After arriving in Kaili, Guizhou that day, we went straight to Leishan Baiyan Baimi Village, as a poverty alleviation project of the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, the completion of the village hostel, which is surrounded by mountains, has brought the opportunity of tourism development to Baiyan Miaozhai.
The night was dark, the car was circling on the mountain highway, and the evening wind was blowing with frogs singing. After placing the luggage backpack in the village lodging room, the housekeeper sister has been ready to wait for us for a long time, the Yunnan-Guizhou area unique grass and spices in the dishes exudes a mouth-watering fragrance.
Suddenly there is a melodious reed-song from afar, continuous and clear, the housekeeper sister said, this is a family in the village to celebrate the completion of rice-planting, everyone in the dance of the reed-song it.
This is a new and full scene! The housekeeper said, village people in the busy rice-planting season, are you help me and I help you, after work, get together, play the reed-sheng dance to celebrate the end of agricultural work. We quickly finished our meal and asked the housekeeper's sister to take us to the dancing site to find out what was going on.
Leaving the village lodging restaurant and walking down the dark mountain trail, we turned on our cell phone lights and chased the source of the reedsongs, a group of men and women in Miao costumes dancing in a circle to the rhythm of the music in a small square not far from the village lodging.
It seems that there is no time for a song to end, asked the housekeeper sister how long they can dance, sister smiled, said, when tired when not to dance.
It is really interesting, as a visitor to the mountains, here people's behavior and speech, and even labor tools can arouse my desire to explore.
The village lodging is simple and elegant in the night of the mountains, and as far as the light reaches, the hammocks and grapevines of the neighbors in the walled village live next to the village lodging, and the moss under the eaves of the tiles and moss as well as the gutters are clearly visible.
The overall building to the villagers unused hammock as the basis for the reconstruction, although slightly low, but the layout of the chic, Miao cloth in the walls in the pillows and bedding, embellished with ethnic minorities unique local flavor, frogs, if not, with the evening wind into the dive, no weariness, and no fatigue.
Early in the morning, open the curtains, instantly stunned by the scene in front of you, terraced fields across the four fields, residential footstools scattered among them, in the terraced fields of the distant canyon between the mountains, the clouds rise, perhaps you will think that this is a fairyland, but this is indeed the earth.
There was a moment when I was actually vaguely worried that the vertical and horizontal terraces would disappear. I grabbed my camera and made my way down the flower-filled mountain trail, past the terraces.
The early morning of the Miao village is quiet and peaceful, smoke in the sky and clouds and mist into one, the mountains outside of the green hills outlined the undulating and winding lines of the diaphanous, from the bottom back to look at the road, the trail submerged in the thousands of terraces, just inserted into the terraces of rice seedlings full of green fields, verdant, like Rhine, the fields of the water, like a mirror, reflecting the early morning sky.
Meets a Miao family brother drove cattle to their own terraces, I accosted, asked him other families have been inserted into the rice paddies finished, how you just began to plow ah. He laughed and said he didn't understand. I repeated the question, pointing to the terraced field next to him where the rice seedlings had already been planted. This time he understood and said, "It's not too late, the other plots of land have already been planted, there is only one field left, and we will be able to plant the rice seedlings after we finish plowing the land today, it will be very soon.
It was hard to understand, but I was able to get the point. I continued to talk and gesture, and asked if it was necessary to rake the soil after plowing. He said, hey, yes. Said, he put the plow on the back of the cow, left hand holding a bamboo pole, right hand holding the plow, only to see him waving a bamboo pole, oxen obediently follow the instructions of the field, the plowshare in the muddy water turned out the black-brown mud, one by one, I can see that the field here is quite fertile. The mountains, oxen and farmers are reflected in the terraces of Shizawa, which is an unparalleled picture of the world.
I think, this kind of painting in many years later remember, will still make my heart move, want to go.
After breakfast in the village, the village headman came over and said, "Let's go watch the Lusheng dance and the bench dance, they are going to the neighboring village for the competition today. Then he said, our village is first every year, awards are too many to hang up ...... Standing in front of the restaurant, he pointed to a short distance - there is our entertainment leisure place, usually singing and dancing there. The eye across the terraces, the small square dressed in full costume Miao people are already in preparation.
Passing by them, a Miao aunt was helping a little girl to organize her headdress. I have long heard of the noble and gorgeous dress of the Miao people in Qiandongnan, and it is true that when I saw it up close, it was amazing, from head to toe, almost every part of the vocabulary and story, headdress, face jewelry, neck jewelry, shoulder jewelry, chest jewelry, waist jewelry, arm jewelry, foot jewelry, hand jewelry, and their hand and foot are showing a different ethnic style.
Elderly people have the flavor of the elderly, young people have the style of young people, people in the wilderness terraces, melting in the mountains and rivers and canyons, with the Lusheng and dance, quite outside the texture of the world.
The reed-song players are five older men, who are in the center of the circle formed by the Miao women, holding a long modeling reed-song, accompanied by the women.
The housekeeper at the village lodging house said the lusheng dance is a three-step, one-turn-around dance that expresses the reluctance to say goodbye to one's hometown. She said the Miao people migrated frequently in their early years, and people pursued optimism in their turbulent lives, singing and dancing, which gradually evolved into the current dance form. Miao Lusheng dance is also due to different regions, the dance is slightly different, Leishan Miao Lusheng dance due to the different content of the festival and the dance is different, each dance contains a certain content, the performance is beautiful and natural, harmonious and rounded, with a distinctive regional characteristics, but also carries a lot of important historical and cultural information of the Miao people and the original memory.
