The state power and the “grassroots power” are based on different backgrounds, with the former  tinged with legislation and even violence  while the latter resting on local ethics and social codes built  on  this basis, which were products  of rural knowledge and folk wisdom. Each of the two powers has its own scope of embodiment and ground for survival, and neither could be completely substituted in a modern society.
    Therefore, we have conducted a fairly long field study over the “grassroots power” - formed on the basis of reproductive systen in Zhanli -- as well as its intercourse and adjustment with the state power.
    Zhanli, a little-known village of Dong ethnic group in the deep mountains of Congjing County of Guizhou Province, Southwest China, has set two amazing records: first, its natural population growth rate has been zero since 1949; and second, its crime rate has always been zero, too.
    In China and most of other Asian countries, population control has been seen as a “No.1 problem”. But Zhanli, as early as hundreds of years ago, had established its theory of “a proper population size”. People there set up their social code spontaneously based on local ethics and exercised the aggregate control of population in the form of “folk legislation”, with an effective system on birth control , selection of marital partners, marriage age and childbear and education. The census in 1970 showed that the village had a population of 729. But in 1999, it was 726, and the number of households did not increase.
    In Zhanli, people did not know what  “modernization”, “environmental pollution” or “population explosion” means.  But people lead a well-off and healthy life. The good-spirited people coexist with the nature in harmony. This is indeed a paradise in the dream of modern people.
    Where the legend began
    Like most of the ethnic villages without written language, the history of Zhanli started from a legend. Once upon a time, there were two brothers. The elder one was called Lao Li, and the younger one was called Lao Zhan. To escape wars and famine, they fled their ancestral home at Wuzhou in Guangxi with their families. Following the divine revelation they went  up along  the river  till they found a waterfall and settled down there. The elder brother Lao Li was fond of mountains, so he built his home up in the mountain and called it Fuzhong. The younger brother Lao Zhan liked water, so he built his home by the river and called it Zhanli.
    Water is the lifeline of the people of Zhanli. So wells were regarded as holy in the village. There are eight wells in this small village, the oldest  being hundreds of years old. Every morning, the first one who came to fetch water should first put a straw into the well. The straw symbolizes nature. It is the straw that disturbed the god of well, whereby human beings were  pardoned of their sins. Building well is the most important issue  in the village. Each well was built with stone tablets  on which are carved tales of the god of dragon . Nobody is allowed to wash clothes or heads at the wells . Fish are raised in the wells to indicate prosperity. The pit for coffin is also called “well”, which means that the dead will return to the origin of life.
     With water, there will be trees. People here believe that everything under the heaven, from mountains and rivers to grass and woods, are shadowed with deity, and people’s good and ill fortune is closely related to these natural elements. So they believe mountains are the deity, which cannot be disturbed at will; the ancient trees are also deity, which can never be felled; huge rocks are the deity, which cannot be cut. Otherwise the deity is infringed upon, and the earth veins are damaged, which could incur  disasters . The awe has given birth to preservation. People of Zhanli have effectively preserved their ecology. After the New Year  holidays , the first thing the  villagers  would  do is to plant trees in the mountains before farming. When a baby is born, the family will plant trees, which will grow with the child and are called “children firs”. Year after year and generation after generation, forests have expanded while the grassland has shrunk with a  forest coverage  as high as 75 percent. Villagers have to herd in the bushes. Now the village is surrounded by thick maples, firs and Chinese red pine.
    Hundreds of years have passed. The ancient Zhanli retreated behind the mountains and forests. In the eyes of Zhanli people, nature and deity are identify. Their interaction constitutes the human habitation. Under their double controls, people awe and treasure them while trying their best to live in harmony with them to win the right to subsistence and reproduction . Like other people of the Dong ethnic group, people of Zhanli approach to the nature with mixed feelings of awe and love, their way of life featuring an  easygoing character which has given rise to  a unique wisdom for survival.
    “Zhanli is a boat. Too many people can have it capsized.”
    “Terraced fields” are a major creation of the people who used to live by water but later moved to the mountainous area. As there was not much flat land, the Dong people built their paddy fields up in the mountains. Land is extremely scarce in Zhanli as the village is sandwiched between two mountains. The elderly people said: “Zhanli is a boat. Forests are the water. Too much land opened will squeeze away water.”
    Legend has it that Lao Zhan had five sons, all surnamed Wu after the Han people. After they grew up, they had their own families and children. Soon the village had sixty households. It was then called “sixty Zhanli”. Seeing the population increased too fast, Wu Gongli, the most respected elderly in the village was worried that “too many boys will have no land to farm, and too many girls will have no money to spend” and “one tree can hold only one bird nest, and the additional one will go hungry.” He feared that their land would not be able to feed the villagers, which would lead to starvation and burglaries. So he had the village rule  set up that a couple who paddy fields enough to produce 50 dan  (2,500 KG) of rice  could have two children, and those whose paddy fields could only produce  30 dan of rice could only have one child.
