David Holm

National Chengchi University · Department of Ethnology

The author has conducted a survey of the vernacular character scripts of the Tai-speaking ethnic groups of southern China, including the Zhuang, Bouyei, Nong and Sha. The survey analysed traditional texts from 45 different locations, including four texts from northern Vietnam. The results of that survey were published in Mapping the Old Zhuang Char...

Corrigenda to Holm, Crossing the Seas, Sino-Platonic Papers

Over two decades ago, Jerold Edmondson and Li Jinfang conducted linguistic fieldwork in the China–Vietnam borderlands, and posited the existence of a migration corridor running between Guizhou province and the northern provinces of Vietnam, passing through the eastern part of Yunnan. This hypothesis was based on linguistic evidence, so they called...

High in the karst uplands of southwestern Guangxi and northern Vietnam, among Taispeaking communities, both female and male religious practitioners perform a ritual segment called “Crossing the Seas” (Khảm hải). This ritual is a genuinely shamanic performance, being part of a journey to the sky. It stands out not only because it seems geographicall...

Then is the designation in Vietnamese and Tày given to shamanic practitioners of the Tày ethnicity, who reside mainly in the northern provinces of Vietnam. Scholars are long aware that the predominantly female spirit mediums among the Zhuang in Guangxi, variously called mehmoed or mehgimq, had a ritual repertoire which included shamanic journeys up...

This article is devoted to establishing, by means of textual and comparative evidence, a link between the religious practitioners called mogong (Zh. bouxmo) and chiefly houses. The mogong are male priests who recite texts in the ‘local’ language, in this case Zhuang or Bouyei. They are also found among other Tai peoples, including the Dai in Yunnan...

For many centuries, like a number of other non-sinitic peoples in the south of China, the Tai people now known as the Zhuang have made use of a character script derived from Chinese. The Zhuang are a Tai-speaking people primarily inhabiting present-day Guangxi, but also parts of Guizhou, Guangdong, and Yunnan; they are closely related to the Bouyei...

The Old Zhuang Script is an instance of a borrowed Chinese character script. Zhuang is the current designation for the northern and central Tai languages spoken in Guangxi in southern China. On the basis of a corpus of traditional texts, as recited by traditional owners, this article presents a typology of Zhuang readings of the standard Chinese ch...

Scholars who study the old Zhuang character script most often focus on the exotic elements. However, many of the variant and vernacular characters found in traditional Zhuang manuscripts turn out not to be local Zhuang or Guangxi inventions. Rather, they can be shown to have direct parallels in mainstream written Chinese. They are best considered p...

Using the story of Dong Yong as a point of departure, this article explores questions of acculturation among the Tai-speaking peoples in the south of China, the relationship between Taoism and primordial religion, and the efficacy of the Chinese state's "civilising project". Michchel Strickmann noted that the ritual traditions of southern minoritie...

This article is about one of the most depressing fieldwork situations I have ever encountered in China. Tiaoxi, basically, is dead. Some of the old artists are still alive, but the plays themselves were performed for the last time in 1987. There is video footage, taken by a professional team from the Ministry of Culture in Beijing, but the quality...

Music censorship in China

The Performing Arts in Contemporary China. By MackerrasColin. [London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 243 pp. £13·50.] - Volume 92 - David Holm

It has long been recognized that there is a particularly close relationship between art and politics in post-1949 China. And indeed this is true. The relationship, however, has usually been viewed only in “macro” terms, as one in which the Party – or the Party through its agents – stifles dissent and makes demands on writers and artists for works r...

Twentieth-century Chinese Writers and Their Pen Names. By ChuPaoliang. [Boston: G. K. Hall 8 Co., 1977. Reference Publications in Asian Studies. 366 pp. $35.00.] - Volume 84 - David Holm

A Type Index of Chinese Folktales. By TingNai-Tung. [FF Communications No. 223, Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1978. 294 pp. FM130.] - Volume 84 - David Holm

Chinese Communist Materials at the Bureau of Investigation Archives, Taiwan. By DonovanPeter, DorrisCarl E., and SullivanLawrence R.. [Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1976. 105 pp. Paperback $3.00.] - Volume 70 - David Holm

BLDSC reference no.: D32375/80. Thesis (D. Phil.)--University of Oxford, 1979. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 387-393).

Thesis (D.Phil.)--Corpus Christi College, 1979. "British thesis."--Cover. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-393). Photocopy.