The Tujia — Education, Health, and Sports
IX. Education, Health, and Sports. Education: The Tujia have their own spoken language but no written script, and formal schooling did not develop over a long period. It was not until the Tang and Song dynasties that Tujia scholars and officials literate in Chinese gradually emerged. In the Yuan dynasty, schools were established in Jianshi, Shizhou, and other areas of western Hubei. By the Ming dynasty, education in Tujia regions had...
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IX. Education, Health, and Sports
Education
The Tujia people have their own language but no script, and school education did not develop over a long period. Only by the Tang and Song dynasties did Tujia scholars and officials who understood Chinese writing gradually appear.
In the Yuan dynasty, Jianshi, Shizhou, and other places in western Hubei had already begun to establish schools. By the Ming dynasty, education in Tujia areas had further developed. Emperor Taizu of Ming once ordered: "All native officials shall establish county schools." Emperor Xiaozong of Ming further decreed that the sons and younger brothers of native officials and native officeholders who wished to inherit native posts must enter school, and those who did not study Chinese learning were absolutely not allowed to inherit the posts of native officials or native officeholders. Therefore, county schools and office schools in Tujia areas increased compared with before. At that time some native officials often set up their own academies and private schools locally, but mostly only the native officials themselves and their direct descendants could attend, and ordinary native people were not allowed to enroll. After the Qing government carried out "replacing native rule with regular administration," it changed the regulation of the native-official period that forbade ordinary native people to attend school, established prefectural and departmental schools, county schools, and charity schools in Tujia areas, and also adopted the imperial examination system of opening examinations and selecting scholars for the Tujia; schools increased compared with before, and the number of ordinary native people entering school grew. From then on, Chinese writing spread even more widely in Tujia areas.
In modern times, although school education in Tujia areas developed to some extent, because schools were established later than in Han areas and because of the constraints and influence of other factors, school education in Tujia areas still lagged far behind the level of development in Han areas.
level of development.
On the eve of the founding of New China, apart from one or two secondary specialized schools in the city of Enshi, there were no higher-level schools in the larger towns of Tujia areas. In the vast rural areas there was not a single school for dozens of li, and students going to the county town for junior middle school faced great difficulties; for example, some students had to walk three to five days to school. Even attending primary school was very difficult: dozens of li uphill and more than ten li downhill, and the journey took more than half a day; by the time they reached school there was not enough time for more than a few classes before they had to head back. As a result, among several hundred Tujia households there might be no one who could read, and illiteracy throughout a whole village was a common sight; it was very hard for an individual peasant child to persist in school for two or three years, but after returning home to do farm work they quickly became illiterate again, so that many Tujia peasant households were illiterate for generations. On the eve of the founding of New China, the eight counties under the Enshi Administrative Office had only 22,475 students, and illiterates made up more than 80% of the total population. Changyang County in the Yichang region, being closest to Han areas, had earlier development of school education in history, but on the eve of the founding of New China its schools too were on the verge of extinction.
In the five counties where Tujia people live in concentrated communities in southeastern Chongqing, before the founding of New China, apart from 4 simple normal schools, there were only 11 middle schools, the vast majority of them junior middle schools; there were 739 primary schools, but most had only a few or a dozen students, and some even had no teachers or students at all, so their backwardness can well be imagined.
After the founding of New China, because the people's government attached importance to developing ethnic education, ethnic education in Tujia areas developed rapidly. At present, Jishou University, Hubei Institute for Nationalities, Wuling University, and China Three Gorges University have been established one after another. According to 2001 statistics, Enshi Prefecture had 2 institutions of higher learning, with 8,429 students and 1,855 faculty and staff; Jishou University in Xiangxi Prefecture had 7,841 students and 1,296 faculty and staff.
By 1985, the Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture had 208 ordinary middle schools, including 47 complete middle schools and 11 ethnic middle schools, with 101,252 middle school students and 10,348 middle school teachers, an increase of tenfold or even dozens of times compared with 1949. The whole prefecture had 3,757 primary schools, including 10 ethnic boarding schools. There were 411,235 primary school students and 17,177 primary school teachers, a very rapid pace of development. By the end of the 20th century, Xiangxi Prefecture had made primary education universal, with the enrollment rate of school-age children reaching 97.7%, had basically eliminated illiteracy among young and middle-aged adults, and had formed an educational system combining higher and secondary education, compulsory education, adult education, and vocational and technical education; schools of all levels and types had grown to nearly 3,000, with 440,000 students enrolled.
