Refuge in Yunnan: the Tragic History of the Miao

                                                                 by Jim Goodman

Miao in the Laomeng market,Jinping County

       Besides the creation of the universe and origins of the gods, Chinese mythology also narrates battles among the gods themselves over control of heaven and earth.  These culminated in the final victory of the Yellow Emperor over his challenger Chi You, a demon deity with a bovine bronze head, four eyes, six arms and a human body.  The long and tumultuous final battle took place at Zhuolou, near the present provincial border between Hebei and Liaoning.

       Both sides had allies.  The Yellow Emperor’s support came from gods and ghosts, bears, leopards, jackals and tigers.  Chi You had his brothers, demons and devils and the Miao.  The Yellow Emperor prevailed and killed Chi You and most of his army, including the Miao warriors.  It was also a territorial victory, for now the Yellow Emperor’s people, the Han, would occupy the lower Yellow River Plain and make it their heartland, pushing the Miao further south.

Miao girl in Mengzi

older Miao woman in the Mengzi market

       Chinese used the term Miao back then, and for many centuries afterwards, to identify any people who lived south of them who were not Han.  Even today ethnologists and some of the sub-groups themselves dispute the classification as Miao all the different people who have been grouped as such, making the, China’s fifth largest ethnic minority.  Yet Chi You is part of Miao mythology, though as a sagacious king and not, as the Chinese would have it, an oppressive monster.  And he’s still revered as a war god by both Han and Miao.

Miao women at the Duoyi River

      Nevertheless, the myth establishes that animosity between Han and Miao dates back to ancient times.  Under successive dynasties the Han continued to expand south, constantly confronting indigenous Miao and other peoples in the way of new settlements.  Because they consistently clung to their own culture and traditions and did not adopt Chinese ways, the Chinese considered them uncivilized barbarians and felt no compunction about evicting them.

       Throughout the Song and Ming Dynasties the same scenario played out repeatedly in the central provinces of Henan, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou.  Han migrants would encroach on Miao land.  The Miao would drive them out and repulse local military attacks.  But then the Han government would send in a much bigger force that eventually defeated the Miao and forced them to abandon the area.  Some moved out of the region entirely, all the way to western Sichuan and northern Guangxi.

Miao girl embroidering at Haizibian, Wenshan

Miao woman gathering edibles in Haizibian Lake

       The Miao were never a nation, nor ever tried to become one.  Authority lay with each clan chief, not with an overall sovereign.  Yet out of the dreary pattern of encroachment, revolt, repression and expulsion, a new Miao myth developed—the Miao King.  Heaven would send him and he would be recognized by certain signs and powers, unite all the Miao clans around, drive out the Han and reestablish the old order.

Miao house in Haizibian, with the loom on the upper floor

       This pattern continued under the Qing Dynasty, especially in Guizhou in the 18^th century.   Always successful initially, for the Miao were defending their own territory, not seeking to expand it, in the end they always lost.  In this period, some migrated out of the region altogether, to northern Vietnam and Laos or faraway Yunnan.

       While they were no longer subject to periodic Han land grabs, the Miao experience in Yunnan varied depending upon where they settled.  Northeast Yunnan is heavily Han-dominated, though the Han government turned over administration of the hill areas, and tax collection, to nobles of the Yi ethnic minority.  The Miao of Zhaotong Prefecture suffered more under the Yi than they had under Han officials in Guizhou or Hunan.  Besides taxes and forced labor, they were also conscripted to serve as soldiers in the Yi nobles’ incessant feuds with each other.

Miao woman prepares herself for market day in Tongchang

Miao woman on the way to Tongchang

       By the late 19^th century they were on the verge of revolt, only awaiting the emergence of a charismatic figure to proclaim he was the new Miao King.  But the situation was different this time, for the Qing Dynasty was in terminal decline, forced into granting concessions to Western powers, one of which was the right of foreign missionaries to proselytize in the country.  Among its many assignments, the China Inland Mission dispatched Samuel Pollard and James R. Adam to Zhaotong, who concentrated their preaching among the downtrodden Miao.  Pollard even devised a script for the Miao language.

