Abstract
We focus here on a Han village-level shehuo in Qinghai, a series of dancing and singing performances held only during Spring Festival (the fifteen days at the beginning of the Chinese lunar year). Particularly, we examine shehuo among Han Chinese in the region embracing the presentday Minhe Hui and Tu (Monguor) Autonomous County,' located in the agricultural eastern area of Qinghai in China's remote northwest. This general area is well described in Schram's three-volume work (1954; 1957; 1961) on the Monguor-a Mongolian-speaking people-during his years as a missionary there in the early twentieth century. Yu (1989) has discussed yuanshi yanju (primitive theatre) in China. By primitive theatre, he refers to ancient forms closely connected with religious ritual that have been preserved in certain remote regions as living fossils, essentially unchanged by modern civilization. . . . Various types of exorcistic performances (nuoxi) comprise the principal category of primitive theatre. . . . The vast majority of exorcistic performances are given at the Chinese new year's Spring Festival (chunjie) and are intended to drive out the ghosts of the old year in preparation for the new. In Qinghai, in addition to exorcism, shehuo fulfills several functions: it seeks to delight the gods so that they will send bounteous harvests, reminds a peasant populace of the importance of agricultural labor,
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