As I've noted before on this blog, doing fieldwork in the social sciences in China presents a particular set of challenges that researchers have to overcome. Namely, that challenge is how to work within a system that is often closed to, wary of, or downright hostile to foreign researchers. In my time in the field this year, I have been lucky. My topic is, generally speaking, not controversial. The questions that I am asking about people's daily lives, and their normal routines, are (and are largely perceived as) benign. The people I talk to are generally open and inviting. The research process has mostly gone smoothly.
This is not to suggest, however, that there have not been challenges. Several different obstacles have presented themselves over the course of the last several months, and figuring out how to circumvent or overcome these challenges is a skill that I'm continually sharpening. Today's post, then, focuses on some of these experiences in hopes that others who read this blog will join in the conversation. As I wrote in a post from late last year:
Too often in qualitative projects, we only talk about the successes and tidy outcomes of our interviews and observations. The moments where the situation slips away from us, or where things take an unexpected turn, or where we fail to get the data we hope for are often excised from our narratives. We need to embrace talking about these moments. Why? Because if we don't we'll never really be able to effectively teach others how to do what we do. And we'll never truly be able to convey the ways in which qualitative research is sufficiently rigorous and valid for scientific inquiry.
I remain convinced that talking about the things that go wrong, or don't work out is critical for people who do qualitative fieldwork. We need to talk about how to act when things get tough. In that spirit, I'd like to share a few words concerning my own experiences.
Most often the struggles I encounter here in the field involve trust. These gaps are understandable. As a foreigner dropping in from out of nowhere, it's very easy to question my motives. Why am I here? What am I doing? To those I meet for the first time, my backstory has several places where things don't seem to check out. I'm a student who is never in class. I don't live in any kind of university housing. More confusing is the fact that I'm not aligned with the local university in any of the places where I'm doing my research. I'm enrolled in a university in Beijing, but I am rarely ever there, and am usually quite far afield from that space. Saying that I'm a visiting scholar often does little to clarify, as it only leads people to believe that I'm a teacher of some sort. Often I start by explaining that I'm a doctoral student, only to have to answer repeated questions about what my "real" job is later on.
To make matters somewhat worse, recent propaganda campaigns have cast foreign researchers in an unflattering light. Take for instance, "Dangerous Love (危险的爱情)," the comic strip pictured above, which was posted publicly in Beijing's XiCheng District, and then quickly shared online, in conjunction with National Security Day on April 15. In the strip, Xiao Li, a young Chinese woman who works for the government attends a dinner party hosted by a foreign scholar with her friends. She merely hopes to practice her English with a native speaker. The scholar, David (an unfortunate twist for me, if I do say so), declares, "My name is David and I'm a visiting scholar researching issues about China. I'm really interested in chatting with all of you." Predictably, David and Xiao Li start dating, and the western scholar begins to ask Xiao Li to let him take a peek at classified documents. You know, for academic purposes.
David: Dear do you still need to keep secrets from me? I'm just taking a look to use in academic articles.
Xiao Li: Uh, OK then.
Predictably David's research increasingly involves the use of sensitive documents. Xiao Li passe on all of this information, convinced that her love is harmless. Eventually however, a day passes where David is surprisingly out of touch. Xiao Li is, naturally, distraught over what could have happened to her boyfriend. The question as it turns out, is immediately answered when Xiao Li is visited by two police officers who show up to question her about her involvement with David. As it turns out, David is not who he claimed to be. Far from the friendly, bespectacled academic who just wants to learn more about China, David is instead something much more nefarious: a spy.
Officer: David is an overseas spy in China to steal political and military information, and we have already captured him. Did you provide him with these 'internal references?'
Xiao Li: What?
Xiao Li: I didn't know he was a spy; he used me! Officer: You show a very shallow understanding of secrecy for a State employee. You are suspected of violating our nation's law.
Now in handcuffs in police custody, Xiao Li is breaks down, and admits that she had no idea. David used her, she explains. He deceived her through his flowery language and false sense of trust built through romance. The strip ends with Xiao Li being told that she, too, is culpable for her carelessness of leaking state secrets to a foreigner, and a last admonition from a stern officer:
A warning from the National Security Organs: According to Chapter 1 on crimes endangering national security, article 111 of the Criminal Law of the P.R.C.: Whoever steals, secretly gathers, purchases, or illegally provides state secrets or intelligence for an organization, institution, or personnel outside the country is to be sentenced from not less than five years to not more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; when circumstances are particularly serious, he is to be sentenced to not less than 10 years of fixed- term imprisonment, or life sentence; and when circumstances are relatively minor, he is to be sentenced to not more than five years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights.
