Introduction to the Miao people’s poison and some weird customs

I actually don’t know whether to characterize this as an experience or a story. In fact, they are both, because not every one of them is something I have personally experienced or seen. . . . .

Let me first introduce some background and local customs. My grandmother’s home is in Rongshui Miao Autonomous County, Guangxi. I usually go back twice a year. My grandmother’s home is still in the county town, but if I go to the Miao village, I have to take a car around. We enter through the mountain road, but it is still a semi-Miao village developed for tourism. When we get there, we usually go over the mountain to the real Miao village. What I am going to talk about happened inside. My uncle lives in that Miao village. Relatives like my uncle, the Miao Village is basically an isolated place, with no electricity or running water, and they live in bamboo buildings. The local Miao people are also divided into Qing Miao and Hei Miao. Qing Miao refers to those who can collect herbs for treatment. The sick ones are also the majority of the Miao people in the Miao village, and the black Miao people are what we usually call the Miao people who can cast poison. The two types of Miao people are incompatible with water and fire, especially the black Miao people generally have a short lifespan. The village is long and the population is thin, so there are very few Black Miao people in the stockade now. It stands to reason that if there are more Qingmiao people, the Black Miao people will not be allowed to live in the stockade anymore, but there is no way, because there are no Qingmiao people anymore. To understand the method of Gu, if you rush to kill them all, you will definitely get into trouble. As for the grudges between Qing Miao and Hei Miao, I will not say more. If you are interested, I can add it later.

If you are an adventurous person and enter such a strange gathering place of Miao people, and no one you know lives there, you should be careful. Generally speaking, Miao people are very enthusiastic. But you can't tell who is green and who is black. You can stay at any Miao home and everyone will welcome you, but you must drink three bowls of wine before entering. The children will only lick a little symbolically. But you must drink it, which shows respect for the locals. If you are unfortunate enough to choose a Heimiao family, you should have been poisoned.

The first time I went to Miao Village was during the summer vacation of the third grade of elementary school. I went there with my parents, uncle, aunt, and my cousin. The scenery there was really nothing to say, because the locals We often visit from house to house, so everyone can tell at a glance who you are, a relative or a stranger. When we arrived, we would say hello to my uncle when we met locals. As a result, my mother had a small chat with my uncle. I was afraid that someone would overhear that sentence, because what he said was some local dialect and I couldn’t understand it. After chatting for a while, the mother left, and we continued to walk to my uncle’s uncle’s house (hereinafter referred to as uncle). (I couldn’t figure out the seniority). On the way, I asked my cousin what they had just said. My cousin said that three young people came before us and lived in a black Miao family. We just happened to come back, and the mother was afraid He was a friend of my uncle's, so I asked him to bring someone out quickly to see if he had been bewitched. If he knew someone who had been bewitched not long ago, he could still ask that family member to remove the bewitched. If it was too late, it would be too late. I said, why can’t I bring them out if I don’t know them? Later, my cousin explained to me that no, because people who raise voodoos will be poisoned if they don’t lay voodoos for a long time. We can only turn a blind eye to this kind of thing, otherwise They will harm us.

In fact, I was very scared at the time. Later, I went to my uncle's house for dinner, and they started chatting. My cousin and I said we wanted to go out to play, so my uncle and uncle told my cousin not to take me to so-and-so's house, even at the door. None of them worked, but later I found out that those houses were all black seedlings, and there was a river just below the village. We went to the river to play. The water quality there was very good, and you could still catch small fish and crabs among the gravel, and touch the river snails. When we arrived, there were already some local children playing there, and there were quite a few swimming. My cousin knew them well and played together. When we were having fun, we saw a girl in Miao clothes coming down from the village. and three young men, so I coaxed all the children to stop playing and start running into the village. My cousin also pulled me away. I didn’t know what happened, but when I saw everyone like this, I felt nervous, thinking that there was something in the water. What is it? When we ran back in a hurry, we passed by those four people. I kept staring at the woman because I thought she was very beautiful, but even so, I still felt that she was evil and a bad person. Wait until we ran back Zhaizi, my cousin just told me that the woman is a witch who can cast poison, and the three men are probably the ones who came to us early this morning. My cousin also said that they must have been poisoned, that's why they always Following her, I really didn’t know much about things like Gu at that time, and I was very curious. As soon as my cousin got home, she told the adults what had just happened. I didn’t understand, so I climbed up to the big window facing the river to see them. , I saw the woman washing clothes. The three men were very attentive to her and rushed to help her. The only strange thing was that the three men didn't seem to smile very much, but there was nothing strange about it. I watched it for a long time. I didn’t find anything weird, so I thought my cousin might be talking nonsense. I came down and joined in their conversation, because there were a lot of delicious food, and I didn’t think it would be boring if I didn’t understand. I found a suitable moment and asked my cousin. , I observed that there was no difference between them just now. How do you say they were poisoned? My cousin said that she must have been poisoned by love. What my uncle said just now, he also said that he was afraid that two of them would die in the end. Listen. It scared me. We stayed at that village for two weeks, but the three young people didn’t even have any intention of leaving. They never went out to play alone, and they even started to help the family a few days later. When it comes to work, in fact, the Black Miao people don't have much work to do. This is why they have to live in the village all the time, because everyone will give them something to eat, and the people who raise Gu will spend a lot of energy on it. So they can't do heavy work, and they will probably starve to death after leaving the village. As for why the young people want to give them food, as mentioned earlier, because they are afraid of getting into trouble, so the three young people just help carry water. Ah, collecting firewood and the like, they never talk to others when they go out, they just fetch water and firewood and then go back, so I started to believe that they were bewitched.

