| Description |
The Hezhen people, once known as “Hejen,” have long inhabited the reaches of the significant “three rivers”—Amur River (Heilongjiang), Sungari River (Songhuajiang), and Ussri River (Wusulijiang)—in northeast China. With a population of approximately 4600 people, they are one of the smallest ethnic minorities in China. Yimakan storytelling is a multi-canto oral genre performed in the Hezhen language, or “Nanay” in linguistic terms, which belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic branch of the Altaic language family. It can be traced back many centuries, and is closely connected with the Hezhen people's life-world, which depends for its existence on fishing and hunting. In China, the Hezhen Yimakan Storytelling was first reported by Ling Chunsheng, an anthropologist, in his work entitled, The Hezhen People Living in the Lower Reaches of the Sungari River, in 1934.
Yimakan storytelling varies in themes and story-pattern, and resembles an extended narrative tradition celebrating heroic feats and tribal alliances. The ‘mergen’ or hero is perhaps the most iconic and enduring superhero ever created, and likewise heroic narratives, centering on depicting ancient warriors, are also among the most popular tales. The basic storyline is devoted to narrating how the hero becomes the tribal chieftain after enduring many trials and tribulations, and how he finally rehabilitates the Hezhens’ homeland, leading his people to undertake a peaceful life. So far, one of the most ancient stories is the Sirdalu Mergen, which is considered “the very first heroic story since the creation of the world” by local people. Other stories take shape at later stages, such as Antu Mergen, Mandu Mergen, and Shensu Mergen. Apart from heroic narratives, other stories about hunting and fishing, beauty and bravery, love and wisdom, local knowledge and daily chores can also be found, such as Gimtekewe Anaburan and Muzhurin Mergen. Thus far about fifty cantos have been recorded, including Mandu Mergen, Yargu, Shirgu, and Princess Yingtu Flying to the Moon, etc. The episodes of Mandu Mergen may last as long as 8 to 9 hours.
The Yimakan performance is a mixture of singing and narrating, and is conducted by an experienced storyteller, with no instrumental accompaniment. Generally speaking, the tradition can be roughly divided into two types: ‘sagdi jarimku’ and ‘uskuli jarimku,’ or BIG SONG and SMALL SONG, respectively, in terms of thematic content and the length of the storytelling. The Big Songs are longer, dealing primarily with heroic stories and creation myths, and they occur mostly in the form of narration; the Small Songs are shorter, depicting love stories, fishing and hunting lifestyles, and the like, and they are rendered with specific melodies.
The solo voice of storytelling differs according to gender and age. For this reason, youth melodies, elderly melodies, female melodies, and similar phenomena, can be applied to particular characters and plots. Melodies of narration typically vary from place to place and continually adapt to match up with the given scene and ad hoc plots, thus producing a vivid spectrum of narrative tones in combination of the sonorous or prolonged strains, slow or quick movements. The formulaic singing and reciting can be identified as “traditional” in many facets, though improvisational elements are still quite common and vary according to the level of emotive interaction between storyteller and audience.
The traditional performers of Yimakan, called ‘Yimakanqi mafa,’ are usually amateurs, trained in a master-apprentice relationship by a clan or a family. During the first half of the 20th century, master storytellers emerged in rapid succession within a clan or a family. At present, however, outsiders are more and more often accepted for apprenticeship. In the Hezhen context, Yimakanqi mafa refers to a personage with high language skills and a quick mind, who is thus highly respected by the folk. Being a small group of wordsmiths, they can smoothly improvise during the performance, while carefully following the traditional story-patterns, motifs and formulaic diction.
Embedded within its society and culture, Yimakan has been the major form of entertainment in the native regions. The Hezhens always enjoy listening to this storytelling during hunting and fishing, upon wedding or house-building ceremonies, and on feast and festival occasions. In particular, the cold and long winter has traditionally ushered in a special time for storytelling. Accordingly, the oral storytelling, as a cultural complex, has been deeply ingrained in the Hezhens’ hearts. In current times, it also supplies a vehicle for younger generations to learn about their history and culture, while opening a window for outsiders to access the Hezhen communities.
Since there is no writing system available for these particular communities, Yimakan plays a key role in preserving Hezhens’ past through oral means. This traditional storytelling, as an ideological form of living oral history, reflects the Hezhens’ historical development, social situatedness, and conceptual systems, along with vivid portrayals of daily life, nature worship, shamanic practice, customs, folkways, and remnants of matriarchal kinship, and to a certain extent has made up for the few written records of the Hezhens that exist. It not only manifests almost all aspects of their cultural creativities, but also plays a core function in maintaining the Hezhens’ mother tongue—a ‘severely endangered language’ as reported in ATLAS OF THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES IN DANGER (UNESCO 2010, p.54)—as well. Through practicing Yimakan, the Hezhens’ everyday language, sacred songs, and divine chants have been easier to keep intact, and the transmission and development of the mother tongue has become a more realistic possibility to cultural resurgence.
