A county in southwest China's Guizhou Province is working on new regulations
to better preserve endangered ancient "Shuishu," the peculiar
pictographic characters of the Shui ethnic group.
As the peculiar characters used by the ancient Shui ethnic
group, Shuishu is in danger of being lost as most of the Shui
people do not know how to read the characters any longer.
People who still know how to read Shuishu are usually wizards of
the Shui ethnic group. They preserved most existing books written
in Shuishu which have been passed down only to a single descendant
within families.
In this sense, Shuishu is regarded as a "living fossil" of the
Shui ethnic group as books written in Shuishu had recorded
encyclopedic contents about the ancient Shui ethnic group,
including astronomy, geography, religion, folk-custom, ethics,
philosophy, aesthetics and law.
In March 2002, Shuishu was listed in the China Archive Heritage
chosen by the State Archive Administration of China. Since then,
great efforts have been made by the central and local cultural
protection departments to protect the endangered characters.
Currently, the people of Sui ethnic group, numbered
approximately 407, 000, live on the Yunnan and Guizhou Plateau in
southwest China. The Sandu county, the only autonomous county of
Shui ethnic group in China, has most of the Shui population in the
country, or 52 percent.
Sandu county has allocated more than 100,000 yuan (US$12,500)
each year for the translation and protection of Shuishu books over
recent years.
"The county government issued a circular on saving the
endangered Shuishu books in 2005, yet it is still hard to prevent
Shuishu from losing," said Pan Zhongxi, director of the Culture
Studies Institute of Shui Ethnic Group in the Sandu county.
"Therefore, the county decided to pass new regulations on the
basis of the circular and add penalty measures to it to enhance
efforts for the protection of the Shuishu," Pan said.
According to the new regulations, government staff members will
be imposed administrative penalties or even prosecuted if the books
are lost due to their abuse of power or negligence of duty.
(Xinhua News Agency April 10, 2007)