She of the Southeastern Hills and Their Phoenix Dress

Scattered across the hills of southeastern China, through Fujian, Zhejiang, and the neighbouring provinces, live the She, a people of the mountain slopes whose small communities are threaded among the far more numerous Han. Farmers of the uplands who once roved the hills clearing fields by fire, they are known for the bright phoenix dress of their women, their love of antiphonal song, and their cherished legend of the divine ancestor Panhu.

This account follows the She from their origins among the ancient hill peoples of the south, through their long scattering across the southeast and their close mingling with the Han, into their borrowed language, their worship of Panhu, and the phoenix dress, the song, and the third-month festival that mark them. It ends with the She of today, a dispersed hill people keeping their identity alive among the Han of modern China.

The Scattered Hill Farmers of the Southeast
Shanha, She, and the Name of the People
The She Tongue and the Speech They Borrowed
The Hills of Fujian, Zhejiang, and the Southeast
The Villages, the Roving Fields, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the She
Panhu, the Ancestors, and the Rites of the People
The Phoenix Dress, the Song, and the Ways of the She
The Weavers, the Embroiderers, and the Makers of Cloth
Rice, Tea, and the Table of the Hills
The Third Month, the Ancestor Rites, and the Feasts
From the Southern Hills to the People of Modern China
The She in Modern China

The Scattered Hill Farmers of the Southeast

Scattered across the hills of southeastern China, through the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Anhui, live the She, a people of the mountain slopes whose small communities are dotted among the far more numerous Han. Numbering some seven hundred thousand, they are one of the more widely spread of China’s minorities, yet nowhere do they form a solid block, living instead in villages sprinkled through the uplands of the southeast.

The origins of the She are much debated, for they share their founding legend, the tale of the divine dog Panhu, with the Yao of the far south, and the two peoples are held to spring from a common root in the ancient hill peoples of southern China. Whether the She are a northeastern offshoot of the same stock as the Yao, or a distinct people who took up the same legend, their beginnings lie among the mountain folk of the south.

Over the centuries the ancestors of the She drifted through the hills of the southeast, a mobile people who cleared patches of forest, cropped them, and moved on, spreading north and east from an earlier home into the uplands of Fujian and Zhejiang. This roving life scattered them widely and mingled them closely with the Han of the region, whose language and ways they came in large measure to share.

To speak of the She is to speak of a scattered hill people of the southeast, farmers of the mountain slopes, keepers of the legend of Panhu and of a bright and distinctive dress, and close neighbours of the Han among whom they live. Small in number and dispersed among a great population, they have kept their identity and their customs through the long centuries in the hills of the Chinese southeast.

Shanha, She, and the Name of the People

The name She, by which the Chinese state and the world know this people, is written with a character that means to clear land by burning, the slash-and-burn cultivation of the hills, and it thus records the old roving way of farming by which the people lived. It is under this name that they are recognised as one of China’s nationalities and given their autonomous county and townships in the southeast.

Among themselves the people call their nation by a name usually rendered Shanha or a word close to it, meaning the guests of the mountains, or the hill dwellers, a fitting name for a scattered people of the slopes who often came as newcomers to the districts where they settled. This self-name marks them as folk of the hills, set apart from the Han of the valleys and the towns.

The She share their founding legend and much of their old lore with the Yao, and in earlier times the line between the two, and between the She and other hill peoples of the south, was not always sharply drawn. The modern division into separate nationalities followed the classifications of the twentieth century, which fixed the She as a people in their own right, distinct from their southern kin.

Whatever the name, the She know themselves as one people, sharing the legend of Panhu, the bright dress of their women, and a common way of life in the hills of the southeast, even as they live scattered among the Han and have taken on much of their neighbours’ speech. The name She, the mark of the old fire-farming of the slopes, binds these dispersed communities into a single people.

The She Tongue and the Speech They Borrowed

The language of the She is a curious matter, for the great majority of them speak a form of Chinese, close to the Hakka dialect, that they took from their Han neighbours over the long centuries of living scattered among them. This She form of Hakka is the everyday tongue of most of the people, and by it they are bound closely to the speech of the southeastern hills.

Yet a small number of the She, chiefly in a few villages of Guangdong, still speak a language of their own, one that scholars link to the Hmong-Mien family and thus to the tongue of their Yao kin. This original She language, now spoken by only a remnant, is held to be the older speech of the people, from which most communities shifted to Chinese in the course of their history.

