Ethnic Territory—the Honghe Borderlands

                                    by Jim Goodman

Flowery Miao stall in Mengla

       Yunnan can boast of a great range of scenic wonders, but its unique ethnic diversity inspired my own extensive exploration.  The province is home to 24 ethnic minorities, comprising one-third of the population and occupying two-thirds of the land.  Some of then consist of two dozen or more separate sub-groups, with their own distinctive clothing and customs.  An aspiring ethnologist in Yunnan could never run out of places to go, people to meet and cultures to record.

       The fact that many of the ethnic minorities live in areas of great natural beauty was just a bonus.  The appreciation of scenery depends on weather conditions, with sunny skies critically important; not so when the focus is on ethnic minority encounters.  One can have a memorable time among them even when clouds obscure the mountains, fog envelops the valleys and sunlight fails to illuminate the landscape.  This is especially true where ethnic traditions remain strong and the women still dress in their traditional clothing.

Hai  with shoulder board, Jinshuihe

Sha Yao in the Jinshuihe market 

       The greatest ethnic variety is in Honghe, a Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture.  Yi sub-groups are present all over the prefecture, while numerous Hani sub-groups mainly reside in the southern counties.  Honghe’s minorities also include different kinds of Miao, Yao, Dai, Zhuang and Lahu.  Together they dominate the mountainous counties south of the Red River—Honghe, Luchun, Yuanyang and Jinping.  Here the Han are the minority, basically restricted to urban centers, along with some Hui.

       Of the southern counties, Jinping is a Miao, Yao and Dai Autonomous County.  Together they outnumber the Hani and Yi, though Jinping has plenty of Hani and Yi villages as well.  On market day in Jinping city the local Hani are as numerous as the Yao.  The women wear loose, side-fastened dark jackets over trousers and coil their hair on their heads in a braid that is lengthened by the addition of black woolen yarn.  They also show up at market day in Adebo, north of Jinping, but rarely at markets south of Jinping,

Flowery Miao girl in Jinshuihe

White Miao girl, Jinshuihe

       Market days in the county are fixed according to the 12-day animal cycle, held every sic days.  Ethnic minorities form the overwhelming majority of participants and so to observe, photograph and meet them the easiest program is to follow the market day schedule.  Having witnessed the action in Jinping, which holds it on horse and rat days, the next day, sheep or ox day, the venue was Jinshuihe, 25 km south of Jinping.   Mengla holds it the following days—monkey and tiger days.  Next, on rabbit and chicken days, it is the turn of Sanguocun, about halfway between Mengla and Zhemi, while the latter stages it dragon and dog days.

Guozuo Hani in the Mengla market

Dai Lu young women in Mengla

       Jinshuihe, which local people more often refer to as Nafa, is a small border town of basically two long streets.  Tropical shade trees—banyans and royal palms—line the upper street, which starts at a riverbank and ends by meeting the lower street at a roundabout with lotus-shaped street lamps.  A street branches here to the bridge on the Laomeng River and the international boundary.  Only a border post stands on the Vietnamese side, backed by hills, with villages barely visible in the distance.

bathing pool at the Xinmeng hot springs

       Not much cross-border trade happens here, so Jinshuihe is ordinarily a sleepy and boring town.  But on market days the lower street and the plaza at the western end fill with stalls and ethnic minorities from the district and even from Vietnam.  When I witnessed it, Yao, Miao and Hani sub-groups made up the bulk of those in attendance, most of them women and all the females, young and old, dressed in traditional attire.

       Among the Yao, some were from the Hongtou (Red Head) Yao prominent in Jingping, selling cloth as they did the day before in jinping’s market day.  Their name comes from the pointed red cap married women wear. They also wear long-tailed coats and shin-length trousers that they heavily embroider with cross-stitched patterns.   A few others were Landian Yao, who dress mainly in plain black, with a skein of magenta woolen thread suspended vertically along the front of the jacket.

 

Guozuo Hani  village above Xinmeng

      The largest contingent was the Sha Yao sub-group, who live in villages in the hills between Jinping and Jinshuihe and over the border in Vietnam.  Their women wear black jackets and trousers and a skein of pink woolen thread down the front, but also long white aprons and a bulky cap with a bill and pink trimming.  Silver neck rings and arrow earrings, like those of the other Yao, were the most popular ornaments.  Unlike the Miao and Hani, who often wandered the market alone, the Sha Yao walked around in groups of four to eight. 

