Study of Institutional Culture in Ancient Tujia Society—Education System Culture (III)
Section 3: Basic Characteristics of Ancient Tujia Education. Ancient Tujia education, influenced by the ethnic group's social living conditions, political and economic circumstances, and external cultures, developed basic characteristics distinct from education in other ethnic regions. These characteristics reflect the historical trajectory and overall appearance of educational change in ancient Tujia society. 1. Han Culture and...
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Section III: Basic Characteristics of Ancient Tujia Education
The ancient education of the Tujia, influenced by the social living conditions, political and economic circumstances of their own ethnic group as well as by outside cultures, developed basic characteristics distinct from educational development in other ethnic regions. These characteristics reflect the historical trajectory and overall appearance of the changes in ancient Tujia education.
I. The Blending of Han Culture and Tujia Culture
The development of ancient Tujia education was extremely closely related to Han culture. Although the cultural exchange between Tujia and Han manifested as a two-way interactive exchange and fusion—that is, on the one hand the Tujia accepted Han culture and production techniques and became somewhat "Sinicized," while on the other hand Tujia culture, through introduction and dissemination by Han literati, enabled Han society to know and understand more of the material and spiritual culture of the Tujia—in the two-way exchange between Tujia and Han cultures, Han culture always occupied a dominant position. Therefore, the traditional education of the Tujia developed gradually in the process of continuously absorbing and fusing Han culture. Undoubtedly, a history of traditional Tujia education is a history of the Tujia continuously absorbing the advanced culture represented by the Han. Continuously absorbing advanced culture and fusing it with one's own ethnic culture to develop oneself—this is both a characteristic of Tujia social development and a characteristic of the development of traditional Tujia education.
Tujia culture has deep historical roots with Central Plains culture. According to the "Classic of Mountains and Seas: Classic of the Regions Within the Seas," the Ba people, ancestors of the Tujia, had frequent contact with Central Plains culture. "In the southwest there is the state of Ba. Taihao begot Xianniao, Xianniao begot Chengli, Chengli begot Houzhao, and Houzhao was the first of the Ba people." The "Classic of the Regions Within the Seas: South" also records the legend of "the Ba snake swallowing an elephant." The totem of the Ba people was the "Ba snake," and the Ba snake was a follower of Fuxi. This legend indicates that the Ba totem originated from the Central Plains snake totem. In 316 BCE, Qin destroyed the state of Ba and reorganized it as "Ba Commandery"; from then on the Ba region became part of Qin territory, and the blending of Han culture and Ba culture gradually strengthened. During the Jianwu era of Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han, after Song Jun subdued the Wuxi Man barbarians, he established schools locally to change the social condition in which "their customs had few scholars and believed in shamans and ghosts." Thereafter, the trend of establishing schools in Tujia areas gradually flourished. From the Tang and Song to the Ming and Qing, the central dynasties of successive eras, in order to strengthen control over Tujia areas, used the loose-rein commandery-county system and the chieftain system to achieve the ruling aim of "using barbarians to govern barbarians." The strengthening of political ties between Tujia areas and the central regime created favorable conditions for cultural exchange and dissemination; Confucian education became the main content of school education in Tujia areas, and the advanced culture represented by Han culture penetrated into every field of Tujia social life and became the dominant culture in the Tujia cultural system.
The influence of the dominant ethnic group on the culture and education of minority peoples is often realized through ethnic education policies formulated by the state. The effect of implementing such organized and purposeful policy measures in turn depends on the educational traditions and level of educational development of the minority people. Historically, the Tujia study of Central Plains Han culture was not an uncritical wholesale acceptance, but rather a targeted borrowing of beneficial elements from Central Plains Han culture according to the needs of the ethnic group's actual living environment. For example, during the Tang and Song periods, the exchange method of tribute and bestowal brought advanced material culture into Tujia areas in large quantities through the court's generous bestowals. After the Ming dynasty, large numbers of Han people who migrated into Tujia areas served as messengers spreading advanced material culture, bringing advanced agricultural production techniques, skills, and methods of operation. But on the other hand, the large numbers of Han who entered Tujia areas gradually merged into Tujia society; they adapted to and accepted local customs and habits and became members of Tujia society. Thus these immigrants changed from being carriers disseminating advanced culture in cultural exchange into being recipients of advanced culture in cultural exchange. This phenomenon may perhaps be taken as an example of Han people learning from the Tujia in the realm of spiritual culture.
