On 19 April 1934, Lu Xun wrote in a letter to Chen Yanqiao: “The same is true of literature today. Works with local colour are more likely to become world literature, that is, to attract attention abroad. Going out into the world is beneficial to China’s activities.” Later, someone condensed the spirit of these words into the well-known saying: “The more national, the more universal.”
On 8 February 1993, I published a short essay of about 3,000 characters in China Culture Daily entitled “Three Treasures of Dong Culture: Drum Towers, Grand Songs, and Wind-and-Rain Bridges.” From that moment the idea that Dong culture has “three treasures” spread widely. In reality Dong culture contains many more treasures than three: Dong customary law (kuan), Dong opera, Dong medicine, and soft-field glutinous rice, among others, are all precious assets of the Dong homeland’s economy and culture.
Today the Dong Grand Song has been recognised as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. This masterpiece is conquering and influencing descendants of humanity both at home and abroad with its unique charm, and is bringing tangible benefits, large and small, to the people of the Dong homeland. Yet relying solely on the benefits brought by the Grand Song is unlikely to fundamentally transform the poverty and backwardness of the Dong regions, because the Grand Song ultimately belongs to the superstructure—an artistic form.
A basic principle of political economy tells us that any artistic form in the superstructure must rest upon a corresponding economic base. The survival of the Dong Grand Song is built upon the soft-field glutinous-rice agricultural economy of the Dong homeland. More precisely, it is built upon a mode of production and way of life centred on the cultivation of soft-field glutinous rice. If you doubt this, go and investigate thoroughly. Historically, the Dong Grand Song was mainly popular in the second sub-dialect area of the southern Dong dialect—today’s southeastern Liping, northwestern Congjiang, eastern Rongjiang, and northwestern Sanjiang. In these areas the Dong people traditionally managed soft fields, planted glutinous rice, and ate sticky rice; most of their customs and folklore were also connected with soft-field glutinous rice.
Everyone knows that no living thing can exist without water. Humans can go several days without food, but not without water. Whether the Moon, Jupiter or Mars has life depends above all on whether water is present. Hence the saying “water is the source of life.” Traditional glutinous rice was generally grown in fields that held water all year round; in Dong these are called Yav Mas (soft fields). Soft fields usually required neither ploughing nor harrowing. After the autumn harvest people trampled the remaining rice stalks into the mud; once the stalks rotted they became excellent base fertiliser, and seedlings could be transplanted directly the following year. Before 1958, soft fields accounted for more than 80 percent of the total rice-field area in the southern Dong regions.
Because traditional glutinous-rice plants are tall—generally over 1.5 metres, sometimes reaching 1.8 or even 2 metres—they are not afraid of flooding and do not need to be drained for sunning. This makes it easy to keep deep water in the fields for raising fish and ducks. The Dong therefore call glutinous-rice fields Daeml Yav (field-ponds). Raising fish and ducks in the paddies has many advantages. Fish eat pests at the roots of the rice seedlings; ducks eat pests in the middle and upper parts of the plants. Both also consume weeds, loosen the soil around the roots, and stir and regulate water temperature. This farming system not only greatly increases land-use efficiency but also realises the comprehensive utilisation of natural resources and ecological balance: duck droppings become fish feed, fish droppings become fertiliser for the rice, and so on. Such a system offers broad prospects for modern circular ecological agriculture.
Because traditional glutinous-rice fields hold water year-round, when it rains they store the rainfall, functioning as countless miniature reservoirs. Unlike ordinary reservoirs, which concentrate large volumes of water by artificial means, soft fields store rainwater in a dispersed manner on the spot. This avoids the artificial damage to natural and human ecology that large and medium-sized reservoirs often cause. Even in the event of natural disasters or human calamities—earthquakes, wars, and so on—they do not produce major catastrophes.
Year-round water-holding glutinous-rice fields do not pile rainwater into concentrated masses like ordinary reservoirs; instead they are widely distributed across plains and hills. This broad distribution pattern allows water to percolate continuously into the ground, replenishing groundwater, and also to evaporate and rise, replenishing atmospheric moisture. Atmospheric water falls as rain or snow into the soft fields; groundwater emerges as springs and flows into them. The two paths converge and circulate, forming a distinctive natural water-cycle system of the Dong areas.
Soft fields are in fact a kind of artificial wetland, yet they differ from ordinary marsh wetlands. Dong soft fields are not laid out on a single horizontal plane; they ascend step by step along the hillsides, layer upon layer, forming a three-dimensional wetland pattern called Yav Janc (terraced or slope fields) in Dong. This distribution is extremely important: it ensures that “where the mountain is high, the water is high,” keeping the natural water-supply system functioning normally; it also meets the water needs of plants and animals at different altitudes and protects biodiversity. The terraced arrangement of soft fields greatly reduces human damage to the natural environment and guarantees the cleanliness of surface water as well as flood and waterlogging control. When heavy rain falls, the water is stored, settled and infiltrated through successive terraces, preventing the wholesale washing away of soil and silt, reducing sediment loads in rivers, lakes and seas within the watershed, and decreasing the frequency of floods. The water that finally reaches the rivers is clear and clean. This is how the green mountains and clear waters of the Dong settlements on the borders of Hunan, Guizhou and Guangxi came to be.
Regrettably, today we remember and favour only the beautiful Dong Grand Song, while forgetting or neglecting the mode of production and way of life that gave birth to it, and forgetting the economic base that produced it. We have forgotten the ancestral teaching “Oux sangx soh, kgal sangx sais” (Rice feeds life; song feeds the heart). Without “rice feeds life,” how can there be “song feeds the heart”? In order to feed life, many young and able-bodied Dong men and women have left their homeland; those who remain—the old, the weak, the sick and the disabled—have been forced to change the modes of production and ways of life they once knew and loved. As a result the Dong Grand Song faces the awkward situation of “people die, songs cease” and a lack of successors. If we want the beautiful Grand Song to continue to live and to thrive, we must seek a way forward in the sphere of production and livelihood!
Where is the way? The way is under our feet! In June 2011 the Dong rice–fish–duck complex system was listed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as a pilot site for the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS). This is another world-class Dong economic and cultural heritage after the Grand Song, and another wing for the Dong homeland’s economy and culture to soar into the world. Unfortunately, at present we still lack sufficient understanding, protection, publicity and utilisation of this wing. Therefore I once again call out: the Dong Grand Song and soft-field glutinous rice are the two wings that will carry the Dong homeland’s economy and culture into the world. Let the Dong homeland’s economy and culture spread both wings and fly far toward a bright future!