苏兰朵《记忆》

Museums are repositories of memories.

Stepping into the Manchu Ethnic Museum of Xiuyan, you first see the Manchu Origin Exhibition Hall. Here, more than 300 precious historical photos and paintings comprehensively recreate the life of the Manchu people and their ancestors in different historical periods.

In the part of Manchu folk customs, you will see a detailed reconstruction of an old Manchu house. The house has the Manchu people's iconic Swastika kang (Wanzi kang). The south and north kangs are spacious and can accommodate people, while the narrow kang on the west is used to offer ancestral tablets. The kang is covered with a golden and bright kang mat, and the kang edge is made of logs. It must have been touched by countless hands when sitting down, and the wood is very smooth. On the side of the open-door kang bed cabinet (kangqin) is colourful glass with hand-painted flowers and birds. On the kangqin, there are quilts and pillows stacked up. Southerners may be unable to imagine that stacking quilts was once a particular labour for Northeasterners. It was completed by unmarried girls in the family. For example, when I was young, every morning after getting up, I had to stack everyone's quilts and pillows on the kangqin. This is not a simple matter. It takes skill to fold neatly and ensure it doesn't fall off. The quilt pile almost reaches the roof if many people are in the family. Except for the sick, no one can sleep in. Because the kang needs to be cleaned and the kang table needs to be placed, the whole family gathers around to eat breakfast. The kang has so many uses. After breakfast, the charcoal fire from the stove will be put into the cast iron fire basin and brought to the kang. In the cold winter, the whole family relies on the heat of the fire basin and the kang to keep warm. Potatoes or sweet potatoes can also be buried in the fire basin. When they are cooked, the whole house is full of fragrance. At that time, I never felt cold, nor was I ever lonely. Children can sit on the kang and play Galah; older people can play cards on the kang; the big girls and young wives can sit on the kang and lean on the kangqin, sew shoes, and embroider. Neighbours like to visit each other, chat freely during the day, and light the kerosene lamp at night to tell some fox fairy and Huang Daxian's ghost stories.

In addition to potatoes, sweet potatoes, and charcoal, this exhibition hall contains all the objects I mentioned. At least in the 1970s, the scenery in the exhibition hall was still the familiar scene of the Northeast countryside.

In this exhibition hall that can evoke many Northeast people's childhood memories, outsiders can also witness the "Three Weird Things of the Northeast" - windows covered with paper on the outside, girls carrying big tobacco bags, and children hung up.

The window paper is not ordinary. In the past, unique paper houses in the Northeast were made of window paper. I have described it in the novel "Lidong": "The so-called shredding rope head is the first process of making hemp paper. That is, the raw materials are cut first. The raw materials include reeds, bulrush, hemp, linen, and old rope heads. This work does not require any technology but also carefulness and patience. The finer it is cut, the finer and firmer the paper. " I have seen this kind of paper when I was young. Because it is full of fibres, it is not easy to tear. Why should the window paper be pasted outside? It is a physical problem. Because the winter in the Northeast is freezing, the temperature difference between indoors and outdoors is very large. The window is at the centre of the cold and hot interweave, often producing water vapour towards the inside of the house. If the window paper is pasted inside, it will be soaked and fall off. People with better conditions must also brush the window paper with Perilla seed oil, which is waterproof and transparent. In elementary school, the windows were all made of glass. But the window paper has not disappeared in the northeast. It has a new use - window sills. Cut the window paper into strips, spread the paste, and stick it on all the air-permeable gaps - of course, still paste it outside. At that time, elementary and middle school students participated in this work before entering winter every year.

The windows of the real-life folk houses in the exhibition hall are standard traditional lattice windows with two shutters. One shutter opens, and a hook is hung down from the beam, which can hook the shutter. When I was young, my grandfather often closed the window before bed and hung his pants on the hook. The lower shutter is inserted into the wooden window frame. The shutter can be pulled from the window frame in summer, and the wind can blow in freely. I can also jump out of the window freely. Every time, I feel that the window suddenly becomes much more significant.

