Part 1- Memories of the old days
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In May in the northwest of Yunnan Province at the 2000-meter high Heqing Bazi Plateau it is almost the harvest season. Along with the idyllic scenery of the ethnic village of Bai people of the Bazi a loud pounding noise can be heard. For over a thousand years this seemingly ordinary sound has represented the rhythms of different generations. An ordinary day in Xinhua Village where the Bai ethnic group lives always begins with the sound of pounding metal. The craftsmen who make this sound are called Yinjiu by the local people., which means "silversmith" in the Bai language.
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Heqing Bazi in Yunnan is ready for the early-autumn harvest season, when there are more intensive farming activities taking place in the fields. Visitors arriving at Xinhua Village a stone stockaded community however are never left unattended due to the busy season. The sounds of hammering silver and copperware in the village is sitll like a long, drawn-out music for this season in this old town.
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May and June is usually a happy time of the year for women in Xinhua Village in Yunnan. The transplanting of the seedlings is over, and the fields are turning green, raising hopes of a bumper harvest to come. For thousands of years, the good news has been spread by the beating of drummers. But now the drummers are beating to a new tune. The home of Cun Fabiao is next to the old stage of the center of town. In most families here, men get up the crack of door and spend the whole day at work, while the women stay at home and doing the housework.
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In Xinhua Village, the day always starts the same way. There is a performance on the Sanxian, the three-stringed loot that is unique to the local ethnic Bai people. The sound of hammering has been heard here for a thousand years. To the attend listeners, it is now a describing of the old village in the new age. The workshop of Duan Bolin is located in the south-facing room of his house. Duan specializes in silver bracelets, which is still made in the traditional way.
Xinhua, A Village Of Silversmiths
Xinhua, also known as Shizhaizi, is a Bai ethnic village in the northwest of Heqing County of Dali Prefecture.For centuries, Xinhua has been noted for its silverwares preferred by Tibetans and other minority groups. Villagers there inherited the family trade since the Nanzhao Period (738-937) in the Tang Dynasty. Each family is a factory or workshop for handicrafts made from silver, copper, and even gold.
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The Bai ethnic minority group has a population of 1,858,063. Eighty percent are living in communities in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture in Guizhou Province. The word Bai means white, and in the Bai minority group white is considered a sacred color meaning purity.
