In-depth interview

Qualitative interviewing can reveal people’s knowledge, views, understandings and interpretations which can be hard to acquire by observation alone (Dunn, 2000). Therefore, in addition to observation, in-depth interviews were also an essential method for examining the Bon believers’ religious practices and their attitudes to religion through their narratives and discourses.

To generate high quality data of this kind, it is necessary “to talk interactively with people, to ask them questions, to listen to them, to gain access to their accounts and articulations, or to analyse their use of language and construction of discourse” (Mason, 2002: 64). Drawing on the interview strategies proposed by Mason (2002: 68-73), my interview questions and topics were designed to ensure that I was collecting data that would contribute to achieving my research aims.

Questions of sampling for interviews are based on the nature of the research projects on which gender, age, class, ethnicity, race and other forms of difference have bearings (Valentine, 1997). Based on knowledge gained from my previous fieldwork experience and my personal experience as a Buddhist believer, I designed the research knowing that gender and generational difference could to a great extent reflect the changes in religious belief and practices (as stated in Section 4.2.3). Based on generation and gender difference, I classified my potential interviewees of laypeople into 6 groups (women and men, each from three broad generational groups), and for monks into 3 groups (three generations) (see Table 4.1). As discussed in Chapter 2, defining a ‘generation’ in practical terms can be a complex process. I defined three generational groups based on different significant patterns of life experience related to changing patterns of education and also the timing of the development of the tourism economy in Jiuzhaigou. I classified the three generational groups as follows:

Younger generation: This group consisted of people age 16-35, who were born around

the time that tourism was introduced, and thus have lived most or all of their lives during the period of tourism growth. In Jiuzhaigou they tend to be well-educated and are

becoming a new force of tourism development. They normally have boarding school experience and have finished college or university education.

Middle generation: This group consisted of people aged 35-55. They have experienced

and remember traditional religious practices prior to the growth of tourism in Jiuzhaigou. They did not have many educational opportunities and are the major force of tourism development;

Older generation: Consisting of people over fifty-five years old, this group had been

through the Cultural Revolution, were primarily illiterate, and once the major force of tourism and have been less and less involved in tourism with age growing. Now most of the older generation just stay at home.

My semi-structured interview questions were informed by the existing literature and my previous research experience in Jiuzhaigou. They were adapted to some extent during the fieldwork, particularly between the first and second periods of research in 2011/2012, which provided time to reflect on the data and to adapt questions to make sure that I was fully addressing the research aims and could fill gaps in my understanding. Through interview questions, I hoped to get richer and thicker understandings of three particular types of issues: the role of tourism, religious practices, and the nature of spiritual belief. My interviewees concerned the three major elements of religion: religious professionals (monks), laypeople and religious space, any one of which cannot be dismissed to form a religion. Particular attention was given to gender and generational aspects of religion. Table 4.3 lists the main interview topics covered in my interviews with the laypeople and monks. The translated, detailed interview questions are attached in Appendix B.

The interview topics listed above are the main points for guiding my interviewing. My interview questions were not fixed to this schedule. Based on the actual interview process, I added new questions, reduced irrelevant ones, and also changed the question orders. For example, in Anbei I asked them to describe their interactions with Jiuzhaigou people and monks and their attitudes towards them. And I also ask Jiuzhaigou people about Anbei.

In my 2011 and 2012 fieldworks, I interviewed 97 persons in total, with lengths varying from 30 minutes to 2 hours. Five of these 97 people were interviewed on more than one occasion. For example, I did two interviews with a young monk in Jiuzhaigou, once in 2011 and again in 2012. The average length of interview was around one hour. All of them were recorded. In Jiuzhaigou, I interviewed 51 laypeople, 15 monks and 5 government officials; In Anbei Village, I interviewed 14 laypeople, 10 monks and 2 government officials (see Table 4.1). Apart from the interviews, I also had informal chats

with tourists, people and monks from other places for complementing my understanding of religion in Jiuzhaigou and Anbei. Most interviews were conducted in places like the interviewee’s home, office, their work place (souvenir stalls, shops) for their convenience, because summer is their busy time in doing tourist businesses. On a few occasions, I encountered someone without a prescheduled appointment and we spontaneously chose grassland or a quiet outdoor place nearby to sit and start our interview.

Table 4.3 Interview topics for laypeople and monks

Research

questions Interview topics and questions

Role of

tourism for local people

Oral history of Jiuzhaigou and Anbei in past 50 years; history of tourism development; tourism impacts in general and on religion in specific; tourism involvement; meaning of tourism; interactions with and attitudes toward tourism and tourists

Religious practices

Everyday religious practices, and their characteristics and patterns; meanings of religious practices; important religious events; Gender and generational difference in religious practices; intergenerational transmission of religion.

Spiritual belief

Knowledge of Bon; strength of belief in Bon; relationships between laypeople, monks and the local monastery; laypeople’s and monks’ attitudes to each other; spiritual experiences in different public and private religious spaces; meanings of different religious spaces; ways of using space; religious practices in specific spaces; life experience as a monk (for monks)

Non-religious life of monks

Leisure activities; connection with the original home; future plans

Chinese (specifically, the Sichuan dialect9_{) was used in all my interviews and my} communication with locals. Language was also a barrier sometimes, especially in interviews with old people. Many of the old people, especially old women barely speak Chinese or just speak a little, so they sometimes could not fully understand what I said. In these situations, I invited local people as translators when I interviewed old people who do not speak Chinese. There was some information loss because translators cannot translate accurately and word by word. Hence, some interview questions which are not easy to understand were given up. For example, it is extremely hard for old people to

9 _{The Sichuan dialect is a kind of Mandarin dialect mainly spoken by people living in} Sichuan Province. Tibetans in Sichuan also speak the Sichuan dialect.

use three words to describe their feelings of their belief. This probably is because most of them are illiterate. Thus I give up this question and replace it with the question “how much do you believe in Bon”. I admitted that language barrier might create a bias towards the people who can speak Chinese. Those who can only speak the local Tibetan dialect are therefore somewhat underrepresented in the research, despite efforts that were made to include them. However, apart from the old people and a few women in Anbei, most of the people could speak fluent or passable Chinese. Furthermore, from my observation, I found for majority of local people Sichuan dialect is usually interchangeably spoken with the local Tibetan dialect in their daily life. In particular many young people and children prefer to use Sichuan dialect in their daily conversation among themselves. Doing interviews with the middle-aged people (especially women) was a bit difficult. As I mentioned before, the main reason is the tense political ambience which made people not dare to talk too much about religion to someone they did not know much. Women seemed more cautious and reserved in talking. However, as I stayed longer, people saw me often in their villages, in many of their events and get- togethers, I became familiar to them. Some of them even said to me “you are becoming a Jiuzhaigou person now.”

English-Chinese language differences also created difficulties in interviewing. For example, space is not a daily used word in Tibet. It is used mostly in formal occasions. Thus in my interviews and informal conversations, I gave examples or rephrased questions where necessary to provide a clearer understanding for interviewees. For instance, when I asked them to tell me the most sacred religious space in their mind, I normally provided examples helping them to understand, such as monastery, temple, home chanting room, sacred mountain. Sometimes I used place (difang) instead of space (kongjian), because place is a more apprehensible word.