Ancient Wa is living there.

The mountains are tumbling and the clouds are floating. In the lofty mountains and vast forests of southwestern Yunnan, hundreds of thousands of Wa, a special ethnic group that has crossed over from a tribal society to a socialist society, live. Saying goodbye to the primitive farming methods and hunting life of slash-and-burn farming and suddenly integrating into modern civilization have made everything that happened in A Wa Mountains full of legend. "Villages and hamlets, drums and gongs, A Wa sing a new song ......" In the conflict between tradition and modern civilization, the Wa compatriots gradually kept up with the trend of the times with great difficulty but determination. As a result, the A Wa Mountains have left behind one singable and memorable story after another. Turning over thousands of mountains and passing through layers of clouds, the reporter came to Cangyuan Wa Autonomous County, one of the only two Wa autonomous counties in China, and what appeared in front of his eyes was a scene of gratifying pictures, and what he heard was a moving new song sung by the Wa people. Changes in Lixinzhai "A man who can't hunt is not a Wa man, and a man who can't weave is not a Wa woman" - this is the deep impression left by people on the A Wa mountains in history. Sitting by the fire at the home of Li Ni, a Wa man in Lixinzhai, Mengjiao Township, the 56-year-old "old hunter" was overwhelmed with emotion. "In the past, Wa men did not leave their guns or their knives." Li Ni said as he took out a gunpowder packet from a toilet bag. "Now, all our guns have been handed over to the government, so we keep the gunpowder pack as a souvenir." A cadre from the Canyuan County Culture Bureau who accompanied us on our visit to Lixinzhai took over the conversation, "Li Ni has three sons, and in the past, he would have had to have three guns, one for each of his sons. Because guns are also the most important decoration for Wa men." The cadre recalled that Wa men used to carry knives and guns for both self-defense and hunting purposes, and self-defense was mainly to prevent other tribes from chopping off their heads and sacrificing them to the valley.In the late 1950s, Canyuan County had long since abolished the custom of head-hunting and sacrificing to the valley, but one of his family uncles was still chopped off by the Wa tribe outside of the country known as the "Wild Card". The head-hunting ritual is a primitive custom that many ethnic groups, including the Han Chinese, had in ancient times. Due to the slow development of the society, until the early stage of the founding of New China, some Wa areas still retained the legacy of "head-hunting and grain sacrifice". According to a local legend, Kong Ming deceived the Wa with cooked grain seeds, saying that if the ground did not grow seedlings, the only way to get a good harvest was to cut off human heads and sacrifice them. After chopping off the heads, Kongming gave the Wa a good grain seed, which really produced a good crop, so the Wa forefathers, who had nothing to eat and nothing to eat, believed in the foolish apotheosis of head-hunting and sacrifice from then on. Anthropologists believe that this old custom is the helpless reaction of human beings when they encountered irresistible disasters due to low productivity and difficulty in escaping from them. Lixinzhai used to be built on a hilltop until the late 1960s when it was moved to Pingba. According to the old people in the walled village, there was also a walled village in this place in the very early days, which was only gradually deserted due to the fact that people were constantly being headhunted. After the liberation, the Wa people themselves removed the bad custom of headhunting and sacrificing to the valley. Now, the young generation of Lixinzhai can only hear this horrible and absurd old story from their grandparents. In the past, Wa people never sold their pigs and chickens, and once they killed a pig, they would invite the whole village to enjoy it. When they were sick, they would go to the "family priest" (equivalent to a sorcerer), and the piglets and chickens would be given to the "family priest", and if they wanted to eat meat, the men would go up to the mountains to hunt, and the women would go down to the ground to catch grasshoppers. At the end of the 1960s, Lixinzhai did not have enough food to eat and ate grain all the time, and more than 100 people in a village could only get two bags of rice in 10 days, and the wild animals in the A Wa Mountains became the best food for the villagers. Later, even hares could not be caught, so the villagers had to dig wild vegetables to eat. In those days, hunting rifles actually became the production tools of the Wa. With the development of productivity, hunting was gradually banned in A Wa Mountains, and shotguns slowly lost their practical value. Two years ago, Cangyuan County banned hunting completely, and Wa men in every household turned over nearly 20,000 powder guns and copper cannon guns to the government. At present, the A Wa Mountains are still not rich, and the per capita net income of farmers in Cangyuan County is only 500 to 600 yuan per year, but the per capita grain has reached 356 kilograms. Although most of the families in Lixinzhai still live in thatched roof houses and very few of them have household appliances, the days of starvation have become a distant nightmare. The yield of the Li Ni family's 8 mu of paddy fields has increased from over 200 kg to 800 kg. Selling grain, plus selling sugarcane and relying on tractors to run transportation, a family of seven can't help but earn ten thousand yuan a year. The Wa man who has been through the vicissitudes of life said honestly, "Now if you want to eat meat, you can buy it on the street." Chen Niga, a prosperous household in the village, has been enjoying a more joyful life, renting all of his family's 8 mu of paddy fields to outsiders and serving the family's small pig farm with all his heart. He has sold 10 pigs this year, and there are still more than 30 piglets squealing happily in the circle. The black hair floats up Wa people can sing and dance, Wa song and dance types are numerous. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 200 kinds of Wa dances that are performed by blowing the reed-sheng, and there are hundreds of dances that are performed by beating the wooden drums, gongs, and copper drums. Wa people even believe that they can't cry when their relatives die, otherwise they won't be at peace underground, and they have to use songs and dances to scare away the "ghosts". A few years ago, the cultural workers of the A Wa Mountains processed a Wa dance and created a free and enthusiastic "hair flinging dance": a group of Wa girls with bronze-colored skin and dressed in red and black costumes flung their long black hair with the rhythmic beats of the music, and their black hair was suddenly like a waterfall pouring down, and suddenly like a column of water in the wind and waves flying back, free and free. The black hair suddenly poured down like a waterfall, or flew backward like a water column in the wind and waves, free, unrestrained and full of wildness, revealing the character of the Wa ethnic group to the fullest. For a while, the "hair flinging dance" became a representative of Wa dance and quickly became popular throughout the country, and many large-scale cultural and artistic activities and celebrations featured the "black hair floating up" of Wa girls. Canyuan County Cultural Team, which specializes in Wa dance, was also invited to perform in Europe and had more than 50 performances in France. It has become the dream of many Wa youths to break into the world by dancing. Through hard learning and practicing, many youths have realized their dreams and brought Wa songs and dances out of the A Wa Mountains, spreading them both at home and abroad. According to the incomplete statistics of Cangyuan County Cultural Bureau, at present, there are more than 700 Wa youths from the A Wa Mountains going to various performance venues such as theaters, hotels and guest houses in Kunming, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Shandong, Liaoning and other provinces to perform ethnic songs and dances. The wooden drum dance of Wa boys has also reached Hong Kong and Macao, and the black hair of Wa girls has "drifted" to Russia, South Korea and other countries and regions. 40-year-old Wa man Chahongming is the founder of Cangyuan County's "Sigangli Wa Tribal Art Troupe," which has traveled to Japan and Singapore for performances. The troupe has traveled to Japan and Singapore for performances. So far, Tea Hongming has trained 5 batches of more than 300 Wa young men and women to learn folk dance. In the square in front of the county cultural palace, a group of young people all from the countryside are practicing seriously under his guidance. The Wa trainees are dancing lightly and neatly, and they are by no means like "novices" who have only participated in the training for one month. Many of them carried rice from home to the city to learn to dance, and some of them didn't even wear shoes and danced on the cement floor with bare feet. "That's how he was trained." Tea Hongming pointed his finger at his assistant, a Wa young man named Xiao Sanmu Bueller, who came from Damwei Village, Nuoliang Township, Canyuan County, five years ago at the age of 22 to receive training at the Sigangli Wa Tribal Art Troupe, and was sent to Kunming three months later to work as an actor in the Yunnan Nationalities Village Art Troupe. Xiao Sanmu Bueller not only traveled across the ocean to Japan to perform Wa dances, but also worked as a supporting actor in TV dramas and shot commercials. "I want to go out and dance, even if it's hard or tiring." Tian Ai, a 24-year-old Wa boy in the training course, told us. Tian Ai said that there are now five young people in their village dancing folk dances in parks in Guangxi and Guangdong, and some have started to send money to their families.　　Tea Hongming is extremely confident in the impact of Wa dancing, saying humorously, "Wa is the black pearl of the East, the wild rose of China, and the black peony of Yunnan." Tea Hongming believes that the "black peony" from A Wa Mountain will definitely bloom in the land of China, which will not only make some A Wa people get rid of poverty and become rich by singing and dancing, but also make the outside world understand A Wa Mountain. According to the Propaganda Department of the Cangyuan County Party Committee, there are four dance training courses in Cangyuan County, mainly for rural youth. A batch of trainees come to the county from the mountains and forests, go to the province and beyond, and then return to A Wa Mountain with new ideas, new concepts and the ability to earn money, so that the formerly closed A Wa Mountain is increasingly keeping up with the rhythm of modern society. The son of a tribal chief is a forest ranger. During an interview in the South Rolling River National Nature Reserve in the southwest of Cangyuan County, we encountered Pao Mingliang, the head of the protected area's Ban Lao management station. His face was dark and shiny, and his eyes were gleaming, which made him a typical Wa man. The stationmaster did not say much, but his words were concise and down-to-earth, giving a sense of stability and majesty between words, and his waist was straight at all times, which seemed to be a martial arts origin. Unexpectedly, the management of the station chief is the late Ban Lao last generation of the big head of Paul Hongzhong's eldest