Xishuangbanna Craft Villages, Past and Present

                                                             by Jim Goodman

ceramic figurines on a temple roof

       In the classic period of its history, from the late 12^th to the early 19^th centuries, Xishuangbanna was a virtually autonomous state.  Its ruler acknowledged the Chinese Emperor as his suzerain and in return ruled his domain without imperial interference.  He also paid tribute to the Chinese Court, but sometimes he also, just to be safe, paid tribute to the much closer Burmese Court.  The state’s population was mainly Dai, inhabiting the plains towns and valleys.  Non-Dai minorities lived in the hills, but interacted little with the Dai, while their administration was left to village headmen.

       Dai society then was strictly hierarchical.  At the top were the ruler—chao phaendin—and his extended family.  Just below them were his relatives.  They formed the Dai aristocracy, the classes that didn’t have to indulge in any manual labor.  That responsibility fell on the much more numerous commoner classes of indigenous settlers, servants and slaves, in the form of taxes, requisitions or services.  

       Villages were basically self-sufficient.  Hence, commercial trade did not play nearly as important a role as it does now.  District towns had shops, of course, for farmers couldn't produce everything they required.  They also had periodic market days, when people from the vicinity came to exchange goods.  A few of these have persisted to contemporary times, such as the Menghai County towns of Menghun, Menga, Xiding and Mengman.

Dai potter at work

making paper in Manzhao

       Besides their ordinary agricultural production, some villages specialized in particular crafts.  Sometimes these were for contracted customers, such as the ceramic figurines for decorating temples, palaces and the homes of aristocrats, or the paper and palm-leaf manuscripts used by temples and government offices.  Other times they worked under contract to supply the aristocracy with its needs.

       Certain craft items were produced for the market and the public at large, such as pottery, drums, jewelry, umbrellas and cloth.  Some of these villages, mostly in Menghai County, have maintained their craft traditions down to the present day, even if fewer families are engaged in such production.

traditional paper umbrella

Dai drums

       Jingzhen village, home to the Octagonal Pavilion, has long been associated with the production of the little ceramic figurines that decorate the roofs of temples and houses.  They are made from a certain kind of white clay peculiar to the area.  Workers pound and knead this clay and then shape it into figures of roosters, peacocks, nagas, stylized flames, etc. and paint them different colors.  When these are dry the workers put them in a small kiln to bake them.

making a drum in Mandan

       Manzha village, in Menghun district, still produces the kind of ceramics for general use—bowls, vases, pots, jars and basins.  Nowadays much of the production is of bricks and tiles, which were not used so much in the past.  But pottery for domestic use still accounts for a good percentage of the output, made in the same manner as it was hundreds of years ago, without the use of a kiln.

       Potters use a small, thick wooden wheel mounted on a swivel.  Seated on a stool beside it, the potter drops a lump of clay onto the wheel, spreading it up to a few centimeters from the circumference edge.  Giving the wheel a spin, the potter shapes it from the inside, adding more clay as required to make it taller, using a thin, flat stick to make the inside surface smooth and a thicker, flat board for smoothing the exterior.  After the piece has been put into its desired final shape, the worker takes it to an open field, stands it on its rim, covers it with straw and burns the straw.  When the piece has been completely fired it is darker, hard and ready for use.

sample of inlaid patterns on Dai textiles

       In former times the village production of everyday ceramics served many villages in the area. But these are in competition now with containers made from synthetic materials like rubber-plastic.  As the Dai have become more prosperous though, they have often replaced their wooden houses with ones made of brick, like in the Dai neighborhoods of Menghun.  This is why production in the village shifted more towards bricks and tiles. 

