Fu Yuguang: Inheritor of Manchu Shuobu

By staff reporter JIAO FENG

Fu Yuguang, an inheritor named in the fourth round of China’s National Intangible Cultural Heritage Project in 2012 for Manchu Shuobu, was born into a Manchu family in Aihui County of Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province in 1933. The older generations of Fu’s family spoke mainly the Manchu language at home, so Fu was exposed to Manchu culture from a young age. Taught by the seniors in his family, he learned a dozen voluminous Manchu shuobu works handed down from his ancestors and grew into an influential inheritor of shuobu in his hometown. Shuobu is an ancient art form of singing and recital on the Manchu world, which has been passed down by word of mouth for generations. Over the decades, Fu has collected, compiled and studied folk literature of ethnic groups in northern China, including the Manchu, and devoted his life to carrying out surveys and research on traditional shaman culture in the regions where the Manchu, Mongol, Oroqen and Daur ethnic groups reside. He has published a number of books in China, the U.S., Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

Shuobu stories are often about warfare and the private lives of Manchu people and their ancestors. This genre is called ulabun, which means biography in the Manchu language. Before the Manchus conquered the Central Plains area, there was no tradition of recording history in written form among the group; oral narration by the chieftains of individual tribes or shamans was the most common way to record history and educate younger generations. Over the centuries, ulabun works that collect and pass down the history of different tribes have formed a Manchu encyclopedia that has become part of the canon of folk literature in northern China.

Distinguished Family Heritage

Fu’s hometown is in a cluster of villages inhabited by Manchus that dates back over 330 years. These villages were initially built for the Manchu armies from Ningguta (today’s Ning’an), Jilin, and Shengjing (today’s Shenyang) who were mobilized by Emperor Kangxi in 1682 to defend the banks of the Heilongjiang River. The population gradually increased and the villages grew in size.

Fu spent his early years immersed in Manchu culture. His family name was actually Fucha, a time-honored Manchu surname, but when the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), during which the Manchu constituted the ruling class, was replaced by the Republic of China, Manchu people changed their traditional names in accordance with the customs of the Han people. Fucha was consequently adapted to Fu. The Fuchas are a prominent Manchurian family with a good number of venerable seniors. Fu respects them as genuine inheritors of ethnic culture and folk artists. Some of them are revered shamans of extraordinary wisdom and talent. They can narrate the history of Manchu heroes with ease, perform folk songs and dances, and have a deep understanding of shamanism.

Fu Yuguang’s grandmother Fucha Meirong learned dozens of traditional folk stories including famous shuobu works from her mother, who was a famed shaman. Under the wings of this accomplished story-teller, Fu’s father and aunts became outstanding folk singers, story-tellers and cultural heritage champions.

Fu’s father was a teacher and proficient in Manchu and Mandarin. In his spare time, he often traveled around villages to collect and record oral myths, legends and stories of the Manchu, Daur, Oroqen and Hezhen ethnic groups.

Older generations of Manchu families have always had a subtle approach to educating and nurturing their children in the hope that they will pick up traditional songs and dances, and master the art form of shuobu. Influenced this way by the senior members of his family, Fu would imitate their story-telling performances. He learned not only about tales from the past, but also about life and the meaning of fighting for one’s future. Looking back, Fu believes that his decades’ devotion to passing down his group’s heritage originates in his family influence.

Eternal Enthusiast

Fu started studying at Northeast People’s University in 1954. After graduation, he found a satisfying job at a provincial research institute in Jilin. He thought this would be a good platform to start researching folk culture, which had always been his dream, but shortly after he began, Fu was transferred to work as an editor for a periodical, and later as a journalist for a provincial newspaper.

Fu never gave up his dream, and quite unexpectedly, while working as a journalist, he encountered a fantastic opportunity to pursue it again. Evidence of a Manchu legend, Umesiben Mama, was found in Dongning County, Heilongjiang Province. Umesiben Mama is an epic about how the world began, passed down from the Nüzhen (Jurchen) ethnic group, the forebears of the Manchu. It tells of the legendary life of a shaman heroine who succeeded in unifying different tribes. It describes warfare in the tribal age and the work is considered a treasure of shaman culture. Fu traveled to Dongning County to track down the inheritor of this epic and together, they were able to save Umesiben Mama from the edge of extinction.

Fu is grateful for his decades-long career in journalism. “This job taught me a lot,” he pointed out. “I developed a habit of observing and analyzing and learned how to carry out surveys and research.”

In the winter of 1972, Fu met former president of Northeast People’s University, Tong Dong. A noted historian, at that time Tong was planning to set up a center for the protection of traditional culture heritage of ethnic groups in northern China. Knowing that Fu was interested in this field, Tong invited him to join the center. Fu still remembers how he felt when he received the invitation from Tong. “I said yes right away!” he recalled. Returning to the job that he had been dreaming of for so many years reignited Fu’s passion. He worked day and night, looking up archives and ancient books. He also started to do what his father had done before him – travel for miles through towns and villages to collect precious cultural materials from everyday people.

All over Northeast China

Eventually, Fu was appointed head of a research office for ethnic culture in Northeast China. He set about sorting out the ulabun works passed down in his family, and also traveled around Northeast China looking for ulabun works of other families. The more voluminous works took months to narrate in performance, therefore a good mastery of the related work was required. Fu devised special methods using graphs, pictures and cards to assist performers in remembering the stories.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the “cultural revolution” (1966-1976), discussions on ethnic cultural heritage were taboo. It was extremely difficult to collect materials relating to folk arts. Elderly shamans and folk artists were hesitant to take part in interviews for fear of persecution. In order to reassure these seniors of the good intentions of his research team, Fu often stayed with the interviewees for several days, living and working together with them and earning their trust.

The enthusiasm and devotion of the researchers moved the interviewees, and they eventually agreed to share their stories. Fu’s patience and sensitivity was rewarded – the researchers uncovered a large number of oracles transcribed by Manchu shamans and original scripts used for shamanist nature worship ceremonies. Genealogical documents on Manchu clans, ancestors’ portraits, objects for worshiping ceremonies and many other valuable cultural relics were thus discovered and showcased to the world. 

The Manchu Story of Creation

For a long time, Western scholars believed that China did not have a systematic creation myth. That was until Fu published parts of the myth War in Heaven in the 1990s. The book made an impact in the academic world at home and abroad and was translated into several languages including German, Japanese and Korean. War in Heaven, also known as A Story on the Shrine, describes the origins of several ethnic groups in northern China against the background of the middle and late period of matriarchal clan society in the Old Stone Age. It is a creation myth much older than Homer’s Iliad or Odyssey.

According to Fu, the myth was written in the Manchu language by his father who heard the story from a shaman. The battered manuscript was passed down to Fu after his father passed away. In order to translate it into Chinese, Fu sought help from shamans of different ethnic groups in northern China since sections are in ancient, pictographic characters that were difficult to decode.

In addition to translating oral shuobu into written forms, Fu is also busy training inheritors in this folk art. His nephew Fu Limin is studying shuobu performance. “We cannot just sit and watch it die out.” This thought alone motivates Fu Yuguang to further his efforts in protecting cultural heritage.

Fu is relentless. He is currently working on his third series of shuobu, which contains nearly 10 shuobu works. Fu hopes that his hard work over the decades will eventually pay off and elevate Manchu culture to the forefront of popular consciousness.