Article 27 of Chapter IV of the Counter-Espionage Law provides that : Where extraterritorial institutions, organizations or individuals carry out, or instigate or financially support others in carrying out espionage activities, or where an institution, organization or individual within the territory linked to a foreign institution, organization or individual conducts espionage activities, and it constitutes a crime, it is pursued for criminal responsibility in accordance with law.
The impact of campaigns like "Dangerous Love" on the experience of foreign researchers in China is hard to track. On the one hand, the poster only went up in one district of Beijing (Xicheng), and despite the prominence it gained on both China's domestic internet (I first saw it on Weibo, China's most popular social media platform) and international news outlets (the strip was covered by The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, ABCNews, National Public Radio, and USA Today, among others) it's unclear whether such messaging found an audience outside of Beijing, or was even that well received within it. Simply put, the campaign may not have reached people outside of the city, in places like Yinchuan or Xining, and it may have been entirely ignored by the people in it.
However, there's also a lot to be found in "Dangerous Love that is disconcerting. In my case there are the very apparent similarities between the fictional spy in academic researcher's clothing and myself. Or, as a friend of mine recently put it, "This must be slightly more of a concern for you, as you're a slightly ginger foreigner named David." Leaving the question of my "ginger-ness" aside, there's an eerie similarity between some of the circumstances of David in the strip, and my real life circumstances. For one thing, the phrase he uses to introduce himself ("My name is David and I'm a visiting scholar researching issues about China. I'm really interested in chatting with all of you") hits really close to home, as it's very similar to how I have usually introduced myself. I must have used similar phrasing at least two or three dozen times when making an acquaintance with a research contact. Likewise, the act of meeting research contacts through friends as David and Xiao Li do in this strip, is one with which I'm familiar. In a very real sense, snowball sampling (the process of getting people you've already interviewed to recommend further potential interview contacts) relies on such meetings. What is disconcerting, then, about the depiction of David in "Dangerous Love" is that his method for introducing himself, which eventually leads to getting information out of Xiao Li, very closely resembles dialogues that almost anyone who's done interview-based qualitative research in China will instantly recognize. We've all been there. We've all said similar things.
Why worry about this? Several reasons. Even without the campaign, conducting qualitative research in China can be challenging. As an obvious foreigner, gaining the trust and understanding of respondents can be a challenging proposition. I've found this to be true in many senses in trying to research Hui identity. My status as a non-Chinese, non-Muslim who is nonetheless researching the Hui has resulted in an interesting mixture of different expectations and questions about my research. I've been asked more times than I can count why I decided to study this topic as a non-Muslim. I've been asked at least as many times if I plan to convert. These questions are usually not suspicious, but are often asked out of curiosity. Occasionally, however, this uncertainty about my identity does, in fact, present a real obstacle to gaining the trust and working in coordination with respondents.
For example, on an afternoon in late April, I went to meet a respondent, a cousin of a previous interviewee. During course of the interview, the respondent, expressed a fairly conservative view of Islam, but nothing I hadn't heard before. Near the end of the interview, I opened the interview up to the respondent. As is my habit, I asked her, "Do you have any questions for me?"
After a brief moment of pause, she asked me why I, a non-Muslim, was interested in Islam. I gave my normal explanation, which involves reasons that are both theoretical and personal (once upon a time I lived with a Hui homestay family in Kunming, and have made many Hui friends over the course of my time in China). She seemed satisfied with the explanation. Her husband, who had been working in the next room and had wandered in near the end of the interview, did not. He pressed me.
What is your religion?
Why do you want to study Muslims?
If you don't plan on converting to Islam why do you care?
Why are you only interested in Chinese Muslims?
Why does your government insist on making war against Islamic countries?
This exchange certainly felt uncomfortable, but again, having had enough conversations on the subject, by this time I felt prepared to handle the response. This was, after all, not the first time I had been met with confusion, or was asked about America's recent engagements in the Middle East. I tried, carefully, to recount my specific interest in the Hui community. I assured him that I respected Islam, even if I didn't intend to convert. Finally, I tried to gently remind him that I had only been a teenager when America went to war in Iraq, and even so, I lacked the political power to unilaterally change my country's foreign policy. In the end, he relented. It seemed that we had reached an uneasy understanding. I left the interview without giving it much further thought. And then my phone rang.
"Hello, David. I understand that you interviewed my cousin."
It was the original recommending contact.
