Sui of Southern Guizhou and Their Secret Script of the Diviners

In the hills of southern Guizhou, in the mountainous heart of the Chinese southwest, live the Sui, a people of the river valleys who guard one of the strangest and most ancient writing systems in all of China. Close kin to the Dong, they are settled farmers of rice and fish, keepers of the unique horse-tail embroidery and the bronze drum, and readers of the ancient Shui script, a pictographic writing preserved not for daily use but for divination and the counsel of the ancestors.

This account follows the Sui from their origins among the ancient Yue peoples of the south, through their river-valley villages and their diviners, into their Tai language and their secret script, their worship of the ancestors and the spirits, and the horse-tail embroidery, the bronze drum, and the Duan festival that mark them. It ends with the Sui of today, a small people keeping their singular writing and their customs alive in modern China.

The Keepers of an Ancient Script
Sui, Shui, and the Name of the People
The Sui Tongue and the Books of the Diviners
The Hills and Rivers of Southern Guizhou
The Villages, the Diviners, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Sui
The Ancestors, the Spirits, and the Shui Script
The Horse-Tail Embroidery, the Drum, and the Ways of the Sui
The Embroiderers, the Weavers, and the Makers of Cloth
Rice, Fish, and the Table of the Sui
The Duan, the New Year, and the Feasts
From the Ancient Yue to the People of Modern China
The Sui in Modern China

The Keepers of an Ancient Script

In the hills of southern Guizhou, in the mountainous heart of the Chinese southwest, live the Sui, a people of the river valleys who guard one of the strangest and most ancient writing systems in all of China. Numbering some four hundred thousand, they are a settled farming folk of the terraced hills, close kin to the Dong and the other Kam-Sui peoples, and keepers of a pictographic script used by their diviners and read like the wisdom of the ancestors.

The Sui belong to the Kam-Sui branch of the great Tai-Kadai family, kin in the deep past to the Dong who live near them, to the Zhuang and Bouyei, and more distantly to the Thai and the Lao. Their forebears are counted among the ancient Baiyue, the many Yue peoples who once spread across the whole of southern China before the coming of the Han from the north.

As the Chinese empire pushed south over the centuries, the ancestors of the Sui settled into the river valleys of what is now southern Guizhou, where they took up the intensive cultivation of wet rice and built the villages that remain their home. There, among the hills and streams, they kept their language, their festivals, and above all their ancient script through the long ages.

To speak of the Sui is to speak of a small people of the southern hills with a treasure rare among the peoples of the world, a writing of their own, born long ago and preserved not for everyday use but for divination and ritual. Farmers of rice and fish, keepers of the horse-tail embroidery and the bronze drum, and readers of the ancient Shui script, the Sui hold a singular place among the peoples of China.

Sui, Shui, and the Name of the People

The people are known to China and the world as the Sui, or in another rendering the Shui, the name written with the Chinese character for water, a fitting name for a people of the river valleys who grow their rice in flooded fields and raise their fish in the paddies. It is under this name that the state recognises them as one of its nationalities and sets aside the autonomous county of their homeland.

Among themselves the people call their nation by a name close to Sui, their own word for who they are, and their language and their famous script are known by the same root, the Shui language and the Shui script, or shuishu, the books of the Shui. The name binds together the villages of the southern Guizhou hills under a single identity, distinct from their Dong, Miao, and Bouyei neighbours.

The Sui are close kin to the Dong, so near in the deep past that both spring from the Kam-Sui branch of the Tai world, and their languages, though now distinct, share a common ancient root. Yet the Sui are a people in their own right, marked off by their own tongue, their own festivals, and above all by the ancient script that they alone among their neighbours possess.

Whatever the spelling, Sui or Shui, the people know themselves as one, sharing a common tongue, a common way of life in the river valleys, and the cherished heritage of their script and their festivals. The name, written with the character for water, records their nature as a people of the rivers and the flooded fields of the southern hills.

The Sui Tongue and the Books of the Diviners

The Sui speak a language of the Kam-Sui branch of the Tai-Kadai family, closely akin to the tongue of the Dong and, more distantly, to Zhuang and to Thai. Like these it is a richly tonal language, distinguishing meaning by the pitch of the voice to a remarkable degree, and it is the everyday speech of the Sui villages, carried in the home, the field, and the market.

