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CBSM Workshop 2011
Thematic Session: Indigenous Social Movements
Sansar Tsakhirmaa
Master of Arts Candidate in International Studies
Josef Korbel School of International Studies
University of Denver
Email: [email protected]
“Indigenous identity” as a matter of “cultural survival”:
Why the Mongolian language matters
Abstract
The construction of “Mongolian indigeneity” in Southern Mongolia, a.k.a. Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region in China is distinct in that knowledge of the Mongolian language has
become the first and foremost criterion to evaluate one’s “Mongolian indigenous status”.
Although such status is being confirmed largely ingroup, the emergence of such a framework
and the quasi-synonymity between “language” and “indigeneity” among Southern
Mongolians would be better understood in a context of Chinese cultural colonization and
subjugation that Southern Mongolians are “physically surviving” and also trying to
“culturally survive”. Given such a context, this article argues that “Mongolian ethnic image”,
language loss, Chinese interpellation and a nation-state by co-ethnics all point to the central
relevancy of the Mongolian language to Southern Mongolians’ “indigeneity-building”.
“INDIGENOUS IDENTITY” AS A MATTER OF “CULTURAL SURVIVAL”:
WHY THE MONGOLIAN LANGUAGE MATTERS
Sansar Tsakhirmaa
INTRODUCTION
As far as collective rights for an identity group are concerned, the framework of “indigeneity” emerges as a
means by which to redress past or ongoing injustice inflicted upon groups forcibly or passively
incorporated into the hegemonic nation-state system. The way such groups were or are being incorporated
therein, as can be empirically observed, constantly features a series of processes including but not confined
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to externally imposed sovereignty, territorial control, military subjugation, change of demographics,
systematic discrimination, structural marginalization, economic exploitation, cultural and language loss,
and so forth. Resulting from both the overwhelming power penetration by dominant nation-states and
ineffective efforts to check that penetration by these subaltern groups, these processes may boil down to
one umbrella term, “colonization”.
Indigenous issues are inevitably concurrent with past, ongoing and potential colonization. To elaborate a
little on that, indigenous issues become issues when colonization issues are present. Without the shadow of
colonization, indigeneity would not have inspired a framework, or rather, an instrument that is called
“indigenous rights”. However, in this regard, it has to be noted that groups subjugated by various
nation-states now are resorting to “indigenous rights” as means to challenge that subjugation because these
groups, whether “minorities” or “indigenous peoples”, have nevertheless survived the colonization. Some
already extinct groups (either culturally or physically), like the Guanche people on Canary Islands, that
didn’t survive colonization, generally can no longer launch their indigenous movement.
In that sense, the formulation of “indigenous identity” is contingent upon the “physical survival”1 of the
group in question. As much is it aimed at “cultural survival” which is in a position to bolster
socio-psychologically, to evidence and to attach meaning to “physical survival”, since human beings are
“cultural animals” (Baumeister 2005). “Cultural survival”, for its part, may entail, by definition, retention
and preservation of distinctive “cultural stuff” (not alluding to that “cultural stuff” is something fixed,
neither fluid nor evolving), ingraining and immersing the younger generations thereof, etc. In other words,
1
Simply put, existential continuation of a collectivity of individuals who share a still-vibrant-and-distinct common ethnic
identity.
3
“physically surviving colonization” is a necessary condition for surviving culturally, while “culturally
surviving colonization”, in its turn, requires a symbol that can attach meaning to it in order to sufficiently
evidence its precondition. Under the circumstance of an indigenous movement, that symbol is a collective
indigenous identity. The survival of the indigenous identity can be likened to a “beacon” in the “dark of
colonization”. The beacon tells the world that this “flock of people” of common cultural heritage, though
subjugated and colonized, still “persists against all odds”.
Mongolian identity (or rather Southern Mongolian identity), as an ethnic identity in the current Chinese
political context (not to confuse with its being a national identity for Mongolians from the independent
state of Mongolia), is being increasingly framed into an “indigenous identity”, especially when a Southern
Mongolian rights activist was arrested by Chinese authority upon departure for the 9th Session of UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues2. Behind such an “indigenous identity”, it is intended that “cultural
survival” becomes increasingly the raison d’être for a Mongolian identity, the preservation of which is
becoming semantically interchangeable with “cultural survival”. This is especially conspicuous in
Southern Mongolia (Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, IMAR3), where the population ratio between
Mongolians and Han Chinese has reached record 1:84. Following the establishment of IMAR in 1947,
“Mongol helniig medeh üü? (Do/Does you/he/she speak Mongolian?)” has increasingly become a
“catchphrase” question among Mongolians under Chinese jurisdiction to examine the Mongolian identity
of a given person who identifies as ethnically Mongolian. Ability to speak Mongolian becomes an ingroup
“social prestige” perceived as adding to the person’s potential to contribute to Mongolian “cultural
2
Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), “Disappearance Mongolian Activist Concern.”
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), “UNPO 9th Session UNPFII.”
3
The acronym “IMAR” will be used in the ensuing sections of the article.
4
Rough estimate synthesized in light of both governmental figures and empirical observations. Demographic figures are
constantly and easily manipulable, thus are often subjects of controversy.
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survival”, and thus will be more likely to secure co-ethnics’ acknowledgment of his or her Mongolian
identity. Otherwise, inability to speak Mongolian becomes an ingroup “hitch” in the event of socializing
with Mongolian community, for it may somehow be perceived as annulling the person’s potential to
contribute to Mongolian “cultural survival”, thus detracting from people’s acknowledgment of his or her
Mongolian identity. In such a context, knowledge of Mongolian language is contagiously regarded as
central to the “cultural survival” of Mongolians as a distinct group under Chinese jurisdiction.
This is probably attributable to the understanding that Mongolian language skills, under a circumstance
where virtually no Han Chinese speak Mongolian in Southern Mongolia and where at least 1 million5
self-identified Mongolians do not use Mongolian on a daily basis, are more and more unanimously and
exclusively perceived as “hard criterion” by which to evaluate a person’s emotional attachment to
Mongolian culture and identity. According to such a perception, the more one is emotionally attached to
Mongolian culture and identity, the more he or she will be committed to the retention and preservation of
the Mongolian language, the more he or she is “indeed” pulling his or her weight for “cultural survival”.
Given the significance of the Mongolian language for a “Mongolian identity” to be recognized, the case of
Mongolians under Chinese jurisdiction becomes particularly salient in that knowledge of the Mongolian
language is lending credence to the validity of one’s “indigenous identity” by virtue of its strong relevance
to the preservation of Mongolian culture. The extraordinary amount of weight accorded to the ethnic
language is, symbolic as it looks, distinguishing this case from many other “indigenous movements” in
which even leading activists find it difficult to speak, let alone to revive or to promote the ethnic language
and thus downplay its significance. Why is indigeneity constructed in such a manner in the case of
5
Rough estimate synthesized on the basis of official figures, incidence of Mongolian-Chinese intermarriage (at least over
40%) and empirical observations.
