1 Michel Bruneau, Diasporas et espaces transnationaux, Paris: Anthropos-Economica, 2004; Thongchai Winichakul, Siam mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994.

2 J. McKinnon, ‘Ethnicity, geography, history and nationalism: a future of ethnic strife for the inland border peoples of mainland Southeast Asia?’, in R. F. Watters and T. G. McGee, eds., Asia-Pacific: new geographies of the Pacific Rim, London: Hurst, 1997, pp. 283–30; Jean Michaud, ‘The montagnards and the state in northern Vietnam from 1862 to 1975: a historical overview’, Ethnohistory, 47, 2, 2000, pp. 333–67; idem, Historical dictionary of the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif, Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006; Laura Schoenberger and Sarah Turner, ‘Negotiating remote borderland access: small-scale trade on the Vietnam–China border’, Development and Change, 39, 4, 2008, pp. 665–93.

3 Colin Mackerras, China’s ethnic minorities and globalization, New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003; Pamela McElwee, ‘Becoming socialist or becoming Kinh? Government policies for ethnic minorities in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’, in Christopher R. Duncan, ed., Civilizing the margins: Southeast Asian government policies for the development of minorities, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004, pp. 182–213.

4 Chau Thi Hai, ‘Trade activities of the Hoa along the Sino-Vietnamese border’, in Grant Evans, Chris Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng, eds., Where China meets Southeast Asia: social and cultural change in the border regions, New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000, pp. 236–53; Brantly Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade: the edge of normalization’, Asian Survey, 34, 6, 1994, pp. 495–512; Li Tana, Nguyen Cochinchina: southern Vietnam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Studies on Southeast Asia 23, Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1998.

5 Peter Andreas, Border games: policing the U.S.–Mexico divide, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000; David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, Global transformations: politics, economics, and culture, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000; Kenichi Ohmae, The borderless world: power and strategy in the interlinked economy, New York: The Free Press, 1990.

6 Throughout recent history, these groups have been categorized differently by various governments of China and Vietnam and by different ethnography institutions there within. For more on these categorizations, which there is not space to explore here, see Jean Michaud, ‘Handling mountain minorities in China, Vietnam and Laos: from history to current concerns’, Asian Ethnicity, 10, 1, 2009, pp. 25–49. Statistics from: Michaud, Historical dictionary; National Bureau of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook, Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2002; Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Census of Vietnam, Hanoi: General Statistics Office of Vietnam, 1999.

7 Gerald C. Hickey, Free in the forest: ethnohistory of the Vietnamese central highlands, 1954–1976, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982; Jennifer C. Sowerwine, ‘The political ecology of Dao (Yao) landscape transformations: territory, gender and livelihood politics in highland Vietnam’, PhD thesis, University of California, 2004; World Bank, Country social analysis: ethnicity and development in Vietnam, Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2009.

8 Sarah Turner, ‘Trading old textiles: the selective diversification of highland livelihoods in northern Vietnam’, Human Organization, 66, 4, 2007, pp. 389–404; James C. Scott, The art of not being governed: an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009; Oscar Salemink, ‘A view from the mountains: a critical history of lowlander–highlander relations in Vietnam’, in Jeff Romm, Nghiem Phuong Tuyen, and Thomas Sikor, eds., Montane choices and outcomes: contemporary transformations of Vietnam’s uplands, Singapore: Singapore University Press, forthcoming.

9 Diana Lary, ‘Introduction’, in Diana Lary, ed., The Chinese state at the borders, Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007, p. 6.

10 Ibid.

11 For an overview of contemporary large-scale, official trade that passes through border crossings see Martin Gainsborough, ‘Globalisation and the state revisited: a view from provincial Vietnam’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 37, 1, 2007, pp. 1–18; Gu Xiaosong and Brantly Womack, ‘Border cooperation between China and Vietnam in the 1990s’, Asian Survey, 40, 6, 2000, pp. 1042–58. For more on contemporary Han Chinese-Kinh cross-border trade see Chan Yuk Wah, ‘Trade and tourism in Lao Cai, Vietnam: a study of Vietnamese–Chinese interaction and borderland development’, PhD thesis, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005.

