The Geographic Location of Maogusi's Origin
Section 2: The Geographic Environment of Maogusi's Origin. Every human culture has its geographic setting. Beyond its historical background, Maogusi also arose in a particular geographic environment. Broadly, this is the You River basin of the Wuling Mountains.
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Section Two: The Geographical Environment in Which Maogusi Arose
Every human culture has the geographical environment in which it arose. In addition to its historical background, the rise of Maogusi also had its own geographical environment. Maogusi arose in a special geographical environment.
In terms of the broader environment, the environment of Maogusi is in the You River basin of the Wuling Mountain area. What kind of geographical environment is the You River basin? It is a closed geographical environment. Within the borders of the four counties of Longshan, Yongshun, Baojing, and Guzhang in western Hunan, there are basically steep high mountains, crisscrossing ravines, shrouding clouds and mist, dense forests, rugged roads, and few outsiders—the best place for primitive human life and habitation. Before the Ming and Qing dynasties, many villages and stockaded settlements mostly belonged to outlying areas "not in communication with China," and there was an unwritten custom that "the Han do not enter the territory, the Miao do not leave the stockade." Overall, the natural environment in which Maogusi arose was an area with relatively harsh production conditions and relatively impoverished living conditions.
Even by the 1980s and 1990s, the Tujia areas were still very poor and backward. In order to let the local people obtain some tangible benefits, the government also formulated some related policies. On July 8, 2003, when the author conducted an on-site investigation in Pojiao Township, Longshan County, I found in the township government office a document formulated in 1983 by the General Office of the Hunan Provincial People's Government. The document was mainly issued regarding the policy for purchasing agricultural and sideline products in the Tujia mountain areas. The relevant content is excerpted as follows:
Document of the General Office of the Hunan Provincial People's Government
Xiang Zheng Ban Fa (83) No. 14
Notice on Adjusting the Varieties of Second-Category Precious Chinese Medicinal Materials and the Task of State Purchase
……
3. Scope and standards of reward sales: In order to promote the completion of the unified purchase and state purchase tasks, grain and cloth coupons shall be awarded for the sale of the following varieties. Coptis chinensis: for every 100 market catties, award 250 jin of raw grain quota and 30 chi of cloth coupons; honeysuckle: for every 100 market catties, award 30 market jin of raw grain quota and 50 chi of cloth coupons; Corydalis yanhusuo: for every 100 market catties, award 50 jin of raw grain quota and 10 chi of cloth coupons; Eucommia ulmoides: for every 100 market catties, award 10 jin of raw grain quota and 2 chi of cloth coupons; Magnolia officinalis: for every 100 market catties, award 10 jin of raw grain quota. Medicinal materials purchased and sold through negotiated purchase shall no longer receive rewards.
Viewed from today's perspective, the content of this document has no practical significance, because such reward amounts are negligible and the tangible benefits are not many. But at the time, it was a catalyst and accelerator for mobilizing people to enthusiastically gather and sell Chinese herbal medicinal materials. The mountain people at that time gained a little tangible benefit and felt a kind of satisfaction. Because at that time the value of one laborer locally was only two jiao, and in some places not even two jiao. This was a specific policy formulated in a specific era and a specific environment, and it also once encouraged many people in Tujia areas to enthusiastically gather Chinese herbal medicinal materials. A policy, issued as a document, is very solemn. Especially when issued by a provincial-level government, its solemnity is self-evident.
From the author's on-site investigation, Pojiao Township is a very poor township. The economic income and living standard of the entire township are not very high, and some people are still below the subsistence line. But compared with other places, it is still relatively backward. Of the state cadres assigned from above, many are unwilling to work in this place, and some who go are very unsettled. There is a local saying, "A state cadre who works here, as long as he does not make mistakes, even if he does no work at all, still counts as a good cadre." Generally speaking, most township cadres here are cadres of Pojiao native origin.
On July 10 and July 11, 2003, the author interviewed Peng Shunhuang, Party branch secretary of Kake Village in Pojiao Township, and Xiang Peihua, Party branch secretary of Lianxing Village. Below are excerpts from the interviews with the two branch secretaries.
Interview record with Peng Shunhuang, Party branch secretary of Kake Village:
Kake Village is located at the southernmost end of Pojiao Township, bordering Bamao Township of Baojing County to the south. The whole village has 508 people, with the Peng surname and Tian surname each making up half. The Tian surname moved here from Shangmuzuo above Suzhu Village. The Peng surname moved from Dala Si to Niudongwan (belonging to Baojing County), and later from Niudongwan to Kake, so the place where Peng Shunhuang and the others now live is still called Niudong.