By and large, Yimakan storytelling will undoubtedly have a profound influence on the Hezhens’ traditions, history, values, and ethos. Since it has long been the major carrier of the Hezhens’ historic memory and cultural expression, this time-honoured oral tradition possesses irreplaceable social functions for enhancing ethnic cohesion and identity. Furthermore, having linked the past to the present through an unbroken corpus of living memory and culture, Yimakan serves as a treasure house for the maintenance of the Hezhen language. For all of these reasons, Yimakan presents a specific example of a living and thriving cultural diversity that is under threat of extinction. |
| Social and cultural significance |
The Hezhen people, once known as “Hejen,” have long inhabited the reaches of the significant “three rivers”—Amur River (Heilongjiang), Sungari River (Songhuajiang), and Ussri River (Wusulijiang)—in northeast China. With a population of approximately 4600 people, they are one of the smallest ethnic minorities in China. Yimakan storytelling is a multi-canto oral genre performed in the Hezhen language, or “Nanay” in linguistic terms, which belongs to the Manchu-Tungusic branch of the Altaic language family. It can be traced back many centuries, and is closely connected with the Hezhen people's life-world, which depends for its existence on fishing and hunting. In China, the Hezhen Yimakan Storytelling was first reported by Ling Chunsheng, an anthropologist, in his work entitled, The Hezhen People Living in the Lower Reaches of the Sungari River, in 1934.
The Yimakan performance is a mixture of singing and narrating, and is conducted by an experienced storyteller, with no instrumental accompaniment. Generally speaking, the tradition can be roughly divided into two types: ‘sagdi jarimku’ and ‘uskuli jarimku,’ or BIG SONG and SMALL SONG, respectively, in terms of thematic content and the length of the storytelling. The Big Songs are longer, dealing primarily with heroic stories and creation myths, and they occur mostly in the form of narration; the Small Songs are shorter, depicting love stories, fishing and hunting lifestyles, and the like, and they are rendered with specific melodies.
Embedded within its society and culture, Yimakan has been the major form of entertainment in the native regions. The Hezhens always enjoy listening to this storytelling during hunting and fishing, upon wedding or house-building ceremonies, and on feast and festival occasions. In particular, the cold and long winter has traditionally ushered in a special time for storytelling. Accordingly, the oral storytelling, as a cultural complex, has been deeply ingrained in the Hezhens’ hearts. In current times, it also supplies a vehicle for younger generations to learn about their history and culture, while opening a window for outsiders to access the Hezhen communities.
Since there is no writing system available for these particular communities, Yimakan plays a key role in preserving Hezhens’ past through oral means. This traditional storytelling, as an ideological form of living oral history, reflects the Hezhens’ historical development, social situatedness, and conceptual systems, along with vivid portrayals of daily life, nature worship, shamanic practice, customs, folkways, and remnants of matriarchal kinship, and to a certain extent has made up for the few written records of the Hezhens that exist. It not only manifests almost all aspects of their cultural creativities, but also plays a core function in maintaining the Hezhens’ mother tongue—a ‘severely endangered language’ as reported in ATLAS OF THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES IN DANGER (UNESCO 2010, p.54)—as well. Through practicing Yimakan, the Hezhens’ everyday language, sacred songs, and divine chants have been easier to keep intact, and the transmission and development of the mother tongue has become a more realistic possibility to cultural resurgence.
By and large, Yimakan storytelling will undoubtedly have a profound influence on the Hezhens’ traditions, history, values, and ethos. Since it has long been the major carrier of the Hezhens’ historic memory and cultural expression, this time-honoured oral tradition possesses irreplaceable social functions for enhancing ethnic cohesion and identity. Furthermore, having linked the past to the present through an unbroken corpus of living memory and culture, Yimakan serves as a treasure house for the maintenance of the Hezhen language. For all of these reasons, Yimakan presents a specific example of a living and thriving cultural diversity that is under threat of extinction. |
| Transmission method |
Yimakan storytelling varies in themes and story-pattern, and resembles an extended narrative tradition celebrating heroic feats and tribal alliances. Apart from heroic narratives, other stories about hunting and fishing, beauty and bravery, love and wisdom, local knowledge and daily chores can also be found.
A Yimakanqi mafa (The traditional performer of Yimakan) performs a story without instrumental accompaniment, alternating between singing and speaking.
Yimakanqi mafas are usually amateurs, trained in a master-apprentice relationship by a clan or a family. During the first half of the 20th century, master storytellers emerged in rapid succession within a clan or a family. At present, however, outsiders are more and more often accepted for apprenticeship. In the Hezhen context, Yimakanqi mafa refers to a personage with high language skills and a quick mind, who is thus highly respected by the folk. Being a small group of wordsmiths, they can smoothly improvise during the performance, while carefully following the traditional story-patterns, motifs and formulaic diction.
