Night watchmen and their fading tradition
Print Edition
It is a serene night as the luminous moon gleams in the black, blue sky. With a gong and mallet in hand, Yu Jiajiu sets out to work.
For many decades, Yu, 74, has been a night watchman for Likeng Village of Wuyuan, an eastern China county loved by many for its rugged beauty.
Patrolling a familiar street with historic wooden houses on both sides, he sounds out the hours with his gong to remind villagers of the time and to warn against fire and theft.
Yu is perhaps the last night watchman performing “dageng,” a centuries-old time reporting service, as its functions have gradually faded away.
It takes 90 minutes to walk the entire village, which has more than 120 historic buildings dating back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).
“I started learning ‘dageng’ from my father at the age of 17,” Yu said. “It has become part of my life. I feel uncomfortable if I don’t hit the gong for a day.”
A night watchman has to follow various rules. He must hit the gong with the mallet once at a crossroads and twice when he sees a suspicious person. At 9pm, 12am and 3am, he must hit the gong twice, three times and four times, respectively.
“Dageng” has a history of more than 600 years in Yu’s village. Traditionally, people measured time based on the position of the sun in the sky during the day, and relied on a night watchman to sound the hours at night.
With the advent of modern clocks and mobile phones, the night watchman’s role as time keeper has been replaced by figures on a screen — few villagers desire to be night watchmen now.
Due to his age, the village allows Yu to work for 3 months rather than the whole year. His work period starts on the first day of the 12th lunar month.
The village pays him around 1,000 yuan (US$158) a month. In addition, he has a small piece of farmland to live on.
“I think the village still needs night watchmen,” Yu said, recalling how he once woke up the villagers to put out a fire in a burning kitchen.
“Villagers get used to the sound of the gong at night. Some joke that they can’t sleep well without the sounds,” said Yu Xinlong, Party chief of the village.
He said that “dageng” is a folk custom handed down by village ancestors, and has been significant in preventing the historic Hui-style buildings from potential hazards such as fire.
With exquisite homes, ancestral halls and memorial archways, Hui-style buildings are mostly seen in the provinces of Anhui and Zhejiang.
The Wuyuan government is trying to list the “dageng” tradition as county-level intangible cultural heritage. Yu’s village has become a tourist attraction for its idyllic landscape and Hui-style buildings.
People also come to visit the last night watchman in the village. He has two sons but they do not want to be night watchmen due to the low salary and exhausting night shift.
Accompanied by a gong and a mallet, Yu walks alone at night, and it would be easy to think that he gets lonely. But he denies this. He just wants to live longer and do something more.
“The weather is dry. Be careful of fire,” he shouts above the resonant sound. “Gong. Gong. Gong.” And he disappears slowly into the night.
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