Introduction.

As things returned to some kind of normality after the turmoil of the "cultural revolution" a group of Miao teachers in Weining took up again the quest for the old songs and stories which enshrined Miao traditions of the past. They discovered that there were no longer any old people who could sing the songs and no copy of either of Yang Yung-xing’s three publications were still extant. However, Wang De-guang in Biejing still possessed a dilapidated and water stained copy of Document K which they borrowed and transcribed.

One great step forward in the production of Document L was the realisation by the Weining teachers that the songs should be set out in lines and not written as though they were continuous pieces of prose, as in all previous documents. This uses a great deal more paper, which was a consideration in Yang Yung-xing’s day, but makes the text much easier to read.

Without any comment they ignored Zhang-ming’s fanciful suggestion about the form of the original Miao writing on page 21 of Document K, and one song, number 16 on page 45, that is M499, is omitted. A few years later, Wang De-guang’s manuscript of Document K was photocopied in Beijing by Dr J. Enwall, and the marks made by the Weining teachers are plainly legible. These indicate that number 16 was not to be included in Document L because it belonged to the group of narrative songs and should appear in the second volume they were planning to produce.

In the final section of the preface there are allusions to songs M212 and M216.

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