The Cyber Revival of Shaman on China's youtube

Around 2012, the ancient ritual of Tiaodashen, a dance performed by shamans in northern China, suddenly appeared on various online platforms. The once-lost folk beliefs and shamanic rituals of ethnic minorities reappeared in a fractured, ghostly form. It also gained a new name, Chumaxian. It has all the elements of spontaneous belief - superstition, confusion, lack of evidence, and ubiquity.

link: https://www.huxiu.com/article/...

The article was originally published in Chinese. This machine-translated English version is for reference only.

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Original title：

I’m dancing at Bilibili: The Cyber Revival of Shamanic Culture

A month ago, one of his videos on station B suddenly attracted attention. In the video, he was singing while beating the drum. In the darkness in the background, an old man sleeps.

"With the Three Emperors, I am a divine helper.

Soldiers from Qili will be moved from Eight Mile

Jiuli took the reins of this horse

The two hanging lights on the main door should be hung in red

I am moving people and horses and magical weapons..."

Someone compiled his lyrics, which included Changmang Si Snake, Lao Xian's Family, and Tu Tu Temple. "When the gods were invited, Wen Bian and Wu Bian were mentioned. Wen Pian probably held them in his arms and said that they were all the deeds of Lao Xian'er showing his face. ", with an explanation, "This singing is too upright" and "can be called a shamanic MC".

If he brings a drum, Sun Baiqiang may sing from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain. He can sing the divine tunes with his mouth open, and he can do it all day long without getting stuck or repeating anything.

Tiecha Mountain is dedicated to Black Mama. Legend has it that it was the place where Taoist priest Guo Shouzhen practiced cultivation. He was surrounded by earthly immortals such as Hu Xian, Huang Xian, and Python Xian who were born in the black soil of the Northeast, representing foxes, weasels, and snakes respectively.

Eight out of ten people who came to pay homage to the mountain were fellow travelers, and Sun Baiqiang could tell at a glance. Most of them spoke confidently and without hesitation, with cunning eyes and a bit of shrewdness. 

This can be called an era where great fairies gather.

Around 2012, the ancient ritual of dancing to the gods in the north suddenly emerged on various online platforms. The once-era folk beliefs and the lost shamanistic rituals of ethnic minorities reappeared as ghosts with a broken appearance and also received a new name, Chumaxian.

It has the characteristics of all spontaneous beliefs - superstitious, chaotic, unproven, and ubiquitous.

As soon as the drum sounded, the words in Sun Baiqiang's mouth were like overturned potatoes in a dustpan, rolling out one after another in a leisurely manner. The singing voice was deeper than usual, reverberating deep in his nasal cavity.

This drum was bought on Taobao a few years ago. It cost 350 yuan. You can also buy it for dozens of yuan. He spent a lot of money. After that, he successively spent a small amount of money to purchase hats, battle skirts, and waist bells and prepared a complete set of shaman attire.

The drums and bells bought on the Internet are played to perform rituals for people from all over the world, praying for money, love, and career success; but the drums they hum are still ancient lyrics, saying that the world is natural and the weather is smooth.

Winter nights in the north are long and it’s freezing outside. Huangpizi (the weasel) dug a hole at the bottom of the firewood pile, slept in the old firewood pile that could not be burned, and lived among his neighbors. There are also foxes and pythons, which are the most common animals in rural areas of Northeast China.

People think they are intelligent and spiritual, giving them a mysterious aura.

The shaman is the intermediary, the person who can communicate with these great and small immortals; and the lyrics of the dance are telling stories, "praising the deeds of the gods, making the gods happy, and coming down to earth to help the world."

The days were very poor in the past, and having enough food was the only motivation to survive. There are countless versions of the legend of transporting food among the people. When Sun Baiqiang was a child, his great-grandfather also told him something like this. He said that during the Chinese New Year, Huang Xian at home could get dumplings from outside.

Folk beliefs have no unified authority and are filled with conventions and simple wishes for the life of farmers who rely on nature for their livelihood.

At that time, people generally believed that they had to rely on farming to support their families. The rhythm of life of working during the day and relaxing at night has been integrated into people's thinking, resulting in an unwritten rule in Chumaxian - whether it is moving a pole (seeing a doctor, breaking a custom), or setting up a hall (inviting a great immortal), everything must be Do it in the evening.

As night falls, people sit around the big Kang at home and start dancing. The dance ceremony requires two people. The big one is responsible for inviting the gods, while the two gods sing on the side.

