"Pakistan (Ethiopia) sand" means a place with a lot of vegetation. There are only more than 2,000 tribes in this jungle, living in the vast forest of Moon Mountain in the south of congjiang county. Because Basha people are surrounded by Miao people, they are used to wearing indigo homespun clothes, and outsiders are used to calling them black seedlings. But their customs and habits are very different from those of other Hmong people, and they never consider themselves Hmong themselves. It is said that the ancestors of Basha people are a branch of Sanmiao Jiuli tribe, living in the far east, where the sun accompanies them and they eat rice. Later, their leader Chiyou and the Yellow Emperor attacked Zhuolu together and were killed after the defeat. Eighty Chiyou brothers led the defeated troops to retreat south and west. As the pioneer of Jiuli tribe, the ancestors of Basha people have been cutting through thorns. Seeing that it is surrounded by mountains, deep forests, rich water resources, easy to hide, and can grow rice, they decided to stay here and live in seclusion.
Basha people take rice as the main crop and hunt in mountainous areas for a long time. Because the places where they live are high mountains and dense forests and the traffic is constant, few outsiders have entered for thousands of years. Walking into Basha, dense forests and towering old trees can be seen everywhere. Bazaar is not big. The village is built on the half slope on the side of Liangshan Aokou, facing Duliujiang River. The wooden building in the village is simple and simple, surrounded by forests, and the environment is elegant. They wear traditional clothes, have strange hairstyles and go barefoot all year round. For the convenience of tourists, the local government allocated funds to build a cement road, but the villagers were greatly dissatisfied. Because the sun is too hot in summer, many people have to put on their shoes, but most people still go barefoot. Their unique clothes and living habits make us feel like we are in a distant ancient tribe.
He Liang Yu He Cang
In Basha hut, the most striking building is the dense wooden building, which extends from the mountainside to the top of the mountain. They are sun-dried valleys and wooden houses, which overlap like palaces and castles and are hidden in the depths of dense forests. Seen from a height, there are rows of bark roofs covered with green moss.
The unique way of harvesting glutinous rice by Basha people has created the most unique scenery in the stockade-Heliang. Grain drying is a tool for Basha people to dry rice ears. They planted several logs with thick bowls in the ground, crossed several logs on the erected logs, and combined them into a tall wooden frame, with fir bark at the top to shelter from the rain. Each grain drying field is about six to seven meters high and four to five meters wide. Whenever the rice is ripe, Basha people will go to the fields to harvest the ears of rice. Although Basha people live a primitive and extensive farming life of slash-and-burn in the deep mountains and forests, the process of harvesting glutinous rice is extremely meticulous. When harvesting glutinous rice, they don't use sickles like other places, nor do they cut straw together. Instead, use a razor-like blade to embed it in a long wooden frame, and then use this blade to pick out the ears one by one and cut them off, leaving the grain and grass in the ground. They tied the cut ears of grain into small handfuls, picked them back to the hut, and hung them upside down on the grain dryer to dry. Because the whole village is drying grain together, every household's waxy ears of grain are hung up in rows, forming a golden yellow, soaring into the sky, like gorgeous silks and satins falling from the sky, gorgeous and spectacular.
When the rice on the ears of grain is dry, Basha people will take them down and store them in the barn until they eat, and then take out several bundles of waxy ears of grain from the barn and put them in the gravel. The barn is a square log cabin, which is built adjacent to the barn and concentrated in pieces, mostly covered with fir bark. On the newly-built barn pillar, you can often see some white paper-cut figures stuck on it. Ask carefully, it turns out that this is the masterpiece of the ghost master (exorcist). It is said that these paper-cut villains are specially guarding the barn to drive away rats.
