The Fenghuangshan She's Recruitment Festival was included in the "Second Batch of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Guangdong Province" in 2007. Courtesy of respondents
She's costumes are colorful and colorful. Courtesy of respondents
Phoenix Mountain is considered to be the birthplace of she culture. Photo by Xiao Yanjing
"Someone from home has come!" Lei Renguang, president of the Chaozhou She's Culture Promotion Association, has visited dozens of She's villages in Zhejiang and Fujian over the years, and this is the most common greeting he hears. The Shes are one of the ethnic minorities in China, with a total population of more than 700,000, distributed in some mountainous areas of more than 80 counties (cities) in Fujian, Zhejiang, Gansu, Guangdong, Qian, Anhui and Xiang provinces, of which 90% live in the vast mountainous areas of Zhejiang and Fujian. As of January 4, 2021, Chaozhou has a registered population of 2,920 She, distributed in 9 villages in 3 counties (districts), scattered in the mountains of the Phoenix Mountains. In terms of population and size alone, the Chaozhou Phoenix Mountain Shes are not significant, but for thousands of years, the Scattered Shes in the southeast have not blurred the belief that Phoenix Mountain is the ancestral homeland, and the story of Phoenix Mountain has been passed down from generation to generation.
Planner: Da Navy
Written by Xiao Yanjing
origin
Phoenix Mountain, Indigenous and Wuling Barbarians
"The officials of the Wenwu Dynasty have all come to send them down to the Phoenix Mountain Palace." "Guangdong Road is the ancestral grave, in and out of the blue thunder plate descendants, the people of the capital are rare to eat, sent to Chaozhou Phoenix Village." The Song of the High Emperor, which has been passed down from generation to generation by the She, records the story of the ancestor Pan Yongdai Tianzhengfan, seeking the three princesses, giving birth to three sons and settling in Phoenix Mountain, and then moving elsewhere. The Shes do not currently have their own writing, and oral transmission is the only way. For the She, song is a form of entertainment and the history of ancestors. The "Song of the High Emperor" may have different details in various places, but there are expressions such as "living in the deep forest of Chaozhou Mountain", "burying on Phoenix Mountain", "three surnames moving out of Phoenix Mountain", etc., which invariably point to the ancestral residence of Chaozhou Phoenix Mountain. When he was a child, Lei Kecai, the village secretary of Ligongkeng Village, saw his father's collection of Zutu in the barn of his home, and the zutu's age is unknown, but he records similar stories in the form of comic strips.
At present, most of the genealogies of the Shes in The Phoenix Mountains of Chaozhou have been lost, but many of the Genealogies of the Shes in Zhejiang, Fujian and other places clearly record the migration routes of the Shes. In the "Preface to the Lei Clan Ancestral Hall" preserved by huiming Temple in Jingning She Autonomous County, Zhejiang Province, it is recorded that the source of my surname was the Phoenix Mountain in Haiyang County, Chaozhou Province, Guangdong Province; the "Lei Clan Genealogy" of Fujian Fuding records that the emperor recruited the three princesses as donkeys and migrated to Fenghuang Mountain in Chaozhou, Guangdong; in addition to the genealogy, the couplet on the ancient residence of Shecun in Xiapu, Fujian Province, reads: "Yong Yong does not forget Gao Dili, Peng Cheng wants to trace the traces of Fengshan Mountain...
Phoenix Mountain is constantly depicted, disseminated and passed on in the songs, legends, stone tablets and ancestral diagrams of the She, thus building the common memory of the She. For most Shes, the point of Phoenix Mountain as the ancestral homeland can be easily agreed upon, but the origin of the Shes is still under discussion in the field of She's cultural research.
Chen Huayu, doctor of anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University and associate professor of the Department of Foreign Languages at Shantou University, believes that the origin of the Shes can be roughly divided into "indigenous theory" and "foreign speaking". "Speaking outside" advocates that the Wuling barbarians of the She, Changsha barbarians, or the ancient "Eastern Yi barbarians" developed and evolved by the southwest "Xuyi" moving southward. It is believed that during the Han and Jin dynasties, the "Wuling Man" (i.e., "Wuxi Man"), who lived in the Dongting Lake area and still lived a more primitive life, was oppressed by the Han rulers, and some of them migrated to the nearby area. During the Sui Dynasty, there were already "People" calling themselves "Mo Wei" living in the area of present-day Changsha, Hunan, whose customs were the same as those of barbarians in Wuling and other places; during the Tang and Song Dynasties, there were often "rebellions" in the xiang, Gui, Guangdong, and Gan areas; during the Southern Song Dynasty, tribes called "Shemin" (or "Boxers") began to appear on the borders of present-day Guangdong, Gansu, and Fujian provinces. The three ethnic groups of "Barbarians", "Wu" and "She" are closely related, and scholars who hold the theory of the descendants of "Wuxi Man" use this to argue the origin of the Shes.
