Night Shift Teacher: Being a Wizard in the Social Cracks of Modern China "Presence·Nonfiction Writing Scholarship"

Text/Huang Yuqing Editor/Xie Ding

1. A boy who suddenly goes crazy

Alley's story was told very skillfully by himself. He said that his family was very poor when he was a child, and his mother went out to work soon after giving birth to him. Before he was as tall as a carrying pole, he had to start carrying water. Of course, there is nothing strange about this. All the children in the village have become their own parents. What was strange was his dream. He said that some ghosts and gods always appeared in his dreams and talked to him. When he was not dreaming, he would hold a stick or sticks in his arms, mutter something, and make the motions of plucking the strings. No one knows where he learned this. When he went to school, his classmates said he was crazy and refused to play with him. Fortunately, his grandma was still alive at that time. Although this situation had not happened in the village for a long time, grandma knew the traditional way to deal with strange things - to ask the immortal.

The so-called asking the immortals means asking the gods. But ordinary people cannot talk to gods. They have to go through some "teachers". "Teacher" is the honorific title given by Fusui people to experts in folk belief rituals, similar to "master".

A "teacher" performed a ceremony for Alley. The tradition is very effective. A Lei did not have another attack for a while. The family breathed a sigh of relief and thought it was peaceful.

However, it didn't take long for Alley to find that he was "abnormal" again. He is often confused, utters words he does not understand, and picks up things all over the floor. When he entered junior high school, the situation became more and more serious. He couldn't stay in school and dropped out of school in the second year of junior high school. Young people in the village have only two options if they cannot study: become soldiers or go to work. A Lei went to the provincial capital and worked with his father at a construction site loading and unloading. But within two years, he returned to his old ways, felt unwell, and ran home again.

What can I do if I go home? Both parents are working outside the city, and my sister is studying in a medical school. There were no idlers in the countryside, so he had nothing to do but follow his aunt to farm, cut hemp poles, and carry firewood every day.

One evening, he did not go to chop hemp poles. At about nine o'clock in the evening, my aunt came home and found him sitting on the bed in a daze, shaking his legs and mumbling words that others could not understand, as if something was controlling him in his body. The family members came back one after another and saw him lighting incense and announcing that his troops were going to recognize the "teacher" from Buli Village as their master.

Some "teachers" nearby looked at Alei's condition and said that he was probably not possessed by an evil spirit, but that he had "become an immortal".

"Chu Xian" is a literal translation of the Zhuang language, which refers to the power of the gods appearing in a person. More often, this word is equivalent to describing a person who suddenly goes crazy. They said that Alei's ancestors also had people who were "teachers". Now, the Yin soldiers and horses led by their ancestors have taken a fancy to Alei and want to choose him as a "teacher" and teach him to "lead soldiers and horses".

The family was shocked. Alei was only fourteen years old, how could he do such a thing? But obviously, those shady soldiers refused to stop, and Alley became "crazy" more and more often. Finally, Alley's family followed the instructions of "Bingma" and went to Buli Village to find Chen Wenhe, the "teacher" who later became Alley's master.

But unlike what the "soldiers" hoped, Alei's family asked Chen Wenhe to perform a ritual to temporarily seal off the "soldiers", at least until Ale came of age and got married. Alley later speculated that this was because “it’s harder to find a wife in this line of work.”

According to the wishes of his family, Chen Wenhe performed a ceremony in which a rooster, traditionally called the "golden rooster", was used. According to tradition, if the chicken's head faces the master when the chicken is killed for divination at the end, it means the ceremony was successful. But at the end of the ceremony, the golden rooster fluttered in a circle, with its head stubbornly facing outside the door.

Chen Wenhe shook his head and sighed: "We can't seal it anymore, those soldiers are coming."

Tradition is like this. A Lei said that this means that Hua Po has received the scepter and this person is going to be a "teacher". Hua Po is one of the most important gods in the folk system of the Zhuang people. Teachers also call her the Holy Mother of Flower King. She is in charge of all teachers' "hukou" in the divine world.

Against the reluctance of his family, the fourteen-year-old Arei established himself as a disciple and embarked on the path of cultivating immortality and becoming a "teacher".

2. Getting to know Arei for the first time

The first time I met Alei was in the summer of 2019, when I was still in graduate school and interned at a museum in Nanning during the summer vacation. I met Teacher Wu Bin, a fellow student from the Zuojiang River Basin area in southern Guangxi. Wu Bin knew Alei well, and when he learned that Alei was going to perform a heavenly wine ceremony, he invited me to go with him. Although I had no idea what the Tianjiu Ceremony was at that time, as a student of film and television anthropology, the few academic cells left in my body reminded me that this must be an excellent ethnographic film subject.

We drove from Nanning, got off the highway, and walked on dusty county roads for nearly an hour. Teacher Wu played a aria from the Heavenly Wine Ceremony in the car and told me that this was the "crossing the sea" part of the ceremony. I couldn't understand those ancient sayings at all, and many questions swirled in my mind: Crossing the sea? Is there a sea here?

The only sea we are passing is the Cane Sea. In midsummer, the sugar cane fields surged around us like slowly flowing turquoise water. Fusui is located in the south-central part of Guangxi. It is the easternmost county in the Zuojiang River Basin and closest to the capital Nanning. It has a vast basin that is rare in the Zuojiang River Basin. Like many other counties in the Zuojiang River Basin, it uses sugar cane as its main cash crop and also grows fast-growing eucalyptus.

We turned onto a rural road and passed by many yellow mud houses with holes in their purlins. The mud walls were partially painted with faded white paint slogans: Compulsory Education Balanced Development. The village seemed extremely quiet in the afternoon, with only the old cow chewing something slowly under the thick shade of the longan tree.

Teacher Wu said that his hometown is in the village next to Arei. But after passing by similar villages one after another, he also began to mutter: "Is this the road?" Just when we almost suspected that we were lost, a small shed with colorful ribbons and decorated with fancy paper-cuts appeared in the grass. . Teacher Wu said: "Hey, Teacher Lei is there."

I turned my head and looked out the window. Several Taoist priests wearing colorful "sheet" robes were standing near the shed. I was guessing who was Alei when I saw a young man wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and wearing slippers. Come towards us.

He was at most one or two years older than me, with a fair, pear-shaped face, barely thick eyebrows and big eyes, a slightly chubby figure, and an unsmiling look, but the little yellow face printed on his slippers was actually smiling. Teacher Wu spoke Mandarin to him: "Shall I park the car at your house?"

"Both." Alei opened the car window and answered nonchalantly in Mandarin, "I'll be back in a while."

We drove into the village. Alley invited many "teachers" from different places to help out. A dojo has been set up throughout the village. The place where we met him was at the intersection into the village. Colorful sheds and flags were also installed on the big banyan tree and in front of the ancestral hall, and villagers and teachers were busy nearby.

A Lei's home is a three-story building. Like other houses in the village, there is no exterior decoration except for a gray cement coating. Beside the door was a pile of sun-dried and faded hemp stalks. We entered the house through a small door facing the road. When we entered the door, we saw a bed with piles of clutter on top and corn under the bed. This was not the living room. It took me several months to realize that this door was. The back entrance of Alley's house - his house complies with the "teacher's" strict direction setting for private space, even though the front door faces no traffic at all. Behind the compartment is a hall. Ancestor tablets are enshrined on a half-empty shelf against the wall. On the right side is a square Eight Immortals table. The table is filled with tributes: leafy plantains, dragon fruits, and apples stacked in a row. Bowls filled with uncooked rice, red and yellow glutinous rice cakes, candies and biscuits were carefully placed on red glass stem plates, vases with flowers, and even various cocktails in transparent glass bottles. Hanging above the table are colorful paper cranes and paper flowers, as well as a green papaya filled with red incense sticks.

It is difficult for me to identify so many complex devices at once. Although Alley and I are barely of the same race, this hall has exceeded the scope of my experience and knowledge in the past twenty-four years. I have never walked so directly into the home of a "teacher" preparing for a ceremony. Alley's home is probably a foreign land among my hometown.

