The Brigands' Song: Serving in the Army of A Native Chieftain: A Traditional Song Text from Guangxi in Southern China [2, 1 ed.] 2021048213, 2021048214, 9789004449831, 9789004498754

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The Brigands’ Song: Serving in the Army of a Native Chieftain

Zhuang Traditional Texts Editors David Holm (National Chengchi University) Meng Yuanyao (Guangxi University for Nationalities)

Editorial Board Anthony Diller (University of Sydney) Li Jinfang (Central Minzu University, Beijing) Liang Tingwang (Central Minzu University, Beijing) Luo Yongxian (University of Melbourne) Somsonge Burusphat (Mahidol University) Barend Terwiel (University of Hamburg) Zhou Guoyan (Central Minzu University, Beijing)

volume 2

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ztt

The Brigands’ Song: Serving in the Army of a Native Chieftain A Traditional Song Text from Guangxi in Southern China

Translated and Annotated by

David Holm Meng Yuanyao

leiden | boston

Cover illustration: The photograph on the cover is a bronze drum in the possession of the late Ling Shudong, formerly Deputy Director of the Museum of Zhuang Ethnology in Jingxi county, Guangxi. The drum is estimated to date from the Warring States period (475–221 bce), and was reportedly collected from the Jingzhou area in Hubei province. In type and design it is very similar to the Guangnan drum from eastern Yunnan (on which see Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors, pp. 163–164). (Photograph by Ling Shudong). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Holm, David, 1946- translator. | Meng, Yuanyao, translator. Title: The Brigands' Song : Serving in the Army of a Native Chieftain : a Traditional Song Text from Guangxi in Southern China / Translated and Annotated by David Holm, Meng Yuanyao. Other titles: Fwen caeg. English | Serving in the Army of a Native Chieftain: a Traditional Song Text from Guangxi in Southern China Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2022. | Series: Zhuang Traditional Texts, 2352-6394 ; Volume 2 | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Identifiers: lccn 2021048213 (print) | lccn 2021048214 (ebook) | isbn 9789004449831 (hardback) | isbn 9789004498754 (ebook) Classification: lcc pl4251.c49 f8413 2022 (print) | lcc pl4251.c49 (ebook) | ddc 495.9/19–dc23/eng/20211115 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048213 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021048214

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill‑typeface. issn 2352-6394 isbn 978-90-04-44983-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-49875-4 (e-book) Copyright 2022 by David Holm and Meng Yuanyao. Published by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii List of Illustrations xi Abbreviations xiv Conventions xvi Introduction

1

English Translation

85

Interlinear Transcription

151

Textual and Ethnographic Notes

450

Appendix: Song Markets in Pingguo 625 Glossary and Concordance 630 Chinese Character Index 672 Index of Vernacular Characters and Allographs 711 Index of Zhuang Characters and Other Symbols 713 English-Zhuang Index 716 Index of Scientific Names of Plants and Animals 734 Subject Index 735 Bibliography 768 Plates: Photo-Reproduction of Manuscript Pages 787

Preface This work presents an annotated edition of a traditional Zhuang manuscript, a song text that is still performed in the central-western part of Guangxi province in southern China. The text itself is in the traditional Zhuang character script. The traditional Zhuang character script is an instance of what is sometimes called a sinoxenic script, that is, a script in which the Chinese character script has been borrowed and modified to write a different language, in this case the Tai language now known as Zhuang. The Zhuang have a population of over 17 million and are China’s largest minority. The Zhuang character script presents particular challenges. Unlike some other character scripts, the Zhuang script is a vernacular script rather than a standardised script that has been subject to bureaucratic regulation. It is unstandardised and varies from place to place. The nature of this variation has not yet been fully explored. A first stage in a long-term project to document variation in the old Zhuang script was D. Holm’s Mapping the Old Zhuang Character Script (Brill, 2013). This work was a survey of the representation of sixty common words in Zhuang, Bouyei, and Nùng and Tày manuscripts, encompassing traditional texts from 45 locations in Guangxi, Guizhou, eastern Yunnan, and northern Vietnam. The present work is a further stage in that project, since it will allow readers to explore the ways in which the Zhuang language has been represented in the Chinese script across the whole of the lexicon as employed in traditional song texts. At the same time, the work is intended to make accessible a song text that is of considerable cultural importance in its own right. In this sense, this volume is meant as a contribution to the work of generations of Zhuang scholars and others in documenting the cultural heritage of the Zhuang people. The Introduction explores some dimensions of the importance of this text in Zhuang history and culture. This has been a collaborative effort. It started in the early 1990s, when I began a long-term collaboration with the Ancient Manuscripts Editing Office (Guji bangongshi 古籍辦公室) in Nanning. The Gujiban gave me access to traditional manuscripts in their archives, and arranged for travel and interviews with participants in the national project to document the written traditions of China’s national minorities. I owe a special debt to Mr. Zhang Shengzhen 張聲震. Mr. Zhang, now deceased, was a high-level provincial official who devoted himself in retirement to promoting scholarship on the Zhuang.

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My co-author for this volume is Professor Meng Yuanyao 蒙元耀, now of the Department of Minority Languages at the Guangxi University for Nationalities in Nanning. After completing his PhD thesis at the University of Melbourne, Professor Meng spent two years on the project as a post-doctoral researcher, collecting and editing texts for the project and at the same time completing a major study on the funeral and requiem songs of his native Mashan county. Before that, Professor Meng was for many years Deputy Director in the Research Office of the Guangxi Minority Languages Commission in Nanning. In this position, he had the opportunity to travel widely throughout Guangxi, and gain familiarity with a wide range of Zhuang dialects and other linguistic and cultural environments. He spent his Cultural Revolution years working in villages in his native Mashan county, and has an exceptionally well-grounded operational-level knowledge of material culture and traditional practices, including the use and classification of plants and animals in Zhuang village society. Afterwards, he participated in the collection of data for Zhuang dictionaries, and in the middle 1990s was one of the editors in charge of the Zhuang-Chinese-English Dictionary project, then being conducted in collaboration between the Languages Commission of Guangxi and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. We had a number of reasons for choosing The Brigands’ Song as the text for the second volume in the Zhuang Traditional Texts series. The most important consideration was based on our desire to present to an international readership works of outstanding significance in Zhuang history and culture. Such works may be well known in Chinese-language scholarship in China, but still almost entirely unknown to the outside world. The Brigands’ Song was an obvious choice because of its highly unusual subject matter: the experiences of ordinary soldiers serving in the armies of the native chieftains. The choice of Pingguo county in west-central Guangxi followed naturally, since this was an area in which the traditional Zhuang song culture was still alive and in surprisingly good heart. It was also an area with an extensive repertoire of traditional songs, with song lyrics recorded in manuscript song-books. The division of labour for this volume was as follows: Meng Yuanyao and I together visited Pingguo county in west-central Guangxi a number of times over the period 2010–2017, selected an appropriate manuscript, and photographed it with the permission of the owner Mr. Lu Shunhong 陆顺红. We also recorded a complete recitation of the text by Mr. Lu’s colleague and song partner Mr. Huang Qingzhu 黄庆祝. Meng Yuanyao undertook the transcription of Mr. Huang’s recitation of the text and produced preliminary word glosses for all words in the text, and drafted a set of preliminary textual and ethnographic notes in Chinese. The notes became the basis for a prolonged dialogue

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and follow-up investigations; the end result is a much-expanded set of notes in English. The notes contain background information on manuscript readings, word usage, grammar, and pragmatics, as well as cultural and historical information, and ‘all manner of things under the sun’. I was responsible for the grammatological and historical linguistic sections of the notes, for the seven indices which accompany the text, for the introduction, and for drafting the final version. A project of this nature could not have been undertaken without a great deal of help from a wide range of people. First and foremost, heartfelt thanks are due to Mr. Lu Shunhong and Mr. Huang Qingzhu. It was Mr. Lu who made his heirloom text of the Brigands’ Song available to us, and Mr. Huang who kindly recited the text in its entirety and, together with Mr. Lu, provided much additional information for us over a period of many months and years following, repeatedly checking our readings and interpretations of the text. Indeed, the dialogue between us continues to this day. Both of them are well-known figures in the cultural scene in Matou zhen, the administrative seat of Pingguo county, and keen aficionados of the traditional Zhuang art of singing. We have also received much support and encouragement from Mr. Nong Minjian 农敏坚, formerly Chairman of the Pingguo County People’s Congress. Busy for many years with his administrative responsibilities, Mr. Nong has also found time to become an energetic proponent of the traditional song culture of Pingguo, and has played a key role in setting up music classes for students in the schools learning to sing in the local style, leaving no stone unturned in promoting the wide transmission of Liaoge singing among young people in Pingguo. It was through his introduction that we were able to meet Mr. Lu and Mr. Huang. We are also grateful to Mr. Li Xiulang 李修琅, formerly Chairman of the Pingguo County People’s Consultative Congress, who provided us with copies of a number of other valuable manuscripts of the Brigands’ Song from his own collection, and much useful information on the ‘song markets’ of the Pingguo area. We also received much assistance from Mr. Huang Guoguan 黄国观, a senior song artist, who also provided copies of valuable manuscripts, and information about the practice of antiphonal singing from a participant’s knowledge and experience. Finally, people in the Pingguo County Cultural Department and the Pingguo County Cultural Bureau provided us with all manner of assistance. It would also not be out of place to express our appreciation and gratitude to the local people of the Pingguo area, including village people as well as townspeople, who were generous, helpful, and welcoming. Thanks are also due to Professor Meng’s MA student, Lan Sheng 蓝盛, who prepared the initial draft of the transcription into IPA.

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Special thanks are due to Dr. Lewis Mayo of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne and one other anonymous reviewer for their painstaking work in going through the manuscript. The maps were produced by Ms. Chandra Jayasuriya, Cartographer and Honorary Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne. The musical scores were prepared by Ms. Hsieh Chia-fang, musician in the Taiwan Henan Opera Company (臺灣豫劇團) of the National Traditional Arts Centre, and checked by Professor Shih Teyu, Distinguished Professor in the Institute of Art Studies, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. David Holm’s research for this project was funded by research grants from the Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology (formerly the National Science Council) in 2013–2017, for a project entitled ‘Vernacular Character Writing Systems of the Tai-speaking Peoples of Southwest China and Northern Vietnam’ (grant numbers 102-2410-H-004-055, 103-2410-H-004-111, and 104-2410-H-004162). Meng Yuanyao’s research was funded by (1) a research grant from the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Minority Nationality Ancient Manuscripts Editing and Publication Office, for a project entitled ‘Translation, Annotation and Editing of Ancient Manuscripts of the Zhuang People, and Revision of the Dictionary of the Old Zhuang Script’ (Zhuangzu guji yizhu zhengli ji Gu Zhuangzi zidian xiuding 壮族古籍译注整理及古壮字字典修订), January 2016–December 2020; and (2) a research grant from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Project Office for a project entitled ‘Character Scripts of Minority Nationalities in Guangxi: Preservation of Documentary Materials and Cultural Transmission’ (Guangxi shaoshu minzu lei hanzi ji qi wenxian baohu yu chuancheng yanjiu 广西少数民族类汉字及其文献保护与传承研究), June 2016–December 2021. We are also grateful for intellectual input and advice from a wide range of people, including Luo Yongxian, Liang Tingwang, Li Jinfang, Du Liping, James Anderson, Frank Muyard, Weera Ostapirat, Wilaiwan Khanittanan, Somsonge Burusphat, Trần Trí Dõi, Triệu Thị Mai, Bùi Hải Bình, Jim Chamberlain, Bob Bauer, Jerold Edmondson, Tony Diller, Tim Whitmarsh, James Wilkerson, Paul Katz, Nicola Di Cosmo, Julian Ward, Zev Handel, Sun Laichen, and the late Fan Honggui, Ling Shudong, and Peter Laird. Our loving families have been understanding and supportive during the long period of writing and editing. Heartfelt thanks are due to Sue Jollow, Aidan Holm, Wei Aiying, and Meng Xia. David Holm Taipei, May 2021

Illustrations Maps 1 2 3 4 5

Western Guangxi during the Ming period Place names mentioned in the text 25 Distribution of Liaoge singing 38 Pingguo song markets 42 Pingguo county parishes 46

21

Figure 1

Brigands’ song musical excerpt

54

Plates: Photo-Reproduction of Manuscript Pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Cover 788 Page 1a, lines 1–12 788 Pages 1b–2a, lines 13–36 789 Pages 2b–3a, lines 37–60 789 Pages 3b–4a, lines 61–84 790 Pages 4b–5a, lines 85–108 790 Pages 5b–6a, lines 109–132 791 Pages 6b–7a, lines 132–156 791 Pages 7b–8a, lines 157–180 792 Pages 8b–9a, lines 181–204 792 Pages 9b–10a, lines 205–228 793 Pages 10b–11a, lines 229–252 793 Pages 11b–12a, lines 253–276 794 Pages 12b–13a, lines 277–300 794 Pages 13b–14a, lines 301–324 795 Pages 14b–15a, lines 325–348 795 Pages 15b–16a, lines 349–372 796 Pages 16b–17a, lines 373–396 796 Pages 17b–18a, lines 397–420 797 Pages 18b–19a, lines 421–444 797 Pages 19b–20a, lines 445–468 798

xii 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

illustrations Pages 20b–21a, lines 469–492 798 Pages 21b–22a, lines 493–516 799 Pages 22b–23a, lines 517–540 799 Pages 23b–24a, lines 541–564 800 Pages 24b–25a, lines 565–588 800 Pages 25b–26a, lines 589–612 801 Pages 26b–27a, lines 613–636 801 Pages 27b–28a, lines 637–660 802 Pages 28b–29a, lines 661–684 802 Pages 29b–30a, lines 685–708 803 Pages 30b–31a, lines 709–732 803 Pages 31b–32a, lines 733–756 804 Pages 32b–33a, lines 757–780 804 Pages 33b–34a, lines 781–804 805 Pages 34b–35a, lines 805–828 805 Pages 35b–36a, lines 829–852 806 Pages 36b–37a, lines 853–876 806 Pages 37b–38a, lines 877–900 807 Pages 38b–39a, lines 901–924 807 Pages 39b–40a, lines 925–948 808 Pages 40b–41a, lines 949–972 808 Pages 41b–42a, lines 973–996 809 Pages 42b–43a, lines 997–1020 809 Pages 43b–44a, lines 1021–1044 810 Pages 44b–45a, lines 1045–1068 810 Pages 45b–46a, lines 1069–1092 811 Pages 46b–47a, lines 1093–1116 811 Pages 47b–48a, lines 1117–1140 812 Pages 48b–49a, lines 1141–1164 812 Pages 49b–50a, lines 1165–1188 813 Pages 50b–51a, lines 1189–1212 813 Pages 51b–52a, lines 1213–1236 814 Pages 52b–53a, lines 1237–1260 814 Pages 53b–54a, lines 1261–1284 815 Pages 54b–55a, lines 1285–1308 815 Pages 55b–56a, lines 1309–1332 816 Pages 56b–57a, lines 1322–1356 816 Pages 57b–58a, lines 1357–1380 817 Pages 58b–59a, lines 1381–1404 817 Pages 59b–60a, lines 1405–1428 818

illustrations 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Pages 60b–61a, lines 1429–1452 818 Pages 61b–62a, lines 1453–1476 819 Pages 62b–63a, lines 1477–1500 819 Pages 63b–64a, lines 1501–1524 820 Pages 64b–65a, lines 1525–1548 820 Pages 65b–66a, lines 1549–1572 821 Pages 66b–67a, lines 1573–1596 821 Pages 67b–68a, lines 1597–1620 822 Pages 68b–69a, lines 1621–1644 822 Pages 69b–70a, lines 1645–1668 823 Pages 70b–71a, lines 1669–1692 823 Pages 71b–72a, lines 1693–1716 824 Pages 72b–73a, lines 1717–1740 824 Pages 73b–74a, lines 1741–1764 825 Pages 74b–75a, lines 1765–1788 825 Pages 75b–76a, lines 1789–1812 826 Pages 76b–77a, lines 1813–1836 826 Pages 77b–78a, lines 1837–1860 827 Pages 78b–79a, lines 1861–1884 827 Pages 79b–80a, lines 1885–1908 828 Pages 80b–81a, lines 1909–1932 828 Pages 81b–82a, lines 1933–1956 829 Pages 82b–83a, lines 1957–1980 829 Pages 83b–84a, lines 1981–2004 830 Pages 84b–85a, lines 2005–2028 830 Pages 85b–86a, lines 2029–2052 831 Pages 86b–87a, lines 2053–2076 831 Page 87b, lines 2077–2088 832 Blank page, inside of back cover 832 Back cover 833

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Abbreviations BBZXB CT CTSB DHSZD Dian-Qian-Gui EM EMC GDZhWZh GXKChML

Qin Gong 秦公 and Liu Daxin 劉大新, Bei biezi xinbia 碑别字新編 Central Tai Thomas John Hudak, William J. Gedney’s Comparative Tai Source Book Huang Zheng 黄征, Dunhuang suzi dian 敦煌俗字典 Yu Shengxiang 于 勝 祥 et al., Dian-Gui-Qian kasite diqu zhongzi zhiwu minglu 滇桂黔卡斯特地區種子植物名錄 Early Mandarin Early Middle Chinese Guangdong zhiwu zhi 廣東植物志 Zhang Yongqiang 張永強 et al., Guangxi kunchong minglu 廣西昆 蟲名錄

GY HCT HV HYDZD HZCH incl. IPA LHY LMC Li MC MSC Mapping the OZS MYY NT Pb PH PT Snd SWM SWT St.Zh. SYSZP

Guangyun jiaoben 廣韻校本, ed. Zhou Zumo 周祖謨 Li Fang-kuei, A Handbook of Comparative Tai Hán-Việt Hanyu dazidian 漢語大字典 Han-Zhuang cihui 漢壯詞彙 Sawloih Gun-Cuengh including International Phonetic Alphabet Xinbian La-Han-Ying zhiwu mingcheng 新編拉漢英植物名稱 Late Middle Chinese Li Lianjin 李連進, Pinghua yinyun yanjiu 平話音韻研究 Middle Chinese Modern Standard Chinese Holm, Mapping the Old Zhuang Character Script Meng Yuanyao, fieldwork, various dates Northern Tai Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese, and Early Mandarin Pinghua Proto-Tai Gu Zhuangzi zidian 古壯字字典 Sawndip sawdenj Southwestern Mandarin Southwestern Tai Standard Zhuang Liu Fu 劉復 and Li Jiarui 李家瑞, Song Yuan yilai suzi pu 宋元以來 俗字譜

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abbreviations Yinxi YTZZD ZHCH ZhYFYYJ

Zhuangyu fangyan tuyu yinxi 壯語方言土語音系 Jiaoyubu Yitizi zidian 教育部異體字字典 Zhuang-Han cihui 壯漢詞彙 Sawloih Cuengh-Gun Zhang Junru 張均如 et al., Zhuangyu fangyan yanjiu 壯語方言研 究

Zhzh

Zheng-Zhang Shangfang 鄭張尚芳, Shanggu yinxi 上古音系

Ch. clf ftnt. mim.suff. mw onom. sbdy sthg vi vm vt XS series Zh.