The "indigenous theory" advocates that the Shes are the indigenous development and formation of the ancient Border between Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu. However, there are some differences, some people believe that the Shes are the descendants of the Baiyue people in the Warring States, Qin, and Han Dynasties; some people think that the Shes are the descendants of the Shanyue in the Han and Jin Dynasties; and some people think that the Shes are the descendants of the Minyue people. In the debate, scholars reached a consensus on the following issues: during the Sui and Tang dynasties, the ancestors of the Shes lived in the mountainous areas bordering the three provinces of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu, and since the Song Dynasty, the Shes have successively migrated to central and northern Fujian.
Anthropologist Fei Xiaotong's article "The Pattern of Pluralism of the Chinese Nation" proposed that the Chinese nation is a national entity that includes 56 nationalities in China, not a general term for adding 56 ethnic groups together; it is believed that all the components belonging to the national entity have a higher level of national identity awareness, that is, the feelings and morality of solidarity, coexistence and death, common glory and disgrace, and common destiny. Some scholars have used the theory of the pluralism and unity of the Chinese nation to study the origin of the She.
"The Shes are a national community formed in history in the border areas of Gansu, Fujian, and Guangdong." Xie Chongguang, a doctor of history at Beijing Normal University and a professor at Fujian Normal University, believes that the origins of the Shes are very complicated, including the descendants of the Wulingman and Changsha barbarians who migrated here from the Wuxi region, as well as the Han immigrants who migrated from the Central Plains and Jianghuai, that is, the Hakka ancestors and the Fulao ancestors. After a long period of mutual contact, mutual struggle, mutual exchange, and mutual integration, these residents of different origins have formed a special culture with the combination of the extensive mountain forest economy and the hunting economy that often migrates as the main economic characteristic, the worship of pan and related cultural matters as the main cultural characteristics, and the living in the left side of the vertebrae and the knotted wooden shed as the main characteristics of life, and the carrier of this culture is the She.
Adhering to the support of their respective research methods and arguments, the academic community traces back to the source and strips away the cocoon. The Shes are not a race that descends from the sky, and there must be integration and evolution over the millennia. For this ancient and mysterious nation, there are still many answers waiting for the fog of history to dissipate, but from the perspective of the ethnic identity and cultural belonging of the She, the special status of Chaozhou Phoenix Mountain in the history of the She and the ancestors of the She is determined.
settle down
Confrontation, compromise and cooperation
"The people of She are not pleased (service), and the people of She are not taxed, and their coming is long." This is the description of the Shes in the Southern Song Dynasty Liu Kezhuang's "Zhangzhou Zhishe", and it is also the earliest term "Shemin" in the existing literature. In the description, "There are different types of Fanxi Caves: Yue Man, Yue Yu, Yue Li, Yue Li, Xishe belongs to Longxi, just like longxi people; Nanshe belongs to Zhangpu. Its land is west of Chaochao, Mei, north of Tongting, Gan, the cave of the traitor's death. ”
Gu Yanwu, a thinker of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, wrote in the Book of The Diseases of the Tianxia County and the State That in the early Tang Dynasty, the "barbarians" of the Tingzhang generation suppressed by Chen Yuanguang took Pan, Lan, and Lei as their surnames and believed in Pan. Judging from the characteristics, the "barbarians" of the early Tang Dynasty are most likely the ancestors of the She.
In the second year of Emperor Gaozong's reign (669), the barbarians were in turmoil between the spring tides. Quan and Chaojian are the present-day border areas of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu, and in the early Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty army was stationed in the spring tide, which was then a barbaric land. Due to its location at the junction and the precarious terrain in the mountains, the Central Dynasty set up counties at the junction of Fujian, Guangdong and Gansu later than the respective centers of the three provinces.
When the indigenous people who occupy the mountains and settle down meet the political ambitions of expanding their boundaries and realizing the "land of the whole world, there is no king", conflict is inevitable.
From Chen Yuanguang's book to the Tang Dynasty's "Please Jianzhou County Table", we can see that in the early Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty sent Chen Zheng and Chen Yuanguang's father and son to lead 3,600 soldiers and 123 generals to "go out of the town of Sui'an (present-day Zhangpu)" in order to "Jingbianfang".
