In his spare time, 70-year-old Du Fuchao likes to sing ballads, not only for his own enjoyment but also to tell young villagers about the history of their home and people.

    "At leisure, let's sit down and talk about the ancient  

     time,

    When our native land was Do Son of Viet Nam.

    One day in the third year of Emperor Hong Thuan's 

    reign,

    Our ancestors floated here to Fuan"

Fuan is the ancient name of Wanwei, a village in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in South China, where Du and 4,000 other Jing people live. Hong Thuan was an emperor of Viet Nam who ruled from 1509 to 1516.

According to the song, the Jing people sailed to China from Viet Nam about 500 years ago. They settled on the three small islands of Wutou, Wanwei and Shanxin, which are located to the north of Beibu Bay in the South China Sea.

Today, hardly any details of their migratory journey are known, except for those recorded in the ballad. Du learned this song from Ruan Jinyu, who composed the lyrics. After Ruan passed away in 2004 at the age of 92, Du became one of the few remaining singers of this important historical ballad.

The song fits in with a communal regulation found in Wanwei. Made in 1875, the regulation mentions: "Our ancestors from Do Son (a promontory close to Haiphong in northeast Viet Nam) floated here in the third year of the reign of Emperor Hong Thuan (1511)"

"I don't have much knowledge, but I know that our ancestors came from Viet Nam," said 67-year-old Ruan Jiwu, a Jing villager from Shanxin Village.

Ruan Jiwu said ancestors of the Jing people in China originally lived on Viet Nam's Cat Ba Island and later moved to Do Son. Making a living by fishing, they floated on bamboo rafts in Beibu Bay throughout the year.

One day they were pursuing a group of fish when they came to Wutou Island. Seeing the area was rich in resources and that the island appeared to be uninhabited, they decided to settle down there.

Later, more and more Jing people arrived, and they began to live on the neighboring islands of Wanwei and Shanxin.

Through the ballad that illuminates the history of the Jing people on Wanwei, the time of the first landing on the islands is brought to life:

    "Upon arrival it was difficult to tell the directions,

    For the island was surrounded by the sea and covered

    by dense forests.

    Laying down their feet, they asked around,

    And found that east to the island was Bailong.

    In the west they border Zhushan,

    And the northern neighbour was Tanji.

    The beaches were filled with mangroves and oysters,

    At low tide there were more crabs and clams

    With no regular residence, these people had been

    floating with their boats,

    Bathing in sunshine in the daytime and sleeping in

    frost at night.

    All of them met and discussed together,

    And decided to build cogon houses here"

    It seems opinion was split over whether to go back to

    Do Son or stay put on the three islands:

    "The sun and moon rotated like shuttles,

    And time passed by like an arrow.

    At last, houses were completed,

    Now there were places to shelter from wind and rain.

    Home is so far away,

    Now this place has become home

    After a while some people complained,

    That though food and clothes were sufficient here,

    It was not home after all.

    Someone replied at that time,

    That this was a scenic place,

    Why not fish and enjoy happy lives here?"

While records of the Jing people's history on the three islands are sketchy in China, a few clues can be found in Viet Nam.

Ties with Viet Nam

In Do Son, 66-year-old Hoang Thi Nhan said she had heard that Do Son people moved to many places 500 years ago, including to the three islands in China. She said some Do Son people went out fishing and did not come back.

After listening to a recording of Du's ballad, Nguyen Nguyen Hai, a teacher of history of world civilization at Haiphong Public University in Viet Nam, said that Du's pronunciation was clearly related to the ancient dialect of Do Son.

At the same time, To Ngoc Thanh, president of the Association of Vietnamese Folklorists, confirmed the authenticity of the song's melody.

"This is a very ancient melody of the Vietnamese people living in the Red River Delta area," said To. "However, nobody in Viet Nam sings exactly like this now, for through centuries the melody changed and developed into two independent melodies, one for lullabies and one for narrative singing, but the Jing people in China still keep the original form."

On Cat Ba Island, 40-year-old Bui Tuan Anh said he did not know about the Jing people's move from Viet Nam to China in the early 16th century, for it was too long ago. But every year Bui attends the Ha Festival, a custom also observed by the Jing people in China.

The Chinese Jing people have intrigued scholars in Viet Nam. Nguyen Phuong Cham has just finished her doctorate thesis entitled Marriage Rites of the Jing People in Wanwei.

"Though living on the other side of the border, the Jing people in China have very strong cultural links with the Vietnamese people," said Nguyen Phuong Cham. "In Wanwei you can often see weddings in fancy restaurants on the beach, and people may wear modern clothes, but they still keep the traditional wedding procedures of the Jing people."

For Nguyen Phuong Cham, the three islands are a good place to carry out fieldwork on the transition of the Jing people's society. She plans to go there again at the end of this year to investigate marriages between women from Viet Nam's Quang Ninh Province and men on the three islands, a phenomenon that seems to have become more and more prevalent recently.

(China Daily October 25, 2005)