Just last week, CET staff traveled to a Miao village in Guizhou to scout the location of a Spring Break service learning trip. Starting off in the provincial capital of Guiyang, we drove about two hours west to a small city called Kaili, and from there, to a Miao and Dong ethnicity autonomous region another 1.5 hours to the southwest.
The Miao people are one of China’s larger non-Han ethnic minority groups, and live in the mountainous regions of Southwest China as well as numerous other countries including Vietnam and Thailand. They are known by many names, in English often referred to as Hmong people, and are officially categorized by Chinese government censuses into numerous different subgroups.
Miao people speak their own languages, and among the different subgroups, some of these languages are mutually unintelligible. Despite linguistic differences, certain common customs and lifestyles tie many Miao people together, for example, shamanistic rituals that traditionally center around ox worship and sacrifice, as well as terrace agriculture and a preference for settlement on mountainsides.
The Miao village we visited was representative of these facts. Beigao, one of several villages within the Wugao area, is situated on a mountainside with terraces of rice, flowering cabbage, and brilliant yellow canola above and below. The village head, who is also the local shaman, invited us into his home for a meal of local chicken hotpot with cabbage, and a delicious pickled pepper dipping sauce. We discussed with him the situation in Beigao, the condition of the village, and what we might be able to do if we were to return for a longer stay.
The village head pointed out that despite the great natural beauty and strong cultural heritage of the area, there were still many hardships that the residents must endure. He showed us drainage ditches which were in disrepair and littered with debris and garbage.
He also pointed out a dangerous path of dirt and stone that local women use to carry heavy loads of crops down from the terraces, mentioning that a number of accidents had occurred there in just the past year. Any progress on these two projects alone would objectively raise the quality of life substantially for all village residents, and we were hopeful that a dedicated group of volunteers could complete at least one of them during a stay in the village.
Parting ways with the people of Beigao was an involved process, and it’s one of the customs we’ll never forget. Maybe it could be described as a sort of singing contests. One of the locals will sing a song to a target, and then the target is required to either sing a song in return or consume one of their delicious local treats. We’re confident that when we return in the Spring, we’ll be doing a whole lot of singing, eating, and working together with them again. We’re so confident about the amount of singing we’ll be doing that we’re telling students they’d better memorize a whole lot of songs before they get to the village!
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