This unique museum is located in Bangao Village, Sandu Shui Autonomous County, Guizhou Province, China, a small village in the southwest of China.
My companions and I travelled by car from the county to Bangao village, and the car circled along the mountain road for about an hour. It is a place as beautiful as a phoenix. Lush mountains and forests surround the village, and a small river flows gently through the middle. Unlike the reinforced concrete houses of the city, the houses here are predominantly wooden and covered with green and grey tiles. Culture and traditional order are being fought against the impact of modern civilisation here. The ethnic and cultural charm of this place is slowly radiating and slowly attracting people.
Most of the people living here belong to one of China's ethnic minorities - the Shui ethnic group. The intangible cultural heritage such as Horsetail Embroidery, Shui Characters and Cow Horn Carvings have a long history here. With increased pressure from school and work, young people are spending significantly less time on these ancient intangible cultural heritages than previous generations. These traditional cultural artefacts are struggling in the vortex of the times.
What I have come to is the only private family museum in the world that focuses on Shui culture. The museum is actually built in the home of the museum's owner, Mr Wei Jiagui, and is a veritable 'house museum'.
When we arrived, Mr Wei was carving gourds and cow horns. The gourds he was carving were decorated with various ethnic totems, such as fish, an important totem of Shui people, and many designs in Shui Characters could be seen. According to Mr Wei, the family museum contains a collection of nearly 30,000 items. The collection here dates back as far as the Qing Dynasty.
When I came to the entrance of the museum, which is also the entrance of the owner's house, I was greeted by a couplet written in Shui Characters. After a cursory understanding of Shui Characters, I could approximately make out the words ‘spring, summer, autumn and winter’, and ‘the year, month, day and hour’.
The museum is on the first floor of the house, and it was only when I went up the narrow wooden staircase that I saw the true nature of the museum and immediately felt the weight of history. The amount of artefacts was indeed very large, but for a moment I didn't know if I could call it a 'museum', as it looked more like a warehouse. The museum contains a variety of Shui books, cow horn carvings, horsetail embroidered costumes, silverware, ancient household items and cultural items. These were used by the Shui people for important ceremonies such as weddings and funerals and for grand festivals such as the Duan and Mao festivals.
The large collection is almost always stacked together, and the dust has settled thickly on them over time. Horsetail embroidery is made from horsetail hair, a natural material that is easily corroded. Many of the old horsetail embroidery pieces have begun to yellow and stain, and the original gorgeous iconography and colours are no longer visible. There are also ancient Shui books, tattered and stacked together. Some of these books have decayed paper and are almost impossible to open. They include very complete volumes and materials, some threadbare books with careful sentence reading and annotations.
Compared to the artefacts that live in the glass display cases of museums, the artefacts here do seem somewhat pathetic and disorganised. We can no longer tell when the signs of moth and decay were caused - was it before or after they entered the museum?
At the same time, they do not have any name, number and introduction. Only the most precious Qing Dynasty horsetail embroidered sash, hangs on the wall with a piece of paper attached to it to describe its identity.
Looking towards the corner by the staircase, there is also a large number of horsetail embroidered costumes stacked there, almost a metre high. They were not wrapped in any bags or boxes, just tied up in bundles. They even looked like used clothes that were ready to be disposed of.
The curator, Mr. Wei Jiagui, is also well aware of the crisis facing the relics. The village is located in a mountainous area with a damp climate and a high concentration of insects. The home museum is also constrained by space limitations and cannot be properly displayed or preserved. The collection is too prone to mould and decay.
Mr. Wei, in fact, has made a lot of efforts. With the development of transportation and deepening economic exchanges, more and more young people there are going out to work. Although fewer and fewer people are engaged in ancient skills, they travel to foreign lands and introduce the traditional culture to others. Many visitors from all over the world are therefore curious about this mysterious and fascinating culture. It was in this context that Mr. Wei, began collecting horsetail embroidery and water books. He saw foreigners coming to buy worn-out horsetail embroidery and regarded the horsetail embroidery and Shui books, which had been left out by the years, as treasures. He began to ride his motorbike to various villages to acquire these artefacts. He gradually became infected by people's ability to create art, and a sense of mission rose from him: n case these were sold, or broken, how would our descendants come into contact with these ancient cultures? This thought drove Mr. Wei to collect the old objects he received. The collection grew in number and his old house was piled high with all kinds of precious objects. It was then that he decided to set up a family museum.
Folk cultural heritage contains the economic, social, cultural, local and folk customs of a region's past, and is a historical precipitation and cultural microcosm of a region. These artefacts are the collective memory of the Shui people, a testimony to the identity of the group, a symbol of the life they lived, and as the symbols disappear, it will be difficult to recreate, to imagine, or to portray history.
What will be the fate of the house museum and its artefacts? I cannot predict. But I hope that things will get better and better.
When I leave, I look back and see a curling cloud and a fresh green field.
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