       Two Miao sub-groups turned up.  Flowery Miao women dressed in bulky, pleated, indigo-dyed skirts, the lower half covered in bright red or orange embroidery and appliqué and V-neck black jackets.  The White Miao wore nothing white, but long black coats and black trousers.  The coat lapels were heavily embroidered, as were their caps.  Besides the vegetable displays, the Miao took most interest in stalls selling thread and Miao clothing components.  Miao men also wore their traditional black jackets and blue trousers

Hani woman spinning thread in Sanguocun

Laowo  Yi woman in Sanguocun

       A few Hani from Jinping came down to run stalls, but most were from the Guozuo sub-group prominent around Jinshuihe and Mengla.  The women and girls wore long blue-black coats, fastened on the right side, shin-length trousers and leg wrappers.  Patches of embroidery and silver studs decorated the jacket along the lapel and above the left breast.  The headgear consisted of three red rattan strips across the front, pink tassels dangling on each side, colored cloth strips across the top and a black flap over the back, festooned with buttons or silver threads.  Many of them carried pack-baskets attached to a wooden shoulder board to more evenly distribute the weight.

Hani women in Sanguocun

       The crowds began dissipating after one p.m. and I headed west for Mengla, a much larger town of mainly White Dai, on the north side of the Laomeng River, in a broad plain with several Dai villages around it.  Market day began early next morning, attended by Hongtou and Sha Yao, White and Flowery Miao, Guozuo Hani and a few down for the day from Jinping and, of course, the Dai.

       Most of the latter around Mengla are White Dai and animist.  Their women wear plain black sarongs and long-sleeved blouses, in dark colors for the older women and bright ones for the younger, with twin rows of silver clasps down the front.  They live in villages of stilted wood and bamboo houses with thatched roofs with one area reserved for their simple ancestral altars.

Landian Yao woman, Saguocun

Kucong woman in the Zhemi market

       They are not the only Dai in the area, though, for a few km across the river, around the hot springs near Xinmeng, lie a few villages of Dai Lu, immigrants from Xishuangbanna.  They live in the same kind of houses, though many had been replaced by concrete modern structures when I visited, and are Buddhist.  Young Dai Lu girls in matching blouses and sarongs, in bright colors, wearing flower wreaths in their hair, stood out as an extra, unexpected attraction of Mengla’s market day. 

Kucong village near Zhei

       Following the market activity I opted for a night at the hot springs in a ramshackle guesthouse, close to the main bathing pool.  “Come here in mid-afternoon,” the proprietor told me, ‘and you’ll see women bathing without any tops.’  The pool measures about 60 m circumference, surrounded by concrete walkways.  The hot spring sits just above it, enclosed by a stone wall, its water bubbling over it into the meter-deep pool, rendering the water comfortably warm, never too hot.

       It began filling up with bathers right on schedule and yes, many females bathed topless—those over 60 and under 6.  This was the most popular pool, though other smaller ones existed in the vicinity, as well as brick bathhouses.  The main Dai village lay a short walk away from the biggest pool and a trail from there ascended into the hills, passing water-filled terraces, to reach the Guozuo Hani village of Tawmazhai.  Stilted houses of wood and bamboo prevailed, very similar to those of the Dai in the plains and very unlike the ‘mushroom houses’ of the Hani in Yuanyang County, though their dialect, lifestyle, customs and festival schedule were the same.

       Early next morning I caught a minibus headed west for Zhemi, which would hold its market the following day.  About halfway there, at a village called Sanguo, the vehicle had to stop for a couple hours to offload a passenger’s merchandise, probably for what turned out to be market day in Sanguo.  I found this scene just as colorful as other county market days.  The Yao here were of the black-clad Landian sub-group and the Flowery Miao of the same branch I saw in Mengla.  They differed from those in Nafa by their side-fastened black jackets with wide rows of embroidered strips along the lapel and around the upper arms and neck, plus the plain black tubular turbans.

White Dai village near Zhemi

Alu Yi girl in Zhemi

       The Hani were of a different sub-group.  The women wore a shorter, side-fastened, indigo-dyed cotton jacket over plain trousers and leg warmers, with two Yao-style silver buckles.  The lapel was lined with colored strips and coin-pendants and most women also sewed a large silver French colonial piaster over the left breast.  Many Hani women spun thread while they roamed the market or ran stalls.  Hani houses on the edge of the village had dyed yarn hanging out to dry in their yards.

       The Laowo branch of the Yi were also present.  Their women wore long black coats trimmed with colored strips and a big black turban embellished with very large colored pompoms on either side.  This sub-group also lives in Laomeng district to the northwest, where they dress in brighter colors.