Sun Baiqiang had three masters. The first one was an old Manchu shaman who taught him how to make offerings; the second master taught him the skills of treating patients and moving poles; the third master was a master who specialized in singing the two gods. He was not possessed by gods, but only Do the work of singing God.

"He is just a master of folk art with secret skills", a little mysterious, but not as "omnipotent" as a great god.

Sun Baiqiang's 18-minute divine tune on Station B is just a libretto by Er Shen.

A friend who was making documentaries was filming in the northeastern countryside and invited him to sing a song to pray to God. The older generation thinks that the invitation to the gods is sacred and avoids appearing in front of the camera. The aunt sleeping in the back is an invited actor.

From an insider's perspective, this was a very routine aria, and he didn't even have to prepare it. In the past, it would take all day and night to move poles and build the entrance to the hall. Er Shen's lyrics cannot be broken or over-sung. They must be able to compose them on the spot.

When I was studying under a teacher since I was young, after learning the basic Thirteen Great Rules, I had to develop the ability to speak out of my mouth. Dagu calligraphy, allegro calligraphy, and lotus falling, if they fit the rhymes and rhymed, they were added.

But much of the content was eventually lost. The "Han Xiangzi" written by the master is the fragrance of perfume; the content of the aria is confusing, "There are two gods, one says that the nature of the leader of Jinhua is Zhang, and he lives in Zhangjiazhuang above, the other says that the nature of leader of Jinhua is Liu, and the temple was built in Daba, Wu. .Everyone says the same thing.”

People who work in this industry have high self-esteem, "I think this is a sacred job, and I can't do things that please others or flatter others." No one is willing to engage in performance, and they have never been able to enter with a serious body of some kind of folk art. The perspective of mainstream culture.

Cyber ​​Revival of Folk Beliefs

Sun Baiqiang grew up in the countryside around Harbin, where the Manchu and Han ethnic groups lived together without distinction between you and me.

When he was a child, he had a serious illness and suffered from persistent high fever. However, the fever subsided every time he went to the hospital. His family felt something was strange, so they took him to the village's "Great Fairy", a witch doctor, for treatment.

The other party said that Sun Baiqiang had an immortal family in his body, and he wanted to help the immortal family live with him. Then, the witch doctor wrote down a list of orders and asked him to go home and paste it on the wall. There was a large bowl with an incense burner underneath, and he would burn incense and offer it on the first and fifteenth day of the lunar month.

It was 2007. After two generations, 14-year-old Sun Baiqiang became the new generation of young shaman in his family.

Counting upwards, his great-grandfather and great-grandmother all worshiped Hu Huangxian as the family's protector. My great-grandfather would treat people in the village for free, and he would only occasionally receive rice and a basket of eggs.

When studying the "Four Gates" beliefs among northern folk, historian Yang Nianqun found that compared to the ancestor worship promoted by Confucianism, ordinary people in the north were more concerned about rain, snow, wind, and drought in their daily lives, and practical issues such as whether their financial resources were prosperous.

Therefore, Baojiaxian's status is higher than that of his ancestors, building a regional identity and becoming the main force that unites family members.

However, during the ten-year Cultural Revolution, folk beliefs were classified as feudal superstition and were severely cracked down on. People of that generation began to feel repulsed by this, thinking that it was a pretense to fool people, which was very embarrassing. The tradition of Tiao Shen has suffered from chronology, and many practice testimonies have been lost.

This is the case with the Sun Baiqiang family. After the death of his great-grandfather, no one of the children in the family was willing to take over, so the decision fell on Sun Baiqiang's aunt. However, my aunt married a Catholic during her second marriage and gave up on "succession" and could only continue to look for someone. This way I found Sun Baiqiang's head.

After several years of worship, Sun Baiqiang also began to look after people. At first, I was looking for a ring for my grandma.

"At that time, I just wanted to say whatever I wanted to say, just like I made it up, and it happened like this. I really found it."

The interpersonal relationships in the local area are close, and the news spread from one person to another, and Sun Baiqiang quickly became famous in the local area. At that time, he only paid five yuan to tell people's fortunes, which could buy two or three bags of QQ candy. By now, the price has increased a hundred times.

In school, he was ridiculed as an outlier among his classmates. When he got a Buddhist bonding book from the class, he would be torn up by his classmates, or scratched and sold to scrap collectors.

