Reading Xiangxi (Sangongqiao Chapter II)
Miao people living in Jishou and Fenghuang retain many traditional customs. Besides festivals shared with the Han, they celebrate Sanyuesan, Siyueba, Liuyueliu, Miao New Year, the Bullfighting Festival, Sister Festival, Chixin Festival, and Ganqiu Festival each year. Sanyuesan, also called the Juming Song Fair, is held on the third day of the third lunar month, when Miao men and women gather in the fields to sing in antiphonal style.
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
Xiangxi Folk Customs
The Miao people living in Jishou and Fenghuang retain many traditional customs. Besides festivals shared with the Han, each year they also celebrate the Third Month Third, Fourth Month Eighth, Sixth Month Sixth, Miao New Year, Bullfighting Festival, Sister Festival, New Harvest Festival, and Autumn Catching Festival. The Third Month Third, also called the Juming Song Fair, is held on the third day of the third lunar month, when Miao men and women go out to sing antiphonal songs and also exchange agricultural and sideline products; the activities of the Fourth Month Eighth mainly include "eating pig," climbing the knife ladder, and Miao antiphonal singing; the Autumn Catching Festival is held at the start of autumn and is an activity celebrating the harvest.
Sacrificial activities in Miao villages
The Miao have many sacrificial activities, mostly aimed at praying to the gods for blessings. The main rituals include "Receiving the Dragon," "Pounding the Ox," and the "Incense-Dancing Gathering," among others.
Receiving the Dragon: "Receiving the Dragon" is a sacrificial activity meant to bring prosperity to one's hometown. After the autumn harvest each year, Miao families set up altars by wells and riversides, plant colored flags, and lay out offerings to pray that the true dragon will bless them with favorable weather for the coming year. Participants can number in the thousands, and the atmosphere is lively.
Incense-Dancing Gathering: Held each year in the tenth lunar month, it is mainly to sacrifice to the God of the Five Grains. People light incense and, while dancing, scatter pounded millet, foxtail millet, wheat, beans, and other five grains, inviting the God of the Five Grains to enjoy the fruits of the harvest and thanking them for their blessings.
Pounding the Ox: This is an ancestral sacrifice, also held after autumn, expressing reverence and remembrance for the ancestors.
The Elegance of Mountain Folk
Among the mountain folk of Xiangxi, there are quite a few broad-minded and upright individuals who, for various reasons, never got the chance to go out and make their way in the world, and so often whiled away their time among the classics, histories, philosophical works, and literary collections. Such people are often plain and unremarkable in appearance, yet sensitive and delicate at heart; their bearing may not seem so elegant, but their conversation is captivating.
The mystery of Xiangxi—why it is not understood, and why it is worth understanding—is roughly concentrated around the Fenghuang area, just as Shen Congwen said in Fenghuang: "The legend of Miao poison-planting started from this place. Practitioners of Chenzhou talismans were concentrated in this place. The chivalrous spirit of the sons of the Three Chu regions was preserved in especially great measure here because of the garrison-soldier hereditary military system. In religious rituals, this place has many peculiarities; the religious sentiment (the sentiment of believing in ghosts and spirits), due to the special social environment, is fervent and sincere to an unimaginable degree." Yet the various mysteries of Xiangxi, in the eyes of ordinary residents, are nothing special at all—they are simply everything in daily life, just as the beauty of milk vetch is scenery in the eyes of tourists, and the brilliance of rapeseed flowers is a sight before tourists' cameras, but for the locals, one is just green manure, and the other is just rapeseed oil soon to be exchanged for money and eaten. But if one encounters certain special mountain folk, the flavor of Xiangxi becomes different. Among the mountain folk, there are quite a few broad-minded and upright individuals who, for various reasons, never got the chance to go out and make their way in the world, and so often whiled away their time among the classics, histories, philosophical works, and literary collections. Such people are often full of learning—if not skilled in calligraphy, then accomplished in painting, and often highly adept at couplets and poetry as well. They are often plain and unremarkable in appearance, yet sensitive and delicate at heart; their bearing may not seem so elegant, but their conversation is captivating.
