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Wednesday July 29, 2009

Crying bride

ZIYING'S BRUSH


Tujia girls of Xiangxi in western Hunan are expected to ritually weep and lament for days before their wedding.

LIKE many mountainous areas in China’s interior, the western part of Hunan province (Xiangxi) is populated by large numbers of non-Han peoples.

In Zhangjiajie, for example, 72% of the population are ethnic minorities, of which roughly half are Tujia (the others being Miao, and a sprinkling of Bai).

South-west of Zhangjiajie, 85% of the people in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture are, according to a government website, minorities.

Strange custom: Performers demonstrating the sobbing skills of Tujia girls, honed by years of practice.

The prefecture is centred on Jishou, home to a university as well as to the Tujia Folk Customs Park incongruously situated nearby stacks of apartment blocks.

I approached the Folk Customs Park with some trepidation, resigned to yet another tourist-trap with mock “authentic” concrete structures inhabited by jaded staff and actors in imitation period or ethnic costumes. The fact that we were welcomed with booming drums and bowls of rice wine did little to allay my scepticism.

A sign informed visitors that the park is constructed in the style of a Tujia mountain citadel. Inside the main gate, tall wooden buildings with tiered dark grey roofs framed a performance plaza where a totem pole with a tiger motif stood in a prominent place, a tribute to the white tiger which is revered by the Tujia who consider themselves its descendants.

The 48m-high wooden main building has nine levels as befit the audience hall of a chieftain and houses Tujia household artefacts, wooden masks as well as a marriage sedan-chair. Half-finished cloth on small weaving looms stood in an open verandah while in a narrow passageway, a knife juggler gave a riveting performance to the beat of a small drum. The daredevil performer tossed several shiny blades around at lightning speed and with increasing ferocity, so it was not surprising that no one refused when a tray was passed around for tips, particularly those spectators sitting just a metre or two away from him.

The Tujia are well-known for their “crying marriage”, surely one of their strangest customs. In a small room in the Folk Customs Park sat three women around a lavishly decorated bed. Two held blue floral handkerchiefs to their faces while a third, with a red veil and colourful satin dress, was obviously the “bride”.

Tujia-style wooden gate beckons visitors at Jishou’s Tujia Folk Customs Park.

She began to intone a mournful song which grew in intensity as her “sisters” joined in, punctuating the wailing and ranting with heart-rending sobs. They sang of their sad fate to be born women, of leaving their mothers and sisters and of never returning home again. Their performance was so convincing that some in the audience were soon wiping their eyes.

Our guide Likun, who has lived in the Tujia area for several years, said: “In the old days, girls married at 13 or 15 years of age, so it is easy to understand their fear and sadness at leaving the family.”

With faces shielded by the bridal veil or handkerchief, the bride would weep and wail with her mother, grandmother, sisters, female friends and relatives for anywhere between one to two weeks to a month, though Likun says the ritual, if practised, now rarely exceeds three days and nights.

The art is considered so important that when a girl turns 12 or 13, she is sent to a teacher to hone her crying skills.

“The most skilful practitioners are those who shed such copious tears that you can hear them drop onto the wooden dishuichuang (water-dripping beds),” Likun explained, and added that another Tujia pre-wedding custom requires the bride to remove the fine hairs on her forehead with a thread.

While their weddings are accompanied by such cathartic crying, Likun said the Tujia sing “to find a partner” particularly during the Love Song Festival in spring. Whoever cries yo wei! after listening to a song will have to sing a few stanzas in response, often making up the lyrics as they go along.

“Unmarried girls wear a red ribbon on their headdress,” she added, “and if a suitor likes her, he would step on her left foot.”

The Tujia number some eight million, ranking sixth among China’s minority groups; of these about 2.7 million live in western Hunan. Some claim Tujia are the descendants of the lost Ba people who lived in the region over two millennia ago and whose ancient coffins are wedged high up in cliff side crevices along the Yangtze River.

Folk parks where people and culture are packaged for tourism should never be a destination of choice.

But unless one has access to increasingly rare practices without being intrusive, a “cultural village” is one way to get a glimpse, no matter how superficial, of the customs of the local people.

Ziying can be reached at ziyingster@gmail.com.

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