The Paper's reporter Wu Yi Yang Zhou, a member of the China Team at the School of Journalism at Fudan University
On the vast plateau, eagle strikes the long sky, and on the snowy plateau at an altitude of 4,000 meters, the Gesar culture is nurtured and carried forward here. The legend of King Gesar has been passed down by word of mouth for thousands of years – this is Dayi County of Goluo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (hereinafter referred to as "Goluo Prefecture") in Qinghai Province, and it is also the "Pearl of Mayu (Yellow River Valley)".
On July 9 this year, the Gesar Tibetan Opera Troupe, founded in 1987, performed a multi-act Tibetan opera in front of the Shilong Palace in Dari County to commemorate the great achievements of King Gesar and pray for world peace, national peace and people's safety, and the well-being of all sentient beings.
Under the long blue sky, the grassland is endless, the horses are galloping, and the actors reproduce the Gesar king in their hearts with a healthy posture.
How does the New Era inherit the ancient Gesar culture and bring it to life? Recently, the "Record China" team went to Goluo Prefecture to interview Jiaxi Dongqiang, a cadre of the Dari County Bureau of Culture and Sports and a Tibetan director, and listened to his story of protecting this intangible cultural heritage as a "guardian".
Cadre of the Dari County Bureau of Culture and Sports and Tibetan director Jiaxi Dongqiang. Courtesy of respondents
The world's only living epic
"Gesar epics are still being sung and written, and they are the only living epics in the world at present." Jiaxi Dongqiang said.
"King Gesar" is a great heroic epic created by the Tibetan people on the mainland, telling the story of the ancient Tibetan hero Gesar who threw himself into the nether realm to save the lives of the living, led the people of the Lingguo to subdue demons, punish evil and promote good, and finally completed the mission of the world and returned to the kingdom of heaven.
The huge statue of King Gesar inside the Lion Dragon Palace. The image was taken by Yang Zhou, a member of the Record China team at fudan university's School of Journalism
In Tibetan areas, Gesar's stories are mainly sung orally by rap artists. While continuing the inheritance, epics are constantly being created with new creations and vitality.
After a thousand years of cultural "transmission", today's "King Gesar" has more than 120 works, more than 1 million lines of poetry, more than 20 million words, and according to the narration of rap artists, it is still being enriched and updated, and it is the longest and most vast "living" epic so far.
King Gesar, along with Homer and Gilgamesh, is called the world's three great epics. In 2009, the "Gesar (S)Ertic Tradition" was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Located in the core area of Sanjiangyuan, Guoluo Prefecture is one of the birthplaces of Tibetan culture on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which is considered to be the place where King Gesar went to be magnificent, and is known as the "hometown of Chinese Gesar culture".
The Gesar culture of "inexhaustible tao and endless singing" has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people here and has shaped the spiritual core of the Tibetan people. In addition to rap artists, the people of Goluo State also pass on and promote Gesar culture in their own way. Jiaxi Dongqiang is one of them.
Dong Qiang recalled that when he was a child, whenever the night fell, the old man in the family would call the children to him and tell them the story of King Gesar under the starry sky. At night, Darri is quiet, and amid the sporadic insect chirping, king Gesar's conquest story is doubly majestic.
At that time, Qinghai People's Radio also had a special column about King Gesar, and Dongqiang especially loved to listen. In memory, on the radio is the famous rap artist Gasang Zhihua talking about "The Biography of King Gesar", his thick voice, half-written and half-white, often singing without saying a few words. When Dong Qiang was three or four years old, he was still learning to speak, and he already liked to imitate and sing "The Legend of King Gesar".
Dong Qiang introduced that rap artists can be roughly divided into divine teaching, digging, round light, smelling knowledge, chanting and intellectualization. Among them, the hearer refers to the artist who spreads the word of mouth by listening to others' rapping, and the number of hearsay artists is particularly large and widely distributed, which plays an important role in the inheritance of Gesar culture.
A palace that took six years to build
Dongqiang's "regurgitation" of Gesar culture began in 2010. Originally a teacher, he changed his career direction and came to work in the cultural department of Naree County. Coinciding with the country's vigorous promotion of cultural prosperity and development, Dongqiang felt that he had caught up with a good time, "I want to make Gesar culture known to more people." ”
In 2013, the China Qinghai "Mayu Gesar Culture" Day Forum was successfully held. Soon, the reconstruction of the Lion Dragon Palace was put on the agenda. According to the epic, the Shilong Palace was the palace of King Gesar and the political, cultural and economic center of the Lingguo Mayu region. Dongqiang, as the head of the Dari County Cultural Bureau, participated in this reconstruction project throughout the process.
Exterior view of the Lion Dragon Palace. The image was taken by Yang Zhou, a member of the Record China team at fudan university's School of Journalism
However, the project started in 2013 and was not completed until 2019. Dong Qiang explained that the biggest difficulties in rebuilding the Shilong Palace are two, one is the difficulty of taking materials, and the other is the short construction period. Dari County is a pastoral area, there are very few trees, and all the construction timber is transported from Manzhouli, Hulunbuir City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and then processed. The stone is mined from the local mountains, but the limited resources are scattered and distributed, and it is difficult to mine.
In terms of construction cycle, due to the local climatic characteristics, the effective construction period of each year is only From May to August, in addition to bad weather such as rain and wind, the construction period is only about 90 days, and the construction time is limited. As a result, the palace was built intermittently for six years.