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Mongolians under Chinese jurisdiction? To account for the perceived quasi-synonymity between
indigeneity and language, several independent variables will be explored in the following sections.
In this article, Mongolians as a people under Chinese jurisdiction will be referred to as “Southern
Mongolians” (translation of the self-designation, or autonym, in Mongolian, “Övör Mongolchuud”,
entailing only ethnic Mongolians), rather than as “Chinese Mongolians” (easily confused with citizens of
Chinese descent in Mongolia) or “Inner Mongolians” (translated from Chinese exonym, “Neimengren”,
sounding more like a demonym). Likewise, the region Mongolians call home will be referred to, as context
varies, as either “Southern Mongolia” (geographically, translated from the Mongolian name, “Övör
Mongol”, favored by ethnic Mongolians) or “IMAR” (politically, abbreviation of “Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region”, translation of the official full name in Chinese), rather than as “Inner Mongolia”
(translated from Chinese, “Neimenggu”). The choice of designations used constitutes an attempt to
establish a discourse in terms of the Mongolian language rather than the Chinese language, whose usages
have been conventionally adopted, but may remain ambiguous and controversial.
VARIABLE I. LANGUAGE CONSTRUCTED AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF
“MONGOLIAN ETHNIC IMAGE”
i.
Mongolian ethnic category
Terwindt proposes the analysis of two different modalities of an ethnic identity, ethnic category and ethnic
image (2009). Ethnic category, according to her definition, is “a label for a collective of people considered
to be connected by blood-ties and regarded as ethnic” (Terwindt 2009). In addition, Terwindt argues that
the coinage of different categories serves as a basic distinction between groups, and categorization is often
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accompanied by ingroup favoritism and outgroup discrimination (2009). In the case of Southern
Mongolians, the relevant ethnic category is being Mongolian, regarded as more indigenous and more
autochthonous, as opposed to being Chinese, regarded as less indigenous and less distinct. Such a
distinction of ethnic categories are officialized on the Resident Identity Card issued by the IMAR
administration and becomes institutionally much less flexible than the construction of ethnic images.
The intergroup distinction on which ethnic categories are based predates the officialization, as Chinese
settlers flooded into Southern Mongolia, speaking a language totally different than the one spoken by the
indigenous Mongolians. Self-categorization by both sides based on ancestry, culture and most audibly,
language, has been practiced for centuries. As per Mongolian ethnic category, it is generally self-identified,
predicated more upon Mongolian cultural practice or use of the Mongolian language than upon interrelated
blood-ties or ancestries. In general, Southern Mongolians tend to perceive the distinction between
Mongolian ethnic category and others (in addition to Chinese, also Manchu, Sinophone Muslim, etc.) as
fundamental and peremptory. For instance, many Southern Mongolians may have begun to identify as
Chinese nationals (“zhongguoren” in Chinese) due to decades of overall integration of IMAR into PRC
and of Chinese “colonial” education. However, it will still be a huge insult if a person of Mongolian ethnic
category is misidentified as of Chinese ethnic category, at least empirically speaking. “Yes, our nationality
is Chinese, but our ethnicity is not!” as they may argue. However, inasmuch as over 40%6 of Southern
Mongolians are married to Chinese spouses, according to Chinese official figures of the 1990 population
census7, the line of distinction between two ethnic categories is turning increasingly blurred when it comes
to the “cross-ethnic-category” younger generations.
6
7
SMHRIC, “Majority Mixed Mongolian-Chinese Mongolian.” (in Chinese)
Ibid.
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ii.
Mongolian ethnic image
As Terwindt explicates, ethnic image is a normative prototype of an ethnic category in relation to another
ethnic category (2009). It represents the content (Terwindt 2009) of an ethnic category as connoting
stereotyped, or rather, imagined behaviors and other traits that are associated with the ethnic category
(Terwindt 2009). Accordingly, an ethnic image seems to be more malleable than an ethnic category in that
the normative prototype can be reconstructed. What’s more, an ethnic image tends to be something
relational, because it is imagined and attached to certain ethnic category to further distinguish that category
from another one. For instance, stereotyped comments may come as “Mongolians relish meat while
Chinese relish vegetables.” But in reality, many Southern Mongolians may relish meat much less than
many Chinese do. This example also serves to suggest that an ethnic image is often characterized as being
in a position to result from hasty generalization as much as in sweeping generalization.
A group’s ethnic image as visualized in mind may differ from individual to individual, but there may be
some stereotyped ones gaining dominant discourse that knowledge of them becomes widespread, be it
ingroup or outgroup. In the case of Southern Mongolians, an “ideal” Mongolian male is a pastoral nomadic
“warrior”, donning the “deel (traditional Mongolian costume)”, often sighted on horseback, skilled in
wrestling and archery, singing the “urtyn duunuud (long song)”, playing the “morin huur (horsehead
fiddle)”, well-versed in “shüleg (poetry)”, taciturn, worshipping Genghis Khan, overindulging in “arhi
dars (alcohols)” to the extent of alcoholic abuse and dependency, consuming extraordinary amount of meat,
“nomhon (obedient)”, loyal, “ichimhii (shy)”, “daamgai (tenacious)”, “alzuu (lazy)” to some extent,
treasuring friendship, “elberelt (compassionate)”, hospitable, not competent in running business and thus
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relatively poor, “erh tsol zereg sonirhoh (ambitious for titles, honors and power)”, less brave than he looks,
etc. Simultaneously, an “ideal” Mongolian female is not only sharing all the above “virtues” with their
male fellows, but also “extremely motherly”, energetic, physically well-built, outspoken, hygienic,
hard-working, self-disciplined, courageous, not dependent upon males, often the pillar of the family, etc.
This pair of Mongolian ethnic images stems from a mixture of both Southern Mongolians’ own comments
and Chinese stereotyped impressions, both of which have been greatly affected by the official ethnographic
portrayal of ethnic Mongolians as “pastoral, brave, manly, loyal, alcoholic, singing and dancing,
carnivorous” by Chinese authority for several decades.
Pastoralism (Bulag 2000) (maljih aj ahui), or the so-called “grassland nomadic identity”, constitutes an
essential part of Mongolian ethnic image, because it is unique to Southern Mongolians in relation to
Chinese and clearly distinguishing Mongolian “cultural stuff” from Chinese one. Ironically, today the vast
majority of Southern Mongolians are engaged in farming rather than herding, and “pastoralism” seems to
have become more available in tourist brochures or emphatic fictions than in real life.