    This rule reflected Zhanli villagers’ respect for the coexistence of land and human beings.
    At the same time, local people also attach  great importance to the birth of new life. Once a baby is  born, the family would hold a solemn ceremony and treat  all the fellow villagers with an ox, a pig, four chickens, two fish and two eggs. The children would all be well looked after. So all the villagers of Zhanli are healthy and witty and live longer because of the good living environment. Here you can find lots of families with four or  five generations under one roof. As there are only one boy and one girl, each family will have only a son to  stay, so the family size is  not too big. Wu Laogu is 90 years old, but his five-generation family has only eight people. His great grandson Wu Shengfu is just one year old, nearly 90 years younger than Wu Laogu.
    At Zhanli, boys have boys’ “shares” of fields and girls have girls’ “shares” of fields. Girls will inherit cotton fields while the boys will inherit paddy fields. The parents will often give their daughter a share of “daughter’s field” as a dowry when she gets married. The habit has lasted  so long that it has become a “habitual law”. A family failing to give this share of “daughter’s field” to their daughter would be sneered at, and the boy’s family might turn down the marriage. In terms of the right of inheritance, the men and women share the forests and vegetable fields. The houses and stock belong to men while the jewelry and cloth belong to the women who take them to their own families.
    The youth at Zhanli have a very open social life. They may get married at 18 or 19. But the bride may not stay at her husband’s home after the wedding. She has to sleep at the house of another person for the first night. On the third day, the family of bridegroom will send the girl back to her own home. In the next three to five years, the bride will stay with her parents. She only goes back for things she is expected to take care of. The girl will not live with her husband until a few years after marriage. This habit has prevented early childbearing despite early marriage. The average bearing age of Zhanli women is above 22 years old.
    The strict control of population has left abundant land and space for sustainable development of the offspring. In Zhanli, the per capita land (good fields) possession is 1.55 mu, against the national average of 1.4 mu (that includes the non-irrigated fields; and in  666 counties  or more than a quarter of the country’s  total the per capita land possession is below the bottom line of 0.8 mu). Zhanli ‘s per capita acreage is twice as much as that of Congjiang County.  The average per capita grain output at  Zhanli is about 350 kilograms a year, which can feed a normal family for two years. People have been living an affluent and peaceful life. As they have plenty of land, the villagers have used  more fertile land to grow a kind of glutinous rice, which is nutritious but yields smaller output. The most typical scene in the village is the racks for airing such rice.
    Pharmacist Wu Naigen
    How have the villagers of Zhanli been controlling the population growth?
    Since ancient times, the villagers have developed a complete set of medicinal and operational treatment system, which  ranges  from the contraception to the selection of sex of babies, from abortion to the supplementary medicine for abortion and recuperation after giving birth. These medicines are all prepared from herbs by the villagers. Some are prophylactics, and some are the medicine for sterilization. It is said they even have a kind of “fairy herb” called “huanhuacao”, which is said to help regulate the sex of babies. In addition to the prophylactics for women, they have the medicine for men. If a couple has had two children, they will take prophylactics conscientiously.
    According to the elderly in the village, once men and women take such medicine, they will be contracepted all their lives. But in case somethings happens to their child , and they wished to have one more baby, they could take a kind of antidote. But the prescription has been a top secret. No villager, except very few, knows about it.
    Besides medicines, the village has a group of special people - pharmacists. They are all female. They start learning medicine since childhood. But only after they reach their adulthood can they offer prescriptions. The practice has been generally passed down from mother to daughter. If a pharmacist’s daughter dies young, she will choose one of her female cousins to pass it on . Pharmacy has become an internal skill of a family. It is said that some men know about such medicines, but they may not do operations.
    Wu Naigen, 72, is the last-generation pharmacist at Zhanli. Using ancient prescriptions, Wu has performed abortion and conception operations for more than 40 women without a single accident. So she has enjoyed a high reputation in the village. As she is also a very patient and warm-hearted doctor, women will always like to ask her for help.
    Pharmacists do not earn money from offering prescriptions. People who come to ask for medicine only give them a bamboo tube of rice (about three to four liang, approximately 150-200 grams). Pharmacists say only the medicines exchanged with rice will be effective. When women came to ask for abortion operation, they would bring a bowl of rice, three salted fish and 1.2 zhang (or 4 meters) of cloth. They could also give money, but the doctor did not mind how much - usually no more than 10 yuan. She would do the operation even if she did not get any money.
    About 90 percent of the families at Zhanli have one son and one daughter. I was extremely curious about the way of contraception and sex selection. One day, I went to Wu’s home, and the following is the record of our dlalogue:
    Q: Where did you get huanhuacao?
