Scholars track and study the "56th nation" for 40 years
Read a "big book" on the development of the enrichment era at Mount Kino
He was transferred from Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences as a Distinguished Professor at the School of History and Culture of Hubei University for more than 3 years. Every spring, Zheng Xiaoyun receives tea, honey and other local specialties from the South Mountain of Caiyun as scheduled.
The express delivery came from a place that had long been integrated into his life - Yanuo Village, Jinuo Township, Jinghong City, Yunnan Province, where the 56th ethnic group in my country is located.
The sender is the granddaughter of Bru Zhou, the director of the old village of Yanuo Village, Jinuo tea farmer Qiwei.
The name of the Han nationality is Zi Chunlan, which was given by Zheng Xiaoyun.
Zheng Xiaoyun remembered that when he first walked into Bru Zhou's house in the 1980s, Qiu Wei had not yet been born, and their family lived in a thatched roof house on the mountainside.
Today, by growing tea, making tea, and selling tea, the annual income of Qiwei's family has reached 200,000 to 300,000 yuan, and he has built two small western-style buildings and two cars.
Talking about the journey of Jinuo friends out of poverty and becoming rich, Zheng Xiaoyun can't help but think of the nights 40 years ago, when he sat by the fire pond in Yanuo Village, listening to the old Jino people singing ancient songs and telling historical stories.
With a big house/Our brothers and sisters/Like the vines on the big green trees in the deep mountains and old forests
Although the vine is thin / but you pull me / I pull you
Not a single one will be blown away by the wind and rain / Not a single one will be washed away by the river / For generations to live...
In the following 40 years, Zheng Xiaoyun's eyes have never left the Jinuo people, and he has never stopped returning to the Jinuo villages for research.
While excavating and saving the cultural heritage of this nation, the scholar also witnessed the socio-economic and cultural changes of the Jino people in the process of modernization.
In his words, he read a "big book" on the development of the enrichment era in Mount Kino.
"The stockade behind the rock"
Jinuo Mountain is located in Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.
In December 1982, Zheng Xiaoyun, who was a senior in the history department of Yunnan University at the time, came to Jinuo Mountain, a settlement of Jinuo people, for an internship.
The Jino people were only recognized by the State Council in 1979 and are the last recognized minority among the 56 ethnic groups in my country.
In this graduation practice, Zheng Xiaoyun walked into the mysterious Yanuo Village on Jinuo Mountain for the first time along the dirt road hidden by the dense forest.
The Jino people have no written language, and their history, literature, etc. are passed on from people to people.
In the Jino language, Yanuo Village means "the stockade behind the rock". It is located in the highest altitude area of Jinuo Mountain. It is a huge "stone cliff" and is backed by the steep peaks on the side of Xiezhuo Mountain, the sacred mountain of Jino people.
The Jino people are scattered in virgin forests and live on crops such as rice and tea. Hunting and gathering are important supplements for their livelihoods.
In Yanuo Village, everything in front of him deeply shocked Zheng Xiaoyun: except for the auditorium, which is a brick house, the rest of the village is a wooden structure with a thatched roof. The only household items in many families are iron pots. , kettle, shotgun.
Seeing that many villagers have only two dilapidated quilts, a few rice bowls and a pot in their homes, this young man who grew up in the urban area of Kunming felt very sad.
At that time, the main crop in Jino Mountains was upland rice, and the people lived very poor.
The subject of the graduation thesis that Zheng Xiaoyun was going to complete here was "The Patriarchal Family of Changfang and Yanuo Village".
On the first night of entering the village, Zheng Xiaoyun, led by village friends, saw the last long house.
The long house is a family cohabitation model that exists in some ethnic minorities in southern China. It also existed in some Southeast Asian countries in the past. It has an important position in the history of human family development and has attracted much attention from the academic circles.
The largest area of the long house is in Yanuo Village.
Most of the walls are made of bamboo wedges and wooden boards, and the roofs are paved with thatch.
The fire pond in the long house was blazing fiercely, and several families cooked and boiled water on the stoves built with stones and iron frames.
In the past, the long house where the Jino people lived was very large and very long. There were as many as 20 or 30 firepits in a row from the beginning to the end. The population was more than 120 at the peak, and the inhabitants were descendants of one ancestor.
During the more than 20-day internship, Zheng Xiaoyun ate and lived with the villagers, and experienced the mysterious Jino culture.
But the extreme barrenness of the mountains also filled his heart with doubts: what is the modernization of the Jino people?
When will modernization take place here?