When my father was young, he had several friends who could be considered legendary figures unknown to fame. In Fenghuang county town there was Great-Uncle Zeng and Third Uncle Tang. The former was refined and elegant, with fine calligraphy, and was the president of the Border Town Poetry Society. He wrote two hall couplets, one being "A gentleman has no vulgar habits; a warrior has resolute actions." The other being "A gentleman has no grudges in his heart; Wulingyuan is a fine place to linger." This shows his scholar-gentleman style. He once even longed to engage in some small Confucian-merchant enterprise together with my father, but one who can wield a brush does not necessarily know how to use an abacus, so naturally he gradually felt the failure of life in his depression. The latter had a somewhat chivalrous air; he joined the army at thirteen and followed the troops of the King of Xiangxi, Chen Quzhen, clearing bandits along the Yuan River, and witnessed quite a few beheadings and killings. But beneath his bold and willful exterior there was another kind of tenderness.
When I was young, he often told my father to buy copies of Youxue Qionglin and Longwen Bianying, wanting me to study classical Chinese, and also told me to constantly grind ink and practice writing, preparing to test my calligraphy when he visited. This time, returning to my hometown again, all has become bygone dust. I never got to visit Great-Uncle Zeng, who by now is naturally "advanced in years"; and Third Uncle Tang has long been a handful of yellow earth, his elegance buried. At my mother's home, I sorted through some of my father's books brought out back then, thinking of how as a child I had lived so ignorantly in that kindness, yet failed to appreciate their loneliness and pride, and I sighed for quite a while.
My uncle gave me a great surprise. My uncle had been extraordinarily stout since childhood, and now past the age of fifty, his figure has expanded even more. I only remember that when I was young and often went to Jishou, he would invariably buy a pile of comic books for me, but after that came the layer upon layer of estrangement that grew with adulthood. On this return to my hometown, he already regarded me as a grown man, and knowing that I had come to revisit those mysterious and exotic stories, he poured out everything stored in his heart over the decades, teaching me all he had—whether institutional changes, strange tales, or legends of gods and ghosts, he recounted them one by one. He himself kept Soushen Ji and Jiandeng Caotang as bedside reading. Though he might not necessarily believe them, a heart busy with daily livelihood would, by night, taste between the lines a different kind of pleasure from another world entirely. Such pleasure, together with the joy of wandering through Tang and Song poetry, could find some outlet when writing couplets, yet in that small town where everyone struggled for a living, there was little time and few friends with whom one could sit down and talk freely about literature. So I, now a guest from afar, bearing alone the traces of some slight education, eager to verify everything about my mysterious and wild hometown as seen through books, meeting him—a host who felt it his bounden duty to speak eloquently—naturally found the speaker speaking freely and the listener listening with great relish.
Xiangxi's Most Beautiful "Cave-Fallen Girls"
If we speak only of what the eye can see, the beauty of Xiangxi lies first in its landscapes, and second in its women. Most people who have read a little know of the cave-fallen girls in the bloom of youth from Shen Congwen's writings. Their beauty need not be mentioned, and they were especially precious and self-loving. No ordinary man of the mundane world—whether a little apprentice in a shop, a sailor working the docks, or a mountain farmer whose feet were often stained with mud from the fields—could stir her heart with admiration. In her young and beautiful heart, she always felt she did not belong to the mortal world. Thus this girl, "bright-eyed, gentle and pure in disposition... usually chaste and quiet, keeping to herself, her emotions fervent but not outwardly shown, given much to fantasy" (Shen Congwen, Fenghuang), "imagined that at some moment she had unintentionally passed by a certain cave, and the cave god had glimpsed her and taken a liking to her. Therefore she grew even fonder of solitude, of sitting quietly, of cleanliness, and sometimes would talk to herself, often believing that the cave god had already come riding clouds and rainbows to see her." In the end, "she was simply left to die slowly.... At death she appeared wondrously clear and radiant, her beauty striking" (ibid.).
However, the legends about cave-fallen girls are actually more than just this one kind. The actual cases I heard from my uncle and what I witnessed in my childhood were quite different. On a slightly chilly early spring night in the third month, my uncle wiped his sweat and told of a girl from Houtoupo in Jixin, Fenghuang, sixteen years old, whose real name was unclear—people only knew her as "Pink Blossom." This nickname carried many imaginable meanings: rosy complexion, faint smiles, youthful radiance.
