Bannermen Tales (Zidishu): Manchu Storytelling and Cultural Hybridity in the Qing Dynasty by Elena Suet-Ying Chiu (review)

Published by the Harvard-Yenching Institute HJAS 80.1 (2020): 222–228 non committal and in-between as Dali’s people, playing her part in creating an ethnicity that is not Chinese and not un-Chinese. Each frontier is idiosyncratic and so is its principal deity (or group of deities). Like other frontier gods, for example, the Three Kings in West Hunan and Huanglong 黃龍 in North Sichuan, Dali’s dominant cult plays a key role in the articulation of its frontier community and the creation of a distinctive sense of regional identity.7 Bryson’s clearly argued and well-documented study successfully realizes her wish to reveal the long evolution of local identity through Baijie’s changing representations.