Southeast Guizhou Part 2 Basha Miao Village: Trees are gods, men hold guns, women marry men

Southeast Guizhou Part 2 Basha Miao Village: Trees are gods, men hold guns, women marry men

On May 11, 2021, since my wish to be a soldier was not realized, I have always yearned for and respected soldiers and people with guns.

The Basha Miao Village, known as the last gunmen tribe in China, has been heard of for many years, but it is only possible to make a trip today. This trip to Southeast Guizhou is for it.

Going to Ba (Mandarin still reads "Ba", and Miao language reads bia first) is not easy. You have to go up and down hundreds of stairs to reach the gate of the scenic spot, and then take a battery car to get to the gate of the cottage, and then walk through the village.

Standing at the gate of the scenic spot and looking down, the Miao Village is at the foot of the mountain, surrounded by green hills and terraced fields.

There are more than 300 households in Basha Miao Village. Due to its remote location, the ancient living customs are preserved. The attire has the legacy of the Qin and Han Dynasties. The Basha man wears a bun on the top of his head, wears a collarless right open bright cloth jacket woven by himself, and straight leg bright cloth pants with large trousers. Wearing a waist knife all year round and carrying a gunpowder gun on his shoulders, he looks like an ancient warrior. Women wear bright cloth dresses made by themselves, with antique embroidery patterns, silver collars and bracelets on the dresses, which are very eye-catching. Some Japanese nationalities and folklorists once came to Southeast Guizhou in search of their roots, and the Basha people also aroused their strong interest, because the Japanese samurai costumes are almost the same as those of the Basha people, so some people think that the ancestors of the Japanese are Basha people. sand man.

The Miao people in Basha are hospitable. When guests come, the mighty Basha men will play the reeds and awn tubes in front of the gate of the village; After a sheng song was played, three iron guns sounded, and the muskets were fired at the sky, and the gate of the village was opened to welcome the guests in. Then walk into the stockade along the stone path in the forest, and perform ethnic customs and customs. Basha Miao Village is known as "the last tribe of gunmen under the sun", and holding guns is specially approved.

It is said that Chi You, the ancestor of the Miao nationality, had three sons, and the Basha people are the descendants of the third son. When Chiyou was defeated by the Yellow Emperor, he led the tribe on the thousand-year long march to the southwest. The ancestors of the Basha Miao people were the vanguard of the great migration—a branch of the Jiuli tribe. They cut mountains and roads, fought fiercely with bears, and they were extremely brave. Men in Basha advocate force. They usually wear self-woven green cloth clothes with collarless right cardigan and copper buttons, straight leg trousers, and green cloth sacks. Climbing mountains and trees is like walking on flat ground. He is very good at mountain climbing and hunting. They attach great importance to their physical strength, superb hunting and farming skills, and also pay special attention to clothing and body marks.

Basha Miao Village advocates tree culture. Their life is summarized by three trees: the tree of life, the tree of disaster relief, and the evergreen tree.

When every Basha person is born, his parents will plant a tree for him, and he will grow up with him until he grows old. When he leaves this world, the tree will be made into a coffin to bury him. No grave will be built after death. There is no monument or tomb sweeping, but another tree is planted at the burial place. This tree is an evergreen tree, which exists in another form (people and trees coexist), until it comes to the world again. The tree burial tradition has lasted for thousands of years in Basha Miao Village, so Basha Miao Village worships tree gods, towering trees can be seen everywhere, and the air is filled with the fragrance and fragrance of trees.

At 11:00, there was a simple welcome ceremony at the gate of the village. Before the welcome ceremony started, there were local Miao people sitting scattered in front of the gate, smoking cigarettes leisurely, or chatting in twos and threes. What made us stop and pay attention was, Some of the guns in their hands were cleaning and inspecting the guns, and some were charging the guns, while the girls sat quietly beside them doing female reds.

The ceremony begins. A group of Bazaar men and women dressed in Hmong costumes lined up to welcome tourists. The men played Lusheng, the women sang and danced, gunpowder smoke rose, and gunshots sounded, which scared me. It was a shot fired at the sky to welcome tourists. This is the welcome of Bazaar Miao Village. highest etiquette.

Follow the Miao Village professional guide to enter the Miao Village.

Walking in the dense forest path with curiosity, the two people hugged the big tree canopy to shade the sun, the faint smell of green grass and the unique woody fragrance of the trees went straight to the heart, and after walking a few hundred meters, a wooden village door opened to us. Basha means a lot of vegetation in Miao language. This is a Miao village, mainly black Miao, retaining a strong ancient style and ancient way of life.

The man wears his head in a bun, wears a homemade collarless green cloth jacket with a right-slit copper button, straight-leg green cloth pants with large trousers, and carries a waist knife all year round, and a gunpowder gun on his shoulder (even children are equipped with a small version of the gun). , it's not easy to mess with. But what is surprising is that such a powerful man is pursued by a woman, and the tie tied at the back of the man's waist is woven by the woman who admires him. The tour guide told us that women cannot take photos with Bazaar men at will. If you want to take a photo, you have to prepare money. If you don’t have money, you have to stay and marry a man.