Speaking the Mongolian language (“helteih” in Mongolian) used to be a trait taken for granted for a
Mongolian ethnic image, since a Mongolian who sings long songs and recites poems was supposed to be
Mongolophone. Howbeit, in light of massive language loss, or language shift, present in both urban and
rural Mongolian communities, ability to speak Mongolian has been added to the formed stereotypes, and is
increasingly assuming the top priority among the various traits imagined of Southern Mongolians. A “true”
Mongolian now is supposed to possess all the above “virtues” and “must be a Mongolophone”.
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iii.
Mongolian language and Mongolian ethnic image
If language loss is regarded as a “zeitgeist”, because many of the abovementioned traits and behaviors are
premised upon the knowledge of the Mongolian language, then being a Mongolophone has lately become
the most appreciated and most integral element, i.e. hard criterion, of the Mongolian ethnic image.
The integration of Mongolian language into Mongolian ethnic image is emphasized to a greater extent
ingroup. In other words, it is suggested that Chinese settlers in Southern Mongolia appear to be indifferent
to whether one is Mongolophone or not. In order to be fully recognized ingroup, an ethnic-category
Southern Mongolian will do well to be a Mongolophone, otherwise, ostracization would possibly ensue to
varying extent. Despite such a simplified observation, there remains several notable trends:
1) Mongolophones still encourage those who experienced language shift to varying degree (ranging from
zero knowledge, to listening comprehension alone, to being able to babble something, to being able to
spell the “tsagaan tolgoi”, the Uyghur Mongolian alphabet, to being able to read the Cyrillic alphabet
used in Mongolia) to retrieve and restore their Mongolian skills. In other words, opportunities are likely to
be offered.
2) Besides, to qualify for a “true” Mongolian, it suffices to have oral and aural skills alone. That might be
imputable to the low-status Mongolian enjoys as regards daily economic survival as well as to the
immediate “emotional effect” sparked of an exchange of formalities and ideas via organs like mouths and
ears. Writing and reading skills are just “bonus”, rather than “mandatory” to qualify for an ethnic-image
Southern Mongolian, all the more since the ability to read and write in Mongolian among younger
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generations is sharply declining.
3) Even among Mongolophones, there exists a perceived distinction between “high-status” dialects and
“low-status” ones, which leads to long and deep intraethnic discrimination (discussed subsequently). The
“purer” one’s Mongolian is of code-switching with Chinese, the closer one can emulate the Ulaanbaatar
accent (“Ulaanbaatryn ayalga” or “tsever Halh” in Mongolian) found in Mongolia, the “higher-status”
one’s native dialect ranks, the more one resembles a “true” Southern Mongolian. It is interesting to note
that many Khorchin (a perceived “low-status” dialect but also the largest dialect spoken by more than half
of Mongolophones in Southern Mongolia) speakers are trying to live up to such an ethnic image they are
themselves willy-nilly convinced of by emulating the high-status accent, and many of them have done very
impressive jobs. Speakers of “high-status” dialects in general also appreciate that gesture by Khorchin
speakers.
4) Being a Mongolophone is replacing, rather than complementary to, the criterion of “pastoralism” as the
most integral and essential dimension of a Mongolian ethnic image. Since 3 out of 4 Southern Mongolians
of these days tend to present little pastoral background (particularly in comparison with the situation in
Mongolia), public intellectuals and rights activists have begun to downplay that element so as to mobilize
more Mongolophones into the Mongolian ethnic image. Although pastoralism remains an indispensable, or
culturally central, part of Mongolian ethnic image constructed among Southern Mongolians, as manifested
in the tendency of Southern Mongolians to show others pictures of “grasslands” instead of pictures of their
genuine “nutag” (“home locality” in Mongolian, actually more Southern Mongolians grow up, if in the
rural areas, in desertified environment than on the overly romanticized “grasslands”), technically speaking,
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to qualify for recognition as a “true” Southern Mongolian by co-ethnics, it is required to be or “become” a
Mongolophone, and better not than in Khorchin.
VARIABLE II. LANGUAGE LOSS AS THE MOST VISIBLE PARAMETER FOR
CULTURAL COLONIZATION AND SUBJUGATION
i. Cultural colonization and subjugation
Cultural colonization, in the context of Southern Mongolia, refers to the cultural implications upon
Southern Mongolians of the continuous and unchecked influx of Chinese immigrants in the past more than
a hundred years. Cultural subjugation, for its part, refers to the ethnopolitical power structure
contextualized in the dyadic interrelation of two cultural identities in Southern Mongolia. In practice, in
response to the cultural colonization and subjugation, the defensive formulation of “Mongolian
indigeneity” by Southern Mongolian public intellectuals and rights activists 8 stresses foremost the
preservation and promotion of the Mongolian language. However, the efforts taken seems to have been
limited to the urban area of Southern Mongolia where the majority of public intellectuals and rights
activists reside. As for the rural area where the majority of Mongolian speakers reside, little has been heard
of specialized efforts to preserve and promote Mongolian. And the under-development of education in rural
areas has two primary implications: 1) parental generations have great difficulty (due to illiteracy for
example) imparting “competent” Mongolian skills and tend to be aloof to the preservation of ethnic
language; 2) younger generations have great difficulty (due to schools’ “withdrawal” from rural areas)
obtaining “competent” Mongolian skills and are more susceptible to the dominance of Sinitic languages.
8
See SMHRIC website.
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ii. Use of Mongolian in urban area of Southern Mongolia
Greatly paradoxical pattern can be identified when a empirical comparison between the use of Mongolian
in urban and rural areas is made. Such a pattern may be further conducive to the trend of language loss, or
language shift, among Southern Mongolians, which some conscientized activists or intellectuals are
exerting themselves to curb. At the same time, they are inclined to consider it virtually infeasible, or rather,
beyond their capacity, to alter the asymmetric intergroup power relation behind explicit cultural
colonization and subjugation.
The inception of visible Mongolian communities in urban areas of Southern Mongolia became possible
only after the establishment of IMAR in Vangyn Sum in 1947. IMAR was a product of mutual compromise
between the ill-fated Southern Mongolian self-determination movement and Chinese Communists who
were eager to mobilize support from Southern Mongolians against Chinese Nationalists (Bulag 2004, 90).
