Oops! Wow, get up! Camels have been walking yamen for many years, ding-dong, walking yamen! Go to the gate! Ding-ah-he-hee!
This is a camel trumpet, deeply loved by generations of camel guests in Minqin County, Gansu Province, from the Ming Dynasty to the present, it has been more than 600 years, is the unique cultural relics of Gansu Province and even the whole country.
Minqin County, located between Badain Jarin, the third largest desert in China, and the Tengger Desert, the fourth largest desert, was once the famous "hometown of camels". The camel, known as the "boat of the desert", plays a pivotal role in the historical process of Minqin County. From the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Republic of China, the Minqin camel caravan "big gang camel bells walked the world", traveled all over the northern region radiated by the Gansu section of the Silk Road, leaving a distant back in a foreign country.
Since the Ming Dynasty, many men in Minqin County have been following camel caravans to transport goods and become camel passengers. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, camel passenger transportation in Minqin County became increasingly prosperous. In the Qing Dynasty, the Minqin Camel Caravan flourished for a time, famous in the northwest, participated in the early Qing Dynasty to quell the Geldan Rebellion, the Luobuzang Danjin Rebellion, and followed Zuo Zongtang to recover Xinjiang at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and was awarded the title of official by the Qing court several times. During the Republic of China period, the Minqin camel caravan was sent by Sun Yat-sen to the Soviet Union to transport goods and was received by Lenin. After the founding of New China, the Minqin camel caravan escorted the Panchen Lama back to Tibet, transported materials for the construction of the Qinghai-Tibet Highway, and donated aircraft for the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Monuments of immortality have been erected.
In the arduous trek of wind and food, the camel guests have formed a unique set of organizational forms, rules of cooperation, survival skills, communication methods and customs. Camel guests are a group with a clear division of labor and unity, with houses, horses, pots, water, and zippers.
Camel passenger transport, generally takes 30 to 50 days, long-distance takes two years. Therefore, to master the taming of camels, the formation of camels, the loading of goods, their own way of exploring, watching the weather, identifying directions, tracking, looking for water sources, building wells, standing photos, wind and snow camping, wolf prevention, treating people and camels of common diseases, etc., but also know how to communicate and communicate with different ethnic groups, trade... These are the valuable experiences accumulated by a large number of camel guests in the long-term practice of successive generations, and they are the "treasure books" of the interdependence of man and nature.
In the era when camels, horses and other large livestock were the main means of transport, the minqin camel passengers, as a special group, created a unique camel culture in the long journey of the desert, the Gobi, the wasteland, the saline and alkali land and other harsh environments. Camel culture involves astronomy, geography, transportation, military, medicine, zoology, botany, literature, music, commerce, folklore and other contents, is a living material for studying the changes in social form in northwest China, and its connotation enriches the Silk Road culture and becomes an indispensable part of human spiritual wealth.
Today, the large-scale merchant freight of the minqin camel caravan has lost its actual commercial value, and the camel passengers' backs are gradually fading away. However, the culture of camel guests in Minqin County is still continuing, they are still telling the legend of the camel caravan of ups and downs, the legend of the popular population, and still singing the rough camel man trumpet. This living inheritance, coupled with the recording of professionals using modern tools, the folk camel and camel culture will certainly be effectively protected.
Non-hereditary heirs are exhibited
Zhao Sichao of folk tales of folk music
Zhao Sichao, a native of Liesiba Village, Hue Township, Minle County, won the Outstanding Individual Award for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Zhangye City in 2008. Since childhood, he has a strong interest in classical literature and folk tales, and since publishing folk tales in Gansu Farmers Daily in the 1980s, he has published many stories in publications such as Zhangye Folk Tales, Qilian Feng, and Folk Tales of Folk Music. Now he is the representative inheritor of the municipal intangible cultural heritage representative project Folk Music Folk Tales.
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