Humanities Scholar's "Lab"
After graduating from Yunnan University, Zheng Xiaoyun worked in the History Institute of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, where he was engaged in the investigation and research of ethnic minorities, especially the Jinuo people.
After training, in October 1983, he packed his bags again and embarked on the research road of Jinuo Mountain and villages and villages by himself.
When he went to some remote cottages for research, the conditions were difficult, and Zheng Xiaoyun often slept by the fire pond at night.
He used Baogu as his pillow. Once, he woke up in the middle of the night. It turned out that the sack in which the Baogu had been placed broke and threw him on the end.
Sometimes when I lie down after a tired day, I hear mice jumping up and down on the beams, and I can't sleep all night.
Once during a survey in a village, the village director was distressed by this young man in his early 20s, and specially found a pair of new quilts for the newlyweds to cover for Zheng Xiaoyun.
A colleague came from the city and planned to stay in the village for a while, but the next morning, he left without looking back.
Some teachers were also surprised when they went up the mountain to visit Zheng Xiaoyun: "How can you stay here for so long?"
Zheng Xiaoyun just thought he didn't stay long enough.
He felt that just like science students need a laboratory, humanities scholars also need to do research in a base for a long time, and Mount Kino is a natural "laboratory".
This time, Zheng Xiaoyun stayed in the mountain for more than half a year, and his research work mainly consisted of interviews. Yanuo Village was one of the villages where he stayed for a long time.
He set up a small table on the balcony of Bruzhou's house and sat around with the Jino people, listening to everyone tell about the history and culture of Yanuo Village.
Under the working conditions at the time, taking pictures and recording audio was an expensive means of recording.
Due to limited funds, each survey can only be equipped with 5 film rolls.
Zheng Xiaoyun cherishes every time he presses the shutter.
In Bakazhai, he used a very simple recording device - a lunch box tape recorder to record the singing of the famous female singer Abhidu from Mount Kino.
Since then, the scholar has launched a return visit to Jinuo villages.
In the past 40 years, he has visited more than 40 villages in Jinuo Mountain, and some villages have returned for many times.
Every year, the days in Jinuo Mountain range from a few months to a few days. Zheng Xiaoyun and Jinuo Mountain have formed a deep friendship for four generations.
Read a "big book" at Mount Keno
The eating habits and eating rules of Jino people are quite different from those of Han people. Due to dietary hygiene problems, stomach problems are common among Jino people.
Zheng Xiaoyun had to bring a large package of medicines every time he went into the mountains, some specially designed to relieve stomach pain and some to reduce fever.
Every time he walked into the village with a bag on his back, the local children knew that "there was sugar and biscuits to eat", and the adults came to get the medicines they needed.
Blue Zhou's son-in-law Ziqie is the one who takes care of him the most.
"At that time, there was no hunting ban in the Jinuo Mountains. Ziqie always wanted to arrange my life better, and I would go into the mountains to hunt every three days." Zheng Xiaoyun still remembers it.
In 1984, Ziqie asked Zheng Xiaoyun to name his daughter. After thinking about it, he finally chose the name "Chunlan", which means spring orchids bloom in the valley.
As a Han scholar, when Zheng Xiaoyun approached the Jinuo people, he felt that they were like bright flowers blooming on the treetops, especially gorgeous in the vast forest.
In the long-term relationship with the Jinuo people, Zheng Xiaoyun increasingly felt that there should be a correct positioning of the minority culture.
For example, the Jino people believe in "all things have animism" and have a reverence for nature.
"All ethnic cultures should be recognized, and should not be artificially divided into advanced cultures and backward cultures."
In the hunting culture of the Jino people, there is a strong concept of average.
Whether the hunters catch a wild boar or a bird, they will be divided equally.
This is also the principle in their life.
The Jino people firmly believe that as long as we live together, take care of and support each other, we can resist all disasters.
When the Jino people treated him sincerely, showing their customs, living habits and even every bit of love in front of him, Zheng Xiaoyun felt that he had read a "big book" in Jinuo Mountain.
During the relocation, the first thing to restore in the village was the school
Solid field research has allowed Zheng Xiaoyun to produce "The Last Long House - Jinuo Patriarchal Family and Cultural Changes", "Temaoke - Jinuo Festival Log", and "Image Memory in the Age of Great Transformation - Jinuo Pictures" and other books and papers.
He excavated and saved the cultural heritage of a nation, and also witnessed the social, economic and cultural changes of the Jino people in the process of modernization.
Jinuo Mountain is one of the best-preserved areas in Xishuangbanna virgin forest.
In the past, except for a national defense road that traverses the mountainous area, the other entrances were only sheep intestines trails, and people could only enter the mountains on foot.