Shangpinghe Yao village

       As a town, my next stop Zhemi, was not very pretty, for all the buildings were newly made concrete structures.  But the area was attractive, surrounded by hills and old-fashioned White Dai villages nearby.  Zhemi is a Lahu Autonomous District, for the main community here is the Kucong branch of the Lahu.  Looking south from a hill above Zhemi I could spot Kucong villages, lying in cleared areas of forested knolls, about 40-50 houses per settlement, single story, mud-brick, with corrugated iron roofs.  Houses lined up almost like military barracks, in neat rows, spaced evenly apart.

       Though they are the most numerous ethnic minority in the district, they were the smallest group coming for market day.  The women wore long black, shin-length, right side-fastened coats, usually with multi-colored striped sleeves, over plain trousers and a tight cap liberally festooned with colored pompoms.  The outfit closely resembled that worn by Lahu women over the border in Mường Tè, Vietnam though very different from that of the Kucong in Xishuangbanna or Laos.

       Others in town for the affair included local White Dai, the Alu Yi from the mountains northeast, the Goho Hani, the same sub-group living around Huangcaoling, directly north in Yuanyang County, and the Landian Yao.  The Alu, running layouts selling vegetables jungle herbs and edible insects, were quite shy, as they were in Laojizhai, their main concentration.  The Hani, managing cloth stalls and selling bundles of split bamboo and palm fiber, were more ready to engage with the stranger and seemed to be the most self-assured people in the market.  In the end, it was another memorably colorful day in an otherwise nondescript town.

sunrise near Pinghe

      The last stop on my borderlands run was Pinghe about 25 km west, inside Luchun County.  The road follows the river alongside Zhemi until it crosses the county boundary and veers into the mountains.  The small town of Pinghe lies on the western end of a long ridge, not very attractive itself and offering only the most basic accommodations.  The original Hani village is adjacent to its northeast side and the women wear the same outfits as the Hani in Zhemi or Huangcaoling.  The immediate area, and especially the mountains to the north, features the spectacular ancient irrigated terraces sculpted all along the sides of the mountain slopes, equally impressive as the area around Panzihua in Yuanyang County that was recently declared a World Heritage Site.

       Above a picturesque set of terraces 4 km west is the Landian Yao village of Shangpinghe.  Unlike the simpler mud-brick, thatched homes of the Landian Yao elsewhere, the homes here were sturdy, two story hillside buildings with flat roofs.  Male and female Yao were both dressed in traditional style when I visited and as they rarely saw foreigners, if ever, they proved to be quite hospitable and cooperative.  Invited for a meal, I sat with the household head, while the others ate separately, the usual Yao custom.  They were easy to photograph, even volunteered to pose, and the day is still lodged in my memory as another typically interesting and congenial adventure in the borderlands of Honghe Prefecture.

Landian Yao men at Shangpinghe

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Jinping is a major stop; on Delta Tours Vietnam’s cultural-historical tour of Yunnan’s Honghe Prefecture.  See the itinerary at https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/honghe-prefecture      

   

      

      

      

      

       

The Reclusive Alu of Laojizhai

                                       by Jim Goodman

Alu woman, Laojizhai district

       Yunnan is famous for its great variety of ethnic minorities.  Altogether the province is home to 25 different minority nationalities, but the larger ones are divided into many sub-groups.  Even when they live in the same physical environments, these sub-groups may dress very differently from each other.  Nowhere is this ethnic diversity more obvious than in Lower Ailaoshan, below the Red River in Honghe Prefecture, especially Yuanyang and Jinping Counties.

       Officially, it’s Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture and the Hani and Yi are the majority of Yuanyang and Jinping County’s population, divided into several sub-groups each.  The area is also home to Dai and Zhuang in the valleys and Yao and Miao in the hills, all of them with at least three sub-groups each.  For the traveler, a big part of the enchantment of the two counties, besides the scenery of irrigated rice terraces climbing up the mountains, is the fact that nearly all the females dress in traditional ethnic clothing. 

       This makes the many market day venues in the towns particularly colorful, but also a way of finding out who lives in the vicinity.  The greatest variety is at the Sunday Laomeng market, my own favorite, south of Xinjie, just inside Jinping County.  It was here that I first spotted women in black garments, with lots of color embellishments, silver studs and multi-colored woven belts.  People in the market identified them as Alu but didn’t now if they were Yi or Hani or something else.

Duoni Hani gitls

Laowo Yi girl

       They were from Laojizhai district, up the mountain south of Laomeng.  In the company of my Hani friend from Huangcaoling, with a couple days left in my time in the area, we headed for Laojizhai in search of the Alu.  It was also market day there, but we arrived when the action had already shut down.  The last Alu family was packing up and only a couple dozen Hani were still around. 

