"In times of disturbance I ask the moon,
But why does the moon never reply?
Opening the bolt, I walk out of the garden on a spring
day,
And wait for the south wind to blow.
Our distance is so far,
That the boatman's hands would be tired from
paddling.
Good wine makes one drunk even before he drinks,
Thinking about you day and night tears my heart apart.
Enough firewood has been collected for a whole
night's burning,
But will your iron heart melt?"
This melancholy song named Love Without Luck is one of the ballads sung at the "Ha Festival" celebrated by the Jing people.
With a population of 22,500, the Jing is one of the smallest ethnic groups in China. But Jing people's history and cultural lineage can be traced back to Viet Nam, where they account for 86 percent of the country's total population, with the Vietnamese name Kinh.
The Jing people traditionally live in the Wutou, Wanwei and Shanxin villages of Jiangping Township, Dongxing, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
Before the 1950s, the three villages were islands, reclamation efforts have connected them to the mainland. Still, the local people refer to their home as the "three islands of the Jing people."
Ha Festival
The Ha Festival is celebrated on all of the three islands inhabited by the Jing people, but on different dates. In Wanwei it is the ninth day of the sixth lunar month, while in Wutou it is the first day, and in Shanxin the 10th day of the eighth lunar month.
The different dates are based upon the time of the founding of each Ha Pavilion (Ha Ting in Chinese, or "Dinh Ha" in Vietnamese), in which the festival is held.
The Ha Pavilion is a communal house where Jing people worship their deities and ancestors. In the past, the Ha Pavilion often also served as a private school.
In Vietnamese, "Ha" means singing. At the Ha Festival, singers would sing to deities and ancestors for days on end, asking them to look after their harvest and the prosperity of the village.
Lasting from three days to a week, the festival contains four processes welcoming the deities, worshipping them, feasting and escorting the deities back.
"The functions of the Ha Festival are worshipping deities, celebrating the harvest, praying for peace and disseminating culture," said Su Weifang, a 65-year-old villager of Wanwei who has been collecting folk songs handed down by fellow Jing.
"This characteristic festival is a result of the geographical environment and social development of the Jing people," said Su.
Every year a chief worshipper is selected to praise the deities and ancestors on behalf of all of the villagers. The standards for selection of the chief worshipper include having many offspring and preferably parents in good health.
At this year's Ha Festival in Shanxin, held from the 10th to the 14th days of the eighth lunar month in mid-September 59-year-old Liu Yangshou acted as the chief worshipper. Liu has four children and six grandchildren.
During the ceremony, all of the villagers' names are recited before the deities and ancestors. The chief worshipper's name is the first on the list, and then the citation follows in order of age, starting with the eldest.
Grand feast
The Ha Festival is a communal festival, and this is most obviously reflected in the feast. Villagers form groups according to their own will, and each day the food for each group is provided by each member in turn. At noon the food is mainly meat, fish and spring rolls, while in the evening people eat desserts and fruits.
Young people that work away from the community are supposed to return to attend the Ha Festival. Twenty-six-year-old Shi Weiyong and 27-year-old Liu Ziming, two young men from Shanxin that are seafood wholesalers in Dongxing, the city on Guangxi's border with Viet Nam, came home to attend this year's Ha Festival.
"In a way the Ha Festival is more important than Spring Festival, for Spring Festival is celebrated by each family respectively, but the Ha Festival is a collective activity which all the people celebrate together," said Shi.
However, as more and more young people work far away, many are not able to attend nowadays. Shi and Liu could only stay for a day before going back to work in Dongxing.
Song collector
Singing is a very important part of the Ha Festival. Every day some villagers sing tunes in the morning and evening to ask the deities and ancestors to protect the village. The poetic and encyclopaedic lyrics cover legends, history and the customs of the Jing people.
Su Weifang has compiled the lyrics to 41 such songs. Besides songs of praise and proverbial tunes, there are love songs.
"Because the Ha Festival is a serious occasion, love songs sung at the festival are usually rather implicit," said Su.
Su used to be the vice-director of the Public Security Bureau of Fangchenggang, Guangxi. Since retirement in 2002, he has devoted himself to recording the folk songs of the Jing people.
He has collected more than 1,000 folk songs, including the Ha Festival standards, historical songs, narrative songs and love songs. He recorded them in Vietnamese and translated them into Chinese, hoping to have them published some day.
Most of the lyrics of Wanwei's Ha Festival are the same as those of Viet Nam, but some lyrics have been changed to suit the local conditions, including three pieces written by Su about contemporary Wanwei.
But not many young Jings sing the songs today. Liu Hongtao, 25, from Shanxin prefers to listen to pop songs in putonghua, which is not uncommon among his contemporaries.
Last and this year, four female singers from Van Ninh in Viet Nam were invited to sing at Shanxin's Ha Festival, mainly because Shanxin's singers are too old to sing nowadays and the young have not kept the tradition going.
The situation is a little better in Wanwei, where Su and other elderly singers have trained some of the younger generation in their 20s and 30s. Now both elderly and young singers perform at the Ha Festival in Wanwei.
Su has also held classes where interested villagers can learn the zi nan ("chu nom" in Vietnamese), traditional Vietnamese system of writing based on Chinese characters. The system is not used in Viet Nam today, but many old Vietnamese books are written in this script, as are many manuscripts detailing traditional folk songs kept by the Jing people in China. Only about 20 people can read zi nan in Wanwei.
Cultural courses
On the other hand, since last year, the Dongxing Jing School at Wanwei has run a Vietnamese language course, teaching the Latin-based Vietnamese writing system that is used in Viet Nam today.
About 85 percent of the students at the school are Jing people. All students from the fourth grade of the primary school to the third grade of the middle school are required to take Vietnamese lessons.
"Besides the Jing students, Han and Zhuang students are also interested in learning Vietnamese, for this area is close to the border with Viet Nam, and they have plenty of chances to use Vietnamese in their daily lives," said Shi Weiming, the school's Vietnamese teacher.
Shi Weiming said the problem now is finding a suitable textbook. Their present textbook, published by the Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Press, is designed for college students. It is a little too serious for primary school and middle school students, though Shi often relates daily life in his teaching to make the lessons more vivid.
In music lessons, students learn Jing folk songs and dances, including those performed at the Ha Festival. Interested students can also learn to play the duxianqin ("dan bau" in Vietnamese), a traditional one-stringed plucked instrument popular among the Jing people.
"When our school was founded in 1995, the primary task was to implement the nine-year compulsory education programme among Jing students," said Su Jiuchun, principal of the Dongxing Jing School. "Having completed this, now we will work more on passing on the culture of the Jing people."
Su said the school was planning to organize exchange programmes with schools in Viet Nam, so the students would have more opportunities to learn about Vietnamese culture.
(China Daily October 25, 2005)