Chinese classifier footnote mimetic suffix measure word onomatopoeia somebody something intransitive verb verbal measure word transitive verb Xiesheng 諧聲 series (graphic-phonetic series) Zhuang

Conventions As in the first volume in this series, the English translation, Interlinear Text, and Textual and Ethnographic Notes are presented separately and seriatim. In the interlinear text on pages 114–368, the first line represents the character text of the original manuscript; the second line represents Mr. Huang’s recitation of the text in local Pingguo dialect; the third line a transcription into Zhuangwen; and the fourth line word glosses in English. The manuscript itself is written mainly in a semi-cursive ‘running hand’ style. The character text in the first line of the interlinear presentation replicates some features of this semi-cursive style, but by and large reproduces the relevant characters in regular script, with modifications where appropriate. The manuscript evinces a wide range of semi-cursive forms, and it was neither practical nor necessary to try to represent minute differences in graphic presentation in the interlinear text, since readers can avail themselves of the photo-reproduction of the manuscript at the back of the volume. On the right-hand margin of the interlinear text, the numbers in italics are the page and line numbers in the original manuscript. Readers may use these reference numbers to locate corresponding lines in the photo-reproduced manuscript pages at the back of the volume (pp. 644 ff.). An asterisk (*) at the right-hand margin indicates that this line is discussed in the Ethnographic and Textual Notes. A transcription in Zhuangwen is provided in the third line of the transcription. This will allow readers to cross-check our information with a range of dictionaries and other reference works on the Zhuang language published in China and elsewhere. A range of such reference works is listed in the Bibliography, including a few reference works on other languages in the Tai-Kadai (Kradai) family. With word glosses we have adopted the practice of providing the basic meaning of each morpheme or word. We have tried as much as possible to avoid giving context-dependent glosses, which often have the effect of masking from readers the identity of the morpheme in question. In cases where glossing with the basic meaning has resulted in lack of clarity, usually because a word is being used in an extended sense, we have added a second gloss, separated from the first by a semicolon. By the same token, if a single-word gloss requires clarification, we have added a second gloss, separating the two words with a comma. In any case, readers interested in understanding the entire lexical field of a morpheme or word are advised to consult the definitions in the Glossary and Concordance. The Concordance also provides a complete listing of all line

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numbers in which the item is found, and also a list of the line numbers for which the item is discussed in the Textual and Ethnographic Notes. Thus for example, under bangx, ‘side, slope, bank (of river)’, the line listing ‘1, 2, 5, … 1779n’ indicates that this lexeme is found on lines 1, 2, 5 and so on in the text, but is also discussed as a possible reading in the note to line 1779, as indicated by the ‘n’ appended to the line number. The character index compiled for this text lists characters alphabetically according to their spelling in Hanyu pinyin. Readers consulting this index will find Vernacular Characters and Zhuang Characters listed separately in two separate sections after the Character Index, arranged by stroke number and stroke type. The English index provides a cross-reference to the relevant entries in the Glossary and Concordance, with Zhuang words in Zhuangwen. The Subject Index provides entries and cross-entries for a wide range of topics, from grammatology to the typology of Zhuang-Han readings to numerous aspects of Zhuang society, culture, history, and geography. The subject matter of the song itself is very wide-ranging, and encompasses any number of different aspects of Zhuang village life, as well as the give-and-take of male-female relationships and matters of the heart. For local people in the intended audience, of course, such matters are taken as a matter of course and are part of the common bread-and-butter of their daily existence, so references to these things in the lyrics are often fleeting, and couched in terms that appeal to local audiences. The task of the Ethnographic Notes is to make these often fleeting references understandable to readers who sit outside this cultural milieu, and the task of the Subject Index is to provide readers with a variety of ways to access information that is of particular interest to them. Thus we also provide an Index of Scientific Names of Plants and Animals. The Zhuang by all accounts have been living in this region for some thousands of years, and can be considered indigenous to the area. This means not only that they are physically acclimatised, but also that they have gradually developed a deep knowledge of the local ecology, including plants and animals but also landforms, soil types, and the vagaries of local weather. This knowledge is also reflected in the song lyrics. For this reason we have made efforts to identify the plants and animals mentioned in the lyrics, and provide brief descriptions and references. With one or two exceptions, we have been able to identify plants and animals in the field, and confirm their nomenclature and local use with local people. Modern and pre-modern place-names have required special care. Another aspect of local knowledge is geographic, but this locally based information needs to be supplemented by other sources of information on historical geo-

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graphy. In contemporary Chinese sources, a possible source of confusion is the practice of referring to administrative villages as villages, when in fact administrative villages are units of basic-level administration that may contain as many as a dozen natural villages. Here we have tried to be as precise as possible, whenever precision is required. It is also often unclear whether references in contemporary sources are to the parish (xiang 乡) level administrative units and all the territory within their boundaries, or to the parish (township) seat of government, usually a small town. The confusion has become exacerbated after some parish-level administrative units were re-designated as ‘towns’ (zhen 镇). Again, we have tried to be as clear as possible, and indicate when and where our Chinese-language sources are referring to one or to the other. Disambiguating contemporary places and place-names from historical place-names has also been necessary.

Introduction The traditional text in this volume, the Fwen caeg or the “Brigands’ Song”, is by any counts a remarkable document, linked to a remarkable ongoing social practice, that of antiphonal song exchanges between men and women in traditional song festivals. Unlike the first text in this series, Hanvueng: The Goose King and the Ancestral King, which is a liturgical text recited only by ordained vernacular priests and performed only on quite specific ritual occasions, the present volume presents a song text circulating widely among ordinary people in Zhuang society. This song text is part of a living tradition in parts of westcentral Guangxi, continuing to change and evolve up to the present moment. The Brigands’ Song is a remarkable document in other ways. One could indeed almost say it was unique. It is part of a larger corpus of songs, but its subject matter is the experiences of ordinary men and women as the menfolk are called up into the army and sent off to war, fighting as native troops under the command of the native chieftain on behalf of the Chinese imperial armies. Chinese literature is full of accounts of war and battles, focussing on the gallant martial exploits of famous generals and brilliant strategists, with, at least in traditional times, little account paid to the experiences of the ordinary soldier. What emerges from the lyrics of this song is a quite different perspective, drawn from the experiences of ordinary people. It is different in another way as well. Sung antiphonally between two men and two women, the song lyrics give equal voice—literally—to the women, and not only at the outset of the poem before the men have left home and marched off to war, but during the entire campaign from beginning to end. Running through the lyrics from start to finish, then, is not only a narrative of disorder, disaster and war, but also the give-and-take of ongoing male-female relationships, complete with teasing, mutual recrimination, stern advice, and expressions of undying devotion. The song lyrics also shed light on matters of great historical interest. The song corpus is said to have taken shape in the Ming dynasty, and the military campaigns that form the background to this song have been identified variously as the mid-Ming campaign against the Eight Forts rebellion led by Wang Shouren 王守仁 (Wang Yangming 王陽明), or as a separate conflict between the different native chieftaincies in west-central Guangxi. Beyond that, the song lyrics provide a fascinating glimpse of the logistical and technical details of such campaigns. The Yuan and Ming are now known to have stood at the beginning of the gunpowder age, and the Ming to have been the first Chinese dynasty to introduce the use of firearms and cannons on an industrial scale in the imperial armies. Evidently the native troops—ancillary forces—were not

© David Holm and Meng Yuanyao, 2022 | doi:10.1163/9789004498754_002

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introduction

unaffected by this technological revolution. The lyrics of the poem give testimony to the local production of saltpetre and charcoal for gunpowder, the use of guns and cannon, and local forging of guns for the native troops. Apart from weaponry, details of other logistical matters such as army rations and transport also are commented on from time to time. The only other comparable document for the entire pre-modern period of Chinese history, it seems, is the Qing-dynasty diary of a Manchu soldier, translated and annotated by Nicola Di Cosmo.1 The Brigands’ Song (Fwen caeg) was first published in Chinese translation in 1963, and is well-known if not famous among Zhuang intellectuals in Guangxi—and reasonably well-known among ethnologists in other parts of China—but it is almost entirely unknown to the international scholarly community. It is the aim of the present work to remedy this situation.

1

Song Markets and Song Culture in Zhuang Society

The Brigands’ Song may be considered a significant work of literature, but it is literature or poetry of a kind that exists not just on paper in various printed editions produced by publishing houses. In the counties of Pingguo 平果 and Tiandong 田東 in west-central Guangxi, it circulates in the form of probably hundreds of handwritten booklets, and the lyrics are sung at seasonal song markets and on other occasions. These manuscript copies are mostly little chapbooks designed to be tucked into a sleeve or pocket and taken along to such occasions when the songs are sung. Behind the text that we present here is a performance culture that has multifarious dimensions, but in performance the song is sung in two-part harmony in the local style, and has musical qualities as well as verbal artistry pleasing to the ear of local audiences. Until very recently, traditional song was found everywhere in Zhuang villages, and was an essential part of the fabric of social and cultural life. At least once a year at customary times, boys and girls of marriageable age and people of other age groups would get together with their friends, troop out to a designated spot, and engage with groups of the opposite sex in antiphonal singing contests, taking turns to sing a stanza of song. The traditional locations for such activity were an open area outside the village such as a river bank, the 1 Nicola Di Cosmo, trans. and annot., The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth-Century China: “My service in the army,” by Dzengšeo, London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Interestingly, the Manchu author of this diary reports on his experiences serving in a Qing military campaign in the Yunnan borderlands, also in the far southern reaches of the empire.

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mouth of a large cave, or an open hillside. These gatherings went by a number of names, of which the most widespread in central Guangxi was ‘song markets’ (Zh. hawfwen).2 Typically singers would first form groups of four or eight boys or girls, then groups of two, and finally, if there was serious interest in each other, boys and girls would continue to sing antiphonally one-on-one. The song melodies were specific to the locality, and the lyrics mostly traditional but with opportunities for improvisation. Such activity allowed young people to test out the cultural knowledge, temperament, and compatibility of their song partner. These singing contests often led to more serious relationships, including lovemaking and long-term liaisons. In most of the western half of Guangxi, it was unusual for boys and girls not to be able to sing in the local style by the time they were in their teens, and not to have ready a repertoire of traditional lyrics and some ability to extemporise. Boys would often also have been provided with little chapbooks of song lyrics, written in a variant of the Chinese script. These song books were small enough to be tucked up a sleeve, and could be pulled out and quickly consulted when in need. The song repertoire in each locality was not confined to wooing songs: there were ceremonial songs for almost any occasion, such as wedding songs, funeral songs, house-building songs, drinking songs, songs for particular festivals, calendrical songs, and songs commemorating historical events.3 Even on other occasions in everyday life there was a tendency in rural Zhuang society to use song where other cultures would use speech, so strong was the tendency to burst into song. If strangers met on the road, they would often greet each other with song, asking each other where they were from and where they were going.4 Testing each other in song provided important clues as to the identity of the other party. All these practices formed the cultural and social basis for versifying and song-making in Zhuang traditional society, including the widespread ability to sing and make up songs for any occasion. Even now, among urban-dwelling Zhuang people, a person who is able to sing well in the traditional style and make up song lyrics extempore is regarded with great respect. Stylistically, Zhuang songs and lyrics are fundamentally different from those of the Han Chinese. Most Zhuang can also sing Chinese songs in the Chinese

2 See Pan Qixu 潘其旭, Zhuangzu gexu yanjiu 壯族歌墟研究, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1991. 3 See esp. Nong Minjian 農敏堅 and Tan Zhibiao 譚志表, eds., Pingguo liaoge 平果嘹歌, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 5 vols., 2005. 4 Xin Gu 辛古, ‘Shange wen lu’ 山歌問路, in Zhuangzu fengqing lu 壯族風情錄, ed. Nanning diqu wenlian 南寧地區文聯 et al., Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1990, p. 8.

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style, but distinguish between the two by giving them different names.5 Zhuang singing in the traditional style is called eu fwen (‘sing + Zhuang airs’), while Chinese singing is called ciengq go (‘sing + Chinese songs’).6 In these two phrases, both the noun ( fwen versus go) and the verb (eu versus ciengq) are different. This highlights the fact that Zhuang singing uses different modes and cadences, different voice production techniques, has different musical phrase structures, and frequently employs two-part and in some places even threepart harmony.7 Traditional Chinese singing, on the other hand, typically lacks harmony altogether. The difference is so striking that any Han Chinese people listening to Zhuang singing will recognise immediately that what they are hearing comes from an entirely different song culture. Zhuang song is different not just stylistically, but also rests on social practices which are fundamentally different from those of the Han Chinese. In Chinese families, and among the more sinified Zhuang, it used to be the normal expectation that marriages between boys and girls of marriageable age would be arranged by their parents, so as to ensure that there was an appropriate match in social standing and wealth, referred to as 門當户對 mén dāng hù duì. Children or unmarried youths and girls were not allowed to form their own relationships. In Zhuang society, however, the underlying pattern and practice in many areas was for youths and girls to establish their own love relationships through the practice of antiphonal singing at song markets and on other occasions. By testing each other in song, unmarried young people could explore the temperament, background, knowledge, skills, and compatibility of their singing partners, as well as their degree of mutual sexual attraction. If they were sufficiently interested, they could head up into the surrounding forest, away from the crowd, and engage in sexual intercourse.8 Both youths and girls were expected to have a number of singing partners before marriage, and to have intercourse with any number of them. Even if a young couple were married, the young woman continued to reside in her natal home, and not to move

5 D. Holm, ‘The Tao among the Zhuang: Imported and Indigenous Aspects of Zhuang Ritual’, Minsu quyi 民俗曲藝 117 (Jan 1999), 380. 6 The words for Chinese-style singing are themselves Han loan-words, from chàng gē 唱歌. 7 For numerous examples see Fan Ximu 範西姆, ed.-in-chief, Zhuangzu minge 100 shou 壯族 民歌 100 首, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 2009, which comes complete with two CD s. 8 This was well within the bounds of acceptable behaviour in Zhuang society. Often lovers in this situation would stick a twig upright in the middle of the forest track, as a warning to any other passers-by not to wander into the forest nearby. There was a cultural tendency also to associate sexual intercourse with the forest, rather than the bedroom.

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into her husband’s house until after the birth of the woman’s first child.9 It is these dynamics that we find reflected in the verses of the song in the present volume. So it would not be an exaggeration to say that songs and the ability to sing were an integral part of—and constitutive of—the process of social reproduction in Zhuang society, since they were one of the primary media through which male-female sexual relationships were established and a new generation of child-raising families took shape. The Chinese state historically viewed these practices as barbaric, and many generations of scholar-officials have attempted to stamp them out and promote (or enforce) Chinese-style marriage.10 In the Zhuang areas, too, Chinese officials in recent centuries have promoted the institution of Chinese-style arranged marriage, resulting in an overlay on preexisting primordial practices. The time and manner in which these Chinese practices were introduced would have varied regionally and locally.11 The lyrics here reflect the tension between these two fundamentally incompatible systems. Song contests at song markets used to be widespread throughout the western half of Lingnan, including the whole of Guangxi and, until around the 18th century, western Guangdong as well. In the more sinified districts in eastern Guangxi, such as Guiping 桂平, part of the song repertoire was sung in Chinese, and part in the local language.12 In many of these areas, written songbooks circulated in vast numbers.13 9 10

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See the classic article by Fan Honggui 範宏貴, Tan Qi 談琪, and Gu Youshi 顧有識, ‘Zhuangzu “bu luo fujia” de hunsu’ 壯族“不落夫家”的婚俗, Shehui 社會 1984, 5, 19–21. This started very early. On efforts at the end of the Former Han period to reform marriage practices among the native inhabitants of Jiaozhi 交趾 (modern-day northern Vietnam), see Jennifer Holmgren, Chinese colonisation of northern Vietnam: Administrative geography and political development in the Tongking delta, first to sixth centuries A.D., Canberra: Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University, 1980, pp. 4–6. Over 2,000 people were forcibly married. This topic has yet to be investigated sytematically. For a fieldwork-based account see James Wilkerson, ‘Zhuang Relationship Terminology and Chinese History: Ludong Township, Jingxi County, Southwestern Guangxi’, in Working Papers on Kinship and Economy on the Yun-Gui Plateau, Nankang: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1999, 1–28. E.g. in the 18th-century collection of song texts by Li Tiaoyuan 李調元, the Yuefeng 粤風. See Shang Bi 商璧, ed., Yuefeng kaoshi 粤風考釋, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1985. See the description of the cave shrine of Liu Sanmei 劉三妹 in Yangchun 陽春 in the 17th century Guangdong xinyu 廣東新語 juan 8, which mentions ‘trunkfuls’ of songbooks donated by worshipping song artists. The same passage makes it clear that a vibrant song culture was found throughout Guangdong and Guangxi, and included the Yao and Han as well as the Zhuang. For a translation of the passage, see Holm, Recalling Lost Souls:

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The musical style and structure of these traditional songs varied from place to place throughout this vast area. Typically in any one area, one song style would be dominant in local song markets. For instance, in and around the county town of Tianyang 田陽, and in the villages along the Youjiang 右江 River valley, the song genre fwen Nganx (Tianyang diao 田陽調 ‘Tianyang mode’) was current, to the exclusion of other song styles.14

2

Liaoge, the Brigands’ Song, and Its Original Discovery

One of these local song genres, found to the east of the area in which ‘Tianyang mode’ is current, goes by the name of Liaoge 嘹歌. While the features of Liaoge will be discussed in greater depth later on in this introduction, it is important to note here that Liaoge is unusual among the regional song genres in Guangxi in having a large repertoire of song cycles with fixed lyrics, the Brigands’ Song among them. Both Liaoge and the Brigands’ Song first came to the notice of the scholarly community in Guangxi as a result of a report from Tiandong county, describing what was a quite distinctive large-scale song market at Yangyan 仰 岩 in the eastern part of the county. Yangyan is actually the name of a cave, called Gamjnyang in Zhuang, located halfway up the side of a cliff in the administrative village of Dingguang 定廣 in Silin zhen 思林鎮. Silin is the easternmost town in Tiandong on the northern bank of the Youjiang River. At the entrance to the cave, on the 29th day of the second lunar month every year, people would come flocking from near and far to attend the song market and make offerings at the Taipingjiao 太平醮 Ritual of Retreat. The ritual was conducted by ritual masters (shīgōng 師公) to pray for the release of wandering spirits. People reportedly would also visit the cave and recall that their ancestors had taken refuge there. According to local song artists and elders, during the Ming dynasty the whole region had suffered grievously from turmoil caused by military campaigns and famine, and people were unable to live in peace. One year the battles raged with particular ferocity, engulfing many counties, and people had fled to Yangyan in great numbers in order to seek refuge. After peace finally returned, they went back to their home villages and started to put their lives back together. Such was the scale of this particular disaster, though, that people reportedly felt that

14

The Baeu Rodo Scriptures, Tai Cosmogonic Texts from Guangxi in Southern China, Bangkok: White Lotus Publishing Co., 2004, pp. 205–206. D. Holm, fieldwork in Bama and Tianyang, April 1993.

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they should not forget it or the people who had died, and so they decided to commemorate it each year on the 29th of the second month. In most years this was the last day in the second month of the lunar calendar, and was an auspicious day. On this day, they would bring offerings along to the Ritual of Retreat, partly in remembrance of the dead and partly to pray for peace in the year ahead.15 After the ritual, people would gather in groups and sing antiphonally, and this too became a customary observance, held every year. It is significant that the Brigands’ Song was said to be the one song that had to be sung every year without fail.16 There are two things about these reports that need to be explained here. First, field investigations in the early days after the Cultural Revolution were conducted on a county by county basis, and local officials in Tiandong were not necessarily aware of local customs in neighbouring counties. Because the local people in the Yangyan area were reportedly gathering to commemorate what had happened to their own ancestors, it was easy to jump to the conclusion that the epicentre of Liaoge song culture and the Brigands’ Song was also located in eastern Tiandong county. It was also easy to accept local people’s accounts and interpret the lyrics of the Brigands’ Song as a record of actual historical events. These ideas were current for many years among intellectuals in Guangxi, but as we shall see later in this introduction, they have since been supplanted by a different narrative based on an abundance of new information. Secondly, it is worth noting that the purpose of the Ritual of Retreat was to rescue the souls of the men who had died on the battlefield. Throughout the Guangxi area, it is held that the souls of people who died unnatural deaths wander in a kind of limbo-like spiritual wilderness, and remain dangerous to living people until rescued from this condition and returned to their rightful resting place in the sky. Such rituals continue to be held to this day in country areas for people who die by accident.17

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Hong Bo 紅波, ‘Liaoge Chang liluan de shidai beijing yu yishu tese’ 嘹歌唱離亂的時代 背景與藝術特色, in Nong Guanpin 農冠品 et al. eds.-in-chief, Lingnan wenhua yu Bai Yue minfeng 岭南文化與百越民風, Nanning: Guangxi jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992, pp. 303– 304. According to Hong Bo, people came to attend the ritual from as far afield as Mashan 馬山, Pingguo, Long’an 隆安, Tiandong and Tianyang counties (ibid. p. 304). Chen Ju 陳駒, ‘Zhuangzu Zeige de shidai beijing he ta yishu shang de xiaci’ 壯族賊歌的 時代背景和它藝術上的瑕疵, in Nong Guanpin, op. cit., p. 287. See Holm, ‘Unnatural Death and its Ritual Treatment among the Zhuang and Bouyei’, Minsu quyi 民俗曲藝 130 (Jan 2001), 125–142. See also David Holm and Meng Yuanyao, Hanvueng: the Goose King and the Ancestral King, An Epic from Guangxi in Southern China, Leiden: Brill, 2015, Introduction pp. 9–15.

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The Chiefly Domains

The historical milieu to which the Brigands’ Song originally belongs is one in which the core political units in Zhuang society were the native chieftaincies (土司 tǔsī), through which the Chinese imperial state exercised indirect rule. Administratively, before modern times, the west-central area of Guangxi along the Youjiang River was a congeries of small chieftaincies, based in flatbottomed mountain valleys suitable for wet-rice cultivation. Apart from the land along the Youjiang River, most of these valleys were small in extent, and hemmed around by hills and limestone karst mountains. Amalgamation of these native chieftaincies into the form of Chinese-style counties was very gradual, and only finally complete in the mid-twentieth century. The Chinese state may have ‘conquered’ Lingnan under the Qin, in a campaign beginning in 219BCE, but for many centuries the state presence was effectively confined to administrative centres and military outposts along major rivers, punctuated by military campaigns large and small and augmented by flows of refugees and migrants from the north.18 Some of the more accessible of these chieftaincies were ‘bridled and haltered’ during the Tang,19 but the main increase in state presence in the western and southwestern part of present-day Guangxi came with the Song, in the aftermath of the suppression of the Nong Zhigao 儂智高 rebellion and the sudden realisation by the Song court that they faced a military threat from the newlyindependent kingdom of Đại Cổ Việt (Vietnam).20 Many existing chieftaincies were brought into client relationships with the Song court at that time, and others were newly founded, mostly too small to pose a security threat to the

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Lingnan 岭南 (‘South of the Ranges’) is a term used to refer to the present-day provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, which lie to the south of the Wuling 五岭 mountain range. The Qin 秦 ruled China between 221 to 206 BCE, and their invasion of the far south, beginning in 219BCE, took over five years to complete. For a brief overview of the gradual extension of Chinese state power in Guangxi during early centuries, see Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors, De Kalb: Southeast Asia Publications, Northern Illinois University, 2003, pp. 164–168. Up until the Yuan dynasty, the term ‘bridled and haltered’ ( jīmí 羈縻) was used to refer to non-Chinese areas brought into what at first were fairly loose client relationships with the Chinese state. See Liu Tong 劉統, Tangdai jimi fuzhou yanjiu 唐代羈縻府州研究, Xi’an: Xibei daxue chubanshe, 1998. See James Anderson, The Rebel Den of Nùng Trí Cao: Loyalty and Identity along the SinoVietnamese Frontier, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007. See also An Guolou 安 國樓, Songchao zhoubian minzu zhengce yanjiu 宋朝周邊民族政策研究, Taipei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1997, pp. 79–84.