Because of the resistance of the local "barbarians", "thinking that they were outnumbered, they retired to Jiulong Mountain and asked for yibing", and the Tang Dynasty sent Chen Zheng's brother and mother "fifty-eight surnames to help". And Chen Qian, who was also in Chaozhou, Guangdong, together with Miao Zicheng, Lei Wanxing, and other leaders of the She's rebel army, led the local people to attack Chaoyang, and the Tang army "could not control the commander-in-chief", and Chen Yuanguang personally suppressed the uprising. After more than 30 years, the rebel army led by Lei Wanxing, Miao Zicheng's son and Lan Fenggao gathered in Chaozhou against Chen Yuanguang's army, and after many years of fierce fighting. In 711, Lan Fenggao led a direct pursuit of Chen Yuanguang to Sui'an, and Chen Yuanguang was stabbed to death.
Nowadays, the cultural momentum of Han She is absolutely strong or weak, but in the Tang Dynasty's Fujian-Guangdong-Gansu border, the Han and She sides can still carry out a tug-of-war for many years, and until the end of the Tang Dynasty, there is also a record of "HuanglianDong Barbarian 20,000, Weitingzhou". Anthropologist Jiang Bingzhao said: "It is conceivable that as a nation, it is impossible for a nation to have such a strong resistance force, if it is not for long-term stability, survival and prosperity. ”
In 711, Lan Fenggao led an army to Sui'an (present-day Yunxiao, Fujian), and Chen Yuanguang was stabbed to death. Chen Yuanguang is known as the "Kaizhang Saint King", and the Kaizhang Saint King faith still has influence in Fujian, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. According to the history of the Han nationality, Chen Yuanguang made Quan and Chaojian bid farewell to the famine and move toward civilization from the realm of "a few suspected inhuman dwellings". For the She, the history of rebellion, compromise, submission, and reconciliation began.
The "Kaishan Official" that allows the Shes to open the mountains and exempt them from the tax of servitude is commonly found at the beginning of the She's genealogy, and the content is basically that Pan Ou levies and meritorious deeds, and His Majesty "never exempts him from military service, does not pay grain taxes, and is always happy." Whether the Kaishan official documents passed down from generation to generation by the Shes are related to the official government is not yet known, but it can be answered by the Han Liu Kezhuang's record that "the people of She are displeased (in service), the Shes are not taxed, and their coming is long". In the legend of the Shes in Zhejiang, there are also officials who send people to the Phoenix Mountain to collect taxes, and the people of She's replied with a straight face: "The land is opened by Ah Lang's whole family, the melon is planted by Ah Lang's family, and the cattle and sheep are built by Ah Lang's family, so why do you want us to pay so much money and grain." "The Shes and Han have begun to face each other head-on.
The Tide of Han Yue, the demeaning of civil officials, the gradual development of The Fujian Style, the beginning of the Tang and Song Dynasties, the acceleration of the process of enlightenment in Chaozhou, and the traditional Han culture from the Central Plains dominated the Chaozhou culture. In the Song and Yuan dynasties, social changes, the Shes cooperated with the Han in the struggle against the Yuan army and jointly resisted aggression. In the "Three Dynasties of Song and Ji", it is recorded that when Emperor Zhaozong committed the barbarism of Tingzhou, the number was 20,000, and the prosperity of his clan can be known, abandoning the plagiarism and fighting, every conscription as a soldier, Wen Xiangguo's resistance to the Yuan, is actually the help of the shebing. The "Changting Zhi Wugong" records that the Tingzhang Zhulu drama thief Chen Hangyan and Lady Xu, who commanded all the Zhi She's army, met the Yuan soldiers and died in battle, and their martyrdom was particularly praised by posterity.
Norwegian anthropologist Friedrich Bass saw the group as a social organization, defining it by its exclusivity and attribution characteristics. It is believed that as long as people's dual divisions between people within and outside the clan do not change, and the boundaries of the clan still exist, the clan can continue. For the She, the historical process inevitably makes it meet with Han culture and Han ethnicity, and among them, under different political environments, ethnic identities, and class contradictions, the Shes and the Han people confront, struggle, and influence and cooperate with each other, and the Shes continue to establish their own group existence and interact closely with the Han nationality.
Fusion
Establishment, convergence and symbiosis
"Shege She, I have a dustpan." The Chaoshan region has a tradition of "Dou She Song", which is the prelude to Dou Ge. Teochew ballads are also known as "Shege" and "Shege Boy". The Shes are proud of their songs and songs. Chao scholar Xiao Yaotian proposed in the article "The Origin and Evolution of Chaoyin Opera" that the natives of Chaozhou are shemin and shui are yanmin. Shege and Song are the purest local tide songs, and they are also the mainstream of tide songs.