At this moment, Alei's house was full of people. Many villagers are busy in the kitchen, most of them middle-aged and elderly women. Teacher Wu greeted them one by one in the local Zhuang language. Not long after, Alley came back. Among a large group of busy old people, he looked unusually young, but this did not prevent him from swinging his slippers through the hall and kitchen of his home, commanding his aunts and uncles to prepare materials and food for sacrifices. . People in the village respectfully call him "teacher".

Teacher Wu introduced me to Alei, and he nodded lukewarmly to show that he knew me. I half-jokingly told him that I might want to make a documentary for him in the future. He listened indifferently while arranging the sacrifices in the hall and giving instructions to people who came to ask him. Just when I couldn't figure out what his attitude was towards my suggestion, he glanced at me and said lightly: "Okay."

I was stunned for a moment: Good guy, how can I take pictures from now on?

Alei ignored us and went back to the crowd preparing for the ceremony, leaving me alone in a daze in front of a bunch of unfamiliar devices. Although Alei and I were both born in the Zuojiang River Basin area in southern Guangxi, and according to the previous classification of local culture by Zhuang scholars, we are people from "the same cultural circle", but in the home of such a "teacher", I am still very confused.

Moreover, Alei is not quite the same as the “teacher” in my memory.

3. Familiar yet unfamiliar magic

For our generation of young Zhuang people, “teacher” is a familiar yet unfamiliar existence. Unlike educators under the sun, our "teachers" are not a profession that can be practiced in broad daylight. When people talk about them, they are often kept secret, just like people treat folk beliefs-we need them, but they should be kept secret.

Among the Zhuang people in southern Guangxi, "teachers" can be roughly divided into three categories.

One type is Taoism. Practitioners call them Taoists or masters. They are most influenced by Taoism. They have standardized rituals and use Chinese scriptures. They often appear at funerals to send people away from bad luck or send people away.

The other two categories can be understood as folk wizards, who need to be "immortal" to be able to do it. You will hear many similar life stories from them: suddenly one day they felt unwell, went crazy or fell ill, and did not recover until they became a disciple and established an altar. These folk wizards are said to be able to communicate with ghosts and gods and travel between the yin and yang realms. They also especially like to "work the night shift" - they always start performing rituals after dinner at 5 or 6 pm, and continue until 4 or 5 am the next morning, leaving the audience and helpers severely sleep deprived.

Later, I heard a "teacher" talk about the process of her "immortality": she suddenly fell ill for no reason, was exhausted, lay in bed and couldn't get up, so dazed that she even picked up a kitchen knife to chop her husband, and poured boiling water on herself Fortunately, the two-year-old son was stopped in time by his family. When her family took her to ask the immortal, she herself told which master she wanted to worship and where the soldiers and horses came from.

Broken down into details, this kind of folk wizards who "come out of immortality" can be divided into "fairy men and fairy women" and Zhan and Mo. The two have different scriptures, rituals and gods to worship. To outsiders, the most obvious distinguishing mark between the two is the magic weapon they use. Zhan Mo has a unique magical implement: a lyra made of gourds and a copper ring (Zhao Mo is called "horse").

Compared with the general immortals, the immortals are mainly distributed in Fusui, Ningming, Longzhou, Pingxiang and other places in the Zuojiang River Basin in southwest Guangxi, extending to Vietnam south of the national border. Alley and his master live in this area. I live here too.

In these places, people are more respected. People believe in a unique system of gods. Male practitioners are called Zhao Gong or Mo (Migong), and women are called Zhao Po or Mo Po. Jiao Mo and their ritual system are considered by some scholars to be the unique folk belief system of the Zhuang Dai-speaking people on the Sino-Vietnamese border. There is a saying among the Zhuang people that "the Taoist sacrifices his life, and the evildoer saves his life." When encountering a disaster or danger, the evildoer will hold a ceremony to pray for people to avoid disasters. During the ceremony, Xuan Mo transformed into a member of the heaven (usually a general or a priest) through his magical instruments and lyrics, and led the Yin soldiers and Yin horses into heaven and earth.

Scholars have not been able to produce any reliable archaeological evidence as to when Qianmo first appeared. But they found that the "Ningming Prefecture Chronicles" compiled during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty contained a record of Zhan Mo: "The witch, named 'Zhao Po'... takes the name of making friends with ghosts and gods, and uses '叏' as a musical instrument. It looks like a huqin, and its name is 'ding'..." Some scholars, based on the pedigree of Fangcheng dynasty in the early 1990s, inferred that the local dynasty has been passed down for at least two hundred years.

In fact, as early as the 1950s, during the nationwide social and historical survey of China’s ethnic minorities, investigators discovered the existence of Zhao Mo: “Zhao Gong has different scriptures from Wu Gong... When doing things, his hands Playing the two-stringed qin (ti:ŋ), a string of copper rings hangs from the thumb of the left foot... There are only a few Dai people... They are mainly engaged in agricultural production. During the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang, they had no political status. "Most of the people these investigators saw were already old, and they believed that the inheritance would be cut off within fifty or sixty years.

Their worries are justified. In my memories of my hometown, there are only a few people in the community, and most of them are middle-aged and elderly people. Young people rarely get close to the world, especially in cities. I once asked my cousin who grew up in the city: "Do you know anything about Mr. Zhao?"

She looked at me with wide eyes: "What is Mr. Zhao?"

Just as the folk call the elderly "Gong" and "Po", names such as "Zhao Gong" and "Zhao Po" have some hints about the age of the practitioner. It seems that the old people also intentionally or unintentionally want the young people to avoid such a tradition, which seems to be a "bad" thing.

In 2022, when I was looking for Xiao Mo, I found a young boy who was hesitating about whether to be Xiao Gong. Ah Rong is from Jinlongdong and was born in the late 1990s. His grandfather is also a hero. When he was young, he liked to take down the piano hung on the wall by his grandfather and play with it, but he never learned from his grandfather. Traditionally, Zhanmo played the Tianqin for ritual purposes. He could not play and sing easily for any reason, let alone teach it to others other than his own apprentices. In middle school, Ah Rong wanted to learn Tian Qin. On the twelfth day of the first lunar month of that year, he went to the house of Duke Li Shaowei to buy a piano. Ah Rong bought the qin, turned it sideways, hid it under his umbrella, and walked around the path back to his village.

I asked him why he hid it, and he said: "At that time, I still had that kind of consciousness, that is, if a young person buys this kind of Tianqin, he is afraid of being criticized by others."

I understand him. In 2013, when I returned to my hometown to look for traditional Zhuang costumes, I also encountered such "others". They said: "Why are you, a little girl, wearing something like this? Only old people wear this kind of thing."

Zhanmo is another kind of traditional clothing "worn only by the elderly". What's more, there is another possible crime of "feudal superstition". Who would be happy to let their children become a fool?

Ah Rong had to be careful not to let others notice when he went to Jun Gong's house. But he eventually met an acquaintance, who asked him why he was here. When he saw the lotus root pond next to him, he suddenly thought: "Come here to play, take a walk and see if the lotus flowers are blooming."

The lotus flowers are not in bloom, they are still very small.

These cognitive experiences made it difficult for me to imagine that the word "铓公" would be applied to a person born in the 1990s before meeting Alei. Alei's master Chen Wenhe is obviously more in line with my understanding of traditional magic.

Chen Wenhe is over 80 years old, her hair is all white, and she is thin. When Alei is busy, she sits hunched over a group of old people and helps cut the paper umbrellas and paper horses used in the ceremony. She does not attract attention at all. You will realize that she is a "teacher" only when the villagers politely invite her to eat and ask her for advice on the placement of ritual items. She looks gentle and kind, but when she puts on the red cassock and touches the strings of the lyra, it is hard not to be shocked by the majesty revealed in her hoarse lyrics, and thus believe that she is really a commander-in-chief of thousands of people. The priest with thousands of troops.

