Editor’s Introduction

Interpreting Sinitic Heritage Ethnography and Identity in China and Southeast AsiaThis special issue seeks to explore shifting dimensions of implicit, adopted, or imposed Chinese ethnicity with regard to contemporary ritual and performance traditions in China and Southeast Asia.The introductory article addresses recent issues within the framework of scholarly debates known as "critical Han studies" and "Sinophone studies," which seek to deconstruct conventional understandings of "Chineseness" within China and the diaspora.Ritual and performance traditions are often overlooked as factors in the formation of ethnic identities.However, they offer a rich domain for examining local inflections of being "Chinese" or, in some cases, resisting being "Chinese."Conventional views have maintained that oral and performance traditions are simply variants of a common "Chinese" culture or are marginal to national discourses about Chinese identity.It is argued here that a range of local players are seizing new opportunities to revive or reconstruct traditional performance culture in unexpected ways.Commerce, globalization, and state heritage agendas are dramatic factors in the transformation of non-elite or even formerly stigmatized cultural forms into iconic items of cultural heritage that engage with notions of "Chineseness" in ways both various and contestable.