Miao village near Tongchang, Jinping County

       The Miao took special interest in the story of Christ, identifying emotionally with the tortures of the crucifixion, so like those inflicted on them by the landlords and bureaucrats.  Attendance at the sermons mushroomed.  Mass conversions soon followed as whole villages enlisted in the new religion.  At the same time they awaited the Miao King, so obviously predicted in the missionaries' story of the Second Coming.  Some even conjectured that Pollard himself was the Miao King. 

       Meanwhile the Miao coming into town in such massive numbers aroused the suspicions of both Yi and Han. A campaign of repression of the Christian Miao commenced, burning villages, seizing property, beating, torturing and imprisoning them.  Yet the more severe the persecution the more the Christian movement spread.  It was not long before virtually all the Miao of Zhaotong Prefecture had embraced Christianity.  The movement even spread to the Miao in Wuding and Luquan Counties, north of Kunming, under the stewardship of Arthur Nichols of China Inland Mission.

Miao women in Mrngla for market day

Miao in Mrngla, Jinping County

       Just as the situation reached the boiling point in late 1904, Pollard intervened.  He persuaded the magistrates to issue proclamations protecting the Christians. Things simmered down for a while but the landlords launched a fresh campaign in 1906-7.  Again the missionaries obtained proclamations from the magistrates, this time sent directly to the Yi lords.  Pollard and Adam themselves visited the lords to urge their compliance.

twisting hemp thread while in the market

       Han officials resented the foreigners' interference and talked openly of expelling them.  When Pollard found out he threatened them with reports to their superiors, a threat that implied their dismissal.  The local officials at once backed down and even promised to take no action against the Christians.  Hostilities continued off-and-on for the next several years.  But gradually some of the Yi also became Christians, while the millenarian aspects of Miao Christianity faded, as did expectations of the Miao King's imminence.  Yet the missionaries' prestige was so high the Miao remained faithful adherents of the new religion.

       Elsewhere in Yunnan, migrant Miao met with a different experience.  Most moved into Honghe and Wenshan Prefectures, in counties where the Han were not so numerous, which were already densely settled by other ethnic minorities like the Hani, Yao, Dai, Buyi, Zhuang and other Yi.  Neither the Han nor any single ethnic minority dominated the area as in the northeast.  Miao culture was not under stress and missionaries had little or no impact.

Miao on the road to Laomeng

selling firewood in Jinshuihe, Jinping County

       Much of this part of Yunnan had been occupied for many centuries before the Miao arrived.  For the most part they had to make do with the narrowest valleys and stony soil--lands nobody else wanted.  A diligent, practical and adaptable people, they managed to eke out a living in such environments, raising corn, millet, sugarcane, vegetables and hemp.  And where they could settle on more fertile lands they became expert agro-engineers, creating extensive terracing for growing rice, as in Pingbian and Jinping Counties in Yunnan and around Sapa in northern Vietnam.

       With a history of resisting or fleeing forced assimilation, the Miao were shyer and more reclusive then their neighbors, rarely marrying out of their own sub-groups, and tenacious about preserving their culture and identity.  Though in recent decades they have become more involved with the society around them, and no longer face aggressive designs on their lands, this remains a chief Miao characteristic, exemplified by the almost universal preference of the women for their traditional clothing.

Miao leg wrappers

      For most Miao sub-groups in Honghe or Wenshan the most striking component is the bulky, pleated, indigo batik skirt, appliquéd with lavish embroidery.  The colors and batik patterns may differ from one sub-group to another, and one group wears plain pleated white skirts, but the shape is the same and no other ethnic group wears a similar skirt.  Some don a plain black jacket, but for most the rest of the outfit is also heavily embroidered and includes leg-wrappers, a wide belt, apron, jacket and some kind of headgear. 