Chen Wenhe started making magic in 1980. There used to be a Zhen in her village. During the Cultural Revolution, he was classified as a landlord and died. Later, people spent a lot of effort to find the hidden magical artifacts in the "landlord's" house: a string of copper rings, a sword and an official seal. They brought these things to Chen Wenhe's home and asked her to come out and sing. Chen Wenhe's father refused to let her go: "What are you singing about? It's too unpleasant to be called "Zhao Po" by others, so don't sing." Chen Wenhe was 49 years old at that time and showed signs of becoming an immortal. She said: "I can't do it without singing. The troops are already on me."

Once she decided to do it, she was very determined. Someone in the village pointed at her and said she was abnormal, and she immediately retaliated: "Don't talk nonsense, we are gods. There is a god named Nailiang in Zhongya, and he is the one who came to me."

Soon, Chen Wenhe had a group of followers. Traditionally, Zhan Mo cannot offer a price for performing rituals for others. Villagers will go to Zhan Mo if their life is not going well or they are not feeling well. Zhan Mo must help, and the remuneration is decided by the owner. Whether it is a pound of rice or a piece of meat, Zhan Mo cannot do it. Being picky or complaining.

When I visited Chen Wenhe in 2021, she still lived in two red-brick houses, half of which was decorated as a shrine. Her priestly seal was placed in the rice bowl on the shrine table, and the Tianqin was placed on the couch. , this is where she usually does her business. The strings of paper flowers cascading down to the tabletop like vines and vines on the upper beams reveal the seniority and title of the owner of the house as a queen - the higher the rank of the queen, the longer the paper flowers.

Chen Wenhe always reminds me of an aunt who is a fairy.

My memories before I was three years old are very vague, but from my family’s stories, I sometimes think of this great aunt sitting on the red lacquered wood sofa in my kitchen, singing divine songs. She has bad eyesight, and her wrinkled face is slightly raised in the air when she sings, with a solemn and focused expression, as if she is staring at the invisible gods.

The Zhuang people believe that people are flowers in Hua Po's garden, and Hua Po is also in charge of everything. After a woman becomes pregnant or a child is born, she is asked to hold a "flower arrangement" ceremony to pray to the flower lady to protect the children and not let them return to the garden prematurely. It is said that all the rituals I went through in my childhood were performed by this great aunt.

It would be difficult for my ancestors to imagine what life would be like without these "teachers". Cleaning villages and houses, fixing locks and flowers, replenishing food and celebrating birthdays, almost all major life rituals in a traditional Zhuang people's life require their presence. They must also be present when encountering big or small events, illness or disaster. But when nothing happens, not everyone is willing to come to them. I have been aware of their existence since I was a child, but except for major ceremonies, they did not appear. In daily life, the monks took off their robes, farmed, sold vegetables, worked, and played the role of ordinary people.

People even avoid them, consciously or unconsciously. According to folk theory, in this line of work, Jun Mo often deals with ghosts and gods. They and their families have to abide by many precepts. Once something goes wrong, Jun Mo and the people around them will be in danger. In addition, it is said that if a person is short-lived, he will easily be disturbed by ghosts and gods when he is close to the end of his life. My father once told me that our ancestors also had ancestors who became immortals. Later, we spent a lot of effort to ask people to send the "soldiers and horses" away so that they would not be passed on to future generations.

Probably because of these reasons, or maybe because of other reasons, I didn’t have many opportunities to get close to the camera when I was a child, and my family didn’t fully approve of my filming at Alley’s house.

4. People who follow the emperor

Maybe it’s not just my family, but also Junmo’s family and even Junmo himself is very conflicted about this. You will hear stories from many people about how they "had no choice but to become a person". Those stories sound bizarre, but they all have a similar narrative logic: possession by ghosts and gods - family objections - struggling to accept it.

But in the accounts of their families, the stories sound a little different.

Alei's sister Wanqing told me that when she learned that Alei was going to become a fairy, her first reaction was to worry. It was rare for such a young boy to do this. What would he do in the future? Will I have no friends? Will the object not be found? After all, Alley was not very popular as a boy.

Wan Qing remembered that A Lei had a conflict with his classmates in middle school and stayed home for a while. His family finally persuaded him to go back to school. When he returned to the dormitory, he found that his mat and bedding had been thrown away by an unknown person, along with all his daily necessities. He never returned to school.

But the current Arey is obviously completely different from the "socially disabled person" described. Although when we first met, I almost thought he had something against me. But as soon as we left Alei's house, he politely asked us on WeChat if we were back home. After that, he enthusiastically invited me to his house every now and then, and we gradually became familiar with each other. I realized that A Lei was quite free and lively in his speech, and was by no means a "friendless" person.

When I started photographing Alley, I discovered that he was not just "friendless", he had too many friends. Every time he performs a large-scale ceremony, many of his peers come to help. Not only the young people in the village and town, but also some young talents from other places.

Wu Chunfen, Alei's cousin, told me: "In the past, there were no men in our area who were so young and made magic tricks. After Teacher Lei started doing it, we started to see so many of them."

Wu Chunfen was one of the first people to follow Alley. She witnessed Alei's journey from becoming a fairy to becoming a teacher. Not everyone who becomes an immortal can become a master. To officially do "this profession", you need to become a disciple, establish an altar, and learn the corresponding rituals. The learning process may last for several years, until the master thinks that the apprentice can become a disciple. Only then can he/she begin to perform rituals independently.

Wu Chunfen was surprised by the speed at which Arei made his move. Even the "eldest sister" - A Lei's senior sister who has followed Chen Wenhe for many years, is not as skilled at singing large-scale ceremonies as A Lei. When A Lei and his master, senior and junior sisters perform rituals together, he is often the lead singer.

After Arei officially started teaching, his mother, aunts, and cousins ​​became the first batch of believers and assistants. Subsequently, more and more people came to Arei for help.

To complete a ceremony, a lot of preparation work needs to be done, and the symbolic items used in the ceremony need to be handmade in advance. During the ceremony, someone also needs to rock the horse (shaking a copper bell to simulate the sound of a horse running), light incense and candles, prepare tea and wine, etc. Arei's female family relatives, Aunt Qiu, Wu Chunfen, etc., will assist him in rocking the horse at large ceremonies.

The first time I stayed up all night to photograph Arei during a ceremony, he was sitting in the lobby of his home playing the lyra and singing tunes to invite the gods. There were incense burners placed on the ancestral shrines and on the altars for worshiping the gods, and believers continued to refill the incense. , the lobby was filled with smoke, making people cry. At twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, I couldn't bear the smoke anymore, so I ran outside the living room to take a breather.

I took a few steps outside and found Aunt Qiu, Alei's mother, sitting on the steps of the yard, so I also sat down on the steps next to her.

Aunt Qiu looked at me with a puzzled expression: "Are you going to sit when I sit down? It's dirty. I dare not sit down until I take a shower."

I said, "I didn't take a shower either."

She smiled. She had been busy all day, and now she had time to sit down and rest for a while. The T-shirt stuck to her back, with several sweat stains printed on it. Probably because she stayed up late for a long time, she was a little fat and was always sweating profusely. Later, Wanqing told me that whenever A Lei performed a large-scale ceremony, her mother would spin around for three or four days and might only sleep for one or two hours a day.

"I was very busy making wine the past few days. There were many people and a lot of work. The teacher went to rest at three or four o'clock, and we also went to rest for a while. Don't squint too much, otherwise it will be over. Get up early and cook for the guests. eat."

Aunt Qiu said.

Aunt Qiu no longer works outside the home. She leased most of the land at home to help Alei full-time. She no longer objected to Alei becoming a prince as she did back then. Maybe it was because after becoming a prince, Alei had a certain amount of income, and maybe he could finally settle down in one place.