Not far from the kangqin, a baby cradle was hung from the house's beams. The cradle was usually made of wood, oval-shaped, with both ends curved up as a swing hung above the kangqin. Each baby didn't stay in the cradle for long. Once he learned to sit, it was easy for him to fall out of it. After learning to walk, every child was particularly fond of the cradle. For him, it was the toy of his dreams, the most comfortable place in the world. But by then, there was usually a younger sibling sleeping inside. They didn't know how to enjoy the toy; they just learned how to sleep. I always felt that the cradle was a bit cruel. However, when the Manchu invented it, it was entirely out of their parents' protection and love for their children. According to the "Old Customs of East China", when the Manchu people were still hunting and not settled, it was unsafe to put the children who couldn't walk on the ground because of the poisonous snakes and wild animals in the mountains and forests. So, they came up with the idea of "hanging up", making a pouch-shaped cradle out of animal skin and hanging it on a big tree in the forest.

The Manchu Costume Hall displays various costumes of the Manchu ancestors, the costumes of the Qing Dynasty, and multiple accessories. Among them are the satin vest of the late Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, the Wula-Sedge shoes of the late Qing Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty's flat square, which are all very Manchu. Among the dazzling exhibits, I noticed a fabric I had never seen before - Buzi. Buzi is also known as "chest back" or "official patch", a round or square fabric woven on the chest or back of the official uniform in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. According to different official positions, the patterns are also different. This patch is from the Qing Dynasty, and the pattern is of a fierce beast, not a bird, so it can be inferred that the patch owner is a military officer. The patch is the most typical symbol of the feudal rank system. Taking the patch of the army officers in the Qing Dynasty as an example, the pattern of the first grade is Qilin, the second grade is Lion, the third grade is Leopard, the fourth grade is Tiger, the fifth grade is Bear, the sixth grade is Mink, the seventh and eighth grade are Rhinoceros, and the ninth grade is Horse. Through this thin and small fabric, we can glimpse the suffocating hierarchy of the feudal officialdom. It was embodied by the rulers as an abstract symbol, constantly whipping people and binding people.

The clothing store also has an exciting collection - the tummy pouch. Manchu men and women of all ages wear tummy pouches. It is attached to the chest and tied around the waist and abdomen. Manchu people are very particular about making tummy pouches. The mouth of the pouch is according to the colour of the banner it belongs to, with a one-inch-wide coloured strip embroidered with auspicious words and patterns. Children embroider longevity and a hundred years of life, adult men embroider auspicious wishes, and women embroider flowers. If it is the year of their birth, they all wear red tummy pouches.

The Manchu Folk Culture and Art Exhibition Hall should be the most eye-catching. The Manchu folk papercuts, shadow puppets and embroidery displayed here were included in the National Intangible Cultural Heritage List 2008.

The most representative of Manchu embroidery is "pillow-top-embroidery". In the preserved Manchu folk embroidery works, pillow top embroidery has the most complete categories and the most excellent works.

In the past, at Manchu weddings, the bride had to hang her own embroidered pillow top on the canopy curtain to "Show Her Dowry" and be judged by relatives and friends. After the wedding, the bride also had to give the pillow top to her mother-in-law or sister-in-law as a meeting gift to integrate into the family. The recipient will keep the pillow top as a souvenir. Some will give it to their daughter when she grows up and gets married. Others will bury or cremate the pillow top when they are about to die. This shows the critical position of pillow top embroidery in the life of Manchu women.

The most characteristic technique of Manchu embroidery is cut embroidery. It is to press two thick fabrics tightly together, fix them on the frame, and cut them in the middle with a sharp knife to form two embroideries with the same colour and symmetrical composition after embroidering the pattern. Cut embroidery is widely used in pillow top embroidery.

Shadow play was introduced to Xiuyan in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and has more than 300 years of history. The difference between the Xiuyan shadow play and ordinary shadow play lies in its inheritance and development of Manchu's unique culture; thus, it has distinct national and regional characteristics.