"Household Sticks" and Tree Burial
Most people go to Miao village to see women, their gorgeous costumes and gorgeous silver ornaments; And go to Basha, mainly to see men, see the strange hairstyle on their heads-"home stickers"
Basha men advocate force, usually wearing blue cloth self-woven collarless right cardigan, straight pants and blue cloth shirt, carrying broadswords and muskets all year round, hunting in mountains and fishing in rivers. Climbing a tree is like stepping on the ground. He is very good at climbing mountains and hunting, and his food, clothing, housing and transportation are taken from the valley. They attach great importance to their physical strength, excellent hunting and farming techniques, with special emphasis on clothing and body signs. Basha men attach great importance to their bun. They call their bun a "family stick", which is the most important symbol of Basha men. The remarkable feature of the "household stick" is to shave all the hair around the male head, leaving only the top of the head, and tie it in a bun on the top of the head, and keep this hairstyle for life.
Every boy in Basha must choose a date to hold his bar mitzvah before 15 years old. On the day of the adult ceremony, the boy will invite several partners of similar age to go up the mountain to shoot birds and fish in the river ... The more birds he catches, the more fish he touches, indicating that the greater his skill, the greater his ambition in the future; Later, they gathered at the boy's house to barbecue the caught birds and fish and drink together; While having fun, the ghost teachers in the house clan are also preparing to shave their heads and comb "household sticks" for their children.
Basha people not only have unique hairstyles, but also unique hairdressing tools. What surprises the world most is that their hairdressing tools are not razors or razors, but sickles for mowing grass. The sickle used by Basha people is about five centimeters wide and forty centimeters long. With wooden handle, the total length reaches 70-80 cm. The ghost master told us that we must sharpen the sickle before shaving, especially the curved one, because most of us use the pointed one when shaving, otherwise it is easy to scratch our scalp. In our opinion, although the sickle is sharpened to the peak, it is still a sickle, mowing grass well and shaving is unheard of. I saw the ghost master flying overhead with a huge sharp sickle, and the hair that should have been shaved around his head fell to the ground. After a while, except for the hair on the top of the head, there was no shaved hair around, and there were no scratches. The ghost teacher tied the hair left on the child's head into a bun and put it on his head, calling it a "household stick", thus completing the strict adult ceremony handed down from generation to generation; The shotguns that parents bring to their children are all made by themselves or handed down by their ancestors. At this point, a standard and brave Basha will officially appear in the village.
There are also different opinions about the origin of "household stick". Some people say that the beginning of the world is like this; Some people say that after the defeat of the ancestor Chiyou, the Miao people migrated from the East. Others say that this was the case during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. It is also said that Basha people use their heads to symbolize mountains, and the bun on their heads is the trees on the mountains; It is also said that Basha people express their worship with the most sacred head of the human body. But no matter when and where it originated, it is certain that since the ancestors of Basha settled in Basha, they have kept this hairstyle and no one has made any changes.
There has never been Yin and Yang and Feng Shui in Basha, Long Mai. They are a tribe with trees as their gods. They have been following the ancient and simple funeral customs, retaining the most primitive simplicity and materialism, and are known as "a mountain village with a cold world." Every time a child is born in the stockade, everyone will plant a tree to accompany the child to grow up. A few years later, when the child has become an old man and left this world, everyone will cut down the tree to build a bridge for his soul to return to his hometown, and then bury him in the depths of the jungle to eliminate all traces of him in the world. At the same time, plant another tree where he was buried, and life will start again in another form.
In the eyes of Basha people, life is a continuous cycle process. The birth of a person shows that the souls of ancestors came into the world in the form of flesh. The death of a person indicates that the souls of ancestors have returned to their distant ancestors, and life and death are only alternate forms of soul and body.
In Basha, people must be buried immediately after death, usually in the morning, afternoon, evening and the next day within 24 hours after death. They don't tell the time of yin and yang, and they don't predict the date of burial; Don't choose a land of geomantic omen, and don't build a grave to carve a monument; It's no big deal, let alone a banquet. When someone dies, relatives and friends will come to help when they hear the news. They will cut down the tree of the deceased before his death, and then cut it into a simple coffin with a knife and axe. Then dig a big pit deep in the jungle as a grave and put the coffin in it; After that, the family members of the deceased will wrap themselves in self-woven navy blue, and ask the ghost teacher to do a simple crossing ceremony; Finally, everyone will take down the third horizontal grain drying wood from the grain drying rack of the deceased's house, carry the deceased's body to the mountain and put it in the coffin, and bury everything of the deceased under the spell of the ghost Lord. Their funeral was extremely simple. There is only one Dai Xiao at a funeral. Even if there are many children and grandchildren, as long as one person wears three feet of filial piety, the rest of the children and relatives do not need Dai Xiao; And all the relatives and friends who came to pay their respects just sent one or two cards as gifts.