Aunt Qiu also calls her son "teacher". Because her son was a father-in-law, she had many godsons and goddaughters. Zhuang people like to let their children recognize natural objects or make them "parents". It is said that they can protect their children from growing up safely. Alei is still unmarried, so the person who is married to him cannot recognize him as his father, but can only recognize him as a brother.

"I wonder when he will find a wife." She sighed suddenly. I reassured her that she would find it, but I couldn't find any examples of missing objects to support this reassurance. Perhaps the only consolation is that even if Ale does not go out, he will meet many different people.

After Alei became a teacher, there were always young people and children coming and going in the family, some were married sons and daughters, and some were Alei's companions. I was shocked at first that there were so many young immortals, but later I discovered that Alei knew almost all the immortals in the Zuojiang area.

I asked him: "Why are there more and more young people becoming immortals now?"

He rolled his eyes: "Maybe the gods nowadays like young people."

Alley later told me that the Internet played a cascading role. They have online social groups, where they introduce "business" to each other and help each other with large-scale rituals organized by each other. Compared with the desolate scene I felt in my hometown a few years ago, the online community of Alei and his friends seems to be thriving.

I asked Alei to pull me into one of the groups. After entering, I saw the group name: "Tianqin Cultural Exchange Group."

5. The rise of Tianqin

In Guangxi, Tianqin has almost become synonymous with the Zhuang national musical instrument. Few people know about Xuan Mo, but everyone seems to know about Tian Qin, and even the rituals that Xiao Mo performed later are called "Tian Qin ritual" or "Tian making ceremony" by many people.

In fact, when Teacher Wu Bin asked me if I wanted to see the Heavenly Wine Ceremony conducted by Alei, he was talking about watching the folk Tianqin activities. People from the Zuojiang area know this very well. The folk activities of Tianqin are the rituals of Xianmo.

Tianqin (called "dingti:ŋ" in Zhuang) is one of the main instruments used in rituals. In 1983, scholar Liao Jinlei published an article in the magazine "Musical Instruments" introducing this unique folk instrument. The article shows the Tianqin of the Pianren (a branch of the Zhuang ethnic group) in Fangcheng Autonomous County, and writes: "'Tiaotian' was originally a bizarre superstitious performance form of the Pianren...Tianpo's Tianqin is called the heaven. The object cannot be moved normally. When necessary, it can only be removed and played after offering incense. "

It is unknown who first translated "ding (ti:ŋ)" as "Tianqin". From the 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century, scholars successively went to Longzhou, Fangcheng and other places on the Sino-Vietnamese border to investigate "Tianqin Culture". According to the recollections of local cultural department staff and the accounts of some scholars, part of the investigation originated from the invitation of the Propaganda Department of the Longzhou County Party Committee at that time. It is said that an official who later served as the county magistrate of Longzhou County had just taken office as the director of the Propaganda Department of the County Party Committee. After becoming an official, she discovered the existence of Tianqin from old materials in her work unit and decided to develop it as a musical instrument.

In 2003, musicians Fan Sim and Liang Shaowu came to Longzhou to help the local government develop Tianqin. Fan Sim has known Li Shaowei, the Duke of Longzhou, for a long time. He was inspired by Li Shaowei's ritual tunes and composed one of Tianqin's most popular songs, "Singing Tianyao", and assisted the local cultural department in organizing "Tianqin Women" combination".

At the "Southeast Asian Style Night" of the Nanning International Folk Song Art Festival that year, "Singing Tianyao" and "Tianqin Girl Group" became an instant hit.

Xiaoying is a member of the first generation "Tianqin Girl Group". She told me that they had only formed a group more than ten days before that performance. Many people in the group were originally dancers. They followed Han Xing, an artist from Nanning, who practiced Tianqin day and night and played "Singing Tianyao". "I've been singing this tune in my dreams. Little Yanzi, you can't even sing anymore, you can only sing heavenly songs... The fingers holding the pick are all flat."

The Tianqin built by Han Xing and others was deliberately distinguished from the magic weapons of the demons. This lyra was played with a pick, and later the number of strings was increased from two to three. After the "Southeast Asian Style Night", the Tianqin girl group continued to receive invitations to perform. Pictures of the "Tianqin beauties" wearing black robes from the Bou-Dai branch were printed on the streets of Longzhou and in tourist albums. Xiaoying and other members were enjoying the feeling of becoming popular and the interviews that came one after another. Everything seemed to be going well. She had never thought of going to the masters to learn traditional Tianqin techniques. Until one day in 2004, the group performed in Ningming County. After the performance, a Sina reporter asked Xiaoying a question: "What do those bells represent?"

Xiaoying panicked. No one had ever told her what the symbolic meaning of these bells was.

To this day, she still clearly remembers that feeling of panic. She said: "I don't understand either. At that time, how did I know about the relationship between this and the master (referring to Duke Zhao), and how the bells have more rings (like that) after you reach a higher level."

The "bells" the reporter mentioned were actually a string of copper rings, which Zhan Mo called "horses". Its shaking can simulate the rhythmic marching sound of horses wearing neck bells. The rocking copper ring is called the "rocking horse". The moment it is rocked during the ceremony is the moment when Zhan Mo leads thousands of troops in the fairy world to soar through the clouds and mist, riding horses and horses. But Xiaoying didn't understand it at all at the time, so she could only vaguely pass the test by saying it was a "talisman."

But this cannot be blamed on Xiaoying. The people who developed Tianqin seem to have formed a secret consensus that if they want to promote Tianqin, they must separate Tianqin from Jiaomo culture.

In 2007, the "Zhuang Tianqin Art" jointly declared by Longzhou County and Pingxiang City was included in the first batch of district-level intangible cultural heritage lists of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and was listed in the "Traditional Music" project category. The staff of the Longzhou County Cultural Center were encouraged and began to declare Tianqin a national intangible cultural heritage.

At that time, local cultural expert Nong Ruiqun, who had just joined the Longzhou County Culture and Sports Bureau, put forward his opinion that the "original" Tianqin should be declared as a folk custom, not a musical instrument. Because it comes from the rituals performed by Zhanmo and is subordinate to the traditional folk belief culture of Zhanmo.

However, in 2010 and 2013, they submitted applications for the Tianqin ceremony twice based on folk customs, but received no response.

The magic of Tianqin seems to have disappeared. No one told them why this popular "intangible cultural heritage"'s efforts to take the initiative to Guangxi have been in vain year after year. Only Liang Shaowu, who was on good terms with the Longzhou cultural and tourism department, hinted to them: "If you apply in another direction, it will be difficult to get approved if it is related to religion."

They see no hope of Tianqin being declared a national intangible cultural heritage. Until 2018, things changed. Vietnam, which borders southern Guangxi and has many villages on the border and is only separated by a river, has joined the movement to "intangible cultural heritage" the Jiaomo culture and Tianqin.

6. Both ends of the border

Many topics are sensitive because of national borders.

Shen Guangyu is an old man who lives near the border. His village is divided into two parts by the border, with the lower half in China and the upper half in Vietnam. He is a naive "old naughty boy". It is said that one time he was at home and someone passed by the door. He pretended to be uncomfortable and sat on the stairs to call for help. After the man came in and helped him up, he held him tightly and said, "Thank you for your hard work. Let me give you a drink of water as a thank you gift." The thank you gift was a bottle of "mineral water" with wine in the water bottle. He was known far and wide for his hospitality and his wonderful sense of humour. He was once a Red Guard who took the lead in destroying the Le Wang Temple in his village; he was also a Chinese militiaman in the 1979 Sino-Vietnam War and opened fire with Vietnam; later he became a villain and even married a Vietnamese wife.

In 2018, I followed Nong Ruiqun to visit Shen Guangyu. I made a phone call before departure. Nong Ruiqun put down the phone and said that we had to go early because Teacher Shen had to "go abroad for work" in the evening. As a result, not long after we arrived, Teacher Shen brought out the wine he had made, as if he had completely forgotten that he wanted to "go abroad". But to put it bluntly, going abroad is just a matter of riding a motorcycle, a ten-minute round trip, which is more convenient than entering the city.