By 1985, the Enshi Autonomous Prefecture already had 397 ordinary middle schools and 3,541 primary schools, among which Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County had 357 primary schools and 28 ordinary middle schools, and Changyang Tujia Autonomous County had 450 primary schools, 33 junior middle schools, and 5 senior middle schools. Primary and secondary education in the one prefecture and two autonomous counties developed considerably compared with before the founding of New China. According to 2001 statistics, Hubei's one prefecture and two autonomous counties had 3 secondary specialized schools with 2,911 students and 228 faculty and staff; 248 ordinary middle schools with 242,816 students and 14,302 faculty and staff; 10 vocational middle schools with 6,658 students and 714 faculty and staff; and 2,088 primary schools with 425,800 students and 19,600 faculty and staff. Education is advancing by leaps and bounds.
By 1985, the various types of schools in Wufeng Tujia Autonomous County had grown to 389, including 357 primary schools and 28 ordinary middle schools; the number of schools built after the founding of New China was 11.8 times that before liberation. Changyang Tujia Autonomous County by 1985 already had 5 senior middle schools, 33 junior middle schools, and 450 primary schools, and the enrollment rate of school-age children reached 98.9%.
School education in the five autonomous counties of southeastern Chongqing developed rapidly. By 1986, the five counties had a total of 2,596 primary and middle schools, 3.29 times that of 1949; 423,300 students of all ethnic groups, 10.9 times that of 1949; and students of ethnic minorities had reached more than 245,000, accounting for 58% of the total number of students in the autonomous counties. Three ethnic primary and middle schools, 56 boarding ethnic school sites, and 154 ethnic classes were restored or established, with 8,174 boarding students. By 2001, southeastern Chongqing had 1 secondary specialized school with thousands of students and faculty and staff; 99 ordinary middle schools with 104,395 students and 6,901 faculty and staff; 6 vocational middle schools with 2,834 students and 445 faculty and staff; and 1,246 primary schools with 284,800 students and 12,200 faculty and staff. Schools of all types have developed rapidly, and the cultural quality of the Tujia people has been greatly raised.
The vigorous development of ethnic education in the contiguous area of the four provinces and municipalities of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Guizhou is inseparable from the selfless assistance of large numbers of educational cadres and teachers who came from Han areas. Only through mutual learning in the common construction of the mountain areas by the Tujia, Miao, and Han peoples could ethnic education be carried out smoothly; ethnic unity promoted the prosperity of ethnic education, and the prosperity of ethnic education in turn promoted the further unity of all ethnic groups. In 1978, when Wuyang Township in Longshan County of the Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture wanted to build a central school and approached Erping Township to discuss buying more than five mu of good farmland as the school site, the village head and masses of Erping Township said that in recent years Wuyang Township had provided them with improved seeds, spread advanced techniques, treated more than 600 people in their township every year, and also helped them solve the problem of selling tobacco leaves and medicinal materials; building a school would benefit the people of all ethnic groups in both townships, so there was no need to mention buying the land—wherever you think is suitable, build there. After this school was completed, it became a school for learning and unity for the children of all ethnic groups in the area. Schools of this kind, embodying ethnic unity and friendship, are fairly common in the contiguous area of the four provinces and municipalities.
