灵魂山巅之歌
在从西藏高原到四川盆地中途，在位于琼莱山峰中的羌族，<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
我见到了崇火及人类原始文明的幸存。 高行 健 ‘灵山’
四川，史称蜀国，是至今仍然跳动着古代中国脉搏的地区之一，成都自公元前五世纪成为首府，至二十世纪末依旧保留着历史传承下来的市中心，而今其独具特色的木结构两层建筑遭受着激进的城市化进程的摧毁。
背靠着喜马拉雅山脉的贡嘎山峰海拔7556米，“中国的阿尔卑斯山”无路可入，以至于某些山谷只有当直升飞机飞来时才被发现。这种与世隔绝的现象部分地解释了四川西北部高山峡谷中羌族种族生存的学术价值及其口头文化流传的长久不衰。
因其特殊的地理环境，“中国的谷仓”至今在人们的印象中是一个外人难以进入的肥沃天堂。以至于在某些村落，我极可能是到羌族地区旅游和逗留的第一个西方人…….
汉人是中国各种族中最知名的种族，因其占中国人口的大多数而被错称为“中国人”。二十世纪前占据着大西藏的藏族人许多个世纪以来就举世闻名。相比之下，羌族人少为人知。
羌族是中国最古老的种族之一，于商代（公元前1600-1046年）时即有记载。今天，200 000羌族人生活在喜马拉雅山支脉地区，以养殖和耕种为生。他们多数信仰万物有灵，若生活在藏人占多数的地区他们则信仰喇嘛教。直至二十世纪末他们没有自己的文字，近来才开始试图用拉丁文字标注本民族的语言。
1997年，我尚未读过高兴建的作品，当时只是一个起步已晚的汉语学生，在四川西北部的喜马拉雅山的支脉地域周游。然而在这片面积几乎有整个法国大的地域，我偶遇两名羌族男子，为了向我清晰地介绍他们民族的起源，唱起了本唱碟开头的那支歌。
1999年，我再次来到四川，从事有关这个不被世人熟知的少数民族的采风工作。我从一个新的与我当初设想略微不同的视野角度扩大了调查研究范围，从而使得本唱碟更贴近实际。
实际情况是，在这四川西北部，坐落在海拔1500到3600米面对扎谷瑙河谷的各个村落中，几个世纪以来在同一个地理环境中和谐地生活着三个不同的种族。汉人，藏人和羌人，三个民族，三种语言，三类信仰，聚集在同一个其顶峰高踞海拔7500米的广袤无际的地域中。这里的草原和高原提醒人们喜马拉雅大山脉离此不远了。
谨以上文解释本民风集光盘问世的时空境遇，它不是一位人种学家调查研究的成果， 而是凝聚了一个乐于观察世界的普通人的心血。
Philippe Bouvet
“这一瞬间，我才发觉自己真正的存在”
高行 健 “灵山”
英文项目介绍
SONGS OF THE SOUL MOUNTAIN by Philippe Bouvet
« Halfway between the Tibetan plateaus and the Sichuan basin, in the land of the Qiang people, set in the median Qionglai mountain range, I have seen the worship of fire and the survival of mankind's original civilisation. »
Gao Xing Jian « the soul mountain »
In 1997, I had not yet come upon Gao Xing Jian's writings; I was but a late Sinology student travelling through the foothills of the Himalaya in northwest Sichuan.
During my sojourn in this region approximately the size of France, I met two men from the Qiang minority. To explain their origins clearly to me, they started to sing the song which opens this CD.
In 1999, I was back in Sichuan to collect material on this little-known minority and I extended my field of investigation as I discovered a standpoint slightly different from my original intention. It would become the thread that ties this CD together.
Indeed, in this northwestern part of Sichuan, in villages located at an altitude of 1500 to 3000m in the heart of valleys opening onto the Zagunao Jiang river, three very different ethnic groups have been sharing the same geographical environment and living in harmony for centuries: Hans, Tibetans and Qiangs, three peoples, three languages, three types of beliefs, all in a single, vast territory culminating at more than 7500m, with steppes and high plateaus recalling the proximity of the great Himalayan range.
Unity of place and time thus mark this collection album, recorded not by an ethnologist but simply by a curious man.
Philippe Bouvet
« At this moment I realise that I really exist. »
Gao Xing Jian « La montagne de l’âme »
Sichuan, formerly the kingdom of Shu, has remained a living heart of old China. Chengdu, its capital since the fifth century B.C., retained until the late 20th century a historical city centre whose two-storey wooden house architecture was much damaged by the intensification of post-communist urbanisation.
Resting against the Himalayas with the Gonga Shan culminating at 7556m, the 'Chinese Alps' are so hardly accessible that certain valleys were not discovered until the advent of planes and helicopters. This isolation partly explains the region's ethnographic interest as well as the oral transmission perduring among the Qiangs of the High Valleys in Northwest Sichuan.
This "attic of China" (by its geographical situation) has conveyed the image of a fertile but inaccessible paradise — to the point that in some villages, I will have been the first westerner who travelled and sojourned among the Qiangs.
While the Hans —improperly called the Chinese because they are the majority, and the Tibetans living in China in what was The Great Tibet before the 20th century, have been known for centuries, we have not heard much about the Qiangs, although they are one of the most ancient Chinese people, already acknowledged in the Shang dynasty (1600-1046bc).
Nowadays, some 200 000 Qiangs live on the foothills of the Himalayas. These farmers and breeders are for the most part animists, or Lamaists when they live in districts with a dense Tibetan population. They had no proper writing until the late 20th century, and they have recently started to develop a phonetic transcription of their language in Roman characters.
Philippe Bouvet
« This is their native land, they have no reason not to live here in total freedom; over generations, their roots have plunged deep into the ground. There is no point in your coming from afar searching for roots on their behalf. »
Gao Xing Jian « the soul mountain »
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