       The production of palm-leaf manuscript pages, formerly the specialty of Mangui village, east of Jinghong, has all but died out.  Paper long ago had already been replacing palm leaf for religious manuscripts and the Red Guards destroyed nearly the entire stock in the village in the late 60s.  Mangui lies opposite a strange, abandoned park called The Art Garden of Banna Dreams.  It contains a number of dilapidated buildings in the Dai style and weird statues of a bearded Indra and various good and evil creatures from local mythology.  Supposedly the statues took their appearance from descriptions in the palm-leaf manuscripts of Mangui.  Nowadays the village reprints the old manuscripts on paper.  They are used to guide the selection of auspicious days for weddings, funerals, building a house, etc.

 

Dai weaver in Manluangdian

      Traditional paper-making, however, is still carried on in a few places, such as Manzhao, about five kilometers north of Menghun.  Workers begin by boiling bark from the mulberry tree for a long time, then beating it to pulp on flat rocks.  Then they spread the pulp in a long tray, add a little water, and mix it to make the solution relatively even.   The worker then carefully lays a rectangular, framed screen into the solution just below its surface, spreads the pulp evenly across the surface of the screen, lifts it out, removes any twigs or debris and leans it against a tree or wall to dry.  On a sunny day the sheet is dry in one afternoon.  Besides official documents and religious manuscripts, the paper also found use for wrapping bricks of tea.

       A thicker version of the same paper is used for making umbrellas, still a tradition in Manxing village, south of Mengzhe.  Families involved in the trade produce their own paper, treat it with sesame oil and color bands of it black, brown and pale yellow.  The frame and handle are from bamboo.  Local farmers use them and traditional umbrellas are one of the gifts devotees donate to the temple monks.

making a basket--men's work

plaiting split bamboo

       Temples also needed drums, especially big ones, though they were not the only customers.  Traditional orchestras, village dance troupes and martial arts groups also used drums.  One of the last places still pursuing this trade is Mandan village, about 15 km east of Mengla, involved for over three hundred years.  It also enjoys a reputation for its martial arts tradition.

       The wood comes from various hardwoods in the nearby forest.  After cutting the wood to the appropriate sizes, the worker leaves it in the house to dry for over a year.  Then he uses chisels, knives and other tools to hollow it out and shape the outside.  When that is done he paints it with lacquer colors, usually red, white and black.  After the paint dries the last step is to stretch a square strip of rawhide over the drumhead and secure it with fasteners of split bamboo. With changes in temperature and humidity the drumhead tends to slacken and must be tightened by pulling on or twisting the fasteners tied down on the upper side of the drum.

Dai-style jewelry, from a Menghun workshop

     As for cloth production, weaving was much more widespread in the past, for virtually every Dai family had a loom and mothers trained their daughters in ginning, spinning and weaving at an early age.  Women used a wooden frame loom with two treadles and sat at a bench at the end of the loom to weave.  Heddles separated the warp threads and by stepping on a treadle every other thread was lifted, creating a shed through which to throw the shuttle with the weft thread.  After moving the reed forward to beat the weft into place, the weaver stepped on the other treadle to make the next shed.  The interlocking warp and weft threads created a strip of plain-weave cloth, with no surface adornment or complex pattern.

       To add the embroidered designs onto the cloth required making extra heddles for supplementary weft thread.  This they did by inserting thin bamboo sticks particular ways into the warp to separate different sections of thread.  Complex surface patterns needed at least a couple dozen of these extra heddle sticks.  Besides cloth for making clothing items, weavers produced sheets and bedspreads, pillowcases, towels and, when feeling religious, wall hangings (tung) for the temples.  In classic times the palace and various aristocratic families, whose women didn’t weave, contracted certain villages to produce their clothing, brocades and other fancy textiles.

Dai-style gold ornaments

leaf-style silver hair ornament

       In contemporary times looms have practically disappeared from ordinary village households.  But a few, such as Manhuomeng, near Menghun, and Manluangdian, just west of Jinghong, maintain the weaving tradition.  Most of their production is in specialty items, such as fancy brocaded bedspreads for wealthy locals and tapestries for tourist customers taken there by tour operators.

