Week 1: Recap

Dear all members and faculties,

This is our Week 2 Recap. We finished our task at Beizhen and move to our second stop Xiuyan to deeply elaborate on Chumaxian. Please let me briefly summarize our outcomes in Week 1.

We spent 4 days with the owner of a local grocery. She became a shaman merely 2 months before our fieldwork. But in theory, the earlier the shaman starts to be possessed, the more accurate their answers are. Therefore, her inquiry usually cost from 1,200 RMB to 100,000 RMB for different purposes, benefiting her family and balancing out the grocery's cost. Her master (师傅) is a half-human half-snake invisible nature focusing on cursing untreatable illness. In the Chumaxian ranking system, snake spirits ranked at the 4th place of the Five Great Immortals (五大仙). They are Hu(胡)-Fox Spirit, Huang(黄家)-Weasel Spirit, Chang(常家)-Hedgehog Spirits, Mang (蟒)-Snake spirits, and Yanhun(烟魂)-Smoke Spirits & Souls. These spirits have various focuses and abilities, for example, the leading fox spirits focus on healing and offering wisdom.

We also interviewed her living style and relationship with Chumaxian. How she could both arrange her grocery and practice the rituals? Thanks to the development of e-payment and vending machines, people have to pay through Wechat Pay or Alipay to open the cabinet with goods to access their intended items. The motion sensers could detect individual behaviors to determine the item taken. Although the grocery could run automatically, it was hard to sustain her family and her son as a college student. Therefore, each person who came to ask questions need to pay the "Suiyuan"(随缘) fee, which doesn't assign a specific amount for each inquiry but dependent on each person. The customers aged from 21 to 80 years ago. The dominant inquiry is about future marriage and almost impossible healing.

Moreover, under the mentorship of professor Fabio Rambelli and Guoguang Bao, we collaborated with the Beizhen local government to interview the shamans and recorded a documentary to introduce Chumaxian to the world! The shaman Mr. Li has demonstrated shamanic dance & praying, songs, and shamanic traditional clothing.

Figure 1: Feather Shamanic Ritual Hat

This hat reflects the traditional Manchu belief on birds especially ravens. They acted as the intermediary of gods and human, resembling the deers in the Shinto shrines. In addition, other parts of the clothing have the same design and purpose. Let's examine what it looks like!

Mr. Li's Dance 1

Mr. Li's Dance 2

Mr. Li's Dance 3

What else do you notice? The blue drum is called Shengu(神鼓), or the Divine Drum. It's made of a thin layer of cattlehide, making no sound but bridging human's world and gods' one. Mr. Li pretended to beat the drum hard and move as the sound change to receive the correct command. The skirt-like dressing is Shenqun(神裙). It has several bells. When the dancer moves, the sound represents the gods' voice and mood: if the dancer moves fast, the god tends to have a more radical mood.

These dancers are typically not "spiritually selected" but practitioners who eager to protect the Manchu culture. They mark significantly, and, in the future, will define the uniqueness of Manchu's culture. Our research team volunteer to record a documentary for them to perserve their highlights. We will also publish it to the Liaoning TV Station to record this moment. All of our members (Silver, Gold, Premium) and staff would have free access to it one day before we submit to the Liaoning TV Station.

What questions do you have? What are you interested? Does it inspire you on anything? Share your thoughts with us and email to adamchenxuan@gmail.com for winning a 20$ Starbucks gift card for the best answer of the week.

Sincerely

Department of Media