Dungan Folktales and Legends transed. by Kenneth J. Yin (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Dungan Folktales and Legends transed. by Kenneth J. Yin Rostislav Berezkin Dungan Folktales and Legends. Translated and edited by Kenneth J. Yin. New York: Peter Lang, 2021. xviii + 426 pp. Cloth $113.25. Electronic $111.60. Dungan Folktales and Legends is an anthology, translated by Kenneth J. Yin from the Russian edition of 1977. The Dungans have a very complex cultural background, as they are Chinese-speaking Muslims (speaking northwestern dialects, close to Mandarin) who originally lived in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces and fled to Russian Central Asia after the failure of the Dungan Revolt (1862–1877) against the Qing Dynasty. Recognized as a separate ethnic group of Central Asia, the exact history of the Dungan's formation in the premodern period still remains not completely clear. There are several theories of their origins (including the origins of the "Dungan" name [Donggan in Pinyin], commonly used in Russian and several other languages).1 Now the Dungans live in Kyrgyzstan, southern Kazakhstan, and the northeastern area of Uzbekistan (formerly republics of the Soviet Union). This volume is the most comprehensive anthology of Dungan folk narratives, available now in English for the first time, and features masterly translations of the most outstanding and characteristic oral narratives collected in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in the mid-twentieth century. The original Russian collection was compiled by the famous Russian sinologist Boris L. Riftin (1932–2012) and two Dungan scholars: Makhmud A. Khasanov and Ilʹias I. Iusupov.2 Riftin started to collect Dungan tales in the 1950s, when he traveled to Kyrgyzstan and worked there at the Dungan collective farm in Milyanfan to study the language and folklore of this people, related to his interest in spoken Chinese and Chinese folk literature in general. It was not the first folkloric expedition of Russian sinologists to the Dungans. The work on collection and studies of Dungan folklore by Russian scholars started around the turn of the twentieth century, during the imperial period, as noted in the preface to this collection of tales.3 The present collection contains seventy-eight folk stories divided into three parts: (1) wonder tales and animal tales; (2) novel-type tales, folk anecdotes, and adventure stories; and (3) legends, historical tales, and narratives. The preface introduces the major special features and cultural status of the Dungan tales. The volume also has several appendixes, a glossary, an index, the original notes to the texts in the Russian translation, and translator's notes aimed at an English-reading audience. [End Page 95] In the past, folk narratives played an extremely important role in Dungan culture, as most Dungans were illiterate: They usually did not study Chinese characters, but did speak a variety of Chinese. Stories were transmitted primarily in the oral mode, though some of them had written antecedents in Chinese literature.4 While living in Central Asia, the Dungans were exposed to the rich folklore of their neighbors and that resulted in their borrowing of numerous tale motifs. The influence of the historical reality of the Russian Empire is also discernible in several tales, for example, the common mention of contemporary Russian currency. The reader of the Dungan tales will be impressed by the fascinating amalgamation of Central Asian and Muslim elements with a variety of subjects and figures derived from Chinese folklore and vernacular narratives. Peri and devs, originating in Iranian and other Middle Eastern tales, appear in these texts along with dragons, magic foxes, diviners, and immortal-magicians typical of Chinese folklore and the vernacular narrative literature of the late imperial period. Many of these subjects also are present in Chinese folklore collected in the modern period. Several subjects of the tales included in this volume were obviously derived from Chinese dramas and novels, such as "Zhon Yu Boils the Sea" (based on the drama of the thirteenth century "Young Zhang Boils the Sea" 張生煮海; Li Haogu's 李好古 version is extant) and "Snake Girl" (similar to the story of the White Snake in Feng Menglong's 馮夢龍 [1571–1646] early seventeenth-century vernacular short story "Madam White Forever Confined under Thunder Peak Pagoda" [Bai niangzi yong zhen Leifeng ta 白娘子永鎮雷峰塔]). These, of course, underwent significant transformation through oral transmission. At the same...