Life Style

The Shuis usually dress in black and blue. Men have long gowns and black turbans, and women wear collarless blue blouses, black trousers and aprons, all of which are embroidered. On festival occasions, the females put on skirts and a variety of silver earrings, necklaces and bracelets. They usually wear their hair in buns.

Shui diets consist of rice and fish, supplemented with corn, barley, wheat and sweet potatoes. A kind of liquor made of rice goes to entertain guests or is offered to dead ancestors at sacrificial ceremonies.

A Shui house is either a one-storied affair or a two-storied building. Dwellers of two-storied houses usually live upstairs and reserve the ground floor for livestock, dogs and chickens.

Monogamy is practiced. Young people had the freedom to choose their spouses three centuries ago. Such freedom came to an end with the growth of the feudal economy, and children of rich landed families could only marry those of wealthy ones, and marriage was arranged by parents.

On wedding day, the groom's family sent some unmarried men to escort the bride home. The bride walked all the way to her husband's home under an umbrella and returned to her parent's home on the same day or the day after. The bride, as a rule, did not live very often with her husband until six months after marriage. Such feudal ways as parental arrangement of children's marriages and extortion of big payments by parents of brides from the grooms' families have ceased to exist following the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

Shui funerals used to be extremely elaborate. Livestock were killed as sacrificial offerings to the dead. Singing, dancing and performance of local operas went on and on until an auspicious day was found to bury the dead. Such wasteful funerals have been simplified in the post-1949 years.

The Shuis are believers of polytheism. In former days a shaman would be employed to say prayers and animals slaughtered to be offered to evil spirits when someone fell ill or died or when something bad happened. Catholicism that came to the area in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) won very few converts.

The Shuis have a calendar of their own which takes the ninth lunar month as the beginning of a new year, and their biggest festival is the "duan" holiday which is celebrated with great pomp after the autumn harvest at the beginning of the 11th lunar month every year. Garbed in their colorful costumes, the Shuis gather in their village to watch horse races and plays, and to feast for days on end.

History

The Shuis are probably the descendants of the Luoyues, one of the early tribes that lived along China's southeastern coast before the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 24). They adopted their present name at the end of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

In the Song Dynasty (960-1279) villages were formed and rice growing began. By the end of the Song, the Shuis had entered the early stage of feudalism. The nobles bearing the surname of Meng initiated in the upper reaches of the Longjiang River a feudal system which bore the distinctive vestiges of the communal village. The Yuan rulers (1271-1368) established local governments at the prefectural level in an attempt to appease the ethnic groups. The Ming period witnessed a marked economic growth in Shui communities. The introduction of improved farm tools made it possible for farmers to open up paddy fields on flatland and terraced fields on mountain slopes. The primitive "slash and burn" farming gave way to more advanced agriculture characterized by the use of irrigation and draught animals. As a result, grain output increased remarkably.

The Ming imperial court followed the preceding dynasty's practice of appointing hereditary Shui headmen. Under this system, the Shuis had to pay taxes to and do corvee for these court-appointed headmen as well as for the imperial court.

During the two centuries between 1640 and 1840 the Shui economy continued to develop. Farm production registered a marked increase, with per hectare yield of rice on flatland reaching 2,250 kilograms. Some quit farming and became handicraftsmen.

After the Revolution of 1911, national capitalism gained some ground in the area. In what is now the Sandu Shui Autonomous County, iron mines and plants processing iron, mercury and antimony were set up, but later they were either taken over by Kuomintang monopolist capital or went bankrupt. The comprador capitalists plundered the rich natural resources, while big landowners annexed large areas of farmland. Ruthless exploitation through usury, hired labor and high land rent robbed farmers of 60 to 70 per cent of their crops, thus ruining a great many farmers.