The bench dance is another characteristic traditional dance here, which is said to be one of the grandest ceremonies of the short-skirted Hmong to send off their guests, and it is seen that they have a small bench in one hand, and when they dance with the music, they rhythmically hit the sound of "Tou Tou Tou Tou Tou", which is clear, crisp, joyful, simple, natural and enthusiastic, and it conveys people's attitude towards life here. The people's attitude towards life here is positive, optimistic and calm.
We went to a neighboring village to see a "climbing festival", and we really can't understand the meaning of this festival literally. Asked the village staff and the village head only to understand, originally, "climb the slope of the festival" of the origin of the early years and young men and women in love related. In the early years, the Miao young man looked at which girl, will pay attention to her direction, and then about three or five friends in the girl appeared near the singing songs, the girl alone to respond to the natural strength of a single, so they also invited their own friends to help the song, and over time it evolved into a group activity.
With the development of the times and the impact of the culture outside the mountains, the marriage custom of singing songs for love, though still there, has been rare. However, this kind of activity has now become a form of cultural competition in which villages gather to conduct cultural competitions. On certain days, villages take turns to sit in on the stage and carry out folk lusheng dance competitions, Miao song competitions as well as cockfighting and dogfighting, with as many as tens of thousands of visitors coming from all sides of the country.
When we arrived, the neighborhood along the mountain road was already crowded, and both sides of the road were filled with stalls of various local snacks. It seems that the "Hill Climbing Festival" is also a day for local people to have picnics. In the bushes and slopes along the mountain road, as well as in the slightly more open areas, people gather in groups and set up a large pot, in which large pieces of meat in the broth rolled around, with an overflowing aroma. Seeing me taking pictures, a big brother holding a beer in his hand issued an invitation: come on, drink one. The scene is real and natural, and the people are warm and simple.
Great beauty is often speechless, quietly exist in the world a corner is very good, such as not far from the village of the roadside waterfalls, whether or not someone to appreciate it, it is still from the top of the mountains Pangbai down, and then flowed to the unseen cliffs below; and cliffs below the dense forests of the Ringshuiyan waterfalls, I do not know where it is coming from, where it flowed to stand on the cliffs of the highway to see, the dense verdure between, a white Jade belt rushing pouring, in the ten thousand feet of the valley abyss, there should be a big river, perhaps it is these water sources, moist mountains and rivers, nourishing this side of the Miao township, so that the land is rich in fish and rice, people are calm and relaxed.
Casually wandering in the mountains, encountered a snake skin bag on the back of the sister, I greeted her: down to work ah.
She smiled but did not say anything.
I pointed to the bag and asked what was in it, and it looked pretty heavy.
She answered, I said I do not understand.
She looked at me did not seem to understand, and then put the bag down, open, said red pota.
Finally understand, she is to go down to the field to plant red camas, because the red camas inside gave birth to long full buds.
Passing by a terraced field that has not yet been planted, a farmer's brother holding a bamboo basket with two transparent ends is chasing something in the muddy water. The villagers next to him said that they were chasing the fish.
The first time I've seen this, I've seen a lot of people who have been in the same boat for a long time. The first thing you need to do is to get a good look at the color of the water, and then you can see the color of the water!
"People in the walled village almost always put some fish fry in the paddy field where seedlings are cultivated, or in the paddy field where rice seedlings are planted, and the fish that grow up in the paddy field are very tasty." Villagers said they eat grass in the paddy field, or small seedlings and rotting dead leaves during the growing process ......
As he was talking, the big brother of the farmer who caught the fish snapped into a fish with a bamboo basket, which looked quite big, and he held it up for us to take a picture of it, with a smile all over his face.
Looking out from the restaurant of the village lodging house, the setting light is warming the terraced rice paddies. As the housekeeper's sister prepares dinner, I go across the street to sit and chat at the house of a neighboring uncle, who is chopping wood, but it doesn't look like firewood, "It's for making spoons," he says. As he scooped up the water, I realized that it was making wooden spoons.
I said this scoop is a little too small, he laughed and said, it is for scooping rice oh.
"I can make 20 finished products a day, not counting the blanks," he said, "and take them to Leishan County to sell, one can sell for 20 yuan, and sell them for 10 yuan in this village."
The children have gone out to work, one in Guangzhou, one in the county, "a person at home, idle is idle, do some handmade wooden spoons, we use healthy, environmentally friendly."
There is no shortage of traditional crafts in Miao villages, such as bench-beating and batik. It is said that many Miao women here do not even need to make drafts when making batiks. Beautiful butterflies, birds in flight, fish symbolizing many children and grandchildren, bronze drums representing the sun's rays and ritual worship, and labor drawings reflecting ordinary life are made with their hands on the weaving fabrics, which reflect the history and life of the Miao people, and are one of the carriers of the cultural heritage of the area.
The staff of the village lodging said that in the future, it will help these traditional handmade products in the village to go to the market and increase the income of the villagers, that is to say, every penny that people come here to stay and consume is helping the construction of social poverty alleviation.