We are Gejia

Nobody already knows why he travels. The mobility has turned into characteristic of our lives. The indifference and the continuous change have accustomed us to turn into hearth the bed that lodges one night to us. Our world, on the other hand, is reproduced by so big precision in all the corners of the planet, which does not matter to travel or not. Only we find what we already leave, and simultaneously what we hope to find.

I am in the equator of this trip. In fact I have come to the province from Guizhou neither to know the poorest province of China, nor to do a few photos of the mixed minorities, not at least to supply me as it stems of books regarding the same ones. If something has pushed me to elect Guizhou as as a destination of this trip, it was the existence of the Gejia.

I had the first news about them across a trips magazine, a few months ago. In the reportage illustrated with magnificent photos full of coloring, it appears before them as a branch of the Miao and simultaneously a different people. Along the text it was tried to them to fit in a definition of the one that they were turning in continuous exception. Texts read later are preserved by the same ambiguity, an ambiguity that for the already old reader that I am, educated in the middle of censoring and subterfuges, could not any more that to have a meaning: that we were before one of these peoples that the anthropologists cannot frame where very well and the politicians prefer to ignore.

I took the bus from Kaili. A short half an hour trip across not very steep hills left me along with Monte de la Tragedia, where the last resistant ones to the big rebellion of the Miao happened during the second half of the XIXth century, succumbed before the imperial troops. It is not necessary to read any more books, only the politics of the terror, untied to break them, it finished with being successful, but, his rough kingdom would have been still alive until our days.

Opposite to the mount, a wooden arch as porch, like welcome, and a way daubed before my eyes. I covered him under a soft rain, to 30 minutes a village put to bed in the hillside of a scrub, he was breathing life for his smoky chimneys. On having crossed a creek, I crossed with a woman, he greeted me kindly, when I returned him the greeting in Chinese, asked me: "Do you want to buy cloths?". "Not, thank you, I want only to throw a glance". "You are Gejia: truth?" "Yes, the whole village is Gejia".

As soon as I came to the first houses, they called me a few women. I accepted his invitation. I went on to his residence. While one me was smiling kindly, other one was extending opposite to me a wide collection of samples of cloths and embroideries. "I do not want to buy cloths" I apologized. It does not matter, sit down a little bit.: "Here are you Miao?" I continued, playing the inverse role. "Not, not, we are not Miao, we are Gejia:" "Pero Miao y Gejia. Everything is the same. No?": "How that is the same? These clothes are not Miao, but Gejia, our hairdos are different, as there it are our dances and songs." "Very well, it costs. In agreement, you are Gejia"

I visited several houses chatting with the inhabitants of the village. Many of them were being reconstructed, activity to which they devote themselves principally in winter, when the fields need less care. Everywhere I listened to the same answer. Soon the news about my presence was spreading between the settlers of the village, and a man of mature age was not late in going out to my meeting. Without subterfuges I raised the problem that me was arising with regard to the identity of his people, with all detail he told to me that all the characteristics were separating them entirely from his neighbors, and the small battle that they realized to manage to be recognized as such, delivering to me a leaflet with the proposal of an autonomous county for his region.

I returned to the way encouraged by his tea and his conversation, trying to understand why there was denying to itself the identity, the reason of the proper being of peoples that in any case could be a threat to the Chinese territorial integrity, and that only were straining for keeping alive his culture and traditions, his being as such. Then, in the solitude, under the rain, I thought that perhaps he was a victim of a few wide-awake ones, which spurred by the profit that the tourism promises, were straining in claiming an identity foreign to them.

On having come to the highway, I decided to penetrate more in the region Gejia. At once I crossed with the children who were returning of the school. They were dressing chándal, as all in China, and some of them greeted me with a "Hello" in English.

Becoming the absent-minded person I asked them: "Are you Miao, no?" "Not, Gejia, we am Gejia", said the nearest to me. His word spread between others, and soon the highway, and the entire mountain filled with an echo "Gejia, Gejia" that I still cannot forget.

I went out of the highway between the memory of the lads. I continued a narrow way, more rain and more mud were my company. I crossed two mountains and a river, my horizon there were only the mountains without end, and the eternal gray sky of this Guizhou. In the distance I distinguished a village. I was not late very much in reaching his first houses. At once I met a young woman the son on the back chatting with his father. I greeted them. For entering conversation I asked them.: "Is this Majiang?" the first village. "Not, no. You have got lost, it has to cross over there the river, cross this small forest, and at once it will see it. Also it can return to the highway." While it was simulating to evaluate the possibilities of reaching Majiang they invited me to enter, and to share the humble collation that they were preparing to take.

Nobody offered me cloths, but rice and vegetables, which I devoured with real pleasure, the heat of his hearth and indications on my way. They were dressing like the Majiang people, and before dismissing me forever, I asked them if it was Miaos. "Not, not, we are Gejia" were answered by them.

"Somewhere here we all are Gejia"

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