       Perhaps one reason Miao women are so attached to their traditional costumes is the great amount of time and effort expended to produce them.  The process begins with the cultivation of the hemp plant, the dried stalks of which can be turned into thread, but only after a long, laborious process.  The women strip off the skins of the stalks and tear them into thin strips.  Then they bundle and beat them until all foreign matter is removed and start twining them into something resembling thread, a common spare time activity at home, walking to the fields or sitting around a market stall.  That done, the next step is to wind them onto the spinning wheel and further twist the threads.

       Following that, loops of spun thread get bleached by repeatedly boiling in water and lime.   Then women mount the thread on a large winding frame to prepare the warp threads to put on the loom.  Now it’s ready to be woven into a strip of cloth, usually 30-40 cm wide.  After that they lay out the cloth on a table to begin the batik process, a form of resist dyeing, by applying beeswax in complicated patterns, dyeing with indigo and removing the wax.  The patterns appear in white.  The final step is to cut the cloth into appropriate lengths for a skirt, stitch narrow folds together while it is wet and after it is dry, remove the stitches for permanent pleats.

festival dance for Trekking the FloweryMountain

       It’s still not ready to wear.  Women add narrow bands of heavily embroidered cloth to the sides and hems of the skirt, obliterating much of the batik designs.  They also add these bands to the jacket, belt, apron, cap and leg-wrappers.  Drawing on a vast repertoire of traditional cross-stitch patterns they may also create new ones, for it is in these details that individualism comes into play.  Young women spend much time improving their embroidering skills, for they are highly regarded in Miao society.  Cultivation of this art requires certain character traits—diligence, a sense of beauty, attention to detail, skill with the hands—that are desirable in a prospective wife and mother.

       Traditionally Miao youth were free to socialize and engage in romance, though parents arranged their weddings.  Should romance blossom into love the couple sought parental approval, but if they didn’t get it they might take the option of elopement and make a new home for themselves somewhere far away, alone or joining another couple or two who also eloped.

       Courtship was usually a group affair in the beginning stage, especially at big public events, though it could also occur spontaneously in the fields or at a rest stop on the way back from a market.  Antiphonal singing was a favorite method, groups responding to the songs of each other.  It was common at the festivals, particularly the event called Trekking the Flowery Mountain, celebrated by several villages together, held in southern Yunnan the 3^rd to 5^th days of the first lunar month, honoring a pair of mythical lovers.

the Flower Pole for the festival

Miao girl dressed up for the festival

       For this event villagers select the bravest boy and most beautiful girl and erect a tall Flower Pole at the festival site. The girl presents the boy with a ball of red silk and a reed pipe.  He must climb the pole and deposit them at the top.  After descending to the ground he returns to inform the girl of his success, holding a flowery umbrella.  The crowd encourages them to get closer until in the end he retreats with her behind the umbrella.  The crowd cheers, hoping that true love sprouts behind that umbrella.  If the couple does fall in love and wed, that will be a happy marriage and bring good luck to the village.  On selecting the couple in the first place the villagers collectively play the role of matchmaking parents.  So if love indeed is the result of their selection, it is seen as a tribute to their collective wisdom.

       Besides various rituals performed by the elders, the festival features song and dance shows, the music of lutes, flutes and reed pipes and antiphonal singing.  Girls begin with a common folk song.  Boys respond with the next stanza.  Eventually they will invent new stanzas expressing their feelings and compete to come up with imaginative lyrics.  The older folks improvise lyrics within a set rhyme scheme and sing about nature, agriculture, Miao history and legends, also in a call-and-response style, which becomes a test of traditional knowledge.