A beautiful girl naturally had many suitors, and her parents finally betrothed her to a Wang family on Jixin Street, who ran a small business and were comfortably well-off. They picked an auspicious day to send the bride, and the weather that day was truly fine, with clear clouds and gentle breeze. So with an eight-bearer sedan chair, suona music playing, and dowry chests stretching in a long line, the procession headed down the mountain. As they passed a cave along the road, the bride in the sedan suddenly began to rave, clearly losing her senses. Now what? The suona music stopped, and it was clear she could not be delivered to the groom's home; they could only gloomily carry her back. An experienced elder took one look and immediately understood it was the doing of the cave god—the girl's beauty had brought trouble. How to resolve it? The girl's parents immediately took incense and paper to the cave entrance and burned them, telling the cave god in the darkness, "We are endlessly grateful for your favor, but this child of ours is betrothed to another and counts as a married woman. She has no fortune to enjoy your vast divine grace, so let her be the wife of an ordinary small merchant." They burned much paper and said many good words, all the anxious pleas of parents for their child, and the cave god seemed to listen. When the elders returned home, they found the child had begun to regain clarity, still the shy maiden with a smiling face. The family secretly wiped tears of relief, put her back in the sedan, and set off again with music playing. This time, however, they dared not take the original route; they made a long detour and arrived safely at the groom's home. This girl, who had nearly been caught in a love between god and mortal, finally became the wife of an ordinary man.
And the ending of the story? "Pink Blossom is still here. I just saw her today at the Jixin market. She must be about seventy, not hunched at all, still with delicate skin." This is what my mother later told me. When my mother was at the Jixin market, I was in a rice noodle shop in the old East Gate Street of Fenghuang eating rice noodles. An old man chatted with me and asked where my hometown was. I said Jixin, and he cried out, "That Boss Xiong in Jixin sold my youngest daughter to Hangzhou. I'm going to settle accounts with him." He rambled on about how his daughter had been tricked into going to work, but fortunately ended up marrying into a good family. "About your age, girl, and she had a baby boy the year before last." When he calmed down, I asked if he knew "Pink Blossom." He said, "I know her, Boss Wang's wife, famous at the Jixin market." So "Pink Blossom's" reputation was indeed very loud—I just never had the chance to see her.
Later I also heard that although 'Fenduo Hua' was beautiful, what was even more famous were the Four Great Beauties of the Jixin market, all Miao people. One of them was Guanlin's aunt. I had seen her as a child; by then she was already almost 60, yet her skin was still smooth and delicate, and the silver ornaments on her Miao clothing jingled pleasantly. I was just about to ask more about how the Four Great Beauties had beauty that could overthrow cities, when someone nearby poured cold water on it. He said there was no such thing as the Four Great Beauties at all. Guanlin's aunt was indeed quite good, and at the time there was a saying, 'Guanlin's aunt has a fine figure, overwhelming everyone in Jixin.' Still, I preferred to believe in the legend of the Four Great Beauties. I had often heard their names as a child. Although I never saw them in person, their children and grandchildren and so on often walked past my door, all graceful and radiantly beautiful women.
Women Lost in Water
There were also cave-dwelling girls who in the end became entangled in love between humans and spirits and could never live spiritually the ordinary mortal life of men plowing and women weaving. One was a young girl in Lahao village above Fenghuang, delicate and charming, also sixteen or seventeen years old, who went with other girls from the same village to another village to watch a film. When they came out, it was already dusk. As they walked together, she said she was thirsty and wanted to go to the well to drink some water, so she left. The other girls waited a long time and did not see her return. Afraid of missing the start of the film, they went to look for her with flashlights and found her sitting blankly by the well, staring foolishly at her own reflection in the water. Her companions sent her home. She had already lost her reason and used all her strength to break free from others, giggling and saying, 'Look, am I pretty?' This was a tragic ending. In the end, she died depressed in silence, and her mother wept all her tears dry.
There were many examples of being lost in water. In the countryside of my childhood, there was a village cadre's daughter, a few years older than me, and we all attended the same school. She was a pretty girl. Usually very shy and silent, and also quite dignified. Below the school was a well, and she often went to the well to fetch water. I loved watching her graceful figure, scattering tiny water splashes, as she passed by my doorstep. Then one morning, her father was called to the well, and I saw her being carried back by her father, a neighbor following behind carrying her water buckets. Her hair was already disheveled, her eyes unnaturally bright, her hands and feet dancing—everyone said she had gone mad. Her father at first locked her at home, but after a long time, feeling pity, he let her out. Once free, she often appeared by the river and roadside, holding a teak comb, talking to herself, softly humming. If anyone approached, she always gave a most charming smile, her eyes clear and bright. Finally one day, her corpse floated on the river surface. According to witnesses, at first they saw her in the river washing her hair in the water and singing, and did not pay much attention. Perhaps later she walked deeper and deeper into the water and drowned.