Medicine and Health
In the old society, Tujia peasants suffered endless exploitation by landlords and bureaucrats; they had not enough food to eat and not enough clothing to cover themselves, and could hardly secure food and warmth, so the incidence of disease was very high. At that time, not only were there no medicines and no doctors in the villages, but even the larger county towns often lacked doctors and medicines. In 1949, the 10 counties of Xiangxi had only 15 medical and health institutions, 132 hospital beds, and fewer than 500 medical personnel. Before the founding of New China, the 8 counties of Enshi Prefecture had only 8 small hospitals, 110 hospital beds, and 654 medical personnel. The 5 counties of southeastern Chongqing had only 5 health centers and county hospitals, each with 3 to 7 medical personnel. In the towns of each county there were only a few Chinese medicine shops, and often only one or two Chinese medicine doctors seeing patients. Moreover, these health centers and clinics had crude equipment. For example, there is an anecdote in Shizhu County town: in 1948, a policeman of the Kuomintang puppet county government had his lower limb blown off by a hand grenade and was sent to the county health center, but the hospital had no surgical instruments; the Kuomintang officials nevertheless forcibly insisted that the doctor treat the wound. The doctor, having no way out, used a butcher's sheep-slaughtering knife and a firecracker maker's steel saw to perform the amputation. In the county town, only the rich and powerful would call a doctor or go to the health center when ill. The great mass of ordinary townspeople had no money to see a doctor or buy medicine. When rural Tujia people fell ill, they gathered herbs to boil or apply, relying entirely on local remedies; when these could not cure them, they often sought help from gods and Buddhas. In disaster years, epidemics spread, and even entire villages might perish, with some families dying out for several generations at once and their "incense smoke" cut off. Before the founding of New China, infectious diseases such as malaria, smallpox, plague, cholera, typhoid, and leprosy occurred almost year after year in the Wuling mountain area, with extremely high mortality. From 1944 to 1945, typhoid spread in Tiannan Township of Dayong County, Xiangxi, killing more than 2,000 people in 11 months. In 1943, cholera ran rampant in Longtan Town of Youyang, with as many as more than 20 corpses buried each day; truly, "bodies were seen everywhere, and wailing was heard in every household." Starving refugees filled the wilderness, and the misery was extreme.
After the founding of New China, the Party and the people's government paid great attention to the health of the people of all ethnic groups in Tujia areas and worked hard to develop health epidemic prevention and health care and medical services in the border area of the four provinces and municipalities, so as to strengthen the physical constitution of all ethnic groups and give the urban and rural health conditions of the Tujia a completely new look.
The Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture now has 21 hospitals at or above the county level and 324 district and township hospitals, with 5,297 beds, an increase of 42 times over 1949, and 5,441 medical and nursing technical personnel, an increase of 11 times over 1949, among whom 2,264 are ethnic minorities; this contingent is growing and expanding.
By 1985, the Enshi Autonomous Prefecture had 756 medical and health institutions, 7,174 hospital beds, and 9,385 health technical personnel, including 165 individually practicing personnel. Changyang and Wufeng Autonomous Counties in the Yichang region both have county people's hospitals, Chinese medicine hospitals, maternal and child health stations, and drug inspection offices. By 1985, Changyang had also built 16 district (town) health centers, 60 township (town) health centers, and 429 village health rooms, with a total of 708 hospital beds and 1,132 medical personnel; 415 village doctors and 539 health workers. Wufeng had also built 10 district and town health centers and 32 rural health centers, with a total of 402 hospital beds, 713 medical workers, 164 village doctors, 142 health workers, and 202 midwives. By 2001, Hubei's one prefecture and two counties already had 280 health institutions, 7,106 beds, and 10,132 health technical personnel.
The five autonomous counties under Chongqing, by 2001, already had 427 health institutions, 3,898 beds, and 5,367 health technical personnel; health services are developing rapidly.
After the founding of New China, in order to help Tujia areas overcome the difficulty of lacking doctors and medicines, the people's government, in the course of building medical and health institutions in the border area of the four provinces and municipalities, repeatedly organized medical teams to go to Tujia mountain villages, bringing doctors and medicines to the mountain countryside and providing free treatment for Tujia peasants. It also repeatedly mobilized and organized Han doctors to take root in Tujia mountain villages and join with the Tujia people in order to solve the problems of health epidemic prevention and medical treatment at the root; quite a few Han doctors have already taken root, blossomed, and borne fruit in Tujia areas, enabling the Tujia epidemic prevention and medical teams to be gradually established and developed. Luo Guangnan, president of the Longshan County Hospital in the Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture, and Zhou Zuwu, vice president of the Xianfeng County Hospital in the Enshi Autonomous Prefecture, are both typical examples of Han people who supported Tujia areas and took root in mountain villages.