It should be said that the exchange between Han culture and Tujia culture strengthened the ties between Tujia areas and the interior and promoted the consolidation of the unified multi-ethnic state. The widespread dissemination of Confucian-centered Han culture in Tujia areas led the Tujia to accept the advanced production methods and techniques of the Han and to identify with many Han values and customs; at the same time, in the process of transmitting Han culture to the Tujia, Han scholar-officials also came to understand more fully the Tujia's material culture as well as their ways of thinking, ethnic character, living habits, and other spiritual culture. They brought what they saw and heard back to Han areas, giving Han society a greater understanding of Tujia culture. Therefore, the two-way transmission between Han culture and Tujia culture constituted the main theme and core content of traditional Tujia education and became the inevitable choice for the development of traditional Tujia education.
II. Official Education and Privately Run Education as Complements to Each Other
In the history of ancient Tujia educational development, official schools and private schools always presented a developmental pattern of complementing each other and of one rising as the other declined; official educational institutions and privately run educational institutions together constituted the complete organizational system of traditional Tujia education. Official schools were founded with the aim of directly producing qualified government officials, while privately run educational institutions aimed to civilize popular customs, and their students had to pass the imperial examinations before they could enter official careers. In Tujia areas, private schools, as the most active component of the educational system, always played the important role of transmitting Tujia culture and spreading Confucian culture, even though official schools, because they received more government support, always occupied the leading position in the educational system.
The earliest record of official school education in Tujia areas dates to the Eastern Han. During the Jianwu era of Emperor Guangwu (25–56 CE), Song Jun governed the "Wuxi Man barbarians" and "established schools" to change the social condition in which "their customs had few scholars and believed in ghosts and shamans." Thereafter, the feudal dynasties of successive eras all attached great importance to using educational means to strengthen cultural control over Tujia areas. From the Tang and Song to the Ming and Qing periods, the feudal dynasties successively established in Tujia areas multi-level and multi-type official educational institutions such as community schools, chieftain schools, and government schools, and built an educational system of official elementary education and official higher education. During the Yongzheng era of the Qing, official school education covered almost the entire Tujia area. In the first year of Yongzheng, Shizhou Guard was changed to Shinan Prefecture, governing the six counties of Enshi, Jianshi, Lichuan, Laifeng, Xianfeng, and Xuan'en. The Shinan Prefecture school was built on Elephant Mountain inside Enshi city, and the Enshi county school was at the old site of the former Shizhou Guard school palace. At that time, apart from Enshi and Jianshi, which had county schools, the other four counties all "attached their schools to Enshi." In the fifth year of Yongzheng, the county schools of Xuan'en, Xianfeng, Laifeng, and Lichuan were established at almost the same time. Thus the official school system of one prefecture, six counties, and seven schools in the Shinan region was formally formed. Official education in other Tujia areas, such as northwestern Hunan, northeastern Guizhou, and eastern Sichuan, also by and large went through such a process of development from nothing to something and from informal to formal. For example, in the eastern Sichuan region during the Ming and Qing periods, official educational institutions flourished without decline and were complete in type.
The distinctive features of running schools in official educational institutions in Tujia areas were mainly reflected in the following aspects: First, strict school regulations were laid down for Tujia students. "Promote filial piety and fraternal duty to value human relations; strengthen the clan to manifest harmony; harmonize the village community to settle disputes; value farming and sericulture to secure food and clothing; esteem thrift to cherish resources; exalt schools to rectify the conduct of scholars; reject heterodox teachings to honor orthodox learning; explain laws to warn the foolish and stubborn; clarify propriety and yielding to enrich customs; devote oneself to one's proper occupation to settle the people's will; instruct the young to prohibit wrongdoing; stop false accusations to preserve the good; guard against harboring fugitives to avoid implication; fix taxes and levies to reduce pressing for payment; link the baojia to eliminate bandits; resolve grudges to value life." Second, Tujia children were given preferential treatment in school admission. For example, in the fourth year of Wanli of Emperor Shenzong of the Ming (1576), the court explicitly stipulated that the official schools of each prefecture and county must implement a policy of admitting more native (tu) students, "at a ratio of three natives to one guest," with "those registered in the household rolls in former dynasties being natives, and those registered in the household rolls in the present dynasty being guests." Han children were not allowed to impersonate natives to gain admission, nor to falsely enjoy native treatment. Third, a system of learning Han culture was promoted. The content of official school education was mostly feudal Confucianism such as "loyalty to the ruler and veneration of Confucius," and what teachers lectured on was mostly Confucian classics. Teachers "daily lectured on the Four Books and the Zhouyi, the expurgated Collected Commentaries on the Book of Documents, the Collected Commentaries on the Book of Songs, the Collected Commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals, the Subcommentaries on the Three Rites, the Commentary on the Classic of Filial Piety, the Essential Meanings of Nature and Principle, the Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics, the Twenty-One Histories, the History of Ming, the Complete Works of Zhu Xi, the Outline of the Comprehensive Mirror, the Outline of the Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, the three compilations of Tang and Song prose, the Chunyuan Mirror of Ancient Prose..."