The story of the cave-fallen girl closely resembles the Greek myth of Narcissus. A beautiful girl, ordinarily not much aware of her own looks, happens one day to find her peerless beauty in a smooth, mirror-like ancient well, and becomes infatuated, from then on her heart entangled only with her own appearance. Having fallen in love with herself, everything outside her body becomes ugly and meaningless, and then in her imagined perfect world, with sparkling glances, she departs. From then on there are no more traces of them in the mortal world, leaving people with countless wistful longings.
The Greatest Fear in Xiangxi Is Poison-Planting
The various legends of Xiangxi make this beautiful place seem draped in a gorgeous coat, brilliant as brocade, yet untouchable. Touch it, and it is either ghosts or sorcery, either taboo or poison. Poison-planting is one of these untouchable brocade threads. In martial arts novels, poison-planting has been greatly exaggerated and depicted as a mysterious and terrifying evil martial art. Take Jin Yong, for example: the most bewitchingly beautiful poison-planting woman is none other than the Miao woman Lan Fenghuang, with a laugh like silver bells. Her appearances are accompanied not only by bewitching laughter but often by poisonous insects and snakes. In Lin Qingxia and Jet Li's The East Is Red, most people probably remember Lin Qingxia's peerless, unmatched Dongfang Bubai, but what I remember is Rosamund Kwan's Ren Yingying. In that film version, Ren Yingying's identity became a Miao woman, inextricably linked with poison-planting. The film could not possibly have her speak Miao, so she spoke Guizhou dialect, which actually fits the original meaning of poison-planting well, because the legend of poison-planting is very prevalent in Guizhou. It is said that before Liberation, the most toxic red arsenic was sold on the streets in Guizhou, so poison-planting was not very mysterious there.
But in Xiangxi, poison-planting cannot be spoken of lightly, and it has nothing to do with bewitching, beautiful women. If someone is said to be a grass-poison (pronounced "gui" in the local dialect) woman, that person must be old and ugly, with red, rotting eyes. There are many descriptions of grass-poison women, and their powers seem not limited to poison-planting alone. As for what poison actually is, I have never been clear—it seems not to be poisonous insects or creatures, but an invisible, formless curse. In childhood, whenever one saw an old woman who behaved oddly, looked ugly, and kept to herself, adults would invariably warn that she was a grass-poison woman, and one must always be careful, never showing the slightest closeness to her. Because with poison, the more you guard and stay alert, the less likely you are to be affected; the closer you are to her, the easier it is to be afflicted. The specific method of dealing with it was, when that person passed by, to place both thumbs between the middle and index fingers, then bring them together, place them at the waist, and mutter a string of words like "Grass poison, grass poison, keep away from me," starting from when she approached and continuing until she had gone a good distance away. From this guarding against poison women, one can roughly see their isolated and coldly treated situation. Actually, whether those people were truly poison women was never verified—after all, no one had ever seen her carry any poisonous creature.
The Legend of the "Grass-Poison Woman"
Poison women were said to love placing poison on children most. Among the cases I know of harm from poison women, one is a neighbor where we now live, Grandma Han. Now she has only one son, but originally she had two. One of them died of poison-planting at the age of two, at death yellow and emaciated, with only a pair of large eyes left, and having excreted two worms. In her grief, Grandma Han recalled that a grass-poison woman often chatted with her and had been close to her child. The child had been held and teased by her, so it must have been her who placed the poison. Because one of the signs of a person dying from poison is excreting or vomiting some strange worms before death.