After graduating from college, he worked for several years and was discriminated against while working in pharmacies and restaurants. Every time he took time off on the third day of the third lunar month to go home and burn incense, everyone knew in their hearts that this was for the family's sake.

"In this place in the Northeast, no one knows what Chuma Xian does. Everyone knows it, but no one talks about it."

But in this atmosphere of silence, Sun Baiqiang observed that in the past ten years, the activity of dancing to the gods has suddenly revived.

The Chuma Immortal Association, a non-governmental organization he belongs to, once made rough statistics and found that there are no less than a few million Chuma disciples in the Northeast.

Many of them prayed to the gods to cure their illnesses. In the end, about one-tenth of the people were able to keep the temple, and another one-tenth would make a living out of it and tell people's fortunes.

"Each of the three northeastern provinces has about 20,000 to 30,000 people. Among them, Liaoning has the largest number of people. I estimate there are more than 40,000 immortals." Sun Baiqiang estimated the current situation.

This situation is largely due to a period of crazy expansion, that is, the six years from 2012 to 2018.

At that time, various media platforms were just emerging. Sun Baiqiang remembers that the first time was on YY Live Broadcast. Two people playing in a row is like a play, one person plays the role of the great god, and the other person plays the role of the second god.

Live streaming online does not involve doing anything. It is just a kind of communication and game. In the words of the older generation, it is singing "white-faced god" (singing false god).

"King Wen rings his whip." The two gods opened their voices and sang a verse to invite the gods. The great god responded by singing another verse in the tone of an immortal. After both of them finished singing, the two gods sang another verse to send the immortal away. This is a set.

For Sun Baiqiang, this is an opportunity to "steal a master". Different places have their own singing and singing methods, and ten masters sing ten rhymes.

Ancient rhythms were used to please the gods, and gradually evolved into their own styles. Jilin's Ershen sings faster, and when the drums are played, all the songs are compact allegro; while Heilongjiang's is slower.

"It's about being immobile and not rocking. If you stand in that corner and move your butt, the master will go up and kick you."

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, this is the running water board; scratch, scratch, stick, eh, bang, stick, this is the third pile; dang, dang, dang, this is nodding. It’s all a different drumbeat.

Most of the words he knows now are from live broadcasts. "As a result, in 2012 and 2013, a large number of outstanding Ershen were cultivated. What YY did, really renewed the popularity of the Ershen sect. Otherwise, it might have been discontinued."

He still remembered that the founder of the live broadcast channel at that time was an old lady in her sixties. Nowadays, most of the older generation of gods are old and no longer engaged in this industry. At that time, they imitated the younger generation in the live broadcast room and began to appear on the stage.

The excitement lasted for about two years.

Next, the momentum of Lianmai's live broadcast subsided and entered the era of QQ groups, where fellow apprentices held live video broadcasts in the group to compare skills. By 2016, all major platforms have fully blossomed, and "wherever there are people, they are full of fairies."

Chumaxian and Baojiaxian Bars on Baidu Tieba became big bars with tens of thousands of people.

According to a set of data as of July 2016, Chuma Xian Bar has 30,431 members and 568,866 posts; Baojia Xian Bar has 14,718 members and 146,715 posts.

A bar owner that Sun Baiqiang knows is, to some extent, a major influence in the industry because of his status. He can sell a lotus flower made of paper for 2,000 yuan, and earned 30 million yuan in one year from 2016 to 2017.

It was also at that time that Sun Baiqiang also started to make money. In 2015, when he was most famous, he could get 1,800 active followers in an hour through Kuaishou Live Broadcast. He tried almost all of the popular platforms at the time: Yingke, Huajiao, and Douyu.

Social platforms have replaced the old local relations and achieved the effect of spreading from one person to another, and the "virtual church" surrounded by the Internet is flourishing.

If the hand-written hall cannot write alone, it will be converted to mass production through printing; some great immortals will constantly update the number and speed of recruiting disciples like they are trying to improve their performance; sometimes, the person who set up the hall does not want to worship anymore, and will spend some money to let the great immortal take it back. go.

Some great immortals can make a lot of money just by closing their doors.

In the past, the reputation of great immortals depended on seeing things, but now they rely on publicity and their popularity on their respective platforms. "Now they are all Weibo masters, Baidu masters, Zhihu masters..."

Sun Baiqiang's various accounts are not active and he mainly relies on the customers he accumulated in the past. However, he found that the new apprentices have used the Internet as their main position and concentrated on operating various accounts.

The day before going to Tiesha Mountain, Sun Baiqiang went to Shenyang first.

