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文：Kim Roseberry

Article and photo by Kim Roseberry

Before traveling to Ximeng, I had heard many things about the wa. They are considered by many to be Yunnan’s most primitive culture- they once were avid opium growers, as their brothers and sisters across the Burma border are still. I’ve been told that the name “Wa” used to strike fear into children’s hearts. After hearing this talk, of course I was intrigued and jumped at the opportunity to see the people who had caused such a stir.

I arrived in Ximeng after a flight to Simao and a long, fast drive over what surely is one of the world’s most curvy roads. It was night and I lay down in the back seat of the car to keep from being sick from the swaying of the car. Occasionally I opened my eyes to see deep forest bathed in moonlight whizzing by. The tree branches swayed gently and I had the sense of traveling to distant places within a dream. At one point, I thought I saw eyes peeking out of the woods, round and yellow, like those of a tiger, but then again, maybe it was only a dream.

Drums and gongs woke me the next morning. Underneath my window passed a procession of people marching in formation to the heavy beat. It was three days before the great Wooden Drum Festival at which the Wa pray to the wooden drum for a bountiful harvest and below me were the people brought down from the villages to practice for the event. They certainly looked tame enough to me.

I rushed into my clothes, grabbed my camera and followed them down to the public grounds where hundreds of people had begun their rehearsals. Their effort would culminate in a grand event drawing huge crowds and broadcast all over the country. I watched the preparations for three days and the main event indeed was a spectacular affair. Women with long, shiny black hair and tattooed men in leopard skin outfits stamped out a beat in the dusty ground to the sound of heavy drum rhythms. Carefully choreographed dances were performed by school children in shiny red and white outfits holding glittery hoops, Wa women smoking long pipes circled about, muscular men pounded on the hollow wood drums and a central dancer was held high to perform a writhing, hair-swinging dance of his people’s history and soul. I saw that the drums beat not only to bring a plentiful harvest, but also for the televisions cameras and tourist dollars. The culmination of the event was the slaughtering of three water buffaloes. The bright-eyed beasts were tied to posts and contentedly chewed their cud as one hunter holding a long spear in his right hand posed for the photographers. The animals hardly knew that their lives were about to end with several stabs to the heart accompanied by the loud cries of triumph coming from the crowd dancing in a dizzying circle about the animal, their shouts louder and louder as death closed in upon it.

During the event, a constant commentary ran, informing the spectators of the characteristics and traditions of the Wa. A couple of days before the actual event, I went to a nearby Wa village to see for myself what those characteristics were. With the festival drawing near, I thought I would surely get a sense of the mysterious and little known Wa culture.

I interviewed four people there. The village head, when asked what the unique characteristics of the Wa people are, said he did not know. This same uncertainty was echoed by a villager who said, “We are Ximeng Wa, we call ourselves Li Va. We speak our Wa language. We came from a cave, Sigangli. We Wa don’t really understand where we came from, we just know how to speak the Wa language.” It seemed to me while I was talking with them that there was a lack of a sense of identity. Nobody could express what it meant to be Wa. They were unsure of their customs, of their general traits and characteristics and where they came from. So, I moved the conversation to the present.

For this village, the present was focused on how to grow rice, feed and raise the livestock and how to earn enough money to send the children to school. For the villagers, providing education for their children was of the utmost importance. I asked about dreams for the future. The village head’s dream is to open up a factory and employ his villagers. What sort of factory, he couldn’t say. How to achieve this, he didn’t know. “We want progress, to be like the places we see on TV. If this situation can be achieved, then I would be proud for myself.”

It was obvious to me that the people of this village were looking forward towards the future, rather than looking back. The Wa people’s traditions and beliefs are incompatible with modern science, beliefs, and lifestyle. They want progress, yet are caught in the limitations of today, unsure of how to achieve their dreams. In the last fifty years, the Wa have struggled to leap forward from the most primitive ways of living and beliefs into the modern world, a process that normally takes hundreds of years. They’ve been uprooted, left with little sense of what or who they are. It appears that for many, the line with the past has been cut, yet they are still grasping for the rope that will drag them into the modern world.

The contrast between the festival and its celebration of tradition and identity and the everyday lives that seemed to lack much of that same identity was striking. Where was the true spirit of the Wa? After several days in Ximeng, I think I found it. It lies within their song and dance. At night, after a day of practice, the small cabins where the Wa villagers stayed erupted with activity. Rice porridge was ladled out and water alcohol flowed. Bonfires were built and they sang and danced without inhibition, with a rawness that is rarely seen elsewhere. Song came from deep within, released with clarity and confidence. They sang of love, war, hardship and toil. Bodies danced with the full rhythm of the music pulsating through them. It was in witnessing this that I felt that I had the clearest view into the soul of the Wa.

The warring past is gone, yet it was obvious that they still carry the strong spirit from those times, and perhaps that is what is most important. The Wa are caught in a time of drastic and essential change. They must adapt quickly to new ways of life. As for anyone, change, especially rapid change, comes with pain, but if their spirit remains strong, then almost surely they will thrive. No matter what ethnicity or nationality, individual or group we consider, success lies in the quality of spirit.

I left Ximeng early in the morning, passing back over the curvy road to Simao. The clouds were drifting among the sharp hills covered in deep forest over which the sun rose, a red ball of fire. As I took in the wild terrain, I thought about the idea of “spirit.” In my lap, I held a Wa outfit presented to me by the Ximeng government. I realized that, although I could wear the costume, I could never myself possess that vital strength of the Wa. They possess a unique spirit that contains a strength that will eventually disappear among the waves of development; it is a spirit born from the earth and jun.