by Jim Goodman
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| Ake village, south of Menghun |
The population of
Xishuangbanna Autonomous Dai Prefecture can be divided into three roughly equal
parts: the Dai, the Han and the
other twelve different recognized minority nationalities (xiaoshu minzu). Four
of Xishuangbanna’s ethnic minorities—the Ake, Kunge, Kemu and Kucong—do not
have sufficient numbers to qualify for official recognition as xiaoshu minzu. Instead, they are classified as “people (ren)’ who are branches of recognized
nationalities.
The Ake (pronounced áh kéu)
have been classified as a branch of the Hani minority, like the Aini. Their Tibeto-Burman language is considered
to be a dialect of Aini (a.k.a. Akha), but differs so much in vocabulary it is
unintelligible to Aini elsewhere in Xishuangbanna. Ake villages are clustered in two main areas in the
prefecture: the hills south of
Menghun, where their neighbors are Bulang and Lahu, and the hills above
Mengkuan, east of Jinghong, where their neighbors are all Aini
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| Ake house above Mengkuan |
The Ake live in stilted wooden
houses with an open-air balcony and peaked roof with wood tiles. Around Menghun they are
indistinguishable from Bulang or Lahu houses. But in Mengkuan district they differ from Aini houses by the
addition of two or three gables.
According to their own mythology the Ake say there were originally three
brothers—Ake, Aini and Han—who decided to divide up the territory. The Ake was the oldest and hardiest of
the three, so he chose the mountains.
The Aini got the lower hills and the Han took the plains.
The Ake say they adopted Aini
culture twelve generations ago, though acculturation to the Aini Way stopped
short of being complete (no Swing Festival, for example). Like the Aini, every year the Ake erect
new boundary gates at the main entrances to the village to mark the line
between the human world and that of the spirits. The longbatou
(village spiritual leader) ritually consecrates the gates so that spirits
cannot pass through them. The longbatou
is also the village headman and the one who fixes the dates of the big
festivals, in consultation with the elders. The major event of the year is the autumn New Year, held
sometime in November. The longbatou
relies on the luchi to assist in the
rituals. The other major office in
Ake society, as with the Aini, is the pima,
the one who memorizes the oral tradition and is the ultimate authority on
questions of custom. Like
the Aini also, the Ake rely on their shamans to treat inexplicable illnesses
that do not respond to medicine.
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| Ake woman at home |
The still popular Ake woman’s
traditional outfit combines a black and red, calf-length Bulang-style sarong
and Bulang-style black, wraparound turban, with a jacket that looks like that
of an Aini sub-group, of blue-black cotton, with colored bands on the lower
sleeves. From the breast to the
lower hem, front and back, the Ake woman covers the surface with rows of
embroidered patterns, a process taking months. Bands of contrasting colors and embroidery also decorate the
pair of leggings she wears below the sarong.
Ake ear ornaments are
distinctly different from those worn by Aini or Bulang women. Like the Wa, Ake women enlarge the
holes in their ear lobes as big as the thickness of a thumb to hold big lugs of
plain ivory or, more commonly, embossed silver. Below these they wear pendant earrings, to which might be
attached hoops, jewels, strings of beads and/or pompoms or long woolen
threads.
The Ake men’s jacket
is rather sedate in comparison.
Plain black, with a little color trimming at the end of the sleeves, its
main feature is a thick strip of bright embroidery around the stand-up collar
and all the way down the center in the front. The men generally save these for special occasions. The women however, despite their more
frequent exposure to modern influences in the town markets, are more attached
to their ethnic style. They wear
it in the villages and get especially dressed up when they go to the Menghun
market, where they are easily the most exotic attraction in the crowd.
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| Ake ear ornaments |
An ethnic group a bit smaller
than the Ake, and basically confined to Mengyang district, is the Kunge. The Kunge people are classified as a branch of the Bulang
nationality. They are not
particularly happy with that classification because they are not Buddhist, live
far from any Bulang village and do not understand the Bulang language, despite
their own being from the same Mon-Khmer linguistic family.
The Kunge live in the
hilly sub-district of Kungeshan, 8-15 km east of Mengyang town, having migrated
to the area from Sichuan over a century ago. The eight Kunge villages lie in
little patches of woods near the streams in between the hills. Small rice fields lie in the immediate,
relatively level vicinity of the village, while in the hills neat rows of
cultivated tea bushes swathe the slopes, providing the Kunge with their primary
income.
Kunge houses were originally
simple, one-story structures of bamboo with thatched roofs. While Banna’s tea boom lasted in the
earlier part of this century, most Kunge families earned enough money to
replace these with sturdy new ones of good quality timber. The new houses stand on strong wooden
posts, with hardwood floors and walls, open-air balcony and angled, wood-tiled
roof; in short, the typical indigenous Xishuangbanna style.
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| old-style Konge house |
Income from tea has also
provided a cash reserve in case of disaster in their farms; specifically,
damages wrought by their old natural nemeses the marauding wild elephants. These beasts make almost one raid a
year somewhere in Kungeshan and in recent years have become more aggressive, even
attacking houses. The only Kunge
defense, for they would never shoot at animals like elephants that they
consider sacred, is to frighten them off by blowing horns, lighting
firecrackers and firing guns straight up 90 degrees into the air.
Compared to their Jinuo and
Huayao Dai neighbors, the Kunge woman’s costume is rather simple. She wears a plain black sarong and a
short-sleeved, pullover top, with a v-neck, reaching to the hips. The upper two-thirds is dark blue,
often with a rectangle of three bands—green, yellow and red—below the V. The lower third is bright red. She also carries a large white
shoulder bag, with a bit of red trimming at the top.