The Peng surname of Suzhu Village above Kake and the Peng surname of Kake belong to one lineage. The Suzhu Village branch is the elder, and the Kake Village branch is the younger; their generation-name poems are the same, both being "Shao Mei Zu Chang Da." Later, in order to increase the population, the Peng surname of Kake Village changed its generation-name poem to "Guo Zheng Tian Xin Shun, Guan Qing Min Zi An. Ren He Jia Nai Fa, Zhu Ye Qin Wei Xian. Zhong Xiao Gen Ji Gu, Li Rang Shi Dai Xian. Zhe Si Yong Yan Qing, Zong Zhi Jiu Mian Yan." Midway they also changed to the same generation-name poem as Suzhu Village; for example, Peng Shunhuang's father was named Peng Changsong. There is also another branch of the Peng surname in Kake Village that moved from Purong in Baojing; their generation-name poem is "Zu Tian Min Ting Guo, Jin Yun Zheng Guang Chang." Shawan in Bamao Township, Baojing County (that is, the site of the famous Babu Dawang Temple) was originally Kake people's territory, and in the year before liberation a few dou of corn were leased to the Shawan people. Later, Shawan separated from the jurisdiction of Kake Village and was assigned to Baojing County. People in Kake Village who can speak Tujia can be divided into three levels. The first level speaks very fluently; there are more than 200 such people. The second level is people who speak half Chinese and half Tujia; there are more than 100 such people. There are more than 60 people who can understand Tujia but cannot speak it. There is also a small portion, about 20 people (mainly children), who do not speak Chinese fluently. In the whole village there is not a single person who does not understand Tujia at all. Both the Peng surname and the Tian surname in Kake Village celebrate the April Seventh (April Seventeenth) festival.
Marriage generally follows the legal age. Once married, the elders propose dividing the household between the son and daughter-in-law, and the support relationship is not very obvious. Unfilial behavior has not yet been discovered; if there were unfilial behavior, the clan would intervene.
The richest in Kake Village is Tian Dewu, who works outside as a contractor and probably has several hundred thousand.
The one who cannot even lift the pot is Peng Jingui, over 40 years old. His wife suffers from meningitis, and his two children are young. They eat breakfast but have no supper, and the entire family property is not worth 500 yuan.
Peng Shunhuang's father, Peng Changsong (75 years old, retired teacher), said that the Tujia of Kake Village are "Huzika." This is said in contrast to the Tujia of Suomei Buzu (Village) in Bamao Township, Baojing County, on the opposite side. Kake people call the Tujia of Suomei Buzu "Shasha." This is a dialect division within the Tujia language and refers to language family. Peng Changsong also explained that "Huzika" are descendants of Duke Peng.
Before liberation, Kake Village had a Tuwang Temple; the ruins still exist, behind the village primary school.
Interview record with Xiang Peihua, Party branch secretary of Lianxing Village:
Lianxing Village is located in the central position of Pojiao Township and is the political and cultural center of Pojiao Township. The entire Lianxing Village has 368 households and four villager groups. Group One and Group Two are on the street, Group Three is in Duohula, and Group Four is in Zejiahu and Taguodong. Group Two has the largest population, with more than 400 people. The village mainly consists of the Xiang, Tian, Tang, and Zhang families. The whole village has a total of 1,358 people, of whom 1,290 are Tujia, accounting for more than 95 percent of the village population. Lianxing Village is a village that uses Tujia as the language of communication. There are more than 600 people who can speak fluent Tujia, among whom more than 400 are the most fluent. People aged 30 to 40 all speak Tujia. Those who cannot speak Tujia account for 5 percent, and these people are all women who married into Lianxing Village from elsewhere. In the village, Party member meetings are generally held in Tujia, while other meetings are held in Chinese. Older people in the stockaded settlement speak Tujia very fluently, and children speak Tujia to each other when playing.
In Lianxing Village, only 1 person goes outside to attend senior high school. In all of Pojiao Township, only 4 people attend senior high school and 6 attend secondary specialized school, because they could not pass the exam for senior high school and so had to attend secondary specialized school. Only one person attends university, and not by passing the exam, but by buying his way in. Those attending junior high school are relatively more numerous.
The per capita net income of Lianxing Village is 603 yuan. The main source of income is going out to work. The richest have more than a hundred thousand, such as Yao Yuanqing and others.
The poorest is Tian Yonghua. Tian Yonghua is 42 years old and suffers from pulmonary tuberculosis. He has been an orphan since childhood and has no home to live in. He lives in the tobacco curing barn of Tian Deda, a member of his clan, and Tian Deda provides him with food.