In fact, it is not easy to distinguish Vietnamese and Chinese near the border.

One morning, I was visiting another great lady, Jin Chao, in Longzhou. We had a great time chatting, and Jin Chao offered to play a piece of Tianqin for me. She asked her husband to light incense, put the fruits I brought on the table, sign up and pray for me in front of the gods, and then started playing. She played three different melodies, melodious and soft, and also sang a folk song.

I realized that I had never heard this melody before, and it was different from the style sung by Fusui and Jinlongdong's Mo on the border. Jin Chao revealed the answer. I guessed it right. This tune comes from Vietnam.

Jin Chao is familiar with more than four languages ​​and writings. I asked her how she learned Vietnamese writing. Even for border residents who mostly have multilingual communication skills, mastering written writing is not an inevitable skill. She smiled and said that she was born in Vietnam and adopted by relatives in China. When she was a teenager, she went to school in Vietnam. Later, her adoptive parents became seriously ill and she returned to China to take care of them. Then she got married and had children, until now. In terms of official nationality, she is "Vietnamese" and holds a foreigner's residence certificate.

The ethnic groups that have the rituals of Jiaomo and Tianqin are transnational peoples. In China, this ethnic group is identified as a different branch of the Zhuang ethnic group. The Jiaomo culture is mainly distributed in the Zuojiang River Basin area in southern Guangxi where the Zhuang ethnic group is concentrated. In Vietnam, they are distributed in Cao Bang, Lang Son, Bac Tai, Ha Giang, Tuyen Quang and other provinces in the north where the Dai and Nong ethnic groups live together.

The Dai people are the largest ethnic minority in Vietnam and enjoy a high political and cultural status. In the 16th century, Gaoping established the Mo family dynasty, which made the Dai settlement area the political and economic center of Vietnam for a time. After the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a group of Dai people who participated in the revolution early occupied important positions. Nong Duc Manh, a Dai person, once served as the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. With their efforts, Dai culture has attracted much attention in Vietnam.

Haihua, a scholar who studies Sino-Vietnamese national culture, believes that these historical events promoted the development and spread of Dai culture, including Jiaomo belief. In addition, due to the research conducted by the French Far Eastern Institute in Vietnam in modern times, the international academic community is obviously more familiar with Vietnam's rituals, and the research results based on Vietnam's Tianqin ritual are also richer.

In places such as Longzhou and Pingxiang on the China-Vietnam border, there are local rumors that Vietnam is using Tianqin to compete with China. Since 2004, they have vigorously promoted Tianqin culture, not only encouraging Xiaomo to perform on stage, but also A series of professional schools have also been established, with official and private participation going hand in hand, expanding the distribution range of Tianqin users from the north to the whole country.

By 2018, the news reached China. Vietnam wants to declare the Tianqin Ceremony as a world-class intangible cultural heritage.

Chinese scholars are worried that the Tianqin ceremony, which is an important part of Zhuang culture, has been applied for as a World Heritage by Vietnam, which will affect the identity of border ethnic groups and thus affect the country's territorial security. What makes these scholars and officials even more uneasy is that although the Zhao Mo belief spreads across the two countries, no one has actually verified it on the ground. Which country has the wider spread of this culture? Who has a longer historical inheritance? However, Vietnam does have the ability to unilaterally apply for World Heritage. Lao Zhao, then director of the Institute of Ethnology of the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, was worried about this. He believes that this culture is shared across borders, but Vietnam has not jointly declared it with China. He worried that Vietnam had ulterior motives.

Nong Ruiqun told me that Lao Zhao came to the door of his community on a rainy night and asked him to talk in detail about the Tianqin ritual activities in Longzhou and the possible impact of Tianqin being added to Vietnam's World Heritage List. Some scholars told me that Lao Zhao visited several counties where Tianqin is distributed. After returning to Nanning, he teamed up with relevant institutions in Guangxi to draft a report on Tianqin's application for World Heritage. The report finally arrived in Beijing and was approved by senior officials. In October 2018, the then Ministry of Culture sent a team to investigate the China-Vietnam border.

Opinions vary on what happened next. I have heard many different versions of what attitudes these investigators hold towards Tianqin and Jiaomo culture. Some said they expressed "full support", while others said they thought the Tianqin ceremony was nothing more than feudal superstition and scorned it. The only thing that is certain is that China did not “get ahead of Vietnam.”

From December 9 to 14, 2019, at the 14th meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Bogota, Colombia, UNESCO listed the Practices of Then by Tày , Nùng and Thái Ethnic Groups) is included in the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In 2020, the staff of the Guangxi cultural department finally received a reply from above, suggesting that they change Tianqin to an art and folk art category, and stop mentioning things like religion and folk beliefs.

They did so.

I asked a cultural center cadre who participated in the application. Intangible cultural inheritors are required to have inheritance pedigrees, which means that the inheritors they apply for must only be the performers of Xuanmo rather than modern Tianqin. Religion and folk beliefs are not mentioned. How did they do it?

The cadre smiled meaningfully: "So applying for intangible cultural heritage is a technical job... Let's write that Tianqin has gone through an evolution process from entertaining the sky to entertaining people."

On May 24, 2021, the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage was announced, and Chongzuo City’s “Zhuang Tianqin Art” was impressively included. A report on intangible cultural heritage in the same year wrote: "Through the excavation and improvement of musicians, the Tianqin has gradually shed its ancient primitive religious color and turned into a charming national instrument."

7. Zhanmo and their village

One evening in the summer of 2020, Alei was invited to Pingxiang to perform a food replenishment ceremony for a family of returned Vietnamese. Replenishing grain is a ritual specially done for the elderly. People believe that there is a granary in a person's life. When an old man reaches a certain age, the rice in the granary will be almost consumed, and a magician needs to be invited to replenish the old man's life.

We arrived at that family's house and saw several daughters of the owner's family, but we didn't see the old man who wanted to replenish food. Later I found out that the old mother who needed food supplements was in Canada with her daughter and son-in-law’s family. But the problem is not big. The ritual is a remote operation, and the food replenishing objects do not actually need to participate in the ritual. The ones who perform the ritual are Duke Zhao and the old man's children.

The problem was that Alley carried a lot of ritual supplies and materials to the scene without his usual ritual assistant. The person who picked him up in Pingxiang was Xiao Lu, a netizen and fan of the ritual. Although he is a hobbyist, Xiao Lu is not good at doing this. Alei calmly ordered the host to prepare glutinous rice, bamboo poles, and paper clothes, but for other paper-cuttings used in ceremonies - such as Mao Lang on the ladder to heaven, he had to do it himself.

"Can you cut?" Alei raised his head and glanced at the second sister of the host family.

The second sister hurriedly shook her head: "I've never cut it before. Who taught me how to do it on July 14th? I don't remember."

"Don't you know how to cut?" Sister Hai, the eldest daughter of the host family, asked Xiao Lu.

Xiao Lu looked back and said, "My father knows how to cut. He said it was his grandma who taught me how to cut."

For a moment, everyone was staring at each other. The more difficult thing is yet to come, when Alei needs someone to give him a rocking horse during a ceremony. Sister Hai took a look around the neighbors who knew how to rock horses, and found that they were all old people. They were either old and had difficulty moving, or they had not returned home from their trips. Xiao Lu even started to think about me: "Wouldn't that be the one you brought?"

Alei looked up at him and said calmly: "Anyone can do it, you can do it too."

The ceremony that night was held on the sixth floor, which was the sacred room where the family enshrined their ancestors' tablets. The weather was very hot and the room was airtight. I soon choked to tears again due to the smoke. With tears in my eyes, I saw Sister Hai opening the video on her mobile phone, and a gray-haired grandmother appeared on the screen.

"Grandma, look, Master is here to give you food to celebrate your birthday."