Southern Mongolian elites, advantaged with their link to Ulaanbaatar and Moscow from which Chinese
Communists derived support as well as with the presence of a Southern Mongolian People’s
Self-Defense Army (Atwood 2004, 244), were initially enjoying substantial say in decision-making to
honor the “autonomy” designated for Southern Mongolians. Accordingly, they were able to recruit
Southern Mongolians from rural areas to co-staff the IMAR administration with Chinese, to mandate the
use of Mongolian in parallel with Chinese across IMAR even if it was no more than symbolic, to expand
and “revolutionize” the Mongolian-instructed educational system among Southern Mongolians on the basis
of Japanese legacy as well as to start from scratch universities where Mongolian-instructed courses were
offered. Such an “autonomy-building” process helped the construction of common “Southern Mongolian
ethnic identity” vis-à-vis the Chinese one, laid the foundation for the co-existence of a
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Mongolian-instructed educational system and a Chinese-instructed one, increased the bulk of co-opted
ethnic Mongolian cadres and intellectuals who were concentrated in urban centers and thus gave birth to
Mongolian-speaking urban communities expected to be “linguistically sustainable” (due to the established
educational system) in major Southern Mongolian cities like Ulaanhot (revolutionized name for “Vangyn
Sum”), Höhhot (replaced Ulaanhot as capital in 1952), Tongliao, Ulaanhad, Hailar and so forth.
However, the urbanized Mongolian-speaking communities did not turn out to be as “linguistically
sustainable” as it could have been even in the presence of an established educational system boasting of the
“best-equipped” Mongolian-instructed kindergartens, elementary, secondary and higher educational
institutions within IMAR. The children of co-opted Mongolophone urban-dwelling cadres, intellectuals
and workers were more often than not sent to Chinese-instructed schools where they socialized in
Chinese with peers. During the Cultural Revolution period, this urban-nurtured generation was
systematically indoctrinated in Chinese even when their Mongolophone parents were being labeled as
“Mongolian nationalists” and brutally persecuted (tortured and imprisoned) by Chinese authority.
Pro-Chinese parental deliberation plus hostile socio-political settings eventually led to the mass loss (Bulag
2003) of the Mongolian language by this generation (exceptions are but few). Their offspring consequently
had very little, if any, chance of being exposed to the Mongolian language unless their Mongolophone
grandparents offered to speak Mongolian with them. Actually, descendants of the earliest urbanized
Southern Mongolians present a sweeping language loss and are irreversibly sinicized even though they are
still found in the homeland of Southern Mongolians.
To account for the egregious trend of language loss, the broad context of cultural colonization and
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subjugation in Southern Mongolia needs to be revisited. Perception of Chinese Chauvinism as a necessary
condition for language loss among urban Southern Mongolians is shared by many Southern Mongolian
intellectuals (Bulag 2003) and rights activists. That is the case all the more since the IMAR administration
that has eventually become Chinese-dominated encourages sinicization under the guise of “modernization”
and “national unity” either by explicitly prohibiting (Bulag 2003) or stigmatizing the use of Mongolian as
“narrow nationalism” (Bulag 2003) or by taking no action to address the issue of language loss.
However, merely loss of autonomy and state-sponsored Chinese nationalism cannot fully account for the
prevalence and continuity of language loss among urbanized Southern Mongolians. Given the eventual
integration of IMAR into People’s Republic of China (PRC)9 and the absolute majority Chinese constitute
in Southern Mongolia (unchecked and never-ending Chinese “juggernaut” by the millions has further
entrenched their majority status), urbanized Mongolophones send their children for education in Chinese
out of concern for future “economic survival” of their kids since knowledge of the Chinese language has
been made the only passport to power, money and fame even within Southern Mongolia. When asked
about the “cultural survival” of Southern Mongolians as a people, some parents will just cite the vast
majority of their co-ethnics back in rural areas of Southern Mongolia to dispel “worries”. That’s why a
number of co-opted “intellectuals” who work for governmental agencies or state educational institutions
based in Höhhot, the capital, live off the Mongolian language for bread (translators, linguists, teachers,
journalists, publishers, radio and television announcers, indubitably beamed to the “service” of rural
Mongolophones) while witnessing their offspring become totally monolingual in Chinese .
9
IMAR’s advent in 1947 actually predated that of PRC in 1949.
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iii. Use of Mongolian in rural area of Southern Mongolia
It remains difficult to provide an exact number of Mongolophones in either urban or rural areas of
Southern Mongolia, since Chinese population census barely gathers linguistic information. Nevertheless,
what can be confirmed includes but is not confined to the observations as follows:
1) More Mongolophones are flowing from rural to urban than the other way round as “power, money and
fame” are concentrated in cities;
2) while urban-raised Southern Mongolians tend to lose Mongolian language skills as discussed in section
ii, new Mongolophones from rural areas keep on filling the gap so that there are always visible
Mongolophone communities in major Southern Mongolian cities;
3) exclusively Mongolophone localities are still existent, but found only in rural areas (of which the
poverty-stricken deserted area of Khorchin Züün Garyn Khoit County, Jirem Subregion, is typical, though
not well-known, with virtually no Sinophones, due to harsh living conditions without meaningful mines10);
4) in some rural localities, it is still possible to maintain basic “subsistence” without necessarily knowledge
of Chinese (applicable to no more than subsistence, and when it comes to education, travel, lawsuits,
medical, general civil services, a lack of proficiency in Chinese incurs tremendous difficulty);
5) only in rural areas can Mongolian monoglots (no Chinese proficiency) be reproduced.
The enumerated observations can boil down to a simple comprehension: rural Mongolophone communities
are linguistically sustainable.
That is starkly contrasted with poor educational facilities and still visible illiteracy found in the rural
10
As empirically observed by the author.
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areas, with the best Mongolian-instructed educational facilities and the concentration of “educated”
Southern Mongolian cadres and intellectuals in the urban areas. In the vast rural areas of Southern
Mongolia, Mongolian as an oral language stays vibrant, while as a written language, it has to rely on the
urbanized Mongolian communities for resources like educational materials, books, legal services, medical
treatment, television and radio programs, religious services, etc.
Then is linguistic sustainability of rural Mongolian-speaking communities immunizing them to language
loss in rural areas? The answer is negative. Centuries-long continuous influx of Chinese settlers, as even
more accelerated since IMAR’s integration into PRC in 1949, resulted in the complete fragmentation of
Mongolian communities in rural areas. In some rural localities, Southern Mongolians and Chinese are
highly intermixed (like Kharchin County and Ongni’ud County, Ulaanhad Subregion and Züüngar County,
Ordos Subregion). In some localities, Southern Mongolians make up a negligible minority (like Ezen
Horoo County, Ordos Subregion and Haliut County, Jirem Subregion). In other localities, Southern
Mongolians have shifted to Sinitic language (actually the Jin dialect) for over a century (like Tümed
counties spanning Höhhot and Baotou), of whose Mongolian identity some Mongolophones express
skepticism. Long, intensive contact with Chinese settlers and overwhelming Chinese population have led
to accomplished language loss among rural Southern Mongolians in a series of localities like the Tümed
counties, Kharchin County, Dalt and Züüngar Counties, producing a considerable number of “rural
Sinophone Southern Mongolians”.