The magical power of the Gu woman is great, yet it is not limited to poisoning children; she can also use her sorcery to engage in magical duels. My uncle said that an acquaintance of his, Old Zhang, claimed he had personally seen two Gu women duel on the mountain. Those two grass Gu women were originally like ordinary people, cutting pigweed on the mountain, preparing to go home and chop it up to feed the pigs, but unexpectedly, because of fighting over pigweed, a quarrel broke out. Neither did they curse like shrews, nor did they scratch each other's hair and tear at each other like ordinary women; they just muttered incantations, and in an instant, two baskets for holding pigweed flew up into the sky, colliding and tumbling in the air, fighting fiercely, yet not a single blade of pigweed was seen to spill out. Old Zhang was chopping wood not far away at the time, and was so stunned that he almost cut his hand with every stroke.
As for the transmission of grass Gu, it is said to be passed down to daughters, not sons. The daughter who has no choice but to accept her mother's transmission has already witnessed the coldness and isolation of the world during her mother's lifetime, so she does not willingly accept this family lore that brings curses upon people. But the mother seems to bear the mission of passing it on, and has no choice but to transmit it. Before dying, she can only, in a weak voice, ask her daughter to find something for her. As the daughter is searching, the mother asks, "Have you got it?" The daughter, not understanding, responds, "Got it." Only then does the mother feel reassured, close her eyes, and pass away. At this moment, the daughter realizes that her response "Got it" has already received her mother's transmission. In an instant, sorrow wells up in her heart, and she can only cry out loud, mourning both her mother's death and her own sorrow. Since grass Gu is such an uncontrollable sorcery, if you interact with a grass Gu woman, you must be careful, just as she must pass it to her daughter before dying; an unrelated person could very likely be transmitted to somewhere. If you go to her house to borrow a bamboo hat, and happen to find her busy spinning in the shadows or busy lighting a fire in the kitchen, she will let you get it yourself from the wall in the main hall. Casually, she will softly ask, "Got it?" If you are not vigilant and rashly agree, the subsequent situation and unspeakable suffering will be like that of the daughter with no choice. So when borrowing things, you must use a respectful tone, do not enter the house, and only say to her outside: "Auntie, I urgently need to borrow a bamboo hat. I just came from outside, my shoes are dirty from the rain, it's not good to go in. Could you please get it for me?" She will surely kindly bring it to you, and you will avoid a disaster.
The matter of placing Gu, because there is no evidence, one cannot lightly say someone is a grass Gu woman. If you speak out, it is ruining her reputation, and she will surely demand that you set off firecrackers and apologize before she will let it go. But in the past, it is said there was the practice of sunning grass Gu women, which was to sun the grass Gu woman under the big sun of June for three days, called "sunning grass insects," with the aim of completely eliminating the harm done by old and ugly women. Those who survived the sunning naturally became ordinary people, but some could not endure it and died weakly. From such situations and the behavior of those I later saw called "Gu women," it seems that "grass Gu women" did not have any extraordinary powers. If she truly had boundless powers, she would not have brought such disaster upon herself. And those who subjected her to cruel torture probably would not have waited to see her suffer; perhaps it was because of her ugly appearance and solitary, self-abased character that people often felt she acted furtively, and over time, she was excluded from normal people.
The Terrifying "Driving Corpses"
The legend of driving corpses is one of the powers of the "Chenzhou Talisman." To hear this legend, one must have considerable imagination and a bit of reverence for ghosts and gods, and also some experience with horror films; otherwise, before the story is even finished, one will exclaim, "Liar!" In the old days, transportation was inconvenient and communication difficult. If a businessman died of sudden illness or other causes in a foreign land, and the family was not well-off, considering the hardship and expense of transporting the coffin back by boat and cart, they would have no choice but to hire a sorcerer to go to the foreign land and drive the corpse back all the way, called "driving corpses." The person telling you this story surely has never seen a person and a corpse traveling day and night one after the other, like my uncle sitting opposite me now, but he will certainly say: "The sorcerer is, after all, human. When tired at night, he must stay at an inn. But people will not pay for a corpse's room, so the innkeeper absolutely will not let the corpse enter. The sorcerer then casts a spell, fixing the corpse outside the door, standing against the wall. The next day, after washing up and eating breakfast, he musters his energy and drives the corpse back all the way." When the listener exclaims, the teller must touch the soles of his feet and add: "When the corpse arrives home, both feet are covered in blood. Because first, the journey is long, and second, the corpse can only walk with straight knees, and when encountering stones or such, it will not detour but kick straight through, so missing a few toes is common." At this point, he stops abruptly, accompanied by two chuckles, as a conclusion. If, amidst your trembling fear, you still want to ask how a dead person can still bleed, how many tumbles a zombie must take along the way, why only the toes are missing and not a broken spine, and how the sorcerer travels thousands of miles without taking a boat or cart, he will say: "Nowadays, either coffins or urns are used; this corpse-driving trade has long been gone. Who knows?"