12 I build here on Appadurai’s ‘–scape’ approach to deconstructing the underlying disjunctures between economy, culture, and politics. The point, briefly put, is that the trading-scapes of local borderland residents are culturally situated, fluid, and irregular, not neatly aligned with either state directives or border control. See Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996, p. 33; Bernard Formoso, ‘Zomian or zombies? What future exists for the peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif?’, in this issue, pp. 313–32.

13 Willem van Schendel, ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: jumping scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 20, 6, 2002, pp. 647–68; Scott, Art.

14 Michiel Baud and Willem van Schendel, ‘Toward a comparative history of borderlands’, Journal of World History, 8, 2, 1997, pp. 211–42; Norris C. Clement, ‘Economic forces shaping the borderlands’, in Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi, Barbara J. Morehouse, and Doris Wastl-Walter, eds., Challenged borderlands: transcending political and cultural boundaries, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, pp. 41–61; Karin Dean, ‘Spaces and territorialities on the Sino-Burmese boundary: China, Burma and the Kachin’, Political Geography, 24, 7, 2005, pp. 808–30; Barbara J. Morehouse, ‘Theoretical approaches to border spaces and identities’, in Pavlakovich-Kochi, Morehouse, and Wastl-Walter, Challenged borderlands; David Newman, ‘The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our “borderless” world’, Progress in Human Geography, 30, 2, 2006, pp. 143–62.

15 Newman, ‘Lines’. See also Baud and van Schendel, ‘Toward a comparative history’; Brantly Womack, ‘International relationships at the border of China and Vietnam: an introduction’, Asian Survey, 40, 6, 2000, pp. 981–86; Demetrios G. Papademetriou and Deborah Waller Meyers, eds., Caught in the middle: border communities in an era of globalization, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2001.

16 Michaud, ‘Montagnards’.

17 Alexander B. Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese model: a comparative study of Vietnamese and Chinese government in the first half of the nineteenth century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971; Li Tana, Nguyen Cochinchina; Sowerwine, ‘Political ecology’.

18 Emmanuel Poisson, ‘Unhealthy air of the mountains: Kinh and ethnic minority rule on the Sino-Vietnamese frontier from the fifteenth to the twentieth century’, in Martin Gainsborough, ed., On the borders of state power: frontiers in the greater Mekong sub-region, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 12–24.

19 Stevan Harrell, ‘Introduction: civilizing projects and the reaction to them’, in Stevan Harrell, ed., Cultural encounters on China’s ethnic frontiers, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1995, pp. 3–36; Sowerwine ‘political ecology’.

20 Michaud, ‘Montagnards’.

21 A note should be made however regarding Tai feudalism in north-west Vietnam. These groups had developed political hierarchies not only with regards to their own chiefs but also regarding their control over other ethnic groups subject to their overlordship. They operated in a tributary relationship with lowland Kinh rulers. See Jacques Lemoine, ‘Féodalité Taï chez les Lü des Sipsong Panna et les Taï Blancs, Noirs et Rouges du Nord-Ouest du Viêt-Nam: emergence de l’Etat et féodalité’, Péninsule, 28, 35, 1997, pp. 171–217; Woodside, Vietnam.

22 Michaud, ‘Montagnards’. See also Bradley Camp Davis, 'States of banditry: the Nguyen Government, bandit rule, and the culture of power in the post-Taiping China-Vietnam borderlands', PhD thesis, University of Washington, 2008.

23 Christian Culas and Jean Michaud, ‘A contribution to the study of Hmong (Miao) migrations and history’, in Nicholas Tapp, Jean Michaud, Christian Culas, and Gary Yia Lee, eds., Hmong/Miao in Asia, Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2004, pp.61–96.

24 Henry McAleavy, Black Flags in Vietnam: the story of a Chinese intervention, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968.

25 Poisson, ‘Unhealthy air’. Vietnamese officials would often pretend to be sick to avoid such a posting, while others would abandon their posts or live in the lowlands for the majority of their tour of duty.

26 Anthony Giddens, The consequences of modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990.

27 This treaty was replaced by the slightly less harshly worded Treaty of Huê or Protectorate Treaty on 6 June 1884, which did, however, retain the main tenets. See Albert Billot, L’affaire du Tonkin: histoire diplomatique du l’établissement de notre protectorat sur l’Annam et de notre conflit avec la Chine, 1882–1885. Par un diplomate, Paris: Hetzel et Cie, 1888.