Language loss also looms large in those “primarily Mongolophone” areas especially in the 2000s when the
“school consolidation” project involving the dismantlement of Mongolian-instructed schools in rural
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localities has left rural Mongolophone parents with no choice but to send their children to urban areas for
schooling. On such occasions, either the parents choose to have their Mongolophone children directly
schooled in Chinese at Chinese-instructed schools at higher expense, or they choose Mongolian-instructed
schools at lower expense (these schools are Mongolophone islands in an ocean of Sinophones). That may
eventually lead to either outdevelopment of Mongolian proficiency by that in Chinese, or total loss of the
Mongolian language, or symmetric bilingualism, or frustrated development of skills in both languages. In
other words, the urbanization of rural education is contributing to the likelihood of Mongolian language
loss even among young rural Mongolophones, but it remains to be re-examined what will become of this
generation of rural Mongolophones as they are still in the midst of education.
Although public services in Mongolian are much more in demand among rural Mongolophones given that
much more Mongolian monoglots are found in the countryside than in cities, such services are more often
than not available only in urban centers where competent Mongolophone professionals are attracted. For
instance, some websites have been crafted by urbanized Mongolophones in the Uyghur Mongolian script11
whereas access to Internet remains rare for rural Mongolophone communities. The activities directed at
preservation and promotion of the Mongolian language by public intellectuals and rights activists are
easily limited to the urban area where language loss is often a fait accompli, in part because urban areas
underscore greater possibility of media attention, donor attention as much as international attention.
However, although efforts, fruitful or not, have also been made to help rural Mongolophones handle
litigations, little has been done beyond rhetoric to address the potential or real language loss in rural areas,
11
Mongolians in Mongolia shifted to the Cyrillic script in the 1940s, and Cyrillic script is much widely used internationally
because Mongolia is an independent sovereign state, whereas Southern Mongolians continue using the traditional Uyghur
script, which is a unique “vertical” alphabetical system and thus difficultly compatible with the informatic world dominated
by “horizontal” writing systems.
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to help create an environment more friendly to the preservation and promotion of Mongolian therein, to
make Mongolian cultural products more accessible to the more numerous rural Mongolophones whose
difficulty with the dominant Chinese language, plus their distress with the “withdrawal” of
Mongolian-instructed schools, sentence them to many hassles in daily life.
To account for that, the context of cultural colonization and subjugation by the Chinese state needs to be
reminisced: in the Mongolophone rural areas, the active presence of non-governmental actors, especially
ethnic Mongolian ones, would run the risk of incurring strong reaction from local Chinese authority
re-invoking the labels of “secessionists”, “nationalists”, “terrorists” that have already been ubiquitously
employed in East Turkestan and Tibet. The mismatch between resources and market, as a paradoxical
pattern, seems to be in a position to perpetuate the trend of language loss among Southern Mongolians in
both urban and rural parts of Southern Mongolia, all the more since there is the broad context of cultural
colonization and subjugation.
iv. Use of Mongolian as varying from locality to locality
On the phonological dimension, “the Mongolian language”, in this article, is meant to be an umbrella term
encompassing a variety of Mongolic languages, or dialects, or patois, spoken in different localities of
Southern Mongolia. On the writing dimension, the Uyghur script is shared by whatever Mongolic dialects
in Southern Mongolia, implying a common and regulated lexicon. Discrepancies can be spotted between
the phonological and writing dimensions, as well as between different localities. They have engendered
and reinforced among Southern Mongolians “intraethnic discrimination” (2009), as approached in the case
of Mapuche movement by Terwindt.
19
As far as “physical survival” is concerned, in the context of Chinese cultural colonization and subjugation,
Mongolian is the low-prestige language even in the homeland of Southern Mongolians. The need to
standardize a low-profile language, as Chinese have done to craft a “Mandarin (Putonghua)” as opposed to
various native Sinitic languages, can hardly be prioritized either by the IMAR administration preoccupied
with the promotion of Mandarin or by Southern Mongolians who are either busy absorbing Chinese
cultural stuff for survival reasons or struggling against language loss. Furthermore, it may be to the
interests of Chinese authority to maintain the linguistic discrepancies within Southern Mongolians, which
is seemingly conducive to achieving a “divide and rule” effect. Nevertheless, the IMAR administration, in
order to live up to its “autonomous” brand to win Southern Mongolians’ heart, declared the Tsahar dialect
as the phonological standard in 198012, thus requiring the use of Tsahar standard in television and radio
broadcasting services across Southern Mongolia.
In practice, the official establishment of this phonological standard becomes a controversial topic to some
extent: Tsahar, literary and idiomatic as it is, is a minority dialect among Southern Mongolians, while
Khorchin, a dialect known for code-switching between Mongolian and Chinese lexicons, constitutes the
largest dialect spoken in Southern Mongolia (estimated half of Mongolophones). Rural Khorchin speakers
were reported to have complained about the use of Tsahar on television and radio which they said could
not easily understand. The deliberation behind the option by IMAR administration for the Tsahar dialect is
difficult to know. But for a phonological touchstone, Tsahar does present several characteristics rendering
it closer to an ideal “Mongolian indigenous identity” than Khorchin whose mere merit is the large
12
Coordinative team on the use of Mongolian in China, Coordinative Work Use Mongolian. (in Chinese)
20
population base: 1) it is much closer in phonology to the standard Ulaanbaatar accent of Mongolia; 2) it
does not display the feature of code-switching as much as Khorchin does, that is, it is “purer” both
lexically and syntactically; 3) it speaks much more like the literary language than Khorchin does (due to
heavy code-switching, what is uttered in Khorchin may be untranscribable in the Uyghur Mongolian
script).
In reality, for such a low-status language as Mongolian, promotion of Tsahar as benchmark has barely gone
beyond television and radio: Southern Mongolians continue to speak their respective dialects; very few
Khorchin speakers, if any, can pronounce in the Tsahar way; the “prestige” given to Tsahar does not
exempt Tsahar speakers from language loss. A common spoken language for Southern Mongolians remains
a dream.