Zhang Xiangwei's family is also very poor. Zhang Xiangwei is 54 years old and a bachelor. He is somewhat mentally abnormal and relies on carrying firewood to sell to get by. His entire family property is about 200 yuan.
There is also Zhang Tingsheng, who is blind. He is 57 years old and suffers from rheumatism. He has one room, and his family property is only about 1,000 yuan. He is supported by his nephew.
The above three people cannot survive normally and were reported for the Five Guarantees household status, but because their age has not reached 60, the higher authorities did not approve it. This is because a Five Guarantees household receives 600 yuan of assistance each year.
The Xiang family has a genealogy book, which is kept at Xiang Qingyuan's home.
As for the marriage age in Lianxing Village, women are all over 20 years old and men over 22 years old. The number of young women brought in from elsewhere as wives totals 30, of whom 5 are not from Xiangxi.
The natural conditions of other places with Maogusi are not much different from here, and some places are even a bit worse than these two places. For example, Xianren Township in Baojing County was formerly called Xianren Rock, which, as the name suggests, means living on a rock. The entire township lives on a mountain slope several tens of li in circumference. The Tujia here live along the slope, from the foot of the mountain to the top, like a snail spiraling to the top, with villages and stockaded settlements winding upward. One can imagine what the natural conditions here are like. One township is on a stretch of mountain slope only 18 square li in area.
There is also Buzu Village in Bamao Township, Baojing County, which faces Pojiao across a ravine. Its full name in Tujia is Suomi Buzu Lie. It is separated from Pojiao Township by a deep mountain stream and ravine. People on the two mountains can hear each other speaking very clearly, and the vertical distance is less than two thousand meters (in the Qing dynasty it belonged together with Pojiao to the Dala Si of Baojing; after the thirteenth year of Yongzheng, Pojiao was assigned to Longshan). From either side, going down into the ravine involves a steep slope of seven or eight li. Going from one place to the other takes three or four hours. Because conditions here are very poor, the people of Suomi Buzu only learned to plant rice at the end of the twentieth century. The road up to the village is very dangerous and obstructed; only two paths on the cliff connect it with the outside. One is the one mentioned earlier that connects with Pojiao, and the other connects with the township government at Bamao. Plow oxen were bought from the market at the foot of the mountain when they weighed less than 50 jin and were carried up. Before reform and opening up, agriculture here was basically based on slash-and-burn cultivation. The main food crops were corn and sweet potatoes. After liberation, living conditions improved somewhat, but compared with other places it is still relatively backward.
Before liberation, the surrounding masses composed two doggerel verses for Suomi Buzu:
One
The people of Suomi Buzu,
With hair all tangled and hooked,
Wear straw rain capes all year round,
Feet unwashed, face unwashed,
Squatting (sitting) in the ashes,
Rolling into the river to poison the fish to death.
Two
Maomao Mountain climbed three times in succession,
Buckwheat and peas served as meals,
If you want to eat a meal of rice,
The whole family, old and young, will fall ill.
Therefore, it can be said that the natural environment in which Maogusi emerged was very poor. As a result, these places lagged behind economically, remaining for a long time in a self-sufficient small-peasant economy. Production methods were also very backward; in some places, the primitive slash-and-burn method was still in use, causing some damage to the local vegetation. Before Liberation, when natural disasters or man-made calamities struck, people often went hungry. These places were far removed from the fertile lands and fish-and-rice towns of the plains, those flourishing spots of flowers and willows. But from another perspective, the impact of other external cultures on it was not so strong. Maogusi quietly persisted tenaciously in places that others looked down upon. The reason Maogusi has survived to this day is inseparable from its natural environment.
It is also worth noting that this harsh environment of Maogusi was in fact a kind of cognitive self-awareness and intellectual self-awareness of the Tujia ancestors. Some believe that the Tujia people's survival in such a harsh environment was an unwise choice by today's developed standards, but in primitive society, the Tujia ancestors' choice of this place was a high degree of wisdom. Because in such an environment, with abundant water, lush grass, and dense forests, it was convenient for primitive humans to hunt and gather; it was relatively easy for people to obtain livelihood resources, and the variety of livelihood resources they could obtain was also relatively broad—it was a rich mining area of livelihood resources. Of course, compared with today's civilized society, such an environment has become a relatively backward area of human society. It is precisely this environment that allowed Maogusi to exist for a long time, becoming a wonderful flower of Tujia culture and a brilliant pearl in the treasure house of Chinese national culture.