Zhou Zuwu graduated from Wuhan Medical College in 1956. In 1960, in order to support the ethnic minority mountain areas, he resigned from his post as a physician at Union Hospital, bade farewell to his parents, who were nearly seventy years old, at his home in Wuhan, and resolutely came to Xianfeng County in western Hubei, taking root in the mountain villages for 25 years and supporting the development of medical and health services for the Tujia and Miao peoples. At that time, the surgery department of Xianfeng County People's Hospital had no anesthesiologist and no surgical assistant, and it did not even have the operating table and shadowless lamp essential for surgery. It was under such difficult conditions that he began the sacred cause of healing the sick and saving lives. On the third day after arriving in Xianfeng, he removed an ovarian tumor weighing more than 20 jin for a Tujia woman. From then on, his reputation as a "miracle doctor with saintly hands" spread far and wide through the Tujia mountain villages, and people from hundreds of li around came one after another to seek medical treatment. In the winter of 1960, within less than three months, he successfully performed more than 120 operations for uterine prolapse. During the years he practiced medicine in the mountain areas, Zhou Zuwu traveled all over the mountains and ridges of two towns and eight districts in Xianfeng County, covering a total area of 2,550 square kilometers, and overcame surgical challenges such as opening the cranial cavity, reattaching limbs, left lung lobectomy, and bladder cancer resection. Not content with merely being proficient in surgery, he also extended his medical skills to pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, and internal medicine, always tirelessly taking it as his duty to relieve the suffering of Tujia and Miao patients. The China Association for Science and Technology awarded him the honor of "Advanced Individual in Rural Science Popularization Work," and people of all ethnic groups praised him as "a good doctor of the Tujia and Miao villages."
Medical colleges across China and the Western Hubei Medical College have successively trained a group of professors, scholars, and experts who master modern medical theory and technology for the Tujia people. Research on medicine, health, and health care in the border areas where the four provinces and municipalities meet has also made considerable progress.
As modern medical and health services have developed day by day in the Tujia areas of the four provinces and municipalities, they have not only eliminated the spread of diseases such as cholera, leprosy, malaria, smallpox, and scalp ringworm, and prevented and controlled the spread and expansion of endemic diseases, but have also continuously raised the health level of people of all ethnic groups. According to surveys, before the founding of New China and in its early years, the average life expectancy in Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture was only about 30 years; by 1978, it had risen to over 60 years, just as a folk saying joyfully puts it: "The roots of a thousand years of illness are cut today; long life and abundant harvests, joy and peace."
Sports
The industrious and brave ancestors of the Tujia people, in the course of struggling with nature and foreign enemies, created various competitive sports mainly aimed at strengthening physical fitness. Passed down from generation to generation and continuously innovated and developed by Tujia descendants, these formed the traditional sports forms of the Tujia people.
There are many traditional sports events of the Tujia people, which can be roughly divided into three types: first, competitive sports, such as belt wrestling, tug-of-war, tug-of-war on dry boats, walking on bamboo stilts, shuttlecock kicking, and swinging; second, fitness exercises, such as lifting stone locks, digging gong, linked crowbars, qigong, martial arts, mountain climbing, and pole climbing; third, performance sports, such as bench dragon, flesh-linked clappers, and Sa'erhe.
Like other ethnic groups, the Tujia people had the sprouts of sports activities—competition and games—arising very early. Many began to sprout among the Tujia ancestors at the stage of primitive society with the emergence of clans and tribes; some arose from social activities such as military affairs, medicine, primitive beliefs, festivals, and rituals and customs, and were often expressed in forms such as "plays," "arts," and "dances." As far back as the legendary era, the Ba people had the competitive sport of throwing swords at stones; there was also a boat-paddling race on land; and the winners of these two competitions were the conditions for electing tribal chiefs. At the end of the Yin and Shang dynasties, the Ba people had a sports form combining military drill with song and dance, and it was even used in front of the battle lines of the anti-Yin allied forces organized by King Wu of Zhou when they attacked Chaoge. By the Tang dynasty, Ba dances still retained military weapon drill forms such as "Mao Yu," "An Tai," and "Nu Yu." To this day, among Tujia people in Yongshun, Longshan, Laifeng, Xiushan, and other places, the playing of "hand-waving" and "jumping Sheba" still preserves a large number of military drill movements. In particular, the movements of the "great hand-waving" are rough and powerful, with wide vibration amplitude and great physical exertion, and should be a traditional sports event of the Tujia people.
