|
The Va Nationality
The Vas, numbering about 350,000, are concentrated
in Xinmeng, Cangyuan counties of the Awa Mountain District in the southeast
of Yunnan province. The Va language belongs to the VaBenglong branch
of the Monkrmer group of Southeast Asian language family. In the distant
past the Va people kept record by carving wood. A written script was
devised for them in the 1950s. The Vas mostly work on farms while still
maintaining the old custom of hunting. Simplicity and frankness are
the nationality's remarkable trait.
In China's southeastern border area, the Nu Mountain
extends gradually from the north to the south between the Lancang River
and the Sarwin River. The Southern part of the moutain is covered with
terraced fields, rising from the mountain base right up to the top.
Here is the home for the people of the Va nationality.
The Va people call themselves "Awa," meaning "people
living in the mountains." Their houses are twostoried bamboo structures
built on mountain slopes. The house, though plainly furnished, is unique
because of its fireplace. In the past, there used to be three fireplaces:
one for worshipping, another for daily use, and one more for cooking.
To mix up the three were considered an act of blaspheme to the gods.
Nowadays, however, the three fireplaces have develored in to one.
The Vas eat millet and red rice as their staple food, maize and peas
as non-staple foodstuff. Meat is rare in the diet. Cooking is done solely
by housewives. When they prepare the meal, all the other members of
the family squat on heals around the fire to be waited on by the housewife,
who fills the wooden bowls with rice and then hand the bowls over to
her folks. Vegetables on the Vas' dinner table come from their vegetable
gardens. They never cook with oil but salt and hot peppers. The Vas
like chewing areca as they believe it does good to their teeth. Moreover,
the blackened teeth and the reddened lips as a result of areca chewing
are regarded as beautiful.
Costumes of the Va nationality more or less reflect the features of
simplicity and boldness specific to hunters. Va men usually wear black
turbans and collarless jackets. They also wear tattoos. Many of them
have figures of bulls tattooed on the chest, birds around the wrists
and images of trees or flowers on the legs. When getting out, they often
carry satchels, long knives and pistols along with them.
Women keep long hair with a silver band around their heads. They dress
in jackets without the collar, and parallelstripped tubeskirts. To
go with these are red-cloth waistbands, rattan rings at the back, silver
necklets and big earrings.
The most distinctive feature of the Va's national dance is the hair
tossing of the women dancers matching the beat of wooden drums various
other instruments like bronze drums, Lusheng (a wind instrument with
a reed), Bawu (also a wind of the Va's fold instrument), Sanxian (a
threestringed plucked one), and another one-string plucked piece. Songs
accompanied by the onestring in strument are very popular among the
Vas living in the Ximeng district. For young Va men, the song serves
as a medium of courtship when they are paying a visit at night to the
girls they love. The actual singing starts simultaneously with the musical
accompaniment, and then stops to allow an interval of the music playing
only in a smooth and steady melody. The same tune may be repeated many
times throughout one song. The famous pieces include "Visiting
Fellow Villagers," "Waking the Girls Up" and "Taking
a Rest."
Although the Vas do not have a writing system of their own, their ancestors
left them a rich legacy of cliff paintings that depict the early history
of the Va nationality. Two thousand meters high above sea level, the
paintings are distributed over the Awa Mountain in the Cangyuan district,
thus known as Cangyuan cliff paintings. Being several thousand years
old, the superb art works are still bright colored and clearly discernible.
Every painting renders with primitive simplicity a graphic illustration
of the Va people's early history-their working, hunting, their practicing
of sacrificing rites, dancing and triumphant returning from expedition
of wars. The Cangyuan cliff paintings deserve the fame of a vividly
illustrated history book of the Va nationality. The Va people worship
them as a shrine where every year they come to offer sacrifices and
pray for good luck and harvests.
Every year when spring ends and summer comes, the Vas hold the sacrificing
ceremony of cutting pieces of meat off the cattle alive. This is believed
to be able to "appease the ghosts" and bring peace and prosperity.
At the ceremony, the head sorcerer of the village executes the rite
of killing the chicken, chanting the incantations and tying the cattle
onto a wooden pole, while the villagers are waiting with knives in hands,
ready to strip the animal. When the cattle's tail has been cut off,
they all join in the slicing of and grabbing for the meat. A few minutes
later, only a skeleton is left of the cattle. Many Va men take the opportunity
to show their gallantry.
The wooden drum plays an important role in the Vas's religious life.
It is seen as a divine article capable of communicating with deities.
Therefore, drum beating always accompanies important events like warfare,
hunting, and their national festivals. Va men and women enjoy dancing
to the rhythms of the drum beating. The vitality of the nationality
is well displayed in the women dancers' feminine charm and the men's
masculine strength.
People living in the Awa Mountain are busy working for a new life both
for themselves and for the following generations. Their schoolattentinding
children embody infinite possibilities for the nationa-lity's future.
|
