Seeking information about the ethnic minority, the Water Tribe

The Water Tribe, Good Neighbors of the Miao and Dong Tribes

Introduction

The Water Tribe is one of the ethnic minorities in China. There are 345,993 of them, mainly living in Sandu Shui Autonomous County and Libo, Duyun and Dushan in Qiannan Buyi Miao Autonomous Prefecture and Kaili, Liping, Rongjiang and Congjiang in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province, and a few of them are scattered in the western part of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The residence of the Shui is located in the south of the Miaoling Mountain Range in the southeast of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, in the upper reaches of the Duliu River and the Long River. With dense forests and picturesque landscapes, it is suitable for the development of agriculture and forestry, and is the home of fish, rice, flowers and fruits on the Guizhou Plateau. The Shui people often describe their hometown as "as beautiful as a phoenix feather" in their folk songs.

The Shui people are engaged in agriculture, mainly planting rice, "Jiuqian wine" is the traditional wine of the Shui people. The Water Tribe has its own calendar, which is basically the same as the Summer Calendar, but with August as the end of the year and September as the beginning of the year.

Language

The language of the Shui people belongs to the water language branch of the Zhuang-Dong language family of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The ancestors of the Shui people once created their own script, called "Shui Shu", which is similar in shape to oracle bone script and gold script, and is an ancient script with a history of 2,000 years, but there are only more than 400 single words and they are mostly used in sorcery activities. These words are transcribed and copied, not printed, but the water book is basically the same everywhere. Most of the water people do not recognize it. They commonly use Han Chinese in their daily lives.

History

The distant ancestors of the Shui people were part of the ancient Baiyue people. The Shui people have a historical connection with the ancient "Luoyue" people, and were developed by one of them. As early as before the Qin and Han dynasties, Lingnan region and the southeast coast of the area inhabited by many tribes, 214 BC, the Qin dynasty unified the Lingnan, the ancestors of the Water Tribe gradually migrated northward to the border of Guizhou and Guangxi; Sui and Tang dynasties collectively referred to as the "Xidong barbarians"; the Tang and Song dynasties with the Zhuang and Dong ethnic groups were collectively referred to as the "fang"; the Song dynasty in the area of the "Baiyue" has historical origins. "In the Tang and Song dynasties, the "Fushui Prefecture" was set up in the area, which was commonly known as the "Fushui Barbarians"; the name of the Prefecture implies that a group of people who called themselves "water" had already been formed. In the middle of the 13th century, a large number of Han Chinese migrated to this area; from the 13th to 17th centuries, a large number of Han Chinese soldiers were transferred to this area to guard the area and set up their homes here, and their descendants were gradually integrated into the Shui ethnic group.

The name "Shui" was first used in the Ming Dynasty. In the Qing Dynasty, it was called "water Miao family", "water family" and so on. After the founding of New China, the water tribe was officially named.

In China's modern history, the people of the water tribe wrote a glorious chapter. 1855 October, Pan Xinjian led the people of the water tribe armed insurrection, put forward "do not pay food, do not pay taxes, overthrowing the Qing Dynasty to enjoy peace" loud slogan, insisted on the struggle for 16 years with the struggle of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. 1909 Wu Chaojun led the water, Buyei, Miao and other ethnic groups to rise up, the water, the water, the water, the water, the water and the water. In 1909, Wu Chaojun led the uprising of the ethnic groups of Shui, Buyei and Miao, and put forward the idea of "exterminating the foreigners and raising the Han Chinese", and carried out anti-foreigner and anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist struggles, which had an important impact on the whole country. During the New Democratic Revolution, Deng Enming, an outstanding son of the Shuizhu people, was the only ethnic minority comrade among the delegates to the First Congress of the People's Republic of China. During the War of Resistance against Japan and the War of Liberation, the people of Shui ethnicity also took an active part in the struggles led by the local underground party organizations of the C***.

Diet

The Shui people eat rice as their staple food and love glutinous food, in addition, the Shui people also plant some wheat, bulgur, millet, red tares, sweet potatoes and rice beans and other miscellaneous grains as auxiliary food.

Aqua farmers are not good at planting vegetables, and thus the variety of vegetables is relatively monotonous, bok choy, broad lettuce and large-leafed leeks are the most common vegetables. The aquatic people attach more importance to breeding and fishing, therefore, a variety of livestock and poultry and aquatic products for the aquatic life provides the necessary meat food.

