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Published: January 19th 2012
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Lala refused to keep on staying in this lovely family. He left them, with the rice given by the young lady. Young lady and her two beautiful girls were seeing him off. Under a big banyan, they began to sing a song. Lala kept on walking. He even didn’t turn round. He was afraid he couldn’t leave them if he stopped.
This is a plot from the film ‘Lala’s gun’. I don’t know why, I consider it is very romantic. The story’s background is in a special village in Guizhou, China. A minority group has lived there for centuries. You may hear of there is a mysterious minority named ‘Miao’ in China. In fact it divided into two groups, short Miao and long Miao, which depends on their length of the skirt. People in this village belong to short Miao. Short Miao is considered poorer than long Miao. The name of this villige is Biasha.
I have willing to watch this film for years. But because it is unknown to most of audiences, it is not easy to find it. I don’t know why that guy decided to produce this film, for getting award oversea, for reputation, for creating
novel story, or for delivering pure and beautiful emotion to the chaos world? He didn’t invite any real actors. People in this village were actors. Or they just played the roles of themselves?
Whatever, I thank him, since I really had a nice and peaceful journey during enjoying the story. And I recalled my visit in that village 3 years ago.
Before I had my travel, I read almost all information I could find about this special group. I did have a big interest in them. They are the only one group who are allowed to have gun without special work responsibilities, because gun is their biggest culture. No gun, no culture of Biasha.
Every boy has the ceremony of being adult when he is 15. And his father needs to give a gun to him as the gift. Each generation there is a sharpshooter. He is also the leader of all gunmen. The stories about these guys are like legends. We don’t know whether they are true. But it doesn’t matter.
In this generation, Guan Yuanliang is the leader. He is just 146 cm, as tall as his gun. The wizard said he was decreed
by fate.
I had known that Biasha had already opened to tourism, but I didn’t know there were so many tourists!!! It was the Chinese national holiday. Apparently more and more people would like to enjoy traveling during this big holiday. People got off from coach by coach. The performance was ready. I thought I might be lucky. If there were not so many tourist groups, there might not have performance.
Oh, one thing I need to explain first. Other villages in this area offer performances as well, mainly by women. Biasha, people come here to have a look at men.
I must say, I almost fell in love with Biasha men after the performance…I even found the most handsome guy and took photo with him. I told my friends this was my boyfriend. They all doubted my taste since then…
In fact I have many words want to say about this village, their unique way of life, their religious ceremonies, their god and so on. But I know I shouldn’t be Wiki.
Women still have lower status than men. Each man has his own maple when he is born. When he dies, the maple
is his coffin. Women don’t have their maples. Some girls still don’t have education. All old women just can speak their own language. They seemed still live in their own peaceful world. But the peaceful life was still influenced by the outside world. Some people went out to work. They even cut off their hair, which is regarded as their life. A man gave me his mobile phone number, and told me he was decorating his chalet. Next year if I came again, I could call him to book a room. Now I imagine there may be many B&B…
There is an argument for a long time – the indigenous people should keep on their way of life or they should try to catch the step of modern life. No one wants to live in poor condition. Everyone has the right to earn good life. But every time we I visited these kinds of places, I had the feeling that something went wrong even though I didn’t know exactly what it was.
How much relationship between culture and modern life? Should we abandon the culture to chase the good living conditions? Is there a solution can balance this
contradiction?
Tourists show their rich to villagers, and also bring bad views. They paid children to ask them to do this and that. I brought pencils as gifts to them, but they told me they had better one. Each child held several beautiful pencils or pens. I didn’t know whether they just considered it was a good thing from tourism but forgot what they should do with those pencils.
I was sitting on the edge of the village, letting my thought run wild. It was a nice landscape of stepped fields. It was the harvest time. I decided to go back as a teacher next year. But now I am sitting in my room to tape these words.
I miss there. I had three bowls of Biasha wine with Gun Yuanliang, the sharpshooter. He made his effort to tell everyone he also had a chance to see the world. He said and said, ‘I have been Beijing. I have been Beijing.’ No one paid attention to him. I thought of the story I read in the book. When the village just found by someone, the journalists came and had interview. When they left, he run after their
making their cloth
beating to make it bright car and shout, ‘Bring me out of there!’
Maybe their culture does contain too much superstition. I still hope it is there when I come back next time. And, I hope their life will be better, better and better.
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