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Chinese state. Many of these client statelets survived until the Qing, and some even into the early 20th century. In the Guangxi area almost all of these client states were ruled by Taispeaking chiefly lineages. The societies over which they ruled were stratified, with various ranks of people both free and un-free, and with people in the surrounding mountains brought into various kinds of trading and other relationships. In the local language these political units were known as luegguek ‘valley kingdoms’ or biengz ‘domains’, the latter an old Zhuang term corresponding to Chinese 邦 bāng ‘country’. Biengz is actually the term that best corresponds to the Tai term müöng ‘domain’, current in the Tai areas throughout mainland Southeast Asia.21 In Chinese-language sources, however, the term usually used to refer to these political units is 洞 dòng, referring not to a cave but a small mountain valley.22 We have described the chief characteristics of these Tai-style polities in a series of articles.23 One of their primary features was that they were militarised societies, with a feudal-style relationship between ruler and commoners that required mature-age males to fight in the army when required, in exchange for the right to till the land. The hunting and fishing skills common among men in these societies were brought into full play.24 The Tai were fierce fighters, and were acclimatised to the southern terrain and climate. Starting in the Song dynasty, the Chinese state came to rely on these ‘native troops’ (土兵 tǔbīng), not just in its southern campaigns but to deal with emergencies elsewhere in the empire.25 In effect, these societies became Gurkha regimes, providing battlehardened troops to the empire.

21 22

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24 25

On ‘valley kingdoms’, see Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, pp. 97–98. This term is thought to derive from a word in the native Tai (Zhuang) language, but it is only used to refer to political units in Chinese-language sources, and not in Zhuang texts or spoken language. Various ideas have been put forward about its etymology. The best candidate is doengh, which means ‘flat land, fields’. See for example Holm, ‘Mogong and Chieftaincy in western Guangxi and Southeast Asia’, Asian Ethnicity 18:2 (2017), 173–189. See also Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors, pp. 165–171. On hunting, see Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, pp. 249, 273, and 276–277; on fishing, see ibid., pp. 219–249. See Holm, ‘Linguistic Diversity along the China-Vietnam Border’, Linguistics of the TibetoBurman Area 33.2 (October 2010), 18–32. It was found that troops recruited from the north or central China very quickly fell ill in the south, owing to the humidity, heat, and tropical miasma.

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The Narrative

The Brigands’ Song can be seen as documenting in poetic-narrative form the lived experience of war and upheaval in the Zhuang cultural zone during late imperial times. It re-tells what ordinary people suffer in times of war, strife, and general turmoil, but also what they have to do to get through such times. The opening verses recall that the men and women song partners have known each other since childhood, have played together, and when older have gone up to work with each other in the hills. They also go into the market town together, have a meal, and buy various items in the shops. In the market town there is a proclamation, a general call-up of men to serve as native troops. Another document arrives, with the men’s names on it. They hear various rumours, saying that this or that place is going to erupt in turmoil. They consider various options, and the women urge the men not to go. They notice a series of ill omens, indicating that war and strife are on their way. They hear rumours about ferocious brigands, and rehearse various measures for self-protection: bricking up the walls and village gate, taking in the pigs and chickens, and going up to the cliff-tops and building fortifications, where they can gather if necessary. They discuss running away, and how they would have to carry their children on their backs, put some rice in a bag, put the chickens in fowl cages, and flee their native place. They rehearse the names of a list of way-stations along the road to safety. Finally, though, the men realise that they have no choice but to go off on campaign, leaving their wives at home. The men prepare to take leave of their wives and families, and the men and women warn each other to behave properly while they are separated. The men hire craftsmen to come and forge guns and swords for them, and ask their wives to make things for them: cloth helmets, tunics, trousers, socks, and puttees. They issue parting instructions to their wives and children, and set out. Their wives warn them not to take up with any women while they are away. The men on campaign kill a chicken and make offerings to the banner, swearing an oath to defend each other. The army then marches off, with some men on horses, some on foot, and the native chieftain in a sedan chair. The men tell of the dangers of marching in mountainous terrain, with their horses slipping on rocky mountain tracks, encountering rain and mist and having no food to eat. Both men and women recount the pain of being separated from each other, thinking of each other constantly but not being able to see each other. The women also voice concern about all of the jobs left undone in the fields. The men march for nine days, arriving in Silin, some going by boat. The ultimate destination is Guangdong. The army marches without stopping, with banners fluttering and men and horses crowded together. They finally reach their des-

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tination after eight days’ march. The men tell of further hardships on campaign: crossing over mountain passes, contracting lice and bedbugs, having too few bullets, and having insufficient rations. The men make camp and beseige a city. They peddle fruit and cakes in order to make some money. A battle is briefly described, with the men charging through a palisade and killing people with their swords. Finally, the chieftain of Tianzhou gives the order to pull back his troops, and the soldiers retreat with their horses. Various hardships then ensue. The men have to hand back their helmets and their guns, and have to have their names struck off the list. When the order to retreat comes they are on top of a karst peak, surrounded by thorn bushes and with no clear way to get down. Coming down they find a pig and a cockerel to kill and make offerings to the wandering spirits of their dead comrades, which leaves them free to return home. But they are left without any means of doing so. They find themselves having to sell their guns, horses and various items of clothing along the way in order to be able to get enough to eat. They finally return home penniless, and are re-united with their women. Once at home and together at last, they roll down the gate and bang in the nail. Running through this narrative is the theme of loving relationships between the men and women, starting with playing together as children, living and working together in peacetime, then growing signs and portents of a time of impending disorder, then the call for mobilisation, and deliberations about various options, whether to flee or take to the hills. It goes on to rehearse the final instructions they give each other before the men leave on campaign. Then follows a long period of separation, distress and hardship, but the antiphonal song format allows the continuation of dialogue even though the men and women are far apart and the men are in the midst of battle. Finally the men return home and the couples are re-united.

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Pair Bonding

In addition to the narrative content of the song relating to the military campaign, then, there is another layer of content relating to the ongoing give-andtake of the relationships between the men and the women. This pervades the song cycle from beginning to end, from the very first pair of stanzas onwards. The song lyrics evidently reflect the kinds of things that men and women in this society in long-term relationships say to each other—or sing to each other—, but through the repeated rehearsal of these lyrics in public spaces, they also provide men and women with a repertoire, a template, and an arsenal of the kinds of things that they might say to each other. Even in long-term relation-

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ships that are said to be fore-ordained (mention of which may be a strategy in itself), what we can see here is not relationships that are ipso facto taken for granted, or forced by various means to conform to their archetypes, but rather relationships that are continually being re-negotiated, and in the process of becoming. The emotional distance between the men and women is constantly being re-adjusted: now close, now further apart, and, in this song cycle, partly in response to what is reportedly happening to the men on campaign and the women back home.26

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The Title, and the Connotations of ‘Brigand’

The title of the song in Zhuang is Fwen caeg 吩賊, which means ‘song of the brigands’. As mentioned above, the word fwen is the usual Zhuang word for songs sung in the traditional Zhuang style. The word caeg is an old Han loan from 賊 zéi ‘bandit’. Editors of the first Chinese edition changed this title to Chang liluan 唱離亂 ‘Song of Parting and Disorder’, possibly because they thought that labelling Zhuang native troops as ‘bandits’ might be misunderstood, or regarded as derogatory. In fact, though, usage in Zhuang follows the centuriesold understanding of the word, whereby ‘people who kill people are zéi 賊, and people who steal things are thieves (盜 dào)’. Indeed, in this song the men do sing about how they break into a walled city and kill people, so the word is apt. There was also a distinction made between native troops, who were recruited for specific campaigns by the native chieftain, and regular troops in the imperial armies, who are called 兵 bīng ‘soldiers’. The men in the song refer to themselves and their activities while serving the native chieftain as guh caeg ‘doing [what a] brigand [does]’, often in self-disparagement or in an ironic sense. That flavour is very difficult to convey to a wider Chinese audience, hence the change of title in the Chinese version. For us, however, ‘brigand’ is usually an appropriate choice.

26

The classic study of the interplay between emotional closeness and tension in family life remains Max Gluckman, Custom and Conflict in Africa, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956. See especially his chapter on ‘Estrangement in the Family’ on pp. 54–80. For a more recent discussion of the dynamics of long-term monogamous relationships, see Linda Stone, Kinship and Gender: An Introduction, Philadelphia: Westview Press, 5th edn., 2014. See esp. Chapter 2, pp. 44–49.

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13

History of Scholarship on Liaoge and the Brigands’ Song

While there is general agreement that both Liaoge and the Brigands’ Song have been in existence for several centuries at least, the genre and the song first came to the attention of local scholars in Tiandong in 1955.27 In that year, Huang Yaoguang 黄耀光 from the Tiandong County Cultural Bureau began to collect materials on the song corpus sung there. What intrigued him was the relatively fixed song corpus and the ubiquitous presence of song booklets, indicating a tradition of song literacy among the local people. He was joined by other local scholars. They also discovered, among the six separate song cycles performed at Yangyan, a corpus of campaign songs purporting to be sung by native troops and their wives. They brought this to the attention of scholars in Nanning, who urged them to continue their work and produce a Chinese translation of the lyrics of the soldiers’ song. This was published in 1963 in the provincial-level literary journal Guangxi wenyi (Guangxi Literature and Art), under the title ‘Song of Parting and Disorder’ (Chang liluan 唱离乱), translated by Huang Yongsha 黄永刹 and Huang Yaoguang.28 Huang Yongsha and Huang Yaoguang’s Chinese translation of the Brigands’ Song was re-published in Shanghai in 1980 as part of a collection of epics and long song texts of Chinese minority peoples.29 Following the establishment of the Guangxi Ancient Manuscripts Editing Office in 1986, more systematic collection of materials ensued.30 The first annotated edition of the Liaoge song texts was based on the song texts current in the Silin area, and published in 1993. This was edited by the Ancient Manuscript Editing Office in Nanning, and included a transcription of the original text, a rendering in the standardised character script of the Gu Zhuangzi zidian 古壮字字典, a transcription into Zhuangwen 壯文 (the official romanisation system), a translation of each line of verse, and accompanying notes.

27

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Zhang Shengzhen 張聲震 ed.-in-chief, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng 1: Qingge 1: Liaoge 壯 族民歌古籍集成 1 情歌 (一) 嘹歌, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1993, Introduction, p. 13. Huang Yongsha 黄永刹 and Huang Yaoguang 黄耀光, ‘Chang liluan: Zhuangzu changshi “Liaoge” zhi wu’ 唱离乱: 僮族长詩《嘹歌》之五, Guangxi wenyi 广西文藝, 1963, 5, 9–26. Huang Yongsha 黄永刹 and Huang Yaoguang 黄耀光, ‘Chang liluan’ 唱離亂, in Shanghai wenyi chubanshe 上海文藝出版社 ed., Zhongguo minjian changshi xuan di’er ji 中 國民間長詩選第二集, Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1980, pp. 611–690. Zhang Shengzhen, loc. cit. The full name of this body was Guangxi Zhuangzu zizhiqu minzu guji zhengli chuban guihua lingdao xiaozu ji bangongshi 廣西壯族自治區民 族古籍整理出版規劃領導小組暨辦公室.

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The wider scholarly community in Guangxi was aware of the cultural significance of Liaoge, but information about it was for a long time confined to the Tiandong location, and scholars supposed that Tiandong was the centre of the tradition and the place where it had originated. This is understandable, given that fieldwork investigations were confined to individual counties. This understanding was later transformed when scholars became aware of the extent and depth of the Liaoge singing tradition at song markets in the neighbouring county of Pingguo, to the east. Zheng Chaoxiong provides some interesting details:31 On the question of the core area of Liaoge, people had only limited access to materials, and knew only that Tiandong had Liaoge; very few people knew that Pingguo and Mashan 馬山 also had Liaoge. So people formed the view that the Yangyan song market in Tiandong was the place where Liaoge originated—and since it was the place where Liaoge originated, naturally it was also the core of this cultural phenomenon. Later, scholars studying Liaoge shifted their attention to Pingguo, and gradually changed their view on this question. Knowledge about Liaoge in Pingguo had its beginnings at the beginning of the Reform Period. In 1978, the relevant cultural bodies in the Autonomous Region government got the funding together and organised a team of 18 cultural cadres from the Pingguo Cultural Bureau (Pingguo wenhuaguan 平 果 文 化 館) and the culture stations (wenhuazhan 文化站) of each commune to conduct a thorough investigation of the antiphonal singing of Liaoge in every part of Pingguo. They collected Liaoge songbooks with a total of over 20,000 lines. Many scholars, after seeing the songbooks from Pingguo, came to a new understanding of where the cultural core area of Liaoge was located. A key figure in the consolidation of this new understanding and change of focus was Lan Hong’en 藍鴻恩. Lan was an authoritative figure in the study of Zhuang literature, and in his 1963 article ‘Ai min sheng zhi duo jian’ 哀民生 之多艱 (‘A lament for the hardships of people’s lives’) he had helped establish the view that Tiandong and specifically Yangyan was the centre of the Liaoge tradition. But even in that article he had expressed doubts, noting that the lyr-

31

Zheng Chaoxiong 鄭超雄, ‘Guanyu Zhuangzu “Liaoge” wenhua zhongxindi de tantao— Zhuangzu “Liaoge” wenhua yanjiu zhi san’ 關於壯族嘹歌文化中心地的探討—壯族 嘹歌文化研究之三, Guangxi minzu yanjiu 廣西民族研究 2005, 2 (r80), 98.

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ics of the Brigands’ Song were most vehement in their condemnation of ‘the native chieftain of Guide’. Guide 歸德 was a small chieftaincy on the eastern side of Pingguo. And since the lyrics were targetted in this way, he had suggested that the protagonists in the song might also be from the same area. Later, after the large numbers of songbooks from Pingguo were brought back to Nanning, Lan Hong’en carefully inspected them, and came to the conclusion that Pingguo was indeed the core area of the Liaoge tradition. He articulated this new finding in his contribution to the new Comprehensive History of the Zhuang (Zhuangzu tongshi 壯族通史), then being compiled under the chief editorship of Zhang Shenzhen 張聲震. He wrote that during the Ming dynasty,32 There appeared the long narrative poem of the Zhuang, the Chang liluan ‘Song of Parting and Disorder’ [i.e. the ‘Brigands’ Song’]. Chang liluan is a segment from the Liaoge. Liaoge is the name of a song genre current in Pingguo county on the middle reaches of the Youjiang River. It includes three kinds of content: the first is Rige 日歌 ‘Day Songs’, the second is Yege 夜歌 ‘Night Songs’, and the third is Sange 散歌 ‘Miscellaneous Songs’ … Chang liluan is current over a fairly broad area, with Pingguo as the centre, then upstream along the Youjiang River to Tiandong, Tianyang, and Bose 百 色. But it is also transmitted and sung in areas within the catchment area of the Hongshui 紅水 River such as Mashan and Bama 巴馬. After this, mainstream opinion among Zhuang scholars in Guangxi shifted, and scholarly attention was increasingly focussed on Pingguo. The early 2000s saw a spate of articles devoted to Liaoge in Pingguo in its various aspects, many of them based on fieldwork. A high point in this trend was a series of articles by senior scholars in Nanning attached to the provincial-level Guangxi Nationalities Research Institute (Guangxi minzu yanjiusuo 廣西民族研究所), which appeared in the journal Guangxi minzu yanjiu 廣西民族研究 in 2005. Scholarly attention continued, and received a fresh dose of energy when Liaoge was approved in 2008 as a national-level Non-Material Cultural Heritage item. This was announced on 7th June 2008. Subsequently, the local government in Pingguo organised a team of administrators, scholars and artists to take part in editing a definitive Pingguo Liaoge 平果嘹歌 series in five volumes. Then,

32

Zhang Shengzhen 張 聲 震, ed.-in-chief, Zhuangzu tongshi 壯 族 通 史, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1996, vol. 2 p. 771.

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English translations of the Pingguo Liaoge were prepared and published by the Baise University (Baise Xueyuan 百色學院).33 Subsequently, over a hundred articles and dissertations have appeared, some of them devoted to specific aspects of traditional Liaoge such as music, but others devoted to issues of branding, modernisation, and the use of Liaoge as teaching material in the schools. For us, one advantage of all this scholarly attention is that a great deal of research has now been published on Liaoge, on the Brigands’ Song, and on the regional culture of the Pingguo area, much of it based on investigations in the field. We have space here to report on only a small fraction of this research output, some of which is of excellent quality. Of course, one might question some of the terms in which this discussion has been phrased. Pingguo is a modern county, and assigning Liaoge to ‘Pingguo’ could be seen as anachronistic. If in fact the tradition dates from the Ming or Qing, it might be better to say that the Liaoge tradition had its origins in Si’en 思恩 prefecture (on which see below), which encompassed a wider area, including what is now eastern Tiandong and western Mashan as well as Pingguo. Secondly, the notion of a ‘core area’ or epicentre is problematic, if too much attention is concentrated on where the form began and ‘who owns it’. Of course, local people may have local stories about where the singing tradition or the songbooks came from. But it would be much more constructive to know the actual geographic extent of Liaoge singing, a question on which there is now more information. Finally, we need to remember that all of the areas in which Liaoge is current are equally ‘central’ for the people concerned, regardless of the degree of scholarly attention.

8

Historical Background: Native Chieftaincies in the Ming

There is general consensus that the Brigands’ Song describes historical circumstances in Guangxi in the Ming period (1368–1644). Leo Shin, in his book The Making of the Chinese State, has documented in some detail the ways in which the Chinese state attempted to extend its reach and consolidate its power in Guangxi province during the Ming dynasty.34 Unlike previous dynasties, par-

33 34

Li Changxin 李常新, ‘Guangxi Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge geshu de chuanbo xingtai yanjiu’ 廣西平果壯族嘹歌歌書的傳播形態研究, Yinyue chuanbo 音樂傳播 2014, 1, 29. Leo K. Shin, The Making of the Chinese State: Ethnicity and Expansion in the Ming Borderlands, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. I say ‘attempted’ advisedly, because Shin’s own sources show that the Ming saw a very considerable expan-

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ticularly the Yuan, the Ming left behind a relative wealth of surviving historical records and documents, and it is possible to examine this long interaction much more closely, at least from the points of view emanating from official Chinese sources and Chinese scholar-officials acting or claiming to act on behalf of the state. The usual labels for such processes in international scholarship include assimilation, acculturation, pacification, and so on, some of which echo the Chinese state’s own consistent rhetoric about its civilising mission. One of the strengths of Leo Shin’s study is his recognition that such processes were two-sided and interactive, with non-Han peoples or their rulers making their own separate accommodations with the military and cultural presence of the Chinese state. An understanding of the inner workings of the native chieftaincies themselves, and even basic facts about their internal social structure, need to be sought elsewhere. Ming dynasty Chinese sources provide only sketchy accounts of such matters and isolated snippets of useful information, almost always from an outside perspective. In fact, it is really only with the social history investigation reports of the 1950s that one finds detailed and systematic accounts of the way these societies functioned internally.35 These reports admittedly are based on an historical-materialist epistemology, and are particularly thorough in their documentation of the ‘economic base’, including patterns of land ownership and land use. Of course, land ownership and land use are matters of vital importance. But the reports also discuss other matters such as patterns of chiefly governance and cultural and religious practices. Jennifer Took’s study is based in large part on the information contained in one of the most comprehensive of these reports, the report on the native chieftaincy of Anping 安 平 in present-day Daxin 大 新 county.36 The social history investigation reports themselves were very clear that the Zhuang chiefly domains constituted a form of feudalism, and that, thanks to their special relationship with the Chinese court, the native chieftains came to exercise a form of untrammeled power that made them in effect ‘local emperors’ (tu huangdi 土 皇帝).

35

36

sion of native chieftaincy to the eastern part of Guangxi, and the weakening or atrophy of Ming military garrisons after the initial insurgence of state power. These were the shehui lishi diaocha 社會歷史調查, reports of field investigations conducted in the early years of the People’s Republic. Investigations were conducted in all provinces in which there were minority peoples. The subsequent reports were first published internally in mimeograph form, then published openly during the 1980’s. Jennifer Took, A Native Chieftaincy in Southwest China: Franchising a Tai Chieftaincy under the Tusi System of Late Imperial China, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005.