What sets the Sui apart from nearly all their neighbours is that they possess a script of their own, the shuishu, an ancient system of several hundred pictographic and ideographic characters. Some of these resemble old forms of Chinese characters, at times written backwards or upside down, while others seem wholly the Sui’s own, and together they form a writing unlike any other among the peoples of the southwest.

Yet the Shui script was never a writing for everyday use, for letters, records, or literature, as the Chinese characters are. It was and is a sacred and secret script, the preserve of the ritual masters and diviners, used to write the books of divination, of the calendar, and of the rites, by which the specialists read the fortunate and unfortunate days and the will of the spirits. The books are treasured and handed down among the masters.

For everyday matters the Sui, like their neighbours, came to use the Chinese language and characters, and in the modern age standard Chinese has spread through schooling and daily life. Yet the Shui language remains the living speech of the people, and the ancient script, studied now by scholars as a rare treasure, endures in the hands of the diviners as one of the wonders of the Sui heritage.

The Hills and Rivers of Southern Guizhou

The homeland of the Sui is the south of Guizhou, a green and hilly country of terraced valleys, forested slopes, and many streams, in the mountainous heart of the Chinese southwest. The greater number live in and around the Sui autonomous county of Sandu, the only such county in all of China, with further communities in the neighbouring districts of Guizhou and across the border in Guangxi.

This is well-watered country, its valleys threaded by rivers and its hillsides cut into terraces for rice, under a warm and rainy southern sky. The Sui settled the valley floors and the lower slopes, where the streams could be led into flooded paddies, and there they built their villages, close by the water on which their rice and their fish depended, as befits a people whose very name means water.

The Sui village is a settled community of timber houses, often raised in the southern style on posts, with the family living above and the animals and stores below, clustered along the streams among the terraced fields. Around the villages lie the paddies where the Sui grow their rice and raise the fish that are a mark of their table, and the forested hills that gave timber, game, and the plants of daily use.

Rooted to their valleys and their rice, and gathered above all in the county of Sandu, the Sui made their homeland in the well-watered hills of southern Guizhou. It is a land of rivers and flooded fields, of terraced slopes and timber villages, where a people of the water kept their language, their festivals, and their ancient script through the long centuries of the southern uplands.

The Villages, the Diviners, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Sui lived in their villages under the sway of custom and the guidance of elders, without kings or a native nobility of their own. Each village was a community of farming households, ordered by the ties of clan and the authority of the old men, and, above them, by the diviners and ritual masters who kept the sacred script and read the fortunate days.

The diviners held a special place in the old Sui world, for on them fell the reading of the shuishu, the books of the ancient script, by which the people chose the days for their undertakings, for planting, for building, for marriage, and for the rites of the dead. To act on an unlucky day was to court disaster, and the counsel of the master who could read the books was sought at every turn of life.

Life turned on the growing of rice and the raising of fish, and on the round of the farming year, and wealth was reckoned in land, in the buffalo that drew the plough, and in the bronze drums that were sacred treasures brought out at the great festivals and funerals. To own such a drum was a mark of standing, and its deep voice sounded at the most solemn occasions of the people.

Governed by custom, by elders, and by the diviners, and ruled from afar by the officials of the empire, the Sui lived as settled farmers of the southern valleys, keeping their language, their festivals, and their ancient script through the long centuries. A small people among larger neighbours, they preserved their identity by the strength of their custom and the treasure of their writing.

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

Sui society rests on the household and the clan, the ties of descent reckoned through the father’s line that bind families across the villages of the valleys. Members of a clan share a common ancestor, honour the same forebears, and owe one another the duties of kin, and marriage, made outside the clan, joins families across the village and the district in a lasting bond sealed with gifts and feasting.

The village is the largest everyday unit of Sui life, a cluster of timber houses among the terraced fields, guided by respected elders and by the diviners who keep the sacred script. The Sui built no wide state and knew no king, and authority within the village rested on age, on descent, and on the command of custom and of the ancient books, rather than on inherited throne.

Marriage among the Sui was arranged with care and marked by the choosing of a fortunate day from the books of the diviners, by the exchange of gifts, and by feasting and song. The songs of courtship, sung between young men and women at the festivals, gave the young a voice in the weaving of their matches, and the ties of marriage bound the clans of a district together.

Women held an honoured place, above all as the keepers of the famous horse-tail embroidery, an art peculiar to the Sui, and as the weavers and dyers whose cloth clothed the household. A woman’s skill at the needle and the loom was a measure of her worth, and the embroidery of a girl’s dress and of the goods for her marriage was a labour of years, so that the crafts of the women stood at the heart of the community.

