Sonorous Silence— Teng Ge'er's Nostalgia and Mongolian Identity
Date Issued
2010
Date
2010
Author(s)
Chang, Che-Yao
Abstract
Teng Ge’er is a very famous Mongolian singer in mainland China and Taiwan. He has won many music competitions, including the Best Artistic Contribution for Music Award at the Montreal World Film Festival, and was recently promoted to deputy head of The Ethnic Song and Dance Ensemble of State. Although most of his songs are sung in Mandarin Chinese, many of them have conspicuous theme about Mongolian live and culture. In China’s New Voice Nimrod Baranovitch argues they are the resistance to Han hegemony. However, can the image of Mongolian pastoral live and nostalgia be a powerful weapon of resistance, or do there have other explanation?
Mongolians are not a lineage ethnic group but an imagined community. The Mogolian identity was formed from the lifestyle, cosmology, heroes and beliefs that precipitated into collective memory. But In the 20 century, Inner Mongolia suffered from land desertification, mass departure and economic depression. Most young generation migrated to city and the traditional pastoral live turned into agriculture and captivity. Mongolians became minority in their homeland, and some were forced to give up their home in the steppes due to the policy of “Return grazing land to forest”（Tuei mu huan lin 退牧還林）. Even the greatest Mongolian hero Chinggis Khan was claimed to be a great Chinese king in history. Those changes and the discrepancy between modern live and cultural memory have endangered their identity.
In this presentation, I am going to argue that Teng Ge’er’s use of Mongolian musical elements, emphasis on his Mongolian identity and praise for the beauty of homeland demonstrate his nostalgic intentions. Through these discourses Teng Ge’er can maintain and rebuild his continuity of Mongolian identity and culture memory. Moreover, what lays in Teng Ge’er’s nostalgic expression is not mere an individual emotion but an epitome of culture circumstance of Inner Mongolia.
Subjects
Nostalgia
Teng Ge’er
Mongolian Identity
Music
Inner Mongolia
SDGs
Type
thesis
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