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Fortunately we are in a position to triangulate information from these social history reports with insights derived from accounts of the Tai-speaking chieftaincies more broadly, including reports from Sipsong Panna in southern Yunnan and northern mainland Southeast Asia. A relatively clear picture emerges of societies that were based on a political culture that operated on principles fundamentally different from those of Han Chinese society or the Chinese state. That picture is one of stratified societies, in which social rank was hereditary. As a rule, children born into a family of commoners remained commoners, while those born into a family of serfs remained serfs. The chiefly lineage formed the highest social rank within these societies, the aristocracy as it were. Then there were other families, aristocratic but of lesser rank than the chiefly lineages, who performed specific functions on behalf of the chiefly court, such as hereditary priestly lineages that performed court rituals on behalf of the chiefly domain.37 The chiefly families generally intermarried only with other aristocratic families.38 Below the aristocratic strata there were other social ranks and gradations, both free and unfree. Georges Condominas has outlined the system of ranks in the Tai chieftaincies of northwestern Vietnam, based on field reports by Vietnamese ethnologists.39 The social categories for Anping as described by Jennifer Took differ in detail, but here also there were classes of local officials and headmen, house-slaves, free townspeople, and serfs, with gradations among serfs depending on whether they were farming ‘manor fields’ or farmland with other specific corvée or tax requirements.40 Villages within the domain were thus not all in the same institutional category, but differed in status and obligations. At the village level, Zhuang society had a tendency to form coeval same-sex cohorts. Boys and girls who grew up together and played together developed relations of trust (or at least mutual knowledge) that carried over into adult life, and youths and girls venturing outside the village could often be seen in separate bands, walking along the roads.41 Within the chiefly lineages, similarly,

37 38

39

40 41

David Holm, ‘Mogong and Chieftaincy’, 183–184. James Wilkerson, ‘The Wancheng Native Officialdom: Social Production and Social Reproduction’, in David Faure and Ho Ts’ui-p’ing, eds., Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2013, pp. 187–205. Georges Condominas, ‘Essay on the Evolution of Thai Political Systems’, in Georges Condominas, From Lawa to Mon, from Saa’ to Thai, Canberra: Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, 1990, pp. 46–49. Jennifer Took, op. cit., pp. 123–173. Holm, fieldwork, Shanglin county, January–February 1993; and Nakang village, Dahua county, January 1997.

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relations of trust were built up on the basis of long-term face-to-face relationships, leading to a form of entourage politics at the highest level in the chiefly domains. In the Tai chieftaincies of mainland Southeast Asia, it was explicitly recognised that the man chosen to hold the chieftaincy was primus inter pares, and could be removed and replaced by the lineage elders in cases of malfeasance or disability. During the Ming, one of the main differences from previous practice was in tightening up the requirements for chiefly succession. The Ming instituted a system requiring that the candidate for succession to the chieftaincy be the eldest son of his father, and the son of his father’s principal wife, rather than of any of his father’s other wives. In Chinese law such a person was referred to as 嫡長子 dízhǎngzǐ ‘the eldest son in the principal line’.42 This amounted to imposing Chinese ideas of orthodox succession on non-Chinese family structures. There were other requirements for enfeoffment by the court: the new candidate for the chieftaincy had to hand over the official seal of the previous chieftain, present tribute gifts, and declare personal loyalty to the emperor.43 To reduce the risk of fraudulent claims and imposters, various documents had to be produced and authenticated. The most important of these was a Chinesestyle lineage register (祖譜 zǔpǔ), demonstrating that the claimant to the chieftaincy was indeed the eldest son in the orthodox line of succession, or a lineage member otherwise legally entitled to the position. Zhuang chiefly families had not previously had a practice of drawing up such documents, but throughout the Ming they were drawn up in great numbers. Typically, they claimed ancestry from one of the Chinese generals who accompanied Di Qing 狄青 on his campaign against Nong Zhigao, or from some other illustrious person from Chinese history. People did this in order to minimise their chances of being deprived of the chiefly succession because of any hint of unorthodoxy in the documents they presented to the court. Perhaps they were not entirely sure what the rules were, or feared that intense scrutiny by malevolent officials might turn up something that could be held against them. For the same reason,

42

43

Tan Qi 談琪, Zhuangzu tusi zhidu 壯族土司制度, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1995, p. 33. These requirements were promulgated quite early in the Ming dynasty, in a series of decrees from the end of the Hongwu 洪武 reign period (1394, 1397). If the son was no longer alive, the position could be inherited by the grandson in the orthodox line. If there was no son or grandson in the orthodox line of succession, a son or grandson in the collateral line could acceed to the position (and so on). Succession rules included women. Tan Qi, loc. cit.

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chieftains instituted the practice of orthodox Chinese rituals at their own courts, and hid any signs of the continuing practice of non-Chinese rituals from Chinese officials (and expunged them from the written record).44 One advantage of claims to Chinese ancestry was that they also made the male children of chiefly lineages eligible to take part in official examinations. If this was sinification or acculturation, it was of a kind intended for outside consumption, and narrowly strategic in purpose. At any rate, claims of Chinese ancestry became so common in the written record that until very recently the Zhuang chiefly lineages were widely supposed to be Chinese, rather than Zhuang. Unravelling these fictitious claims was the work of Zhuang scholars writing in the 1980s and 1990s.45

9

The Youjiang Region during the Ming

During the Ming the Youjiang area came to be dominated by the powerful lords of the Cen 岑 lineage based in Tianzhou 田州, located in modern-day Tianyang.46 The area of present-day Pingguo came to be dominated by Si’enfu 思 恩府, also ruled by a chieftain of the Cen lineage, with its seat of government first at Jiucheng 舊城 in northeastern Pingguo. The region was also dotted with smaller chieftaincies, most of them subordinate to Tianzhou or Si’en. Smaller chieftaincies in the area included Guohua 果化, with its seat of government in the Youjiang river valley in western Pingguo; Guide, with its seat in the centraleastern part of Pingguo; a separate smaller domain of Jiucheng, with its seat in northeastern Pingguo; Encheng 恩城, with its seat at Bangxu 榜墟 in the north of Pingguo; and Xiawang 下旺, with its seat in the present-day town of Haicheng 海城 in the central north of Pingguo. These small domains were ruled over by chieftains of various lineages: Guohua by the Zhao 趙, Guide by the

44

45

46

See for example ‘Lingle xian Zhuangzu shehui lishi diaocha’ 凌樂縣壯族社會歷史調查, in Guangxi Zhuangzu zizhiqu bianjizu 廣西壯族自治區編輯組, ed., Guangxi Zhuangzu shehui lishi diaocha 廣西壯族社會歷史調查, vol. 4. Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1987, pp. 412–413. This volume contains numerous reports giving details of so-called ‘official rituals’ (guānyí 官儀) at the courts of native chieftains. Tan Qi devotes an entire chapter to this question; see ibid. pp. 49–70. See also Taniguchi Fusao 谷口房男 and Bai Yaotian 白耀天, Zhuangzu tuguan zupu jicheng 壯族土官族 譜集成, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1998, passim. Like other chiefly lineages in the western part of Guangxi, the Cen of Tianzhou were ethnically Zhuang, though they laid claim to illustrious Han Chinese ancestry. See Taniguchi Fusao and Bai Yaotian, op. cit., pp. 203–318.

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map 1

21

Western Guangxi during the Ming period

Huang 黄, Jiucheng by the Huang 黄, and Xiawang by the Wei 韋.47 Many of these small chieftaincies survived until the early Republican period: the native chieftaincies of Guohua, Guide, and Jiucheng were combined with other territories to form the new county of Guode 果德 only in August 1915. The native chieftaincy of Shanglin 上林 in eastern Tiandong and Xiawang were combined

47

See Gong Yin 龔 蔭, Zhongguo tusi zhidu 中 國 土 司 制 度, Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe, 1992, pp. 1079–1080, and 1099–1101.

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into a new county of Silin 思林 in 1918.48 A number of these chieftaincies are mentioned in the Brigands’ Song in this volume, and the chieftain of Guide is criticised as ‘hateful’ because of the arbitrary way he chose to call up his troops.

10

The Brigands’ Song as an Historical Document

One of the points at issue among Guangxi scholars in earlier decades was which of the many military campaigns during the Ming formed the historical background to the Brigands’ Song. Lan Hong’en was one of the first scholars in Nanning to realise the importance of the Brigands’ Song, and he argued that the place-names mentioned in the song—Qiaoli 喬利, Shanglin 上林 and so forth—fitted in with the line of march that would have been taken by armies of native troops being sent to quell the Eight Forts Rebellion of the Yao and Zhuang people in present-day Shanglin and Xincheng 忻城 counties in central Guangxi, a campaign that was directed by Wang Shouren and took place in 1528. Lan also argued that some of the names that appeared in the text could be identified with the names of historical personages that had taken part in the campaign.49 Other scholars disagreed, pointing out that Wang Shouren’s campaign had only lasted one year, unlike the three years mentioned in the song lyrics they had to hand. Chen Ju 陳駒 observed that Tianzhou area had suffered severe and prolonged disturbances during the Ming, and that these were recorded in the Ming History’s ‘Biography of the Native Chieftains’ section. According to that source, the disturbances had begun in 1483, when Cen Pu 岑溥, the native prefectural magistrate of Tianzhou, started a war with his nephew Cen Qin 岑欽, the native subprefectural magistrate of Encheng 恩城. Cen Pu was defeated in the subsequent battle, and Cen Qin sacked Tianzhou and slaughtered its inhabitants. Then in 1490, Cen Qin entered Tianzhou again.

48

49

Pingguo xianzhi 平果縣志, ed. Pingguo xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1997, p. 37. Silin county had its county seat moved to Bangxu and its name changed to Pingzhi 平治 county in 1934. Pingzhi and Guohua were combined to form the modern county of Pingguo in 1951. Qiaoli is just some 15 km to the southwest of the present-day county seat of Mashan, while Shanglin is the name of a county to the east of Mashan and south of Xincheng. For details on the military operations of the ‘Eight Forts Rebellion’ (Bazhai qiyi 八寨起義) see Zhang Yigui 張益桂 and Xu Shuoru 徐碩如, Mingdai Guangxi nongmin qiyi shigao 明代廣西 農民起義史稿, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1988, pp. 64–77. For discussion of Lan Hong’en’s identification of historical personages, see Chen Ju, op. cit., p. 288.

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Fearing retribution from the Ming court, he colluded with Cen Ying 岑應, native prefectural magistrate of Sicheng 泗城 in the northwest, and they agreed to occupy Tianzhou on a joint basis. Cen Ying had already seized eighteen cities including the native chieftaincy of Shanglin 上林 in northwestern Guangxi and Zhenning 鎮寧 in west-central Guizhou. In 1492, Cen Qin killed Cen Ying and his son, but not long afterwards, Cen Qin and his own son were themselves killed by Cen Ying’s younger brother Cen Jie 岑接. After Cen Qin’s death, Cen Pu returned to Tianzhou and resumed the chieftaincy. In 1499, however, he was assassinated by his eldest son Cen Hu 岑猇, who then also took his own life. Fierce fighting between the Tianzhou and Si’en branches of the Cen clan continued until 1505 or so, and involved the repeated sacking of Tianzhou, the looting of its treasury, and the slaughter of over 10,000 people.50 It was this protracted and vicious struggle, argued Chen, that lay behind the commemoration ritual at Yangyan and the lyrics of the Brigands’ Song.51 Such events would indeed involve terrible suffering and trigger widespread popular outrage and condemnation. The pattern of assassination and counterassassination, however, was not an uncommon one in the Tai-style chieftaincies, where the greatest danger to the safety of a chieftain often came from members of his own immediate family or its collateral branches.52 The wholesale slaughter of civilian populations was also not just confined to the Zhuang, but was standard practice in the Ming imperial armies.53 Other scholars suggested that the lyrics of the song might conflate details from a number of different campaigns. Hong Bo suggested, for example, that the repeated mention of Guangdong falling into disorder might reflect a different campaign entirely, that against the Yao rebels at ‘Great Rattan Gorge’ (Datengxia 大藤峽) in eastern Guangxi, a disturbance which did extend to several counties in the far west of Guangdong.54

50 51 52

53 54

Chen Ju, op. cit. pp. 289–290. See Ming shi 明史, ‘Guangxi tusi er’ 廣西土司二, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju edn., pp. 8246–8247. See also Hong Bo, op. cit., who presents a similar argument. On this structural problem see Holm and Meng, Hanvueng, Introduction, pp. 22–24. The Hanvueng ritual itself is conducted to obviate entrenched internecine strife, particularly between brothers. On which see David Holm, ‘Linguistic Diversity’, pp. 25–27. Hong Bo, op. cit., p. 305. On the campaign against the ‘Great Rattan Gorge’ rebels, see Zhang Yigui and Xu Shuoru, op. cit., pp. 78–100; and David Faure, ‘The Yao Wars in the MidMing and Their Impact on the Yao Ethnicity’, in Pamela Kyle Crossley et al., eds., Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity and Frontiers in Early Modern China, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005, pp. 171–189.

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Quite a number of different manuscripts have now become available.55 One could of course carefully scrutinise available songbooks for the place-names they mention, and then compare these lists with what is known about the various military campaigns and disturbances in Guangxi during the Ming and afterwards, but one would find that such listings would be different for different local manuscripts of the Brigands’ Song. A text from Tianyang, totalling some 708 lines, is included in the second volume of traditional songs edited by Zhang Shengzhen.56 The place names mentioned in that version of the song include Hainan, and the song reportedly commemorates the Hainan campaign launched in the 8th year of the Jiajing 嘉靖 reign period (1529) led by the local chieftain Cen Zhi 岑芝.57 In that case, at least, the song lyrics are evidently related to a specific historical campaign. In the present text, the line of march is described only in relatively vague terms. Starting out from line 841 onward, the troops arrive at ‘the domain’ (line 908), then the ‘red slope’, the ‘bald slope’, and the ‘little slope’ (lines 969– 971), ‘down to the boats’ (line 976), and through the ‘narrow mountain pass’ (line 985). Then on line 1001 begin a series of lines describing the first day of the march, the second day, and so on up to day ten. The troops are said to go to the capital on the fourth day (line 1017), and on the sixth day arrive at Zhoulu 周陸 and Qiaoli, places in present-day Mashan county to the east of Pingguo (line 1033). These are the only two specific place-names mentioned, except for the village of Nahai 那海 (line 1178), which is located in the centre of Pingguo. On line 1100 we hear that the troops are going to Guangdong to fight, but there is no description or indication that they actually arrive there. Strictly speaking, in geographic terms, this is rather muddled, with snippets of information originating in actual campaigns combined with what seem to be poetic flourishes. Other texts of the Brigands’ Song may provide more placenames and more coherent accounts of lines of march, but a more fundamental point is that the song lyrics do not need to be very specific about such matters. Zhuang native troops from the Si’en area were involved in almost all of the 55

56 57

See Meng Yuanyao, ‘Manuscripts of the Traditional Song Text “Song of the Brigands”’, in New Directions in Sinoxenic Manuscripts and Scripts, Hamburg: Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg, edp 2021. Zhang Shengzhen 張聲震, ed.-in-chief, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng: Qingge 壯族民歌 古籍集成: 情歌, vol. 2, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1997. Ibid., p. 722. The campaign was bloody and Cen Zhi died on the beach. On the Hainan campaign, see Frederick W. Mote and Denis Twitchett, eds., The Cambridge History of China Volume 7 The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part I, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 382.

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map 2

Place names mentioned in the text

25

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Ming-period campaigns, and each campaign would have been different. In any case the decisions about destinations and routes would have been a matter for the native chieftains to decide in coordination with the imperial armies, rather than the common soldiers. In contrast, there is far more detail about the escape routes from the Pingguo region down to Jiaozhi (Vietnam). The lyrics of the Brigands’ Song may contain historical detail, but that does not mean that they should be read ‘as history’ in any conventional sense. Their truth and social function lie elsewhere.

11

Cultural Development during the Ming

Some of the developments that took place during the Ming were much more positive than the internecine strife recounted above. The conditions for an unusual level of popular literacy in the Pingguo area—the widespread ability to read and write Chinese among the general populace—were also something that took shape during the Ming, and were connected with the administrative history of the area. Before the 5th year of the Zhengtong 正統 reign period (1440), the various sub-prefectures, strongholds (bǎo 堡) and forts (zhài 寨) in the area of present-day Pingguo were subject to Tianzhou prefecture 田州府, itself part of the Youjiang Circuit (Youjiang dao 右江道).58 In the 5th year of the Zhengtong reign, Si’en 思恩 sub-prefecture, with its seat located within the present-day county, was elevated to the status of a prefecture, with a territory that included parts of present-day Pingguo, Wuming 武鳴, Mashan, Dahua 大 化, Long’an 隆安, Tiandong and Tianyang counties. The governing seat of the prefecture from the start was Jiucheng in the central eastern part of present-day Pingguo. In the 7th year of the Zhengtong 正統 reign (1442), however, the seat was moved to Qiaoli in present-day Mashan; then, in the 7th year of the Jiajing 嘉靖 reign period (1528), it was moved again to present-day Fucheng zhen 府 城鎮 in Wuming.59 The first prefectural magistrate of Si’en was Cen Ying 岑瑛. Cen Ying was from Xingning jie 興寧街 in Jiucheng xu 舊城墟, and the son of Cen Yongchang 58

59

The Left and Right River Circuits were units in military administration much wider in scope than the Left and Right River valleys, and included most of the central and western parts of Guangxi. The Left River Circuit included the prefectures of Xunzhou, Nanning, Taiping, and Zhen’an, and the Right River Circuit included Liuzhou, Qingyuan, Si’en, and Sicheng. See Su Jianling 蘇建靈, Ming-Qing shiqi Zhuangzu lishi yanjiu 明清時期壯族 歷史研究, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1993, p. 31. Gong Yin 龔蔭, Zhongguo tusi zhidu shi 中國土司制度史, Chengdu: Sichuan chuban jituan Sichuan renmin chubanshe, 2012, p. 859.

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岑永昌, former sub-prefectural magistrate of Si’en. Cen Ying took over from his father in the 18th year of the Yongle 永樂 reign period (1421). Cen Ying was

canny and shrewd as an administrator, and the domains under his rule were relatively peaceful. He also maintained good relations with the Ming court, for which he was rewarded and promoted numerous times, to positions such as Prefect and Administration Vice Commissioner zhīfǔ cānzhèng 知府參政 and Regional Military Commissioner dū zhǐhuī shǐ 都指揮使. The court also bestowed additional territories on him, so that what was originally a small subprefecture governing a few hundred households grew to become a large jūnmínfǔ 軍民府 governing over two thousand households. This was very unusual at the time. Cen Ying was also diligent in the governance of his domains. He several times petitioned the court to waive land taxes (zǔshuì tiánfù 租稅田賦) and exempt the prefecture from military recruitment. Thus the people under his rule gained a respite from the harsh pressures of life at that time. Cen Ying ruled for 58 years, and died in the 14th year of the Chenghua 成化 reign period (1478). After his death, people in a number of places including Shanxin 山心 and Jiangzhou 江州 (respectively in Guohua 果化 and Matou zhen 馬頭鎮) erected temples in his honour, called either Cenhoumiao 岑侯廟 or Cenhousi 岑侯寺, to commemorate his achievements.60 Cen Ying was attentive to the cultural development of the regions under his jurisdiction. Among the many native sub-prefectures and prefectures, he was the first to establish a Confucian palace of learning (rúxué xuégōng 儒學 學宫), in Si’enfu. According to fascicle 318 of the Ming History: in the twelfth year of the Zhengtong reign period (1447), the court authorities responded to a request from the magistrate of the Native Prefecture of Si’en, Cen Ying, to ‘set up a Confucian school, with an establishment of one professor and four tutors.’ Then, in the fifth year of the Jingtai 景泰 reign period (1454), the Ming court again ‘responded to a request from [Cen] Ying, to set up a temple school (miàoxué 廟學).’ Cen Ying himself was a keen advocate of Han Chinese cultural education, and reportedly “loved learning” (hào xué 好學), “worshipped Confucian learning and was respectful of the Way” (chóng rú jìng dào 崇儒敬 道), and “accumulated a houseful” of books and scholars. He himself was keen practitioner of the literary arts, and inscriptions of his poems can still be seen on the streets of Jiucheng. His influence inspired the younger generation in his lineage and other chiefly lineages. His grandson Cen Jun 岑濬 was said to be quite proficient in the Classics and Histories, and able to intone classical poetry in Chinese and write rhapsodies. Cen Ying’s influence meant that by the mid-

60

Zheng Chaoxiong, op. cit., 99.

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Ming period, the area of present-day Pingguo became a centre for traditional Chinese learning, at least for the upper strata of local society.61 Luo Hantian has pointed out that a hive of cultural activity developed in the environs of Jiucheng, which remained the administrative seat of the sub-prefecture after the prefectural seat was moved to Qiaoli in 1442, and gradually expanded to neighbouring areas.62 It seems that this set of developments was one of the factors that contributed to the formation of a particularly well-developed written culture in the Zhuang villages in the area. Su Jianling has investigated the establishment of schools in the Ming-dynasty native chieftaincies throughout Guangxi, and found that the Si’en Confucian school stands out as one of the most successful.63 Most of them were failures.

12

The Content of the Song: What to Do in Times of Disorder

As previously noted, this version of the Brigands’ Song appears not to be a straightforward historical record of any particular military campaign. It is also worth noting that the first 700 lines of the poem are devoted to what happens before the men set off on campaign. This is just over one third of the poem. Within these 700-odd lines, the possibility of running away as refugees is canvassed at one point, and at another the idea of going up to the tops of the karst peaks and building fortifications. These are mutually exclusive options under normal circumstances. The point though is to see the contents of the song as an inventory of various possible survival strategies. Conveyed in song from one generation to the next, these strategies become a part of ‘cultural memory’, but this is cultural memory in a very specific sense. First, it is not just allowed to flow on from one generation to the next in a casual fashion, but is deliberately

61 62

63

Ibid. Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Sanyue ge pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 三 月歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, Introduction pp. 8–9. Another family of accomplished scholars was the Wang 王 lineage of Danliang bao 丹良堡, who during the Ming and Qing produced over ten outstanding poets, some of whose work was distributed locally in small printed editions and included in the well-known collectanea Yuexi shizai 粤 西詩載. Danliang bao was located in Guantun 貫屯 in the administrative village of Paolie 袍烈 in Taiping 太平 parish. This hamlet was just to the east of the main road between Taiping and Xinxu. The Yuexi shizai was a voluminous collection of poetry compiled by Wang Sen 王森 during the Qing, in 25 juan, completed in 1714. See Yuexi shizai jiaozhu 粵 西詩載校註, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1988, vol. 8 pp. 341–342. Su Jianling, op. cit., p. 92.

