In the southwest of Yunnan, in our motherland, there is a shining emerald, that is, the beautiful Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture. With the yearning and longing for the magical and charming natural scenery and unique ethnic minority customs of Xishuangbanna, I went to the countryside to Mengla County in Xishuangbanna in December 1969. Mengla County is a multi-ethnic settlement, according to Mengla County records: Mengla County inhabited by 26 ethnic groups such as Dai, Hani, Yi, Yao, Miao, Zhuang and Laku. As of the 2020 census, the ethnic minority population is 182,200, accounting for 74.3% of the registered population. Among them, 63,200 are Dai, 60,900 are Hani and 19,400 are Yi.
The Dai people are the main ethnic group, the villages are built in the dam with fertile water and soil, the Dai people live by the water, the intersection of the Dai village is planted with phoenix tail bamboo, the Dai bamboo building of the Dai family is hidden under the wide banana leaves and tall coconut trees, and the roads in the village of more than 100 households are like a tic-tac-shape, vertical and horizontal. The scenery is very beautiful. Other ethnic groups chose to build the village on a sunny and open, cool mountain beam with spring water or halfway up the mountain. In the ten years of Mengla County, I visited six of the eight communes in Mengla County, except for Xiangming Commune and Numbushu Commune. Xiangming Commune and Numbushu Commune (formerly known as New Commune) are two of the most remote and isolated places in Mengla County.
It took me a day to walk the mountain road to enter the commune of Yao District, but I heard that it took two days to enter the commune of Xiangming. In 1974, each company of our Second Water Conservancy Regiment was transferred to the Mengla Prefecture to work in Mengla Prefecture, where they received intensive training for five days at the county guest house, and then they were transferred to various departments and units in Mengla County. I and Wang Guoxing of the 16th Company, Pan Yimin of the 10th Company, and Gong Huiguang of the 9th Company were transferred to the Yao District Commune. A short man from the Seventh Company went to Xiangming Commune. Two years later, I met this young man from Qilian on Mengla Street. He wore a black coarse cloth national costume from head to toe, and could speak the language of the Ailing, and if he found another Ailing woman as a wife, he would really be assimilated by the Ailing.
One year when I went back to Shanghai to visit my relatives, I took a shuttle bus along the Nanla River. On the opposite side of the river are rolling mountains covered with reckless primeval forests. Someone in the car shouted, "Look at the new commune." "Others are excited, I am afraid. I thought if I walked into this deep, majestic vast forest and sea, as if I walked into a darkness, would I still be able to walk! The administrative area of Mengla County now has an extra Guanlei town, and I learned that it is actually the former new commune, and the later numb tree commune. Guanlei Town was built as the first port for Southeast Asian countries to enter the mainland via the Mekong River. The main ethnic groups in Guanlei Town are the Hani, Dai and Yao.
The Hani are known locally as the Ailing. The Hani people scattered throughout Mengla because of historical reasons, there are several branches between ethnic groups, several Biyo villages living in Yao District, that is, the branches of the Hani people, listening to my students in the village, although they are the branches of the Hani people, but after hundreds of years of historical evolution, the Biyo and Hani ethnic groups have been very different in language, customs and clothing.
When I was a clerk in the company, I went out to buy vegetables twice and went to the village of the Ailing ethnic group. Once, the villagers of the Ailing tribe brought me into their vegetable field, which was full of large cabbage. Put the cabbage in a sack and weigh it on a large scale. I bargained with the villagers before. I said 1 dime per catty, but the villagers disagreed, and insisted on 1 dime and 2 cents per catty. I said, okay, just 1 dime and 2 cents per catty. The scale was hung from a tree, and the scale was a big rock. The problem is that the villagers don't know the scales, and they can't calculate them, so if I want to look at the scales and calculate the money, in the end, I still have the final say. I certainly don't deceive the villagers. But these Ailing people are indeed simple and easily deceived.
Another time I came to a mountain inhabited by the Ailing people, their vegetable field was on the opposite side of the cottage, more than ten meters apart, a simple chain bridge connecting the two mountains, five meters deep under the bridge is a mountain stream, the water is turbulent, strange rocks. Walking onto the chain bridge, the bridge deck began to shake. Back with the dishes, you have to go through the chain bridge again. I carried a sack of cabbage on my back and walked on the bridge, just like the Red Army was walking on the chain bridge at the mouth of Laozikou, the bridge moved the sack, and my clothes were soaked nervously. And the Ailing people carried vegetables across the bridge like walking on the ground. Most of the Shanghai educated youth who cut the queue are from Shanghai's Hongkou District, and some of them join the queue in the Ailing cottage, and living in such a difficult environment really requires strong perseverance.
I went to work in the commune in Yao District and was assigned to Sharenzhai, a 10-minute walk from the commune office. The villagers of Sharen Village are divided into Zhuang ethnic groups. I have worked and lived in Sharen Village for two years, and I feel that the Sharen villagers are no different from the Dai people I have seen in terms of language, clothing, bamboo buildings and living customs. I checked the historical data, the Zhuang people in Xishuangbanna are also called "sand people", the ancestors of these people entered Laos from Jingwen Mountain in Guangxi hundreds of years ago, and then moved from Laos to Mengla due to war and settled in Mengla, they have long been in contact with the Dai people, mixed and intermarried, and have been completely assimilated by the Dai people.