"Now it can be reached by car in one or two hours. In the past, we had to walk for two or three days." Zheng Xiaoyun recalled that he used to carry a suitcase and walked through the forest most of the time.
In the early 1980s, the planting of Amomum villosum was developed in Jinuo Mountains, and a number of "10,000-million-dollar households" were once generated.
Subsequently, the locality made full use of natural resources, vigorously adjusted the industrial structure, and with the support of the government and scientific research institutes, developed the forest economy based on the cultivation of Amomum, tea and rubber.
The skills of farmers in self-management have been greatly improved, and some people have begun to use their brains to develop commodity production. For example, the Shamula family rented dozens of acres of land on the hillside of the northern head of the village to grow tropical fruits such as longan and lychee. Selling their own agricultural products and mountain goods on the market is the first step for the Jino people to move towards a market economy.
In June 1984, Zheng Xiaoyun witnessed the first trade fair in the history of the Jinuo people.
In order to develop the commodity economy, the Jinuo township government encourages the villagers to trade their commodities on the market.
During the research process, Zheng Xiaoyun found that the Jinuo people are very active in accepting modern education.
During the relocation process of visiting Mansan Xiaozhai, he saw that the first temporary residence in the village was the school. The villagers set up a few bamboo stools in the open space and hung up the blackboard they had been carrying when the school was relocated. They can sit down and read.
The village director said: "Only by reading, can the dolls have contact with the outside world and change their current difficult living conditions." This moved Zheng Xiaoyun, who was investigating in the temporary camp.
He also noticed that batches of young Jino people have entered universities, participated in work, and become experts in the economic construction of their hometowns, all of which benefited from the local emphasis on education.
After graduating from Yunnan Vocational and Technical College of Transportation, Zi Chunlan returned to Jinuo Mountain to pick, process and sell Pu'er tea.
How to inherit and protect the Jinuo culture is an important issue at present
In the social and economic transformation, many traditional cultures are also quietly disappearing.
In Jinuo Mountain, with the implementation of the policy of returning farmland to forest, the traditional farming culture represented by "slash and burn" has withdrawn from the historical stage since the 1990s.
The development of the commodity economy and the "household contract" completely disintegrated the economic foundation of the big family in Yanuo Village, making the co-living model of long houses gone forever.
In Zheng Xiaoyun's view, how to inherit and protect the Jinuo culture is an important issue at present.
In addition to the preservation of cultural forms such as music, dance and handicrafts, there is also a need for the inheritance of customs and values.
In 1988, the Jino ethnic Temouk was identified as a national holiday.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Zheng Xiaoyun spent seven festivals with villagers in Jinuo villages.
In the process of writing the book "Chinese Festival Log · Te Maoke", he led the research team to conduct field investigations in the mountains many times.
Zheng Xiaoyun always believes that a scholar should root his research in the field and print his footprints on the earth.
The field habits he cultivated during his research on Mount Kino had an impact on him throughout his life, and he always had to "go to the scene to have a look".
Today, many Jinuo friends who supported Zheng Xiaoyun in his research and research have passed away.
In order to reproduce these historical memories of the Jino people, Zheng Xiaoyun scanned more than 2,000 photos from hundreds of dusty film rolls, and after restoration, more than 360 of them were finally presented in "Photographic Memory of the Great Transformation Era. "middle.
This book truly records the natural environment, village style, agricultural production, and social life of the Jinuo people in the 1980s. Many photos freeze phenomena or scenes that have disappeared during the development of this nation.
Photos connect past and present.
Looking at a black and white photo, a girl with dark skin and bright eyes is now a grandmother; a baby in the arms of her mother is now Zi Chunlan, a famous tea merchant in Yanuo Village.
In 2019, the Jino people declared that the whole family was lifted out of poverty.
Today, the vast majority of Jino people bid farewell to thatched houses and live in new brick-concrete houses.
Villages and villages have roads and electricity, and many families have cars and modern communication equipment.
In Zheng Xiaoyun's view, the future development of the Jinuo people also needs to manage a green economy and a green home, pay attention to the further development of education, and protect and promote traditional culture.
"For ethnic groups with smaller populations, the Jino people set up a model for development through the interaction of external conditions and internal dynamics."
40 years is just a short moment in the long river of human history, but Zheng Xiaoyun has witnessed the great changes of an ethnic village. Modernization”; today, the prosperous life of the Jino people is the best footnote written for this era, and it is also the most vivid explanation of the diligence and wisdom of the Jino people.
Yang Xinman, China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Lei Yu Source: China Youth Daily
July 04, 2022 Edition 06