While official educational institutions in Tujia areas flourished day by day, privately run educational institutions also developed vigorously and became another educational form coexisting with official schools, thereby satisfying people's demand for learning to a greater extent. Privately run educational institutions in Tujia areas mainly took three forms: private tutors (sishu), charitable schools (yixue), and academies (shuyuan), among which charitable schools were the most commonly established. In the seventh year of Yongzheng, "Yongshun Prefecture newly opened the Miao frontier and should first establish charitable schools, selecting tribute students and regular students from the province and ordering them to teach earnestly, with a measured allowance of stipend." Thereafter, counties established charitable schools one after another. In Baojing County, "in the eighth year of Yongzheng, county magistrate Wang Qinming petitioned to establish four charitable school halls, located in the village settlements of Genuo, Paidaifang, Hangshaping, and Huluzhai. Circuit intendant Fu Nai petitioned to establish fourteen charitable school halls, including two garrison charitable school halls, one at Yinshantai and one at Xiaomengchang. Twelve new-registration charitable schools were at Maoping, Muzizhai, Bizizhai, Luluxiang, Hangshaping, Ake, Aipo, and other places." As time went on, there were even more charitable schools in Tujia areas. In the thirteenth year of Yongzheng, Youyang Prefecture established 8 charitable schools, Qianjiang County established 3, and Pengshui County established 8.
In short, under the policy guidance and measure guarantees of the central dynasties of successive eras, Tujia areas initially formed a school education system in which official education and privately run education complemented each other. In terms of form, there were not only prefectural, prefectural-level, and county schools established by local governments, but also chieftain schools with an ethnic education character; in terms of level, there were both government schools mainly cultivating administrative talent and private tutor schools charged with elementary education. Official educational institutions and privately run educational institutions complemented each other and brought out the best in each other, jointly promoting the development of ethnic education in Tujia areas.
III. The Combination of Secular Education and Religious Education
In ethnic regions, one of the characteristics of ancient education is that religious education, while instilling religious doctrine, religious outlook on life, and religious morality into the educated, also served as a means and tool of secular education, serving secular education and cultural transmission. The secularizing and humanizing character of religious education determined the closeness of its connection with secular education and the permeability of its content. In Tujia areas, primitive religion and its activities also possessed a certain educational function of cultural knowledge and technique; the nature worship, totem worship, ancestor worship, and witchcraft existing in Tujia society each had their own distinct educational content. Here we shall focus on discussing the educational role these primitive religious activities played in history.
The Tujia custom of "adopting" natural objects as godparents is quite prevalent. If a child in a family remains frail for a long time, it is believed that the child must be "adopted" by some natural object as a godparent in order to grow up strong and healthy. The natural objects to be adopted include ancient trees, huge rocks, rivers, the sun, and the land—that is, the five attributes of metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Through this practice of adoption, people come to understand the relationship between metal, wood, water, fire, and earth and human survival. Adopting natural objects as godparents expresses reverence and gratitude toward nature as a "parent," and is also a way of imparting knowledge about nature. The Tujia people generally worship the "God of the Five Grains," and every household has a shrine for sacrificing to this deity. The worship activities of sacrificing to the God of the Five Grains include recounting to people the origins of the five grains, the cultivation of the five grains, and farm management. It is not hard to see that the process of sacrifice is also a process of spreading farming techniques and introducing plant growth.
The totem worshipped by the Tujia people is the white tiger. The Hand-Waving Dance, which is popular among the Tujia, evolved over time from a dance for worshipping the white tiger, and its dance movements mainly imitate the movements of the white tiger. It can be seen that white tiger totem culture gave rise to the unique dance art of the Tujia and became a vehicle for transmitting Tujia traditional culture. White tiger totem worship embodies the common belief of the Tujia ancestors in valuing strength and courage and their basic ethical and spiritual orientation. It formed the Tujia national psychological mechanism of being righteous and selfless yet fierce and fearless, and this national psychology was sublimated into a national character of bravery, chivalry, and righteousness and a national spirit of tenacious enterprise. Therefore, white tiger totem worship has a strong function of moral molding and a certain function of cultural creation.