Chaozhou song and ballad fusion shege, song and Han folk songs, in the long process of historical evolution, absorb local folk art, integrate Han folk songs in the Central Plains, and finally form a form of rap performance with local characteristics. As a treasure of Chaozhou culture, Chaozhou opera is a masterpiece of Chaozhou culture and absorbs the essence of Chaozhou songs. The "Peach Blossom Transition" in the traditional Drama of Chao Opera "Su Liu Niang" is folded, and Su Liuniang's beloved concubine Peach Blossom goes to Xiqi to report the news on the orders of the Wai'an people, and sings with Du Bo when crossing the river, which is a typical "Dou She Song" scene.
Lei Nan, the representative inheritor of Chaozhou Shege, learned Shege from his mother, and is one of the few people in Chaozhou who can sing She's songs today, and has won gold medals at the "March 3rd" song conference held in Fujian and Zhejiang. Lei Nan still occasionally creates She's song now: "Phoenix Oolong is famous, originating from Shejia Shiguping." Good mountains and good water produce good tea, and terraced tea gardens are full of mountains and forests. ”
Chaozhou Gongfu tea is famous all over the world, and has attracted much attention with its exquisite and exquisite tea culture. Ordinary people are attracted by the Twenty-One Style of Kung Fu Tea, but for old tea guests, the phoenix single bush tea behind Kung Fu Tea is the soul of good tea. Lan Yifeng, the village secretary of Shiguping Village in Fenghuang Town, has been making tea for generations in his family since he has had memories. Where there are Shes, there is tea, and the Shes do not grow tea without gardens. Lei Nan introduced that at the Panama Pacific World Exposition in 1915, the tea leaves of Fu'an in Fujian and Jingning in Zhejiang Province, two ethnic minority settlements, won gold medals. Today, tea is still the pillar industry of Shiguping Village. The Shes rely on the mountains to eat tea, and Lei Nan uses "long history, unique love, superior skills, and profound heritage" to describe the relationship between the Shes and tea. Stepping out of the Phoenix Mountain, you can still observe the close relationship between the Shes and tea, such as Jingning's Huiming tea and Fu'an's great white tea, which are of their own.
If the Teochew cuisine in high-end restaurants has launched the "exquisite" sign in The Chaozhou food culture, then for the Teochew diet with a broader connotation, its more fundamental characteristics such as lightness, health, and seasonal food come from the She. The Shes eat raw and can make kway teow. In Han Yu's "Eighteen Laws of The Eighteenth Harmony of The First Southern Food Yiyuan", it is said that "I have come to yumei and taste the southern cuisine." Mixed with salty and sour, pyrene with pepper and orange. "But the snake knows the old, and the mouth is really afraid of the eyes." Open the cage and listen to it, depressed and uneven. It can be seen that the custom of eating raw food is not suitable for the original Han Yu. It is revealed that Chaozhou had the habit of light cooking and attaching importance to seasoning at that time, which was well inherited in today's Chaozhou cuisine and became a major feature of Chaozhou cuisine that distinguishes it from other cuisines. As for the process of Chaozhou rice cake mashing rice as flour, mixing with water, kneading into a kwayin skin, and filling with various spice rice or bean paste, it is in line with the dietary habits of the She. As a nomadic people, the Shes are familiar with the habits of natural plants and attach importance to dietary therapy, which also affects the characteristics of today's Teochew food culture that pays attention to health and eats according to time.
Chaozhou is considered to have well preserved the Central Plains culture. Over and over again, people tell the story of the Hipsters crossing the south and nostalgic for their homeland, emphasizing the preservation of traditional Chinese Confucian culture in Teochew culture. But in Teochew culture, there has always been a tenacious folk force. From Chaoshan architecture, Chaozhou songs, and Chaozhou food, we can see the palatial public aesthetic, hear the liveliness and interest of the "Lower Riba people", and taste the pure delicacy of primitive interaction with nature.
During the visit, some of the Shes mentioned that the Han people once discriminated against the Shes, including insulting songs and titles such as "Shiguping, (Fire + District) Sheke, Vine Broken Stone Stack" and "Dog-headed Descendants". Before the founding of New China, some of the Shes were forced to change their surnames in secret and were oppressed and exploited by landlords.