"Wo" (about 5 kilograms of glutinous rice) is a meal arranged by bereaved families.
In Basha, there has never been a grave-sweeping ceremony, because there are no graves at all and there are trees everywhere. In the past century, Basha, a village with more than 400 households and nearly 2,000 people, has fixed all the funeral land in three places, with a total area of only about 40 mu, and the surrounding land is 18 square kilometer, all of which are terraced fields and lush mountains.
Tree God and the Sun
Basha people believe that their ancestors can escape disasters and their nation can thrive, mainly thanks to the treasure land chosen by their ancestors and the shade of the forests on this land; Therefore, Basha people think that the bun left on their heads is a tree growing on the mountain; And the blue cloth you are wearing is beautiful bark, and you and the tree belong to the same world. Therefore, Basha people especially worship trees and worship them as gods. Basha people say:
"People come from nature and belong to nature; Life without a trace, death without an inch of wood. " Therefore, since ancient times, Basha has never cut down trees indiscriminately, and deforestation is regarded as an act against the clan. If anyone cuts down trees or seedlings without permission, he should be told to plant twice as many seedlings as he found and then be punished. If he has money, he will be punished, and if he has no money, he will kill his livestock for everyone to eat, as an example. Even if it can't be done sometimes, it is limited to the needs of life and production, and the rest are restricted. Therefore, although the 32 1 national highway was built from a place not far from Basha as early as 1965, until now, no car dared to load a load of wood in Basha. Villagers will live in poverty if they lack oil and salt. They will only go up the mountain to prune branches or cut down some dead trees and walk to the county seat to retail. For a long time, there were countless trees in Basha village, which was in sharp contrast with the bare hills in other places.
But Basha, there is also a unique tree cutting technique. From 65438 to the death of Chairman Mao in 0976, Beijing began to build the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, and people of all ethnic groups in the country enthusiastically worked and delivered materials. With infinite admiration for the Chairman, the people of Basha, after holding a villagers' meeting, resolutely decided to dedicate a Millennium camphor tree with a diameter of 1.2 meters in front of the village as a great god in the forest and build a memorial hall for Chairman Mao. At that time, Basha people couldn't cut down trees by themselves, so they had to invite twenty strong men from other villages to cut them down. When the tree fell to the ground, all the people in the village knelt under it. It is said that when the cut trunk is separated from the root, it is not white pulp, but strange red pulp. On the day when Zhangshu left the village, all men, women and children gathered on both sides of the road to watch the tree god leave. In memory of the tree god, we built an octagonal one where camphor trees grow.
"Dedicated to the Memorial Pavilion of Cinnamomum camphora in Chairman Mao's Memorial Hall", in which camphor trees are dedicated to burn incense and worship.
In the southeast of Baisha Lusheng Hall, there is a slope of several hundred square meters, called Dongfang Slope, which is very steep. It is the place where Basha people worship the sun. Basha people worship the sun very much. They think their ancestors came from the far east and the place where the sun rises. Therefore, worshipping the sun is an indispensable ceremony and procedure in the life of Basha people. Whenever there are festivals and important activities, they will worship the sun here. Climbing this eastern slope, if it is a normal climb, you have to turn your back on the sun. After each worship, Basha people will walk to Lusheng Hall while singing and dancing. They will face the sun, the old and the young, and slowly retreat. Whoever has his back to the sun is disrespectful to the sun. Many outsiders tried to face the sun here, but everyone fell to the ground after a few steps. Basha people, on the other hand, stick to their own beliefs and traditions from generation to generation, climb mountains backwards and March towards the sun in their hearts.