    A:  From my aunt. She knew how to make the medicine. But she is now dead. So the medicine is gone with her. None of others knew the prescription. I don’t know whether it works or not.
    Q: How do the people of Zhanli select the sex of their babies?
    A: I donÕt know. We are all naturally giving birth to one boy and one girl. It is purely natural.
    Q: So now the medicines you  pharmacists give women are for abortion or contraception?
    A: Yes. The medicines passed down to this generation are the ones for abortion or sterilization. Such medicines were only passed on to women, not men. Now only some old grannies know about it. Young women will not.
    We also talked about the abortion operation ,and  Wu said a woman does not want to keep the baby will go to a pharmacist in the odd  month after she gets pregant , namely in the third or fifth month . Wu said the operation is very simple and safe ,with no risk . The woman can walk right away .She has performed 50 to 60 abortions and there has been no problem.
    Pharmacists also help deliver children. In Zhanli, women rarely die of delivery. In the village, averagely four to five children are born while the same number of the elderly die each year. So the population has been kept a zero growth.  Since  the family planning policy was introduced to thd village , as the medicines offered by the government were better and easier to take, the contraception control and family planning have become even safer. The pharmacists no longer do the traditional abortion operations. I was somewhat worried that nobody would inherit the ancient prescription from Wu Naigen.
    I went on to ask Wu: “As you help people do abortion, you are actually killing lives! Don’t you feel sinful?”
    But Wu did not think so. She said Zhanli villagers believe that the foetus in the mother’s womb is indeed a life, and if the baby is aborted, the jinn will be offended. But, she said, the mother has to take the responsibility because she asks the pharmacist for help. Therefore, the pharmacists do not need to bear any responsibilities, as they have done a good, not a bad, thing.
    But for a mother, killing the foetus in her womb is something heartrending. And she will suffer both physical and mental trauma for such an act.
    However ,in loval ethical norms ,  babies  up to one year old are regarded as  the same with piglets or dogs. And the hades won’t punish for taking their lives away . Then , to alleviate the sense of sinfulness or avoid the blame of the Hades, the woman who has the abortion could  have a drop of rice wine dripped into her mouth while the foetus baby falls out of her, which is  to prove that the baby has died natural. So the Hades will not reproach the woman, or the pharmacist.
    Our survey found that the people of Zhanli had ingeniously adopted a“pact” on strict population control. Everyone must obey the village rules agreed upon by the whole village and be responsible to the rules passed down from the ancestors at the ethical level. A direct result was that the mothers and pharmacists had been eased a great deal of psychological, emotional and moral pressure. Therefore, the moral and emotional elements concerning traditional practice of abortion have been diluted by the ancestral rules, which have been jointly exercised and followed in the past hundreds of years. But the pressure imposed upon people was so large that the “pact” could not adequately help eliminate the fear. So faith has become  another enormous  and deeply hidden power for psychological adjustment and maintenance of the faith for survival.
    Laws under the Drum Tower
    What is the “pact” then?
    There is a huge wood tower Ñ Drum Tower Ñ standing in the center of this Dong village. Instead of a residential building, the tower is a symbol of the law, tradition, spirit and will of the Dong people. On the square of the tower, the villagers, led by the elderly, formulate the rules to govern the village; in the tower, the disputes and problems are  mediated and solved; and the tower  also offers  an arena for story-telling, singing and rendezvous among  youth.
    The “pact” is the folk law adopted in the Drum Tower, which has a binding force on people’s way of behavior and mentality since ancient times. Governed by these rules, Zhanli has been a village where houses do not need to be locked. Since 1949, not a single criminal case has occurred, except only one “case” in the villagers’ recollection. A guest came to sing in the Drum Tower. A villager stole the cloth of the guest. After being found, the villagers took over his property to offset the wrong deed. They butchered his cattle, shared the beef among villagers, took away his rice jar and even decided to dismantle his house. In addition, he was imposed a fine of 120 jin  60 kilos of wine, 120 jin of rice and 120 jin of meat. After all these punishments, he was driven out of the village. All the villagers should abide by the strict folk rules of Dong to the letter; otherwise they would be punished by the whole village.
    Tradition, belief, system and pact... comprise the strong “grassroots power” in the rural society in Zhanli. It is this power that has sustained the cultural  course of Zhanli in the past centuries. Under the dual control of modern and traditional cultures, how will the village take its new step forward? Wither Zhanli? Let’s wait and see.
About the author:
Zhang Xiaosong
    professor, works as leader of the graduate school of culture and anthropology in Guizhou  University, supervisor of graduate students and part-time researcher of the Social Academy of Gui Zhou Province. She had been  engaged in the study of culture and anthropology for a long time and conducted a lot of field surveys and published several academic essays. She has written scripts of  two TV documentaries: Enter Long Ga and Walk out of Long Ga.