Editor's note: Lingnan culture is an important branch of Chinese culture, with distinct regional characteristics, and dialects are a colorful part of it. Dialects are not only the carriers of collective memory and national culture, but also play an increasingly important role in foreign exchanges and dissemination. From now on, Nandu and N Video launched a series of reports on "Reading Lingnan Dialects" to take you to understand the stories of Guangdong dialects.
"Boom boom! Tian Zai scolded Tian Gong, Tian Zai did die, and Tian Gong ate white rice. In the 1920s, the dialect song "Tian Zai Scolding Tian Gong" composed by the "king of the peasant movement" and the revolutionary martyr Peng Pan when he launched the peasant movement in his hometown of Haifeng, Guangdong, is still sung by the locals.
The dialect in the song is the Fulao dialect that is the most populous and popular in Shanwei.
The Fulao dialect and the Chaoshan dialect belong to the same branch of the Minnan dialect and are considered "brothers". The Haifeng Wujoren Band, which was previously popular throughout the country, used this dialect to present the local humanistic customs in many dialect songs such as "Daoshan Pretty Boy". Recently, the Southern Metropolis Daily and N video reporters visited Shanwei Haifeng in Guangdong Province to gain an in-depth understanding of this long-established Lingnan dialect.
Absorb a large number of Hakka and Cantonese vocabulary
"You can understand every word, but you don't necessarily know what the other person is saying in the whole paragraph."
Zeng Muxian, a Haifeng person who has lived in the Chaoshan area for 4 years, laughed and said that listening to others speak Chaoshan dialect is like listening to an English listening test.
Located in eastern Guangdong, the Hailufeng region has a dialect somewhat similar to Chaoshan dialect, and many people think that the dialect here is a branch of Chaoshan dialect. Not really.
The Hailufeng dialect and the Chaoshan dialect belong to the same branch of the Minnan dialect. Xie Liqun, director of the Party History Research Office of the Haifeng County CPC Committee, has been studying Hailufeng culture for many years, and he introduced to reporters in Nandu that judging from the genealogical records of various places in Hailufeng, most of their ancestors immigrated from Fujian in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. According to the "Hailufeng History and Culture Series", after the Fujian ancestors who spoke Minnan dialect came to Hailufeng, after frequent contact with indigenous residents, Hakka people and Cantonese speakers, they absorbed a large number of Hakka dialects and Cantonese vocabulary, and after hundreds of years of development, they formed a local dialect that was different from Quanzhang dialect and Chaoshan dialect - Hailu Feng Fu Lao dialect, also known as "Xuelao dialect".
"Academically, both The Fulao dialect and the Chaoshan dialect belong to the branch of the Minnan dialect, and the Fulao dialect and the Chaoshan dialect should be a 'brotherly' relationship, not a 'father-son' relationship." Xie Liqun said.
The same Hokkien dialect, Fulao dialect and Chaoshan dialect have many similarities. For example, both have a small number of words that are the opposite of mandarin word order, that is, "inverted words", such as "renke" read by guests and "wind platform" as typhoons. There are also a large number of vocabulary structure, pronunciation, and usage that are basically the same as in Chaoshan dialect, retaining the same ancient usage, such as "book" (book), "Ding" (iron pot), "cuo" (house), "surprise" (fear) and other words.
The Gojo people record local customs by singing in dialect
Hailufeng is also one of the famous overseas Chinese townships in Guangdong.
Nandu reporters learned from the relevant departments of Shanwei City that by the end of 2019, there were more than 1.4 million compatriots living in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and overseas Chinese in Shanwei City, of which about 500,000 were in Haifeng County.
The Gu family's Hailufeng people go to a foreign country to make a living, and if they have a little success, they will return to their hometown to visit their relatives. Xie Liqun told Nandu reporters that they brought back foreign cultures, and some English and Malay words were also incorporated into the Fu Lao dialect, for example, the meaning of kissing "唚" is derived from the Malay "cium", and "呔" is derived from the English "tie", which means tie.
Hailufeng's local culture is rich, and the Fulao dialect naturally retains a number of words that are very different from other dialects, such as "head scales" meaning dandruff, "Lang Zai" meaning children, and "old trend" used to describe a person who is unruly - this word is also a Fu Lao phrase that is well known to fans across the country after haifeng's local band Wutiao sang "Daoshan Liangzai".
The Five-Strip Band appeared on the variety show "Summer of the Band" last year, and then swept the country. The two Haifeng main creators, Renke and Ah Mao, may have been immersed in local culture for many years, and many of the band's dialect songs reflect folk customs.
Five-Man Band. Image source: "Summer of the Band" official Weibo
Nandu has previously paid attention to and reported on this band that came out of Haifeng.
