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RELATED THEMES education identity traditional skills OTHER THEMES IN SW COLLECTION THEMES IN NE COLLECTION BACKGROUND |
culture and customs in the southwest collection These interviews are all from China's minority peoples. The collection features Yi and Miao narrators in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces; Yao narrators in Guangxi autonomous region; and Wa and Lahu narrators in Yunnan. Each group has their own customs, practices and language, but they share a common concern to maintain their identity and culture while taking advantage of modern life. Weaving and sewing richly coloured and embroidered clothes, for example, remains a prized skill for all these groups. Some young people prefer to use the time to earn money and buy ordinary ("Han") clothes; others see traditional craft skills as a source of pride and satisfaction in lives that are otherwise filled with hard labour. There is an interesting dialogue on the subject between one of the few male voices in this collection, a 27-year-old Miao Oxfam extension worker, and his female interviewer (China 18). He maintains that Miao women can ill afford the time or the cost of making their traditional clothes and feels that they are wrong to do so, saying: "When one does anything, one needs to consider whether it can make money…". The interviewer disagrees: "…women's lives are too harsh. From morning till evening, all they do is work, work, work!… So I think making these clothes allows them to have something to rely on mentally (to put their spirit and thoughts into)… it embodies part of their value system in life. I think if there were no such kind of stuff for them, they would have no support for their souls, and then women's lives would be too harsh, too bitter." An elderly woman (China 15) has much to say on Lahu culture - songs, festivals, rituals and crafts. She acknowledges that the skills of weaving and sewing are in some decline as the older generation die - but "Han clothes aren't as warm as Lahu ones". She also describes jiaohun (translated as "calling the spirit"), which is a traditional practice through which ancestors' spirits who are troubling their surviving relatives (causing illness, for example) are persuaded to leave their families in peace. She says she is not the only one in her community to know how to perform the ritual and it is mentioned by other narrators. One (China 16) is rather disparaging about such customs, feeling that people waste their precious resources: "When people are sick, they don't go to the hospital - they kill a pig [to get rid of troublesome spirits]. So the pigs and chickens are used up in this way, and life in the village becomes more difficult… They do that because they don't have scientific knowledge. When people perform jiaohun, some people get well but some can't. It doesn't have any benefits". This tension between maintaining old customs and adopting a modern "scientific" approach to life does seem to be an issue for some in these communities. Several narrators mention traditional songs and dances. One 54-year-old (China 26) says when she was young she travelled away from her mountain village as "part of a song and dance organisation". She describes one song in particular: "I sang about flax sowing. Sowing flax, after sowing we weed it, after weeding we cut it, cut it and have it dry in the sun. [When it has] dried, then we take it to soak, soak it then scrape it, scrape it then spin it, spin it then weave it, weave it then boil it, boil it then wash it, wash it then hang it on sticks. After winding the thread on the stick, we spin again…the song was like this." quotes about culture and customs"It's not only me who knows how to do jiaohun; there are three to six other people who know about it. I also learned from others…I followed what they said. I asked the dead old person to bring back its spirit. I asked it to drink and eat, then take back its ghost. I told it that its children and grandchildren were not well, they could not sleep well, could not live well... I asked it not to bother its descendants…" "[This] is the place for burning joss sticks…to the god of your house. This ritual is passed on to us from the older generations… Even when we have no pain and no disease, we still have to burn the joss sticks in the direction of sunrise. All the traditions passed on by our older generations - we have to maintain them…" "In the past [when there was a death] people would ask the baima (someone who deals with the spirit world) to come and pray, to pray for a whole night, and dance, something like that… They also murmured about the holy writings. [Today? This is] popular for some, but not for all." "Most of the young people now don't know how to weave cloth. You just have to labour for others for four to five days, then you can buy a piece of clothing to wear…" "I always think that making these Miao clothes costs too much time … After [a woman] finishes the day's work, she can't go to bed early… She has to spin the flax or do something else. Thus her time for rest is short… It affects her physical and mental health. I think they could make just one set to wear in our Miao festivals in remembrance of our tradition… To make the costume is too troublesome. It costs too much." "Clothes, and many other things have changed much. In the past, the old people wore only one big pair of trousers, the wide trousers… They didn't have underwear and shirts. We heard this from the old people. All wore gunny (made from flax or hemp) clothes. People worked in the daytime, and made the clothes at night… [Now] we can barely remember how to use cotton and spin. There isn't [the need] now…" "People sing best after they've drunk. Now most people don't know how to sing the songs of the Spring festival. When people work they sing work songs. When young women and men go out to have fun, they sing love songs. When people send off the spirits (family and other spirits), they sing spirit songs. When people die, [others] sing laments." "The 15th of the eighth month of the lunar calendar is when food is offered to the sun and the moon. We cooked melons as an offering, peeled pears as an offering, gave pineapples as an offering, gave bananas as an offering. We don't see people celebrate this festival anymore. In the past, we pulled up the green bean plants, picked out the beans, pounded them and made them into soup as an offering." "There's only a trace of the tradition [of wearing the headdress] left. Rural children are not too fastidious about wearing the headdress; they dress in a simple way." |
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culture and customs in the northeast collection
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Summary
