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The Zhuang have a rich variety of customs and culture.
Contents
Festivals
"Sam Nyied Sam" the 3rd day of the 3rd month of the Chinese lunar calendar is one of the main festivals of the Zhuang celebrated by singing, dancing, games, and special food. At this time traditionally young men and women sing antiphonal songs to each other.
Stories
The Zhuang peoples of Yunnan and Guangxi have a rich tradition of written and unwritten stories. Zhuang folk stories often take the form of songs. There are various folk tales, myths, legends, and historical poems and chants. For over one thousand years they have used Sawndip to write a wide variety of literature, including folk songs, operas, poems, scriptures, letters, contracts, and court documents.
There are many stories one a thousand years old. One, a fairy tale which has attracted much attention on recent years is "The orphan girl and the rich girl" an early version of the story Cinderella (Zhuang "Dahgyax Dahbengz" Dah - indicates female, gyax means orphan and bengz means rich) found in Zhuang opera scripts. A 9th century Chinese translation of Zhuang story entitled Ye Xian was written in the Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang and the Sawndip versions we now have are quite similar and analysis suggests these versions took shape no later than the 10th century. "The house-raising song" has been sung for over a thousand years this song has to parts, the first part describes the construction of a traditional stilt house and the second part the customs to ward off evil from the new home "The Origin of the Bronze Drum" tells of the origins of bronze drums that are like "stars" (such drums have a star in the middle of them), that they are as many as the stars of the sky and like stars can ward off evil spirits.
The Zhuang have their own scriptures written in poetical form such as the Baeu Rodo about the creation of the world.
As well as idengenous stories many stories form other peoples such as the Han Chinese have become part of the Zhuang literary tradition. Whilst the original Chinese opera of "The Legend of Wenlong" it has been preserved in Zhuang texts.
Folk arts
Zhuang folk arts include music and dance:
Music
Dances
There are many types of Zhuang dance.
Handicrafts
Traditional Zhuang folk handicrafts includes the following.
Religion
Most Zhuang follow traditional animist practices known as Mo or Shigong which include elements of ancestor worship. The Mo have their own sutra and professional priests known as Bu Mo who traditionally use chicken bones for divination. In Mo, the creator is known as Bu Luotuo and the universe is tripartite, with all things composed from the three elements of heaven, earth, and water.
There are also a number of Buddhists, Taoists, and Christians among the Zhuang.
Language
The Zhuang languages are a group of mutually unintelligible languages of the Tai family, heavily influenced by nearby dialects of Chinese. The Standard Zhuang language is based on a northern dialect but few people learn it, therefore Zhuang people from different dialect areas use one of a number of Chinese varieties to communicate with each other. According to a 1980s survey, 42% of Zhuang people are monolingual in Zhuang, while 55% are bilingual in Zhuang and Chinese. Whilst according to some semi-official sources "In Guangxi, compulsory education is bilingual in Zhuang and Chinese, with a focus on early Zhuang literacy." in fact only small percentage of schools teach written Zhuang. Zhuang is traditionally written using logograms based on Chinese characters ("Sawndip"), and Standard Zhuang, which was written in Latin script, with a few added Cyrillic letters for tone, between 1957 and 1982, and is now officially written using only Latin letters, even though Sawndip are still more often used in less formal domains. Its Wikipedia is za.wikipedia.org.
Traditional medicine
Zhuang folk medicine has a history of over one thousand years. In Sawndip texts thousands of Zhuang medical terms have been identified and some terms have entered into Chinese medical dictionaries, and in Southern China some hospitals have Zhuang Medicine departments.