The aquatic acid soup is very characteristic, there are spicy acid (made of chili peppers), hairy spicy acid (made of tomatoes), fish acid (made of fish and shrimp), stinking acid (made of boiled pig and cow bones) and other kinds of. Among them, spicy acid is the most commonly used. Spicy acid with fresh red pepper processing made. The production method is: the fresh red pepper wash clean, add water with a mill into pulp, add a lot of sweet wine (or glutinous rice), into the pickle altar sealed, after fermentation, that is, into a delicious sour soup. When consumed, cabbage, bok choy, young bamboo shoots, large-leaf leeks, broad lettuce and other vegetables cooked, scooped into the appropriate acid, boiled can be. To paste chili noodles, salt and scoop a little vegetable soup into a dipping water, eat vegetables to eat with the dipping water, its taste is delicious, extremely appetizing. Very few fried dishes, eat "hot pot" all year round, a big pot of sour soup with dipping water is almost a daily dish. Even if the occasional tofu, meat or fish, it is customary to add vegetables, cooked into a pot of dipping water to eat.

The water tribe loves to drink, and every family will bake rice wine. Whenever there are festivals, celebrations or visits from friends and relatives, they can't avoid treating guests with wine. There is a long tradition of hospitality among the aquatic people, and taking turns to pass the end is a cultural expression of hospitality.

Costumes

The men of the aquatic people wear blue cloth shirts with big lapels and no collars, wear small hats with melon skins, and the old people wear long shirts with their heads wrapped in cloth and their feet wrapped in bindings. Women wear blue and black round necked, wide-sleeved shirts with long pants, knotted cloth loincloths, and embroidered green cloth shoes.

Shui men's clothing from the 1940s onwards, and the surrounding Chinese clothing is not very different, but the women's clothing still retains a distinctive ethnic characteristics. Water women weaving "water family cloth" (i.e. Jiuqian green cloth) yarn quality fine and uniform, dyed green, blue, green are deep through the washable, as early as a hundred years ago, known far and wide. Water tribe original soybean paste painting printing and dyeing technology, has been rumored to have more than 700 years of history, its printing and dyeing products are very popular among the masses.

The women's clothing of the aquatic people are mostly sewn with water family cloth, collarless lapel half-length shirt or long shirt. The long shirts are knee-length and are usually not embroidered with lace. And festivals and wedding dresses are very different from the usual. Wedding dresses have embroidered flower bands around the shoulders and cuffs of the sleeves and the bend of the knees of the pants, and colorful patterns on the headscarves. A silver crown is worn on the head and a silver collar on the neck. Wrist wearing silver bracelets, chest silver elegant collar, silver earrings, feet wearing embroidered shoes. The bride is often dressed up in a flamboyant, elegant style. In addition, women's embroidered straps more artistic. Said "belt", in fact, is a piece of embroidery gorgeous "T"-shaped "curtain", the upper end of the two sides of the belt, "curtain The size of the "curtain" can be wrapped around a toddler. It is the white ponytail wrapped around the white silk thread, plus other colors of silk thread, first of all, a variety of patterns were embroidered, and finally the embroidered pattern mosaic to the straps made of fabric. The straps are beautiful and practical, and are the best gift for mothers to give to their daughters who are getting married.

Women in the water tribe before the wedding with light blue, green or gray cloth made of plainclothes tunic, blouse more satin for the material. Clothing body sleeves are contracted than in the past, appearing to be close to the sharp curves of beauty. Chest embroidered long apron, head wrapped in green and white cloth long scarf, elegant and quiet. The cuffs of married women's sleeves, shoulders and trouser legs are decorated with a blue lace. Long hair into a handful of disk on top of the head, from the right side of the comb fixed. Some women in the hijab outside and horizontal tie white scarf, some directly with lattice square hijab head wrap, traditional but not lose fashion.

