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Contagious Passion for “People Like Us”
by Mo Rui Qiu
I was searching for a person who had a strong passion for his own
culture and language. As I talked with Liào Hàn Bō (廖汉波), and
discovered the number of people that he had influenced, I realized I had stumbled upon a visionary individual with a rare knack for inspiring others to action.

Liào Hàn Bō recalls that, as a middle school student, he was not clearly aware that he belonged to an ethnic minority group. Everyone around him spoke his language and shared the same cultural outlook. If children from “outside” were in his class, they soon started speaking the local Zhuang because it was the only way they could join in everyone’s games. It was natural to think that his experience growing up in Debao, Guangxi was common all over. Then, one day a new student teacher, named Mr. Gong, came to his school, and he introduced himself saying, “I’m of Han ethnicity. You all are Zhuang.” That moment was the first time that Liào Hàn Bō awakened to his own ethnicity.

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Liao Han Bo in his hometown with friends. (He is second from the left.)

Later, he went to the district center for high school. There, he experienced culture shock because most people were speaking a type of Cantonese. Only his friends from home could speak his mother tongue. They stuck together and always spoke their mother tongue, so students from other areas coined a nickname for their language. When his English teacher told him about a historical Zhuang hero, Nóng Zhìgāo (侬智高), he became curious about his roots and found magazines and a dictionary that talked about these topics. He went to Xi'an (西安) in north central China for his university education, and continued to research his own people’s language, history, and culture. Although he was one of a few Zhuang students at his university, he found Zhuang students at other universities in town and formed a Zhuang Club so they could connect with each other.

Since those early days, his vision has expanded and grown. After graduating from the university in 2000, he returned home and learned how to sing the Zhuang antiphonal “mountain songs” (山歌). He soaked up recordings of people who were masters at this art, and he interviewed many local artists. These experiences gave him a rich treasure trove of local vocabulary. It carved the ancient patterns and rhyme systems into his heart and mind. In late 2001, he was surfing the web and discovered a website for the Bouyei people group. Knowing that the Bouyei were closely related linguistically to the Northern Zhuang, he thought, “How come they have a website and we, the Zhuang, don’t have our own website?”

In late 2001, that question sparked another venture that has become an online forum for all things Zhuang. With personal discussion forums, studies about the Zhuang people, information about the Zhuang language, and Zhuang music downloads, the Zhuang Online site (www.rauz.net) is a magnet for others who share his values and his vision. His eyes lit up even more when he explained why they chose the name ‘Rauz’ for the website address. In his dialect, ‘Rauz’ means “us.” It captures the local concept of their identity; it is not so much a formal minority group name, but the feeling of belonging to “people like us.”

It was early 2004 when he heard someone else’s remix of a Chinese pop song into Zhuang. He was interested in the concept, but thought her song wasn’t done very well. Digging into the treasure trove of Zhuang vocabulary that he’d collected several years earlier, he began to write original Zhuang lyrics. Soon, they had launched several Zhuang concerts featuring local musicians and bands. As he was explaining all of this to me, Liào Hàn Bō excitedly showed me a video of one of their concerts…four young people were using their Zhuang language to emcee the event. To help me understand the local rhyme patterns, he quickly sketched out the principles that local artists use when they craft lyrics spontaneously. He also gave me a sneak preview of several songs that have already been recorded for the first ever Zhuang pop music album. It’s due to be released this month, June 2008!

Enthusiastic about his own ethnic identity, Liào Hàn Bō is passionately living out his vision to not only see the Zhuang language passed on to future generations, but also developed further. At one point during our visit, he saw some children out playing on the street and he went over to them. He came back smiling, saying, “They’re still speaking our language….even here in the county town.” His zeal for promoting and developing the Zhuang language is contagious. If you had the chance to meet him, I’m sure you would catch the bug too!