It was daytime on the other side of the screen. Grandma was wearing a purple vest, her face was close to the camera, her eyes were narrowed and she was grinning. Sister Hai stood her cell phone next to Alei, who was playing the Lyra. The room with the LCD TV and hanging lights on the phone screen looked like a small white tile, inlaid with incense candles, Lyra, flowers and gold and brass rings. in the real world. Sister Hai happily told her grandma: "I will live a long and healthy life of 800 years."

"Old people used to like to hear Master sing this." Sister Hai told me.

There are dialect differences between the Zhuang languages ​​of Pingxiang and Fusui, and in addition to the fact that Zhanmo's lyrics often use ancient dialects, she actually couldn't understand what A Lei was singing. But sitting in the God Room, listening to Alei playing the strings and singing attentively, while Xiao Lu shook the copper ring next to her, another kind of solemn emotion appeared on her face.

Several elderly people from nearby were sitting at the door of the narrow shrine. They heard that a teacher was performing the ceremony, so they panted up to the six floors to watch.

The ceremony lasted all night. Finally, under Alei's guidance, the daughters of the master's family solemnly added uncooked rice and coins to the rice can symbolizing the old man's granary, and sealed it.

"When I was a kid, I always felt mysterious when I heard the tinkling sound (the sound of lyres and copper rings) coming from other people's homes. Now that I'm making my own magic, I don't think so anymore." Alley told me once. In fact, I am just like him. The playing and chanting of the music constituted my earliest experience of mysticism in my childhood. For a child from a small isolated village, the outside world is out of reach, but the mysterious world that Zhan Mo sings opens the door to the sound of the piano: Zhan Mo transforms into a divine general and leads his troops through the village's earth temple to the village. In the sky, you pass through fairy gates with different lights and come to places in ancient legends. You climb over mountains and ridges, cross the sea, see different gods, and talk to them.

In rituals, the gods also have their own characteristics and personalities. On the way back from Pingxiang, Alei asked me if I could understand the Vietnamese spoken by Sister Hai and others. I said no and asked him if he could understand it. He said he only knew a little bit, but there were exceptions.

"When?"

"When I invited gods, I invited ghosts from Vietnam, and I suddenly started speaking Vietnamese." A Lei said seriously.

I haven’t seen Vietnamese ghosts and gods in his rituals, but I have seen some that were not serious. The street-crossing part of the Heavenly Wine Ceremony is one of the favorite parts of the onlookers. At this time, the "teacher" will descend from the gods - no one knows who it will descend on. One time when he was crossing the street, Alei suddenly looked around with an angry look on his face. The grannies around him understood and started to light cigarettes and toast him. After smoking a bag of cigarettes, Alei slowly began to "Speak for the Gods", and he hadn't even finished singing half of the lyrics. , the grannies around him were already laughing so hard, the granny closest to him turned red with laughter, covered her face and said, "Do you want it even at such an old age?"

I asked Alley's loyal "fan" Tan Sangu to help translate what Alley sang. Tan Sangu burst out laughing and told me that the god he had descended fell in love with the grandma in front of me and said, "Last time Hua Qianyue made up his mind, I just hope to be paired with you when I come back."

Every time A Lei performs a ceremony, the house is always surrounded by seven aunts and six grandma from the neighborhood on three floors inside and three outside. Alley jokingly called them his "fans." "Fans" are the most honest viewers. When encountering a not-so-fun part, they just sit on the mat and fall asleep without any scruples. Some "fans" actually come to join in the fun. I asked a grandma if she could understand Arei's lyrics, and she shook her head: "I don't quite understand." After the ceremony, the teacher himself had to cook and cook with his family to entertain the guests. The grandmothers gathered together and lay side by side on the various beds in Alei's house at night, chattering and bustling.

Tan Sangu is a relatively "professional" audience. She has been following A Lei for many years. She would come to almost every big ceremony that A Lei held and would help him cut paper. She has a pair of skillful hands and can make all kinds of ritual items, such as paper cranes, paper flowers, and bamboo shoots. She can also turn waste paper and old cigarette boxes into exquisite collage paper clothes. She is also one of the few literate believers and can speak Mandarin fluently. In fact, she was a smart teenager, went to middle school, had excellent grades, and her teachers all liked her. However, because of her father's bad background, she lost the chance to go to college and got married early and had children. At the age when she knew her destiny, her children were all grown up and working. She was no longer content to stay at home with her husband who "knew nothing". She went to sing with her sisters and rode a moped to the Alley house to watch the ceremony. Her happiest moments.

Most of the people watching the ceremony were female villagers. In some large-scale ceremonies, uncles from the village will also come to help decorate the venue and kill chickens and pigs. For example, during the Fusui Zhai Festival, making heavenly wine for three consecutive days is a blessing done by Xiaomo for the whole clan and the whole village on a special day, and the whole village must participate. In Jinlongdong on the Sino-Vietnamese border, before the official start of farming in spring, people celebrate the Nong'ao Festival. On the day of the festival, Zhan Mo performed a prayer ceremony for the whole village in the open space of the fields. Each villager had to bring tributes to the fields to place them. Zhan Mo offered sacrifices to the gods and went to the Jade Emperor to "beg for seeds", praying for good weather and good harvests this year. Fengdeng.

The traditional zodiac has the important task of holding ceremonies and praying to heaven for the village community. Even for villages under modern organizational management, these rituals are not necessarily important.

In 2018, scholar Xiong Xun came to Jinlongdong to shoot a documentary about the Nong'ao Festival, and my friend Ayi acted as a local translator for him. Ayi recorded the process of their research that year in her diary - in the village where Master Shen Guangyu lived, a village committee secretary told Xiong Xun: "I am too busy with poverty alleviation this year and cannot allocate funds to do it. "Nong'ao Festival." But on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month of that year, Shen Guangyu still came to the fields to worship the gods and pray for the village in the early morning as usual, even though there were only more than 20 households of villagers who came to the site to participate in the sacrifices that year. He said that this was not a task, but his obligation.

Where there is imperfection, traditional habits will continue. Zhuang folk tradition has the habit of burning paper outdoors on the roadside on July 14th. One July 14th, Ale and I went to a crossroads near their village, where Ale was going to burn paper for a ceremony. There used to be frequent car accidents at this intersection, and it was known throughout the town as the "Cape Fear." Alley himself even pretended to shudder when he talked about it. But when the fire lit up and the sound of the copper ring rang, I didn't think of any horror stories. What I thought of was that my grandma told me that July 14th is the most important festival after the New Year's Eve. People in the underworld have to go home. , lighting lamps and burning paper for them in the wild can provide some means for the deceased who are wandering away, allowing them to find their way home smoothly.

Alei said that before he became an immortal, few people in his village came to the intersection to worship the ownerless souls for a long time. But we can’t blame the villagers for forgetting their traditions so easily. There are many wanderers and few worshipers.

In the land where the infernal gods descended, people rushed to a greater miracle - the city, although there were not many roads for them in the city: entering the factory or going to the construction site. In traditional societies, people often work in farming to maintain their livelihood while performing rituals for villagers. But now, farming at home is no longer a priority. The price of agricultural products has made it almost impossible for farmers to get rich by farming. In fact, the main method used by the local government to lift poor households out of poverty is to mobilize farmers to go out to work.

Staying in the village means that they need to find other means to maintain their livelihood. Some monks began to charge fees for private rituals, but they had to be careful to separate their activities from "feudal superstition." When I went with Wu Chunfen to the Guanyin Cave in Baxian to see the song fair, I met a fortune teller who could tell you a fortune for just a few dollars. Alei's family clearly "identified" such people: "These are Liar, how can (fortune telling) be so easy..."

Xuan Mo doesn't think they are omnipotent. Arei’s father told me that one time a co-worker of his from Anhui wanted to ask Arei to help him with a settlement. Alei hesitated for a long time and said he didn’t know if his troops could go such a far place or if he could get help from the local gods. . Later, he still hired troops with the mentality of giving it a try. Alei's father said that it was actually quite accurate.

