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Saub us uj, listen carefully to what the Master has to say, the Master carries a crossbow on his back and a cock under his arm to accompany you, and now leads you into a deep dark forest, with great crickets wailing, take no notice of them, have no fear, for this is the sound of your own daughters and sons weeping and lamenting, you make your own way and go ahead, go ahead and play
Saub us uj, listen carefully to what I am telling you now, the Master has led you past the leaping mountain crags of Dragon and Tiger, I now take you to your very own country to find the hillside of your grave, that is your country and there is your land, putting aside the breath of life, go off and play
The Master who leads you to find your country and your land, will lead you to return home again along the flowery path of revival, in the central hall, you will hear the sound of the reed pipes like great crickets wailing, and the sound of the drum like the mighty thunder roaring, but have not fear, these are the ways and the paths of your ancient Mother and Father...
In tales and legends of the past, the Hmong who have traditionally been shifting cultivators, speak of a vanished kingdom from which they were ousted by the all-powerful, dominant Han Chinese (Tapp 1989). Their dislocation as shifting cultivators and denizens of South East Asia is thus constantly referred to a 'lost point of origin' which is at the same time, most definitely, a physically located place, assumed by many Hmong to be located somewhere in their ancestral homelands in the mountains of southern China.
During the many deaths, losses and separations of the political conflicts the Hmong were involved in during the Indo-China Wars from 1954 to 1975, these legendary and nostalgic recollections of the past took on an added personal poignancy, as parents were separated from children, husbands from wives and brothers from sisters, during the fighting and then through the refugee diaspora which followed 1975. This is truly what Robin Cohen (1997) calls a ‘victim diaspora', showing clearly the intrinsic relation between the formation of modern nation-states and the existence of displaced populations (Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Agamben 1998).
172
Saub us uj, listen carefully to what the Master has to say, the Mas- ter carries a crossbow on his back and a cock under his arm to accompany you, and now leads you into a deep dark forest, with great crickets wailing, take no notice of them, have no fear, for this is the sound of your own daughters and sons weeping and lamenting, you make your own way and go ahead, go ahead and play
Saub us uj, listen carefully to what I am telling you now, the Mas- ter has led you past the leaping mountain crags of Dragon and Tiger, I now take you to your very own country to find the hillside of your grave, that is your country and there is your land, putting aside the breath of life, go off and play
The Master who leads you to find your country and your land, will lead you to return home again along the flowery path of revival, in the central hall, you will hear the sound of the reed pipes like great crickets wailing, and the sound of the drum like the mighty thunder roaring, but have not fear, these are the ways and the paths of your ancient Mother and Father..."
In tales and legends of the past, the Hmong who have traditionally been shifting cultivators, speak of a vanished kingdom from which they were ousted by the all-powerful, dominant Han Chinese (Tapp 1989). Their dislocation as shifting cultivators and denizens of South East Asia is thus constantly referred to a 'lost point of origin' which is at the same time, most definitely, a physically located place, assumed by many Hmong to be located somewhere in their ancestral homelands in the mountains of southern China.
During the many deaths, losses and separations of the political conflicts the Hmong were involved in during the Indo-China Wars from 1954 to 1975, these legendary and nostalgic recollections of the past took on an added personal poignancy, as parents were separated from children, husbands from wives and brothers from sisters, during the fighting and then through the refugee diaspora which followed 1975. This is truly what Robin Cohen (1997) calls a ‘victim diaspora', show- ing clearly the intrinsic relation between the formation of modern na- tion-states and the existence of displaced populations (Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Agamben 1998).
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