Being a tourist site in the Li minority area and a national natural reserve of Hainan Province, Shuiman Village in Wuzhishan City has been under construction in the recent years as a “civilized-ecological village,” a state project in name of civility and environmentalism. Throughout history, the Li minority have been the subject of various civilizing projects implemented by the Chinese state with different perception of the Li communities in terms of their practice of Chinese culture, participation in the Chinese Communist Revolution, development of commodity economy, and, most recently, environmentalism. This thesis examines the changing discourses and practices of these civilizing projects in Shuiman Village in different terms of civility, particularly in the last two decades of econo...[ Read more ]

Being a tourist site in the Li minority area and a national natural reserve of Hainan Province, Shuiman Village in Wuzhishan City has been under construction in the recent years as a “civilized-ecological village,” a state project in name of civility and environmentalism. Throughout history, the Li minority have been the subject of various civilizing projects implemented by the Chinese state with different perception of the Li communities in terms of their practice of Chinese culture, participation in the Chinese Communist Revolution, development of commodity economy, and, most recently, environmentalism. This thesis examines the changing discourses and practices of these civilizing projects in Shuiman Village in different terms of civility, particularly in the last two decades of economic reforms. Perceptions of the local community by different social agents, such as local villagers, state officials, researchers and tourists, will be studied and compared, and how their perceptions are negotiated in different communal events will be investigated.

The case of Shuiman Village suggests that marginality on the ethnic frontier of the Chinese state can be understood by how locality is defined, contested and negotiated between the local community members and different agents of civilizing projects in different terms of civility.