In 2019, the reconstruction project of the Lion Dragon Palace was finally completed. Today, the palace has five floors, displaying the seated statue of King Gesar, the thirty generals, the eighty arhats, the eighteen thangkas and other precious cultural relics. The Shilong Palace is not only a transmission center of Gesar culture, but also a concentrated display of traditional Tibetan architecture and a base for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage in Goluo Prefecture.
Speaking of the palace, Dongqiang is full of pride: "It is like a museum, an important window for people to understand the history and culture of Gesar. ”
Bring the story to the big screen
Just as the Shilong Palace was about to be completed, Dongqiang had a new idea: to make a literary and artistic work, so that Gesar culture could "go out".
In 2018, Dongqiang's film "Gesar Tibetan Drama" was launched. This movie tells the story of the little protagonist Zade who loves Gesar culture, overcomes difficulties to learn to perform Gesar Tibetan opera, and finally gets the support of the director of the county cultural center to realize his dream step by step.
Prior to this, Dong Qiang had not been exposed to movies, and he described himself as a "pure amateur layman".
The film focuses on a child's quest for Gesar's Tibetan drama. Talking about the original intention of the film creation, Dong Qiang said that he hopes to present his understanding of Gesar culture more delicately and concretely, so that the works are close to people's daily lives, so that the audience can realize that the Tibetan people's love for Gesar culture is deeply rooted in the bone marrow.
"When I was a child, I was also deeply influenced by Gesar culture, and this story has its own shadow." Dong Qiang said.
Jia Xi Dong Qiang is collecting wind. Courtesy of respondents
Professional film actors are inevitably unfamiliar with Gesar culture, and Dongqiang prefers to invite native Gesar artists to perform, even if they have no acting experience, "This is to put the performance of folk rap artists on the big screen, which has special inheritance significance." ”
The little protagonist of "Gesar Tibetan Drama" is the grandson of one of The most famous Gesar rap artists in Golo. Angers has been dead for a long time, but Gesar's singing skills have been passed down by word of mouth in their family.
Dong Qiang said that he saw the photo of the little boy during the casting and thought at a glance that this was his "male number one". The little boy's family lives in Gander County, 50 kilometers away from Dari County, and Dongqiang drove directly to the casting. "There are a lot of things I don't have to teach him, he is already very good at singing, and the love of Gesar culture is also flowing in the blood. I think that's what I want to express. ”
Jia Xi Dong Qiang and the film crew members. Courtesy of respondents
Many of the participants are Friends and Relatives of Dongqiang, and everyone participates with enthusiasm and blood, and does not take a penny of remuneration. Due to financial problems, the crew could not afford to live in the hotel, Dongqiang vacated his old house, and the neighbors also lent the idle house to the crew to live temporarily, and the filming was completed in Dari County. The dream is to become a reality step by step under such "simple" conditions.
The film was released nationwide in August 2020. Affected by the epidemic, the attendance rate of cinemas is not high, but Dongqiang has paid attention to many audiences who have seen the movies and given positive evaluations.
He felt that the success of the film was secondary, "the important thing is that I love and care about the development of national culture as always, and I want to tell you how Gesar culture has shaped the values and spiritual attitudes of the Tibetan people." ”
"The Tibetan Encyclopedia"
Gesar's heroic legend is one of the spiritual cores of the Tibetan people, which teaches people compassion and kindness, and brings people hope and passion for life.
However, Dongqiang also feels that due to changes in living environment and conditions, today's young people can be exposed to a richer entertainment life, and their understanding of Gesar culture has weakened. In addition, the living conditions of Gesar folk rap artists have also changed.
How should Goluo Prefecture, as an experimental area for gesar cultural and ecological protection, play a role? Dongqiang believes that protecting cultural sites, ensuring the funds of artists and inheriting and carrying forward skills are the keys.
He introduced that there are countless Gesar-related sites in Goluo Prefecture, in addition to the famous Lion Dragon Palace, there are Adalam Castle, Sanglun Palace, etc., which need to be further excavated and studied.
The epic texts are voluminous, and experts well versed in Gesar's epics are engaged in arduous collection, collation, and publication. Folk rap artists bear the responsibility of passing on their living skills and need training and financial support for their professional skills.
In addition, in Goluo Prefecture, there are Tibetan theater troupes of all sizes in the private sector and the government. These Tibetan opera troupes are dedicated to rehearsing Gesar Tibetan opera, showing the grand epic content as "Horse Racing King", "Birth of a Hero", "Prince of Qiang", "Xindan Infighting" and other plays, performed on horseback. They are always present in grand festivals and celebrations, and they often go out of Qinghai to perform in other places.
Gesar Tibetan drama at the Simmering Festival. The image was taken by Yang Zhou, a member of the Record China team at fudan university's School of Journalism
In 2022, Gesar's Tibetan opera "Horse Racing king" was performed at the Beijing Tianqiao Art Center, with the intention of helping the Winter Olympics and letting the world feel the richness and variety of Chinese Tibetan culture.
In "Horse Racing King", the line that impressed Dong Qiang the most was: "There is only the public enemy of the Dharma, not the personal vendetta of Gesar." "It means to uphold justice, benevolence and love.
Dong qiang further elaborated that Gesar's conquest was not to conquer or dominate any region for selfish interests, but to select the most famous and authoritative people in the local area to manage, for the sake of the local people, to redeem all sentient beings, and to benefit one side. This is the most important spiritual value that Gesar has passed on to the Tibetan people.
"The Gesar epic is an encyclopedia of Tibetan history, culture, and social customs, as well as a mobile living epic with the participation of many people, which is a cultural phenomenon that should be further protected, inherited and carried forward." Dong Qiang said.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhong Yuhao Photo Editor: Jin Jie
Proofreader: Shi Gong