The Chronicle of Chenghai County says: "She's song touches the object of excitement, even the class sees righteousness, the aria of obscene liquid, there are people who make people deep and cannot help themselves, and their words are elegant and vulgar." "Exploring the history of the She, paying attention to this important and niche part of Teochew culture, is not only to clarify the context of Teochew culture, but also to warn people at all times that the existing advantages need to be reflected on, and the culture of others should be forgiven." When encountering the ballad "There are people who make people feel deep and cannot help themselves", you should think about the commonality between different cultures and the good life and human nature.
■ Close-up
Make Phoenix Mountain worthy of "the birthplace of She's culture"
From the ancient city of Chaozhou, cross the Han River, all the way to the northeast, along the winding mountain road upwards, is the Phoenix Mountain Ligongkeng Village.
The mountains are dense, the shade of the trees obscures the poisonous sunlight, and the Li Gong Pit is full of greenery, leisurely and quiet, and you can hear the sound of your feet stepping on the fallen fruit. Lei Aiqi, who went to junior high school next semester, and his younger siblings ate popsicles in the shade of trees, and they usually went to school in the city and returned to Ligongkeng in the summer. "Since childhood, I have known that we are the She, and the clothes of the Shes are different and have many colors." Lei Aiqi and her father were able to communicate in She,and the other two third-grade children had only learned some of the She's dialect at the Li Gongkeng Village Service Point of the Chao'an District Library and Culture Department.
At present, among the She's villages in Chaozhou, Ligongkeng Village in Wenci Town and Bowl Kiln Village in Guihu Town are two villages with a good inheritance of She's dialect. Lan Yifeng, the village secretary of Shiguping Village in Fenghuang Town, could only understand She's words roughly, and recently began to speak to Li Gongkeng Village Branch Secretary Leike Caixue.
Many anthropologists, researchers of She's culture, and foreign Shes came to Chaozhou's Phoenix Mountain, the ancestral home of the Shes, but found that the preservation of She's culture here was far less than that of Zhejiang and Fujian. Weaknesses in population size, customs and languages have been passed down, and some scholars have asserted that the Teochew Phoenix Mountain Dialect will die out within fifty or sixty years.
Qian Xiaoli, china textile intangible cultural heritage promotion ambassador and founder of Yuxi "Xiaolongyin", began to contact the clothing culture of the She ethnic group last year and was amazed: "The clothing of the She ethnic group is so attractive! She's costumes have very complex production techniques and are very exquisite. Qian Xiaoli and the chao embroidery master She Yanxuan cooperated to restore the traditional costumes of She women, retaining the black color used as the base of the She's clothing, using traditional ramie, and in the details, it presented the brightly colored and exquisitely decorated side of the She's clothing. After Qian Xiaoli arrived in Chaozhou, she found that the she's costumes were almost not preserved here, and she deeply regretted that she's ethnic groups should first strengthen their cultural self-confidence, "The she's costumes are very beautiful, we must vigorously publicize, and at the same time pay attention to living in the present, so that every She's people should have at least one set of their own national costumes." ”
On May 1, 2021, the Regulations on the Protection of the Culture of the Shes in Chaozhou City (hereinafter referred to as the Regulations) came into force. The "Regulations" clearly stipulate that the Chaozhou Municipal People's Government shall strengthen the leadership over the protection of the culture of the Shes in its administrative region, formulate the overall plan for the protection of the culture of the Shes in Chaozhou City, and incorporate it into the national economic and social development plan and urban and rural planning. The Chaozhou Municipal People's Government shall establish a joint meeting system and convene a meeting at least once a year to coordinate the resolution of major issues in the protection, inheritance and development of the Culture of the She.
Lei Nan, the representative inheritor of Chaozhou Shege, believes that first of all, it is necessary to increase the breadth and intensity of the propaganda of She's culture, emphasize the cultural self-confidence of the She's, and let the She's culture be recognized by compatriots within the clan and recognized by the outside society; second, it is necessary to strengthen the training and inheritance of the She's language and She's song. Lei Nan hopes that the government will take the lead in organizing the establishment of a research institute on Chaozhou She's culture to organize and study The Chaozhou She's culture in an organized manner.
The small population has always been an important issue in the cultural inheritance of the Chaozhou She, and Lei Renguang, president of the Chaozhou She's Culture Promotion Association, believes that more attention should be paid to top-level design and systematic planning for the cultural inheritance of the Chaozhou She.
On the express train of rural revitalization, Ligongkeng Village has completed the construction of the main road of the village, the ancestral platform, and the Exhibition Hall of She's Culture. Despite the use of tea as an economic pillar, Lan Yifeng still said that Shiguping Village should slowly recover the traditions of She's culture.
Making Phoenix Mountain worthy of the "birthplace of She's culture" is the future direction of The Chaozhou She.