The Hezhens always enjoy listening to this storytelling during hunting and fishing, upon wedding or house-building ceremonies, and on feast and festival occasions. In particular, the cold and long winter has traditionally ushered in a special time for storytelling. Accordingly, the oral storytelling, as a cultural complex, has been deeply ingrained in the Hezhens’ hearts. In current times, it also supplies a vehicle for younger generations to learn about their history and culture, while opening a window for outsiders to access the Hezhen communities.
Since there is no writing system available for these particular communities, Yimakan plays a key role in preserving Hezhens’ past through oral means.
Through practicing Yimakan, the Hezhens’ everyday language, sacred songs, and divine chants have been easier to keep intact, and the transmission and development of the mother tongue has become a more realistic possibility to cultural resurgence.
Without a script, Yimakan has long provided the ideal means for preserving the Hezhens’ mother tongue and mentalities, civilization and norms, and religion and beliefs, as well as folklore and customs. It is thus called the only “living history” linking the Hezhens’ past to present.
In the past, Yimakan storytelling enjoyed a close link to everyday life and to the productive activities of the Hezhen people. It can even be said that storytelling was once the only real form of communication, a typical lifestyle of the people: every Hezhen community always had its own performing Yimakan. Nowadays, however, Yimakan storytelling can only be deliberately organized and presented on specific occasions for festivals, or for the purpose of training individual apprentices. In former times, Yimakan storytellers won the respect and admiration of all the members of the Hezhen; they helped to create an atmosphere that supported a large number of talented performers, each of whom mastered the Yimakan repertoire in the original. According to statistics, there were more than twenty outstanding masters in the 1980s. At present, however, there are only five Yimakanqi mafa (storytellers) who are capable of performing some cantos of Yimakan.
Now that we are highly aware that the intergenerational inheritance of Yimakan Storytelling is at severe risk of permanent disappearance.
Today, the traditional practices of Yimakan storytelling have been threatened from outside and inside:
(i) With the rapid development of the global economic integration and the impact of cultural conflicts, tremendous changes have taken place both in the living environment and in the traditional lifestyle of the Hezhen people. This situation, in turn, represents a serious threat to the social conditions and cultural contexts sustaining the Yimakan tradition.
(ii) With the acceleration of modernization and the standardization of school education, a rapid and widespread language shift emerged among the Hezhen, an ethnic group with a tiny population, and their mother tongue is endangered as a result. At present, only the elders can speak their native language, while the majority of adults and teenagers have lost their mother tongue and have increasingly become strangers to the legacy of their ancestors. The Hezhen language, as a significant vehicle for expressing and transmitting the Yimakan tradition, is on the brink of extinction, and the loss of the ability to speak the Hezhen language has become a major obstacle to promotion of the vitality, viability and sustainability of the Yimakan tradition.
(iii) Possessing no writing system of their own, the Hezhen people pass their cultural heritage orally from generation to generation. The traditional mode of teaching and learning remains the only way of transmitting Yimakan storytelling, which relies on bodily experiences and oral practices in face-to-face communications. Due to structural change in Hezhen society, the family-based teaching and learning system is in severe crisis, while the community-based culture-transmitting mechanism has not been fully recovered.
(iv) The crisis has been aggravated by the deaths of an increasing number of veteran storytellers, and by the rural exodus of younger generations to bigger cities in search of employment. People who can demonstrate a certain degree of proficiency in ethnic language and traditional repertory are becoming older and rarer, while young people are increasingly converting to the modern way of life and turning to learn the dominant language. Traditional practitioners and their successors are in dire shortage.
(v) A boom in developing tourism has brought an erosive effect on the social conditions that have helped to maintain the Yimakan storytelling tradition. For instance, inappropriate adaptations of Yimakan performance for commercial exploitation have brought negative effects on the folk traditions.
On all accounts, the socio-cultural space for sustaining the long-term survival of the Hezhen Yimakan storytelling has radically decreased; the intergenerational transmission is challenged by such endangerment. It is therefore imperative that more positive strategies and more effective measures be adopted for transmitting this invaluable oral heritage of humanity. |
| Community |
▶The Hezhen ethnic minority group in China. Major communities (Heilongjiang Province, China) :
1) The Jiejinkou Hezhen Ethnic Township and Bacha Hezhen Ethnic Township, Tongjiang City;
2) Hezhen Ethnic Village of Aoqi Township, Jiamusi City;
3) Sipai Hezhen Ethnic Township of Raohe County, Shuangyashan City.
▶Societies involved:
1) The Branch of Hezhen Studies, Ethnology Society of Heilongjiang Province;
2) Tongjiang Society for Hezhen Studies, Heilongjiang Province.
▶Individual representative storytellers (the state-level or provincial-level):
1) Wu, Mingxin;
2) Wu, Baochen;
3) Wu, Mingxiang;
4) Ge, Yuxia. |
| Type of UNESCO List |
List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding |
| Incribed year in UNESCO List |
2011 |
