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Eating ice-cream in winter always reminds me of my stays in Gaoluo village over New Year, between rituals in the lantern tent, the opera outside, and imposing processions. As Chinese New Year approaches, I’ve just added a page on the rituals around 1st moon 15th, based on my book Plucking the winds and part of a revamped series on Gaoluo (see here).

Looking back now, I was most fortunate to be privy to this ever-changing microhistory—reinvention, conflicts and all, as social dynamics evolved constantly in the wake of successive thefts of ritual paintings, with a change of leadership, and the rise of rival groups.

Indeed, conflict was a regular feature of the village’s history, from the animosity between the ritual association and the Catholics which led to the 1900 Boxer massacre, to the social dislocation of Maoism. Such a detailed and frank account contrasts with both the sparse imperial records and recent heritage propaganda—conflict, another core socialist theory, biting the dust…