The loss of the old tongue among most of the She reflects their long and close mingling with the Han, among whom they lived in scattered villages rather than in a solid homeland of their own. Surrounded by Chinese speakers and drawn into the Han world of trade and administration, most She communities came to speak the language of their neighbours while keeping their own dress, legend, and identity.

In the modern age standard Chinese has spread among the She, as among all the peoples of the country, through schooling and daily life. The keeping of the old She language, spoken now by so few, is a matter of concern for those who study and cherish it, a rare survival of the people’s ancient speech in a nation where most She have long spoken the tongue of the Han.

The Hills of Fujian, Zhejiang, and the Southeast

The homeland of the She is not a single block of country but a scattering of hill communities across the provinces of the southeast, above all Fujian and Zhejiang, with further groups in Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Anhui. Nowhere do they form the bulk of the population, living instead in villages sprinkled through the mountainous uplands among the far more numerous Han.

This is the green, wet, hilly country of southeastern China, a land of forested mountains, terraced valleys, and mist, warmed by the sub-tropical sun and drenched by the summer rains. The She settled the slopes and the higher valleys, often the poorer and steeper land left aside by the Han of the plains, and there they cleared their fields, terraced the hillsides for rice, and grew the tea for which the region is famed.

The one place where the She are recognised with a county of their own is Jingning, in the hills of southern Zhejiang, the sole She autonomous county in all of China, a green upland district that has become a centre of She culture and identity. Elsewhere they live in autonomous townships and in scattered villages, their communities marked out among the Han by dress, custom, and the memory of their origins.

Rooted to their hill slopes and their terraced fields, and dispersed through a wide southeastern country, the She made their homeland less a territory than a network of upland villages. Among the tea gardens and the forested mountains of Fujian and Zhejiang, they kept their identity through the centuries, a hill people threaded through the lands of the Han of the southeast.

The county town of Jingning, the She autonomous county

The Villages, the Roving Fields, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the She lived in their hill villages by a roving cultivation, the slash-and-burn farming that gave them their very name. They cleared a patch of forest by fire, cropped it for a few seasons, and moved on to clear another, a mobile way of life that scattered them widely across the hills of the southeast in search of fresh land.

This roving farming kept many She communities on the move over the generations, drifting from district to district as the soil was spent, and it settled them often on the steep and poorer land above the Han of the valleys. In time, as land grew scarce and the state pressed closer, many She took up the settled terraced farming of their neighbours, growing rice and tea on fixed fields.

Governed by custom and by the heads of their clans, the She built no kings and no wide state, living in scattered villages under the guidance of elders and, above them, the officials of the empire who ruled the region. The bonds of clan and the memory of the four great surnames of the people, tracing back to the sons and daughter of the legendary Panhu, ordered their society.

Life turned on the hill field, the tea garden, and the ties of kin, and the She kept their bright dress, their songs, and the legend of their divine ancestor through the long centuries of living among the Han. A scattered people of the slopes, roving and then settling, they preserved their identity by custom, by dress, and by the cherished tale of Panhu, even as they took the language of their neighbours.

The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the She

She society rests on the clan and the village, the ties of descent reckoned through the father’s line that bind families across the scattered hill communities. The She trace themselves to four great surnames, Pan, Lan, Lei, and Zhong, held to descend from the children of the legendary Panhu, and a person’s surname marks their clan and their place in the people, and governs whom they may marry.

The village is the largest everyday unit of She life, a cluster of households on a hill slope or in a valley, guided by respected elders and by the heads of the clans. Scattered among the Han and building no wide state of their own, the She ordered their communities by custom, by descent, and by the bonds of kinship, and by the memory of their common origin from the divine ancestor.

Marriage among the She was made outside the clan and marked by the exchange of gifts, by feasting, and above all by song, for the She are famous for courting and marrying in music, the young men and women singing back and forth, and the very rites of the wedding carried on in antiphonal song. The songs of the wedding and the courtship gave the young a voice in the weaving of their matches.

Women held an honoured place, above all as the keepers of the bright dress and the fine embroidery that marked the She among their Han neighbours, and as singers in the antiphonal songs that fill She life. The famous phoenix dress and headdress of the She women, worn above all at the wedding, was the pride of the household and a measure of a woman’s skill and standing.