That Tujia soldiers were skilled in battle in history was recorded long ago in historical texts. They were praised as "divine soldiers," or called "the Tujia soldiers of Huguang are the fiercest under heaven," and were famous throughout the country. In autumn and winter they had to drill, and they also had to receive inspections by the Tusi on the drill ground, performing military exercises, martial arts, qigong, and so on. Practicing martial arts had long become a traditional sports form of the Tujia, and in social activities, martial contests had become an important condition for a woman choosing a husband. Practicing martial arts had long become a social custom among the Tujia people, and this fine tradition was still maintained in modern times.
"Flesh-linked clappers" was an entertainment activity of the Tujia ancestors for resting from labor and keeping fit. They used both hands to massage and slap their own bodies all over, while coordinating with various body and leg techniques, moving without stopping, sometimes twisting the waist and turning the body, sometimes squatting and jumping, sometimes rolling the body, in order to relax muscles and invigorate blood circulation, eliminate fatigue, and strengthen the physique.
"Bench dragon" is a traditional performance event of the Tujia people and some ethnic minorities in central-south and southwest China. According to Tujia legend, many years ago during a Spring Festival, Tujia people gathered together to watch a dragon lantern performance. Three young men became more and more excited as they watched and very much wanted to try it themselves. Making a dragon lantern would take too much time, and snatching someone else's to play was not acceptable. In their urgency they hit upon an idea: they grabbed a long bench and played with it as a dragon lantern. From then on, generation after generation passed down this way of playing and its routines, and at festivals and New Year celebrations they always had to play "bench dragon."
"Rolling dragon with Pengxiao" is also a sports form loved by the Tujia. The performer holds a Pengxiao in one hand and clappers in the other, rhythmically and regularly striking various parts of the body with the Pengxiao, sometimes squatting and kneeling, sometimes sitting and lying, sometimes rolling while striking, exercising the whole body, with vigorous and forceful movements, rough and unrestrained. In Tujia settlements such as Laifeng, Xuan'en, and Xianfeng, in early spring, young Tujia women wearing Xiangbo skirts gather in groups beside towering swings. In pairs, they step onto the swing, grip the ropes with both hands, one standing and one squatting, exerting force. Pushing the footboard, they swing back and forth, soaring high in the air. Sometimes groups of Tujia youths accompany them with dongdongkui, combining play, dance, and music. "Two-person swinging" is also a traditional sports event of Tujia youth.
Since the 1920s, only through Tujia students studying in the interior or teachers from Han areas who understood modern sports going to teach in schools in Tujia areas were modern sports such as ball games, track and field, and swimming introduced into the mountain areas. However, modern sports events developed rather slowly among the Tujia people. Because sports teachers were extremely scarce and sports venues and equipment were all very simple and crude, some competitive events could not hold competitions. The great majority of Tujia people had to climb mountains and cross ridges in their labor, so only a few people engaged in some ethnic traditional sports for practicing skills and martial arts during slack farming seasons or festivals.
After the founding of New China, the people's government attached great importance to developing sports undertakings in ethnic minority areas. By the 1980s, Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture had trained a total of 425 professional sports talents, 328 graded athletes, and 115 graded referees, and more than 103,000 people had reached the national physical training standards. Zhao Jishu of Dayong developed excellent qigong skills and performed abroad many times, receiving high praise.
Enshi Autonomous Prefecture established 9 spare-time sports schools for children and youth, 6 prefectural ethnic sports schools, and 1,762 sports grounds; 15,508 students reached the national physical training standards; and it trained a large number of sports backbones and outstanding athletes, with 42 athletes sent to provincial and national sports teams. There are currently 196 referees at various levels. In 1986, the Hubei Provincial Ethnic Minority Games were held in Enshi, with as many as more than 140 traditional ethnic sports events.
Since 1982, Tujia athletes from Tujia areas have participated in all seven National Traditional Ethnic Minority Sports Games and achieved excellent results. The Hubei delegation won 8 gold medals, 3 silver medals, and 7 bronze medals at the Seventh National Traditional Ethnic Minority Sports Games, ranking fourth in total gold medals among the 34 delegations nationwide.