Yunnan

Early in the spring semester, students will have the opportunity to visit the southwest province of Yunnan, and they will spend ten to fourteen days traveling and staying in homestays in places as varied as the Tibetan highlands in the north and the tropical Thai jungles in the south. Activities on this trip are an integral and important component of the Area Studies course, Chinese Ethnic Minorities.

Located in the southwest corner of China, Yunnan is famous for its diverse geopraphical landscape as well as its diverse ethnic cultures. It is the home of 26 of China's 55 minority ethnic groups, and hosts a huge spectrum of folk and religious traditions within those groups. Here we will stay with local families in a number of towns and villages and will learn about local customs, such as the Naxi's Dongba pictographic script and its religious uses, as well as interacting with Tibetan lamas in one of the several beautifully preserved Tibetan Buddhist temples in the area. In the southern region, we will also learn about the Dai (Thai) ethnic group and their transnational relationship to Thailand through local oral performance.

In multicultural Yunnan, students will have the opportunity to experience first hand the diversity and complexity of peripheral China, and the maintenance the Chinese government and the local ethnic groups perform to preserve and develop their ethnic and national identity largely through tourism. In Kunming, the capitol, the students will have the chance to reflect on these identities by going to Chinese Ethnic Minority theme parks and experience directly the global effects of tourism.

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