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inculcated and memorised as a set text. Secondly, the lyrics are of course concerned with ‘cultural values’, morality, and what it means to be a proper person, but there is a much more basic ‘value’ than what is usually thought of ‘cultural values’, which is survival. The role of the women’s lyrics throughout the song, among other things, is to urge the men not to be foolish, and to come back alive. Let us look at two of these survival strategies. One is to go up into the karst mountains and build fortifications, and then move up there in order to avoid being slaughtered by bandits or imperial troops. Actually, this is something that was done in recent times by the inhabitants of the karst hollows south of Guohua.64 According to the report of a social history investigation conducted in 1953, the ‘people of the hollows’ built walls of stone all over the mountains in order to serve as a defense against bandits in times of disorder.65 The other strategy is to flee, to become a refugee. Again, the lyrics of the song tell people how to do this, what to take along, and the route to take. In the Brigands’ Song from Taiping zhen edited by Luo Hantian, the instructions are even more specific, and include two possible evacuation routes, one leading to Bo’ai 剥隘 in eastern Yunnan and another going southwest through the mountains to Jiaozhi. The name of the places at the end of each day’s march are also given. This could strike one as just imaginary, except that the places are real and people really did become refugees in times of famine and turmoil and flee in these directions.66

13

The Terrain

The geography of the vast area in central-western Guangxi over which the Si’en chieftains held sway was quite complex. Indeed, the lyrics of the Brigands’ Song themselves reflect a geographic terrain of considerable challenge for pre-modern armies. However, unlike the Manchu troops on campaign in

64

65

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The Long people (Longren 隴人, Zh. bouxrungh, ‘people of the hollows’) are a Zhuangspeaking sub-group who live in the tiny valleys in the karst country of southwestern Pingguo. These valleys (‘hollows’) are surrounded by karst peaks on all sides, and are typically quite small in extent—sometimes only 100 metres across, with enough arable land on the valley bottom to feed only one or two families. ‘Pingguo xian Longren qingkuang diaocha’ 平果縣隴人情况調查, in Guangxi Zhuangzu shehui lishi diaocha 廣西壯族社會歷史調查, ed. Guangxi Zhuangzu zizhiqu bianjizu 廣西壯族自治區編輯組, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, vol. 7, 1987, p. 208. The latter route is something that we have called the ‘Jiaozhi shuttle’. Once the time of troubles was over, people would often move back to their home villages. For details including place-names along the route, see Holm and Meng, Hanvueng, Introduction, pp. 24–28.

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Yunnan during the early Qing period, as recorded in Dzengšeo’s diary, Zhuang native troops were operating over terrain and in a climate that was familiar to them.67 This deep familiarity is reflected in the lyrics of the Brigands’ Song in all kinds of ways, including frequent references to local plant and animal species. Most of the central part of Pingguo is limestone karst, and karst is also found in other parts of the region affected by the mid-Ming disturbances. Zhou Guowen has an apt description:68 Apart from the areas in Linfeng xiang 林逢鄉 and Silin zhen along the Youjiang River valley, which are on flat land, the rest of this area is mountainous. The flat land along the river valley is all fully utilised by local inhabitants, with those areas that are easy to irrigate being made into wetfields for growing wet-field rice, and the areas that are not easy to irrigate being made into dryland fields and planted with sugar cane, sweet potato, maize, watermelons, and a variety of green vegetables. The hills on both banks of the Youjiang River are mostly earthen hills rather than karst, and are covered with rich vegetation, with pines and fir trees predominating, but also eucalypts, Melia azedarach and other trees. These hills have now partly been cleared and planted with sugar cane, sweet potato, maize, tong oil trees, and other economic crops. Further away from the river on both sides the mountains are karst, and here generally each Zhuang village is nestled in the relatively level ground at the foot of the mountains. In these areas communication is quite difficult, with some villages not even able to use bicycles for transport. At the foot of the mountains (in the ravine) in areas where it is easy to irrigate people use these areas as wet-fields, while on the dry land they plant sugar cane, maize, and such crops. Higher up the mountains above the ‘mountain waist’ (the saddle between two little valleys) the terrain can be described in the phrase “deserted mountains and bald ridges” (huāng shān tù lǐng 荒山秃岭): up above everything is covered with bare rock, on which grow a variety of wild grasses and groves of small trees. What these can provide to the local

67 68

See Nicola Di Cosmo, op. cit., Introduction, on the unfamiliarity of the terrain and the dangers of tropical disease. Zhou Guowen 周國文, ‘Lun Liaoge’ 論嘹歌, Yishu tansuo 藝術探索, 1997, 222. The deforestation that happened in 1958 was connected with the Great Leap Forward. For details about the vegetation cover in Pingguo, see Pingguo xianzhi, 1996, p. 93. On forest cover, see ibid. pp. 151–182.

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people is limited to green grass for their oxen and goats. They can also dot-plant a few maize plants in the very limited soil found in the crevices between the rocks. The local people say that these karst mountains used to be covered in forests of large, tall trees, but in 1958 they were cut down in great numbers to “make a lot of iron and steel”, and it is this that has led to the current situation. Destruction of Guangxi’s forest cover did not begin with the Great Leap Forward of 1958–1960, but much earlier, during large-scale military campaigns of successive dynasties and then the population explosion that began in the 18th century.69 During the Ming, judging by contemporary descriptions, forest cover in most areas seems to have remained relatively intact.70 Forest cover is related to the prevalence of tropical miasma (瘴 zhāng).71 Imperial troops from the north could be deployed in the far south on brief campaigns, but could not be left there as garrison troops for long periods, lest they fall ill and die. This problem was recognised as early as the Song dynasty.72 It affected rotating officials as well as troops, and is known to have resulted in a change in personnel policy early in the Yuan dynasty.73 Throughout the Ming dynasty also, the dangers of tropical miasma remained an important factor in the Ming court’s heavy reliance on native troops, both for military campaigns

69

70

71

72

73

Jiang Zhongcheng 蔣 忠 誠 et al., Guangxi yanrong shanqu shimohua ji qi zonghe zhili yanjiu 廣西喦溶山區石漠化及其綜合治理研究, Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 2011, p. 10. The travel diaries of Xu Xiake 徐霞客 contain numerous references to abundant forest cover, from a wide variety of locations. Xu Xiake travelled in Guangxi in the late Ming period, during 1637–1638. See Xu Hongzu 徐弘祖, Xu Xiake youji jiaozhu 徐霞客游記校 注, ed. Zhu Huirong 朱惠榮, Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, revised edn. 1999, 2 vols., vol. 1 pp. 304–661. See also Julian Ward, Xu Xiake (1587–1641): the Art of Travel Writing, London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Ward notes (pp. 1–2) that Xu was an unusually attentive observer of the natural environment in the regions he visited. This was originally thought to be a pestilence caused by ‘mist and fog’ (hence the phrase 瘴氣 zhāngqì), but is now known to have been caused by several forms of malaria, carried by the Anopheles mosquito. The native Tai speaking peoples had acquired immunity to these diseases. See Robert B. Marks, Tigers, Rice, Silk and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 71– 76. Gu Youshi 顧有識, ‘Shilun Zhuangzu tubing de xingzhi, zuoyong ji qi shehui yingxiang’ 試論壯族土兵的性質、作用及其社會影響, Guangxi minzu xueyuan xuebao 廣西民 族學院學報 1984: 2, 81. Huang Jiaxin 黄家信, Zhuangzu diqu tusi zhidu yu gaitu guiliu yanjiu 壯族地區土司制 度與改土歸流研究, Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2007, pp. 98–99.

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in the south and for garrisoning southern cities, as the numbers and battlereadiness of regular Chinese troops in the ‘guard and battalion’ (wèi-suǒ 衛所) system continued to atrophy.74

14

Native Troops

The basic dispensation in the domains ruled over by a Tai-speaking ruling stratum was that all the land in the domain belonged to the chieftain, as representative of the chiefly lineage.75 Land was parcelled out and allocated to families on a hereditary basis in exchange for quite specific services. Most of the farmland was allocated to families in exchange for military service, with the men labouring on the land until called up by the chieftain to serve as soldiers in a military campaign. Failure to report for duty when called up resulted in the confiscation of the land or other forms of punishment. On the other hand, men in these families were not liable for any other form of corvée duty. There were other categories of land, corvée fields allocated to other families for other specific duties.76 The primary duty of Zhuang native troops was defense of the chieftain, his family, and the domain. In some cases the territory of the domain was relatively stable, with little change in the boundaries over time, but in other cases chieftaincies either re-located, as the Cen lineage had done,77 or embarked on raiding expeditions in neighbouring domains or wars of amalgamation. Raiding expeditions involved cross-border pillaging and looting, and carrying off some of the local populace and their domestic animals back to the home territory.78 Wars of aggrandisement or amalgamation took place very frequently during the Ming period. Ordinary Zhuang native troops would have been parti-

74 75 76

77 78

On the ‘guard and battalion’ system, see Edward L. Dreyer, Early Ming China: A Political History, 1355–1435, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982, p. 79. Gu Youshi, op. cit., p. 80. On the juridical basis of such claims see Jennifer Took, op. cit., pp. 186–187. By the late imperial period, such categories included sedan-chair porters, water carriers, suppliers of fodder, firewood-gatherers, stone masons, timber-getters, musicians, cannonfirers, flag-bearers, and wine-pourers. See Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu tongshi, pp. 634– 636, quoting ‘Nandan xian Layi xiang Zhuangzu nongye ji fuye shengchan zhuangkuang de diaocha’ 南丹縣拉易鄉壯族農業及副業生產狀況的調查, p. 176. For the migration history of the Cen chiefly house, see Holm and Meng, Hanvueng, pp. 26– 28. Raiding is one of the activities mentioned in the lyrics of the Brigands’ Song: see lines 1305– 1312.

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cipants in such operations when called upon. Such campaigns did not involve the imperial army or the Chinese state, although they sometimes led to state intervention. The other duty of Zhuang native troops was to follow the native chieftains as they led their troops in serving at the behest of the Chinese central authorities. This mainly involved going out on campaign, fighting battles, and serving as garrison troops. Native troops were called up in large numbers throughout the Ming period. Most often they were involved in putting down rebellions within Guangxi province itself, but they were also called up for the Ming invasion of Vietnam during the Yongle period and, in the latter half of the Ming period, involved also in quelling disturbances in other provinces, such as the campaigns against the Wo 倭 pirates in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area.79 Guangxi during the Ming was wracked by any number of large-scale rebellions, some of which lasted well over a century, and native troops from Tianzhou and Si’en were deployed for almost all of them.80 In the aftermath of such rebellions, native troops were also deployed to stand watch over the territories denuded of population. The lands laid waste (called juétián 絕田, ‘truncated fields’) were in many cases quite extensive. Ming practice was to set aside vacant land and allocate it to the native troops to garrison and farm, with each family being apportioned a fixed amount of land. The farmer-soldiers retained their military organisation, and in some cases chieftaincies from western Guangxi were re-located to impose order on the conquered territories in the east.81

15

Battle Tactics and Weapons

Contemporary official sources are largely silent on the operational details of battles and weaponry. A rare level of detail about battle tactics of the Zhuang

79

80

81

Regular troops in the Ming dynasty’s Vietnam campaign were accompanied by 34,000 native troops drawn from the native chieftaincies in the southwestern region: see Zheng Yongchang 鄭永常, Zhengzhan yu qishou: Mingdai Zhong-Yue guanxi yanjiu 征戰與棄 守: 明代中越關係研究, Tainan: Guoli Chenggong daxue chubanshe, 1998, p. 37. On the Great Vine Gorge campaigns, see Mote and Twitchett, op. cit., pp. 377–380. For detailed operational accounts of the other campaigns, see Zhang Yigui and Xu Shuoru, op. cit. This usually involved measures such as the transfer of non-inheriting members of a chiefly clan along with their retinue and soldiers. For detailed examples see Holm, ‘Linguistic Diversity along the China-Vietnam Border’, 26–32. See also Su Jianling, op. cit., for a full treatment of this subject.

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native troops comes from an account by Zheng Ruozeng 鄭若曾, a high official who served in the campaigns against the Wo pirates in Jiangsu at the same time as the native troops from Tianzhou under Madame Wa and other contingents of native troops from other Guangxi chieftaincies.82 Zheng evidently observed native troop battle tactics at first-hand. Here is his description of the Cen lineage troops:83 The methods of the Cen family: seven men made up a squad, and men in each squad held their fate in common. Four men were in charge of attacking and stabbing, and three men were in charge of cutting off enemy heads. Any heads obtained were divided in common between the seven men. The men who cut off heads were reliant on the skill of the men who attacked and stabbed, but they did not need to be men with the highest degree of skill in battle. Discipline was strict and penalties severe. The Zhuang native troops in these contingents had no choice but to kill and decapitate enemy soldiers if they wanted to survive themselves. Survival of course was the number one priority for them. The compulsion would have been all the greater because the native chieftain personally led the troops into battle, and was there on the scene. Against this background we can more readily understand the descriptions of battle in the song lyrics here (‘cutting down men is like cutting down plantains’, line 1481). Calculating military merit by means of ‘head tallies’ (首級 shǒují), by the way, was not confined to native troops, but was standard practice in the imperial armies.84 Conventional wisdom has it that the Zhuang native troops during the Ming dynasty did not use firearms in battle, even if the imperial armies were well equipped with such weapons.85 It is true that in the passages in this text describing close hand-to-hand combat, it is always other weapons that are mentioned, specifically the cax ‘bush-knife’ and mid ‘dagger’, but there is a good

82

83 84 85

For a biography of Zheng Ruozeng see L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, eds., Dictionary of Ming Biography, 1368–1644, New York: Columbia University Press, 1976, pp. 204–208. Zheng Ruozeng 鄭若曾, Chou hai tu bian 籌海圖編, annot. Li Zhizhong 李致忠, Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2007, p. 736. This work was written in 1561–1562. See George L. Israel, Doing Good and Ridding Evil in Ming China: The Political Career of Wang Yangming, Sinica Leidensica, Leiden: Brill, 2014, pp. 72, 139, 160, 162, 179, 292. Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu tongshi, p. 643. See also Barlow, The Zhuang, Chapter 013 p. 23.

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reason for this: guns were not used in hand-to-hand combat, but only to strike enemy soldiers from a distance. The description of guns ‘resembling giant cane shoots’ in our lyrics (lines 1107, 1111) suggests that the guns here had much longer barrels. As it happens, this description tallies with middle- to late-Ming period matchlocks (niǎoqiāng 鳥槍), which by that point had developed into firearms with barrels six chǐ 尺 (‘feet’) long. Extensive deployment of these weapons was one of the factors leading to victory over the Wo pirates in Jiangsu and Zhejiang,86 a campaign which also involved contingents of native troops from Tianzhou fighting on behalf of the imperial armies.87 Interestingly, it seems that similar weapons were used by upland-dwelling peoples in mainland Southeast Asia until very recently. Edward Anderson reports that he was surprised to see in northern Thailand ‘black-clothed hunters going to the forest with their hair cut in queues carrying crossbows and home-made black gunpowder rifles with barrels longer than the people are tall’.88

16

Liaoge and Regional Song Traditions

The Brigand’s Song and the Liaoge genre to which it belongs have a strong association with a particular geographic area. Generally, throughout the Zhuangspeaking areas of Guangxi and contiguous provinces, song genres tended to be locally specific and often exclusive. That is to say, local boys and girls and men and women would often only sing in one basic style. The Tianyang mode ( fwen Nganx) was sung in the Youjiang River valley and on the north bank of the river between Tianyang and just to the east of the county town of Tiandong. The Bama diao 巴馬調 was sung in the area around the Bama county seat, but the western parishes in the same county sing in Fengshan diao 鳳山調, and

86

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88

Sun Laichen, ‘The military implication of Zhu Wan’s coastal campaigns in southeastern China: focusing on the matchlock gun (1548–66)’, in Kenneth M. Swope and Tonio Andrade, eds., Early Modern East Asia: War, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange, London and New York: Routledge, 2018, 128–139. For details see Wang Pingfang 王萍芳, ‘Qianshuo Xu Xiake youji zhong de langbing’ 淺 說《徐霞客游記》中的狼兵, in Xu Xiake yanjiu 徐霞客研究, 39 (December 2020), 32–40. It is not impossible that participation of native troops in these campaigns provided opportunities for technology transfer. Edward F. Anderson, Plants and People of the Golden Triangle: Ethnobotany of the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1993, p. 19. Describing the weapons as ‘rifles’ may be questionable. Whether or not such weapons had rifled bores is a matter that would have to be investigated locally.

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the eastern parishes, now part of Dahua county, sing in Duyang diao 都陽調.89 Each of these is a recognisably different musical style. The most common explanation for the name of the Liaoge 嘹歌 song genre in which the Brigands’ Song is usually sung has to do with the long drawn-out extranumerary syllable attached to the end of every second line of lyrics “leu”, transcribed into Chinese as “嘹”.90 Other explanations reportedly circulate in the Tiandong area. One is that starting around the time of the Three Kingdoms (220–280CE), a common name for the forebears of the local Tai-speaking people was Lǎorén 僚人, and the word lǎo 僚 was homophonous with liáo 嘹 when pronounced in the Zhuang fashion. Another is that the name came from the name of a village in Tiandong where the Liaoge singing tradition was particularly well-developed: this was Naliao 那料, and liào 料 pronounced in the Zhuang fashion was also homophonous with liáo 嘹.91 As the editors at the Ancient Manuscripts Office commented, which of these explanations was correct was a matter for scholars to debate.92 The corpus of song texts sung in the Liaoge style was of considerable size. In eastern Tiandong, the whole corpus, all in the form of five-syllable lines and four-line stanzas, sung antiphonally, comprised 4012 stanzas, and a total of 16,048 lines.93 This corpus was conventionally divided into Night Songs and Day Songs. The Night Songs ( fwenhaemh) included three long song cycles—the Road Songs ( fwen daihloh), the Brigands’ Songs ( fwen caeg), and the Housebuilding Songs ( fwen hwnjranz), plus six shorter songs: the Songs for Entering the Village (rù zhài gē 入寨歌), the Poor Family Songs ( jiāqióng gē 家窮歌),

89

90

91 92

93

Holm, fieldwork in Tianyang and Bama, 1995. The Zhuang names for these song genres are usually fwen ‘song’ plus the name of the place with which it is associated. Thus for example the Tianyang mode was called fwen Nganx, where Nganx ‘long’an’ is the Zhuang place-name for Tianyang. Tianyang was so-called because of the orchards of dragon-eye fruit trees that were planted there. Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng 1: Qingge 1: Liaoge, 1993, Introduction p. 12. This source also gives further information about other formulaic and filler word additions to the singing style in this locality. These melismatic syllables (nonsense words like trala-la) are called chèncí 襯詞 in Chinese, and their function is to make the singing more rhythmical and melodious. Ibid. Ibid. For further discussion, see Zheng Chaoxiong 鄭超雄, ‘Zhuangzu “Liaoge” de qiyuan ji qi fazhan de shehui lishi tiaojian’ 壯族嘹歌的起源及其發展的社會歷史條件, Guangxi minzu yanjiu 廣西民族研究 2005, 1, 94–96. Pan Qixu op. cit. p. 238 offers another explanation, which is that the word leu in Zhuang had the connotation ‘widespread, famous, notable’. Zhang Shengzhen, op. cit., Introduction p. 11.

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the Groping-in-the-Dark Songs (chuān hēi gē 穿黑歌), the Songs for Opening the Ten Sluice-gates (dǎ shí zhá gē 打十閘歌), the Songs for Praising the Village (zàn cūn gē 贊村歌), and the Songs of Parting (xī bié gē 惜别歌). The Day Songs ( fwenngoenz) consisted of two long song cycles—the Songs of the Third Month ( fwen samnyied) and the Songs of Offering ( fwen dwk), and an assortment of five shorter songs: the Calendrical Song ( jiànyuè gē 建月歌), the Song of the Hours (shíchén gē 時辰歌), the Interrogation Song (pánwèn gē 盤問歌), the Matching Song (duìduì gē 對對歌), and the Drought Song (tiānhàn gē 天旱 歌).94 The Brigands’ Song was part of this much larger song corpus, and was sung with the same melody and musical structure. The other songs included not just wooing songs (“how to get girls” and “how to get boys”), but songs on other themes such as house-building and calendrical songs. The song lyrics encompassed pretty much the sum total, or at least a very substantial part, of what was considered traditional cultural knowledge in the Zhuang-speaking villages of the area. Thus the lyrics of the Drought Song recount, year by year, what happens to the vegetation, the crops, and human communities in periods of prolonged drought, including what people have to do in those extreme conditions. The Song of the Hours lyrics rehearse the names of the cycle of Twelve Earthly branches, the hours of the day that these give their names to, and the names and primary characteristics of the twelve horary animals—the rat, the ox, the tiger and so on—that correspond to the cycle of twelve. The Calendrical Song lyrics do the same with the names of the months, the twentyfour solar periods, the twelve-day cycle of Establishment and Removal ( jiànchú 建 除), and the annual cycle of agricultural work.95 The House-building Song lyrics recount in some detail the procedures both ritual and practical which go into building a house, including the selection of timbers for various house parts, the moulding and firing of bricks, and so on. The Brigands’ Song fits into this pattern, serving as a vehicle for important cultural knowledge. On the question of the actual extent of the area in which Liaoge is current, most writers have been content to provide brief descriptions, based mostly on general impressions. One scholar who has investigated the situation on the ground is Zhou Guowen 周國文.96 Zhou applied stricter criteria to the notion

94 95 96

Ibid. On the calendrical Establishment and Removal cycle see Holm, Recalling Lost Souls, pp. 277–278. Zhou Guowen, op. cit., 221–232.

