UC Berkeley Tourism Studies Working Group

Tami Blumenfield
Kui Ge Scholar of Ethnology, School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Ethnology, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico

Friday, October 20th, 4PM-6PM PDT
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Abstract
After a nearly four-year hiatus, I returned to the space previously known as the Mosuo Folk Museum—now known as the Museum of the Mosuo People-- Mosuoren bowuguan—in July of 2023. But it was not only in the capacity of old friend and longtime collaborator that I returned. Instead, I came to participate in “By the Lake 在湖边”: the Lugu Lake Cultural Life Festival sponsored by a nationally prominent streaming media platform, organized by a team of bloggers and marketing professionals, and hosted by the museum directors and staff.

This talk discusses the complicated, frustrating, and sometimes joyful process through which people from the region, long-term staff and volunteers, festival participants and Mosuo scholars co-produced a new museum space, transforming the physical location into an emotional center. This co-production centered on the museum’s two courtyards, including a recently renovated outer courtyard and a not-so-different interior one. Often gathered on long benches and sipping tea at the edge of the interior courtyard were many Mosuo scholars, longtime friends and acquaintances. In the exterior courtyard was an eclectic group of people, who set up tables where they sold yogurt cups and homemade granola; hawked fruit-flavored beer; dipped brushes into tiny bowls of dark ink and carved visitors’ names on handmade “Dongba” paper; and otherwise offered wares to entice their fellow visitors. Periodically, these vendors would abandon their tables to participate in the performances happening in the inner courtyard. A young woman with dreadlocks strummed a guitar and sang melancholy German- language melodies. Another woman played the shakuhachi. Others drummed. Once, I entered the inner courtyard to find someone leading a meditative breathing session, accompanied by appropriately modulated instrumental music. At another point, returning to the space where my experimental film had screened earlier that morning, I found twenty or so people moving about very slowly, arms out in front of them, eyes closed, following guidance to alternately move without touching anyone else, hug someone, think of a particular moment, and/or smile.

Meanwhile, a poet-artist was hard at work in the cavernous museum warehouse space, his enormous white cloth spread out on the floor as the contours of a grinning Mosuo grandmother emerged slowly from his oversized brush, soon to be joined by extra-large characters marching into any remaining spaces and surrounding her. The culmination of this artistic production occurred when his oeuvre was literally launched, mounted on enormous poles in the inner courtyard, and the eponymous grandmother appeared in person to teach an eager audience to sing songs in her language – no small feat as this language has no straightforward writing system.

Speaker Bio
Tami Blumenfield is an anthropologist, media producer, writer, and cultural translator based in Greenville, South Carolina. Her work in southwest China, particularly in matrilineal Na / Mosuo regions, explores the dynamics of changing communities, focusing on gender, heritage, media, tourism, identity, food systems, ecology, and inequality. Since 2019 she has been a Kui Ge Scholar of Ethnology at Yunnan University and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Blumenfield holds PhD and MA degrees in Sociocultural Anthropology and an International Development Policy & Management Certificate from the University of Washington, an MLIS from the University of South Carolina, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in East Asian Studies from Oberlin College. Blumenfield is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and French, and conversational in southwest Chinese dialects and in Naru, the Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Na people.

Blumenfield's research and filming work has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, two Fulbright fellowships, the American Association of University Women, and the Association for Asian Studies. She has appeared on NBC's The Today Show and helped produce pieces for National Geographic Television and the BBC Radio. From 2018-2022 she served as President of the Cool Mountain Education Fund, an organization that supported education and community-building projects in southwest China.

In addition to her more conventional scholarly work, Blumenfield is also inspired by creative approaches to storytelling and sharing ideas. She has worked on mixed-media collages, developed circular photographic essays inspired by a shared journey with Mosuo women around a sacred lake, and translated poetry written in Chinese and Naru. She recently completed 转Zhuan: Turning, Spinning, Circling, a slow-moving nonfiction piece in five parts, a collaboration with Chinese filmmaker Wang Jiaxin.