Entry: Maogusi Dance
Maogusi Dance is the most traditional Tujia dance. The dancers are fully naked except for straw coverings and straw sticks in their hands. The straw stick represents the spirit and strength of man. It is the only dancing prop. Including scenes of cutting with a knife, burning with fire, sowing and seeding, hunting, sweeping away bad luck, snatching a bride, singing antiphonal songs at Tiaonian Gathering, and celebrating harvest, the dance is a farming epic of the Tujia people and is a living fossil of Chinese drama.
Now, my ancestors, dressed in straw from head to feet, are singing and dancing to tell me about the past, hometown, labor and the legendary history carved in bones and engraved in the heart.
After a war and in order to create a paradise, my ancestors, walking across rivers and hills and living a primitive life, came barefoot to the mountainous Xiangxi, with the hope of finding a place where they could grow up and create a warm and gentle home for us, their descendants. Heaven and earth are the spirit of everything and the five cereals are the first created. Thus, my ancestors offer superior sacrifices to the heaven, to the earth and to the god of crops by singing and dancing. If the god of crops laughs, we will gain a bumper harvest. If the god of crops is not happy, we will suffer from famine year after year. Therefore, my ancestors dance nearly fully naked, covered only with stalk of any kind of the five cereals, such as straw or corn stalk and wheat stalk. They would dance every day during the New Year period of this year to next year, for this generation and the next.
This is the farming songs and dances for grain production.
This is a splendid painting of idyllic life.
This is national notes, simple, primitive and rough.
With drums rumbling, my ancestors come one by one to cut down thistles and thorns with sickles and explore the wasteland by persistently poking the ground with long sticks. Igniting fires on mountains symbolizes the slash-and-burn cultivation methods. My ancestors have already polished their knives, waiting for the harvest in August, September or October. Mountains are gazing around and rivers are listening quietly. The ancestors are cutting, digging and burning with an ox and a plough to cultivate, which evokes an amazing farming poem and image. Their dripping sweat irrigates the land, cultivates the soil for all seasons, making the newly ploughed land bright and fertile. They have the same breath with the land, hot and humid.
Sunlight is moved and splashes down, caressing my ancestors' swarthy backs. Rain is moved and sprinkles down, washing their swarthy backs. After the rain, a rainbow rises from the two sides of mountains and creates a colorful scene. It is under the sun, the rain and the rainbow's glow that my ancestors cultivate and sow. After sowing, the rice, the corn, the wheat, the millet, the yellow and the green beans grow out. In spring, flowers and birds are all racing to come into the field. When my ancestors walk on the fields, the sound of grains' growing slightly comes from their feet. The grain leaves gently stroke the faces of our ancestors and the trunks gently touch their bodies. When they weed and fertilize crops, they hear the sound of the crops growing up in their jointing stage, the crops' call for sunshine, the sunshine's call for the fall and the fall's call for a harvest. This is the happiest sound for our ancestors just like the cry of a baby. Hearing this sound, my ancestors grin and then look up at the blue sky. Not far from here lies another mountain and another piece of land that have been reclaimed by them.
In this way, barren hills are laboriously cultivated by my ancestors, leaving behind the endless gardens, land and home. Days of reclaiming are the bitterest and sweetest time for my forebears. Their heads and backs are seen moving up and down in fields and between rolling hills. At this time, there is always a wordless song rising into the sky and then falling over the land. Words cannot express their happiness, so they only use this call to praise harvests and sing for the land."Yo-ho!" "Yo-ho!" "Yo-ho!"
And then the dance starts to depict what happens in winter when my ancestors are rushing to hunt in the snow. The buffalo-players are dressed as prey in an animal skin with gray hair, bustling around in the hunters' pursuit and interception. On a narrow road leading to the mountains, every shiny spear is a tight whistle for alarming, and my ancestors' hunting dogs and hunting guns are ambushed at every corner of the roads. With the overwhelming hunting bellows, wild boars pace sideways from the mountains and become the docile livestock. Pheasants with bright tail feathers pop out of the grass and become the docile poultry. Musk deer, tigers, axis deer, and many other rare birds and animals obediently line up to come one by one, kissing my ancestors' warm skin. My forefathers are so brave, capable in conquering and taming all things in nature.
In this victory, my ancestors enrich their experience, widen their roads, broaden their world and perfect their images. They laugh and pick up brooms to sweep away the plague! Sweep out pains and illness and sweep in health and peace. Sweep! Sweep out plagues, and sweep in thriving domestic animals. Sweep! Sweep out famines and disasters, and sweep in bumper harvests. Sweep! Sweep out ignorance and poverty, and sweep in civilization and prosperity.
In order to understand love and life, my ancestor sits with legs crossed, caressed by the wind carrying the fragrance of ripening grain, missing his faraway girl. She is the world's most gentle and beautiful lady, who can not only bear children but also work in the fields. The yellow pumpkin flowers over her head are blooming and shining. Her eyes are crystally clear and her smile is charming. Therefore, she is even more a beauty, spurring my ancester to eagerly grab her and turn her into a wife.
Although their hands are rough with calluses as time goes by, their descendants have proliferated quickly. They will inevitably make a wooden groove of Baba (glutinous rice cakes) in front of the Grain God, drink a bamboo tube of corn liquor and sing one thousand even ten thousand antiphonal songs to express their feelings and celebrate the festivals.
The Garden of Peaches/The Garden of Peaches/The Garden of Peaches is good to till/The land is my hometown/My hometown bears grain/The full grain warehouses make a happy new year.
At this time, the dancers exit in turn. Their songs and dances slowly end. The whole process and significance of survival and struggle are concentrated in the scene of farming, sowing and harvesting. In order to survive, my ancestors pursue in such a way. In order to create a home for their children and grandchildren, my ancestors tirelessly struggle like this. What is showed by this song and dance is not only grains, harvest and home, but also faith, will and strong character refined by soil and sweat. It is our ancestors who create and shape history, create us and transform us. We should be proud of them. When we are touched by the song and dance, and shed tears of respect, we can do nothing but hand down this dance and song from generation to generation. While we all take trains or cars to enjoy our homeland and nostalgia that we have in common, our ancestors have also come to life again.
Leaves in their mouths have now become our tea. Their descendants' lives are no longer like those of the ancient migrants.