The ground of the women

Yang Erche Namu and Christie Mathieu. - The ground of the women. Lm. 2004.

I met Namu before having known it. Perhaps the gift is one of the prerogatives of the heroic personages of being known before the first meeting. Certainly, for stranger who seems to the one through that a period has not lived in Peking, this enormous city of 12 million inhabitants is a small village, at least as for the social life of the foreigners and the Chinese who relate to them, since for much that one tries to keep isolated from the most banal activities, there is always some commitment to be present at any type of commercial or cultural activity, where invariably one meets the same faces with which it takes stumbling from immemorial time.

In this case, our first meetings, before meeting us, did not stem from any of these common activities in Peking, but from the simple fact of which we were nearby, his house was distant less than 50 meters of mine, and in some occasion we had to of being for the neighborhood, on the market or in some of the snack bars of the nearby streets. Surely neither in these first occasions nor me he knew who it was she who was, she did not even know who it was me who was. And only years later, after having visited his house and being in person, we knew that we knew each other from the night of the times.

Of the personage Namu, of the heroine that all the Yunnan girls admire, I knew from the first time that I visited this province. Since already in that epoch, the books as "Going out of the kingdom of the women (zou chu nuer guo)" o "Returning to the kingdom of the women (zuo I fled nuer guo)", in that he was narrating his first years of life and his experiences in the big city up to turning into a famous singer, there were a success of sales, and were in all the bookstores, and even in tourist centers and the airport.

Although we still not knew each other, I had the fortune of enjoying the hospitality of the house of his mother during my second trip to Yunnan, since in that epoch we had already some friends in common, who when they knew that he was traveling to the distant grounds of the Lake Lugu, advised me to speak with her. As if the destination was playing the secret storage with us, she left the house of his mother the day previous at my arrival, therefore we could not know each other this time either. We had to be satisfied with a telephone conversation and the hospitality of his family, which allowed me to know the ambiences that he narrates in his book and the persons protagonists of the history of his life, before meeting herself.

In last time between my first and second visit to his birth place, the beautiful Lake Lugu, hearth of these Moso, famous persons for his matriarchal society, Namu had transformed of being a famous singer to be a famous writer. The history of the woman who being born the isolated mountains that separate the province of Sichuan of that of Yunnan, had managed to reach reputation and international fame, was filling the hearts of the girls of China with more energy than his melodic songs. Now the qualifications were "The girls can (Nuer neng)", "The girls travel (nuer you)" or "You also can (Not ye keyi)". In every village the youngsters were devouring with interest the details of his life, dreaming that some day would have the opportunity to imitate it. The success of his books did that for then, his presence in the mass media was turning into something daily, from the small screen Namu it was opening with naturalness his recipe for the victory, before a few spectators who were longing for hopes.

His reputation certainly has penetrated borders, and the international version of the history of his life, written in collaboration with the anthropologist Christine Mathieu, has been translated into more than twelve languages, between them the Spanish, where we have seen like his book, which treats about the life of a woman, who belongs to a small minority, not at least recognized in her own country, one was converting into the first book on a minority of China translated to the Castilian.

And that is important, because the Namu history cannot come undone of any form of the history of his people, and along his stellar career, Namu has turned into one leader of the rights of the Moso, between them, the most important, that of being recognized as such by the Chinese authorities. Logically she has not been alone in this task, result of which one is the partial success of seeing how the moso have been recognized at least by the provincial Yunnan government like an independent ethnic entity.

The book that concerns us, they sum up of his experiences before going out of the Lake Lugu, and later in the places in which his jump is blowing up to the reputation, it turns out to be interesting for many motives.

First of all it is a story that shows us some of the particular customs of these moso, which as we have mentioned are famous for his matriarchal system, in which the families are directed by women. The everyday life of the persons, the relations inside the family, with the men, his works of production, his economic level in the 70s, is outlined along the book. In this aspect the description of the first stages of his life, which with some form are marking him like special someone, and simultaneously someone with difficulty to adapt themselves to the traditional life of the Moso, is full of flavor. His mention of some local customs, like the cause that leads his mother to separating of the family of his grandmother, or the initiation ceremony of the girls, takes so much ethnological interest as human.

Secondly it gives us an idea of the life in the remote mountains where the persons live through the moso, the daily relations between, and the customs of the same ones, as well as the relations with the nearby peoples, like the Yi, the Tibetan ones, the Chinese or the Naxi.

In the third place it opens the door to us for the future expectations between the persons of remote places, not only of the minorities, but of any rural China, so that the big cities as Peking or Shanghai, there were a sleep. In that the success of his book takes root in China, and it is the reason of his translation to numerous western languages, not in which he narrates the history of a girl moso, but it tells us the history of a poor rural girl, that she lives given shelter in the mountains, and that thanks to his willpower, he makes use of all the opportunity it appears, up to managing to triumph.

The book is tender, and simultaneously it is tremendously hard. Tender, perhaps for the sincerity with which there is narrated the history of this exceptional woman. I last for the ambience in which it has to be unrolled, in that the space to the romanticism seems not to exist. Both the protagonist and the personages who turn out to be related to her move in a society of iron structures, to whom the persons only have the possibility of adapting themselves, or of hitting continuously them. The book is full of illusions and of disappointments, which every personage suffers when it confronts his expectations with the reality. The epistolary relation with also writer Moso Lamu Gatusa, turns out to be pathetic, with a pathos that fits perfectly in the gray reality of the moment.

Along the whole work a crescendo is perceived, of course due to the hand of Christine Mathieu, in that each of his infantile and juvenile experiences is like a stage in the long formation of the heroine, of such form, which on having contemplated of retrospective form the years that it spends with his uncle taking care yaks, or the tempo that happens serving to the teachers in the school, they acquire an epic character.

Really this book reaches port both on the Chinese society of the 70s and 80s of the XXth century, and on the society moso and on the proper authoress. Not in vain she is immersed herself both in the first one and in the second one.

Across his history we can know the history of China, this recent history in which so many absence does personal documents as that provides this book.

Pedro Ceinos Arcones

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