Going Beyond the Western Pass: Chinese Folk Models of Danger and Abandonment in Songs of Separation

Abstract

From the early Qing dynasty (1644–1911) to the beginning of the People’s Republic, men in northern China from drought-prone regions of northwestern Shanxi province and northeastern Shaanxi province would travel beyond the Great Wall to find work in western Inner Mongolia, in a migration known as “going beyond the Western Pass” 走西口. This article analyzes anthologized song lyrics and ethnographic interviews about this migration to explore how songs of separation performed at temple fairs approached danger and abandonment using traditional metaphors and “folk models” similar to those of parents protecting children from life’s hazards and widows and widowers lamenting the loss of loved ones. I argue that these duets between singers embodying the roles of migrant laborers and the women they left behind provided a public language for audiences to reflect upon and contextualize private emotions in a broader social context, offering rhetorical resolutions to ambivalent anxieties.