“Poya Love Song” of Zhuang Ethnic Miniority in Funing County, Wenshan 

Historical Background

Poya Love Songs, also known as the “Poya Songbook”, are called “Bu Wa Fen” in the Zhuang language, which means “mountain songs painted with symbols on homespun cloth.” They are named after Poya Village, where the songbook was first discovered. The songs originated from the rich cultural ecology of mountain songs in Funing County, Yunnan Province, and reflect the local tradition of using such songs to express emotions and communicate during social interactions.

The tradition of using pictographic symbols to record songs was once a common method among the Zhuang people living along the Youjiang River in Funing County. Over time, this method nearly disappeared. However, in 2006, a cultural survey team in Funing discovered a piece of homespun cloth with pictorial patterns of the Poya Love Songs at the home of Nong Fengmei. This discovery unveiled the long-lost Zhuang folk art that uses symbolic imagery to record love songs, sparking renewed interest and attention from the public.

Cultural Characteristics

Narrative Structure

The Poya Love Songs revolve around the theme of romantic love between young men and women. Through poetic and subtle expressions, the songs portray the journey of Zhuang youth from their first encounter to falling in love. The narrative covers the joy of a chance meeting, cautious probing, modest self-description and praise, mutual inquiry into each other’s past romances (both true and fabricated), the budding of affection, and the intensifying emotions and passions—leading finally to solemn vows of eternal love and a shared life. The collection details this touching love story from acquaintance and affection to lifelong commitment.

Basic Composition

The Poya Love Songs consist of 81 pictorial symbols drawn on homespun cloth, with each symbol representing a single love song. The collection is divided into three parts:

1. Exploring Love – Songs 1 to 15
2. Passionate Love – Songs 16 to 69
3. Vows of Happiness – Songs 70 to 81

The symbols include representations of the moon, trees, rice, plows, birds, horses, people, clothing, houses, and more. These symbols are drawn with simple lines.

There is a certain correlation between the structure of the symbols and the content of the songs. The relationship between sound, form, and meaning is indirect—the symbols are not direct phonetic representations or ideograms, but instead symbolize specific Zhuang love songs. Most of the pictorial symbols depict common elements from everyday life in Funing County—such as plants, animals, buildings, and daily tools—whose appearances align closely with the themes and content of the corresponding songs.

Artistic Features

The melodies of the Poya Love Songs are primarily derived from Zhuang folk tune subgenres such as “Fen Dalao,” “Fen Biao,” “Fen E’ai,” and “Fen Gema.” The lyrics typically use five-character lines, and each song may contain four lines or extend to dozens of lines. Rhyme schemes commonly include head-to-tail rhyme, waist-to-tail rhyme, and end rhyme. In terms of expressive techniques, the songs extensively employ metaphors and symbolic comparisons (known as fu, bi, and xing in Chinese poetics), as well as narrative and lyrical methods—often describing something else before expressing the main subject. The rhythm is tight and harmonious, the melodies gentle and pleasant, the techniques flexible and varied, and the rhetoric appropriate. These elements together form the typical characteristics and artistic value of Zhuang folk songs.

The Poya Love Songs exhibit a unique structure in literary content: each song stands alone, yet collectively forms a coherent and complete work; they are a combination of short songs, yet also a long poem; both a lyrical epic and a narrative poem. The main literary characteristics are as follows:

1. Romantic Subjectivity:
   As a form of intangible folk literary heritage, every song in the Poya Love Songs emphasizes the free expression of personal emotions, displaying strong subjectivity and a romantic flair. The unique use of folk vernacular and musical rhythm is a hallmark of romantic literature. Techniques such as exaggeration, contrast, and especially imagination, create a free atmosphere in pursuit of happiness and express a longing for an ideal life. This romantic sentiment reaches its climax in the third section—Oaths of Happiness—where both lovers express deep yearning and pursuit of a beautiful future.
2. Rich Rhetorical Devices:
   The use of various rhetorical techniques not only makes the content more vivid and concrete but also evokes imagination and emotional resonance, enhancing the artistic features of the work. Metaphor, exaggeration, rhetorical questions, and contrast are heavily concentrated in the Passionate Love section, especially during the love duels (song battles), where exaggeration pushes the emotional intensity to a small climax. These techniques guide the audience from concrete images toward rich imagination, expressing strong emotions and increasing the impact of the lyrics. In later parts of the song duels, rhetorical questions combine with other techniques to make the songs more compact, attention-grabbing, and emotionally resonant.
3. Symbolic Imagery:
   The extensive use of fu, bi, and xing enhances the imagery of the work. In the 15 songs of the Love Exploration section, 13 employ one or more of these techniques. For example, the opening song starts with:
   “Tonight the moon is bright, bright as a mirror, glowing all around,”
   using the moon’s brightness to initiate the theme (xing) and compare the woman to the moon, praising her beauty. This makes the female protagonist more vivid and three-dimensional, achieving both initiation and metaphor in the first line. Another example appears in song 53 from the Passionate Love section, where direct narration (fu) is used to clearly express the woman’s wish for the man to begin marriage preparations, evoking strong everyday life imagery.
4. Concise and Refined Language:
   The language of Poya Love Songs is simple and polished, mostly using five-character lines, with each song varying in length from four lines to several dozen. In song 42, titled Thatched Grass, when the woman questions whether the man already has a wife, he replies:
   “Sister says brother has a wife, then ask the grass in the field, ask the rice seedlings in the paddy, if the seedlings say yes, then it must be true.”
   This response feels spontaneous, almost like casual conversation, yet retains poetic rhythm—concise, direct, and lyrical.
5. Fusion of Lyricism and Narrative:
   Consisting of 81 songs divided into three sections—Love Exploration, Passionate Love, and Oaths of Happiness—each poem strongly conveys the emotional journey of the protagonists. Looking at the work as a whole, these songs collectively portray a nuanced and compelling love story, vividly detailing the psychological path of the relationship and perfectly blending lyrical and narrative elements.

Transmission Methods

According to villager Nong Fengmei, when she was young and learning to sing mountain songs, the elders would teach her to draw these pictographs on the ground by hand to help with memorization. Over time, the pictographs became ingrained in her mind. Every time she sang a song, an image would appear in her head. This method of recording songs has been passed down from generation to generation.

Poya Love Songs have traditionally relied solely on oral transmission and pictographic assistance, and were nearly lost over time. Because the songs continue to be passed down through oral and demonstrative methods by designated inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, the means of transmission remain limited and fragile, with only modest effectiveness.

Singing Style

The Poya Love Songs are performed in the northern dialect of the Zhuang language, sung in an antiphonal style between male and female singers. The entire collection consists of 81 songs—41 sung by men, 39 by women, and 1 duet—using a total of 12 different melodies.

Before singing each song, villagers typically recite the lyrics aloud. The tone used during this recitation is distinct from both everyday speech and the singing tone; it lies somewhere in between, resembling a kind of chanting or intoning. This unique chanting style prior to singing is one of the most notable features of the Poya Love Songs‘ performance style.