       Many romances might result from this.  But more important to the participants, the festival is a celebration of being Miao, of being a people whose traditions and culture have persisted, despite tragedies and displacements, ever since the time of the Yellow Emperor.

festival participants, Trekking the Flowery Mountain

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for more on the Miao, see my e-book The Terrace Builders

Delta Tours Vietnam organizes trips through Miao territory in Honghe Prefecture.  See the itinerary at https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/honghe-prefecture

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      

   

      

      

      

      

       

In Search of the Hà Nhì in Vietnam

                                                     by Jim Goodman

      

Hà Nhì village above Mường Hum

       By the end of last century I had already begun research in Yunnan’s Ailao Mountains, the range that runs along the southwest side of the Red River.  The area is famous for its ancient irrigated terraces and is dominated by ethnic minorities.  Dai and Zhuang inhabit the valleys, while Hani, Yi, Miao and Yao live in the hills.  Traditional ways were strong in this part of the province.  Nearly all the females preferred their ethnic clothing, old customs and festivals had been revived and economic reforms had improved their material lives.

       The Ailao Mountain range continues into Vietnam and in fact, near the popular tourist attraction of Sapa stands the second highest peak in the range.  Many of the sub-groups of minority nationalities on the Yunnan side also live along the border in northwest Vietnam.  They have different names sometimes:  Hmông instead of Miao, Dao (pronounced Zao) for Yao, Thái for Dai and Hà Nhì for Hani.   Having visited many of them in Yunnan, curiosity about what their life was like on the other side of the border prompted my first visit to Vietnam.  

Phong Thổ

       I was particularly interested in the Hà Nhì because they were the most numerous in Ailaoshan, the minority I knew best and the only one whose language I was somewhat familiar with, up to a point.  They are not very numerous in Vietnam, only about 9000, and in Hanoi at that time I could learn nothing about where they lived.  Assuming they must live somewhere adjacent to where they lived in China, my first attempt began at the Monday market day at Phong Thổ, northwest of Lai Châu town.        

       Also known by its Thái name Mường Xa, the small town lies beside a river, is backed by hills and is just a short ride to the Chinese border.  White Thái dominate the immediate vicinity, but on market day they were far outnumbered by three sub-groups each of Hmông and Dao, as well as some Giấy and Hà Ngì.  A few women were from the largest sub-group in Jinping County, Yunnan, recognizable by their blue and black jackets and the false braid they added to their hair and coiled it on top of the head.

       A larger group, mostly young women, dressed in blue or pink jackets with embroidered lapels and bands around the sleeves.  The outfit resembled some I’d seen in Yunnan, and local people identified them for me as Hà Nhì, but didn’t know where they lived.  They didn’t speak any Vietnamese, so we never learned.  But later on I never found the identified as one of Vietnam’s Hà Nhì sub-groups, so presumed they came from across the border.

Hà Nhìi n P:hong Thổ

Hà Nhì girli n Phong Thổ

       My next stop was Tam Đường, a pleasant town with some Dao and Hmông in the streets and small hills speckling the urban area.  No Hà Nhì villages nearby, though, and in the Tam Đường Đất Thursday market no Hà Nhì appeared.  However, when I returned to Tam Đường I spotted two young women walking on the street wearing outfits I’d not seen before; long black coats, decorated with silver studs, color trim and bands of color on the sleeves.  I snapped pictures, but there was nobody around to tell me who they were.  Only after I returned to Hanoi, visited the Ethnology Museum and picked up books, I learned they were Hà Nhì, but from Mường Tẻ, the extreme northwest.

Hà Nhì Hoa girl in  Tam Đường

       Even if I had known that then I wouldn’t have reversed directions.  My next stop was Sapa.  High up in the hills, in full view of Phansipan, Vietnam’s tallest peak, with rice terraces cut into the slopes, Sapa bore the closest resemblance yet to the mountain towns I knew in Ailaoshan, Yunnan.  Most of the villages in the vicinity were Black Hmông or Red Dao, but the small yet interesting city museum included displays of the clothing, artifacts and daily life of the Hà Nhì as well, from Bát Xát district to the north.    