Panhu, the Ancestors, and the Rites of the People

At the heart of She religion stands the legend and the worship of Panhu, the divine dog who, in the tale the She share with the Yao, won the hand of a princess in the days of a legendary emperor and became the ancestor of the people. From him, the story holds, sprang the four great surnames of the She, and his memory is honoured in song, in painted scrolls, and in the great rites of the ancestors.

The worship of Panhu and of the forebears of the clan lies at the centre of She faith, and the ancestor rites, held with painted scrolls that tell the story of the divine ancestor and with the singing of the ancestral songs, bind the people to their origin and to the dead who watch over them. To honour Panhu and the ancestors is to affirm one’s very identity as a She.

Around this ancestor worship the She hold a belief in the spirits of the hills, the fields, and the streams, and they took in over the centuries much of the Taoism and folk religion of the Han among whom they lived. Ritual specialists, versed in the chanting of the scriptures and the performing of the rites, served the community in healing, in funerals, and in the great ceremonies of the ancestors.

In the modern age the old faith has weakened, as among many peoples, under the pressures of a changing world, yet the worship of Panhu and the rites of the ancestors remain the mark of She identity, cherished and revived as the heart of what sets the people apart. The legend of the divine ancestor, carried in song and scroll, remains the deepest root of the She sense of themselves.

The Phoenix Dress, the Song, and the Ways of the She

The most striking of She traditions is the phoenix dress of the women, a bright and elaborate costume said to recall the plumage of the phoenix, worn above all at the wedding. The headdress in particular, a tall and ornate construction of red cloth, silver, and beads, is likened to the crest of the phoenix, and the whole array, embroidered and adorned, marks the great occasions of a woman’s life.

Song is the soul of She tradition, for the She are a people who sing at every turn, in courtship, at weddings, at work in the fields, and at the festivals, in antiphonal songs sung back and forth between singers. So central is song that the very rites of the wedding are carried on in music, and the meeting of young men and women in singing contests at the festivals is among the most cherished of She customs.

The legend of Panhu and the rites of the ancestors, carried in painted scrolls and in the singing of the ancestral songs, stand among the great traditions of the people, binding them to their divine ancestor and their origin. The ancestor ceremonies, held with solemn song and the unrolling of the scrolls, are the deepest expression of what it is to be She.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the courtship carried on in song, the weddings with their phoenix dress and their antiphonal singing, and the festivals with their contests and feasts. Through the phoenix dress, the song, and the worship of Panhu, the She mark the passages of life and the turning of the year in ways that set them apart among the Han of the southeast.

The Weavers, the Embroiderers, and the Makers of Cloth

The chief craft of the She is the making and adorning of their dress, above all the bright embroidered clothing and the phoenix headdress of the women. They weave cloth, dye it, and cover it with fine embroidery in bright thread, in patterns handed down among the women, and they fashion the tall headdresses of red cloth, silver, and beads that are the pride of a She bride and the mark of the people.

The weaving of a distinctive patterned sash or belt is another well-known She craft, worked in bright colours with figures and, in some accounts, with signs that carry meaning, and worn as part of the traditional dress. Such woven bands, along with the embroidery, gave the She women a means of display and a measure of their skill, and marked their communities among the Han.

Beyond cloth the She practise the crafts of a hill farming people, the building of houses of timber and earth, the plaiting of bamboo into baskets and mats, the making of tools, and the working of the tea that is a mainstay of their hill economy. The picking, drying, and preparing of tea was a skill of the She uplands, whose gardens yielded a valued crop.

The She were also known for a knowledge of herbs and of traditional medicine, drawn from the rich plant life of the southeastern hills, a lore gathered over generations of life on the forested slopes. Yet it is for the phoenix dress and the bright embroidery above all that the crafts of the She are known, an art of the women that clothed the people and marked them out among their neighbours.

Excavated artefacts from Xiapu in the She country

Rice, Tea, and the Table of the Hills

The food of the She is the food of the southeastern hills, built on rice grown in the terraced valleys and on the crops of the mountain slopes. Rice is the heart of every meal, boiled or steamed, and among the She the glutinous sticky rice is especially prized for the festivals, when it is pounded into cakes or steamed and dyed with the juices of plants into coloured rice for the great days.

