After a lapse of two months, I came to Langde Shangzhai again in the southeast of Guizhou. Although it was still autumn at that time and it is now winter, the feeling of visiting Langde Shangzhai was the same. The warm welcome ceremony—— 12 Daobanmen wine, original folk song and dance performances, cheerful melody of Lusheng...all of which are impressive.
Langde Shangzhai is located in Langde Town, Leishan County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province. It is divided into upper and lower natural villages. The one that is open to the outside world is Shanglangde. The more formal name is Langde Shangzhai. It was the first to open to the outside world), it became famous earlier than the adjacent Xijiang Qianhu Miao Village, and it was already a national key cultural relics protection unit very early.
Langde Shangzhai is built on the mountain, surrounded by green trees, guarded by the mountains, and the scenery is charming. In front of the village, a small stream passes by, clear and clear, and slowly flows to the Danjiang River in the distance. "Lang De" is called "Nangl Deik" in Miao language, and the Chinese name is a transliteration of Miao language. "Lang" means "downstream of the river", and "De" is the name of the river "EbDeik" in front of the village. Together they mean "the village living in the lower reaches of the De River". On this charming stream, there is an antique wind and rain bridge flying across both ends, which is magnificent in the wind.
When you come to Langde Shangzhai, you have to drink bar wine according to the etiquette and customs of the Miao family (now it is usually a performance, one in the morning and one in the afternoon). Starting from the Zhaijiao Highway to the Zhaitou entrance gate, a total of twelve wine barriers have been set up to welcome guests. For each door-blocking wine card, a square table is placed in the middle of the road, and a few young men and women of Miao nationality in costumes stand on both sides, carrying pots and cups, and toasting to the guests (usually women toast, men playing Lusheng). There are two earthen bowls for the gate wine, which means good fortune and longevity.
There are fertile fields and beautiful bamboos in front of Langde Shangzhai, while the houses in the village are orderly. The entire village is equipped with gatehouses with wooden pillars and tile roofs on the east, west and north sides, guarding this beautiful Miao village inlaid on the mountainside like guards. In the village, five alleys radiate from the center of the village, so that the whole village presents a "radiant" radial structure. Row upon row of wooden buildings on stilts are arranged on both sides of these streets and spread up the hill. The buildings in the village are basically wooden structures on stilts built against the mountains. The other trails, courtyard dams and gates of each household in the village are all paved with local cobblestones or bluestones.
There is a performance venue in the middle of the five alleys in the village. After drinking twelve bars of wine, tourists usually come to the performance venue in the center of the village to watch the original Miao singing and dancing performances. The performance hall adopts the pattern of the sun pattern on the surface of the ancient bronze drum, and is paved with green-brown cobblestones and material stones to form twelve rays of light, extending in twelve directions. The two ends of the bronze drum and Lusheng field are inlaid with pebbles and cement to form two galloping horses.
The Miao nationality is a nation with a language but no written language. It is known that the Miao nationality used to have its own national language. "Ancient Songs of the Miao Nationality" records that the ancestors of the Miao nationality were exposed to the enemy because of their escape from the war, the pursuit of the court, and the migration of national culture. , had to burn and erase the text, and when the few intellectuals died, the text was also lost, leaving only the text written on the clothes, so the culture of the Miao people all depended on songs Inheritance with various patterns on clothing.
It is precisely because of this reason that the Miao people are a people who are good at singing and dancing. They can dance when they can walk, and sing when they can talk. From babbling children to silver-haired old men, they can dance to the melody while playing the lusheng.
Yu Fan wrote an article before introducing the actors in these villages. After they perform every day, they will get a small card, which is similar to the work points in the group before. They can earn about 3-5 yuan for a dance. Two dances a day, plus other activities such as door-to-door drinking, they can still get a few hundred yuan a month. Compared with the thousands of yuan wages of working in factories outside, these hundreds of yuan are actually a lot of money. Very few, so to say that they come to the performance with enthusiasm every day, it is definitely out of love from the heart.
However, without leaving home, each person can earn a few hundred yuan per month. A family of four or five members can earn one or two thousand yuan, which can basically cover the family's living expenses without affecting the family's agricultural production. You can sing and dance all day long, and it's fun.
Speaking of it, the Miao nationality is actually a nation full of suffering, and their history is a history of blood and tears of continuous migration. A local writer of the Miao nationality wrote this way before: "The Miao nationality is a nation that is constantly driven out or even eliminated, but they have never Giving up on faith, since 5,000 years ago, climbing mountains and wading through rivers and lakes, experiencing all kinds of hardships, fleeing from the Central Plains to the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and other parts of the world, looking for a hometown where the sun sets, nourishing ancient songs and myths with blood, there is no Resentment, treating cliffs as homes, building terraced fields against mountains, believing in all things, worshiping nature, worshiping ancestors, and thanking enemies."
If the Drum Tower is the landmark building of the Dong people, then the stilted buildings and silver ornaments are the symbols of the Miao people (but some other ethnic groups in the Southwest also have stilted buildings, such as the Tujia, etc.). Diaojiaolou. I heard from an old man in the village that building a house is not just a simple process from laying the foundation to building the roof, but a rather sophisticated culture. Generally speaking, it takes Langde people a year or more to build a stilted building. Aside from the economic cost, the construction of a stilted building requires a set of customs and taboos from selecting the foundation, digging the foundation, laying the foundation, erecting the central pillars, erecting the beams, installing walls, and moving. Take the selection of the foundation of the house as an example, where the emphasis is on "the house facing the depression". After choosing the location, you have to take a duck there to kill it, and cook it to see if it is good or bad. If the duck eyes are closed or opened, it means auspicious signs, which can be used; if the duck eyes are opened and closed, it is a bad sign, so discard them. If there is no duck, you can also use an old rooster to do it for you. Bamboo or maple trees should also be planted on the selected site. If the new buds of bamboo or maple trees are luxuriant, this site can be selected; otherwise, the site must be re-selected. After all the conditions are met, the foundation of the house should be leveled according to the pacification date in the traditional almanac.
Compared with Qianhu Miao Village, Langde Shangzhai is much smaller in scale, but it became famous earlier. The sense of commercialization here is not so strong. There are few commercial facilities, and the original appearance of the village is basically retained. There is not a lot of construction and expansion, and there are not a lot of foreigners. There are some Miao folk customs that can be seen everywhere. You can experience the more simple Miao culture here. This is one of the reasons why Yufan has visited many times.