Guiyue Customs
01 · Historical Records
The Yao stone-tablet convention has a long history, traceable as far back as the early years of the Ming dynasty. A stone tablet of the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign of the Ming dynasty (1631), held in the Jinxiu Yao Museum, is the earliest Yao stone tablet discovered to date.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Yao stone-tablet convention is the institutional form of the covenant behavior passed down from generation to generation among the Yao people. To maintain order in production and daily life as well as public security, and to achieve the development of the people, the Yao carved covenants adopted by common discussion onto stone tablets or wooden boards, requiring everyone to observe them together, with stone-tablet leaders responsible for supervising their enforcement. Jinxiu lies on the principal range of the Dayao Mountains, to the east of central Guangxi, where Yao culture has been preserved relatively intact. Among these procedures, the stone-tablet meeting is convened after the stone-tablet leaders and the villagers' committee have drafted a proposal, bringing the villagers together to deliberate the covenant. Delivering the "liaohua" (leaders proclaiming the covenant) consists of the stone-tablet leaders or community elders vividly explaining the covenant to all the villagers. The oath of alliance refers to all participants swearing together, establishing the authority of the stone tablet. The fine social atmosphere of Yao society—"no one pockets lost articles on the road, and no one bolts the door at night"—is inseparably bound up with the stone-tablet convention.
Drafting and deliberating at the stone tablet meeting
A leader and the village committee draft a plan, then all villagers meet to deliberate clause by clause, so that the rules belong to everyone.
Expounding the tablet
Reading the articles aloud, called expounding the tablet, is done by the leader or village elder so that even the illiterate grasp their meaning.
The joint oath
All those present swear together, and the authority of the tablet is thereby established; violations are thereafter judged by its terms.
Three ways of naming a tablet
Tablets are named by the number of villages, by the number of households, or by the place of erection, each naming preserving a different kind of information.
The earliest known tablet, dated 1629
The earliest known Yao tablet, held by the Jinxiu museum and dated to the fourth year of the Chongzhen reign, gives a firm starting point for a written record of an unwritten society.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The stone-tablet convention is widely distributed in Jinxiu Yao Autonomous County of Laibin City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region; Zijing Town of Guiping City and Longsheng Various Nationalities Autonomous County; Lianshan Zhuang-Yao Autonomous County and Liannan Yao Autonomous County of Guangdong Province; Jiangyong County of Hunan Province; and Libo County of Guizhou Province, with Jinxiu the most concentrated. The stone tablets fall broadly into three kinds: first, named for the number of participating villages, such as the Seventy-Two Village Stone Tablet and the Sixty-Village Stone Tablet; second, named for the number of participating households, such as the 108-Household Stone Tablet and the 390-Household Stone Tablet; third, named for the place where the tablet was erected, such as the Pingmian Stone Tablet and the Tenggou Stone Tablet. The local people establish stone tablets through three procedures—convening the stone-tablet meeting, proclaiming the stone-tablet "liaohua" (explaining the stone-tablet covenant), and swearing the oath—and transmit the associated customs in practice as a collective.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Miao Zaiyan Customs · Guiyue Customs · Guiyue Customs · Guiyue Customs · Guiyue Customs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The engraved covenant content covers protecting production and the safety of traveling merchants; safeguarding the family and the public order; and cracking down on crime and protecting the peace of the Yao mountains. The existence and development of the Yao stone tablets have been closely tied to the course of the times. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, they survived in the form of village regulations and popular covenants and, on the premise of abiding by national law, have absorbed new content of the era, such as mediating civil disputes, safeguarding national unity, developing the economy and production, and protecting the natural ecology. The stone-tablet convention is a true reflection of the historical society of the Dayao Mountains; it enjoys broad social and popular foundations, and for a thousand years it has made positive contributions to building harmonious social order and a beautiful ecological environment in the Yao settlement areas and to ensuring cultural transmission. Against the backdrop of the new era, the stone-tablet convention keeps pace with the times, displaying vigorous vitality in realizing rural revitalization, carrying forward the core socialist values, and safeguarding the great unity and great development of the nation.
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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