The Story of Darkness, compiled by Hu Chongjun, published by
the Changjiang Art Publishing House, 18 yuan (US$2.2)
For Hu Chongjun, who collected stories for the epic, the
publication of "Darkness" is the culmination of 20 years of work,
ever since he accidentally discovered a hand-written manuscript in
Shennongjia, in Central China's Hubei
Province, in the early 1980s.
Working at the local culture center of Shennongjia, Hu took to
collecting local folk songs.
In
August of 1982, Hu was visiting an old local farmer's home in the
town of Songbai when he was handed a booklet.
Written with brush and Chinese ink, the booklet looked like a
songbook, with about 3,000 lines of seven Chinese characters each.
Reading the tales, he found himself reading familiar Chinese
mythologies of primeval times.
Hu
had heard that local people used to sing folk songs and beat drums
when somebody died. The libretto they were chanting spoke of
legends for the creation of the universe, the world and human
beings which sounded eerily similar to the copy he found.
Hu
began to study and gather the manuscript. Soon the first copy of
the ballad of "Darkness" was published in a collection of
Shennongjia.
Liu Shouyi, a professor at the Chinese Culture Department at the East China
Normal University, read the ballad and suggested that
"Darkness" may represent the Han people's Genesis that has been
handed down in oral form.
Encouraged, Hu started to search for more old manuscripts of
"Darkness."
Though he earned a meager income, Hu traveled around almost every
corner of Shennongjia. He visited about 200 old funeral singers and
finally found eight different copies of "Darkness" and noted plenty
of oral narrations.
In
1986, an overall collection of different versions of "Darkness" was
published by Hubei Folk Arts Association. The collection attracted
great attention from experts inside and outside China.
Yuan Ke, an eminent scholar in Chinese mythology who died last year
in Beijing, carefully studied the original materials and supported
Liu's suggestion that "Darkness" is a folk epic.
Yuan said that the discovery of "Darkness" could be regarded a
historic event in the folklore history of the Han people.
Meanwhile, Yuan suggested that some people should further study the
different versions and rearrange, with care and caution, the
manuscripts into an integrated epic, without ruining its original
flavor.
Hu
was the best man for the job of compiling this massive epic.
It
took Hu nine years before he finally finished his collection. With
5,500 lines, the new edition was the best of the many different
versions, compiled after Hu sifted through more than 30,000 lines
of the original manuscripts.
Many experts were worried that the new edition may have changed the
original words and plots.
But Liu, who has read most of the original material, said in his
preface, "So far, the content of this edition is the richest one.
Compared with other versions, this edition is more beautiful and is
in the linguistic style."
The same year, 16 publishing houses competed to buy the copyrights
to The Story of Darkness before the Beijing-based Hualian
Publishing House in Beijing finally won the competition.
But due to financial problems, the publishing house delayed the
publication of "Darkness" year after year.
In
2000, Zhou Baiyi, publisher of the Changjiang Arts Publishing House
met Hu Chongjun in Shennongjia and asked about the book.
When Zhou discovered that such a valuable book was still shelved
after five years, he persuaded Hu to end his former contract and
gave rights to his publishing house.
In
2001, Hu signed a new contract with Changjiang Art Publishing House
and went to Wuhan for some final corrections. The final edition of
The Story of Darkness would finally see the light of
day.
"I
believe the book's publication will spark a strong response from
both readers and the researchers," Zhou said.
One of the most frequently asked questions will be why such
manuscripts survived in Shennongjia.
Located in the remote northwestern part of Hubei Province,
Shennongjia National Nature Reserve has arguably the wildest
scenery.
The name for the area was translated as "Shennong's Ladder" to
commemorate a legendary emperor, Shennong, believed to be the
forefather of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and
agriculture.
As
part of a more modern legend, Shennongjia is also known for the
sightings of wild, ape-like creatures - the Chinese equivalent of
the Himalayan Yeti or the North American Bigfoot.
Above all, the place has been considered the confluent point of the
Ba culture, an ancient state in the eastern part of what is now
Sichuan Province and the Chu, a powerful state more than 2,000
years ago that covered today's Hubei and Hunan provinces.
Some funeral singers said the oral form of "Darkness" could date
back to the Tang Dynasty (AD 618-907).
Some reports said "Darkness" already had a wood copy in the Ming
Dynasty (1368-1644). Some elderly people in Shennongjia claim that
they had once seen it. But Hu couldn't find that copy.
Hu
said that the mountains and nature have protected it from
modernization and enabled "Darkness" to be handed down from one
generation after another.
(China
Daily April 3, 2002)