Rituals of Miao Village Festivals
It is best to visit a Miao village during a festival—April Eighth, Tiaonian, Ganqiu—when the crowds are thick. Not only can you see Miao women in groups, their silver ornaments jingling, coming in a long procession, but you can also witness many rituals. For example, climbing the knife ladder: a peeled fir tree, somehow so tall it seems to pierce the clouds, with ox-horn knives inserted crosswise. Of course, the knives are not necessarily shiny; some are even dark. Before climbing the knife ladder, a Miao male shaman, the Miao Laosi, leads a group of disciples in chanting incantations, extremely solemn and majestic. Then several brave men climb the ladder step by step. No matter how dull the knives look, it is still a knife ladder, not a wooden one, so their speed is not fast; they try to find the right foothold and step on each knife to climb up. Reaching the depths of the clouds, they gradually become small black figures. The crowd below cheers, and from high above comes his wailing cry.
Miao Sacrifices Require "Chui Niu"
There is also the "Chui Niu" (ox stabbing) for sacrificing to gods and seeking peace. Unlike Spanish bullfighting, where the bull runs around the arena, and the brave bullfighter, unlike the proud Spanish matador, waves a red cloth and wears shiny clothes, performing various dashing moves. The ox is tied to a wooden stake. The immortal master, a person of high prestige, stabs the ox's side with a spear, and then others stab in turn until the ox is stabbed to death and falls with a thud. After the ceremony, the beef is divided and eaten, with different parts distributed according to seniority and status. The performative Chui Niu ritual I saw is very similar to what is recorded in the Daoguang-era "Fenghuang Tingzhi," which states: "At the time of sacrifice, the ox is tied to a flowered stake. First, the elder stabs with a spear, and the rest stab in order." But this performative Chui Niu may not necessarily follow ancient customs exactly; over a hundred years, simplifications or omissions are possible.
In fact, Chui Niu was originally not just a public performance, but a sacrificial ritual in Miao families in childhood. Customs vary by region and among different Miao groups, and the Chui Niu ritual also differs. In 1939, Mr. Zhou Libo, as a reporter for the "Anti-War Daily," investigated Miao life in the Luxi, Jishou, and Fenghuang areas of Xiangxi. In his article "The Past and Customs of the Miao People in Xiangxi," he recorded the Chui Niu process he witnessed: "The grand ceremony is on the main day. The host ties an ox to a wooden stake in front of the house, with guests and hosts watching. First, the host's uncle stabs the ox's side with a spear, then the girls stab, then the sisters, and then relatives and friends stab in order of seniority, until the ox is stabbed to death. ... At night, male and female guests sing, dance, and beat drums, while the Miao Laosi performs rituals."
"Chui Niu" Varies by Region
According to records, the rituals of the "Kayou Zhongjia" (a branch of the Miao) in the Guiyang and Anshun areas are different: "For sacrifices, the poor use one ox, the rich several. Relatives and friends each bring chickens and wine to sacrifice, weeping around the ox. After the sacrifice, the ox is slaughtered and the meat divided. After eating, they disperse." In addition, besides regional differences, Hakka Miao and true Miao also differ. The sinicized Hakka Miao's Chui Niu is "tying a straight pole to the ox's back and cutting its neck with a large knife," while the true Miao "stabs the ox's back (actually the ox's left front leg)." However, everywhere Chui Niu must be presided over by a Laosi, who leads the ritual with both song and dance. The song is the chanting of the Miao Chui Niu scripture, and the dance is a prayer dance of worship in four directions to entertain the gods. The Miao Chui Niu scripture is said to be vast, about ten thousand lines, divided into two parts: one traces Miao history, unfolding the picture of Miao ancestors migrating over mountains and rivers and then settling down; the other is prayers, devoutly seeking blessings and protection from all gods. Although I witnessed the ritual, I never saw the scripture, which is a regret.