Whether they respect the power of the gods and admit that they are only using the power of the gods to help others is the basis for distinguishing themselves from the deceitful "immortals" in their self-identification. They use this to try to get rid of the relationship with "feudal superstition" and "liars" , gain people’s acceptance.

Tianqin, as an intangible cultural heritage, became an outlet for them to put this self-identification on the table. With Tian Qin, they are no longer just "wizards", but also have a new identity that they can call "Lian Qin's intangible genetic inheritors". But in fact, almost everyone has a different opinion on what "feudal superstition" is. As a kind of folk belief, it is not easy to distinguish between "feudal superstition" and "Jianmo culture". They can only stagger between the cracks and try to find a way to go.

8. Survival between cracks

In China, after Tianqin was established as a national intangible cultural heritage, the People's Congress of Chongzuo City held many meetings to discuss how to protect and inherit this "intangible cultural heritage". The most debated issue was that Tianqin, as an intangible cultural heritage, Where is the boundary between traditional culture and "feudal superstition"? .

Some scholars advocate looking at "whether there is a fee for the ceremony", while another more common perception is much simpler - whether it is lighting incense.

Many young celebrities like to post their ritual videos on video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. Just like their group name is "Tianqin Cultural Exchange Group", most of the labels attached to these videos are "intangible cultural heritage", "Tianqin", and "national culture". After going through the baptism of account bans and traffic restrictions, they gradually figured out the secret of "passing review" - videos of incense and candles can easily be identified as illegal content.

Lighting incense on stage is absolutely not allowed. On April 16, 2021, the Guangxi Department of Culture and Tourism held a Zhuang Tianqin art exhibition to celebrate "March 3". Su Yongliang, an intangible cultural worker responsible for planning and organizing the event, is a hero himself. He has been working with A Lei and others all year round. Let's play together. He divided the performance into two parts: "Traditional Repertoire" and "Newly Edited Repertoire". "Traditional Repertoire" invited five singers to perform ceremonial music on stage, and Alley also went.

This is the first time since I was a child that I saw Chinese singers playing and singing ritual songs on stage. The singers all seemed a little nervous. There were many places where they sang out of tune and played wrong notes. Alley's hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat. There were no ritual items or incense on the stage, just two futon cushions. Many cameras were facing them off the stage, and the entire performance was broadcast live in VR.

While the band members were playing and singing, Arong was temporarily called over to rock their horse.

After many setbacks in learning Tianqin in the early years, Ah Rong later became an art student. He taught himself how to play and sing Tianqin through classmates and videos, and was active on various stages of Tianqin and folk song performances. He also became familiar with the young heroes. In the past two years, he became a master and began to be an apprentice.

I asked Arong if he could sing traditional ritual songs on stage, and he shook his head.

"If you don't light incense, what if something happens? Why don't I sing some folk songs? Why are you looking for trouble for yourself?"

An official in charge of religious affairs said he understood the mentality of the evildoers. He said: "Look at those performances where people are performing swordsmanship and fire. They secretly light incense backstage. If they are not allowed to light incense, there will be no incense to protect them. Who will be responsible if something goes wrong at that time. But (if incense is lit) this is a folk ceremony ”

A scholar from Beijing once asked Ah Rong and Master Ah Hai to sing ritual music. Ah Rong was worried that not lighting incense to attract soldiers would make him dizzy, but lighting incense in front of experts would make them appear superstitious. Finally, they excerpted a very short section, mixed the lyrics of different sections and sang them in an incoherent way, so as not to really alarm the "soldiers".

Ceremonial songs are rarely sung on stage, and there are few newly composed songs, which makes the repertoire that Chinese Tianqin performers can sing very limited. A Lei didn't like those newly composed songs very much. When we went to drink milk tea, he explained to me why while holding his Shao Xiancao milk tea:

"Others (referring to Vietnam) also appeared on the stage, but they were very gentle and not so much. The ancient religious blessings of Tianqin are effective in our planting and crops." He gave an analogy, He said that the Tian Qin performance without the tone of traditional rituals was as boring as the milk tea missing from the Shaoxiancao - he was obviously a persistent milk tea party, "What do you get when you add coffee to the Shaoxiancao?"

"You'll get Yuanyang milk tea." I teased him.

He was speechless and took out his mobile phone to show me the video of Tian Qin in Vietnam.

Many Chinese people watch Vietnamese Tian Qin ceremonies and songs through the Internet, including those performed on stage. Their singing forms are indeed more diverse and the tunes are richer.

Unlike the government’s nervousness and vigilance over the “ownership of intangible cultural heritage,” ordinary people on both sides of the border do not always differentiate between “you and me.” At least before the epidemic blockade caused the exchanges between the two sides to almost come to a standstill, the border residents of China and Vietnam always participated in each other's song festivals, sang to each other, and intermarried. The special festival "Nong Ao Festival" in Jinlongdong is held in the form of a rotating village. From the eighth to the fourteenth day of the month, it is held in different villages on the Chinese side, and on the fifteenth day of the month, it is held in Halang, Vietnam.

Xiaoying was shocked by the Tianqin performance in Vietnam. She still remembers that a few years ago, the China-Vietnam Culture and Art Festival was held in Shuikou, a border town in China. The Vietnamese performance team put the entire incense ceremony on the stage, including all the props used in the ceremony. Light it. It’s really fragrant. I’ll light the incense on it.”

After watching many videos of Tian Qin performances in Vietnam, I suddenly discovered that A Lei’s ritual singing style was very similar to that in a certain video. A Lei's way of singing the ceremony is different from that of his master Chen Wenhe. He explained to me before that the master's singing method was too long: "It's a long sentence. After singing the front, I can't think of the back, and I'm still very tired. I sang for several days and nights. It’s all very troublesome. If you sing it shorter, it will be easier for the land gods to remember.”

Many Chinese fans of Jiao Mo and Tian Qin learned Vietnamese playing and singing methods by watching videos, or they may have learned it through exchanges with Vietnamese Jiao Mo. Some scholars are anxious about this, worrying that "our" culture will be taken away by Vietnam, blurring the national identity of border residents.

But scholar Haihua is open to this: "What's the point? Vietnam will also say that it can learn from your Zhuang people. We should have this kind of cultural self-confidence." He believes that such learning is not one-way, and Vietnam's elites are also Learn Chinese rituals, clothing and songs.

Ah Shou, a young gentleman who is very famous in Vietnam, has a very good relationship with Chinese maggots. He has come to China several times to participate in intangible cultural heritage inheritor activities, and once asked Haihua to buy Chinese clothes for him. When the Chinese monks he was friends with performed large-scale rituals, he would occasionally come over to help.

Ah Tho is a native of Lang Son Province in North Vietnam. It is said that he started learning to make zither from his grandmother when he was 13 years old. Unlike China, which relies entirely on folk traditions, he once studied Tianqin playing and singing for three years at the Vietnam Art College. He was also invited to Paris to perform Lyra ceremony on behalf of Vietnam. Now, while working at home and farming, he earns subsidies by conducting large-scale pujas for the rich. In large-scale dojos in Vietnam, it is said that one can earn thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan per session.

Haihua knows these things, and is therefore worried that many young celebrities have gone astray, performing rituals just to make money through tradition, and eventually develop into "superstitious activities" to cheat money.

There are indeed people who are here to make money. Once, I met one of Alley's young apprentices at his house. This apprentice is engaged in investment, has oiled hair, and drives a BMW. I asked him why he wanted to learn how to invest, and he said: "You can't invest for a lifetime. You just want to have a craft and earn a living when you get old."

Haihua said that this is not the case with traditional charcoal. The traditional method of killing people to eliminate disasters and relieve worries is an irresistible destiny. No one has ever become rich because of a well-executed ritual. Sangu Tan told me that she went to play at the home of Master Nong, Alei’s junior sister. Master Nong was over seventy years old and had been a wife for more than ten years. Tan Sangu said that she only discovered when she went there that "she lived a primitive life. The color of the mosquito net was the same as a used rag, and there was a big hole. When I looked up, there was a cat squatting on the window. I didn't dare to sleep because I was afraid. Come here that cat."