son. Half a century ago, private ownership was not prominent in the Wa Mountains, where mountains and forests were publicly owned, and some of the good land was owned by tribal chiefs, "headmen" and big families. The tribal chiefs were hereditary and had supreme power in the tribes, and they had the right to dispose of the tribal land and affairs of all sizes at will. Bao Mingliang's father, Bao Hongzhong, was one of the four chiefs of the Ban Lao. 1951, the Central Committee delegation came to Cangyuan, the four chiefs of the Ban Lao found the county secretary of the Work Committee, Comrade Zhang Chunya, who stationed his troops in Cangyuan, and reiterated that the Ban Lao was the land of China, and asked for a title. Comrade Zhang Chunya felt very difficult, and in a hurry, he named the four chiefs Defend the Country, Defend the People, Defend the Factory and Bao Hongzhong, to show their loyalty to the motherland. From then on, the four chiefs took this as their official names. Later, Comrade Bao Hongzhong became the deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Yunnan Provincial People's Congress. Bao Hongzhong's eldest son, Bao Mingliang, was born in 1964, only three years after the return of Banlao to the motherland, and the headmen still enjoyed great prestige in the Wa villages. At that time, there were 36 guns in Ban Lao village, 19 of which belonged to the Pao family. Pao Mingliang still has an impression of his childhood. "At that time, when the people in the walled village got their prey, the most tender tenderloin meat would definitely be sent to my house; the hearts and livers of the animals were also strung up on a rope and mentioned to my house." He, who has long since stopped eating game, remembers vaguely, "I ate elephant meat when I was a child, and it was not good, just like buffalo meat." Pao Mingliang's uncle, Paohongxing, who was in his prime at the time, recalled that although the Wa people had hunting habits in their history, there was a day in the past when A Wa Mountain had an elephant day every month, and whoever hit the elephant had to be punished, and there was also a place in the walled village where elephants were enshrined. Wa people believe that "the place with elephants will not be poor." However, during the Cultural Revolution, the higher-ups organized a hunting team, and whoever didn't want to participate was criticized for having superstitious ideas. In 1969, the hunting team had killed six elephants in three days, and notified the whole township to go and eat elephant meat. "At that time, we didn't raise pigs or chickens and specialized in eating elephant meat. An elephant weighed several tons and couldn't be cooked for a whole day." Bao Mingliang's uncle recalled. Ban Lao Zhai south slope of the South Rolling River along the forest, was once a paradise for wild Asian elephants. 1950s, there are nearly a hundred elephants here, the elephant herd through the forest, the rumbling footsteps often in the near and far valleys echoed between. But indiscriminate hunting during the Cultural Revolution caused frightened elephants to flee outside the country along the Nanluo River, and some never returned. "The elephants have disappeared!" This fact made Pao Mingliang, who had never left the Wa Mountains, feel very sad. 1987, he came to Kunming to study at the Southwest Forestry College, and immediately returned to the A Wa Mountains after his studies were over, and became a forest ranger in the Nanluo River Nature Reserve. He said, "The mountains and forests are the lifeblood of our Wa people, and I just love doing this business!" There are only three employees in Ban Lao Management Station, and their daily work is to patrol the forest area. There is no transportation in the management station, and Baomingliang relies on his two legs to patrol, and he has to walk 30 kilometers back and forth from the management station to the edge of the protected area by the Nanluo River. If they want to enter the center of the reserve, they have to walk even longer. Drill through the thorny bushes, climbed a sharp slope, day after day, year after year, Bao Mingliang on the protected area of the ditches and cans all know in the chest, he and his colleagues to stop one after another indiscriminate hunting incidents, only last year, the punishment of 11 hunters. Bao Mingliang has been living in his hometown to work Laozhai, many of the trappers are his neighbors. His colleagues said that the family history of the stationmaster of Paul still has a certain deterrent effect on the nearby Wa walled village trappers, but most importantly, his reasoning to convince people to deal with the prohibited way to make the violators, although punished, but happy to be convinced. The son of the last headman has left behind a new legend and witnessed the changes in the Nanluo River Nature Reserve. According to the local government, under the persuasion and education of the forest rangers, the Wa mountain people have completely given up their ancestral slash-and-burn farming methods, and the vegetation of the mountains around the Nanluo River Reserve has been rapidly restored. Now, on more than 2,400 square kilometers of land in Cangyuan County, primary forests and secondary forests cover about 30% of the land, and mixed woods cover most of the mountains. Asian wild elephants displaced from their homes and return to the South Rolling River to settle down; Bengal tigers, dolphin deer, clouded leopards, black bears, white-pawed gibbons and other rare animals have also become a "regular guest" here. "The number of wild elephants in the South Rolling River has been no less than 18, and there will be more and more." Baomingliang said excitedly. "The area of Nanluo River Nature Reserve will be further expanded. My work is getting better and better!"