an article i picked up from the papers.....a little insight into my dialect. =)
Henghua homeland
ZIYING'S BRUSH
The ancestral home of many overseas Chinese, Fujian’s Putian county has a rich and colourful local culture.
THERE is an inlet along the coastline of central Fujian called Xinghuawan (Henghua Bay), whose name is synonymous with the dialect of Putian, a county renowned for its extensive repertoire of 5,000 Xinghua-dialect “Puxian” operas and recognised as the home of sea-goddess Mazu.
It is easy to tell when you are in the vicinity of Putian or the Xinghua cultural area largely because of its unique architecture. Traditionally constructed of tamped earth, the houses and temples have elongated, segmented roofs with red tiles, each topped with a brick, presumably to hold them down in the typhoon-prone region.
Some years back, when I first visited my grandfather’s village (which, though not in Putian, is in the Xinghua dialect neighbourhood), I asked the local residents why the roofs there are so different. They told me a Tang dynasty imperial concubine named Meifei came from Putian and as the reigning favourite, was granted a once-in-a-lifetime favour to return home for a visit.
Form and function: The 900-year-old Mulanbei dam also serves as a bridge across the stream.
Craftsmen from the Tang capital Chang’an were sent to overhaul the region, and the distinctive roofs are a legacy of the imperial lady’s homecoming 1,300 years ago.
I don’t know if this tale is fact or folklore, but Putian certainly has its share of bizarre and poignant stories.
One of the strangest has to be the anecdote about monk Jinxian, first master of the county’s 1,451-year-old Guanghua Temple (Guanghuasi), one of Fujian’s most important Buddhist edifices and site of the province’s first school and Buddhist seminary.
It seems that Jinxian was well-respected by the people of Putian and when he went around collecting alms for the temple, they also gave him food, including meat which he ate as he did not want to offend the donors.
The story goes that upon returning to Guanghuasi, he would purify himself by taking out his stomach and intestines, and washing them in the brook that still runs through the temple grounds.
Unlike many of the other well-known temples, Guanghuasi is serene, without the usual crush of tourists and worshippers. Its distinguishing feature is a stone pagoda reminiscent of the pair in Quanzhou’s Kaiyuansi, except that only four of its five storeys are visible, the first level having sunk below ground.
Apparently it had a wooden twin that was burnt by the Japanese. Both the Cultural Revolution and acts of nature took their toll on Guanghuasi which was restored in the 1980s mainly with funds donated by ethnic Chinese from South-East Asia.
A little less dramatic but no less appealing is the story of a girl who, a thousand years ago, embarked on a water diversion project to irrigate the fields and save her village from floods caused by sea-tides that swelled Putian’s Mulanxi (Mulan Stream).
Just 18 years old, Qian Siniang built a dam across the troublesome waterway but sadly, the barrier was destroyed in a big flood. Some say she committed suicide by plunging into the Mulanxi. A new weir named Mulanbei was subsequently rebuilt in a less turbulent section of the stream and 900 years on, is still in use.
Elegant: A Putian-style roof shields a gateway at the tranquil Guanghua Temple.
Mulanbei is virtually untouched by tourism, at least for the time being. A quiet gravel road leads to the stream and from there we followed a stone-paved path to the granite dam.
A small gate controls the flow of water at each of Mulanbei’s 32 sections. Although signs of construction are everywhere across the river, the peaceful farmland on the near bank has retained much of its timeless rustic character.
Normally, Spring Festival or Chinese New Year is celebrated on the first day of the first lunar month but not so in Putian. Our native Putian guide revealed that the local people wait until the fifth day to celebrate the festival because of a bitter episode that transpired in the days when Fujian’s coast was constantly raided by Japanese pirates, derisively called wokou.
One Spring Festival Eve in the Ming dynasty, the wokou launched a brutal attack on Putian just before the customary reunion dinner. Caught unprepared, thousands were slaughtered until the hero Qi Jiguang arrived and drove out the invaders. It was only on the fourth night that the people were finally able to observe New Year’s Eve, and New Year has been celebrated on the fifth day since.
In early April, many of Putian’s residences still had fresh-looking red paper chunlian (New Year couplets) on their front doors. Curiously, some had a band of inauspicious white at the top. It seems the county was a hotbed of anti-Manchu resistance during the Qing dynasty and according to our guide, half of the local population of 100,000 were killed by Qing forces just before Spring Festival some 300 years ago.
To achieve a semblance of peace, the emperor ordered all subjects throughout the empire to celebrate the New Year replete with firecrackers and traditional red. Putian obeyed, but left a band of white at the top of their chunlian as a sign of mourning.
It is said that Fujian’s mountainous terrain has in the past given rise to isolated communities with many variations in dialects and customs. Fortunately, despite the province’s rapid modernisation, some of the local traditions remain unchanged.