"Yes," I said. "I just finished. Thank you for putting me in touch with her. I'm happy to have the interview."
"I'm sorry," my contact responded. "I understand her husband's opinion of you wasn't very high," she said somewhat nervously.
This felt strange. I had assumed we'd resolved our issues before I left. I tried to downplay the tensions, insisting that in the end it had been fine.
"It was a little rough at the beginning, but I think it worked out in the end," I said optimistically.
"I understand he may have asked you some impolite questions," she said, again sounding like there was something she wasn' t ready to say just yet.
"Yes," I said, "but it's OK. I think it was fine."
Not able to continue holding back, she blurted out, "He seemed to think you were a spy."
It took a moment for me to actually comprehend what she had said. A second later, I felt suddenly very nervous.
"What!?" I shouted more than I asked, adding with a sense of urgency, "Did you make sure that he knows that I'm not?"
"Yes, I explained to them what you're doing," she said. "They understand now."
"What made them think I was a spy?" I asked, disbelieving.
"You have to understand," she began to explain, "they're just not very well educated, they're nationalistic, and they're extremely conservative. They're good people, but they don't really understand academia. Truthfully, I don't always understand her either, and she's my cousin."
I was assured repeatedly that there was nothing to be worried about. However, the episode unnerved me. I have never viewed my own research as dangerous, and until that point, I had conducted research for almost a full year without any hang-ups about whether I was in any kind of danger. The fact that an ordinary interview, with an admittedly obstinate respondent, could lead to me being suspected as a spy is disorienting. How does a researcher gain trust amidst such suspicion in the midst of a political climate that is urging citizens to be wary of foreign scholars?
It's a difficult question, for sure. Over the course of my time in the field, it's one I've given a lot of thought. While no solution is perfect, I have found that adopting a posture of naivety helps tremendously in fostering trust. What do I mean? Mostly, I mean turning the tables on the typical interviewer/interviewee dynamics in academic interviews, and positioning the researcher as a student and the respondent as teacher. Sometimes this means asking respondents to define simple or commonly used terms ("Can you tell me with qing zhen means to you?"). In other times it asks respondents to use illustrative examples of the points they make ("Can you explain to me what the difference between Yihewani and Gedimu sects is?"). Sometimes it simply means asking rather basic follow up questions: Why? How? When? In many ways, asking such questions turns my outsider status as a foreign, non-Muslim into an advantage rather than a liability. Allowing respondents to teach and educate me on the subject of the interview provides the respondent with an opportunity to assume the role of expert. In so doing, the dynamics are usually reversed. Instead of having to be intimidated by the foreign scholar, the respondent is put in a position of authority.
I find this has several positive effects that ease some of the potential tensions and areas for mistrust. For one, specifically requesting to be taught or having something explained or clarified allows me to signal a genuine willingness and eagerness to learn about a subject. Likewise, asking for explanations even to rather basic bits of information allows the interviewee to control what information he or she chooses to reveal to the interviewee and in what manner. In another very important sense, it prevents the interviewer from asking questions that may be too pointed or appear to be delving at sensitive topics. I find that if I behave too directly, or ask questions with too fine a point on them, interviewees may shy away from providing fuller answers. By putting myself out as being willing to be taught, I try to illustrate my intentions and communicate that I'm harmless as best I can. Often practicing such deliberate naivety means that I end up asking questions that I more or less know the answer to. In spite of all this, however, such simple questions may yield surprising replies. For instance, my asking people to discuss what they consider to be the standards of qingzhen often reveals a wide range of responses, and represents a real degree of diversity and disagreement within the community itself.
Naivety is by no means a perfect solution to trust issues, or the increased struggles that scholars face when dealing with authoritarian regimes that are wary of their presence in the first place. But it is at least one method for presenting the harmlessness of my intentions and that I am not up to anything as nefarious as the fictionalized version of the western academic portrayed in "Dangerous Love." Regardless, I am increasingly convinced that sharing these stories of struggles and challenges is important. Without an open and honest accounting of the times when work in the field fails to go as planned, or presents obstacles that we, as researchers could not have foreseen, how can we hope to progress? The kinds of coping strategies we employ to navigate the ripples caused by the likes of "Dangerous Love" or any other challenge of working under the context of an authoritarian regime are critical to our development as scholars on the whole. They're simply too important not to share.
***
FINAL AUTHOR'S NOTE: It should be noted, that the U.S. has done its own version of "Dangerous Love," in the form of a video released by the FBI entitled "A Game of Pawns". It's every bit as absurd as you might imagine. Enjoy: