'The Rat Sh*t Chilli': Historical Memories and Chinese Power in Upland Far-North Laos.

This article offers historical and anthropological insights into China's growing presence in an understudied but important part of the Sino–Southeast Asian frontier: the uplands of Phongsali province, far-north Laos. Bringing ethnographic fieldwork in an ethnic Khmu (and Akha) community into conversation with oral history and archival sources, it provides both historical insight into previous China–Laos entanglements (particularly the Sino–Vietnamese conflict of 1979) and anthropological insight into how culturally specific historical memories relate to upland engagement with 'global China' in the future-oriented present. In so doing, this article both balances the disproportionate scholarly focus on headline-making, BRI-related nodes and corridors and pushes back against the stereotype of Laos and its people as hapless prey to an all-devouring China. It also suggests a more nuanced, localised approach to upland oral history: far from being unequivocally 'marginal' or even 'subversive' to official discourse emanating from national capitals and regional centres, upland minority histories and their attendant moral claims can resonate with broader tropes, for reasons owing to both agentive appropriation and locally specific dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]