When Tan Sangu left, Master Nong wanted to give her a bag of corn. She couldn't bear to take it, so she jokingly told her, "I don't want it. You live a primitive life, and I don't want your corn."

Alley's family members remember the poverty at home. A Lei and Wan Qing started working when they were five or six years old. One Mid-Autumn Festival, Aunt Qiu came home from outside and found that the children were eating white porridge at home, with no moon cakes and no meat. A Lei's sister-in-law, A Dong, told me that the reason she returned to her hometown was that she had worked in a factory and made a lot of money, but she had been working on the assembly line, and when people fell ill, she spent all the money she earned on medical treatment. Are's father also returned to the village after a serious illness.

Alley was supposed to be working outside. When he first left school and went to the construction site, he still had great expectations. His sister Wan Qing said that he worked very hard with his father in loading and unloading and never complained about being tired. After receiving his first month's salary, he couldn't wait to buy gifts for his sister and mother and rushed back to give them to them. But he could never settle down outside. After starting to make magic, Alei finally settled down in his hometown.

Being a hero is the "job" that Alei has done for the longest time, and perhaps the one that he has worked hardest for. Unlike Zhan Mo, who was mainly engaged in farming before, he was on the way to the ceremony almost every day, from one village to another village, from one city to another city, singing seven or eight songs all night long every few days with dark circles under his eyes. Hour. Every time Teacher Wu Bin sees him "off duty", he will sigh: "It's not easy to eat this bowl of rice."

Although Alley occasionally complains about being tired, most of the time, he enjoys his full-time job. He has become accustomed to his "soldiers". Once when he was going to another place for a ceremony, he yelled that there were not enough cars and he needed to drive two. I counted to him: "Your mother, your aunt, you, me, eldest brother, there are five of us, why are there not enough?"

He said: "Then where will my troops sit?"

Sometimes I feel like Alley is grateful that Soldiers and Horses found him. When he recounted his journey to immortality, he said: "It might have been because of poverty at that time, and the ghosts and gods would also know this. Such people would be better and lead people to do good." He believed that ghosts and gods were more willing to choose poor people, just as Poor people also believe in ghosts and gods more than rich people.

But especially poor people obviously cannot be successful. Jin Chao, the Fairy Queen, became an apprentice and took a long time to officially become a teacher. The reason was that the ordination ceremony required the purchase of tributes and ritual items, and her family did not have the money to buy them. After you start making zhen, you must also keep enshrining the shrine in your home and need tributes. Most of the things brought by believers will be packaged and distributed after paying tribute. If you leave too much behind, you will be criticized by the community. Arei has to work very hard to support himself with the income from performing rituals. What's more, he just took out a loan to buy a house in the city.

"Why do you always sing at night?" I once stayed up two long nights with Alei, and I was about to collapse.

Alei rolled his eyes: "This is how it was passed down from our ancestors."

Later he told me that according to tradition, day and night are reversed between the underworld and the underworld, so the strategy of raising troops must be carried out at the turn of day and night. However, in order to adapt to the time rhythm of young people in modern life, he sometimes makes some fine adjustments, such as singing earlier during the Mid-Autumn Festival, so that he can finish early and go to the street with friends to eat barbecue and sing karaoke.

In fact, Are has been careful to try to use modern knowledge to explain the tradition. He hopes to be understood by more people than his small group. He is also very good at using modern vocabulary to explain traditions. When he explained to me "Zhongfu Middle Road (called kjaŋ xa kjaŋ lo in Zhuang)", the legendary location of the Immortal Gate in the Immortal World, he said: "When doing things here, it is like the central It’s a level-level department... Whether you go to the city or to another province, you have to talk to the central government first... Because the religious beliefs of each province are different, you have to hand over the department here, like There is a file in the company’s human resources and finance department.”

He always emphasizes positive energy when tweeting, and he discusses Tianqin’s color and tone with others in the group. As a wise man with modern education, he would advise those who come to him for rituals when they are sick to go to the hospital first, saying that they must believe in science.

After attending the "March 3rd" performance in Nanning, a reporter from the district TV station interviewed him and asked him: "Why do you want to learn Tianqin?" He threw all the words aside and answered honestly: "Because this is national culture, I have the sense of responsibility to pass it on."

9. Ending

The COVID-19 pandemic struck us unprepared. In the spring of 2020, Alley posted on his WeChat Moments to advise believers not to gather at his home. He drew "disease-repelling charms" for everyone and asked everyone to "no contact and wear masks" when they came to get them.

The COVID-19 pandemic is obviously going to last longer than we expected, and the prayers of the bad guys won’t help much. In August 2022, the border once again faced large-scale closures. Alley half-whiningly asked me one day: "Do I need to be quarantined if I go to Nanning now?" He was troubled by every lockdown, unable to move across districts at will, and his "work" was also affected.

Alei didn't know that this year, the Chongzuo City People's Congress had held several meetings to discuss whether the Tian Qin was a musical instrument or a magical instrument, and how to use the Tian Qin so that it would not be a feudal superstition. He also didn't know that experts in Chongzuo City had proposed a new development direction, trying to transform Tianqin from a "folk instrument" used for accompaniment to a standardized "national instrument."

The bad guys in Vietnam were separated. Tianqin lovers in China have lost touch with Ah Shou for a long time. Shen Guangyu's wife returned to Vietnam to visit her family after her husband's death, but has not been able to return to her home in China. High walls were built along the border and barbed wire was installed.

Border counties are closed from time to time. When I was locked up at home, I watched the video of the ceremony I took when I went to Alei's house for the first time. I saw him sitting cross-legged in the hall, singing about paper cranes flying into the sky and sugarcane turning into wine; singing about the ancestors coming to Yayin Mountain, Borrow the staff from Yayin. If the staff touches the moon, the moon will shine. I seemed to have an illusion that in that small room, old people who had never left the village were following Xuan Mo around the world. It's a strange world that I've never really ventured into before.

But when I was filming this video, to me who didn’t understand the lyrics at that time, it was nothing more than the incense smoke that choked my eyes at the scene. I remembered Haihua's emotion to me: There are many scholars who study Tianqin nowadays, and they can't even understand the lyrics sung by Zhena Xiana, and they can't rock a horse. With the rise of research on intangible cultural heritage documents, Haihua received a project and was working hard to translate an incomplete scripture.

The intangible cultural heritage of Tianqin has given some opportunities to be noticed, and Alei has thousands of Douyin fans. The March 3 performance planned by Su Yongliang, the master of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Center, was probably the first time many Guangxi people heard and saw how the master sang. Although we still don’t know how much cultural content this boot of intangible cultural heritage can contain. Teacher Nong who wrote the intangible cultural heritage entries for Tianqin in "Intangible Cultural Heritage Guangxi" told me that the review of the entries took longer than the writing time, and most of the ceremony pictures were deleted. The few ceremonies that can be mentioned are Anhua and Food supplement.

I remembered that in the early morning after the food replenishment ceremony in Pingxiang, Alei and Sister Hai sat on the mats spread on the balcony to rest and eat fruit. They talked about the magic in the nearby villages, which old people had passed away, which young people had inherited the ancestral business, and some villages no longer had magic. There was a cage of chickens and a cage of ducks on the balcony. They poked their heads out of the cage holes, wondering what they could see in the dark. But they were still looking hard. The dragon fruit vines on the opposite floor had already revealed a vague outline, and the crowing of roosters could be heard in the mist of the distant mountains. Perhaps looking to the east, the sky would eventually light up, although Don't know when.

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References:

Editorial Board of the Social and Historical Survey Materials Series of China's Ethnic Minorities: "Survey on the Social History of the Zhuang Nationality in Guangxi (VII)", 2009.

Liao Jinlei: "Tian Qin", published in "Musical Instruments", 1983(01), pp. 24-25.