#biasha

As mentioned in the previous post, the second tour guide whom we met in the morning for breakfast told us that we ought to visit Biasha - a village in Congjiang county famous for the hair shaving and shooting gun performances. And so, our dear tour guide friend swiftly made arrangements for us to head to Congjiang city in Congjiang county, coordinating both the transport there and our accommodation. 

Our transport there was kind of arranged via uber-like system on Wechat, and our driver was a guy who looked like a gangster but had the most adorable daughter, and his wife with him in the car. He drove us safely there for approximately two hours and we arrived in Congjiang city safe and sound. 

After reaching our hotel and checking in, a bunch of guys, slightly younger than us, reeking of smoke, came up to us, offering to drive us up to Biasha village, just about 5 kilometres away from the city. Our alarm bells really should have started ringing, but our naive selves had experienced too much goodness in Kaili that we quickly agreed to their offer without really thinking. The moment we entered the car, we quickly regretted our decision to join them. They were smoking iNSIDE the car, and the driver told me he started driving when he was 15 years old even though the legal age to drive is 18 years old in China O.O Nevertheless, thankfully, we safely made it to the entrance of the Biasha village, where we were promptly stopped as foreigners needed to pay the entrance fee of 80RMB. 

Because our second tour guide friend told us to meet her friend at the entrance of the village, we decided to wait there for him. But the gangsters were unhappy that they had to wait so long for us, and quickly got angry at us. We told them, very happily, that they should just go ahead, and they sped away without turning back (which we were really happy about). The performance was supposed to start at 3pm, and we were already kind of late, but we thought best to wait for the guy outside. While waiting, we chatted with the employees at the entrance booth, and since they were around the same age as us, we got along with them quite well. After a while we gave up waiting and decided to just go in. They had some discount for students, and so we passed them our student card, which was all written in English, and thankfully our new found friends believed us. 

We went up the stone path they told us to take, and reached a pavilion with a preserved tree bark in the middle. Biasha village is a Miao village, and although it reads basha in hanyupinyin, Biasha is the original Miao way of pronouncing it. This particular village believed in tree gods and had a particularly old tree, which was taken away by the government when they collected famous treasures around China when Mao passed on. The people were so moved by the cutting of the tree that they surrounded the tree and cried. The government found this scene very touching and thus built this pavilion to commemorate the tree. Or so the story goes. 

Further down the stone path we reached a small museum that had some photos of the village in the past, and how it was eventually turned into a tourist attraction. Walking further down the stone path brought us to an open area - the village square, I suppose - where the performances are supposedly held, but we arrived too late to watch the performances. Nonetheless, we decided to just walk around and speak to villagers. 

The village was pretty quiet, and because we didn’t know how to speak Miao, we weren’t really able to converse with the locals. The village was really beautiful, with its wooden houses in layers with the mountains and skies as its background. 

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/features/2014/04/28/china-village-gunning-for-tourists/

China village gunning for tourists

A RIFLE shot tears the air of a mountain hamlet — met not with terror but cries of delight in China’s only remaining village where authorities encourage gun ownership.

“We start carrying guns from about 15 years old,” said Jia Xinshan, fingering a wooden rifle’s trigger as tourists snapped pictures of him in a shiny black coat.

“We’re the last gun tribe in China.”

The armaments in Biasha, a village tucked amid the wooded peaks of Guizhou province, are a reminder of an era of conflict between Beijing and the mountain tribes who still inhabit swathes of China’s southwest.

Villagers are allowed to own rifles but restricted to firing them during displays for tourists — illustrating how once-restive minority groups have integrated with the state.

China, wary of social unrest and crime, bars most civilians from owning firearms, giving the village’s gunpowdery atmosphere an illicit feel.

“We used to use our guns to protect the village,” said Jia, 30, who performs daily in a dance routine where he thrusts his gun into the air before firing it.

“Now we carry them to give tourists an impression.”

Biasha’s wooden shacks which cling to hillsides are home to members of the Miao minority, an ethnic group of about 12 million people who are more at home in their own languages than Mandarin Chinese.

The name “Miao” was first applied to hill tribes who fought bloody rebellions against the Chinese state which pushed south in the 1600s, forcing locals into high mountain territory.

Miao fighters had “considerable experience with firearms”, as early as 1681, according to historian Robert Jenks, whose account of the rebellion was published by the University of Hawaii.

But the deadliest clashes occurred in the 19th century, where by some estimates several million died.

Chinese forces lost 30 to 40 men a day from Miao snipers who fired into government camps under cover of darkness, a British mercenary commented in 1870, according to Jenks.

‘One gun maker remains’

The rebellions were finally put down and Miao leaders executed in 1872 by Chinese army regiments.

Mountain groups “went through a process of adaption to the new nation-state system,” said Siu-Woo Cheung, a professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

The Miao achieved their first official recognition as an ethnic group by the republic that followed the collapse of China’s last dynasty in 1912, granting them limited autonomy, a status that continued when the Communist Party took power three decades later.

The Miao’s accommodation with the government contrasts with other groups such as Tibetans and Uighurs, who continue to clash with authorities over what they claim is cultural repression.

Villagers in Biasha said just one gun maker remains — in a hillside shack where vegetables hang from the roof and metal weapon scraps fill a wicker basket.

“It takes two or three days to make a gun,” said Gun Laosheng, the craftsman. ”My father taught me, because he loved guns and was great at hunting wild birds.”

But these days locals prefer to profit from tour groups, he said.

“Now you spend a day hunting and you don’t even know if you’ll shoot anything, so it makes more sense to work and buy some meat.”

Many villagers have taken the surname “Gun”, whose similarity with the English word is coincidence.

‘Not even allowed to buy gunpowder’

Hunting has been virtually banned, locals said, in a measure to protect wildlife, and villagers are prohibited from firing guns outside of performances.

“We’re not even allowed to buy gunpowder on the market, so we have to secretly buy it,” said one young villager who asked not to be named.

Ning Jingwu, a movie director who spent over a year in the village said: “The government allows them to keep guns but is very scared about gun production.”

But an illicit trade survives — in Guiyang city just 300 kilometres from Biasha, police this month seized 15,000 guns from an “illegal ring”.

“People come from outside the village to sell guns, but the locals won’t admit it,” Ning said.

“Now the gun has turned into a tool for performances, which we think is kind of sad.”

In Biasha’s stone-paved village square, opposite a tourist hotel labelled “The Gunner Inn”, five-year-olds pose with plastic replica rifles while visitors pay to fire shots into the air.

Wearing a brand-new backpack, 27-year-old Tan Ying, a member of China’s Han majority, came to Biasha with a sightseeing group.

“They used to have guns to fight us Han, but now I feel they are more or less the same as us,” she said.

Sitting on a grassy knoll, 37-year-old gunner Guan Nila said: “Our country is peaceful now so we don’t need to use guns.”

“If I wanted to fight, I would just hit you, and not use any weapons.”