Dabia (Yunnan)

Abstract

Dabiya is a musical instrument used by Nu people in Yunnan. Nu is a minority which still keeps a primitive way of life. As they have no writing of their own, Nu people have handed down their history and legends by intoning. And while doing this, they play Dabiya. By the ancient custom only boys have been allowed to learn to be balladists. Oudede, the hero of our story, is outstanding in this training for he is the only one who has mastered forty ballads. But now something worries him. He has three daughters and no son, and this means he has no one to inherit him. The Party Secretary of the village asks him to choose a non-kin boy as his pupil. Oudede is annoyed with the seemingly ugly custom but he does not feel he would like to violate it. He goes to the tombs of his father and grandfather, where he throws away his century-old Dabiya.