According to Terwindt, intraethnic discrimination derives from the perception and dichotomization of
low-status ethnic category (“fake”) and high-status ethnic category (“genuine”) within a given identity
group. Perceived low-status members will be stigmatized as not “genuine”, and thus excluded, at least
psychologically. In the case of Southern Mongolians, as regards the dialects, Tsahar is perceived as
highest-status, Khorchin is perceived as low-status, but not the lowest, since Sinophone Southern
Mongolians are often assigned with the lowest-status category. Currently in Southern Mongolia, the
number of Mongolic dialects is shrinking because many smaller dialects were assimilated into larger
dialects. If arranged according to perceived status, these dialects will be ranked according to the extent to
which code-switching with Chinese is present. In that case, Khorchin, Mongoljin and the virtually extinct
(Atwood 2004, 373) Kharchin are perceived as low-status, while Tsahar, Abag, Sönid, Ordos,
21
Baarin-Arkhorchin-Ongni’ud, Barga, Buriad, Üzemchin, Urad, Alshaa (Alagshaa Oirat) are perceived as
high-status, at least relative to Khorchin. Although language loss is a common issue speakers of whichever
dialect are confronted with, Southern Mongolians are nonetheless engaged in intraethnic discrimination.
High-status dialects, though spoken by less than half of Southern Mongolians, are indisputably more
“Mongolian” in that they are less “sinicized”. Even Khorchin speakers will generally concur to that.
Linguistic “high-status” attaches high-status ethnic category to the speakers of these dialects, some of
whom are in a position to ridicule the Khorchin speakers, dismissing them as “half-Chinese” rather than
helping them shift to a high-status phonology, lexicon and syntax. In response to that, Khorchin speakers
use their large population to lever against the low-status assigned to them, snub those high-status dialects,
and become largely immune to discrimination against them.
In a word, when it comes to how intraethnic discrimination among Southern Mongolians goes, the
significant role language plays in the construction of Mongolian ethnic categories stands out. Different
merits attached to the various dialects are clearly contextualized in the aggressive presence of Chinese
cultural colonization and subjugation.
v. Monist Chinese policies, language and cultural loss
In the discussion of the cultural and linguistic policies implemented by Chinese authority with regard to
Uyghurs in East Turkestan, Dwyer dichotomizes them in two ways: 1) accommodative and assimilative
policies; 2) overt and covert policies (2005). Regardless of how mutually paradoxical these policies may
look, there is consistently a sense of monism (Dwyer 2005) aimed at emphasizing an overarching “Chinese
national identity”, reducing diversity to one colonial principle of statehood and diluting (Dwyer 2005) the
22
ethnic identity of peoples like Uyghurs, Tibetans and Southern Mongolians. These observations collected
in the case of Uyghurs can largely be extended to the case of Southern Mongolians, due to their similar
status of being the “titular autonomous peoples” of two “autonomous regions”, XUAR (Xinjiang Uyghur
Autonomous Region) and IMAR, under Chinese jurisdiction.
The accommodative dimension of Chinese cultural and educational policies applied to Southern
Mongolians is manifested in the “tolerance” of a Mongolian-instructed educational system which offers
education in Mongolian from kindergarten through university, for which Southern Mongolians are at times
asked to be grateful to the Chinese authority for an educational system that was actually founded by
Southern Mongolians themselves. However, such a “tolerance” is not unconditional, behind which the
assimilative dimension of policies can be apprehended: although the medium of instruction appears to be
Mongolian, the content of instruction is composed of almost predominately Chinese “cultural stuff”, since
it is mostly translated from Chinese educational material13. As a consequence, Southern Mongolian
students, even though receiving education in Mongolian, may recite well the Mongolian translation of
Mao’s poems while having never heard of famous Mongolian poems like Minii Nutag (“My homeland” in
Mongolian) by Dashdorjiin Natsagdorj. Many of them will recount in Mongolian to you how Hong Kong
came under the rule of British Crown through Sino-British treaties while having no idea how the IMAR
came into being in 1947 simply because it is not covered in textbooks. Generations of
Mongolian-instructed students have been indoctrinated of essentially Chinese “cultural stuff” in their own
language, which leads to the conclusion that assimilation can also be facilitated in one’s mother tongue.
13
Brief comparison done by the author between corresponding textbooks in Chinese and Mongolian shows that the
Mongolian version is exactly the translation of the original Chinese version.
See also Atwood, “Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region” in Encyclopedia Mongolia Mongol Empire, 243.
23
Cultural loss thus becomes possible even if the Mongolian language is still used in instruction, which could
not have been achieved without the collaboration of a host of co-opted “respected” intellectuals ingroup,
who are translators, professors, publishers or instructors at normal schools training Southern Mongolian
teachers, paid by the Chinese state. Some Southern Mongolians who are skilled at interpreting Chinese
culture in Mongolian tend to be shocked when realizing their grave paucity of ethnic knowledge, while
others may go aloof to that paucity, especially when it is not vital to “physical survival”.
Lately, even the conditional “tolerance” is being withdrawn by the IMAR administration. Following the
infamous “school consolidation” project that has swept the Mongolophone rural areas, education in
Mongolian, once readily available for its geographic immediacy, despite the indoctrinational nature, now
becomes less available and more expensive. Poverty-stricken Southern Mongolian rural parents sending
children to Chinese-instructed schools for a better career prospect that would help the family shed poverty
is no longer little heard-of, which portends a new wave of language loss in rural areas that are often seen as
the bastion for the preservation and promotion of the Mongolian language in Southern Mongolia. It looks
even more as such if the IMAR administration experiments14 the already-notorious “bilingual education”
modeled upon what is being done in Uyghur-instructed schools in XUAR. The practice in XUAR indicates
that it is in nature monolingual education in the beautiful guise of “bilingual education” because Chinese
has replaced Uyghur as the language of instruction in almost all curricula. Once implemented, for Southern
Mongolians, such “bilingual education” would put an end to the last bastion for the reproduction of the
Mongolian language in Southern Mongolia.
14
Boxun, “Assessment possibility switch ordered.” (in Chinese)
24
Policies giving rise to both cultural and linguistic loss among Southern Mongolians inevitably evoke the
themes of cultural colonization and subjugation. The formulation of Mongolian indigeneity as a response
to these themes will inevitably place extraordinary emphasis upon the preservation and promotion of the
Mongolian language, as it has to battle against the principal symptoms of cultural colonization and
subjugation, cultural and linguistic losses, in order to combat the loom of identity loss. In the mean time,
public intellectuals and rights activists may become increasingly cognitive of counterbalancing the
indoctrinational effect of Mongolian-instructed education by promoting Mongolian “cultural stuff” in
parallel with the promotion of the language.