What happened next is what I heard from my uncle when I went there again a year later. After we left for a month, we picked a day and one of the young men got married to the Miao girl and they also divided. They bought everyone some wedding cakes and the like, but the other two young people were nowhere to be seen. The family said they had all left, but no one in the village said they had seen them leave. This became a mystery, although everyone I felt that the two of them were in danger, but no one could tell such a thing. It didn't take long for the young girl to become pregnant. One evening five months later, the local midwife was invited to deliver the baby. When she came out, His face turned blue, and he said that the child was a monster at all. It was impossible for a 5-month-old child to survive after birth, but when the child came out, he just heaved a few times, and he didn’t know whether he was crying or laughing. What was strange was that There was also a tumor on the child's forehead, which looked like two heads, and something was obviously moving inside the tumor. The mother put the child down and washed her hands and it came out immediately. So when she saw the young girl again that year, she felt She has become more evil. I am afraid of her from the bottom of my heart. Every time I bump into her, I can run very fast without my cousin pulling her. There are local rumors that the child is not thrown away at all, but is used to continue to raise Gu. This can improve the level. I still believe in this theory about the ability of cultivating voodoo people. The tumor on the head of the fetus must be voodoo worms. Later, I heard that voodoo cultivators will not waste such good fertilizer as embryos, even if it is their own. My child, as for the young man who stayed behind, he was always in a vacuum and never paid attention to anyone. In the following years, I never heard him speak when I saw him. Once we were on the bluestone road in the village. Run, he just came back from carrying water and was knocked over by us. I wanted to help him and apologize to him, but the young girl appeared, said something sinisterly, glared at us and helped the man. I left. I had nightmares for two nights just because of that one look. It was called resentment. This was the first time I came into contact with such unbelievable things. After that, I gradually learned about and came into contact with more. Today Let me start by saying this, it may not look very good, but it was indeed a bad experience for me.

There are actually many kinds of seedling voodoos. Most of them now are insect voodoos. There are also snake voodoos, dog voodoos, frog voodoos, flying voodoos, etc. The latter ones are actually more difficult to tame, so I think some of them have been lost. However, my family actually encountered snake voodoo. I think it was an accident.

I remember that day my mother said she wanted to eat bamboo rice. At dawn the next day, several adults followed my uncle’s daughter to pry bamboo in the bamboo forest. Snakes may be more active in July and August. It was a bit dangerous to go to the bamboo forest on that day, so we didn't let our two children follow us. Moreover, we went early, so we didn't even know it, and we still slept soundly.

Around nine or ten o'clock, we had just finished breakfast when we saw them coming back in a hurry. My uncle's daughter was injured. My uncle said she had been bitten by a snake, and her whole face looked wrong. You may not believe it, it’s just a kind of blue-grey color. When my uncle saw what she said, he went to get a red rope and tied it below her pelvis before asking, and then took a white rope and tied her thighs tightly, and then tied it on her I placed a basin at my feet, spit wine on it with a knife, and roasted it on the stove. The wound was opened with one cut, and blood flowed out immediately, but the blood was actually purple-black, with many small particles inside. I almost screamed when I was nearby. My cousin immediately told me to be silent. She said that if I screamed, I would definitely be driven away and I would not be able to see. The blood gradually became lighter in color. , but it was still different from our normal blood color. My uncle looked very ugly. He grabbed a few herbs, chewed them twice and spit them on her wound. He wrapped it tightly with a cloth, and then cleaned up the blood that flowed out. Blood, my uncle slowly poured the hot water from the stove into the basin filled with blood. Then he heard a squeaking sound. After a while, he looked at the basin again. The blood and water had separated into layers and floated on the surface. There was a layer of small gray-white particles. At that time, my uncle's face was always very bad, and we didn't dare to ask. At that time, I thought that this was what snake venom was, and I never thought that it was poisonous poison.

