Danger Beneath Boisterousness

Examining Market Morality and Its Rhetoric in Anonymous Folk Poetry Depicting the Yu'tan Fair in Pre-Socialist Dali

Abstract

Locating the lyrics of anonymous Zhuzhici folk poetry in the transformation of an agrarian material marketplace with respect to rising consumerism, uneven commercialization, corrupted surveillance, and conflict of interest in early twentieth century Dali enables us to unravel the author's moral undercurrent and the Dengchuan peasant's suffering. I regard this folk poetry as an informative historical artefact that gives us a rare glimpse of how local elites and commoners experienced and judged the 1940s Yu'tan Fair Market. The meaningful proverbs, imageries, and rhetoric in the poetry open possibilities for examining how market morality was built and advocated through vernacular aesthetics. The anthropological discussion of moral economy should take into account the poetic aspects. Zhuzhici, as types of cross-class communicative texts, suggest the dynamics of ethical mentality distribution in a specific time and space. Their verbal peculiarities of ambiguity and indexicality subtly conjure a visualization of the power relationship and simultaneously protect author and reader from the official gaze.