Ancestor worship is a product of soul worship. Tujia ancestor worship includes worship of primordial ancestors such as "Luanyu Guniang" and "Chunba Mama Pa," worship of distant ancestors such as "Xiangwang Tianzi" and the "Eight Great Gods," and worship of the individual family ancestors of one's own clan and household. Tujia ancestor worship takes diverse forms and has complex content, and possesses a strong function of social education. From the sacrificial rituals and content, we can see that sacrificing to ancestors essentially became a mutually beneficial exchange of interests between the Tujia people and ancestral spirits: people offered incense and sacrifices, and the spirits repaid them with abundant harvests and thriving livestock. Turning to ancestral spirits for protection whenever disaster struck was a common mentality among the Tujia, and expressing thanks to ancestral spirits on auspicious occasions became a behavioral habit of the Tujia. Remembering ancestral virtues and continuing ancestral bloodlines became behavioral norms and moral standards of the Tujia. What this reflects is precisely the educational significance of ancestor worship activities for strengthening blood ties and consolidating ethnic unity. The frequent and varied ancestor worship rituals linked each family more closely with all other families sharing a common ancestor, enabling families, clans, and even the ethnic group to coalesce through blood relations, and thereby forming common value orientations and psychological qualities.
The shamanic culture of the Tujia covers almost every level of social life. Nuo culture, with Nuo dance, Nuo sacrifice, and Nuo opera as its basic carriers, is a special subsystem within the shamanic cultural system. Tujia Nuo culture expresses the relatively stable concept of chief deity worship of a mountain farming people. Under farming conditions, the factors affecting people's survival and reproduction decreased but became relatively concentrated. Therefore, actively struggling against harsh climate, plague, and evil in order to seek favorable weather, suitable cold and heat, long life and abundant harvests, and thriving livestock became the main content of people's sacrifices, and the farming god became the sole chief deity of their worship. For example, Tujia sacrificial songs contain a great deal of content praying for favorable weather and abundant harvests:
Offer wine, oh offer wine,
Offer wine to the leader of grains, bitter buckwheat,
Offer wine to the new bride of grains, sweet buckwheat,
Offer wine to the bimo of grains, corn,
Offer wine to the sister-in-law of grains, oats,
Offer wine to the brother of grains, potato,
Offer wine to the daughter of grains, white rice,
Offer wine to the servant of grains, red bean.
Tujia Nuo culture also has an important educational function. The content of Nuo opera performances is drawn from people's various livelihood activities, such as farming, fishing, and hunting; the performance form is a display of labor skills. This undoubtedly helps improve people's knowledge quality and survival abilities. Moreover, the values advocated by Nuo opera—such as respecting elders and masters, caring for juniors, family harmony, and harmonious coexistence between humans and nature—undoubtedly have a positive educational function.
Tujia Nuo culture also has an important motivational function. The basic principle of color expression in Tujia Nuo ritual masks is to make the performer's tendencies of love and hatred concrete and vivid through color, which is consistent with the facial makeup of theatrical performance. Just as theater has different facial makeup such as black face, red face, painted face, blue-green face, and blue face, Nuo ritual masks also gradually developed from simple to complex into a complete symbolic color system of facial makeup, and these different colors themselves carry certain symbolic meanings. For example, for the red-faced Lord Guan, red signifies loyalty and bravery; black signifies uprightness and frankness, as with generals and vanguard pathbreakers; white signifies treachery, as with the White Bone Demon. The character-design principle of Nuo ritual masks—distinguishing good and evil, separating the upright from the clownish, and embodying praise and blame—exerts a certain motivational effect by stimulating the audience's vision and emotions. It tells people that only by actively turning toward goodness and promoting good while suppressing evil can one achieve a good outcome and receive good reward. "In Tujia Nuo ritual masks, the various symbolic concepts contained embody the spirit condensed by the Tujia people over a long and arduous historical development, the centripetal force that attracts the psychology of clan members so as to form group solidarity, unity, and order, and strengthen the group's fighting capacity in the struggle for survival. It is a symbol of the Tujia people's collective consciousness and also a representation of their enterprising spirit."
Of course, Nuo culture is also mixed with some idealist concepts, such as belief in spirits and driving out ghosts and epidemics. These concepts may more or less have negative effects on people's behavior. Therefore, when paying attention to Tujia Nuo culture, we must, with an open mind and an innovative spirit, highlight the artistic charm and positive functions of Tujia Nuo culture and eliminate its vulgar content and negative influences.
Obviously, in traditional Tujia society, the educational significance of religious activities was very clear. The ancestors worshipped spirits mainly not for spiritual liberation, but to ask the spirits to help solve livelihood problems, eliminate disasters and avoid misfortune, cure illness and expel evil, ensure thriving offspring, and bring abundant harvests. "For farming peoples worshipping the gods of heaven and earth, the state and grain, mountains and rivers, the sun and moon, wind and rain, and thunder and lightning, the most important purpose was to seek favorable weather and ensure a bumper agricultural harvest." Religious activities often became activities for transmitting production skills and life knowledge, and religious sacrificial rituals often became sites of social education; religious education was always merged into secular education and became a powerful tool for advancing moral instruction and stabilizing social order.