       The remaining Hani included the headman of the nearest village, 3 km away, so we accepted his invitation and had our evening meal there.  The women of this Hani sub-group, the Duoni, dress like those of the Doko Hani of Huangcaoling, except that the girls wore the silver-studded ‘chicken hat’ worn by the Nisu Yi of Yuanyang. 

Alu Yi family

foggy morning in an Alu village

       Their dialect also differed considerably from that spoken around Huangcaoling or Xinjie, such that the headman and my Hani friend found it easier to converse in Chinese than in Hani.  The headman also remarked that night that according to their history, the Duoni are Hani.  But their customs are mostly Yi.  He didn’t elaborate, but I recalled a Hani adage I was already familiar with—“Hani and Yi are children of the same mother.” 

Alu weaver at work

      Knowing the headman of the nearest Alu village, 5 km out of Laojizhai, he arranged to take us there by tractor-trailer in the morning.  Unfortunately, thick fog covered the area the entire excursion.  We couldn’t see past ten meters, so I had no idea of the landscape or the view.  But once the foreigner and his entourage got to the village, I at least got to see what the people looked like.  Within minutes folks of all ages came to get a glimpse of me, well within my ten meters of visibility range.

       Black is the basic color for practically all of their clothing components: jacket, loose trousers and headdress.  Yet it also serves as a background to accentuate all the colorful additions.  These include bands of colored strips around the calves of the trousers, piping on the sleeves, a short blue apron, appliquéd patches on the jacket sides, sleeve cuffs and the top flap of the headdress.  The women’s jackets also feature vertical sections on the front lapels comprising many rows of little silver studs.  The front of the headdress may also be studded in a similar way, while from the flaps on each side hang little red pompoms. 

       As with most ethnic fashions, variations exist in the general style.  Older women may use less color embellishment.  Younger women may wear a round cap, studded widely across the front and topped with flowers on each side.  The men’s outfits are less colorful—plain black for the older men, but for the younger generation color on the jacket cuffs, hems and pockets.

      Alu women purchase from the market most of the materials used to make their clothing.  The one item they make themselves is the multi-colored belt, 10-15 cm wide, that ties around the jacket at the waist.  They weave this on a simple bamboo-frame loom, leaning against an outside wall of the house at a 70 degrees angle. The weaver sits on a stool at the bottom of the loom and passes the weft shuttle through the warp threads at shoulder level.

young Alu woman

Alu mother and child

       It was November, long past harvest, a season when women make clothing and men build houses.  Several looms were in operation the morning of my visit.  After observing the weaving we were invited inside the headman’s house for tea and learned that the main events in the Alu calendar were the Torch Festival in mid-summer and Rhamatu, held the third day after Lunar New Year.  Rhamatu was the same name of the most important annual Hani festival, and the Alu version included the same rituals to the three stones at the village altar, representing humans, animals and crops, and involved a collective village feast.  However, it would also feature dances, in which the girls picked their boy partners.  Our host encouraged us to return for either event.

       We didn’t stay much longer, for our Duoni Hani friend had to return to Laojizhai and the heavy fog precluded any possibility of exploration.  However, my interest in the Alu already aroused, in February I was back in the area at Lunar New Year time.  Once again in the company of my Hani friend from Huangcaoling, on the third day of the year, the first day any vehicles were running again, we left Huangcaoling early for Laomeng.  Unfortunately, no bus was going to Laojizhai until early afternoon.

Alu Yi village

       However, by coincidence the Miao were celebrating their Caihuashan festival 10 km east and the fellow who informed us of it gave us a ride there in his truck.  Hundreds of colorfully dressed Miao females certainly provided plenty of photo-ops and eyeball enchantment.  Besides traditional and modern Miao dances, the program also included performances by the Laowo Yi, a sub-group also in the Laojizhai area.

       We made it back to Laomeng in time to catch the bus, but arrived in Laojizhai too late to find out anything about the Alu Rhamatu.  Our Duoni Hani contact didn’t know.  Too late to hike all the way to the Alu village, we stayed the night in Laojizhai hoping that, as the next day was a tiger day, and several Yi sub-groups held important Lunar New Year festivals on the first tiger day, maybe we weren’t too late.

       We set out early for the fog-bound village we had visited before, but the headman there regretfully informed us we missed it.  They held it on buffalo day, the day before.  The rites at the three stones took place early morning, so we would have missed that anyway.  Then came the procession of each household delivering meat, rice and alcohol to the headman’s house to make a collective feast.  After that were the dances.

young Alu Yi woman

little girl in full Alu clothing

       Anyway, he had a lot of food left over, so he invited us to a sumptuous meal.  Afterwards he speculated that since today was a no-work day in Alu tradition, dances might be continuing at the biggest of the thirteen Alu villages, 5 km away.  It was courtship season, after all.  And Alu youths are free to choose their own spouses.