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Distribution of Liaoge singing

of ‘area of currency’ than other scholars. He argued that to say a song or song genre was current in an area, it should be sung everywhere in the area, with a relatively high frequency of performance. Also, in each village inhabited by the same ethnic group, it should be the case either that almost everyone is able to sing it, or that more than half the people can sing it, ‘or to retreat a step further, at least around 10% of people can sing it’. Zhou found that people in Tianyang county town no further than 50 kilometers from Silin zhen 思林鎮 as the crow flies, or—in the same direction—even people in Linfeng parish only 17km from Silin zhen (apart from people in the four villages of Lintuo 林馱, Linfeng 林逢, Tanhe 壇河, and Pingqiao 平橋 in

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that parish) all sang something different from Liaoge, namely fwen Nganx.97 This marked the western boundary of Liaoge singing in the Youjiang River valley. Elsewhere in Tiandong, Zhou found that Liaoge was sung in all the Zhuang villages in Potang 坡塘 parish in the far southeast of the county and in Ruwu 褥 午 parish on the eastern border of the county, and some of the natural villages in the administrative villages of Liuyang 六羊 and Shuoliang 朔良 in Shuoliang 朔良 parish, in the northeast. In Pingguo, Zhou found that Liaoge was current in some of the Zhuang villages in the parishes of Guohua 果化, south of the river, in Taiping 太平, Haicheng 海城, and Tonglao 同老, and in a small number of villages in the parishes of Liming 黎明 and Bangxu zhen 榜墟鎮.98 The location of most of these villages is shown on the accompanying map (Map 3, Distribution of Liaoge Singing). On the eastern side of this area, information on the distribution of song styles in Wuming is worth noting. Zheng Chaoxiong reports that in Wuming county, to the east of Pingguo, there are Liaoge songbooks, but no tradition of singing Liaoge. According to the county gazetteer, the Wuming xianzhi 武鳴 縣志, people there sing in a 5-syllable 4-line verse form, with lèjiǎogē 勒腳歌, locally called “歡歐腳” (huān ōu jiǎo).99 Different tunes are current in different places: in the southern districts in the county (Chengxiang 城廂, Taiping 太平,

97

98

99

According to the information reported in Zhang Shengzhen Zhuangzu minge vol. 1 p. 12, the area in which Liaoge was sung in the eastern part of Tiandong included the thirteen villages of Tanle 壇樂, Yingzhu 英竹, Dongmei 東梅, Potang 坡塘, Lifeng 立豐, Shuangyan 雙燕, Baibi 百畢, Liangyu 良余, Donglong 東隆, Sanbai 三百, Dingguang 定廣, Lanfang 蘭芳 and Linxiu 林秀. These ‘villages’ are administrative villages, each including as many as a dozen natural villages. Interestingly, they are located on both the northern and southern sides of the Youjiang River. For the locations of these villages, see Guangxi dituce 廣 西地圖冊, 1976 edn., n.p. Zhou Guowen, op. cit., 221–222. Tiandong villages can be located (mostly) in the 1987 Guangxi dituce. Baoqun is an admin. village just SE of Lintuo, on the south side of the river. Pingqiao is probably a name for the administrative villages of Pinghong 平洪 and Qiaoli 橋禮, about 5 km to the west of Linfeng (Guangxi Zhuangzu zizhiqu dituji 廣西壯 族自治區地圖集, Beijing: Xingqiu ditu chubanshe, 2003, p. 403). Liuyang is about 6km to the NE of Shuoliang, just across the border from Pingguo (same source). Citing the Wuming xianzhi 武鳴縣志, ed. Wuming xianzhi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Nanning: Guangxi renmin chubanshe, 1998. This is a form of Zhuang verse with patterns of repeated lines. In a relatively simple pattern, each stanza is divided into couplets, and the first line of the first couplet gets repeated as the second line of the second couplet. The second line of the first couplet then is repeated as the second line of the third couplet. See Huang Yongsha 黃永刹, Zhuangzu geyao gailun 壯族歌謠概論, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1983, pp. 51–73. The local term cited above represents the Wuming Zhuang term fwen aeu giek, lit. ‘song—require—base’, where giek is a word meaning ‘foundation, base’.

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Shuangqiao 雙橋, and Ningwu 寧武), singing is ‘high-pitched and emotionally effusive, and belongs to the gāoqiāng 高腔 style’. In the western districts (Luoxu 鑼墟 and Xianhu 仙湖), the song style is ‘crisp and clear, convoluted and eventempered, like soft-voiced conversation’. In the northern districts (Fucheng 府 城 and Lingma 靈馬), the style is ‘enthusiastic, unrestrained, and fast-paced, like rushing river water’. Zheng concludes, ‘It is clear from this source that the song styles in Wuming are very different from those in Pingguo, and that these do not belong to the same song genre.’100 Zheng Chaoxiong’s information suggests that Liaoge may have been sung in some parts of Wuming county in the past, but that it is no longer current.101 Throughout this wide area in which Liaoge is current, we would find the Brigands’ Song performed as part of its extensive repertoire. The Brigands’ Song itself, however, is not confined to this area or to Liaoge. Various other forms of the Brigands’ Song are found over a considerably wider area than the area in which Liaoge is now current. A version of the Brigands’ Song is also found in Tianyang, to the west, where it is sung in the Tianyang mode ( fwen Nganx).102 Brigands’ Songs are also found to the north of the Liaoge area: another song text, called ‘Gudai bingge’ 古代兵歌 (Old Soldiers’ Song) in Chinese, comes the environs of Bangxu in the northern part of present-day Pingguo county. Traces of the Brigands’ Song have also been found in the western part of present-day Mashan county. Much further to the southwest, Nong Minjian 農敏堅 reports that the Brigands’ Song is sung among some Zhuang communities in Napo 那坡 county.103 For that matter, Brigands’ Songs are also sung in the northern reaches of Vietnam, in the province of Cao Bằng, where they are still current among the descendants of mercenary troops from Tianzhou recruited by the Mạc court in the late Ming period.104 100 101

102

103 104

Zheng Chaoxiong, ‘Guanyu Zhuangzu “Liaoge” wenhua zhongxindi de tantao’, Guangxi minzu yanjiu, 2005, 2, 97. Zheng Chaoxiong (personal communication, April 2021) has provided further information as follows: when the seat of government of Si’en was moved to Qiaoli and then onward to Fucheng 府城 in present-day Wuming, Liaoge also became current in these areas. In the 1950s, there were still people in Fucheng who could sing Liaoge, but it became much less common after that. In Qiaoli as well, there are now no signs of Liaoge transmission, but in places like Zhouxu 周墟 and Yongzhou 永州 in western Mashan, closer to Pingguo, the Brigands’ Song is still sung. Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng: Qingge vol. 2, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1997. As previously mentioned, this version of the song, with 708 lines, is centred on a campaign on Hainan island. Meng Yuanyao, personal communication, 15 August 2018. Holm, fieldwork, Quảng Uyên district, February and August, 2015. These people are called the Ngạn (= Nganx). For some sample lyrics, entitled ‘Lượn giặc’, see Hoàng Thị Quỳnh

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Pingguo Song Markets and Song Culture

As has been noted earlier, the key locus for the performance and circulation of the Brigands’ Song was the system of song markets (gēxū 歌墟). In some areas, there was a song market within walking or travelling distance of most villages. A survey of song markets in Guangxi was conducted in 1985 by Guo Wei 過偉 and the Guangxi shifan xueyuan 廣西師範學院, the results of which were included as an appendix to Pan Qixu’s monograph on song markets.105 The survey noted the date in the traditional calendar when each song market was held, and the average number of people attending. Five song markets were listed for Pingguo. These were (pp. 292–293): Shanxin gexu 山心歌墟 7th day of the 1st month 30,000 Muniangshan gexu 姆娘山歌墟 1st–3rd days of the 1st month 10,000 14th to 16th of the 7th month Xinxu gexu 新墟歌墟 2nd day of the 2nd month 6,000 Jiucheng gexu 舊城歌墟 1st day of the Frost Falling 霜降 7,000 Xumo gexu 墟莫歌墟 15th of the 8th month 30,000 Locations of these song markets are shown on the accompanying map (Pingguo Song Markets). It can be seen from the attendance figures that some of these events were of very considerable size, and would have attracted participants from a wide area. More complete information was subsequently collected by the Pingguo Working Committee to Promote the Cultural Brand of Liaoge, which collected information on 18 traditional song markets in Pingguo, including ones that had been discontinued.106 This information was published in an article by Qin Naichang 覃乃昌,107 and is included here as an Appendix to the current

105 106

107

Nha, Sli lượn hát đôi của người Tày Nùng ở Cao Bằng, Hanoi: Nhà xuất bản Văn hóa Thông tin, 2003, pp. 33–36. Pan Qixu, op. cit., pp. 281–314. Individual counties had as many as 73 song markets (Bose), and as few as 1 (Yongning). The name of this body in Chinese was Pingguo xian Dazao Zhuangzu Liaoge wenhua pinpai gongzuo lingdao xiaozu bangongshi 平果縣打造壯族嘹歌文化品牌工作領導小 組辦公室. Qin Naichang 覃乃昌, ‘Zhuangzu “Liaoge” de chuancheng yu chuanbo yanjiu—Zhuangzu “Liaoge” wenhua yanjiu zhi qi’ 壯族嘹歌的傳承與傳播研究—壯族嘹歌文化研究 之七, Guangxi minzu yanjiu 廣西民族研究 2005, 4, 94–95. Qin collected the information in April 2004.

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Pingguo song markets

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volume. The information tabulated includes the name of the song market, the traditional dates in the lunar calendar when the market is held, the location, the number of attendees, the date of foundation, the type of activity, and other relevant facts. Most of these song markets are traditional, but there is one market in the county seat that was founded in the year 2000, and meets every market day rather than once or twice a year. The entry reads: 18. Matou song market Mǎtóu gēxū 馬頭歌墟 Located in the Martyrs’ Memorial Park (Lieshi lingyuan 烈 士 陵 園) in Matou city 馬頭鎮. Held on market days. Attendance 1000–10,000. Date of inception 2000. A song market is held on every market day. Qin comments, ‘It can be seen from the above that in recent decades there have been 18 song markets of some considerable size in Pingguo county. What with natural attrition and man-made destruction, there are currently eleven still in operation.’ Liaoge, and the Brigands’ Song, were sung at all these song markets. Since the beginning of the Reform Era, some of these markets have had varying degrees of official support or involvement, but they remain primarily non-government, locally-organised activities. This was only the large end of a spectrum of song-related activity that reached down into natural villages and households. The same article by Qin Naichang also provides the following valuable information:108 In fact, according to our investigations, lots of villages in Pingguo have song markets; it is just that their scale is rather small. At a conference held on 15 April 2004 by the Pingguo County Party Committee Propaganda Department, He Chengwen 何 承 文 of the Guangxi Masses’ Art Institute, a native of Guohua zhen 果化鎮, said that in his native area there were lots of villages that had ‘song slopes’ at the head of the village. These were called man di huan (曼地欢 [i.e. mbaen dieg fwen]) in Zhuang, that is ‘places where songs are sung’. Some of the larger villages had two of these places, one at the head of the village and one at the tail end. These were ordinarily one li or thereabouts distant from the village, and when there was singing going on the people in the village could not hear it. They were usually fairly flat grassy places, chosen so that they were in

108

Ibid., p. 95.

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eye-catching locations. Some were located underneath banyan trees. The ‘Night Songs’ and ‘Day Songs’ that were sung at home at ordinary times were sung at these ‘song slopes’, sometimes continuing for over ten days at a stretch. He Chengwen said that even during the Cultural Revolution, when going to song markets was prohibited, and even singing traditional songs was prohibited, the song market activity in some locations carried on without stopping, with some of the sites being moved into the mountains. The people in each village that were devoted to singing traditional songs went on their own initiative out to other naturally suitable locations to engage in antiphonal singing. When we conducted investigations in Taiping village in Taiping zhen on the 13th April 2004, three song artists Yu Xianzhuan 余顯專, Yu Xiantian 余顯天 and Yu Xiannian 余顯念 from Yexu 耶墟 informed us, that their village—Buwu hamlet 布吾 in Linlin village 臨林 in Yexu parish also had a song slope at the head of the village, and that at ordinary times people would gather there by mutual agreement in order to engage in antiphonal singing. Qin Naichang’s information indicates that there was a gradation of different venues and contexts for the singing of traditional song in this area. ‘Song markets’ held once or twice a year on fixed dates were the most conspicuous of these, and the larger ones could attract singers from over a very wide area. The ‘song slopes’ were village-level venues, and the timing of local people gathering to sing antiphonally was ‘by mutual agreement’, in other words locally, and not necessarily at fixed times. There were other kinds of antiphonal song gatherings that took place in people’s houses, or in other venues, again ‘by mutual agreement’.

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Night Songs and Day Songs

In Pingguo, and also in the eastern part of Tiandong, the Liaoge song corpus is divided into night songs ( fwen haemh) and day songs ( fwen ngoenz). As the names imply, these two kinds of song are sung at night and in the daytime respectively, but they are also sung by two different kinds of people, or rather people in two different kinds of situation. The night song corpus includes three long song cycles: the Road Songs ( fwen loh or fwen daihloh), the House-building Songs ( fwen ranz), and the Brigands’ Song ( fwen caeg). The night songs are sung when young male singers from another village are invited to the house of the family of one of the female sing-

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ers, or conversely, young female singers are invited to the house of the male singers. After the evening meal, the company assembles in the main hall of the house or out in the courtyard, and engages in antiphonal singing until dawn.109 The singing starts off with the male (or female) guest singers singing the opening section of the Road Songs (Haeuj mbanj, ‘Entering the Village’), the lyrics of which narrate their journey and arrival at the village.110 At a certain point in this song the female (or male) host singers join in, and sing antiphonally. After finishing this opening section, the hosts can decide whether to continue singing the Road Songs through to the end, or to proceed directly to the Brigands’ Song or the House-building Songs.111 A midnight snack (xiāoyè 宵夜, Zh. caeuzhwnz) is served after the singers finish the final section of the House-building Songs or the Road Songs. Some additional information comes from an MA thesis on Liaoge by Guo Jing 郭 婧, submitted to the Chinese Academy of Music.112 According to her investigations in the field, ‘night markets’ ( yexu 夜墟, Zh. hawhaemh) could be held in any village, in the home of a village family, and could take place whenever a guest entered the village. By prior arrangement between the hosts and one of their relatives, a party of guests from outside the village, including the host’s relative, would arrive around nightfall, and be welcomed inside by the host. The singing starts around 9pm or so, and carries on throughout the night. Such gatherings are not necessarily confined to the single household and a small party of guests: in the second night market Guo Jing was taken to, people from other households in the village and neighbouring villages came along, resulting in a sizeable gathering. Singing took place in a large courtyard. In the middle of the night, people started wandering off to other houses in the village and continued to sing antiphonally in smaller groups.113

109

110 111 112

113

Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Luge pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 路歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, Introduction (unpag.). Luo notes that the Road Songs can also be sung as ‘day songs’ in open-air song markets, so the places and occasions on which they can be sung are not subject to strict limitation. Ibid. pp. 1–37. Ibid. p. 37. Guo Jing 郭婧, ‘Guangxi Pingguo xian Liaoge yinyue xingtai diaocha yanjiu’ 廣西平果縣 嘹歌音樂形態調查研究, MA thesis, Zhongguo yinyue xueyuan 中國音樂學院, 2012. Guo conducted fieldwork in a number of remote areas in the karst mountains, as well as more accessible places. Ibid. pp. 6–7. Guo Jing notes that Huang Guoguan, Nong Minjian and a number of locallyfamous singers were among the guests, which may account for the size of the gathering.

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Pingguo parishes

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The Brigands’ Song was often sung on such occasions. In former times this song was not sung in a casual manner. If people wished to sing it, they first had to consider whether there had been any people from the village who had died by accident in the recent past—or been dragged off, forcibly mobilised, or killed in battle. If there had been, then singers would avoid singing this song. By the same token, this song was sung normally after the Road Songs had been sung, and after people had eaten their midnight snack and taken a short rest afterwards. So it was usually well past midnight. So as not to disturb people in nearby houses, singers would normally sing this song in a quiet voice. As Luo Hantian notes, ‘The deep quiet voices in the midst of the stillness of the night, along with the sombre subject matter, could not but be very moving for singers and audience alike.’114 The repertoire of day songs includes two long song cycles, the Day Song ( fwen ngoenz) and the Song of the Third Month ( fwen sam nyied). The Day Song itself is often sung by men and women who are trapped in Chinese-style arranged marriages. They would have had previous love relationships before they were forced into marriage, and usually but not always their singing partner will be their former lover. The Day Song is regarded with heavy disapproval by the local guardians of Confucian virtue and other respectable village people, and its performance is hinged round with any number of strict prohibitions. First, it can only be sung in the daytime, and cannot be sung at night. Also, it can only be sung in certain places. It cannot be sung inside the village or inside the house, and cannot be sung in the woods, but only in grassy open areas such as the ‘song slopes’, within sight but out of earshot of fellow villagers, especially the old people.115 The content of the song also concerns middle-aged men and women in arranged marriages, former lovers who meet along the road ‘by chance’, who pour out their feelings of continuing love for each other and tell of the scoldings they have suffered at the hands of their families and punishments meted out by local officialdom.116

114 115 116

Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Zeige pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 賊歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, Introduction (unpag.). Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Rige pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 日歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, Introduction (unpag.). Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Sanyue ge pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 三 月歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, p. 3.

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Transmission of Singing Knowledge

Maintenance of a tradition of singing in the traditional style is dependent on new generations coming forward, and being willing and able to take the time to master the art. In the Pingguo area, this cultural transmission takes place in families, with older generations of singers transmitting their love of singing and their knowledge of the song repertoire to younger generations. Qin Naichang has investigated this matter locally and has some pertinent observations:117 Basically, the transmission and dissemination of traditional singing is reliant on one generation after another of skilled singers who have both the capacity to create traditional song lyrics and the talent to perform them. Most of these people receive their training in the annual song markets and thus are able to transmit their skills generation after generation. The song markets are the vehicle that facilitates the preservation and transmission of traditional song, and the singers that emerge out of this song market milieu, generation after generation, are the central elements in this process. The song markets are like schools: people who participate in the song markets and sing in them must first learn the songs. [They do this by] first learning from the song masters, and requesting instruction; secondly, they read and copy the song chapbooks. Before they go to the song markets, new singers must be able to sing in accordance with the sequence and mode appropriate to each traditional song type, and they need to be able to make up their own lyrics and sing them extempore. They acquire these skills by means of instruction and help from song masters and older singers. Then, by the time they are at the song markets and are singing antiphonally, they are able to receive recognition from their singing partners and members of the audience. Only in this way will they be considered to have mastered the craft of singing. The song market is also an examination ground, wherein every singer must pass an examination. The examiners are the other singers and the broad mass of song market attendees. Whoever creates the most outstanding songs, and whoever sings them in a voice that is moving and pleasing to the ear, will receive everybody’s affirmation, and will be able

117

Qin Naichang, op. cit., pp. 95–96.

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to hold their ground on that field of song, otherwise they will just be discarded. Truly this is like an annual “examination”, which through this process tempers new singers one batch after another, and ensures that talented people come forth in each generation, thereby ensuring that Zhuang traditional song will be transmitted from one generation to the next, and will also promote the continuous development of the song markets themselves. Qin also notes an important point, which is that teaching of singing knowledge within families is used to teach children how to be proper people. The lyrics of traditional songs, in other words, are seen as incorporating moral teachings as well as the knowledge necessary to behave properly in society. He notes that in this teaching process the direct method is used, rather than any theoretical training.118 Such teaching was aimed at girls as well as boys, but there was a difference. Girls were expected to memorise the lyrics of the songs and be able to sing extempore, but they did not traditionally go to school before modern times, and were not taught the vernacular script in which the songbooks were written. In most circumstances, the women followed the men in song, stanza by stanza, and responded to what they had sung. Thus at song markets, one finds the men singers consulting their songbooks in the pauses between stanzas, while the women rely on memory and skill, and consult with each other without recourse to prompt-books. This degree of oral skill is in any case highly prized, and the subject of legend. It is for these reasons that the women’s lyrics were traditionally omitted from the songbooks in former times. That pattern is now changing, and womens’ lyrics are being written into the new copies of the song lyrics which are now being made, but even so one sometimes finds that one or two stanzas of womens’ lyrics have been left out by accident. Such is the case with the present volume.