       After my museum visit I dined in a restaurant where I sat at a table with the young, personable, bi-lingual, Vietnamese founder of the new Green Sapa Tour Company.  He had himself not yet visited a Hà Nhì village, but to meet them we could go to the Sunday market day in Mường Hum village, west of Bát Xát, which Hà Nhì regularly attended.  That was to be my last full day in the area, so I agreed.       

       We set out at six a.m. on a foggy, drizzly morning and reached Lào Ca in 90 minutes.  From there northwest to Bát Xát was another half hour, but through a flat, boring landscape.  The town had been built on a new location in recent years, but the original village still existed a few kilometers west of the town, and it was also hosting market day that Sunday.  At that early hour it was mostly Giấy setting up stalls, along with a few Dao and Hmông.  This market area was rather small and we pressed on to the much bigger venue at Mường Hum, still another hour away.

      The road ascended into rolling hills and eventually wound down into the riverside town of Mường Hum.  Low-lying villages in the area are Giấy, with well-tended terraces and sturdy, stilted houses, but most people in the market were from the surrounding hills.  Red Dao women dressed a little differently from those around Sapa, with tall, tubular turbans, sometimes decorated with silver ornaments and, except for the babies, the young girls wore the same outfits and turbans as their mothers.  Dao men also dressed in traditional clothes, though less colorful than the women, consisting of plain black, side-fastened jackets and black turbans.

       Three different Hmông sub-groups were in attendance:  the Black Hmông I was familiar with in Sapa, with their black jackets and knee-length trousers; the Flowery Hmông I’d seen in Tam Đường, wearing short jackets and bulky batik skirts embellished with strips of appliqué; and the Red Hmông, whose women extended the length of their hair with red braids.

young Black Hà Nhì woman

older Black Hà Nhì woman

       Fortunately for me, the Mường Hum market also attracted a large number of Hà Nhì women and girls.  I recognized them as the same sub-group that dominates the Jinping Yunnan vicinity and was surprised they lived this far east of Jinping.  In Vietnam they are known as the Black Hà Nhì, after the main color of the women’s outfit—black jackets with colored trimming and plain black trousers.

       Long-sleeved, loose and hanging down to the hips, the side-fastened Hà Nhì woman’s jacket is black with blue or green cuffs and a wide, horseshoe-shaped band of color across the chest.  Usually this band is blue, either plain or with crisscross blue stitching and jackets may also have another band along the sides and lower hen of the back.  Some of the younger women brighten these up with white and red stitching.  Around the neck they wear beads and coins.  They tie long woolen braids to their hair and coil the lot around the top of the head like a turban.  Young girls dress the same as their mothers, but do not braid and coil their hair, but wear a round, ornamented cap instead.

buying sugar cane in the market

Hà Nhì thread sellers

       They had darker skin tones and more angular faces than the Hmông and Dao in the market.  A group of Hà Nhì women occupied a corner of the market square behind a long, low table laden with loops of different colors of mercerized sewing thread.  Dao and Hmông women were their customers.  I decided to approach them and see how far I could get talking to them in their own language. 

       At that time Mường Hum was not accustomed to foreign visitors.  Nearly all tourists in Sapa for the weekend spent Sunday in Bấc Hà, in the hills east of the Red River.  I became quite a curiosity that day just because I was the only foreigner.  After conversing pleasantly with the thread sellers in Hà Nhì, showing them photos of the Hani in Ailaoshan including Jinping, I graduated into a sensation.  ̣(Also shocked the guide.)

       As a result, we learned where the nearest Hà Nhì village was, about five kilometers up the mountain.  It was near noon, the morning drizzle had resumed, so after a quick lunch we drove to the village, nestled in a grove surrounded by undulating rows of terraces.  The houses, with peaked, thatched roofs were the same shape as those in Jinping villages, but with walls of split bamboo instead of brick. 

