The Poya folksongs form a collection of beautiful love songs,in the form of traditional Zhuang folksongs.The set of written symbols can be thought of as a kind of“textbook”for the local people to practice the love songs.The eighty-one songs represented by the written symbols are traditional folksongs which have already been sung for years.According to the 2003 census of cultural resources,the Zhuang traditional folksongs of Funing County have had a large variety of types and tunes,rich in melody and popular from generation to generation since ancient times.Themes of the songs mainly focus on emotions,love,marriage,birthday congratulations,praise,satire,riddles and so on.The forms of many songs have long been fixed,such as wedding songs,funeral songs,birth songs,toasting songs,handkerchief dancing songs,songs for welcoming the bride and songs celebrating friendship between people born in the same year.Many of these folksongs,especially those sung antiphonally between duets of male and female singers,embody the Zhuang characteristics of being“smooth as silk and gentle as water”,of being creative and agile.The kind of love song is called morning and evening love songs and usually sung during the Longduan Festival in the open air,as well as at home during holidays.

Funing Zhuang houses are typically built of wood,in the ganlan style of vertical houses,and divided into three floors.The top floor is for storage,the middle floor is for people and the ground floor is for domestic animals.In contrast to the ganlan houses of some other ethnic groups,the traditional Zhuang houses include a side“lean-to”room of eight square meters on both sides of the front gate on the middle floor,which is called“En Ciang”in the local Zhuang dialect.These are special rooms for young men and women to sing the male and female duet folksongs.The duet style singing of Zhuang young men and women in Funing County usually follows the seven steps of request,hesitation,blessings,praise,love,confirmation and farewell.First,the song of request is sung by the host singer,who would like to ask for the honor of being able to sing to the guest singer.Second,the guest singer sings the song of hesitation,expressing the required modesty of not being able to sing well as expected.Third,the guest singer sings the song of blessing as the guest cannot refuse the host’s request and will sing a blessing to express his or her wish that his or her singing will be found acceptable.Fourth,both parties sing songs of praises,praising the other for the quality of the house,the family’s wealth,his or her appearance,beauty and singing ability.Fifth,the love song expresses the pursuit of love by both parties.Sixth,the song of confirmation voices the agreement by both sides as they vow to love each other.And finally,seventh,the song of farewell is a means of saying goodbye to each other.

The Poya folksongs collection consists of eighty-one such songs,representing the essence of the Funing Zhuang love songs.The songs are mostly composed for duets of two men or of two women to sing,though the last song is for mixed chorus of men and women.The length of the folksongs varies from four five-word lines,songs of more than ten lines.In terms of the content,the eighty-one love songs develop gradually,following the seven steps,and covering the whole love story of a young couple from first meeting,to growing acquaintance,to mutual admiration,to the exchanging of vows to love each other to the end of time.The style and technique of expression in the Poya folksongs can be compared with the Chinese classic the“Book of Songs”,which is composed differently but with equally satisfactory results.Taking the first Poya song as an example,it begins with a description of the moon.In an autobiographical voice,a young man describes himself standing with his shadow in the moonlight,feeling lonely and signing for his poor family background.The beginning lines of the first Poya song,recited in five-syllable lines,“Tonight,the moon is bright,shining as bright as a mirror,shining down everywhere!”are similar to those of the four-syllable lines of poem in the Book of Songs(Shi Jing):“Oh,how bright is the moon! Oh,charming is the Beauty!”By comparing these songs to other folksongs,the special value and significance of the folksongs of Poya Village are highlighted.