Marriage etiquette

The marriage customs of the Water Tribe have a strong traditional color, and it is important to marry in the open. Before marriage, young men and women can make use of the festivals and fairs when the song activities to love each other. Even if the love of free love, but also have to be explicitly married, otherwise it is not etiquette, to be discriminated against. Young men and women love each other, the first trustee to tell both parents. If the parents expressed willingness, the male party to ask the matchmaker to go to the woman's home to send gifts betrothal, and choose an auspicious day, sent people to carry piglets to the woman's home "to eat a little wine". Officially welcome the bride, and then carry a big pig to the female family "to eat big wine". Banquet to sing a toast, the hostess sings a song, the guests will have to dry a cup of wine, to get drunk to show the host's hospitality. Receive and send the bride, men and women's families do not participate, except in a few places by the bride's brother back the bride sent to the husband's home, most of the bride in full dress to play a deliberately torn open a slit in the red umbrella walking in front of the bride to receive the bride's best man, bridesmaids and carry the dowry of the long queue immediately after. Generally at noon out of the mother's door, six or seven o'clock in the evening into the door of the husband's house, the auspicious time shall not enter the door. The bridegroom's family members go out to avoid the bride before she enters the door, and the bride can only go home after she enters the house. Wedding night, bridesmaids and the bride with the night, the next day the bride that is back to the door to go to her mother's home to live. After the wedding date, the groom goes back to invite the bride back to start married life. Some brides return to the door for the first time up to one or two months, called "sitting home", in fact, is "not fall husband's home," the remnants of the wedding custom. Bride on the way to get married, the most taboo thunder change of day, so the wedding in the fall and winter.

Habitat

The water tribe living area in the subtropical, rainy and humid, coupled with dense forests, jackals, wolves, tigers, leopards and wild boars often infested. Aquatic living "dry fence" homes, can avoid the ground moisture and wild animals.

The water tribe wooden building, generally divided into two layers. The lower level is the entire upper housing load-bearing parts, so the first to fix the foot, according to the performance of the wooden house inter-frame structure, the foundation of the house only requires a block of stone according to the terrain to stabilize the foot can be, generally do not repair the house foundation plane. Lower column thick (diameter is generally more than 30 centimeters), the column body mortise and tenon with through square longitudinal and horizontal connection, each row of the bottom of the column at the top end of the buckle frame thick logs as beams, beams and beams laid between the cushion wood, commonly known as the "floor pillow", pillow on the floor of the floor boards laying a wide (mostly pine or maple tree into the boards), the formation of a flat floor. The upper roof frame is generally five columns and four melons (or eleven purlins and water steps) in each row, and there are also five columns and six melons (or fifteen purlins and water steps). Wooden buildings are of pierced bucket structure, with a network of pierced square between the columns. In particular, the upper roof frame column foot fastening square is a fish-tail type of corner connection, which is the most outstanding creation of the water tribe carpenters in the construction of the dry bar. This fishtail type "corner" structure of the column foot fastening square, firmly fixed the orientation of each column. On the top, purlins are used to hold the head of each row of columns and the head of the melon, and the articulation of each part is riveted tightly with teeth and tenons, making the building integral and very stable. The lower level of the columns and beams and the upper rows must be corresponding, commonly known as "columns top columns", which makes the performance of the wood pressure resistance has been fully realized.

The immortal hero Deng Enming

Deng Enming is the most recognizable member of the Aizu ethnic group in all of China and the world. He has such an impact because of two reasons: first, he is a delegate to the First Congress of the C***, and anyone who knows how the C*** was founded knows about him; second, on June 28, 2001, the State Postal Bureau of the People's Republic of China issued a group of commemorative stamps titled "Early Leaders of China's C*** Producing Party (I)", and Deng Enming's glorious image is on the third stamp, and anyone who collects stamps or receives mail with this stamp affixed to it, knows about him. stamp will know him.

Deng Enming, formerly known as Deng Enming, was born in January 1901 in Shuipu Village, Libo County, Guizhou Province, into a family of working people of the Shui ethnic group.In the fall of 1917, after graduating from elementary school, he went to join his second uncle in Shandong Province because of the difficulties in his family's situation and entered the First Provincial High School in Jinan City. During the May Fourth Movement, he embarked on the path of revolution and was elected as the leader of the Student Self-Government Association of No. 1 Middle School and head of the Publication Department, editing the school magazine. During this period, he became comrades in arms with Comrade Wang Baimei and further embraced Marxism-Leninism. in November 1920, he organized the Lixin Society, founded the semi-monthly magazine Lixin, and participated in the organization of the Shandong ****productivist group. in July 1921, together with Wang Baimei, he was a delegate from Shandong to attend the First Congress of the Chinese ****productivist Party and National Revolutionary Groups of the Far East, and in the following year, he went to Moscow to attend the First Congress of the Far East ****productivist Parties and National Revolutionary Groups. In the following year, he went to Moscow to attend the First Congress of the Far Eastern Nationalist Party and National Revolutionary Group. After returning to China, he became the secretary of the C*** Qingdao Municipal Committee and the secretary of the Shandong Regional Committee, and led the general strike of the workers of the Jiaozhi Railway and the workers of the Qingdao Japanese Yarn Factory, and in 1927 he became the secretary of the C*** Shandong Provincial Committee, and in December 1928 he was arrested by the Kuomintang reactionaries in Jinan, where he led the escape struggle, and on April 5, 1931, he bravely took his place in the army, at the age of only 30 years old. Deng Enming, as a proletarian revolutionary, is immortalized and his spirit lives on.