Hà Nhì village near Mường Hum

      A family invited us inside for a drink and we found the houses had no windows, the only illumination being small oil lamps.  Furniture consisted of mats and stools and a single bed.  We sat around the central fireplace and sipped the local specialty—cassava wine.  I learned they held the same major festivals of the Jinping Hani, the long-table collective feast and the swing festival, but also others for venerating the forests and the water sources.  They relied on their own medicinal plants for treating illness, rather than pills or other remedies from the town pharmacies.  And if that didn’t work, they called on the services of a shaman.  They were obviously poorer than the Jinping Hani, but their only real complaint was that the Dao higher up were drawing off a disproportionate amount of water from the reservoir. 

       The rain picked up, cutting the trip short because the guide worried about the road condition.   We made it down without mishap and I returned to Lào Cai and then Hanoi and then bookstores and museums to learn more about the border people.   As a result, in three months I was back in Vietnam, this time bound for Mường Tè.  This was another rarely visited town, for it was way off the beaten track and foreigners weren’t allowed past the town then.  The nearest Hà Nhì village was a new settlement next to the road, rather modernized and nobody in traditional clothing.  Mường Tè didn’t have a regular market day, so to meet Hà Nhì, I had to hope some mountain dwellers would come to town while I was there.

Hà Nhì woman in Mường Tè

       Another problem was that the local La Hũ minority women dressed in the same outfit as the Hà Nhì.  It’s difficult to determine who took after whom.  The Kucong branch of Yunnan’s Lahu wore the same ensemble, but I’d also seen the same headdress and coat, though shorter, on Hani women across the border in Luchun County.  The nearest La Hủ village was just three km before the town.  But when I tried to visit, just as I caught a glimpse of the women, and before I could take pictures, a scowling, officious man in an army jacket told me foreigners were not allowed in the village.  Go out now.

       I returned to Mường Tè, but as the market was deserted, I spent the rest of the day in the friendly White Thái village just beyond the town.  Other minorities live in the district—Si La, Công, Mảng and White Hmông.  But only a couple Hmông women turned up in town during my stay. 

       I soon discovered one way to tell the La Hủ from the Hà Nhì, even before I had a chance to try speaking with them.  The La Hủ were uniformly skittish.  Mothers hid their babies’ faces, women scurried out of view and even the men looked frightened.  Hà Nhì women just looked at me nonchalantly.  The men nodded a greeting. 

       A Vietnamese shopkeeper informed me the group near us was Hà Nhì, not La Hủ.  Hà Nhì Hoa, he called them, the sub-group called Flowery Hà Nhì, after the vibrant deployment of color on their clothing.  When I told him I could speak some Hà Nhì, he invited them over to meet me.

       They were quite pleased to chat, since we spoke in their language.  I told them of my travels in China other Hà Nhì I’d met, showed photographs and basically led the conversation so we could keep to my limited vocabulary.  One older man could speak Chinese with me, while the market Vietnamese came to join, too.  I could speak a little Vietnamese by then, so it was a tri-lingual encounter.

Hà Nhì Hoa in Mường Tè

headdress of the Hà Nhì Hoa

       As in Mường Hum, I found that the Hà Nhì Hoa basically lived the same way, materially and spiritually, as their ethnic counterparts in Yunnan.  They didn’t have quite the same irrigation system as in Luchun County, where water flows all year down the slope, terrace by terrace.  But they shared the same festivals, customs, type of village shrine and ate the same kind of food that I had observed in Yunnan.

       My encounters with Hà Nhì in Vietnam were limited by time and by government restrictions that didn’t exist in Yunnan.  But besides the information I got from my conversations, there was another trait I found common to Hà Nhì sub-groups in both countries.  They are a friendly, polite, hospitable people, proud of their ethnic heritage and easy to talk with, on either side of the border.

Mường Tè

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         for more on the Hà Nhì, both sides of the border, see my e-book The Terrace Builders