory and further assess the identity these people are still fighting for.