       Weaving cloth was always women’s work, but weaving split bamboo baskets and other containers was men’s work.  After cutting the bamboo into strips, men plaited the strips and shaped them into various containers.   They could be woven very loosely, with spaces between the joints, as in baskets for carrying firewood or bags of grain and other produce, or very tightly, like the large ones for carrying grain or the small tobacco cases. No particular village specialized in split-bamboo products, for they all produced them.  If they made more than they needed they sold the surplus in the markets. 

silver hair bun ornament

       In Banna today there are more men still weaving with split bamboo than women weaving with handlooms.  Factory-made cloth of all kinds is readily available in any town market, and while cheap synthetic substitutes for split-bamboo baskets and containers are also available, it takes far less time to weave a basket than a bolt of cloth.  Some men keep it up because it gives them something useful to do.  The synthetic stuff might be cheap, but that made from bamboo is free.

      A craft that was not so universal, nor the specialty of a certain village, but rather that of select families in towns like Menghun, where it still carries on, is that of making jewelry.  Dai women have always loved ornaments.  They wore rings on their fingers, bangles around their wrists, rings and studs through the earlobes, necklaces and fancy pendants, silver belts, sometimes with attached pendants, to hold the sarong around the waist, and various pins and brooches.

       They also decorated their hair with flowers, ribbons and jewelry.  Women tied their hair in a bun and embellished that with a special pin, affixed silver leaves to it, or wrapped it in an open-work silver cone, with dangling pendants.  The upper classes referred gold, while the commoners used silver.  Nowadays, with the classes abolished and prosperity reaching all Dai villages, traditional jewelry is still popular.  On market days particularly, Dai women like to show it off. 

      In those families still involved in the production, young women do most of the work.  Their tools comprise an awl, clamps, pliers, a small, bellows-operated, acetylene torch, a perforated plate for sizing wire and a roller to make silver plate super-thin.   They use the little torch to weld together chain links, using a copper-silver alloy, though the rest of the item is pure silver.  For filigree work they make careful use of the pliers.

making a silver chain in Menghun

rubber seed necklaces in Manhefang

       Traditional jewelry is still popular in Banna because the Dai people, though not immune to modern influences, have retained a strong sense of tradition.  They often prefer using split-bamboo baskets and containers and ceramic pots over substitutes in the market just because they are traditional.  In recent years some villages that have kept their traditional stilted houses have applied for recognition as a “culture village.” 

       One of these, Manhefeng, south of Jinghong near the prefecture museum, invented a new handicraft—the making of rubber seed necklaces to sell to tourists.  The village didn’t have enough land to turn over to rubber plantations and so the people never benefited enough from their small rubber patch to afford new houses.  But with the prefecture government promoting all things traditional, Manhefeng saw a chance to turn their small rubber production into a new income.   

       Because of its traditional architecture and its location near the museum, Manhefang became a regular tourist stop.  A couple of silver workshops are on the itinerary, along with stalls selling Dai clothing, but the main souvenir item is the rubber seed necklace.  Villagers use on an old-fashioned wooden punching device to make holes in the seeds.  Business has been good since Manhefang became a “culture village” and its residents have monetary incentive to keep their tradition.  One can only hope that other Dai villages, not yet wealthy enough to have the option to discard their traditions for a modern look and lifestyle, will be inspired to do something similar.

Dai-style silver sarong belt with pendants

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The Branch Peoples: Minor Minorities of Xishuangbanna

                                       by Jim Goodman

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           

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.

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.

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.

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. 

tying up the calf

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. 

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.

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 8^th lunar month. and during Honghuajie, the Red Flower Festival, akin to Kemu New Year, held the 2^nd 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 20^th 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.

traditional Kucong man's jacket

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.

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 12^th 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.

Ake woman, south of Menghun

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      for more on Banna minorities, see my e-book Xishuangbanna:  TheTropics of Yunnan