28 Lloyd E. Eastman, Thrones and mandarins: China’s search for a policy during the Sino-French controversy, 1880–1885, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967.

29 A. Thomazi, La conquête de l’Indochine, Paris: Payot, 1934. This war was fought in the lowlands and not on the Chinese–Vietnamese border in the uplands, so it is not discussed further here.

30 See Maurice Abadie, Minorities of the Sino-Vietnamese borderland, with special reference to Thai tribes, trans. Walter E. J. Tips, Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001 (originally published as Les races du Haut-Tonkin de Phong-Tho à Lang-Son, Paris: Société d’Éditions Géographiques, Maritimes et Coloniales, 1924).

31 King C. Chen, China’s War with Vietnam, 1979: issues, decisions, and implications, Stanford, CA: Hoover Press Publications, 1987. See also Pierre Lefèvre-Pontalis, ‘Voyage dans le Haut-Laos et sur les frontières de Chine et de Birmanie’, Mission Pavie Indo-Chine 1879–1895: géographie et voyages, vol. 5, Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1902; Pierre-Bernard Lafont, Les frontières du Vietnam: histoire des frontières de la péninsule indochinoise, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989.

32 It did not help that a number of upland posts were classified as ‘unhealthy’ because of climatic conditions, a classification that in 1912 included the present-day province of Lào Cai, one of the sites considered in the discussion of border narratives below. See Poisson, ‘Unhealthy air’.

33 Abadie, Minorities, p. 22.

34 See Michaud, ‘Montagnards’, pp. 345–9, for a longer description of the military territories in 1903.

35 Centre des Archives d’outre-mer, Archives Nationales, Aix-en-Provence, France (henceforth CAOM), GGI 66105, Mng Khng, ch. 2, 1898.

36 On 20 November 1894, for example, a local French military reconnaissance headed to Lang-Xa-Hoan, a small village two-and-a-half hours’ walk from Mng Khng, and attacked Chinese bandits there.

37 CAOM, GGI 66105 Ba-Xat, 1898, written by Lieutenant Victor Frobet.

38 Although I focus on upland, cross-border trade and movements in this article, this is not to dismiss an important lowland–upland trade that also occurred throughout history. For more on this see Salemink, ‘View’.

39 CAOM, GGI 66105 Mng Khng, ch. 3.5, 1898.

40 CAOM, GGI 66105 Mng Khng, ch. 4.3, 1898. The French colonial government maintained a monopoly on alcohol, salt, and opium, and it is estimated that, in the 1920s, approximately 70% of the colonial budget came from indirect taxation via these monopolies. See Luong Văn Hy, Revolution in the village: tradition and transformation in North Vietnam, 1925–1988, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1992. Trn Hũu Sn, ch biên, L ch s công nghi p Lào Cai (Tran Huu Son, ed., Industrial history of Lao Cai), Lao Cai Tourism and Cultural Bureau, 2004.

41 Abadie, Minorities, p. 15.

42 CAOM, GGI 66105 Ba-Xat, ch. 4, 1898. French military reports document chevaux (horses), rather than mulets (mules), being used at this time.

43 Man Yao refer to Yao (Dao) in Vietnam, while Meo refer to Hmong in Vietnam.

44 CAOM, GGI 66105 Mng Khng, ch. 5, 1898.

45 CAOM, GGI 66105 Ba-Xat, ch. 5, 1898.

46 Abadie, Minorities, p. 15.

47 Interviews, Sa Pa, March/April 2007.

48 Larry R. Jackson, ‘The Vietnamese revolution and the montagnards’, Asian Survey, 9, 5, 1969, pp. 313–30.

49 Christopher E. Goscha, ‘The borders of Vietnam’s early wartime trade with southern China: a contemporary perspective’, Asian Survey, 40, 6, 2000, pp. 987–1018.

50 Ibid., p. 994. Goscha provides an overview of both government-sanctioned and private trade between China and Vietnam at this time, much of which took place in relation to procuring arms for the Vietnamese army.

51 Christopher T. Roper, ‘Sino-Vietnamese relations and the economy of Vietnam’s border region’, Asian Survey, 40, 6, 2000, pp. 1019–41.

