WARMING YOUR HANDS WITH MOONLIGHT ལག་$ང་&་བ་ལ་བ(ོས།། Lavrung Tibetan Oral Traditions and Culture by G.yu lha ག"་$། text editing by G Roche, CK Stuart, and T Thurston image editing by E McKinlay Asian Highlands Perspectives Volume 13 ISSN (print): 1835-7741 ISSN (electronic): 1925-6329 Library of Congress Control Number: 2008944256 © 2012 Published by Asian Highlands Perspectives/ Lulu.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without express prior written permission from the publisher. Front Cover: Dbyangs 'dzom and her two granddaughters in their home in Siyuewu Village, January 2010. Back Cover: Siyuewu Village in 2010. Citation: G.yu lha (G Roche, CK Stuart, T Thurston, and E McKinlay [eds]). 2012. Warming Your Hands with Moonlight: Lavrung Tibetan Oral Traditions and Culture. Asian Highlands Perspectives Volume 13. e-mail: [email protected] hard copy: www.lulu.com/asianhp online: www.plateauculture.org/asian-highlands-perspectives The images in this book include sacred images of gtor ma, bla ma, and mountain deities and should be treated respectfully. CONTENTS FOREWORD <5-8> PART ONE: INTRODUCTION <13> Location and Ethnolinguistic Context <14-19> Siyuewu: Territorial Divisions, Population, and Village Name <20-24> Language <24-25> History <25-28> Village Livelihoods <28-30> Housing <30-32> Religion <32-35> Home Remedies <35-37> ji Loss <37-40> Love and Marriage <40-43> PART TWO: FOLK NARRATIVES <45> Introduction <46-50> Helping Others Will Bring You What You Need <47-48> Do lo's Life <48-50> The Leveret, the Sparrow, and the Pig <50-51> The Flea and the Louse <51-52> The Bone in the Meat <52> The Jar Buyer <52> Blo ring and zæn tʂi <53-55> Dividing Housework <55> The Helpless Nomad <55-57> The Hunter and His Wife <57> Do lo Divides a Mdzo <57-59> Do lo the Hunter <59-61> A Wild Boar Attacks <61-62> Conclusion <62> PART THREE: OTHER ORAL TRADITIONS <63> kʰɛ dəә Riddles in Lavrung <64-66> Sngags Secret Chants <67-68> Lavrung Work Songs <68-70> •3• PART FOUR: FIGURATIVE SPEECH <71> Introduction <72-73> Proverbs <73-112> Proverbs in Lavrung <73-82> Proverbs in Sichuan Chinese <82-89> Proverbs in A mdo Tibetan <89-112> Euphemisms and Metaphors <112-121> Death <112> Menstruation <112> Sexual Intercourse <113> Defecating and Urinating <113> Advice and Reprimands <113-119> Animal Comparatives <119-119> Figurative Speech in Villagers' Narratives <121-144> Example One: Sex and Menstruation <121-124> Example Two: Birth <125-127> Example Three: Illness One <127-129> Example Four: Illness Two <129-131> Example Five: Personal Tragedy One <131-135> Example Six: Personal Tragedy Two <135-137> Example Seven: Personal Tragedy Three <137-140> Example Eight: A Story Fragment <140-142> Example Nine: School Life Memory <141-143> PART FIVE: FIGURES <145-254> CONCLUSION <255-257> APPENDIX ONE: Lavrung Swadesh List <259-266> APPENDIX TWO: Siyuewu Festivals <267-268> APPENDIX THREE: Measure Words <269> APPENDX FOUR: Lavrung Kinship Terms <270> APPENDIX FIVE: Non-English Word List <271-283> BIBLIOGRAPHY <284> •4• FOREWORD1 I have several names: my mother calls ma G.yu go; my relatives and my community members call me G.yu lha; my official ID card gives Yina; and all my recent friends, classmates, and teachers call me Jody. I am from Siyuewu Village, Puxi Township, Rangtang ('Dzam thang) County, Aba (Rnga ba) Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province, China. All Siyuewu villagers are classified by the government as Tibetan and speak a language that linguists refer to as Lavrung, but for which we have no name. In fact, we never use the word Lavrung. My family are agro-pastoralists. Nine of us live together: my mother, grandmother, my second oldest uncle (a monk), and I support our other family members: my two younger brothers; my eldest uncle, who is a monk and has been sick with tuberculosis since 2002; my great grandmother (b. 1915), and; my late grandfather's brother, who is the local reincarnate lama. My family is large because we have three monks who did not marry and establish their own households and because we have four generations living together. I graduated from the local county junior middle school in Rangtang County Town in 2007. I studied in the ETP (English Training Program) at Qinghai Normal University from 2007-2009. For complex reasons, I was unable to continue my study and then started my current 1 Tibetan (Wylie), Chinese (Pinyin), and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are used to record non-English terms. All terms with appropriate scripts are given in the Non-English Word List. Tone has been omitted in the IPA rendering of the Lavrung language. See the bibliography for references on this language. •5• project documenting oral tradition in my village with guidance from Gerald Roche. Mother was not supportive when I began my research by asking her about childbirth and home remedies, because she thought such things do not constitute