Going Beyond the Western Pass
Chinese Folk Models of Danger and Abandonment in Songs of Separation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6007997 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Levi S Gibbs (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 178-207 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0097700419860417 |
| OpenAlex | W4242202271, W2972468445 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 33 |
From the early Qing dynasty (1644–1911) to the beginning of the People’s Republic, men in northern China from drought-prone regions of northwestern Shanxi province and northeastern Shaanxi province would travel beyond the Great Wall to find work in western Inner Mongolia, in a migration known as “going beyond the Western Pass” 走西口. This article analyzes anthologized song lyrics and ethnographic interviews about this migration to explore how songs of separation performed at temple fairs approached danger and abandonment using traditional metaphors and “folk models” similar to those of parents protecting children from life’s hazards and widows and widowers lamenting the loss of loved ones. I argue that these duets between singers embodying the roles of migrant laborers and the women they left behind provided a public language for audiences to reflect upon and contextualize private emotions in a broader social context, offering rhetorical resolutions to ambivalent anxieties
Abandonment (legal · Ambivalence · Archaeology · Art · China · Context (archaeology · Ethnography · Ethnology · Literature · Lyrics · Political science · Rhetorical question · Seclusion · Sociology · Asian Studies and History · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Psychology · Social Psychology
Metaphors We Live By
Cultural Models in Language and Thought
In One's Own Shadow
Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia's Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931
Swallows and Settlers
Reluctant Pioneers
Young Mongols and Vigilantes in Inner Mongolia's Interregnum Decades, 1911-1931 (2 vols.)
Separation and Reunion in Modern China
A Description of "Jiangjing" (Telling Scriptures) Services in Jingjiang, China
The Oral and Ritual Culture of Chinese Women
Smallpdx, Salesmen, and Sectarians
Irrigation, Commercialization, and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Inner Mongolia
Preliminary notes on audiences in Africa
Language and the Politics of Emotion
Performing Grief
I Heard the Old Fishermen Say
Jeannie Robertson
Expressive Depths
Folk Ideas as Units of Worldview
The Logic and Meaning of Anger Among Pintupi Aborigines
Ritual
The Cultural Construction of Emotion in Rural Chinese Social Life
Anxiety and Ritual
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |