first look: the qiang people of sichuan

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Report

First Look: The Qiang People of Sichuan

Emma ZEVIK

Two Stories

The first holy man in the Qiang peoples history, whose name was AbaMullah,

came down from heaven and stopped to rest on the top of the snowy mountain.He laid his holy book down and while he slept, a sheep ate the pages of thebook. When he awoke, he had forgotten all the sacred sutras contained in theholy book. A monkey appeared and instructed him to kill the sheep and use thehide to make a drum. The holy man complied and made a one-sided sheepskindrum. The monkey told him to play the drum and in this way, the holy manwould remember the holy scriptures.

This story explains why all Qiang holy men to the present day play a sheepskin drum, why there is no written holy book among the Qiang,and why the Qiang worship a monkey skull, also called the AbaMullah , asa way to memorialize the first priest.

The Qiang people are one of the 56 ethnic categories living in Chinatoday. Qiang is a name given by the ancient Han to the nomadic people in

Emma Zevik , Ph.D., is Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for East AsianResearch, Harvard University. She teaches in the Graduate School of Arts and

Social Sciences, Lesley University. From 1995 to 1997, she was VisitingProfessor, Composition and Musicology, at Sichuan Conservatory of Music inChina. She received her Ph.D. from The Union Institute University. Her e-mailaddress is: [email protected].


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western China. Today, they inhabit the mountainous regions in the north-western part of Sichuan Province. In their own language, they call them-

selves erma people, meaning ourself. The Qiang are recognized as afirst ancestor culture due to their ancient roots; evidence from bones andtortoise shells shows that the Qiang were living in communities in north-western China during the Shang Dynasty, c. 16th11th centuries B.C.Some Qiangs were assimilated by the Tibetans and some by the Han,leaving a small number unassimilated. This group gradually moved to theupper reaches of the Minjiang River and eventually became todays Qiangnationality, with a total population of over 198,000 (Zhang and Zeng

1993).Qiang belief systems and traditions pre-date Taoism and certainlyChinese Buddhism; it is no exaggeration to state that Qiang culture couldbe considered the first culture of China. Certainly, Qiang culture of todaycontains complex influences, including Tibetan, Han Chinese, Buddhist,Taoist and even Christian. It would be impossible to sort out these tangledstrands to uncover the original religious practices; yet in examining thestories, myths and legends, we can perhaps find a glimpse of some deeperunderstanding of the human condition as experienced by the Qiang.

The focus of my work in the field was the traditions of the Qiangshamans or duangongs .1 It is my best guess that there are perhaps today nomore than twenty living Qiang shamans who have had full and completeinitiations ( gaigua ). Those whom I learned from range in age from 62 to82. This generation of shamans, of a virtually unknown and widely scat-tered minority group, holds particularly poignant knowledge. Each one haspersonally experienced the multiple turbulences of Liberation in 1949 andthe many movements since that time culminating in the Great Leap For-

ward and the Cultural Revolution. Although the recent opening policiesof China have certainly allowed economic improvements to trickle down tovillagers, day-to-day life in the countryside is harsh and difficult. Theseshamans hold first-hand knowledge of both suffering and healing, asindividuals, and as community intellectuals.

My fathers [shaman] tools disappeared during the Cultural Revolution. Its apity. Disappeared. Tools disappeared. Lao Beizhi explains the complexitiessurrounding his career as a Qiang shaman. After Liberation, my family was

identified as a rich peasant family. The rich peasant is not as good as the poorpeasant. This is one of the bad identifications. So, how could I carry on my[shaman] duties at that moment? Lao Beizhi, age 61, had completed sevenyears of study as an apprentice shaman, then went off with the soldiers to liberate


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the countryside under the new government of communist China in 1950. Whenhe returned, the new government had discarded the feudal traditions and he

was not allowed to have his gaigua , the initiation-graduation ceremony in whichhe would be crowned as a shaman and receive his own set of shaman tools.Everyone in the village points to Lao Beizhi, exclaiming, He is the

duangong [shaman]. Yet they also question his credentials, his authority, andhis abilities because everyone knows he never had a gaigua . No one can listany specific deficiencies. Mr. Lao explains his situation quite clearly, Oh, thisis the same as the examination system in the ancient system of China. Youknow, if a student is qualified to pass, to be a scholar, he must take theexamination. But if the examination system is discarded, he couldnt be a scholar

even though hes qualified. I had completed all the courses at that moment, I just didnt have the gaigua . Of course, this is the same for qualified studentswho couldnt pass the examination to be a scholar. This is the same. 2

One wonders how and why the implements, sacred and invaluable,disappeared so easily and so casually. One wonders at the depth of feeling about traditions and ceremonies discarded so simply. One wondersabout lives and professions so abruptly interrupted. These were among myquestions during my time with the Qiang people.

Although there is a growing urban class of professional, educatedQiang, the shamans remain in the village, bilingual although most areilliterate in Chinese. Clearly, they are community scholars, keepers of Qiang history and culture, having memorized the epics as part of theirtraining. The Qiang shamans are distinctive in their professional dress andimplements, including monkeyskin hat, sheepskin drum, holy stick usedto drive out devils gongs and seals, and perhaps, most significantly, the

AbaMullah : a preserved monkey skull handed down, in some villages, forover fifteen generations.

The world outside China now knows the details of recent modernChinese history, in large part through the work of gifted writers,filmmakers, artists and musicians. These talented people had the possibil-ity to overcome tremendous obstacles and find their way out. Yet, whatabout the peasant intellectuals, these community scholars, particularlyminority duangongs : not sent down to the countryside but born into thecountryside with no possibilities ? What were their experiences? What aretheir reflections today?

The Qiang Today

Since the early 1980s, China has been opening to the outside world. In its


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efforts to modernize, a result of economic development, enormous changesare taking place for both individuals and within the social body. These

changes are influencing the ancient belief system and traditional customsof Qiang culture. The Qiang people live in villages situated in difficulttopography. It is a harsh geography of steep mountains with crisscrossingturbulent rivers, which effectively block homogeneity or unity among theQiang. Historically dominated by both the Tibetans and the Han Chinese,the Qiang have never been a unified political entity. Consider even thelanguage: it is quite often the case that residents from villages twentykilometers apart have trouble understanding each other if they speak in the

Qiang language. Beyond language and geography, this intra-diversityamong the Qiang can also be seen in their customs, music and dance, andin religious practices as well.

The Qiang live in stone-fortress homes built on the mountain cliffs.There is also a growing number of urban Qiang residing in Chengdu, thecapital of Sichuan province: about 600 at present. 3 More and more,villagers, after obtaining changes in their household registrations easierto achieve now but still a rigorous process are able to move to the countytown, where they pursue a variety of jobs, sell their crops in the freemarkets, or perhaps open small shops. In the villages, they are primarilyfarmers, raising crops such as corn, buckwheat, potatoes, vegetables,apples, walnuts, tobacco, and hemp, and livestock such as pigs, chickens,goats, yaks, oxen, mules, and dogs.

In Sichuan Province, the Qiang inhabit primarily the countiesMaoxian, Wenchuan, Lixian, Songpan, Beichuan and Heishui of the AbaTibetan-Qiang Autonomous Region, an area interspersed heavily withTibetans and Hui (Moslems) as well as Han Chinese. Although this area

was opened to outsiders in the 1980s and tourism is being activelydeveloped, it is officially considered a minority area. Linguistically, theQiang language is part of the Tibetan-Burmese branch of the Sino-Tibetanfamily. The Qiang language is categorized into Northern and Southerndialects, with five and four sub-dialects respectively (Yu 1997).

Although the Qiang people have their own language, most speak Mandarin Chinese, and some few are even learning English in the hopes of obtaining better jobs outside of their villages. Therefore, the Qiang lan-

guage could be considered an endangered species. The Qiang language hasno written form, but several years ago Chinese linguists developed a scriptfor it and a pilot program was launched in four village schools to teach thisstandardized Qiang language.


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My concern with the issues surrounding the language reflects a directlink between the language and the religion of the Qiang. The Qiang sutras

have no written form and were memorized by the shamans when they wereyoung boys. Since most children and young adults today cannot speak theQiang language, the shaman has also become a keeper of the language, andin reciting the chants and songs, the words themselves are emblems of theculture. Indeed, one of the most daunting aspects of the fieldwork for mewas the language issue. I would collect sutras and chants in one village, andthen begin working in a nearby village and realize that although I washearing the same chant, used in the same situation, the language was

almost completely different. I thus began to wonder about the influence of the language itself on the movements and the procedures for each cer-emony as presented in nearby villages. The language itself could be con-sidered a social body, defining itself and imposing itself on the residents of a particular locality, and by extension, influencing the rituals, ceremoniesand religious practices of that locality. Yet, as I have noted, it is the casenow that only elders know the Qiang language. As this emblem, the Qianglanguage, fades out, the larger, stronger social body of the Chinese andeven the English language moves in, as a major constraint affecting theindividuals in the village and Qiang culture as a whole. Exploring thefissures and pressures facing the language, we can gain a deeper under-standing of the religion and its current practices, for both the social body asa whole and the individuals who act within this social body.

Qiang Religious Practices

The Qiang people hold a polytheistic belief system based on animism;

basically, they worship gods of nature and spirits of the ancestors. Theyoffer sacrifices to the gods of nature, while spirits of the ancestors areenshrined in the family house (Wang et al. 1992: 20). There are five greatdeities and twelve lesser deities worshipped in each village (Graham 1958:46) as well as a variety of other deities, such as mountain gods, tree gods,door gods, the god of fire, the god of domestic animals, the god of windand rain, the god of births, occupational gods (hunter, stonemason,blacksmith), the god blessing women in their work, and the god blessing

men in their work. Many, but not all, of the gods appear in male-femalepairs; for brevity and clarity in this report, I use the term god to coverboth genders or paired possibilities and I look forward in the future tooffering readers a more detailed article in which this intriguing aspect is


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examined more fully. Many Qiang people believe Chinese gods to be realdeities and worship them regularly, such as kitchen gods and house gods.

According to Wang et al, there are up to 48 levels of deities:All the gods, with the exception of Abamubita (God of Heaven), are of equalrank and assume social functions and duties within certain limitations. Forinstance, the god of a certain mountain can only govern this mountain; the godof a certain place can only rule that place. There are no degrees of seniorityamong the gods, nor are any statues of them given. People can choose anygod(s) to worship according to their needs. (1992: 14)

The religious practices of the Qiang are the most complex aspect of Qiang culture. The religious customs encompass a diverse and vast array of activities. Dress, food, residence, travel, marriage, funerals, festivals, dailylife etiquette, social contacts all have strong links to religious customs.Since, as earlier noted, the Qiang language has no written form, and itsspoken forms are quite numerous and distinct from each other, the reli-gious customs vary greatly from locality to locality and even from villageto village. For instance, every Qiang family enshrines gods, but the waysof worshipping, the number of gods enshrined, and even the gods them-

selves in different households can be quite different (Wang et al. 1992:16).

Without question, the most visible and distinctive element of Qiangculture and religious practice is the white stone. Commonly found in allareas where the Qiang reside, the quartz stones are enshrined on roofs,towers, and mountains, in fire pits, fields and forests. Wang et al. state thatsince the Qiang have no idols, the white stone, symbolizing all the gods,

bears a soul which [the stone] itself lacks but represents something mysterious

and powerful. Ancient people thought that enshrining and worshipping thesesoul-bearing objects would help them acquire the protection of the gods theseobjects represented. The worship of the white stone is a worship which focuseson the gods represented, not on the object itself. A white stone on the roof represents the god of heaven; a white stone beside the cooking stove representsthe god of fire; a white stone on the mountain represents the god of the mountain;a white stone standing in the fields represents the god of crops and earth. (1992:27)

At the center of Qiang culture stands the duangong , called bi in theQiang language. As earlier noted, the bi is the keeper of the culture, thescholar of the community. Although there are several stories of femaleduangongs in the past, and there is no limitation as to gender, there are no


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living female duangongs at this time. Among his many responsibilities, thebi coordinates the relationships between human beings, spirits and deities

for the welfare of all the villagers. Like the Qiang language, the bis skills,knowledge and wisdom, as well as his tools and implements and practicestraditionally transmitted orally from generation to generation, areendangered.

The Qiangs belief system has been influenced by Taoism, Buddhismand even Christianity (via missionaries). As noted earlier, there is greatvariety in spiritual beliefs, even between villages within close proximity toeach other. Generally, there is belief in souls and in spirits, ghosts, and

demons. Some people have adopted the Chinese belief in three major soulsand seven lesser souls (Graham 1958: 43). There is belief in reincarnationand fate as well as the regular practice of ancestor worship. The Qiangbelieve in a large pantheon of gods; however, unlike the Chinese and theTibetans, both of whom make images of their numerous gods, the Qianghave no holy images of their gods. There are possibly two exceptions:

AbaMullah , the original holy man now memorialized by a monkey skull,and the King of Demons, often carved on the priests sacred staff. The

AbaMullah monkey skull is wrapped in bundles of white or brown paper.Once each year, the statue is ceremoniously wrapped in another layer of paper.

Duangong , Priest, Shaman?

During my time among the Qiang, I was able to complete a comprehensivesurvey of all living duangongs of the Southern Qiang and a preliminaryexploration of Northern Qiang duangongs . Let me here outline the basic

tasks and responsibilities of duangong s. The duangong in fact lives anordinary everyday life, with family and work responsibilities no differentfrom anyone else in the village. However, the duangong tools and imple-ments are an emblem of the spiritual place he both occupies and carries outwithin the community. The duangong is believed to have regular contactwith the gods and spirits. It is believed that the duangong can prevent andheal diseases. He also calculates (through divination and fortune telling)the best dates for important events in community life, carries out rituals and

ceremonies, and conducts sacrifices and blessings.The specific details of the ceremonies vary greatly among villages andamongst individual duangongs . Among the ceremonies I observed anddocumented were a funeral, a memorial service, blessings of all sorts,


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healing rituals, and consultations of many kinds. In addition to these actualceremonies, I observed re-creations of certain ceremonies as directed by

individual duangongs as well as a huge re-created festival organized by thelocal governmental office. Generally at such ceremonies there is recitationof appropriate sutras from the Qiang holy book, preparation of a ritualizedfeast from appropriately prepared goat/pig/chicken, the burning of incensesticks and sometimes, paper money, and the preparation of holy flags,stamps, seals, charms, and spells.

Is the duangong a shaman? In this essay, up to this point, I have usedthis term interchangeably with other terms, such as holy man and priest. At

first glance, it would appear that he is a shaman, although Graham (1958:43) labels him as priest. He performs typical shaman duties: he plays adrum and is constantly sought out to heal the sick; and he is believed tohave mysterious powers to deal with the world of spirits, demons andghosts. Wang et al (1992) make a convincing argument that the duangongcarries out some functions of a shaman but that, at the same time, theduangong is also quite different from a shaman. Briefly, their argument canbe summarized as follows. The duangong carries out several roles: presid-ing over religious ceremonies, carrying out magic spells to relieve peopleof evil spirits, acting as wizard, healer, doctor and psychologist treatingpatients for their sicknesses, organizing and performing the Qiang epics,myths and legends at festivals and major gatherings, and acting as thecommunity intellectual and scholar. The duangong is an ordinary memberof the village, never making his living as duangong professional. Whileboth shamans and duangongs deal with the spirit world, using magic andspecial chants and the drum, duangongs deal with a wide range of spiritsand have the supreme AbaMullah god in common, while shamans often

deal with a much smaller number of gods and have a personal protectorgod, quite individual to each shaman. Shamans generally have been chosenby the spirits to become shamans (often after a test or life-threateningevent), whereas anyone can become a duangong as long as they completethe training and education. Often shamans receive the spirits in trance orpossession; duangongs never do. Possession and trance does occur duringsome rituals, but this happens with other people, often called tongzi , whilethe duangong chants and beats the drum (Wang 1992: 78).

Closing Thoughts

Duangong s are the scholars, the historians and keepers of the Qiang


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culture. The duangong is the central axis around which the Qiang villagerevolves. The hat and the sheepskin drum are his tools for carrying out

rituals and ceremonies; more importantly, these are also vital signs, tan-gible and visible, by which the villagers recognize the duangongsauthority, competence and respected position in the social body. Theduangongs tools are the mark of his authority, but the duangong himself is the most important sign for the community at large. He is the symbol of the communitys heritage and culture. The duangong of today has becomea living museum a container of Qiang history, displaying the Qianglanguage, dress, beliefs, customs, epics, songs, and dances.

Of the 11 duangongs I worked with in the Southern Qiang area, notone had a complete set of duangong tools. At various times during theirlives, the tools were hidden, in hopes of salvaging them from Chinesegovernment search teams intent on destroying these items left over fromthe feudal era. Qiang shaman tools and dress were routed out and destroyedby the army and, at the same time, concealed by the Qiang in attempts togain some measure of control and protection; but they could not fullysucceed in preserving their cultural icons. In this report, I have made thecase that among the Qiang people their indigenous language is one of theemblems of their religion, just as are their tools and dress; and just as theQiang tools are endangered, so too is the Qiang language and culture itself as embodied in the duangong.

Notes

1. This fieldwork was made possible with a grant from the Asian CulturalCouncil. My work was carried out from October 1995 to September 1997 as

Visiting Professor, Composition and Musicology at Sichuan Conservatory of Music in Chengdu under the Visiting Scholar China program of the UnitedBoard for Christian Higher Education in Asia. I thank my students andcolleagues at the Conservatory, who provided a first look at the Qiang villageson National Day, October 1, 1995. I offer special thanks to Mr. Li Zhongyong,President Emeritus. I also thank Mr. Zou Xiangping for providing introduc-tions and encouragement. I am grateful to the Foreign Affairs Departments of Sichuan Province and Sichuan Conservatory of Music as well as to WenchuanCounty Foreign Affairs and Tourism Bureau. Finally, I offer many thanks to

Ms. Tian Liyuan, Ms. Yao Xiaoyao, and Mr. Mao Yao, research assistants, andto Mr. Chen Zhong, interpreter. Last but not least, I thank Mr. Zhang Wei andMr. Tang Qinquan for their translations.

2. It is my privilege to know Mr. Lao Beizhi as colleague and teacher, as well as


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the other duangongs who graced me with their life stories. I look forward tocontinuing to learn from them with enthusiasm and gratitude.

3. There are a variety of Qiang professional urbanites, born in the villages, whohave been able to pass the examination and pursue higher education, usually atthe Minority College. Among those particularly helpful to this work was Mr.Yu Yaoming, a journalist.

References Cited

Graham, David Crockett. 1958. The Customs and Religion of the Chiang.Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution.

Lao Beizhi. 19951996. Personal interviews.Wang Kang, Li Jiangzhong, and Wang Qingyu. 1992 . Shenmi de baishi chongbai

qiang zu de xinyang he lisu (Mysterious White Stone Worship Beliefsand Social Customs of Qiang Nationality) . Chengdu, China: SichuanNationalities Publishing House. Tang Qinquan has written an unpublishedtranslation of this manuscript.

Yu Yaoming. 19961997. Personal interviews.Zevik, Emma. 2001. Lao BeiZhi Never Had a Gaigua [initiation or coronation].

In Shaman , Vol. 9, No. 1 . Budapest: Molnar & Kelemen Oriental Publisher.

Zevik, Emma. (forthcoming). Qiang Shamanism. In Encyclopedia of Shaman-ism . Oxford: ABC-CLIO.

Zhang Weiwen and Zeng, Qingnan. 1993. In Search of Chinas Minorities.Beijing: New World Press.


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Fig. 1. Lao Beizhi 1995. Photograph by

Emma Zevik.

Fig. 2. Duangong displaying

holystick 1996. Photograph by

Mao Yao.


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Fig. 3. Two duangongs with family and

Emma Zevik 1996. Photograph by Zhang

Wei.

Fig. 4. Qiang village with watch towers 1996. Photograph by Yu Yaoming.

first look: the qiang people of sichuan

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