On the train, he quickly found a colleague in Shenyang through Weibo. The other party specializes in being a master. He wants to meet with the other party to see if there are any opportunities for cooperation. In the parlance of the industry, this is called "stepping on the plate".

The Internet is also constantly reshaping this folk belief. In the past, there was no such thing as "immortal". When the older generation asked gods to cure their illnesses, they were mostly called "the most fragrant one", "the one who dances with gods" or "the one who sees things". The appearance of a horse was originally meant to be an identity verification ritual among shamans.

In 2008, Sun Baiqiang went online for the first time and searched for Baidu terms, only to find out that there was a saying about Ma Xian.

He guessed that the popularity of this term would not be earlier than 2005 or 2006. At that time, the rise of fantasy and supernatural online novels promoted the name to be widely accepted and even entered the Baidu entry. "Our generation believes very much in Baidu." Encyclopedia.”

In his opinion, it might be more appropriate to call this kind of spiritual activity called Han Shamanism. Nowadays, the "big gods" and "two gods" in people's mouth always have a derogatory and ironic flavor, which brings curiosity and teasing to the viewers.

"But if you want to correct it, you must have a standard, and the only standard is the Internet. The reason why the Internet can have such a great impact on reality is because this belief has gone through time. It has a lot of blank spaces, and people can write in the blank spaces."

By 2019, the government began to crack down on superstition, and the horse fairy was also included in it.

Media reporters conducted unannounced visits to reveal secrets, and all kinds of negative news emerged one after another. Some great immortals who saw things through were punished for fraud.

Major platforms cracked down on feudal superstition. Overnight, all related videos were removed from the shelves, accounts were banned, and major post bars were closed. The great minds on the Internet are scattered.

Dozens of lecture videos recorded by Sun Baiqiang in the past have also been removed from the shelves by major platforms. Now there is only a small part of the content left on his Bilibili account, most of which are some singing jokes.

The introduction to the video reads, "Northeast Divine Tune and Errenzhuan have the same origin and origin, and are a kind of inheritance of cultural heritage. I hope everyone will support it and connect three times with one click." This video that exceeded 100,000 yuan earned him a platform reward of 1,147 yuan and 2 cents.

He wondered if the money would allow him to hire a professional editor.

A time without shamans

Contrary to the rise of Chuma Xian, there is the loss of minority shamanic traditions.

The old man Guan Kouni is considered the last shaman of the Oroqen people. "The Paper" reported that when she was 73 years old, the local cultural department wanted her to find someone to pass on her shamanic identity.

Under the organization of Huma County, an inheritance ceremony was held on the banks of the Huma River, and the selected inheritor was Meng Juhua, the daughter of Guan Kuni.

Meng Juhua died in a car accident a year later. In 2012, when "Southern People Weekly" revisited the remaining old shamans, Meng Huiying, a professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, "Officially, this is an era without shamans."

In modern times, shamanic culture is regarded as a kind of folk custom.

Since 2005, various places in Jilin and Heilongjiang have begun to rush to rescue, excavate, convert them into intangible cultural heritage, and develop tourism.

"Shaman Family Sacrifice" is included in the list of intangible cultural heritage of Heilongjiang Province, and the government designates specific candidates as representative inheritors. Most of the existing folk sacrifices are cultural performances supported by the government.

In the countryside of Acheng, where Sun Baiqiang grew up, there is a Manchu family that still maintains sacrificial activities, called "Haigu Village".

The stockade stands in a low farmyard, like a lonely castle. There is a large pond in the courtyard, with two rotten totems stuck in it. In the hall is a large Kang with ten thousand characters, and there are sacrificial antler hats, peacock feathers, sacred clothes and hats.

The "village leader" is Fu Dejun, and his lover and daughter are both shamans.

Across the road is the yard of the supply and marketing cooperative. The proprietress also has the same surname as Fu. She said that they are all descendants of the Fucha family of the Manchu people. Being adjacent to Haigu Village, she didn't seem to understand that someone would go to such a far away place just to understand the shaman.

The elder brother on the side felt that the two large sauerkraut jars in the corner were more worthy of showing to outsiders.

The landlady still believes in shamanism. Although they can now go to the hospital for medical treatment, if they have any minor ailments, they still like to go to the village witch doctor to see if they are scared, "which is a kind of sustenance."

They are still wary of outsiders and keep repeating the same words, "We just believe in ourselves and will not affect the country."

