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Writing for the Wa  by Xiao Kang
"T hey say to me, ‘Mr Rong, you can’t read the scriptures, you
must recite them from memory! We heard you could recite
scriptures, but it turns out that you just read them!’” Sam Rong is describing the job of a jao bīh, a traditional Wa holy man. The jao bīh performs rituals on behalf of the sick. Occasionally, Sam Rong is called upon to act as jao bīh. “With one hand I pour the liquor onto the ground,” Sam Rong continues, “and with the other I hold out my book, reading the chants that I have written down. Then they all laugh at me!”

We are sitting in Sam Rong’s front room on a slightly shabby sofa, facing the elderly yet still good-looking Wa scholar and translator across a long, low coffee table. With us is A Ko, Sam Rong’s grandson, young, energetic and handsome. A Ko teaches Wa traditional song and dance at a vocational school in the Cāngyuán (沧源) county town. Cangyuan nestles in the hills of southwest Lincang prefecture, just across the border from the Wa State of Burma. This county is home to over 136,000 Wa, accounting for around 35% of the total population of Wa people in China.*

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A Ko’s students practising a traditional dance.

“Long ago, our Creator Spirit Siyīex came down from heaven and taught the people of the earth how to read and write,” Sam Rong begins to explain. “He wrote down his wisdom for the ancestor of the Han Chinese and for the ancestor of you Westerners. But he loved the Wa the most. So for our ancestor, he wrote down his wisdom on an ox hide so that it would last a long, long time. However, our ancestor was very hungry and ate the ox hide. So Siyīex’s wisdom ended up in the Wa ancestor’s stomach. All the other peoples of the earth have their wisdom written down, but the Wa people have it stored in their stomachs. The civilised peoples tell us, ‘You are so primitive, you don’t even have your wisdom written down.’ But we say, ‘As soon as you’d written your wisdom down, you promptly forgot it. But we Wa have our wisdom treasured in our hearts. We shall never forget it.’”

Sam Rong speaks animatedly; his face lighting up has he warms to his subject. He is a zealous champion of his people’s history and culture. He is especially proud of A Ko who, after years of aimlessly roaming South East Asia, returned to his homeland to study and promote Wa cultural heritage. “When I grew up, I was never interested in learning our songs or playing our instruments. Can you believe that?” A Ko laughs. “When I met with Wa people in other parts of South East Asia, I began to realise how precious our culture was. If my generation didn’t pass on our culture then it would die. So I came back to learn what it truly means to be Wa.”

Later on, as we sit in Sam Rong’s courtyard eating lunch, we discover the extent of A Ko’s abilities. Seeing us lift our glasses of wine for a toast, A Ko suddenly breaks out into a rhythmic and vigorous song. His head jerks back and forth, his long, jet-black hair sweeping in time to the beat. Fingers clicking and feet drumming, A Ko is swept up into his own music, emitting a mix of ancient melodies, percussion effects and sporadic bursts of quick-fire Wa rap. We are completely electrified by the sheer energy of his performance. We learn that the Wa have songs for every occasion: welcoming guests, conducting rituals, courting lovers, and of course, toasting.

A Ko’s dance troupe has already achieved an impressive level of fame, touring as far as Beijing, Shanghai and even far-flung France. Sam Rong, though, would like to see even more happen to preserve and promote their culture. He is particularly interested in encouraging the reading and writing of the Wa language.

Although traditionally the Wa language had never been written down, an alphabet was devised in the early 1900s by pioneering Western missionaries. The Chinese government revised it in the 1950s and a few schools are currently teaching it in Cangyuan county. The Yunnan provincial government requested Sam Rong to help translate the Chinese elementary school curriculum into Wa in order to develop some form of bilingual education. Sam Rong has now almost completed his task.

Sam Rong hopes that more and more Wa will become literate. In this way, they can record their stories and songs for posterity. Despite the traditional Wa pride in a lack of letters, Sam Rong believes that even the Wa cannot preserve their cultural treasures in their hearts forever. Our modern era requires that the wisdom swallowed long ago by the Wa ancestor must, like all other wisdom, be written down at last.


*National census figures, 2000