Week 2: Xiuyan & Updates

Dear all

I'm glad to announce that the second week of our fieldwork has successfully finished. Our research team has demonstrated their academic ability, teamwork, and our spirit as Cybershamanism researchers. Their second stop was Xiuyan, a traditional shamanic town with thousands of Daxian and Er'xian(二神). The research team has conducted interviews, recording, and practices with them. Furthermore, it's my honor to announce that Prof Fabio Rambelli from UCSB officially joined in our research team to instruct us on Shamanism and East Asian religion in a boarder scope.

Xiuyan is about 200 miles away from Beizhen. As a jade-export town, Xiuyan has much higher population, average consumption, and diverse lifestyles, which is the key to understand how a religion survive in a community. We interviewed the village head Mr. Wang. He was selected through voting rather than appointment. Despite that, he also inherited Dangu(担鼓) from his father. Dangu is a form of drum performance that has four main performers at each corner of a room or a square, representing four gods. Mr. Wang usually play leading position to act as the most important god. Since Dangu was developed during the Tang dynasty, they use the Tang style singing texts and rythme, and don't necessarily perform Chumaxian rituals. However, Dangu reflects how it blend into Chumaxian when the performers move to the Northeastern China.

Traditional Dangu is only a artistic performance without religious elements. Mr. Wang started to learn Dangu at 13. It took 2 years to perform the basics, and 10 years to lead a team of four. But when Mr. Wang moved from Harbin to Xiuyan and became the village head, he noticed Chumaxian was so popular and attractive. There is one secret book with Daoist texts, and some "religious" chapters were later revised into shamanic style and blend into Chumaxian. The drums are different from the one last week; they make profound and solid sounds but still represent the gods' voice. Dangu performers are invited by Chumaxian priests to invite the gods and create a fake banquet for them so that the spirits could take the priests' quest seriously.

We also recorded documentary on their performance. However, due to the technical issues, we are regret to inform that the video couldn't be uploaded to our website. If you are interested, please directly email the Department of Media for access.

Department of Media