Two very different ethnic minority communities--the Naxi of the Lijiang area in northern Yunnan and the Tai (Dai) of Sipsong Panna (Xishuangbanna), along Yunnan's border with Burma and Laos--are featured in this comparative study of the implementation and reception of state minority education policy in the People's Republic of China. Based on field research and historical sources, Lessons in Being Chinese argues that state policy, which is intended to be applied uniformly across all minority regions, in fact is much more successful in some than in others.

In Lijiang, elite...