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Poetic Structure and Music

The Brigands’ Song and Liaoge in general conform to a pattern that is widespread in Zhuang song forms throughout Guangxi. Stanzas are four lines long, and each line has five syllables. Unlike Chinese five-syllable verse (詩 shī poetry), there is no caesura between the third and fourth syllables; in other

118

Ibid., p. 92.

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words, there is no pause in the middle of the line. Rather, what happens in terms of cadence in recitation—recitation, that is, rather than singing—is that the final syllable in each line is often elongated, either by lengthening the delivery of the vowel in open syllables or the nasal in words that end with a nasal. Tones in these line-end syllables often appear in exaggerated form. Rhyme in these verses conforms to a typical Tai pattern in which the end syllable in the first line rhymes with one of the first four syllables in the next line. In Chinese scholarship this is referred to as ‘waist’ rhyming (腰韻 yāoyùn).119 Most often the rhyme occurs on either the first or second syllable in the second line. In Liaoge, end rhymes also appear within stanzas. Thus, for example, one common pattern is: 0 0 0 0

0 x 0 y

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

x y y 0

In Zhuang verse rhyming syllables will often be identical in vowel quality and final consonant, but some lattitude is permitted. Syllables with a final -t are allowed to rhyme with syllables ending in -k, and syllables ending in a nasal (-m, -n, and -ng) are allowed to rhyme with syllables ending in any other nasal. Likewise, syllables with any of the short vowels (i.e. -ae-, -e-, -i-, -oe-, -u- or -win Zhuangwen) can form a rhyme with syllables with any other short vowel. In the rhyming of syllables with different tones, the following division of tone categories is common: 1. syllables with tones 1 and 2 2. syllables with tones 3, 4, 5 and 6 3. syllables with tones 7 and 8 (the ‘entering tone’ or ‘dead syllables’) These divisions correspond to proto-Tai tone categories, with tones 1 and 2 corresponding to proto-Tai tone A, tones 3 and 4 corresponding to tone C, tones 5 and 6 corresponding to tone B, and tones 7 and 8 corresponding to tone D.120

119 120

For a more detailed exposition see Holm, Killing a Buffalo for the Ancestors, pp. 32–37. The system of tone numbering used here is that used for Tai languages in the People’s Republic of China. In Comparative Tai Studies internationally, a different system is used. Tone 1 here corresponds with Tone 1 in the latter system, Tone 2 with Tone 4, Tone 3 with Tone 3, Tone 4 with Tone 6, Tone 5 with Tone 2, Tone 6 with Tone 2, and Tones 7 and 8 to Tones 1, 2, 3 and 5. See for example Thomas John Hudak, ed., William J. Gedney’s The Yay Language, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, 1991, xx–xxi.

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Like other Zhuang verse forms, Liaoge verses frequently exhibit pervasive parallelism, in which the semantic categories and grammatical structure in one line of verse are replicated in the second.121 In the act of reading, such parallel formations, along with the presence of rhymes, aid in the decipherment of the text, while in oral performance at song markets or elsewhere, they aid both singers and audience, since they provide a template on which the next line of song is to be sung as well as cues to aural comprehension of the lyrics. The Brigands’ Song is sung antiphonally by two male and two female singers. Like other songs in the Liaoge repertoire, its lyrics are cast in the form of four-line stanzas. The male singers first sing a stanza, and then the female singers immediately follow with a four-line stanza of their own. To accompany the actual words of the lyrics, the singers also sing melismatic syllables (Ch. chèncí 襯詞, ‘underwear words’), meaningless but pleasant-sounding syllables that lead into, punctuate, or follow on from each line of lyrics. Liaoge is sung in two-part harmony, with a relatively fixed musical structure. Within its broad region of currency, there are clear differences in song style and structure in different cultural and ecological milieux. Just within the bounds of present-day Pingguo county, there are some seven or eight melodic types in Liaoge, such as Ha Liao 哈嘹, Nahai Liao 那海嘹, Siga Liao 嘶咯嘹, Chang Liao 長嘹, Diga Liao 迪咯嘹, and Yoyi Liao 哟咿嘹.122 Each of these has its own pattern of relatively fixed melodic lines, arrangements of melismatic syllables, sequences for when the accompanying singer adds his or her voice to the lead part, usually coming in after the beginning of the stanza, and set patterns for singing in two-part harmony or in unison. For each type there is also a conventional repertoire of melismatic syllables. Luo Hantian provides useful information about four of these melodic types, along with sample musical scores.123 From his description it is clear that some of these song types are found all over the Liaoge area, while others are confined to specific localities or regions. Most of these song types are used generally for a wide range of contents, but there is also at least one example—Siga Liao—which is used specifically for singing lyrics related to boats and travel by boat.

121

122 123

For detailed analysis see D. Holm, ‘Parallelism in the Hanvueng, a Zhuang Verse Epic from West-central Guangxi in Southern China’, Oral Tradition, Special Issue on Parallelism, 2017, 373–406. Luo Hantian, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Sanyue ge pian, Introduction p. 2. Luo Hantian, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge: Fangge pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 房歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009, Appendix pp. 313–316.

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The Brigands’ Song is sung in Ha Liao. Ha Liao (Zh. fwenreuh) is described as a melodic type found throughout the area in which Liaoge is current, though Teng Guangyao notes this form is current on the plains and in the hill areas (non-karst) in the parish of Taiping and the municipal districts of Chengguan 城關 and Guohua.124 It is sung in the singers’ natural range, with some falsetto notes, and each stanza begins with an intro of melismatic syllables he leu. Then the lead singer sings the first seven syllables of the lyrics in the stanza—that is, the five syllables of the first line plus the first two syllables of the second line, all in one breath, and then the second singer comes in and sings the final three syllables of the second line in harmony with the lead singer, both of them adding the melismatic syllables xi, he, and leu along the way. The harmonic interval employed is fourths.125 Luo Hantian says that the third and fourth lines in the stanza are then sung in the same fashion as the first two lines. This may be true in some areas or with some singers, but the musical score below indicates that both singers sing the first three syllables in unison, then sing in close harmony until the fourth syllable in the final line, which is drawn out over more than four beats, with the lead singer singing descant and the second singer singing a prolonged base note before finishing the final syllable in unison. What follows is a musical score of a sample stanza of the Brigands’ Song, sung by Mr. Lu Shunhong 陸順紅 and Mr. Huang Qingzhu 黄慶祝.126 The song mode employed is Ha Liao. This sample represents the way they would sing the Brigands’ Song in performance. For convenience of a wider range of readers, the melodic line has been transcribed in both five-line Western notation and in the tonic sol-fa notation commonly used in China. The tonic sol-fa line will also allow readers to compare the melody directly with samples provided by Luo Hantian and other Chinese writers on Liaoge. The lyrics of this sample stanza are partly different from those found in the present manuscript.127 When Mr. Lu and Mr. Huang were asked to sing, it turns out that they opted to sing a segment from a manuscript owned by Mr. Huang, rather than Mr. Lu’s manuscript.

124

125 126 127

Teng Guangyao 滕光耀, ‘ “Liaoge” de neirong, xingshi he fenlei—Zhuangzu “Liaoge” wenhua yanjiu zhi si’ 嘹歌的内容、形式和分類, Guangxi minzu yanjiu 廣西民族研究 2005, 2, 114. Luo Hantian, Fangge pian, p. 313. This is based on a recording made in Matou zhen in January 2017. The first two lines are the same as lines 1889–1890 in the present text, but lines 3–4 are different.

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The lyrics and translation are as follows:128 Gvaq laj goek go nim loq nax pass under base clf rhodomyrtus loq-nax We pass beneath the trunk of the rhodomyrtus tree, Gvaq laj goek go nganx nangz hah pass under base clf dragon-eye lady hah We pass beneath the trunk of the dragon-eye tree. Gvaq haenz mbanj youx gim rox nax pass edge village lover golden rox nax We pass by the village of our lovers, Sing rox mbouj loq nax sound know not loq nax Do you recognise the sound?

21

Internal Structure

When the Brigands’ Song was first published in Chinese translation in 1961, it was divided into chapters. When the translation was reprinted in 1980 for a wider readership, the division into chapters was retained ‘for the convenience of readers’.129 The translators turned the song lyrics into Chinese five-syllable verse, and naturally the translation is rather free in places.130 The practice of

128 129

130

The melismatic syllables are rendered in italics. Huang Yongsha and Huang Yaoguang (1980), pp. 611–690. In broad outline this version of the Brigands’ Song is similar to the present text, except for one section, ‘Returning Gifts’, that is not found in the present text. Other details such as place-names are also somewhat different. This would have been entirely acceptable and common practice at the time, since the aim of the collection was to engage and inform a wider Chinese readership. The chapter titles themselves were added by the editors, and reflected the then-current thinking that the native chieftains’ regimes were harsh and unjust.

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figure 1

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Brigands’ song musical excerpt

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adding Chinese-style chapter headings, and translating the lyrics into fivesyllable verse, was followed in subsequent editions. In the 1993 edition, the headings are different, but do reflect some of the major themes and contents of the song.131 The chapter titles themselves are not found in the original songbooks in any form. Actually, what is needed here is an account of the internal structure of the song that takes the beginning line of each stanza as its starting point. It is the beginning line of each stanza that serves as a cue, reminding singers both male and female of where they are in the progress of the song. What readers will find, when reading through the lyrics of the song, is that there are extended sections of song where the wording of the first line in each successive stanza is the same, and whole stanzas differing only slightly from the previous stanza, often by only a single word or two words. The women’s responses to the stanza that the men have just sung will also often vary only by a single word or two. The effect of this can be quite mesmerising, not to say soporific, if one is reading the song text as a written text, but it is this repetition combined with subtle variation that enables the song to go forward in performance. Thus in the present text, stanzas beginning with the line “Bineix bi gijmaz” (皮女皮鸡马), “What kind of year is this year?”, start on line 265 and go on until line 408, a total of 36 stanzas and 144 lines. Some of these long stretches of song that extend over many stanzas are ‘counting stanzas’, starting with ‘one’ and going up to ‘ten’ or whatever number is appropriate. Such for example are the passages counting the number of days’ journey needed to arrive at a particular place if one is fleeing home; or for the army, counting the number of days on the march. On the other hand, there are other first lines that appear only once or twice, and move quickly through a brief account of certain events. This variation in the tempo of the narrative is one of the things that probably adds to its appeal for audiences at actual performances.

22

Previous Editions of the Brigands’ Song

The general layout of the annotated 1993 edition has already been mentioned. There are two other matters that deserve mention. First, the published text contains material drawn from a number of different manuscripts. The editors outline their research procedures in the Introduction. They explain that

131

Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng: Qingge, vol. 1, pp. 268–488.

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they conducted a comprehensive search, interviewing many song artists and inspecting many songbooks, and then selected and organised singers to sing for them antiphonally, noting down the lyrics by hand in Zhuangwen as they went along. They then compared the result with the materials collected in the 1950s and 1960s, and made a final choice of five songbooks and groups of singers.132 Subsequently they produced a composite text. Evidently their aim was to produce a version that was as perfect as possible, rather than one that reflected actual usage in any specific text or village location. Secondly, the vernacular script in the published version is in the form of printed transcription, a point which follows from the first. There is no photo-reprint of an existing manuscript. This lessens the value of this material as a basis for scholarship and analysis, since it is not clear how much variation there was among these five source texts in either lyrics or script. Still, this is the best material we have on the script in the Yangyan area, so it is not without value for reference purposes. Also useful are two editions of the Brigands’ Song by the Zhuang scholar Luo Hantian. For the first one, published in 2007, Luo returned to Yangyan and produced an annotated transcription of the Brigands’ Song into Zhuangwen.133 In his choice of Zhuangwen spelling, Luo did not use standard spelling, but sought to represent the sounds of the local language. This is useful, given the absence of an IPA transcription. The second one was published as part of Luo’s fivevolume edition of the Pingguo Liaoge, published in 2009.134 This collection was also annotated, and contains a Zhuangwen transcription but no vernacular characters. Unlike his 2007 edition, Luo used standard Zhuangwen for this edition. Even so, this edition is a mine of information. It was based primarily on the Liaoge repertoire of one particular informant, Tan Shaoming 譚紹明 of the village of Buling 布凌 in Taiping zhen, in the central part of Pingguo. Biographical information about Tan is provided on the back cover. Appearing at more or less the same time was the five-volume collection of Pingguo Liaoge edited by Nong Minjian 農敏堅 and Tan Zhibiao 譚志表.135 Luo Hantian’s work was the work of an individual scholar, but Nong Minjian’s edi132

133 134 135

Zhang Shengzhen, Zhuangzu minge guji jicheng vol. 1, pp. 13–14. The locations and the names of the singers are given in this source. The five songbooks chosen were from Tanle, Liangyu, Dingguang, Linxiu and Yingzhu. Further details are given, such as the names of the male owners of the songbooks and female singers in each location. Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Zeige 賊歌, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2007. Luo Hantian 羅漢田, ed., Pingguo Zhuangzu liaoge: Zeige pian 平果壯族嘹歌: 賊歌篇, Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009. Nong Minjian 農敏堅 and Tan Zhibiao 譚志表, eds.-in-chief, Pingguo Liaoge 平果嘹歌, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 2006, 5 vols.

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tion was a collective effort and had the support of the Pingguo County government. It was intended to be a definitive edition, and is sumptuously produced. Unlike the two works by Luo Hantian, this edition contains the vernacular character texts, though these have been transcribed rather than photo-reprinted. A note in the relevant volume tells us that the original text of the Brigands’ Song was supplied by Tan Shaoming of Taiping zhen.136 This would seem to suggest that the text was not a composite text compiled from various sources. Information obtained recently from Pingguo, however, indicates that textual material from a number of different manuscripts was combined to produce the published version. There is also a five-volume Zhuang-Chinese-English edition of the Pingguo Liaoge produced by the Baise University.137 This is a brave effort by staff and students of a regional institution of higher education, and was intended to help make the Liaoge song texts available internationally by producing an English translation. For a quick overview of the Liaoge repertoire, this edition is useful.

23

This Edition

The copy of the Brigands’ Song chosen for this volume is the manuscript copy belonging to Mr. Lu Shunhong 陸順紅 of Matou zhen in Pingguo. The booklet itself is 14cm long and 6cm high, written on fine miánzhǐ 綿紙 paper and thread-bound on the right-hand side, with vertical columns of text running from the right to the left. Generally, three stanzas and thus 12 lines of song lyrics are written on each Western-style page. The ‘b’ side of page 49 however has repeated three lines, and the ‘a’ side of page 66 has repeated one line. The entire song consists of 522 stanzas, each of four lines, giving a total of 2088 lines. The internal arrangement of the lyrics generally reflects a pattern of antiphonal singing between men and women, with the men singing first and the women responding. The calligraphic style is even and meticulous, and pleasing to the eye. This suggests that the copyist had a quite accomplished grasp of the calligraphic art. For the cover, the booklet uses laminated cardboard from a cardboard box, of the kind often seen and readily available. This gives

136

137

See the note on p. 1226 of the Changge ji 長歌集, volume, which contains the Fwencaeg text (Chinese translation pp. 249–325, Zhuangwen pp. 655–731, transcribed characters pp. 1061–1137). Zhou Yanxian 周艷鮮 and Lu Lianzhi 陸蓮枝, eds.-in-chief, Liao Songs of Pingguo— Pingguo Zhuangzu Liaoge 平果壯族嘹歌, Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 5 vols., 2011. The last volume (unnumbered) contains ‘Songs of War’ Zeige pian 賊歌篇.

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it a enticing appearance and makes the booklet sturdy, convenient to carry around, and easy to peruse. Lu Shunhong is a Zhuang farmer from the suburban parishes of Matou zhen. He was born in 1963, and has a lower middle school level of education. He has been a farmer for many years, and grows maize and wetland rice. He has had experience outside Pingguo as a contract labourer on building sites. There are five people in his family. Apart from himself and his wife, he has three children. The oldest boy has already found work in Liuzhou. From 2004 onwards, Mr. Lu no longer went out to work as a contract labourer, but stayed at home tending his crops and taking part in cultural performances in his spare time. He himself loves to sing, a circumstance which he attributes to his family upbringing. His father, his uncle, and even his paternal grandfather and grandmother were people who loved to sing in the traditional Zhuang fashion. He is now the person in charge of the Training Centre for the Cultural Transmission of Pingguo Liaoge (Pingguo Liaoge chuancheng jidi peixun zhongxin 平果嘹歌傳承 基地培訓中心). This is a position without salary, and members are aficionados of the traditional popular arts. The government provides a venue for the Centre’s activities, in return for which the members help the government by mounting performances in conjunction with government information activities. He frequently organises all sorts of antiphonal singing contests and other performance activities, and is an active and well-known traditional performing artist in the Matou zhen area. Because he is steadfast in his work and punctiliously proper in his performance style, with a strong ability to engage in antiphonal singing, he often gets invitations from nearby counties to take part in singing contests and other performances. The ‘Songs Fly Across the Broad Land’ (Dadi feige 大地飛歌) programme on the Guangxi Television channel has aired a special program featuring Mr. Lu and one other performer singing Liaoge antiphonally. In addition, he responds to calls from the County Department of Education to give lessons in traditional singing and traditional singing knowledge to primary and secondary school students, as another way of transmitting knowledge about traditional song culture. The text of the Brigands’ Song chosen for editing and annotation here was handed down in Mr. Lu’s family. The family has been in possession of this particular text of the song since the time of Mr. Lu’s paternal grandfather. The earlier origins of the text are something that cannot be determined. Within the family the text has been through three generations, from grandfather to grandson, and has been copied and re-copied many times. The text is quite stable and relatively old. One can be sure that all the chapbooks one is able to see today are not primordial copies, but rather, copies that are in actual use and therefore subject to re-copying and continual innovation in light of the needs

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of actual performance. The present text also shows signs of recent changes, such as including letters from the Roman alphabet and Arabic numerals in order to represent the sound of words in Zhuang. Still, regardless of the recent date of the last re-copying, the content of the songs is still quite old, and the lyrics are steeped in the atmosphere of everyday life among ordinary people in the Zhuang lands. Through this edition of the text, we can catch sight of many traditional customs and lifeways among the Zhuang people of this area in times gone past, and can glimpse many events affecting society in the Zhuangspeaking countryside since the time of the Ming dynasty. This song text is a work of popular literature, but the phenomena that it sheds light on are nevertheless regarded by the families themselves as worthy of preservation and deep reflection. The person who recited the text and provided explanations for the lyrics is Mr. Lu’s partner in antiphonal Liaoge singing, Mr. Huang Qingzhu 黄慶祝. Huang Qingzhu is a native of Longbu 龍布 hamlet in Yalong 雅龍 administrative village in Matou zhen.138 Also from a Zhuang family, Mr. Huang was born in May 1955, has a lower middle school level of education, and is a local farmer. He previously grew maize and wetland rice for a living, supplementing this by repairing agricultural machinery and motors. At present he only grows a little wetland rice for his own family’s needs; his main business is contracting for several tens of mǔ 畝 of hill land, on which he grows green jujubes. His family’s main income now comes from the fruit production. Mr. Huang is also a song artist of no small repute locally, and he loves to sing. Apart from participating in the activities organised by people in the Liaoge Association, he often spends his time during the winter slack months with the older generation of song masters. During the Spring Festival period of 2016, Mr Huang recited the entire text of the Brigands’ Song for us. On the basis of this recording, we undertook preliminary analysis and processing of the text. Then, beginning in August of 2017, having identified areas where further work was needed, we undertook followup discussions with both Huang Qingzhu and Lu Shunhong, asking them for detailed explanations on the meaning of lines of song and individual words. The subsequent editing and annotation process has been based in part on their explanations, which are reported in the Notes. The transcription into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is based on Huang Qingzhu’s recitation. Apart from the recording of the first-time recitation as the basis for our IPA

138

This hamlet is a few kilometres to the northwest of the county town Matou zhen. See Pingguo xianzhi p. 44.

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transcription, we have also carried out follow-up investigations, checking the reading pronunciations of the characters in the text, and identifying locally current dialect usages in consultation with Mr. Lu and Mr. Huang.

24

The Wider Demographic and Linguistic Context of the Pingguo Area

Before going on to discuss the Zhuang dialect in which the songs are sung and recited, it would be helpful to provide some information on the region in which Pingguo is located. Pingguo is considered part of the Youjiang region, and lies one county further east from the county of Tiandong. Local Zhuang speech in most parts of Tiandong has strong affinities with Tianyang and Bose further upstream, and is regarded as part of the Youjiang sub-dialect area.139 The local Zhuang speech of Pingguo, however, has stronger affinities with areas further to the east, such as Long’an and even Yongning 邕寧, or with areas further to the northeast such as the western part of Mashan and contiguous parts of Wuming.140 The southwestern part of Pingguo lying south of the Youjiang River, however, is inhabited by speakers of Southern Zhuang dialects, whose speech is connected with that of the western parishes of Long’an, the eastern part of Tiandeng 天等, and the southern parishes of Tiandong, all areas lying to the south of the river and mostly covered in karst mountains. People in these southern parishes have different song traditions and do not generally take part in the northern song markets where Liaoge is the main singing style. By the same token, people living north of the river, even as close to the Youjiang river as Matou zhen, do not generally take part in the song markets south of the river.141 One important consequence of this is that boys and girls north of the river do not look for singing partners south of the river—and vice-versa—so there is virtually no intermarriage. Descriptions of the Pingguo dialect from the early dialect surveys came from the area to the north of the Youjiang River, specifically from the Xinxu area and 139 140 141

For a brief description see Zhang Junru 張均如 et al., Zhuangyu fangyan yanjiu 壯語方 言研究, Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1997, pp. 37–38. This is officially known as the Yongbei 邕北 (North Yongning) sub-dialect. For a description see ibid. pp. 35–36. This information is confirmed by Nong Minjian (personal communication, February 2015), and by Qin Zhongqun 覃忠群 of the Central Nationalities Language Translation Bureau (personal communication, April 2021). Both of these scholars are from Pingguo, with many years of experience working on Zhuang language and culture.