52 Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade’; Mari Olsen, Soviet–Vietnam relations and the role of China, 1949–64: changing alliances, London: Routledge, 2006; Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam wars, 1950–1975, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.

53 Interview with Ku, 3 June 2005, from Laura Schoenberger, ‘Crossing the line: the changing nature of highlander cross-border trade in northern Vietnam’, MA thesis, Department of Geography, McGill University, 2006, p. 71.

54 The United States never officially declared war against Vietnam and therefore the exact dates of the commencement of the Second Indochina War are debatable. Some authors state that it began in 1948 when the US sent advisors and funds to aid the French; others assert that 1955 was the starting date, following the defeat of the French against the north Vietnamese in 1954; still others give 1965, the year that US President Johnston sent the first ground troops to Vietnam, as the beginning of the war. I have here labelled the start as 1955 simply to disaggregate events from the colonial era.

55 Nguyen Manh Hung, ‘The Sino-Vietnamese conflict: power play among communist neighbors’, Asian Survey, 19, 11, 1979, pp. 1037–52.

56 Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade’.

57 Kuah Khun Eng, ‘Negotiating central, provincial, and country policies: border trading in South China’, in Evans, Hutton, and Kuah Khun Eng, Where China meets, pp. 72–97.

58 Schoenberger, ‘Crossing’, p. 71.

59 For more on the long-term causes of the heightened China–Vietnam tensions that led to this border war, see Nguyen Manh Hung, ‘Sino-Vietnamese conflict’; John C. Donnell, ‘Vietnam 1979: year of calamity’, Asian Survey, 20, 1, 1980, pp. 19–32; Roper, ‘Sino-Vietnamese relations’.

60 Nguyen Manh Hung, ‘Sino-Vietnamese conflict’.

61 Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade’, p. 498.

62 Nguyen Manh Hung, ‘Sino-Vietnamese conflict’.

63 Donnell, ‘Vietnam’.

64 Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade’, p. 498.

65 Interviews, 2007; Claire Tugault-Lafleur and Sarah Turner, ‘Of rice and spice: Hmong livelihoods and diversification in the northern Vietnam uplands’, in Jean Michaud and Tim Forsyth, eds., Moving mountains: highland livelihoods and ethnicity in China, Vietnam, and Laos, Vancouver: UBC Press, forthcoming.

66 Kinh local resident, personal communication, 2000.

67 Interviews, 2007.

68 Womack, ‘Sino-Vietnamese border trade’, p. 499. See also Do Tien Sam, ‘Vietnam–China cross-border trading in the highlands of Vietnam’, in Miriam Coronel Ferrer, ed., Sama-sama: facets of ethnic relations in South East Asia, University of the Philippines: Third World Studies Center, 1999, pp. 101–13.

69 Chau Thi Hai, ‘Trade activities’, p. 238. Roper, ‘Sino-Vietnamese relations’; Kinh trader interviews, 2005.

70 Gu Xiaosong and Womack, ‘Border cooperation’.

71 Kuah Khun Eng, ‘Negotiating’.

72 Roper, ‘Sino-Vietnamese relations’.

73 Gu Xiaosong and Womack, ‘Border cooperation’.

74 China State Council, ‘Circular of the State Council regarding relevant issues on frontier trade’, 3 January 1996, http://www.asianlii.org/cn/legis/cen/laws/cotscrrioft672/ (consulted 1 March 2010).

75 David G. Marr, ‘Vibrations from the north’, 31 August 2009, http://inside.org.au/vibrations-from-the-north/ (consulted 1 October 2009); Nga Pham, ‘Vietnam quiet on China border deal’, 2 January 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7806991.stm (consulted 17 August 2009). For Chinese coverage, see Xinhua, (‘China and Vietnam to celebrate the successful conclusion of the land demarcation’), 24 February 2009, http://jdz.jxcn.cn/get/partypolicy/cdzw/gnsz/20090224054215381479293408.htm (consulted 1 March 2010).

76 A detailed overview of the importance of the Chinese rural market network is outlined in three consecutive articles by G. William Skinner, ‘Marketing and social structure in rural China’, Journal of Asian Studies, 24, 1, 1964, pp. 3–43; 24, 2, 1965, pp. 195–228; and 24, 3, 1965, pp. 363–99.