In the song "Pouring Hong Kong Paper", Ah Mao repeated the phrase "You have Hong Kong paper without", telling the common memory of generations of Haifeng people about the east gate of the intersection of small streets.
Haifeng dialect "pour Hong Kong paper" means "exchange Hong Kong dollars", many years ago was a popular local business - Haifeng County is located in the southeast of Guangdong Province, the waterway to Hong Kong is only 81 nautical miles, at that time many Haifeng people have relatives to and from Hong Kong, Dongmentou "pour Hong Kong paper" is to provide currency exchange services for this part of Haifeng people.
Ancestor worship and sacrifice are unique local cultures in eastern Guangdong, and many of the colloquial sayings and posthumous languages that are passed down by word of mouth in the folk are also derived from local folklore.
Shrines and Buddhist temples can be seen everywhere in the village head of the Hailufeng area, and almost every house offers worship to the gods. The festival is mostly held on the 10th day of the first lunar month, the spring equinox or the winter solstice. In front of the ancestral hall, the Eight Immortals Table was placed with offerings, and people held sacrifices to the ancestral shrine, lit incense candles and paper money and knelt down three times and prostrated their heads, praying for the protection of the ancestral spirits. The ancestral hall foreplay class plays and sets off cannons and fireworks, which is a common scene in local villages.
In the old days, most families were poor, working hard and thrifty for a year, and only in the New Year could they have fish and meat. The phrase "row money for thirty nights — rich enough" refers to the fact that the dishes are more abundant than those of Chinese New Year's Eve nights, and are generally used to appreciate the host's hospitality.
In the songs of the Five People, "Please Come to the Old Ancestor" presented in the form of rock and roll describes a scene of the locals worshiping the ancestors: "One please two please three please, please please come to the old ancestor, there are incense, candles, tea, wine ceremonies, five animals, silver ingots, cloth... Lao Zu Gong came to collect it. ”
In another song , "Qingming Over paper", Ah Mao's lyrics are told - "Hanging paper on the Qingming Festival, carrying the burden to go up the mountain, auntie shouting no flat burden, uncle does not know how to use a hoe to bear it", which is also derived from the folk customs of the Ancestor Worship of the Qingming Festival in Hailufeng: In the FuLao dialect, the ancestor worship of the Qingming Festival is called "worship of the ancestors" or "hanging paper".
The songs written by the "King of the Peasant Movement" are sung to this day
Before the Five-Jo Ren band was on fire, Hailufeng folk also circulated some dialect songs that men, women and children could sing, the most widely sung of which was "Tian Zai Scolding Tian Gong", which was created in the 1920s, and was also included in the local primary and secondary school music class textbooks.
In the early 1920s, after returning from studying in Japan, Peng Pan, the "king of the peasant movement", established China's first county-level peasant association in his hometown of Haifeng, leading the establishment of the first Soviet regime.
During his leadership of the peasant movement, Peng Pan realized that the targets of mobilization were mostly illiterate and toiling peasants, and the difficult and obscure text content did not necessarily attract their attention. He decided to write the real problems of peasant life into the ballad in dialect.
Therefore, Peng Pan created a number of catchy, easy-to-learn and easy-to-remember dialect songs such as "Tian Zai Scolding Tian Gong", "May Day Labor Day", "Uprising Song", "Peasant Association Song", etc., and the lyrics all reflected the suffering of the peasants at that time and the urgent hope of turning over.
The score of "Tian Zai Scolding Tian Gong" is displayed in the most obvious position in the memorial hall of the former site of Red Square in the Red Palace. Luo Xiaomei, a docent of the memorial hall, introduced to the Nandu reporter that the simple and straightforward lyrics reflected the tragic situation of the peasants under the oppression of feudalism at that time: the peasants ploughed the fields day and night, and all the grain they cultivated was handed over to the landlords as land rent.
"At that time, Mandarin had not yet been widely popularized in rural areas, so it is conceivable how much influence and role these easy-to-understand dialect songs and ballads had in the peasant community." Chen Huojin, director of the Memorial Hall of the Red Square Site of Haifeng Red Palace, sighed to the Nandu reporter.
Peng Pan may not have expected that "Tian Zai Scolds Tian Gong" is still sung to this day.
The song reads—
"Boom boom! Tian Zai scolded Tian Gong, Tian Zai did die, Tian Gong ate white rice."
"Unite to do the revolution, the revolution rises up and divides the land, you divide the land, I divide the land."
"There are fields and land that are really happy, and there is no sweet potato to eat white rice."
"Reading the Lingnan Dialect" series of reports
Chief planner: Rong Mingchang
Executive Planner: Wang Jia
Coordinator: Nandu reporter Xiang Xueni
Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Xiaoyin Intern Wu Haoyi
Photo: Nandu reporter Huang Xiaoyin (except for the signature)