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from Matou zhen. Just how far to the north and northeast this particular lect extended was not made clear. A basic operating assumption of the early dialect surveys was that, with a few exceptions, one location should be chosen to represent each basic administrative unit, and that this location was to be considered ‘representative’ of the administrative area as a whole.142 In the case of Pingguo, however, this default assumption is more than usually problematic. The present-day county is of very recent provenance. Places in the far north of the county like Bangxu and Fengwu 鳳梧 are located along the Pingzhi River, which flows into the Hongshui River rather than the Youjiang.143 Pingzhi 平治 formed a separate county during Republican times (1911–1949), and was only amalgamated with the county of Guode 果德 to the south of it to form the present-day county of Pingguo (Ping-Guo) in May of 1951.144 There is overlap in other directions as well. Further to the west, the local speech of the eastern parishes in present-day Tiandong, such as Silin and Daowu, has strong affinities with that in the central Pingguo area.145 In these areas, too, as previously noted, Liaoge is the dominant song genre at local song markets. The information provided by the Pingguo County Gazetteer (Pingguo xianzhi) about the population history of Pingguo is pertinent here. According to this source, Pingguo is an area with a high concentration of Zhuang people. Most of this population is native to the area. There are also people who have migrated into the area from outside. The Zhuang people who speak with a Du’an 都 安 accent moved from present-day Du’an county to the north of Pingguo at the beginning of the Guangxu 光緒 reign period of the Qing dynasty (1875), and settled in the northern parishes: present-day Liming, Bangxu, Fengwu and Haicheng. People with the surname Pan 潘 who are now found in the parishes and towns of Guohua, Chengguan, Taiping and Haicheng came to those areas

142

143

144 145

As is well known, dialect boundaries and other features of local cultural geography do not necessarily coincide with administrative boundaries anyway. Nor for that matter do local patterns of trade in rural marketing systems, on which see the classic articles by G. William Skinner, ‘Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China’, Part I Journal of Asian Studies 24:1 (Nov 1964), 3–43; Part II Journal of Asian Studies 24:2 (1965), 195–228; and Part III Journal of Asian Studies 24:3 (May 1965), 363–399. Impressionistically, the local speech of Jiucheng in the central east of the county and places like Bangxu and Fengwu in the north seem closer to Mashan speech and the Du’an dialect respectively. Pingguo xianzhi p. 20. Daowu, present-day Daowu zhen, is located in the far eastern part of Tiandong county, some distance from the river, directly north of Silin and just across the border from Haicheng parish in northwestern Pingguo.

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from Wuming over a few decades during the Qing dynasty.146 Another distinct sub-group of Zhuang speakers, not mentioned in this source, are the so-called karst hollows people (Longren 隴人) who live in the karst mountains to the south of Guohua.147 By contrast, the Han population is mostly of fairly recent provenance, and consists mainly of two sub-groups, the Sugar-cane people (zhèyuán rén 蔗園人) and the New people (xīnmín 新民), who migrated into the Pingguo area during the Qing dynasty, starting in the Kangxi 康熙 reign period (1662–1723) and continuing to flow in until around the Daoguang 道光 reign period (1821–1851). The Sugar-cane people, speakers of Pinghua 平話 dialects, came from further east, from places like Suju 蘇居 village and Yangmei 杨梅 village in Yongning county and present-day Binyang 賓陽 county (then called Binzhou 賓州), and they settled in areas along the banks of the Youjiang River.148 The speakers of so-called Xīnmínhuà 新民話 migrated to the Pingguo area around 16 generations ago, and are now found in the administrative villages of Lingtang 靈塘, Anbang 安邦, and Yinshan 印山 in Sitang 四塘 parish, in the far southeastern corner of the county near the border with Wuming.149 The language they speak is a form of Hakka.150 This Han population is concentrated in the small towns along the major transport routes.151 Later, during the Republican period (1911– 1949), speakers of a Cantonese dialect (locally called báihuà 白話) migrated to the area from Guangdong and Nanning and settled in the town of Guohua zhen 果化鎮 and Shanxin xu 山心墟, where they engaged in commerce.152 There are also Yao people living in Pingguo. The Yao people are said to have migrated into the mountainous areas of Pingguo during the Qing dynasty.153 In 1953 the Yao were reported to be living in the northern part of Pingguo, in what used to be Pingzhi county, and concentrated specifically in the then parishes of Shanghe 上合, Jiuhuai 九懷, Shangmei 賞梅, Gulou 古樓, Longfeng

146 147 148

149 150 151 152 153

Pingguo xianzhi p. 660. ‘Pingguo xian Longren qingkuang diaocha’, in Zhuangzu shehui lishi diaocha vol. 8, pp. 190–263. A description of the Pinghua dialect spoken by the Sugar-cane people (a dialect also called Zhèyuánhuà 蔗園話) is given in the Pingguo xianzhi pp. 665–666. Details of the distribution of Pinghua speakers are given in ibid., p. 665. From this information, it is clear that these people lived in their own separate hamlets. Pingguo xianzhi p. 660. For a description, see Pingguo xianzhi pp. 667–669. ‘Pingguo xian Longren qingkuang diaocha’, p. 190. Pingguo xianzhi p. 660. Pingguo xianzhi p. 660. These people came south from present-day Du’an county.

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龍鳳, and Hemin 合民, in what later became the 8th and 9th districts.154 They

were composed of three groups which were quite different from each other: the Donglong Yao 東隴瑶, the Man Yao 蠻瑶, the Black Yao 黑瑶 (also called the Heiyi Yao 黑衣瑶 or the Tudi Yao 土地瑶).155 The Yao in Pingguo are speakers of eastern dialects of the Bunu language, a language of the Hmong branch of the Hmong-Mien language family.156 In 1954 the Zhuang comprised 84.6 percent of the population of Pingguo, and were found in all of the districts within the county. The karst hollows people accounted for a further 5.12 percent of the population, but were found in only one district. The Han, by contrast, comprised only 3.05 percent of the population at that time, and were found mainly in the towns and along the Youjiang River. The Yao comprised 7.23 percent, found in all districts north of the river.157

25

Sound System of the Pingguo Dialect of Zhuang

We have at our disposal three sources of information about the sound system of the Pingguo dialect. The first is material from the dialect surveys conducted in the early years of the People’s Republic and published in the 1990s.158 Apart from the brief summary contained in Zhang Junru, there is the more detailed account in the Zhuangyu fangyan tuyu yinxi 壯語方言土語音系 (1994).159 The second source is the description of local dialects in the Pingguo county gazetteer, which was published in 1997.160 The third source of information comes from Mr. Huang’s recitation of the song lyrics. Mr. Huang is a native of the area just to the north of Matou zhen, the present-day county seat, and his pronunciation is slightly different from that collected during the dialect surveys, which comes from Xinxu, further to the north. In what follows, we will first discuss the dialect survey material, based on the Zhuangyu fangyan tuyu yinxi, then

154 155 156 157 158

159 160

For these locations see Pingguo xianzhi pp. 42–43. ‘Pingguo xian Longren qingkuang diaocha’, p. 191. Pingguo xianzhi p. 669. A description is given on pp. 669–670. ‘Pingguo xian Longren qingkuang diaocha’, p. 191. Cf. Pingguo xianzhi pp. 103, 109. Available mainly in Zhang Junru 張均如 et al., Zhuangyu fangyan yanjiu 壯語方言研究, Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1999 (hereinafter ZhYFYYJ). This source provides data for 36 survey points. Zhuangyu fangyan tuyu yinxi 壯語方言土語音系, ed. Guangxi qu Yuwei yanjiushi 廣西 區語委研究室, Nanning: Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1994 (hereinafter Yinxi). Pingguo xianzhi, 1997. Information on ethnic groups, their distribution, and the languages and dialects they speak is found in the chapter on Society (Shehui 社會), pp. 660–670.

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review briefly the material from the Pingguo xianzhi, then go on to provide an overview of the pronunciation of Mr. Huang. 25.1 The Language Survey Material The informants for the language survey material for Pingguo were two individuals, one from Xinxu jie 新墟街 in Xinhe 新荷 parish in the Third District, and one and from the hamlet of Tangneng 塘能 in Paolie 袍烈 parish, also in the Third District.161 These locations are close together, one in present-day Xinxu, a small market town directly to the north of Matou zhen and about halfway along the road to Taiping, and the other in the immediate vicinity of Xinxu. In what follows we will refer to this as the Xinxu lect. 25.2 Tones For open syllables, Xinxu Zhuang has six tones. The tone values are given as:162 Tone 1 mid falling and rising, 314 Tone 2 mid falling, 42 Tone 3 high level, 55 Tone 4 low falling, 21 Tone 5 rising, medium to high, 35 Tone 6 mid level, 33 Checked or ‘dead’ syllables (those ending in p, t, or k) have the following possible tones: Tone 7 short high level, 55 Tone 7a long high level, 55 Tone 7b long rising, medium to high, 35 Tone 8 short low falling, 21 Tone 8a long low falling, 21 Tone 8b long medium level, 33 An interesting feature of this particular lect is that two values are given for checked tones with long vowels, Tones 7 and 8 long. The two long tone values are distinguished in the source transcription by the addition of an apostrophe after the Zhuangwen transcription: thus bak’ ‘mouth’ etc.163 In other places such

161

162 163

Yinxi p. 255. The names of these informants are given in this source, but no other personal information is provided. The administrative divisions specified in this material are those current at the time of the survey, rather than those current in the 1990s when the material was published: the numbered districts were established in 1954 (for details see Pingguo xianzhi pp. 42–43). Yinxi p. 252. I have added ‘a’ and ‘b’ to these tone labels for the sake of clarity.

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distinctions often have to do with whether or not the word is a Han loanword, with Han loans such as dap ‘pagoda’ (from tǎ 塔) realised with a tone contour different from that of native morphemes like bak ‘mouth’.164 No variation in the realisation of these tones (tone sandhi) is mentioned in these sources.165 25.3 Initials Examples of initials are given in the Yinxi in Zhuangwen transcription, with the IPA equivalents noted in parentheses:166 b mb m f v d nd n l s r ny c y g ng h Ɂy gv ngv gy by my

/p/ /Ɂb/ /m/ /f/ /w/ /t/ /Ɂd/ /n/ /l/ /θ/ /r/ /ȵ/ /ɕ/ /j/ /k/ /ŋ/ /h / /Ɂj/ /kw/ /ŋw/ /kj/ /pl/ /ml/

164

No clear pattern, however, emerges from the examples listed, since Han loans are found in both categories. In the brief description of the Pingguo dialect in ZhYFYYJ, no such division is mentioned, and only the mid-high rising (35) and mid-level (33) values are listed: see page 60. The method used in the surveys was based on wordlists and elicitation of isolated single syllables or morphemes. Yinxi pp. 252–253.

165 166

bei ‘year’; bae ‘to go’; biq ‘to spit out’; baeu ‘crab’ mbouq ‘not’; mbaet ‘bamboo tube measure for rice’ meiz ‘to have’; mae ‘thread’; muengh ‘to hope for’; meh ‘mother’ feiz ‘fire’; faiq ‘cotton’; fangz ‘ghost’ vah ‘talk’; vaiz ‘water buffalo’; vaq ‘trousers’; vaih ‘bad’ da ‘eye’; diuq ‘to leap’; dai ‘to die’; dah ‘river’ ndaq ‘to curse’; ndat ‘hot’ naeuz ‘to tell’; namh ‘dirt’; nit ‘cold’; naiz ‘phlegm’ laj ‘below’; lau ‘fear’; lae ‘flow’; loek ‘to pull up grasses’ song ‘two’; sai ‘belt’; saet ‘to run’ ranz ‘house’; roengz ‘to descend’; raeuz ‘we’; rwz ‘ear’ nyungz ‘mosquito’; nyouh ‘to urinate’; nywj ‘grass’ caeuq ‘with’; caen ‘real’; cang ‘to put on’; cienz ‘money’ youz ‘oil’; yah ‘wife’; yak ‘barbarous’ gai ‘to sell’; gaeq ‘chicken’; ga ‘foot’; gai ‘street’ ngaih ‘easy’; ngoenz ‘daytime’; ngah ‘not want’ haq ‘to get married’; hing ‘ginger’; hawj ‘to give’ youq ‘to be at’; yien ‘smoke’ gvaq ‘to pass by’; gvai ‘well-behaved’; gvangq ‘broad’ ngvax ‘roof tile’; ngvaek ‘to nod the head’ gyaeuj ‘head’; gyaet ‘frozen’; gya ‘to add’; roeggyeuq ‘mynabird’ byaij ‘to walk’ myaeb ‘(of lightning) to flash’

introduction

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An additional pre-glottalised initial /Ɂw/ is listed in ZhYFYYJ, with a single example: Ɂwuǝn3 ‘bowl’.167 The Yinxi provides the following additional information about these initials:168 1. The initials ‘by-’ and ‘my-’ in Standard Zhuang are realised as consonant clusters ‘bl-’ and ‘ml-’. Thus byaij ‘to walk’ is pronounced as blaij, and myaep ‘to flash (lightning)’ is pronounced as mlaep. 2. The actual value of ‘r’ is [hɹ], pronounced with slight aspiration, slight trilling, and friction. 3. Initial ‘s’ is a dental fricative (i.e. θ). It should be noted in passing that the official Zhuang script, Zhuangwen, does not distinguish between non-glottalised and pre-glottalised /w/ and /j/ initials, writing both as ‘v-’ and ‘y-’. 25.4 Finals For finals the most useful information is in ZhYFYYJ, which is in IPA rather than Zhuangwen transcription.169 The Yinxi provides the following additional information on these finals:170 1. All of the /e/ finals are long, with an actual pronunciation that is between [i] and [e], closely resembling [ɪː]. 2. The long /oː/ is higher than short /o/, with an actual pronunciation that is close to [ʊː]. 3. The /ei/ final of Standard Zhuang is pronounced here as /ǝi/. Thus geiq (kei5) ‘record’ is pronounced as kǝi5. Examples of these finals have been incorporated in the list of examples for Mr. Huang’s Pingguo dialect, on which see further below. The transcription in ZhYFYYJ has been phonemicised, and does not indicate actual phonetic values. Nevertheless, as we shall see, sufficient information is provided to be able to say that this is a dialect close to that spoken by Mr. Huang.171 There are also some differences, however, which will be discussed below.

167 168 169 170 171

p. 60. This morpheme is written vanj in Zhuangwen. Yinxi p. 255. See also ZhYFYYJ p. 60, which repeats the information on the trilled /r/. ZhYFYYJ p. 61. The Yinxi presents the same information on pp. 253–255, but with examples in modified Zhuangwen. See also ZhYFYYJ p. 61, which lists only the first two points with slightly different wording. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the dialect of the county town of Matou zhen, as documented in the Pingguo gazetteer, is a dialect of the Southern Zhuang type, rather than Northern Zhuang. Secondly, Mr. Huang’s pronunciation is likely to be of a kind widely understood in the central parishes of Pingguo.

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25.5 The Gazetteer Information on Zhuang Dialects in Pingguo The Pingguo xianzhi, compiled during the 1980s and 1990s and published in 1997, provides a useful supplement to the language survey description based on a single location. In particular, it contains information about five different Zhuang sub-dialects or lects spoken within the boundaries of present-day Pingguo, including information about their geographic distribution and some details about their phonology. Three different Northern Zhuang dialects and two Southern Zhuang dialects are discussed. What it calls Hǎichénghuà 海城話 is spoken in the parishes of Haicheng, Jiucheng, Taiping, Pozao, and Tonglao, while what it calls Bǎngxūhuà 榜墟話 is spoken in Bangxu, Fengwu, and Liming; and what it calls Dū’ānhuà 都安話 is spoken in all parishes throughout the county. The Southern Zhuang dialect Xīn’ānhuà 新安話 is spoken in a number of administrative villages in Xin’an 新安 parish and a number of administrative villages in Guohua parish. The other southern dialect, Chéngguānhuà 城關話, is spoken in Matou zhen and Xin’an parish.172 The dialect of most interest to us here is clearly the Haicheng dialect, spoken in the central and southern parishes north of the river, and this is the dialect described most fully in the gazetteer (pp. 661–664). For the most part, the sound system in this dialect is broadly the same as the Xinxu lect described in the earlier survey reports, but there are some interesting differences.173 First, there are some differences in the realisation of tones. For convenience, we provide a table comparing the Xinxu tone values with those of Haicheng:

Haicheng Xinxu same (=) or different (x) Tone 1 Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4 Tone 5 Tone 6 Tone 7 short Tone 7 long Tone 7 long (b) 172 173

24 31 55 42 44 33 55 33

314 42 55 21 35 33 55 35 55

x x = x x = = x

Pingguo xianzhi p. 661. For a list of administrative villages and natural villages in each parish or township, see pp. 44–51. It is not clear whether the Haicheng dialect description was based on language informants from Haicheng or some other locality.

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Haicheng Xinxu same (=) or different (x) Tone 8 short Tone 8 long Tone 8 long (b)

21 22

21 33 21

= +/-

As previously noted, the two different values for checked tones with long vowels in Xinxu are not included in the ZhYFYYJ material, or documented elsewhere. While some of the above tone values are different, it should be pointed out that in social interaction, the tone values are probably close enough to ensure mutual intelligibility. More interesting are three other features of so-called Haicheng dialect. First, the /pl-/ and /ml-/ initials are realised in this dialect as /pj-/ and /mj-/. This is different from the Xinxu lect as recorded in the language survey data. Below is a table of how the /pl-/ initial is realised in the various Zhuang dialects in the Pingguo area:174

karst peak head hair to walk green vegetable Standard Zhuang Haicheng dialect Bangxu dialect Du’an dialect Xin’an dialect Chengguan dialect

pja1 pja1 pa1 pa1 pha1 pla1

pjom1 pjom1 pom1 pom1 phum1 plom1

pjaːi3 pjaːi3 paːi3 paːi3 phaːi3 plaːi3

pjak7 pjak7 pak7 pak7 phak7 plak7

As can be seen from the above table, the /pl-/ initial is documented here as characteristic of the speech of the county town of Matou zhen, but this is a Southern Zhuang dialect. It is important to note these variations, because as we shall see, Mr. Huang pronounces these words most often with plain /p-/ initial, but also reasonably often with /pj-/, and occasionally with /pl-/.

174

Pingguo xianzhi p. 662.

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Secondly, /r-/ initials in the Haicheng dialect are not realised as a trilled /r-/ as described in the language survey data for Xinxu. Neither are they realised as the /ɣ-/ initial of Standard Zhuang. In the Haicheng and Bangxu dialects, Standard Zhuang rin (ɣɪn1) ‘rock’, rueg (ɣuːk8) ‘to vomit’, and raen (ɣan1) ‘to see’ are pronounced as lin1, luːk8, and han1 respectively.175 The /l-/ initial in place of /r-/ is found also in the Youjiang dialects of Tianyang and Tiandong, further west. What we will find in Mr. Huang’s pronunciation is a range of different realisations, including occasionally /ɣ-/ and /r-/ but most often /ẕ-/. Thirdly, /kj-/ initials are found in Haicheng dialect, but are pronounced as affricates in most of the other dialects:

Standard Zhuang Haicheng dialect Bangxu dialect Du’an dialect Xin’an dialect Chengguan dialect

egg

head distant gold

kjai5 kjai5 tɕai5 tɕai5 ɣai1 lai1

kjau3 kjau3 tɕau3 tɕau3 – tɕau3

kjai1 kjai1 tɕai1 tɕai1 tɕai1 tɕai1

kim1 kim1 kim1 tɕim1 kim1 kim1

pick up kip7 kip7 kip7 tɕip7 tɕip7 –

Again, it is important to note these variations, because Mr. Huang pronounces these initials sometimes as /kj-/ and sometimes as /tɕ-/. 25.6 Mr. Huang’s Pingguo Dialect As previously indicated, Mr. Huang’s recited pronunciation is close to that of the Xinxu lect, but there are some interesting differences. Unlike the above data, the data below have not been phonemicised. Nor, for that matter, has the IPA transcription in the interlinear text. Rather, a ‘narrow transcription’ has been presented that indicates more closely the underlying phonetic reality of Mr. Huang’s recitation. 25.7 Tones The tone values of Mr. Huang’s Pingguo dialect are close to those of the Xinxu dialect, except that Tone 3 is a mid-level tone (33) rather than a high level tone (55), and Tone 6 is a low falling tone (31) rather than a mid-level tone (33).

175

Ibid. p. 663.

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There is considerable variation in the realisation of the tones in recitation. This variation is represented in the transcription of the text. For convenience, the following table is provided. No attempt at this point has been made to work out any common patterns in tone sandhi.

category

citation form variants

Tone 1 Tone 2 Tone 3 Tone 4 Tone 5 Tone 6 Tone 7 short Tone 7 long Tone 8 short Tone 8 long

324 42 33 21 35 31 55 35 33 31

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 8 0

r V H v : = < < X