A Fire that Renewed Culture — Wengding Village
Captured on iPhone - April 29, 2023 - Wengding Village, Lincang City
Exotic, primitive, and isolated. Burnt, rebuilt, and standardized. A fire in 2021 revolutionized life in the small village of Wengding, wiping away traces of tradition and replacing the authentic Wa culture with performances characterized by Han Chauvinism.
Wengding village is a Wa village located on a mountain in the city of Lincang, famously known as the “last primitive village in China”. In 2021, a fire obliterated the ancient village that had existed for over 400 years. The fire destroyed all the villagers’ houses, public facilities, and livestocks, forcing them to rebuild the entire village. However, the government decided to relocate the villagers to a newly built, modern neighborhood that was nearby the original village site. The fire burnt down straw huts, while the government rebuilt concrete ones. Modern houses with up-to-date domestic appliances and urban designs. The new neighborhood is located half-way up the mountain. On the two sides of the road up the mountain, there are newly installed images and slogans about national unity and Chinese socialist values.
Modernized village settlements nearby the original site of the village
Eager to realize the full value of this obliterated village, the government rebuilt the destroyed straw huts, although these new straw huts were not inhabitable, rebuilding Wengding into a tourist destination. A tourist visiting Wengding today would see many straw huts, though all of them would be empty, as the purpose of their rebirth is for decoration instead of any utilitarian purpose. Some of the straw huts are occupied by village members, who are paid to show up for visitors to see. Some of them would have traditional soup ready for tourists to try, other huts would contain displays of villagers’ homemade agricultural products.
In one of the huts, the younger chief of the tribe, who is over 90 years old, sat with another elder, boiling tea and smoking shisha. They told me that they were paid to sit in the hut for 8 hours on work days, and their job was essentially to talk to tourists. The older chief, the chief in charge, had died earlier, and so the younger chief was now responsible for leading the village and meeting tourists. They wore traditional Wa clothing, black clothes that were embroidered with colorful floral patterns. There were younger Wa men who worked as guards at the side, however, they did not wear traditional clothing, instead, they were dressed in navy blue uniforms. While we were talking to the chief, the guards came by and listened to our conversation. I asked them why they did not wear traditional clothing, and they responded by saying that nowadays, only elders wore traditional costumes, and it was common for elders to wear non-traditional clothing too. While they were at work at the original village site, they were required to appear in traditional Wa costume because the tourist department responsible for the village wanted tourists to feel the authenticity and exoticness of Wa culture.
Left: elder of the tribe | Right: the younger chief
Every once in a while, the tourist site offers a cultural performance in which the Wa people perform a ritual that requires the killing of a chicken. The chief would stand in the center of the altar (a wooden structure decorated by skulls of animals), holding a chicken, tribe members would form circles surrounding the chief, then, the chief would kill the chicken. Many tourists came to watch the performance. Almost every Wa person on site came to attend the performance, and after killing the chicken, they carried its dead body across the village, inviting tourists to join them in the carrying process.
The altar
While tourists responded to the performance with considerable passion, the local people appear quite indifferent to what was happening. They were not really paying attention to the ritual, instead, they sat together and talked to each other, without even looking at the ritual. To them, this was not a ritual, it was just a routine performance they were asked to attend. The village that tourists visit now are no longer their homes. They’ve been forcefully relocated to these new concrete houses, abandoning the architectural tradition where every hut had two levels, the upper level for people to live in and the ground level for animals to live in.
They were assigned jobs to make this village seem like it was still in use and alive, yet, the original village was no home to anyone. It is now owned by a third party organizations, and the villagers have “traded” their homeland for the newly built houses a few miles away from the original site. There were regular cultural performances: tourists were welcomed by the entrance gate by traditional songs and dances; elder Wa women offered home-made agricultural products to tourists; the sacred forest where the skulls from the old head-hunting rituals was still there; but the tribe was different. Tourists probably care more about the presence of these ancient cultural remnants than the Wa people do. The fire burnt down their homes, and the community. They are now relocated into modern society, where things worked in a different way, the tribal way of going around things has simply become ineffective. Instead of trying to preserve culture or hold onto the old community, the villagers are more concerned about maintaining a living.
There is no right or wrong in how the Wengding people live their lives. There is also no way to determine the true cause of the fading of Wa culture in Wengding. Was it the fire’s fault? Did the fire take away with it both the physical and spiritual presence of the Wa culture in Wengding? Or was the government responsible for the fading of culture?
In the past, Wa people had a ritual that involved head-hunting. After obtaining the human head, they would store it in wooden or bamboo cages. These cages were all located in one lane in the sacred forest.
When I asked the chief what was his thought on culture, he was unaware of what culture meant. To them, culture was probably just a way of living. It did not carry historical or spiritual significance, it was just their default way of living. There was no awareness of culture, they did not think culture had been lost or had changed, all they realized was that the way they lived changed, the way they made food changed, and that life had become more convenient. It is certainly not wrong for the Wa people to adopt a easier way of life, they too, like any other Han person that lived in the cosmopolitan cities, deserve to enjoy the inventions of the 21st century. But the reason for such transition invokes much criticism. The governments forceful relocation of the village community, the commodification of the original site, and the use of ethnic performances to create a sense that this artificially constructed Wa culture was authentic, leads to questions over the legitimacy of the government’s actions. The Wa people might have one day abandoned their traditions, but that day would have happened naturally, without any external intervention. Regardless of all other influences, the commodification of culture has undoubtedly led to the local people’s indifference towards their traditions, and tourists’ distorted understandings of ethnic minorities.
Culture can take many forms, culture can change freely, culture can be enjoyed or abandoned, but people must have autonomy and sovereignty over their culture.