My friend in Sharen, the father of substitute teacher Bo Yingfa, is the Dai ethnic group who came to Sharen Village. These so-called Zhuang people are mainly the Sharen village and the two villages of Mengbo in Yao District. In fact, our Han nationality has also formed our Han nationality today through the integration of various ethnic groups for thousands of years. I think the relevant departments in Mengla should reclassify the so-called Zhuang ethnic group in Yao District as Dai ethnic group. Generations of villagers in Sharen Village will be confused and embarrassed by their vague national identity.
After working in the Sharenzhai Primary School in the Yao District Commune for two years, I was transferred to the Laobaizhai Primary School on the mountain. The villagers of Laobaizhai and the nearby Huanglian Cottage and Dashanzhai are all Xiangtang people. The Xiangtang are a branch of the Yi ethnic group, and the national costumes worn by women and the long black scarf wrapped around their heads are no different from those of the Yi people, and the men's clothing is the same as that of the local Han people.
The Xiangtang have their own language. But in the 20th century, many of the younger generation do not speak their own language. I asked my Xiangtang students, do your generation still speak your Xiangtang dialect? Student Runyu replied to me: "Teacher Chen, we won't be able to go down the mountain, Yiwu in the upper half of the mountain, the high mountain, and the people on the Xiangming side will say." "When I was teaching in Laobaizhai, I went to the villagers' houses at night and listened to older women sing their own folk songs, which were love stories of young men and women. It is estimated that the younger generation now cannot sing.
The girl of the Xiangtang clan is very beautiful, and teacher Fan Qiaoliang from Longba Xiaozhai Primary School in the Yao District Commune married the girl from Laobaizhai. I've seen this girl, she's very beautiful. Zhou Xinhan, who was transferred with me from the water conservancy corps and assigned to work as a language teacher at the Mengla County Middle School, also married a girl from the Xiangtang clan. After we all left Mengla, Zhou Xinhan stayed in Mengla. He has two sons and is financially strained. When he came to Shanghai to visit his relatives, his friends in Shanghai secretly stuffed some money into him. He later died of lung disease. We all mourn the loss of a good friend.
Teacher Fan Qiaoliang is a native Han Chinese from Yiwu Commune. In 1976, the Mengla County Education Bureau assigned seven to eight teachers from the Yao Commune, including Teacher Fan, from the neighboring Yiwu Commune. When these people came to report to the Yao District Commune on the first day, I also happened to be in the commune. These people are all wearing blue clothes and black pants. The Han and Dai, Yao, and Yi ethnic groups of Yiwu Commune are all local ethnic groups, and I estimate that their ancestors may be the Han people in the interior who migrated from Yunguichuan and other places to escape the war during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Teacher Fan now lives in Mengla County.
It is not uncommon for Shanghai educated youth to marry local people, but they are generally young people who have been transferred from the XPCC farm to work in local areas. Due to the strict militarized management of the Corps, there are few opportunities for young people to go out, and it is difficult to contact ethnic minority girls in the villages. At least the company of the Second Water Conservancy Regiment, to which I belong, has not heard of any young people marrying girls from local ethnic minorities. When Shanghai's educated youth want to find local girls, the biggest resistance is that the woman's family demands that men can work, build houses, and plow fields. And these are all weak points for Shanghai's educated youth. I have a young friend who falls in love with a Dai girl, and the girl's father does not agree on the grounds that the young man cannot work.
But local girls still like Shanghai Zhiqing. In the Yao District Commune, two Laku girls who worked in shops were married to two Shanghai educated youths working in Yao District. And these two Shanghai educated youths are rooted in Mengla. Three Shanghai educated youths working in Yao District passed by a village on their way to the village and went to the village primary school to ask for water. Only one of the local teachers at the elementary school treated him warmly because the other two were already married. The single Shanghai Zhiqing is still liked by local girls. A young friend of mine was caught in a dilemma, he liked a Dai girl, but he refused to give up and go back to the city, and the final choice was to return to the city. Romance must give way to reality.
Time flies, and today's Mengla is no longer the remote, isolated border town it was back then. Mengla closely followed the pace of economic development of the motherland and took the road of urbanization, and the villagers went out of the depths of the mountains to buy houses and settle in Mengla County. Those with better conditions went to the state capital Jinghong to buy a house and settle down. Tourists from all over the country flock to Mengla. How many Shanghainese are planning to travel to Mengla after the epidemic. People want to see the beautiful natural scenery of Mengla, the rich ethnic customs of Mengla, the colorful living customs of various ethnic groups in Mengla, and those young people who went to the mountains and countryside to Mengla, they want to go to Mengla to find the lost youth of that year.
My Xiangtang student Runyu Zuoyi traveled with her teacher classmates and companions in Tibet. The first four are Dai people, and the back right one right and two Han people. Children in the mountains flew far away with wings.
The Xiangtang girl in the mountains was ecstatic to see the sea for the first time on Hainan Island.
The Xiangtang students in the junior high school class, the years have printed wrinkles on their faces. I can't remember what they looked like.