A food closely tied to the She is the black rice, or the dark-dyed glutinous rice cooked with the juice of a certain wild plant, made above all for the third-month festival and eaten as a mark of the season. To the rice is added a relish of vegetables, gathered greens, beans, and the produce of the garden, with pork and poultry as the meat of festivals and welcome.

Tea holds a special place among the She, for the tea gardens of their hill country yield both a crop for sale and a drink for the household, and the She have their own ways of preparing and drinking it. The offering of tea to a guest was a mark of hospitality, and the tea of the She uplands was among the goods that tied their villages to the wider trade of the region.

Rice wine, brewed in the household, is the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at every festival, and offered to Panhu and the ancestors. From the terraced rice and the black festival rice to the tea of the hill gardens and the home-brewed wine, the food of the She is rooted in the slopes and valleys of the southeastern uplands that are their home.

The Third Month, the Ancestor Rites, and the Feasts

The best loved of She festivals is the San Yue San, the festival of the third day of the third lunar month, the great gathering of the people. On this day the She cook the black rice dyed with wild plant juice, don their finest phoenix dress, and gather from the scattered villages to sing, to hold their singing contests, and to honour their ancestors, so that the day is filled with song, colour, and feasting.

The third-month festival is above all a festival of song and of the young, when men and women sing back and forth in courtship and the best singers display their art, and many a match is made. It has become the great symbol of She culture, celebrated across the scattered communities and drawing visitors to see the dress, the songs, and the customs of the hill people.

The rites of the ancestors, above all the great ceremonies in honour of Panhu, held with the unrolling of the painted scrolls and the singing of the ancestral songs, are among the most solemn occasions of the She year, binding the people to their divine ancestor and their origin. These ancestor rites, kept by the clans, are the deepest expression of She identity.

The turning of the farming year and the passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, the wedding above all carried on in the antiphonal song for which the She are famous. At all these occasions the bright phoenix dress, the singing contests, and the coloured rice bring colour and sound, so that the She meet the great moments of the year and of life with song and feast.

From the Southern Hills to the People of Modern China

The She trace their origins, in legend, to the divine ancestor Panhu, and in history to the ancient hill peoples of southern China, kin to the forebears of the Yao. From an earlier home in the south, thought by some to lie in the hills where several provinces meet, their ancestors drifted north and east over the centuries into the uplands of Fujian, Zhejiang, and the neighbouring lands.

This long migration, driven by the search for land and by the roving slash-and-burn farming of the hills, scattered the She widely across the southeast and settled them among the Han of the region. Living dispersed among a great population, they came over time to speak the Chinese of their neighbours while keeping their dress, their legend, and their sense of themselves as a distinct people.

Through the centuries of imperial rule the She lived on the margins of the Han world, farming the poorer hill land, and at times they joined in the risings and disorders that swept the southeast. In the turbulent early twentieth century, the hill country of the She in Fujian and the neighbouring provinces was drawn into the revolutionary struggles of the age, and many She took part in them.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the She were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, and the She autonomous county of Jingning in Zhejiang, along with autonomous townships elsewhere, was established to mark their homeland. The modern age has brought roads, schools, and the reach of the market to the scattered She villages, drawing the hill people into the wider life of the country.

A revolutionary-era site in the She country

The She in Modern China

Today the She number some seven hundred thousand, living still scattered through the hills of the southeast, above all in Fujian and Zhejiang, with the one She autonomous county at Jingning and many autonomous townships marking their communities. Nowhere a solid block, they remain a dispersed hill people, their villages threaded among the far more numerous Han of the region.

Modern life has come to the She hills in the shape of roads, schools, and the reach of the market, and the same forces that touch all of rural China, the pull of the cities and of migrant labour, draw many younger She away to the factories and towns of the prosperous southeast coast. Living so closely among the Han, the She face strongly the pressures that blur the lines between peoples.

The old She language, spoken now by only a remnant, is the most fragile part of their heritage, and most She have long spoken the Chinese of their neighbours. Yet the dress, the songs, the legend of Panhu, and the third-month festival remain the marks of She identity, and in recent times these have been cherished and revived, above all at Jingning, as the heart of what sets the people apart.

The She carry their heritage with growing pride. The phoenix dress and the fine embroidery, the antiphonal songs and the singing contests, the black festival rice, and above all the worship of the divine ancestor Panhu endure as marks of who they are. A scattered hill people of the southeast, living among the Han yet keeping their own, the She hold their identity alive in modern China.