Religion

In the past, they believed in the spirit of all things and worshipped many gods. It was believed that ancient trees, boulders, wells and springs all had spirits. In the late 19th and early 210th centuries, Catholicism was introduced to the area, but there were not many believers.

In some remote mountainous areas, the aquatic people have hung animal bones to worship the custom of the gods. After hunting tigers, leopards, wild boars, bison, bears and other animals, people used to hang the animal horns or skulls neatly on the wall or hanging on the door. Some places to slaughter cattle ancestor also left the horns hanging, so that the beasts, ghosts and gods fear, do not dare to enter the village infringement of human and animal, but also shows the family's wealth and the owner of the hunting skills.

Unique production practices

The economy of the water tribe is a typical type of mountain rice farming, as early as 150 years ago, paddy fields in the water tribe inhabited areas accounted for more than 80% of the arable land area. In agricultural production, Shui farmers still maintain some special customs. From the perspective of today's green agriculture, some of these practices are worth learning from and promoting.

Accumulation of fertilizer and fertilization. Although aquatic farmers now also use pesticides and chemical fertilizers, their high cost and pollution are obvious drawbacks. In order to increase and use more farmyard fertilizers, it is still common for aquatic farmers to adopt the method of cow treading to accumulate fertilizers. They keep the oxen in captivity when they are at leisure, pad the grass left over from the oxen in the circle, add washer soil at the right time, and let the oxen trample the feces, urine, and grass and soil together, composting them into fertilizer.

Harrowing tools. Harrowing is to rake the mud in the field, rake the paddy field, so that the rice has a loose growing soil, and can be evenly watered. Special, aquatic farmers with "boat rake" and "stone rake" raking. "Boat rake" is about 1 meter long wooden boat-shaped rake, "boat bottom" is flat, the bottom of the outside down with wooden teeth or bamboo teeth. If people pull the rake, "boat" filled with soil or stones to suppress; if the oxen pull the rake, people are standing in the "boat" to drive. Stone rake is a rectangular stone bar, the two ends of the stone drilled through the rope traction, the bottom surface of the stone has a coarse carving. The main function of the stone harrow is not to harrow the field, but to smooth it out.

Irrigation. Irrigation in the Shui area to the benefit of nature. In the valley above the paddy field to build ponds and weirs or river dams to store water, and then open the canal to divert water to irrigate, or directly lead to the mountain springs and streams to the head of the field to irrigate. Field high water low, but also the use of tube car, turning car (keel car) and other ancient water lifting device.

The production practice of "live lutou" is widely practiced in the aquatic areas. The "live road head" is a local Chinese dialect, "translated" into Mandarin as "the leader of the agricultural work". Important agricultural work in the village of the Water Tribe, such as plowing, cultivating the fields, raising seedlings, transplanting seedlings, harvesting, etc., all the families in the village have to wait for the "living head of the road" to start drying before they can begin to do so. When the agricultural time comes, the "head of the living road" chooses an auspicious day, holds a simple ceremony, symbolically plows a row of land, inserts a few root and stem seedlings, or cuts a few handfuls of rice, and then other people start to do this agricultural work in their own contracted fields. This custom has at least two meanings, one is the importance of agricultural production, and the other is the "living head of the road" is a crop of old masters, their experience according to the climate to master the agricultural time has a certain degree of scientific, follow them to do can get a good harvest.

The Shui people have a clear division of labor between the sexes in agricultural production. "Women don't plow, men don't plant rice seedlings" is a tradition, and anyone who violates it will be criticized. In the past, there have been labor-short households where women dressed as men plowed the fields at night. Men plowed the fields, tilled the ground, and repaired the ridges. These tasks were more laborious and the struggle in the mud and water was really difficult for women. This is not to say that women do not have a hard time, rice planting, cutting rice seedlings, picking grain, not to mention other things, just in terms of the waist, a day down, almost all have the feeling of "about to break".

After generations of hard work, the people of the Water Tribe have made the mountains and hills where they live look like a phoenix. The sparkling terraces, the fruitful gardens, the stacked wooden buildings, the green trees, and the happy spring streams are like the beautiful feathers of the phoenix. The beauty of the mountainous countryside, idyllic scenery, earthy atmosphere, the beauty of nature, simple love, and the prosperity of the city **** with the symphony, playing the era of the great motherland movement.

