If you spend any time around Nuosu villages, eventually you will see one of the bimos, wearing a toadstool-shaped hat of black felt. When a bimo is not doing ceremonies for healings or funerals, he goes off to a quiet spot at the edge of a village. You can never predict where you will happen upon a bimo reading his scripture, often with an acolyte beside him tending a small fire. The scriptures are copied out on papyrus-like material or thin sheepskin. There is another kind of priest-figure, a suni, who is a kind of shaman. He drums on a waist-mounted hoop-drum (which looks very Siberian); he dances and sings for hours in a trance; he often has matted hair going down past his waist.
The Nuosu people have never accepted a religion from outside. In fact, their belief system has an inherent complexity: it is a tapestry of seasonal rituals, epics about divine ancestors, and stories of nature spirits. Perhaps because the Yi nationality remains an aggregate of branches, their beliefs have never fused into a dogmatic system. Their collection of beliefs provides a sense of belonging to the natural environment; it contains a rich variety of perspectives on the human condition. For these reasons it reminds me of American Indian religion.
The poet Jidi Majia is the child of an aristocratic Nuosu family. After 1949 his father held a leading position in the judiciary of Butuo County, in the Nuosu heartland. Jidi Majia came upon his calling as a poet in his early teens, when a Chinese version of Pushkin抯 works came into his hands. He resolved early upon his path in life: he would articulate the identity and spiritual outlook of the Nuosu in poetry.
At the age of 17 Jidi Majia was admitted to Southwest Nationalities College in Chengdu. During his college years his hungry mind absorbed Nuosu epics and folklore. He also read great works of Chinese literature: everything from the mythically rich ancient poetry of Qu Yuan to vernacular prose masters of the 20th Century. He also read works of world literature, such as the novels of Michail Sholokhov and Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
After graduation he returned to his home district; his poems soon won province-wide attention when they were printed in the Sichuan journal Xingxing. Before long he was hired by the Writer抯 Association of Sichuan, and he rose steadily to a position as secretary of that organization. He broke onto the national stage in 1986, when he won the National Poetry Award from the National Writers?Association and became a prot間?of the respected older poet Ai Qing.
Jidi Majia concentrated on being a poet, without seeking rewards extrinsic to his vocation, yet such awards came his way when he was given a position in the office of the National Writers?Association. He had chances to participate in conferences of writers and poets around the world; he was invited to observe the workings of the U.S. government almost a month, as a guest of the U.S. Congress?International Young Leaders?Program. To appreciate the breadth of Jidi Majia抯 activities as a cultural figure in recent years, it helps to know that he has been creative director and librettist of musical stage productions (慟inghai抯 Secret Realm?and 慦hite Dove?; he has also organized major cultural festivals (Qinghai International Poetry Festival?007 and 2009).
Jidi Majia has never stopped being what he always was: a great soul who emerged from among an indigenous group southwestern China and undertook to bridge his people抯 ethos with realities of the outside world. For Jidi Majia, the project of articulating his identities as a Nuosu, as a Chinese, and as a world citizen are in no way mutually exclusive.
The Nuosu are a proud people whose antecedents lie on the margins of Sinitic culture. Being a long-embedded element within Chinese culture, yet never having been fully absorbed by it, they represent a unique position on the continuum of Chineseness. With respect to influences across the Han-Nuosu cultural interface, they have contributed as much as they have received in music, folk art, and myth.
The position of Jidi Majia as a Nuosu poet writing in Chinese reminds me of Irish writers who emerged on England抯 literary scene in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Irish writers and poets brought a tremendous vitality to the English language. Though the Queen抯 English was a borrowed language for them, they were able to make it fresh, perhaps because of Ireland抯 strong oral tradition. This tradition gave them an eloquence which we sometimes describe as the 慻ift of blarney.?Several examples spring to mind: W.B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett.
In the U.S. we also have examples of ethnic groups whose historical position as embedded outsiders lent strength to their literary expression. These include black American writers such as Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, as well as writers from the Jewish immigrant community such as Issac Singer and Saul Bellow. More recently, we have heard strong voices from the native American poet Sherman Alexie and from the ethnic Chinese immigrant Li-Young Lee.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Jidi Majia has a strong affinity for figures of America抯 Harlem Renaissance. Only a great-souled poet could have succeeded in the project that Langston Hughes attempted: to revive a people抯 identity, from the roots up, in a modern setting of cultural dislocation and anomie. The Harlem Renaissance figures started from a position on the margin, but their voices were eventually heard and felt by the cultural mainstream. Such was also the mission which Jidi Majia settled upon as a poet. But his affinity with the Harlem figures also lies on a more elemental, symbolic level梚n the phenomenon of blackness. The most populous branch of the Yi call themselves the Nuosu, which in their language means the 慴lack tribe.?Their holy men wear black hats and capes. Their formal decorative scheme features a black background with red and yellow patterns. In one poem Jidi Majia writes: 慖 write poems, because it seems that the spirit of our introspective, ruminative tribe is shown outwardly in a melancholy color. For a long time this color has been harbored deeply in our souls.?(慜ne Kind of Voice? The color black, as a symbol of an emotional atmosphere, indicates an awareness of suffering and death; it is also the color of spiritual knowledge and depth.