Two Chinese villages end 200-year feud

[Photo: from VCG]

Two feuding villages in South China have officially put an end to a 200-year marriage ban between them - mostly because no one really remembers what started it.

Representatives from Guolong and Beishan, two villages in Puning, Guangdong Province, held a reconciliation ceremony in Guolong on Sunday to mark the end of the centuries-old feud.

A friendly agreement was also signed between the two villages to start cooperation on issues such as education, economy, environment and culture.

Guolong has about 24,000 residents all surnamed Zhuang, while Beishan, population 16,000, is home to people are all surnamed Xu. They are only six kilometers apart.

But for more than 200 years, cross-village marriages between the two villages were taboo.

According to nfncb.cn, in the past, couples would be forced to break up by their families.

However, locals said that while village ancestors had passed down the feud generation after generation, the reason it sparked in the first place had been long lost.

According to Zhuang Chengjie, the Deputy Secretary of Guolong Committee, "Village elders said that perhaps long ago, there had been some conflicts over agriculture, such as fighting over land and water rights. The feud started back then." 

[The audio clip is from Studio+, produced by CRI] 

(Source: Global Times)