2.The cultural need to transmit the heritage of the Zhuang folksongs is a necessary factor to produce the Poya folksong symbols.

The folksong is one of the main sources of Chinese literature.The famous book Book of Songs(Shi Jing,also known as the Classic of Poetry and the Book of Odes)is considered the source of Chinese literary history.In the past thousands of years,the Han people had created and passed down brilliant folksongs through the various dynastic periods.However,due to historical reasons,folksongs were regarded as unsophisticated and vulgar works of illiterates and were not written down or accorded the attention give to formal written literature composed by scholars and bureaucrats.Therefore,few of the Han folksongs have been passed down and become well known.The reasons why the Zhuang folksongs have endured are their specific historical background,the current enduring social environment,and the way that the songs continue to serve the psychological needs of the culture.During the long period of Zhuang history in which there was no unified writing system for their languages,singing became a method of sharing thoughts and emotions,and of disseminating ethnic historical and cultural knowledge.This tool for transmitting knowledge and culture fit their daily life practices and rituals and satisfied their aesthetic needs and contributed to the development of an outlook on life and aesthetic style reflective of their own ethnic psychology.As Liu Xifan stated in his work The History of Ethnic Tribes,“All Zhuang people,men and women,consider singing as the most important problem in their life.Those who can’t sing will be isolated,lonely,and lose their chance of being loved,and will be considered shallow and ignorant.”It is this strong cultural value and aesthetic that promoted the socialization of the Zhuang singing activities.Their social ideology,their will to survive,their pursuit of certain ideals,their communication of emotions,agricultural knowledge,history,ethics,marriage,birth,life,and funeral etiquette are all expressed in singing.They sing about everything and everywhere,and this cultivates the poetic way of thinking of the Zhuang people and a kind of well-developed poetic culture.Singing fairs,such as Longduan,emerged,characterized by singing competitions between men and women.According to experts and scholars,it is believed that the origin of the Zhuang folksongs can be traced back to the tribal era when the forms of group sacrifice and the intermarriage system among different tribes transitioned to a marriage system in which couples paired off by themselves.Among the current collections of the Zhuang folksongs organized and published by the relevant departments,we still see different styles of Zhuang folksongs in different places in terms of content,forms and tones.Each form follows a combination of certain themes,such as“Liao Songs”,“Huan An Songs”(or“Lining Up Songs”),“Huan Ya Wa Songs”(or“Frog Songs”),“Huan Da Lao”(or“Big River Song”),etc.There are three functions of the Zhuang singing custom: The first is to sacrifice to deities and spirits and to pray for good weather and good harvests.The second purpose is to transmit ethnic culture,history,the knowledge of agricultural production methods and morality to the next generation.The third purpose is to provide a means for young men and women to get to know one another,build trust in each other and perhaps get married.Such important cultural functions in a context of high demand is bound to produce specific symbols to record these folksongs.

Traditionally，the main way of the transmission of folksongs is via oral teaching that results in accurate and internalized understanding of the songs.From the age of the tribal clan，the Zhuang people and their ancestors have constantly striven to create their own characters.After the Qin（221-206 BCE）and Han Dynasties（206 BCE-220 CE），with the spreading of Han Chinese culture from the central plains of China to the south，the Zhuang began to receive Han cultural influence，including the Han Chinese characters.From the Tang（618-907 CE）and Song dynasties（960-1279 CE），Zhuang intellectuals created square Zhuang characters（known in Zhuang as Sw Ndip and in Chinese as Tu Shu Zi）using the form，sound，meaning of the Chinese characters and the six principles of character formation.^[2]One example is the character used to represent the Zhuang word naz，meaning rice field in Zhuang dialect.The Zhuang square character（Sw Ndip）used to represent this Zhuang word is ，which combines the radical 田，which means“field”in Chinese（but is pronounced tian in Mandarin），and the radical 那，which is pronounced na in Mandarin（but means the demonstrative“that”）.The Zhuang square character has na as its pronunciation and the meaning of“field，”or more specifically，a rice paddy field.This kind of modified square character system has been used to record folksongs，stories，folk tales，religious books，contracts and accounting，etc.in various Zhuang areas.But this writing system also has its own limitations in that it can only be mastered by those who have already obtained a basic knowledge of the Chinese language and characters，which，historically most Zhuang people have not had opportunity to do，due to lack of educational opportunities before.Therefore，the picture symbols used to represent the Poya folksongs have endured and have been transmitted down from generation to generation.