VARIABLE III. INTERPELLATION OF MONGOLIAN IDENTITY
In both practice and rhetoric, the IMAR administration and some Chinese in Southern Mongolia have been
trying to convince Southern Mongolians of their ineligibility for indigeneity15. According to their rationale,
one dimension of the ineligibility rests on their prevalent cultural and linguistic loss that delegitimizes their
distinction from Chinese. Such delegitimization of indigenous status may be intended both to challenge
the cultural and linguistic foundation Southern Mongolians appropriate for the construction of an
indigenous identity and to ridicule them of such a sensitive issue as language loss. Nevertheless, it has
yielded an unintended effect: interpellating Southern Mongolians of the distinct identity and reminding
them of the central importance of the Mongolian language to the Mongolian indigeneity. “You have your
cultural and linguistic foundation for indigeneity, but it is yourselves that are not treasuring it and forfeiting
it.”
15
See Bulag, “Alter/native Mongolian identity.”
25
Urban Southern Mongolians are more exposed to such provocative delegitimization as they are engaged in
daily contact with Chinese that far outnumber them, and accordingly, urbanized Southern Mongolians are
in a position to understand better the alarming situation of their tongue than rural Southern Mongolians.
That may account for why urbanized Southern Mongolians tend to treasure more the knowledge of
Mongolian as central to the Southern Mongolian ethnic image, and why some, though very few, of them
still managed to revive their Mongolian skills “against all odds” to live up to the requirement to become a
“true” Southern Mongolian.
“Thanks to” the interpellation of the fatal link between Mongolian indigenous status and the Mongolian
language by Chinese rationales provocatrices, even greater emphasis has been placed upon the
preservation and promotion of Mongolian for the construction of a Mongolian ethnic image as much as of
a Mongolian indigenous identity.
VARIABLE IV. THE PRESENCE OF MONGOLIA, A FRAME OF REFERENCE
i. both “intraethnic” and “international”
“No worries about Mongolian ‘cultural survival’! We’ve got Mongolia!” Feeling powerless towards issues
of language loss, cultural loss, poverty, ethnic discrimination, unemployment, environmental degradation,
land deprivation, etc., Southern Mongolians may come up with Mongolia, an independent nation-state
established by their co-ethnics, to consolate themselves. In reality, the presence of Mongolia right to the
northwest of Southern Mongolia has long been an “authoritative” frame of reference for the construction
of Mongolian identity in Southern Mongolia.
26
In the first fifteen years of IMAR, waves of young Southern Mongolians were “officially” sent to
Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) for education when a formal “communist friendship” was still
maintained between MPR and PRC. These Ulaanbaatar-educated youth played a crucial role in building
the Mongolian-instructed educational system on the groundwork laid under Japanese rule, standardizing
the Uyghur Mongolian script and staffing a Southern Mongolian intelligentsia. The adoption of MPR
lexicons and usages into the Uyghur-script written language, done primarily in that period, left a lasting
impact upon the Mongolian language used in Southern Mongolia. Also during the inception of IMAR,
Southern Mongolian cadres still had considerable influence over decision-making due to their liaison with
MPR and USSR. The climax of MPR-IMAR cooperation came when an ephemeral campaign to replace
the Uyghur script with the Cyrillic one adopted in MPR was launched by the IMAR administration. No
sooner had a large number of rural Southern Mongolians almost acquired literacy via the Cyrillic alphabet
than the campaign was halted by the Chinese authority for unknown reasons.
In the early 1960s, the MPR-PRC relationship deteriorated as Mao broke up with Khrushchev, and the
interaction between Southern Mongolians and Mongolia was virtually banned as a result. Between the
early 1960s and the late 1980s, Chinese authority criminalized any connection of Southern Mongolians to
Mongolia as “treason”, closed Southern Mongolia to the rest of the world and unscrupulously targeted
Southern Mongolians for persecution during the Cultural Revolution (Chinese official figures 16 on
Southern Mongolians arrested range from 346,000, one out of five, to 750,000, one out of two). Intraethnic
contact between Southern Mongolians and Mongolians (there used to be no “border” until 1962) was for
the first time completely cut off, and this approximately 20-year-long zero contact greatly added to the
16
Atwood, “‘New Inner Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party’ Case” in Encyclopedia Mongolia Mongol Empire, 402.
Asia Watch, Crackdown in Inner Mongolia, 4.
27
cultural divergence of the same ethnic group in two nation-states. Another impact was a decrease in mutual
understanding and knowledge together with an increase in mutual suspicion and mistrust.
Despite that, Southern Mongolians and Mongolians have been rejoining each other since Mongolia’s
democratization in 1990. The economic turmoil following democratization saw thousands of Mongolian
nationals come to Beijing or to Southern Mongolia trading Mongolian specialties for food, beverage,
household products, medicine, electric appliances, etc., which opened a non-negligible source of income
for thousands of Southern Mongolians who were paid for their interpreting, translating and intermediary
services between Mongolian and Chinese merchants. Today, thousands of Southern Mongolians are
engaged in the so-called Sino-Mongolian trade for life-long career, which helped thousands of Southern
Mongolian families bid farewell to poverty. Contact between co-ethnics on two sides of border has been
ever increasing, deepening and widening ever since 1990, which is no exception as far as the Mongolian
language is concerned.
Many, if not all, Southern Mongolian public intellectuals and rights activists now look to the language
resources of Mongolia for the preservation and promotion of Mongolian, all the more since the enthusiasm
among Southern Mongolians in learning the Cyrillic alphabet, though still far from being comparable to
that in learning English or Japanese17, is augmenting. In the construction of Mongolian ethnic image, or
what a “true” Mongolian is supposed to be like, Southern Mongolians unanimously reference Mongolians,
stereotyping their behavior and traits, comparing them with those stereotyped of Southern Mongolians, and
adjust the “ethnic image” more in agreement with the stereotyped likeness of Mongolians (one example
17
Still the most learnt language among Southern Mongolians in addition to Chinese and Mongolian.
28
can be emulating the Ulaanbaatar accent). However, a portion of Southern Mongolians may still dissent in
who represent a “true” Mongolian ethnic image, by asserting Southern Mongolians as “truer” than
Mongolians regardless of language and cultural loss.
ii. Uyghur Mongolian script versus Cyrillic Mongolian script
The preservation and promotion of the Mongolian language in Southern Mongolia used to intend two
mandates: of the language as opposed to the “offensive” Chinese language, and of the Uyghur Mongolian
script, which is the traditional and historical writing system for the Mongolian language. The second
mandate is no longer as “urgent” as it was when the democratizing Mongolia is gradationally legislating
and enforcing the restoration and protection of this Uyghur script. Although the old script remains
something visual and symbolic that differentiates in a way Southern Mongolians from Mongolians, it helps
almost little in reversing the trend of language loss. Instead, the inherent inconveniences of the Uyghur
Mongolian script, like the presence of several forms for a single glyph (initial, medial, final), the lack
of distinction for certain vowels and consonants, difficult compatibility with modern Mongolian
phonology, difficult compatibility with informatics, keep on frightening those who decide to revive their
Mongolian skills, aggravating the trend of language loss. In addition, as placards saying “Embassy of
Mongolia” inscribed with the Uyghur Mongolian script have been posted around the world, Southern
Mongolians are no longer in a position to ridicule their co-ethnics in Mongolia of losing the “root” of
Mongolian culture.