Meng Huiying believes that although shamanism has been ruled and governed for a long historical period, it has always had "many stubborn possibilities and weak calculations."

Fu Dejun's mother is also a shaman.

When he was a child, his mother would fall ill from time to time, with convulsions all over her body, similar to epilepsy. He would go through most of the village to find a witch doctor to treat her.

"She's really good. When you see something like that, you feel like you have to believe it."

Fu Dejun believes that he has a magnetic field that can bring blessings. When he was a child, he went into the city and was surrounded by a group of people and was about to be beaten. Suddenly a stranger stepped forward and helped him scare away the gangsters. No one would dare to bully him again. He found it particularly magical and remembers it to this day.

No one performs the actual shamanic rituals, and only one or two sentences of Manchu remain. These beliefs are hidden in the heart, and they are just a show to outsiders. As a tourism project, Haigu Village holds sacrificial performances every year. Fu Dejun, who is nearly 60 years old, personally wears divine clothes, dances divine dances, and goes up to Daoshan.

But no matter how loud the drums are, the gods can no longer be invited. Fu Dejun's daughter, who is far away in Tianjin, has started to work as a fairy, and she has gained a good reputation. People come to her online to see what's going on.

"The Calculation of the Weak"

On October 17, the first day of September 9th, a pilgrim who was originally scheduled to set up a temple released Sun Baiqiang's dove. This kind of thing is common, let alone an agreement made online. "Nothing can be agreed until the night before."

Sun Baiqiang sat bored in the store and opened Honor of Kings on his mobile phone. A Taoist senior brother was also online, and the two teamed up and chatted via voice. "How are you doing? Are you busy on September 9th?" the senior brother asked.

"Not busy, hey, just a few people looking at things."

"Does the epidemic also affect pole moving?"

"No."

After a while, the takeaway from the fried chicken restaurant was delivered, and Sun Baiqiang took out a whole chicken from the paper bag and placed it on the plate in front of the restaurant.

Before September 9, he would make a big offering, including one roasted chicken, one carp, nine eggs, five raw and four cooked, twenty-five steamed buns, and a piece of pork. Leave it there until it smells bad, then take it off.

Some colleagues also fold paper ingots. Sun Baiqiang thinks that is completely superstitious. "You said they were trained as animals. It's reasonable to eat roast chicken. If you give it gold ingots, where will it spend it?" He stopped and said this seriously, "I am a very rational person."

A long wig hangs in the room. He will take time to go to the Comic Exhibition in Harbin. He used to cosplay Inuyasha, but now he is the founder of the devil.

In the past few years, he has gradually become fond of Chinese comics, such as "The Patriarch of the Demonic Way", "Fox Demon Matchmaker", "Zhenhun Street", "Under One Person"... In these works, cultivating immortals has been given various shapes and imaginations.

Sun Baiqiang likes Hanfu and even hopes that one day Chumaxian will be as accepted by the public as Hanfu.

He suspected that as more people accepted its existence, it would become more formal and less full of errors and charlatanism as it is now. "Everyone wants their faith to be great and glorious, but in fact, all its shortcomings are here."

His bookshelf contains reading materials such as "The Crowd" and "Game Psychology", placed together with "Introduction to Feng Shui" and "The Book of Changes". Traditional shamans do not do fortune-telling, but to make a living, most of them learn a set of skills such as Plum Blossom Yishu and Qimen Dunjia.

Sometimes, Sun Baiqiang feels that predicting events is just guessing people's hearts. Only those who are under pressure will seek immortality and entrust problems that cannot be solved in this world to mystery.

"For example, if your father dies tomorrow, you will be sad and need psychological comfort. This is not something that any spiritual mentor can enlighten."

"You just need people like us, who can tell you that his soul can go to heaven, and you will feel better." He said, "What can psychology do? Maybe let you go out for a run."

During the conversation, his WeChat message rang, and a familiar pilgrim sent a long voice message, wanting to calculate the friendship between himself and his friend. Putting down his cell phone, Sun Baiqiang looked at the current time and made up a hexagram. He deciphered the meaning and told the man that these were the words of the great immortal.

"Humans, sometimes need this thing. Otherwise, why, superstition has never stopped for thousands of years."

But superstition is not accepted by the mainstream after all. He guessed that if one-day Chumaxian becomes an orthodox belief like Buddhism and Taoism, all these mysterious parts will be removed, and it will be used in the harmless form of health preservation, inedement, and Chinese studies. appear in front of the public.