Paint You a Picture--Pingpo Miao Zhai

There’s no better province in which to get lost than Guizhou. When I wandered into the Miao village of Pingpo, I was hoping for nothing more than a hygienic drink and a set of comprehensible directions. Instead, I was hailed by two dozen men and women in bright costumes, who broke off from practicing song-and-dance routines to insist that I join them. Their big festival was the following day.

“You mustn’t miss that,” they said. “Stay the night: the music and dancing and bullfighting are all tomorrow morning.”

Their dancing restarted as I joined a group of older villagers to sup weak tea from cracked porcelain bowls. Women dancers proceeded in a rough circle around two men, who blew a tune on their lusheng, traditional Miao instruments composed of bamboo pipes of differing lengths bound together to form a multi-tubed flute. They went through a complete routine, then stopped to debate what was wrong with it, regularly slipping from Chinese into their own language, or mixing the two together. Then they did it all again from the beginning.

With the women dressed in batik skirts and elaborately embroidered jackets, it was exactly like the “minority” performances I'd seen on Chinese television. The younger women wore the brightest clothes, topped off with headdresses strung with artificial flowers and plastic beads. I turned to the oldest man there, 77-year-old Zhang Qiyang, and asked if festivals had always been like this.

“When I was young they were much the same as they are now,” he said, “But the women dressed more beautifully in the old days. They used much more silver. Now we can’t get the silver: it’s controlled by the government and most of it goes to areas with bigger concentrations of minorities.”

Nevertheless, this year’s event was quite different in that it had been designated an official “Miao peasant painting art festival.” Outside the dancing circle, other villagers were preparing and showing off their exhibits for the next day. This isn’t such a traditional activity—no such painting went on until 10 years ago, when a local teacher named Lan Qun began encouraging others to join her in creating pictures that reflected Pingpo’s life and culture. Lan Qun’s grassroots initiative has been such a success that it has been adopted by the local government, which has given the Pingpo Art Association a nice plaque for its headquarters and invested a little money into making the annual festival an official showcase for the village artists.

Festive Fighters

There are no entrance tickets to the Pingpo festival; instead, visitors pay their way in by drinking a cup of rice wine. This is no small fee for outsiders; the first sip actually made me gag, but I wasn’t allowed in until I’d drained the cup. Happily, no one noticed when I spat the fluid into my scarf a few steps past the gate.

The main events took place in the local schoolyard. Paintings lined one side, ready for the judges’ inspection, while dance troupes from surrounding villagers filled the plastic seating in front of the “stage,” located on the forecourt of the main school building. A ramshackle band punctuated the dance performances with enthusiastic renderings of revolutionary tunes. But the most excitable crowds gathered some distance from the schoolyard. A lane filled with food and knick-knack vendors led to the raised footpaths that served as vantage points for the bullring (actually a trampled rape field), where the fights began in mid-afternoon.

The Miao don't fight in the Catalan fashion; they pit one male water buffalo against another in a head-to-head trial of strength. This lasts either until one bull clearly proves its superiority, or is stopped and declared a draw if there is no winner after five minutes. This still isn't entertainment for animal lovers; after the third fight, the bulls were separated only for one to break away from its handlers and charge back into the fray, goring its opponent. The bulls butt with such force that they sometimes kill each other, in which case the owner is compensated for 60 percent of the bull’s value.

Men, women and children all watched the contests, which are a particular feature of local culture. Visiting villagers say they all have their own bullfighting festivals (theirs are better, of course). In a nearby town, I had seen a statue at the main intersection depicting two bulls locking horns and with a slogan honouring the “Bullfighting spirit.”

But while bullfighting counted as family fun, only men gathered around the cockfighting area in Pingpo. The cocks fight until one gives up, and that can take a long time and leave both in a bloody mess. Just outside the ring of craning spectators, a young man held his battered, defeated bird.

“Is that the first time he has fought?” I asked.

“No, he’s been in the ring six times and this is the first time he’s lost,” said the young man.

“Will you put him in the ring again?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How much money do you get if he wins?”

“There are no prizes, it’s just for fun.”

The dances were long over by this time. As the last panting bull was led from the field and the clamour of the cockfights died away, I joined the line of villagers drifting away into the first flakes of a snowstorm that closed the day.