The Ancestors, the Spirits, and the Shui Script

The religion of the Sui is rooted in the worship of the ancestors and in a rich belief in the spirits that fill the world of the valleys, the spirits of the hills, the rivers, the great trees, and the fields. Offerings and rites keep these spirits content and secure their blessing on the rice and the fish, and the forebears of the clan are honoured with offerings, for their goodwill is held to guard the family and their neglect to bring misfortune.

At the centre of Sui religion stand the diviners and their sacred books, written in the ancient Shui script, which hold the calendar of fortunate and unfortunate days, the rites, and the lore of the spirits. To choose a day for any undertaking, to heal the sick, to bury the dead, or to hold a festival, the people turned to the master who could read the books, so that the script and the faith were bound closely together.

The reckoning of lucky and unlucky days from the shuishu governed much of Sui life, and the diviners, versed in the reading of the ancient characters, held a place of the highest respect. Their books, treasured and handed down, were the storehouse of the people’s sacred knowledge, and the rites they performed kept the community in right relation with the ancestors and the spirits.

In later times something of the Taoism and folk religion of the Han reached the Sui, mingling with the older worship, and in the modern age the old faith has weakened under the pressures of a changing world. Yet the worship of the ancestors and the spirits, and above all the diviners and their ancient books, remain at the heart of the Sui sense of themselves, a faith bound to the treasure of their script.

The Horse-Tail Embroidery, the Drum, and the Ways of the Sui

The most celebrated of Sui traditions is the horse-tail embroidery, an art peculiar to the people and reckoned among the treasures of Chinese folk craft. In it the embroiderers wrap fine white thread around strands of horsehair to make a firm, raised outline, which they lay down in patterns on the cloth and fill with bright silk, producing an embroidery of remarkable durability and beauty used above all for baby carriers and festival dress.

The bronze drum is another ancient tradition, an inheritance from the deep Tai past, a great drum of cast bronze once used to summon and to lead and now a sacred treasure brought out at funerals and the greatest festivals. Its deep voice is held to reach the ancestors and the spirits, and the drums, some of them very old, are among the most prized possessions of a family or a village.

The reading of the ancient script and the reckoning of fortunate days stand among the great traditions of the Sui, binding the turning points of life to the counsel of the diviners and the books of the shuishu. No marriage was made, no house built, no field planted, and no funeral held without the choosing of a lucky day from the sacred books, so that the ancient writing shaped the very rhythm of life.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the festivals with their bronze drums and their songs, the courtship carried on in music, and the rites of the ancestors and the spirits. Through the horse-tail embroidery, the bronze drum, and the ancient script, the Sui mark the passages of life and the turning of the year in ways carried down from their forebears in the valleys of the south.

The Embroiderers, the Weavers, and the Makers of Cloth

The master craft of the Sui is the horse-tail embroidery, an art found among no other people in quite the same form. The embroiderers take strands of horsehair, wrap them tightly with fine white silk thread, and lay this firm cord down on the cloth to outline the pattern, which they then fill with coloured silk. The result is an embroidery raised, durable, and richly figured, used for baby carriers, aprons, shoes, and festival dress.

The patterns of the horse-tail embroidery, drawn from flowers, birds, butterflies, and the things of the natural world, carry the wishes and the artistry of the maker, and the finest pieces, above all the embroidered baby carriers given at the birth of a child, are treasured and handed down. The craft, learned young and carried on through life, was a measure of a woman’s skill and a pride of the household.

Beyond this the Sui women weave and dye cloth, producing the deep indigo fabric from which their dress is cut, and adorn it with embroidery. The men build the timber houses of the village, plait bamboo into baskets and mats, carve the tools of daily life, and once cast and kept the bronze drums that are the people’s ancient treasures.

The making of paper, the forging of iron tools, and the distilling of rice wine rounded out the crafts of a settled farming people. Yet it is for the horse-tail embroidery above all that the crafts of the Sui are known, a unique art of the women that clothed the people, adorned the carriers of their children, and carried the patterns and the wishes of their forebears from one generation to the next.

Folk arts of the peoples of the southwest

Rice, Fish, and the Table of the Sui

The food of the Sui is the food of a wet-rice people, built on rice grown in the terraced paddies of the southern valleys. Rice is the heart of every meal, boiled or steamed, and among the Sui the glutinous sticky rice is especially prized, above all for the festivals, when it is steamed and often dyed with the juices of plants into coloured rice for the great days.