Until the end of the last
century Kunge women also practiced the peculiar custom of calf-binding. They did this when fully grown, using a
thick string, dyed black, to wrap around the calf from just below the knee to
the ankle. With constant adjusting
and tightening, this had the effect of pushing the calf muscles downwards and
eliminating the curve of the lower legs.
The result was lower legs shaped like perfect pipes.
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| tying up the calf |
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| elderly Kunge woman |
Unlike foot-binding, the
process did not alter the bones of the lower leg in any way, nor did it affect
the way a woman walked. Kunge
women have different aesthetic sensibilities nowadays, however, and the custom
survives only among the very old.
They do not wear their traditional clothing very often, either, other
than special events like weddings and perhaps the occasional trip to the
Mengyang market.
While the Kunge preference for
the traditional look has abated, Kunge ethnic consciousness remains strong,
even as they have become more linked to the modern world. When invited to join the Poshuijie
parade in Jinghong, the Kunge insisted on marching on their own as the Kunge
people, and not as part of a Bulang contingent.
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| Buddhis tKemu village above Jinghong |
Also officially classified as
a branch of the Bulang, though their language is only distantly related, is a
small ethnic minority called the Kemu. Originally from Laos, most of them live
in southern ,Mengla County, but Kemu villages also lie in the hills just
northwest of Jinghong, surrounded by their rubber tree plantations.
Like the Bulang, though, most
Kemu in Xishuangbanna practice Dai-style Theravada Buddhism and have their own
Dai-style temples. They celebrate
the same Buddhist festivals as the Dai and Bulang and keep a permanent rocket
launcher in the courtyard for use during the mid-April New Year. They build their houses in the Dai
style and dress the same way. For
some years they were known as the Kemu Dai for their near-wholesale adoption of
Dai culture, though they speak their own language among themselves.
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| Kemu man, southern Mengla County |
Not all Kemu have adopted
Buddhism. In fact, most of the
more than half million Kemu in Laos are animist and animist Kemu villages exist
in southern Mengla County. Their
beliefs resemble those of the other animist peoples in Banna, with the house
spirit accorded the most importance.
Besides shamans to deal with illnesses they have ritual specialists for
propitiating spirits, who are publicly active at the New Rice Festival, full
moon of the 8th lunar month. and during Honghuajie, the Red Flower
Festival, akin to Kemu New Year, held the 2nd lunar month.
Also living in southern Mengla
County is Xishuangbanna’s smallest ethnic minority—the Kucong. They are
classified as a branch of the Lahu, share many Lahu traditions and the Lahu
dialect spoken in Menghai County is more or less intelligible to a Kucong
dialect speaker. Banna’s Kucong
migrated here in the early 20th century from their original homeland
in Phong Saly Province, Laos. But
by then most of the Kucong had migrated further east, to their current
concentrations in Zhemi Autonomous Lahu District, in western Jinping County,
where they are the largest ethnic group, and over the border where several
thousand live in the far northwest of Vietnam, around Mường Tè. As for the Kucong who remained in Phong
Saly, the Lao government in the 80’s relocated them to northern Luang Nam Tha
Province.
For the first several decades
of their existence in Xishuangbanna the Kucong lived hidden away deep in the forest,
subsiding on hunting and gathering and a small amount of slash-and-burn
farming. Men with crossbows would
sit on branches high up in big trees to patiently await the arrival of game
birds in the trees and mammals on the ground. Women gathered wild edible plants and tubers. The Kucong avoided contact with other
communities and carried on a barter trade indirectly by placing slain animals
and other forest products on a major path and then hiding themselves in the
woods. Passers-by interested in the
goods left in place an amount of salt, cloth, etc. they deemed of equivalent
value and departed. The Kucong
then emerged from the jungle to collect what the buyer paid.
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| traditional Kucong man's jacket |
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| Kucong woman dressed in her finest |
All this changed in the
1950’s, when the new government of the People’s Republic sent work teams into
the remote areas of Xishuangbanna and cadres eventually persuaded the Kucong to
move to the plains west of Mohan and take up a more sophisticated kind of
agriculture. Kucong houses are not
as big or as fine as those of their Dai neighbors or new Kunge houses. Many of them are simple, rectangular
buildings with corrugated iron roofs. The community has always been relatively
poor and only got in on the tea business when the boom was nearly over.
They do keep traditional clothing
on hand, though only wear them for very special occasions. The woman’s outfit
comprises a waist-length, slightly flared black jacket, sarong and turban. The V-necked jacket features colored
bands on the lower third, embroidered strips enhancing the neckline and a row
of embossed silver buckles running diagonally along the lapel.
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| Kucong altar to the Sun and Moon |
The best and perhaps only time
of year Kucong women are likely to dress in full ethnic style is the Sun and
Moon Festival, marking their New Year on the full moon of the 12th
lunar month. The ritual
activities take place in the village temple, a modest, one-room building at a
quiet end of the settled area, its exterior decorated with paper streamers and
cutouts. In the yard stands a
table of split bamboo, flanked on two sides by a tall bamboo pole, the top
festooned with paper streamers and cutouts. People leave offerings—spirits, rice, tea, etc-- on the
table.
The
village spiritual chief conducts rituals inside at an altar decorated with a
fringed strip of white paper.
Behind the altar hangs a poster of two white disks, one with a jagged
edge representing the sun, one with a smooth edge representing the moon, on a
blue-green background, above and between vertical bands of color with cutout
designs. The spiritual leader asks
the gods to bless the people and give them good fortune in the coming
year. With the rituals done the
people can commence the feasting, singing and dancing, for they know that since
their gods are now happy, the Kucong can be, too.
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| Ake woman, south of Menghun |
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for more on Banna minorities, see my e-book Xishuangbanna: TheTropics of Yunnan
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