After that, my uncle's daughter was sleeping all the time, and my uncle started to ask his uncle what happened, and said that she had been poisoned. The adults were shocked, not knowing that she had been poisoned. Uncle I told them what happened today, saying that originally they were choosing bamboo in the bamboo forest, but nothing happened. My uncle’s daughter also told everyone to be careful of the green bamboo leaves. When they picked a few bamboos and were cutting them, my aunt said that her feet were tired and she wanted to rest. I immediately looked back to see if there was any rock to sit on, and immediately I saw a strange animal squatting on a small rock behind my uncle's daughter. The small one looked a bit like a four-legged snake, but it had red spots on its head. The cockscomb was very eye-catching, so maybe my aunt wasn't too scared at the time, so she asked others to look at it. When my uncle's daughter saw it, her face changed, and she told them that they should quietly and slowly exit now, not to look at it. Everyone did as they were told, and my uncle’s daughter walked at the end. Just as they were walking out of the bamboo forest, my uncle’s daughter jumped on my aunt’s back, saying that she had been bitten by the snake just now, and she was afraid that if they panicked, she would hurt her more. People just endure it.

Later, my uncle went out for the whole noon and afternoon and did not come back. The adults did not let us go out for fear of getting into trouble, so they stayed at home to guard my uncle's daughter. During this time, she did not wake up, but I could It was obvious that her complexion gradually turned sallow. In the evening, my uncle brought a Miao man who looked quite old, carrying a small bamboo basket on his back. This man's face had many wrinkles, and he also looked yellow. Yellow, my uncle still had a sullen face and asked my dad and uncle to carry her daughter into the back room. After my dad and the others came out, the Miao man went in and lowered the curtain. My uncle also told us not to peek, and my cousin told I said, this man is also a black Miao, he should be the poison, and now we have to cure it. We were eating and waiting in the hall. During this period, we kept hearing the Miao man saying some strange things. I thought it was I secretly asked my cousin about the local dialect, and she said no, and she couldn’t understand it either. It was probably a spell or something. My uncle’s family used to heat hot water on the stove all year round. The Miao people came in for more than an hour, and my uncle sent three pots of hot water in. , my uncle said that we can’t look at this kind of thing, as it will shorten our lifespan. Later, he vaguely heard the moans of his uncle’s daughter, and his uncle said that he finally picked it up.

When the Miao man came out, he seemed to be exhausted. My mother also said that she saw a faint black air under his skin. There was a wound on his arm, which was opened just now. The uncle took a big leaf, filled it with some food and handed it to him. After saying a few words to him, he left. The uncle said, "The sins you have done have cost you a lot of energy, but they have also accumulated yin." Fu, don't think about revenge. If you don't offend me, I won't go looking for you. I think these are the exact words, because it is impossible for my cousin to polish it to this extent by herself.

Later, my cousin and I pestered my uncle about what was going on. I think the people in Miao Village are good because they never hide these things from children, but my parents always feel that we children should not listen. , my uncle said that he went to see the clan leader (that is, the most senior person in the village) today, and then they went to the black Miao family together. He refused to admit it at first, so my uncle said, except you, who else in this area knows how to raise roosters? Snake Gu, he also said that someone’s daughter-in-law was killed by your rooster and snake back then (I’ll tell you this story later). Even though I don’t agree with you, I never offend you. People in the entire village still keep you, so how dare you There was trouble in the village, and later the clan leader said, if you don't admit it's insect poison, I can't help it, but you know better than anyone else whether the snake poison is you or not. I know where your poison is kept, and you want me to dig it out. Taking you to the ancestral hall to force a confession, etc. Maybe I thought that the Miao Village's method of forcing a confession was very special, so he was probably afraid, so he said that he was practicing Gu in the bamboo forest last night. When our adults entered the bamboo forest in the morning, Before he left, the snake might have smelled the fragrance (everyone knows that the poison only has a chance to harm people once in a while) and ran out to bite people. Later, he found out that he had caused trouble, and he couldn't think of it because he was afraid of damaging his energy to remove the poison. I admitted it, and later agreed to remove the poison. I first de-venomed the biting snake at home, killed it to get the blood, and then burned some grass. In short, it took me a long time to prepare for the poison. My uncle also said that to remove the poison, you need to use the poison. In the past, Qingmiao had a method of dismissal that did not require poisoning people's blood, but it was very complicated, and the medicinal materials were very picky, so it was slowly lost, so they could only avoid people who raised poison, and they could only try to avoid each other. Offend each other.

Later, speaking of this rooster snake, my mother and the others still remember it fresh. Later, I checked on the Internet to see if there was such a species. As a result, although there were similar snakes found in the search, they were still It's different from what my mother described, so I don't know if it was raised by a voodoo breeder. It's only suitable for laying voodoos. So next time you encounter a rooster snake in a strange place, be careful. It may be a voodoo. My uncle also said , the rooster snake can not only run but also jump, so if you encounter it, protect your head. If it bites anywhere on your head, the voodoo keeper will not be able to save you.