In the flooded paddies the Sui raise fish alongside the rice, in the old way of the southern valley peoples, and fish holds a special place at the Sui table, above all at the great Duan festival, when fish stuffed with herbs and greens is the dish of honour, served to guests and offered to the ancestors. The Sui share with their neighbours a love of the sour and the pickled in their cooking.

To the rice and the fish are 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. The forests and streams of the valleys yield wild plants, fish, and game to enrich the table, and the raising of pigs in every household gave the meat for the great occasions.

Rice wine, brewed in every household, is the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at every festival, and offered to the ancestors and the spirits. From the terraced rice and the paddy fish to the sour pickles and the home-brewed wine, the food of the Sui is rooted in the flooded fields and the streams of the southern valleys, as befits a people whose very name means water.

The Duan, the New Year, and the Feasts

The greatest festival of the Sui is the Duan, their own new year, held in the autumn according to the reckoning of their ancient calendar, when the harvest is gathered in. It is celebrated over many days by different districts in turn, with the honouring of the ancestors, the offering of fish, the sounding of the bronze drums, and horse-racing, singing, and feasting, the high point of the Sui year and the greatest expression of their identity.

At the Duan festival the fish stuffed with herbs is the dish of honour, offered to the ancestors and shared among the gathered kin, and the bronze drums sound their deep voice as the people give thanks for the harvest and pray for the year to come. The horse races that mark the festival draw crowds and riders from the villages, and the singing and dancing fill the days of celebration.

Other festivals mark the turning of the year and the honouring of the spirits, above all the Mao festival kept by some Sui communities, and the rites of planting and harvest, each with its proper ceremonies chosen for a fortunate day from the books of the diviners. These occasions gather the villages for offering, feasting, and song, binding the community to the ancestors and the land.

The passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, each held on a day chosen from the sacred script. At all these occasions the horse-tail embroidery, the deep voice of the bronze drum, and the antiphonal songs of the people bring colour and sound, so that the Sui meet the great moments of the year and of life alike with feast, with song, and with the counsel of their ancient books.

From the Ancient Yue to the People of Modern China

The Sui are counted among the descendants of the ancient Baiyue, the many Yue peoples who once spread across the whole of southern China, and their forebears, close kin to the ancestors of the Dong, settled the valleys of southern Guizhou in the deep past. There they took up the wet-rice farming that shaped their way of life and, at some point in their long history, developed or preserved the ancient script that is their singular treasure.

Through the long centuries of imperial rule the Sui lived on the margins of the Chinese state, in valleys remote enough to keep much of their own custom, language, and script. The empire ruled the region at times through native chiefs and at times through its own officials, and the Sui, like their neighbours, at times resisted the taxes and the demands of the state.

The origin of the Shui script has long puzzled scholars, some holding it a very ancient inheritance, akin in its forms to the oldest Chinese writing, others thinking it developed later in imitation and transformation of Chinese characters. Whatever its beginnings, it was preserved not for daily use but for divination and ritual, kept alive in the hands of the diviners through all the turns of the people’s history.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Sui were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, and the Sui autonomous county of Sandu was established in their homeland. The modern age has brought roads, schools, and the reach of the market to the valleys of the Sui, and scholars have come to study the ancient script, even as the people are drawn into the wider life of the country.

The Sui in Modern China

Today the Sui number some four hundred thousand, living still chiefly in the hills of southern Guizhou, above all in and around the Sui autonomous county of Sandu, with communities in the neighbouring districts and in Guangxi. A small people among larger neighbours, they remain rooted in the terraced valleys where their forebears settled, keeping their language, their festivals, and their ancient script.

Modern life has come to the Sui 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 Sui away to the factories and towns of the coast. This brings both opportunity and strain to a people long settled in their remote southern valleys.

The ancient Shui script, once the secret preserve of the diviners, has drawn the attention of scholars and of the state, who have worked to record and preserve it as a rare treasure of the world’s writing, and the horse-tail embroidery has won recognition as a masterpiece of folk art. This has brought a new pride and a measure of protection to the heritage of the Sui.

Through the changes of the modern world the Sui carry their heritage with pride. The ancient script and the books of the diviners, the horse-tail embroidery, the bronze drums, the fish of the Duan festival, and the honouring of the ancestors all endure as marks of who they are. A small people of the southern valleys, keepers of a writing found nowhere else, the Sui hold their singular heritage alive in modern China.