The Brilliant Ecological Wisdom
605
4 An Eternal Ode
“Like dogs digging holes, you cannot be afraid of slurry in farming; like a cattle
plowing the farm, you cannot complain about exhaustion and hardship in working.”
This is the song that Hani people sing when transplanting rice seedlings and they
sing it every year during spring farming. The clear and crisp song flows in the air far
and wide, not only expressing the farmers’ high spirit and energy, but also conveying
their aspiration for a bumper harvest and a happy life. It is their work song.
However, Hani people of the young generation have walked out of their villages
into cities over recent years and merged into the modern urban life. They leave the
elders and children at home, like in some mountainous villages, and would only
come back on festivals, during the Spring Festival or in the farming season. Perhaps
they are too accustomed to the beauty of the terraces to be as shocked and amazed
as visitors like us. Young Hani people no longer wear dark blue blouses and widelegged trousers, but prefer trendy shirts and close-fitting jeans. It is the elders that are
guarding and inheriting the terraces. Wearing wide pants and holding hoes in hand,
they are still mending the farm ridges while aged women, carrying baskets on their
back, are either picking loaches or mending the ridges because some ridges are so
fragile that a break of them would lead to chain effects, especially in the rain season.
The thousand-year-long farming civilization is in danger of having no successors
and inheritors.
This reminds me of the speech given by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the central
rural work meeting in 2013. “At the end of the day, the key to rural economic and social
development lies in people. Without people, without labor force, we cannot achieve
food security, modern agriculture or the construction of a new countryside, and
our traditional farming culture cannot be well protected and inherited. The farming
culture is a valuable fortune in our agriculture and an important component of Chinese
culture. It should not be forsaken, but should be carried forward and promoted. If
people all leave the villages, who will inherit and carry on the farming culture? I
heard that where the Hani rice is planted in Yunnan, the number of people who
can sing ancient Hani songs like Hani Work Song all Year Long and dance to Hani
music is shrinking. We cannot lose what our ancestors have left us in the name of
modernization!”
Do not make light of the Hani Work Song all Year Long. It relates a complete
system of folk culture and knowledge about agricultural production ranging from
natural landscape, fauna and flora, production and life to experience and wisdom.
The song consists of five parts—introduction, winter, spring, summer and autumn.
The “introduction” emphasizes how important the all-year-long work song passed
down from previous generations is for the Hani ethnic group, while the other four
parts recount in seasonal order the procedures and technical essentials for terrace
farming as well as the associated astronomical and calendar knowledge, patterns of
natural and climatic changes, festivals and worship ceremonies, and ritual norms.
These contents are usually taught through oral instructions and personal examples
between master and apprentice, father and son, or mother and daughter, either by
605
4 An Eternal Ode
“Like dogs digging holes, you cannot be afraid of slurry in farming; like a cattle
plowing the farm, you cannot complain about exhaustion and hardship in working.”
This is the song that Hani people sing when transplanting rice seedlings and they
sing it every year during spring farming. The clear and crisp song flows in the air far
and wide, not only expressing the farmers’ high spirit and energy, but also conveying
their aspiration for a bumper harvest and a happy life. It is their work song.
However, Hani people of the young generation have walked out of their villages
into cities over recent years and merged into the modern urban life. They leave the
elders and children at home, like in some mountainous villages, and would only
come back on festivals, during the Spring Festival or in the farming season. Perhaps
they are too accustomed to the beauty of the terraces to be as shocked and amazed
as visitors like us. Young Hani people no longer wear dark blue blouses and widelegged trousers, but prefer trendy shirts and close-fitting jeans. It is the elders that are
guarding and inheriting the terraces. Wearing wide pants and holding hoes in hand,
they are still mending the farm ridges while aged women, carrying baskets on their
back, are either picking loaches or mending the ridges because some ridges are so
fragile that a break of them would lead to chain effects, especially in the rain season.
The thousand-year-long farming civilization is in danger of having no successors
and inheritors.
This reminds me of the speech given by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the central
rural work meeting in 2013. “At the end of the day, the key to rural economic and social
development lies in people. Without people, without labor force, we cannot achieve
food security, modern agriculture or the construction of a new countryside, and
our traditional farming culture cannot be well protected and inherited. The farming
culture is a valuable fortune in our agriculture and an important component of Chinese
culture. It should not be forsaken, but should be carried forward and promoted. If
people all leave the villages, who will inherit and carry on the farming culture? I
heard that where the Hani rice is planted in Yunnan, the number of people who
can sing ancient Hani songs like Hani Work Song all Year Long and dance to Hani
music is shrinking. We cannot lose what our ancestors have left us in the name of
modernization!”
Do not make light of the Hani Work Song all Year Long. It relates a complete
system of folk culture and knowledge about agricultural production ranging from
natural landscape, fauna and flora, production and life to experience and wisdom.
The song consists of five parts—introduction, winter, spring, summer and autumn.
The “introduction” emphasizes how important the all-year-long work song passed
down from previous generations is for the Hani ethnic group, while the other four
parts recount in seasonal order the procedures and technical essentials for terrace
farming as well as the associated astronomical and calendar knowledge, patterns of
natural and climatic changes, festivals and worship ceremonies, and ritual norms.
These contents are usually taught through oral instructions and personal examples
between master and apprentice, father and son, or mother and daughter, either by