In addition, during festivals, the Eight-Person Swing and Monkey Drum are programs for women. I have participated in both April Eighth and Tiaonian, so I have seen and heard the beautiful women's silver-bell-like laughter on the swings, their sleeves fluttering, silver ornaments dazzling. The women beating drums make various movements of dressing and harvesting, without affecting the drum's rhythm at all.
If you are lucky enough to encounter a wedding, it is even more fascinating. Not to mention how the bride with the "nest umbrella" (the umbrella is of blue cloth, not fully opened) attracts you to eagerly see her appearance under the umbrella; the suona music along the way is already lively enough to make you stop and watch. After arriving, you drink big bowls of wine and eat large pieces of meat, sit around the fire, and listen to the relatives of the bride and groom sing in antiphonal style. If you are happy and drink a few more bowls, you will truly be drunk and not know where you are.
Visiting a Miao Laosi
The Miao people are fond of witchcraft and emphasize gods, hence there are Laosi who preside over various rituals to drive away ghosts and gods. Thus, there is a saying that without a shaman, a village cannot be established, showing the prevalence of witchcraft.
My return home this time was in an ordinary season, not any festival, but I was fortunate to visit a Miao Laosi. This shaman is from Chongliangpo, surnamed Long, 83 years old. In the countryside, the area is not large; he often passes by our house and is an acquaintance, though I did not know before. My mother had sent word to him the day before, so at noon the next day we took some cigarettes and wine and headed into the mountains. The weather was fine, and along the way we smelled the fragrance of rapeseed flowers and purple vetch, stepping on remnants of cow dung, walking along the mountain path. After about 40 minutes, we approached the village and saw a line of women washing clothes by the well from afar. An old man with rolled-up trousers was leading a cow along the field ridge, about to leave the village. My mother, sharp-eyed, called out to him: "Mamang (uncle), are you taking the cow out?" So it was him. He answered my mother, saying: "I'll let the old woman graze the cow. Wait for me a moment; I'll take you to sit in the house." We stood by the field ridge. In the field, a person was plowing, driving the ox with whips, and the plow turned over waves of mud. The rapeseed flowers were especially brilliant in the sun, with butterflies swirling above in groups. The houses in the village had yellow mud and black walls; few people were seen, the dark wooden doors closed, creating a serene and refreshing quiet in the sunlight. A few children were playing on another field ridge not far away, pushing and shoving, looking toward us. As we walked over and just raised the camera, they scattered with a shout, then gathered again, and when the camera was raised again, they ran off again.
The old man handed the cow to a child, instructing him to lead it to the village entrance for his wife, then took us to his home. Stepping over the stone threshold, we entered the stone courtyard. The door was unlocked; he pushed it open with a creak. His house was no different from others in the village, an ordinary three-room structure. In the main hall, there was something like a shrine, not enshrining any statue, but with some residual incense paper on the ground, and a couplet pasted on both sides, the characters already illegible, and densely covered with brush writing. The old man said that was his own altar. Entering the right wing room, he brought out stools for us to sit, lit a cigarette, and chatted with us.
When I just asked about the nature of his work, he told me it is religion, the religion of the Miao. The Han also have Laosi, but "each has its own teaching, each belongs to its own skin." Since they are the ones presiding over rituals, they are all literate. The old man said he studied everywhere in the past, attending private schools. "I studied at Shaijintang and Duimenpo. When young, I could recite the Three Character Classic; now that I'm old, I can't remember it all." The Laosi is passed down from generation to generation. The old man said he is the fourth generation in his family. "Let me think... great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather... ah, I don't know, just know it's family transmission. That's not long; there's a family in Tangchong that has passed down seven or eight generations." At fifteen or sixteen, he followed his father to villages and hamlets, getting up before dawn and still working after dark. The old man spoke with a sense of hardship: "Blisters on the feet were common; over time, calluses formed." He blew a smoke ring and smiled. But the past was not all hard memories of early rising and late sleeping; more were the glories of the Miao witchcraft culture era. The old man squinted: "In the past, for Nuo vows, Chui Niu, and dragon boat races, Laosi were invited. How lively it was!" "Did you pray for rain?" I imagined him waving a prayer wheel and chanting in the sun, then a downpour, and the people cheering. He said: "Yes." And then no more. I pressed: "And now?" "Now, there are water pumps. Who would invite you? Right?" The old man blew another smoke ring.