Yi Cuotaiji
01 · Historical Records
“Cuotaiji” is a transliteration of Yi words meaning “the play of becoming human”; when this dramatic form arose is still undetermined and it is not recorded in Yi texts. Drawing on local materials, it survives only in Luoga village, Bandi township, Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou, and has been preserved because it circulated in a remote area with little outside influence.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Cuotaiji is an ancient dramatic form surviving only in Luoga village, Bandi township, Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou. It is generally performed from the third to the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, to drive out evil, welcome auspiciousness and pray for a good harvest. Its performance is highly distinctive: the performers wrap their heads into pointed cones with white headscarves and bind body and limbs tightly with cloth to symbolise nakedness; some wear masks, playing a Yi elder (1,700 years old), an old woman (1,500), a Miao elder (1,200), a Han elder (1,000) and a child. The masks are generally about a foot long, with protruding forehead, long straight nose, hollowed eyes and mouth, blackened with soot and lined on forehead and face with lime and chalk, black and white alternating, most rough, mysterious, stern and archaic. The one without a mask is the mountain-forest elder or mountain god (2,000 years old), the embodiment of nature and wisdom. The performance falls into four parts—sacrifice, cultivation, festivity and village sweeping—of which cultivation is the core, mainly reflecting the history of Yi migration, farming and reproduction. The village-sweeping, or “sweeping the Mars”, on the fifteenth day brings the whole performance to its climax: the performers go from village to village sweeping away disaster and plague and wishing prosperity and a good harvest, sitting by the hearth in each house to recite auspicious words, asking the host for eggs and hemp, pulling a handful of straw from the corners of the woodshed, then burying three eggs at the village crossroads, lighting the couch grass, boiling and sharing the remaining eggs and chanting “the Mars has gone, the Mars has gone”. Because of its function of folk belief and ancestor sacrifice, Cuotaiji has become an important way for local people to sacrifice to ancestors and pray for prosperity and favourable weather, deeply rooted in Yi production, life and cultural history. It survives only in Luoga village, Bandi township, Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County; remote and narrowly circulated, it has long been little influenced by the outside and preserves a relatively archaic aspect, with the Weining cultural centre as the project's protection body.
Sacrifice, Cultivation, Festivity and Village Sweeping (the Four Parts of Cuotaiji)
Cuotaiji performance falls into four parts, of which “cultivation” is the core, mainly reflecting the history of Yi migration, farming and reproduction.
Sweeping the Mars (Sweeping the Village on the Fifteenth of the First Month)
The village-sweeping of the fifteenth day, or “sweeping the Mars”, has the performers go from village to village sweeping away disaster and plague and brings the Cuotaiji performance to its climax.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Cuotaiji survives only in Luoga village, Bandi township, Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County; remote in location and narrow in circulation, it has long been little influenced by the outside world and preserves a fairly archaic aspect, with the Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County cultural centre as the project's protection body.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
This primitive art has value for the study of the genesis of drama and of artistic morphology, and its performances concerning production and life are also of important reference value for anthropology and ethnology. Cuotaiji has continued because it circulated in a remote area and was little influenced from outside, but under the impact of modern civilisation an art mastered and transmitted by only a few is very fragile, and a failure at any stage could deal it a fatal blow, so protection is necessary. With ancestor sacrifice and the driving out of evil at its core, it is important material for studying the genesis of drama, artistic morphology and Yi production and life; its transmission depends on a few artists, and the loss of any link would have a serious effect, so the locality relies on the cultural centre for recording and teaching. Wen Daohua (as recorded in the official dossier of an associated inheritor): male, Yi, born in 1948 in Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou. Wen Daohua began in the late 1970s to transmit the Yi Cuotaiji interrupted by the Cultural Revolution, and in 2003 passed the traditional craft to Luo Xiaoyun. He is a representative inheritor of Yi Cuotaiji in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects. The Cuotaiji he directed won first prize at the First Bijie Regional Ethnic Culture Expo in 2002 and has many times taken part in the China Guizhou Yi Annual Meeting and Yi Culture Festival (Liupanshui), the International Azalea Festival (Dafang county) and the First Guizhou Intangible Cultural Heritage Showcase.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Wen Daohua 02-0645
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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