Audio recordings: Andrew Hsiu. (2017). Red Gelao (Shajing) audio word list. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1122525
Conference presentations: Hsiu, Andrew. 2013. The Gelao languages: Preliminary classification and state of the art.
On July 27, 2012 in Fengyan, Shajing Township, Qianxi County, Guizhou, China, I recorded the last remaining Red Gelao speaker of Shajing Township, Li Tingju 李庭举 (age 80). She was accompanied by her middle-aged daughter, Li Zhongying 李忠英. Both were illiterate and could not even read or write their own names. Li Tingju was not easy to work with, as she declined to repeat each word three times into my microphone and only wanted to say random words that would randomly come to her memory. She was not fluent in Gelao, and only knew possibly a few dozen to a few hundred vocabulary words, as well as a few songs. Altogether, I only obtained 3 songs and less than 20-30 vocabulary words from her.
Journal entry: July 26, 2012
At the Shajing government office, I was introduced to Xiang Huagui 项华贵, an ethnic Hmong. He took me around on his motorcycle to look for speakers of Gelao. We went to Shajing village 沙井村and Tele 特乐 (alternatively Tiele 铁乐) village, but we were told that neither locations had any Gelao speakers left. We were also told that one of Zhuo Guoyan’s former Gelao informants in Shajing, Liu Qiwen 刘启文, who was 60 as of 2004, had also passed away. However, in Tele village, one local told us that there was still one semi-speaker by the name of Li Tingju 李庭举 in Qingyan village 青岩村. She was over 80 years old by now.
The roads were incredibly muddy, and I often had to get off the motorcycle to walk past gigantic pools of muddy water in the middle of the road. My shoes had turned completely brown halfway up.
Xiang Huagui said we had to head back into town, it was since 6 pm. On the road, we saw only one elderly Hmong woman wearing traditional ethnic Hmong clothing. Xiang Huagui said that most Hmongs have now switched to conventional modern clothing.
That night, I stayed at a local guesthouse (住宿) for free, since the local township government had paid for two nights’ accommodation. The guesthouse was run by a friendly Han Chinese family with the surname Xiong 熊.
July 27, 2012
Since all the government officials were having a morning conference, I was waiting around for Xiang Huagui to take me to Fengyan in the afternoon. To pass the time, I chatted up a 15-year-old ethnic Yi boy at the bookstore opposite the guesthouse where I was staying. He was a freshman in high school by the name of Chen Aiming 陈爱明 (15). Normally, he would live in the local high school dormitory in Qianxi, and come back to Shajing during the breaks. He said that he liked Shajing better because life there felt much more relaxed and slower. His paternal grandfather was 88 years old, and even he could not speak the Yi language. Chen Aiming showed me around his small bookstore, which had mostly textbooks for elementary and middle school students.
At noontime, I had lunch at the government office. Xiang Huagui said that he could not accompany me today, so I decided to hire a local motorcycle taxi driver instead. We drove past Luodu 罗都 (alternatively Ledu 乐都) village, to Huangni village 黄泥村 and found Gao Pinzhen 高品珍, whom a government official had recommended me to contact. I had trouble understanding her Southwestern Mandarin, but I was able to understand her comments about how there were no Gelao speakers left in Huangni, as even the last semi-speaker had already passed away. We then left Huangni to go to Fengyan. The road to Fengyan was a very wide one under construction, and we drove over a bridge with spectacular views overlooking steep hillsides.
We arrived in Fengyan and finally met up with Li Tingju 李庭举 (80). She was accompanied by her middle-aged daughter, Li Zhongying李忠英. Both were illiterate and could not even read or write their own names. Li Tingju was not easy to work with, as she declined to repeat each word three times into my microphone and only wanted to say random words that would randomly come to her memory. She was not fluent in Gelao, and only knew possibly a few dozen to a few hundred vocabulary words, as well as a few songs. She could not read my vocabulary elicitation list in Chinese characters, and also had trouble understanding my Putonghua. She also seemed to be somewhat annoyed by the microphone, so I had to do many of the recordings without my unidirectional microphone and use the netbook’s built-in microphone. Altogether, I only obtained 3 songs and less than 20-30 vocabulary words from her.
However, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Shajing Gelao was incredibly similar to Hongfeng Gelao, although there were some minor differences. For example, for many body parts, Li Tingju used the prefix a instead of pa that Wang Lunguang of Hongfeng had used. I played my newly recorded Hongfeng data for her, and she said that some of the words sounded wrong to her. Since she said she has not spoken Gelao for over 30 years, she could not remember many words. However, playing the Hongfeng words for her would jog her memory, and she would then be able to say the Shajing Gelao version of the word.
I had never seen any linguistic data at all from Shajing Gelao, and I was satisfied that I had finally obtained some pieces of data from possibly the last semi-speaker of Shajing, incomplete as they may be. Afterwards, Li Zhongying’s daughter wrote down her name for her mother, since Li was illiterate. We bid farewell to each other, and headed back into town.
I stayed at the guesthouse and had dinner there for free. There family enjoyed talking to me, as they had never had a Chinese-American guest before.
The next morning, I called by Wang Liguo of Hongfeng and announced my discoveries. He said that he knew they had relatives in Shajing, and that if I should say Huangjiaba 黄家坝 instead of Hongfeng 红丰 to the elderly Gelao people of Shajing, since Huangjiaba was the old name for Hongfeng.