serious study. Great Grandmother wanted me to return home to marry if I was not enrolled in school, so my family could see me every day and worry less about me. Most villagers could not understand what I was doing and thought that my project was a strange sort of homework. However, after I explained the purpose of my research to my family and some villagers several times, they began to understand its importance and were eventually proud of me being the first person to document our community's culture. Grandmother still asks me to take the higher education entrance examination and attend college. I understand her and am careful to never directly contradict her. However, my uncles and mother say I can do what I want, since they believe in and trust me. Their support gives me confidence to continue my work. I and other students doing similar projects were trained in conducting research interviews, data analysis, writing in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), and in using digital audio recorders, digital cameras, and computers. I learned many things that I never knew about my community before undertaking this research. I had never heard my village's history, or even imagined that my village had a history. I now sincerely want to continue learning about my community in order to better comprehend myself and inform others about my culture. I was bored and clueless when I conducted my first interview with an old monk, who told me that learning king stories2 was best when studying oral traditions. It was a hot 2 Rgyal po dpe 'king stories' are oral narratives relating the exploits of unspecified kings. Such narratives may be •6• August day and the monk suggested we go to the third floor of his house. The interview lasted three hours. Since the third floor lacked an electrical outlet, I extended a power cord from the second floor to my recorder. We then waited for an hour because there was a blackout. I was frustrated because I did not really understand the long, complicated king stories he told. After this rather unsuccessful interview, I questioned the value of further interviews. I was told many folktales I had never heard during my second interview with an aunt. She was delighted to tell stories and comfortable being recorded. She was digging a drinking pool for her household's seven cows with her twenty-seven year-old son when I visited. He told us to do the interview while he continued digging. After we finished, my aunt asked me to return so she could tell more stories. Later, the village leader, Reluo, helped me organize a circle dance to be videoed in his hamlet, where there are fifteen households. Everyone dressed in their best Tibetan robes and performed four circle dances. They were all delighted. Kha btags3 were prepared for me and I was treated like a lama or a leader. A former classmate gave a short speech about my work. We were classmates as you all know, and I'm really happy that she is doing such wonderful work. Doing such cultural preservation work is important and we should support her however we can. We are not expecting to get anything from her; on the contrary, we will provide whatever we have to support her. Thank you! extremely short – one or two minutes in duration – or up to three hours long. 3 A strip of white silk offered to high lama or other respected persons. •7• After my experiences and interviews, I increasingly felt the impact of continuing this important, multi-faceted work. My villagers' support inspires me. One day while conducting research, I was taking a walk in the village near Cho ldan's newly built house. He was outside, fixing his hammer. I stopped and asked him about local proverbs. "ɘ ɣo4 Cho ldan, please tell me some proverbs or metaphors," I requested, squatting next to him where he was concentrating on his work. "You know, I'm not the right person to ask. Asking me is just like warming your hands with moonlight. You should ask someone who knows. I'm just an old man who knows nothing," Cho ldan said. I later asked my mother what that meant – warming your hands with moonlight. She explained that the phrase meant trying to do something that brings no results. I was astonished that Cho ldan had refused my request for a metaphor with a metaphor, and I had not even noticed. I decided then that Uncle Cho ldan's metaphor would make a good title for my book. I also made DVDs of audio, photos, and videos for the villagers. Villagers were sincerely amazed when they saw themselves on their TVs. Additionally, a few villagers acknowledged my cultural preservation work and offered their support, reminding me again of this work's importance. The research for this book was supported by funds from the World Oral Literature Project and private donors. For online examples of materials discussed in this book visit: http://www.oralliterature.org/collections/gyulha001.html 4 Lavrung: uncle. See Appendix Four for more on Lavrung kinship terms. •8•