       It was still early and the weather lovely so off we went on a high but relatively level road, with fine views of distant villages, tea gardens and rice terraces.  The only traffic was pedestrian, mostly young couples or pairs of couples in full Alu traditional clothing.  Our destination lay on a slope just below the summit of a hill, with a view across the valley to the west.  Except for a school and a couple government offices, all the houses were box-like, one-story, mud-brick and timber structures with flat roofs.  No utility poles stood anywhere, for the village still had no electricity.

Alu Rhamatu dance

       As the first foreigner to ever visit, I found crowds forming everywhere I went. Everyone was polite, though, and not many ducked the camera like in the first village.  My presence soon drew the attention of the local Party official, who invited us to his office.  Yes, we had missed the festival and the dances.  But he could arrange dances tonight if I would pay the same 300 yuan the local government had given them to sponsor the Rhamatu dances for neighboring villages.  My Hani friend argued that the local government had much more money than me and that I only carried enough to cover my trip in Yunnan.  He settled for 200, including meals and lodging. 

       The meal, shared with eight others, comprised the still tasty leftovers from the feast the day before.  It included a large green leaf vegetable that is an Alu specialty, one I’d see them hawking in the markets in Laojizhai and Zhemi.  Besides this, they grow rice, maize and other vegetables and a high-quality green tea, that was selling then for 200 yuan a kilo.

       After dark our host got busy making arrangements for Rhamatu Dances Part Two.  A couple tables went up, laden with alcohol, beer and cups, in front of a row of stools for the elders and the two special guests.  Masses of villagers surrounded us on all sides, full of curiosity, but not pressing on us.  Hardly any of them had ever ventured beyond Laojizhai district and had no idea what a foreigner might look like.  As for me, I totally enjoyed being stared at by people wearing such attractive apparel.

Alu women in the Laojizhai market

       Speeches preceded the start and even I had to give one, in my limited Mandarin, which probably hardly anyone in the crowd past my table understood.  Then the dances began, led by a young man playing a gourd-pipe, followed by a line of other young men.  But no girls.  Another dance, same result.  Our host then claimed it was difficult to persuade the girls to dance.  Perhaps if I gave another 100 yuan they would.  I replied that if the girls were too shy, it didn't matter. 

       But the young men were tired of dancing alone.  So they somehow persuaded eight girls to join the line and from then on it became more authentic and participation grew.  The show continued for well over an hour, climaxing with a ring dance.  We were pleased.  Next morning as we were about to depart, our host claimed I owed him another 100 yuan just because the girls had finally danced.  Not wanting to leave in a mood of acrimony, or prejudice the visit of the next foreigner, I gave it to him.

       It was Sunday now, so we were back in Laojizhai in time for the peak of market day activity.  Groups of Alu women stood behind baskets of the green leaf vegetable we’d enjoyed the night before.  Others sold maize or bean sprouts.  Duoni Hani women wore their Huangcaoling-style, side-fastened, black-bordered blue jackets and many, young and old, donned the ‘chicken hat’ as well. 

       Several Laowo Yi women were there, too, easily recognized by the bright jackets of pink and blue and their long hair braided with a woolen thread extension and coiled on top of the head, rather like the Hani in Jinping.  Altogether, it was a typically colorful Ailaoshan market day.

Laowo Yi woman in Laojizhai

Alu selling maize in the market

       I did not return to Laojizhai again but I did happen to see an Alu dance performance once more in, of all places, the newly designated Hani Cultural Village in Yuanyang County.  I was there wandering around taking photos when a Chinese tour group turned up.  After their walk through the streets full of traditional Hani houses, a stop at the village altar grounds with the three stones and a look at the Hani swing, the climax was to watch a dance performance.

       The Laló Hani living in this village have no dance tradition.  So the government hired an Alu troupe from Laojizhai to perform instead, for Chinese tourist groups expect some kind of ethnic entertainment on their program.  So there they were again for me, Alu girls in their gorgeous outfits dancing like they did the night of Rhamatu, Part Two.  Probably none of the tourists knew they were Yi, not Hani.  But were the Hani bothered by a Hani cultural tour concluding with a Yi dance performance?  Probably not.  After all, these are the people who coined the phrase “Hani and Yi are children of the same mother.”

Alu dance troupe in the Hani Cultural Village

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                 for more on the Yi of Ailaoshan see my e-book The Terrace Builders