The women here wear black double-breasted dresses and pleated skirts with brightly colored batik and embroidery. The white skirts indicate that they are married. The embroidery on their clothes is all embroidered by themselves. They embroider every bird and flower they see by hand. Whenever they have free time, the women start to embroider. Such an ingenious girl can pursue boys from the age of 15. As long as she likes a man, Bazaar girls will embroider things for them and hang them on their bodies. I feel that ethnic minorities respect women more than Han people. Women have a lot of power. From the matriarchal society in Lugu Lake, Yunnan, to the Dong people in Guangxi, and then to the Miao people here, women marry men, and the status of women is much higher than that of men.

The staple food of Basha people is glutinous rice. Rows of wooden frames can be seen in several places in the village. The tour guide asked us to guess what they were used for. We guessed randomly that it was originally used to dry glutinous rice. The crops that come up are hung here to dry.

The houses in Basha Miao Village are all ancient stilted buildings, which are built according to the mountain situation, well-arranged, and have strong Miao architectural features. The wooden houses they live in are also unique, with wooden panels as walls, bark as tiles, and moving wooden windows for lighting.

Basha people built granaries and residences separately to prevent food from being kept in the event of a fire in the village.

Standing on the second floor of the Bazaar Culture Exhibition Hall and looking down, you can see that there are quite a few households in the Bazaar Miao Village, and the roofs are basically the same style, which is quite dense. According to the data, the whole village is divided into 16 villager groups, 470 households, and more than 2,200 people, which is equivalent to a brigade (now called a village) in a Han village.

Surrounded by mountains, the environment is quite good, and the air quality must be good. Going up and down the mountain should be their normal state.

The camphor memorial pavilion presented in front of us is unusual. According to the tour guide, in the 1970s, when Chairman Mao passed away, Basha Miao Village contributed a thousand-year-old rare camphor tree to the construction of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. Chairman Mao is the great savior of the Chinese people and the god in the hearts of our Miao people. , with infinite respect for the Chairman, the Basha people resolutely decided to dedicate a thousand-year-old camphor tree with a diameter of 1.2 meters to the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. When the trunk of the camphor tree came out of the village that day, all the people in the village, old and young, ran to both sides of the road to watch them off, and did not return to the village until the dust had cleared away. The director couldn’t afford to kneel. This matter spread to Beijing. The headquarters for the preparation of the memorial hall was very moved. They allocated special funds to build this pavilion at the root of this ancient camphor tree, and named it "Camphorwood Memorial Pavilion of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall". , the local Miao people call it "Shenshu Pavilion". This is the only tree-cutting "action" in Basha.

Approaching the pavilion, the faint smell of camphor from the tree roots comes out. The locals regard it as a god. It is said that touching the roots of the tree with hands can avoid evil and seek good fortune, make one's wishes come true, and keep one's health healthy. So everyone went to touch the roots of the tree.

It cost 40 yuan to watch the performance, and only me and another elderly couple watched it among the 17 people in the group. The show is really authentic, better than those gorgeous shows with a lot of high-tech, stage lighting decoration.

The performance includes the ceremony of worshiping the tree god of the Miao nationality, the ceremony of welcoming guests, and the local wedding customs. Let an audience act as the groom to restore the wedding process.

Marriage show.

Basha's sickle shaving was the climax of the day's performance. Bazaar does not have a barbershop, and the haircut is done with a sickle. You see, the handle of the knife is more than a foot long, and the iron knife is like a crescent moon. There is no "razor" bigger than the sickle. It is really not easy to work on this skill. The blade must be sharpened, the knife must be cut accurately, and the knife must be moved smoothly. It takes about ten minutes to complete the job, which can be called a unique skill.

Basha men attach great importance to their hair bun, which is called "hugun" in Basha Miao language, and is the most important gender symbol in men's attire. Most of the hair around the men's head is shaved off, leaving only the middle part The hair is in a bun, and this hairstyle is kept for life. It is said that this attire was handed down from the time of Chi You's ancestor, and it is also the oldest male hair style that can be seen in China so far.

The buns on the Basha people's heads symbolize the trees growing on the mountain, and the green cloth clothes they wear symbolize the beautiful bark. Basha people believe that such a comfortable life is mainly due to the precious land selected by their ancestors, especially the shade of the forest where they were born and raised. Therefore, Basha people especially worship trees and worship trees as gods. Basha people say: "Man comes from nature and returns to nature; life does not bring a thread, and death does not take an inch of wood." From ancient times to the present, Basha has never cut down trees indiscriminately. What is needed for daily life and production, the rest are subject to restrictions. Although National Highway 321 was built and passed through the border in 1965, no car has ever dared to go to Basha to pull a load of wood. The villagers are short of oil and salt. The county town went to retail and never pulled by a car.

The biggest surname here is the Gun surname, and many wooden houses are nailed with "Gun surname family rules" with wooden boards: When you see benefits, you think of righteousness, when you see water, you think of the source, when you see difficulties, you think of loyalty, and when you see virtue, you think of virtue. "Gun" is a curse word in Chinese, but it is a surname in Basha. The famous character Gun Lala was born, and the movie "Rolling Lala's Gun" was made based on him.

The ramie grown in the stockade can be used to make ramie clothes.

The entire stockade maintains its authentic appearance because there is not much outside intrusion. Although the stockade is very dilapidated, you can still feel the ancient civilization and rich original ecological rural atmosphere here. The Miao people here are away from the hustle and bustle of the city, guarding this primitive village, enjoying their peaceful life. In today's tide of commodity economy, here is really a rare pure land.

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