Now there is a visible tendency to allocate greater importance to the Cyrillic script as regards the
construction of Mongolian indigeneity. In an era of computerization and Internet, the Cyrillic alphabet has
29
already assisted Mongolians from Mongolia to open up a vibrant and ever-growing cyber world, whereas
Southern Mongolians, plodding with the task of rendering the vertical Uyghur script “universally”
compatible with computerization, have no choice but to shift to the use of Chinese characters online, losing
ground to Chinese in a new sphere. However, the number of Southern Mongolians able to use the Cyrillic
alphabet is ever increasing, which is practically an aggregate of individual preferences, since the Cyrillic
script is little, if at all, taught at school (except for students majoring in “Mongolian language and
literature” at colleges18). As Mongolian “cultural stuff”, which is vital to the Mongolian ethnic image, is far
better preserved and promoted in Mongolia, and is ever-prospering, Southern Mongolians are looking to
the resources from their co-ethnics to lend force to their identity-building. As these resources are often
carried by the Cyrillic script, Southern Mongolians set accordingly much more store by it than ever before,
“importing” large quantities of cultural products from Mongolia. Equally notable is that the promotion of
Cyrillic alphabet is helping more and more Southern Mongolians who suffer language loss to varying
extent resuscitate their Mongolian language that is directly featured in the “true” Mongolian “ethnic
image” presented by Mongolians from Mongolia. In a word, due to the effectuality of the Cyrillic alphabet
in gathering momentum for “cultural survival”, it is very likely to play an even bigger part in the
construction of Mongolian indigeneity in Southern Mongolia.
iii. “Are we living up to being Mongolian while losing our mother tongue?”
Because the presence of Mongolia, immersed in language and cultural settings that are deemed distinctly
and “indisputably” Mongolian, offers a clear “mirror” of what a Mongolian ethnic image “should” be like,
Southern Mongolians are not in a position to argue that a person diglossic in Mongolian and Chinese and
18
Empirical observation of several Southern Mongolian universities the author visited.
30
more versed in Chinese traditional culture than in the Mongolian one qualifies for a “standard” or “true”
Mongolian. Actually the presence of Mongolia provides a readily available standard for being a “true”
ethnic Mongolian. The most universally applicable and achievable trait of this standard is the proficiency
in the Mongolian language, since other traits like singing skills, wrestling skills, pastoralism, equestrian
skills, being a Tibetan Buddhist, etc. are more individually specific. Southern Mongolians choose to live up
to the standard featuring language skills laid by their co-ethnics because they need to distinguish
themselves from Chinese settlers and to justify their claim to indigeneity, notwithstanding that many
encounter difficulty since the impact of sinicization is ubiquitous.
In summary, the availability of Mongolia as a “frame of reference” for indigenous identity building has
two primary implications:
1) necessitating language skills to qualify for being a “true” Mongolian clearly distinct from a Chinese;
2) providing a standard as regards what kind of Mongolian language to preserve and promote.
iv. Non-Mongolians’ perception of Mongolians versus that of Southern Mongolians
Interpellation by others of a “true” Mongolian ethnic image is particularly remarkable when
non-Mongolians behave judgmental over whether Mongolians or Southern Mongolians are more
“Mongolian”, i.e., more representative of the ideal type of a Mongolian imagined in their mind. In front of
a Mongolian who speaks Mongolian fluently and presents Mongolian “cultural stuff” exclusively in
Mongolian, next to a Southern Mongolian who speaks Mongolian laboriously, diglossic in Chinese, and
even boasts of “Mongolian cultural stuff” in Chinese, non-Mongolians are not expected to judge the latter
as more “Mongolian” than the former. In a word, in order for an indigenous Mongolian identity to hold
31
water both ingroup and outgroup, the Mongolian language, again, becomes unbeatably the hardest
criterion.
CONCLUSION
Southern Mongolians are no doubt “physically surviving” the context of Chinese cultural colonization and
subjugation. Yet to evidence their distinction of being “Mongolian” as much as to justify their indigenous
status to their profoundly colonized homeland, it behooves them to pursue “cultural survival”. By that
token Southern Mongolians are, either intentionally or unwittingly, in the process of constructing a
“Mongolian indigenous identity” to maintain their “cultural stuff” as opposed to that of Chinese. Southern
Mongolians’ mission to “cultural survival” revolves around the indigeneity construction, which would
“perpetuate” their theoretical eligibility to self-determination and to challenge Chinese colonial rule.
However, the “cultural stuff” Southern Mongolians can appropriate to construct their distinct identity is in
crisis. Massive language and cultural loss as the most visible parameter of cultural colonization and
subjugation lead Southern Mongolians to rethink their “ethnic image”, adjusting it by making the
Mongolian language an integral part of that image. This adjustment serves no less to challenge the
“zeitgeist” of cultural colonization and subjugation, as attaching a central importance of the Mongolian
language to the Mongolian indigeneity symbolizes a prefigurative “post-colonial” scenario imagined in the
mind of Southern Mongolian public intellectuals and rights activists. Exacerbating the “traumatizing”
experience of language and cultural loss are the monocultural and monolingual policies implemented by
the Chinese authority, and interpellation by Chinese of cultural loss as disqualifying Southern Mongolians
for an “indigeneity”. The existence of a Mongolian nation-state to the north of Southern Mongolia also
gives immense inspiration to Southern Mongolians over “how to be a Mongolian as opposed to a
32
Chinese?” And the most applicable and achievable trait of the “true Mongolianness” has been discovered
to be the Mongolian language.
In short, the semantic interchangeability between “language” and “indigeneity”, as manifested in the
Mongolian language being perceived as lending credence to the validity of one’s “Mongolian indigeneity”,
can be interpreted as a product of how the Mongolian “ethnic image” has been constructed to confer
extraordinary relevancy to the language, of a reaction to language loss as a “zeitgeist”, of Chinese
interpellation of language loss to reject “Mongolian indigeneity”, as well as of the presence of Mongolia
that sets a standard that “to be Mongolian means to be able to speak the Mongolian language.”
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