77 Minister of Defence, Decree No. 32/2005/ND-CP of March 14, 2005 on land border-gate regulation, Hanoi: Minister of Defence, 2005; Do Tien Sam ‘Vietnam–China’; Schoenberger and Turner, ‘Negotiating’.

78 In Vietnam the precise name of the Pha Long crossing is L C Chin, and that of the Si Ma Cai crossing is Hóa Chu Phùng, but locals know such crossings instead by the name of the closest market towns. My best estimate (from interviews and available documents) of the number of these crossings in Lào Cai province is eleven, four of these having been officially recognized in 2009. Numerous ‘unofficial’ crossings also exist. See Vietnam Department of Survey and Mapping, ‘Phê duyt các ca khu ph trên tuyn biên gii tnh Lào Cai (Approval of the auxillary border crossings, Lao Cai province)’, Hanoi: Vietnam Department of Survey and Mapping, 2009; Mnh Hung, ‘Lào Cai: tăng cung giám sát bnh cúm ti các ca khu (Lao Cai: strengthening influenza surveillance at the gate)’, in ‘Báo Biên phòng (Border Guards Report)’, Hanoi: Co quan ca Đng u và B Tu lnh Biên phòng (Agency of the Party Committee and the Commander of Border Guards), 2009.

79 The third category here refers to ‘trade through government-designated border ports, conducted by approved enterprises in approved border cities’. See UNDP, ‘Enhancing China–ASEAN economic integration: cross-border economic cooperation zones at the China–Vietnam border’, 2007, http://www.undp.org.cn/showproject%5Cproject.php?projectid=55702 (consulted 15 August 2009).

80 Listed in ibid. See also (A study on China–Vietnam border trade), Beijing: The Ethnic Publishing House, 2006.

81 Interview with Ping, Si Ma Cai, 29 February 2009.

82 In comparison, Yao women tend to use cotton that they buy in marketplaces.

83 In reality, the amounts of tetrahydrocannabinol in these two subspecies is considerably different, with the hemp variety containing too little for physical or psychological effects. See J. K. Olsen, ‘An information paper on industrial hemp (industrial cannabis)’, Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Queensland Government, 2004, http://www.420magazine.com/forums/hemp-facts-information/80195-information-paper-industrial-hemp-industrial-cannabis.html (consulted 24 March 2010).

84 Yúnnán academic, personal communication, 6 June 2009.

85 Interviews with local Hmong, 2009; Gu Wenfeng, ‘On the current problems the hemp textile culture of the Miao people is faced with and protective suggestions for its transmitting from generation to generation’, in Proceedings of training workshop on the transmission of traditional techniques of costume-making of the Miao/Hmong people living in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, Kunming, China: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2000, pp. 67–79.

86 Turner, ‘Trading’.

87 Interview with Píng.

88 Tāo named some of these cross-border traders coming from Vietnam as Zhuàngzú (Zhuang). Of this Chinese classification (which incorporates over 17 million people in China) it is the Nung and Tày who are found in Vietnam, and hence would most probably be the traders to whom he was referring here, according to Vietnam classifications. Likewise, the group he referred to as Yi, are known as Lolo or Lo Lo in other parts of the Southeast Asian massif. See Michaud, Historical dictionary.

89 Interview with Xio Bàz Han Chinese trader, 30 March 2009.

90 Interview with Si Ma Cai Hmong trader, 22 February 2009.

91 Scott, Art, p. xii. See also Formoso, ‘Zomian or zombies?’

92 Numerous Vietnamese newspaper articles stress the importance of these developments to China–Vietnam relations and their trade benefits, such as Nguyn Minh Hng, ‘Lào Cai vói vùng kinh t trng đim Bc B trên hành lang kinh t Côn Minh–Lào Cai–Hi Phòng (Lao Cai to be the northern key economic region in the economic corridor of Kunming–Lao Cai–Hai Phong)’, 2008, http://portal.laocai.gov.vn:2009/home/vn/news/pages/viewnews.aspx?nId=21129&cid=407&g=29;586;594;53;31;597 (consulted 1 March 2010).

93 Formoso, ‘Zomia or zombies?’, p. 313–32.