Festivals

There are many traditional festivals in the Aizu ethnic group, including the Duan Festival, the Mao Festival, the Suning Festival, the Recommendation Festival, the Jingxia Festival, and so on, and the most important of all is the "Duan Festival".

Duan Festival, also known as the Melon Festival, the water tribe people called "borrow end", "borrow" is the water language "eat" means, is the water of Guizhou Province Sandu Autonomous County, Duyun, Dushan, The vast majority of the Shui areas in Guizhou Province, such as Sandu Shui Autonomous County, Duyun, Dushan, Libo, etc., have this festival, which is similar to the Spring Festival of the Han Chinese people.

The water tribe has its own calendar, and the "Duan Festival" is projected by the water book water calendar. On the choice of the water calendar in December to February (equivalent to the lunar calendar August to October), every Hai (pig) day, according to the tradition of batches of festivals around the world. It coincides with the harvesting of the big season and the sowing of the small season, and is also the end of the year in the Water Calendar, so it is a grand festival to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, celebrate a good harvest, and honor the ancestors.

In the water tribe, there is a traditional distinction between "over the end but not the d, over the d but the end", and the order of festivals in each region can not be reversed or confused. About this custom, the more consistent legend is that the ancient water tribe's ancestor Gong Gong Deng has two sons, the brother was divided into the upper side of the inner jacket area, the younger brother was divided into the lower side of the Jiuqian area. Originally agreed, after the harvest to celebrate the reunion of the ancestors. Later, it was decided that the older brother would celebrate the Duan Festival and the younger brother would celebrate the Mao Festival because of the inconvenience of traveling far away from each other. To this day, the water tribe is basically the same clan with the same family name to celebrate the festival together.

Duan Festival, young men and women in the "end of the slope" around the music, song and dance, but also held horse races, bullfighting, cultural performances, movie screenings, friends and relatives get together for dinner and other activities. Tens of thousands of people from neighboring Miao, Dong, Buyi, Zhuang, Yao, Han and other ethnic groups come to participate.

Before the Duan Festival, families sweep their courtyards and clean up inside and outside their homes. The day before the festival, the festival villages beat copper drums to bid farewell to the old and welcome the new. The festival kills chickens and ducks to eat new grain, and to fresh fish stew, ready to entertain friends and relatives with new rice soup. New Year's Eve (Hundred Days evening) and the first day (Ohio) morning ancestor worship, avoid eating meat, offerings can not have other meat other than fish, avoid meat but not fish. Ancestors of the main product is fish wrapped leeks, the reason is that legend has it that the ancestors had nine kinds of vegetables and fish and shrimp made of medicine to drive away a hundred diseases. It is made by filling leeks, bad chili and seasonings such as green onions, ginger and garlic into the belly of a washed fish, tying it and then stewing or steaming it.

Ma Festival, the water language called "borrowing the Mao", just Sandu County, Jiuqian area and its neighboring Libo County, part of the region of the aquatic people to spend the holiday. With the end of the festival, is also staged in batches, the day to choose the end of rice-planting after the water calendar in September and October (lunar calendar, five, six) of the d day, and to the Xinmao day for the auspicious day. However, the dao festival is held in four batches. Because the "Duan Festival" and "D Festival" are in fact New Year's Day, so the areas where the Duan Festival is celebrated do not celebrate the D Festival, and the areas where the D Festival is celebrated do not celebrate the D Festival.

Suningxi Festival, the water language is "water calendar April Ugly Day" means, the water folk festival, time in the water calendar April Ugly Day, that is, the lunar calendar December Ugly Day. According to aquatic legend, this day is the "birth mother mother" to the earth to send the heir of the day, so it is also called "Niang Niang Festival", the main content of the festival is to worship the birth mother mother.

Commendation Festival, the water language is the "first month" means, also known as "lending recommendation", is influenced by the Han Chinese Spring Festival and produced a festival, in fact, is also the Spring Festival. In areas where the festival is celebrated, it is usually not celebrated at the Duan Festival or the Mao Festival.

The Jingxia Festival, "Xia" is the water language "water god" means, Jingxia is also called "worship Xia", that is, to worship the water god, is a concrete manifestation of the primitive religious worship of the people of the water tribe, mainly in Sandu County. Embodiment, mainly in Sandu County Jiuqian area and its adjoining areas over this festival. Worship Xia Festival is not held every year, two years, six years and twelve years apart. Specific time has a water book Mr. according to the "water book" projections.