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      

   

      

      

      

      

       

Dai Ways in Yunnan’s Red River Counties

                                                             by Jim Goodman

 

Laomeng White Dai village, Jinping County

       Sprawling southeast of Kunming all the way to the Vietnam border, Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture comprises two distinct parts.  The landscape of the counties north of the Red River, high plateaus and rolling hills, resembles that of central Yunnan.  Famous old cities like Shiping, Jianshui and Mengzi lie in this part of the prefecture.  While there are districts here and there dominated by Yi and Miao, the Han make up the majority north of the Red River.

       The four counties south of the river—Honghe, Yuanyang, Luchun and Jinping—are famous for the irrigated terraces that line the slopes of the Ailao Mountains that dominate the land from the river to the Vietnam border.  Here the Han live only in the towns and cities.  Most of the population consists of minority nationalities, particularly the Hani, but also Yi, Yao, Miao, Zhuang and Dai.  All of them have sub-groups, too, including the Dai, with differences not only in traditional apparel, but in lifestyle as well.

Dai La, Huangmaoling

       The sub-group of Dai occupying the Red River valley in Honghe and Yuanyang Counties call themselves the (Dai) La.  Like their neighbors and cousins the Huayao Dai upriver in Yuxi Prefecture, they live in villages of 50-60 mud-brick, flat-roofed houses.  They are wet-rice cultivators, but the sugar cane stands that speckle the valley upriver are here replaced by fruit orchards, particularly banana groves, which lie in abundance all around the rice fields and up the lower slopes of the Ailaoshan foothills. 

       Dai La villages along the alluvial plain obtain two rice crops a year from their fields.  Those living higher up, above irrigated terraces, get only one crop annually, but supplement their income with, besides bananas, mango and litchi groves. They engineer water from the nearest mountain stream to flow through the village first and then into the terraces fanning out below the settled area.  They set traps in this stream to catch eels and small fish, part of their regular diet, and go fishing in the river with both traps and nets.  Women use the river to do their washing, farmers bathe their buffaloes there and beneath big leafy shade trees on the bank the children come to splash and play.

Dai La woman

ginning cotton in Huangmaoling

       Other people in the area often refer to them as the Black Dai, after the dominant color of the women’s traditional outfit.  It consists of a headscarf, a side-fastened, short-sleeved jacket, plain black, calf-length sarong and leggings.  The jacket fits loosely and hangs to just below the waist.  Basically black, it is trimmed with silver studs around the neck and in a broad strip along the lapel, bordered by bright, narrow bands of appliquéd silk or embroidery.  Color bands also go along the right side and the hem all around, while the sleeves consist of a broad strip of bright color, like red, pink or orange, and narrow bands of contrasting colors.  Beneath the black skirt they wear tight black leggings, lavishly cross-stitched with bright patterns, no two pair alike.  They also carry a shoulder bag with the same lush embroidery.

Dai La embroidered leggings

       Women tie their hair in a bun and wrap it with a narrow strip of black cloth.  The end, featuring a block of embroidered designs, is tucked into the scarf along the right ear and the decorative end left to dangle.  They do not wear much jewelry, but many still tattoo the backs of their hands with an auspicious symbol that looks like a cross with a V on each end.

       The preference for traditional fashion still dominates the daily dress of Dai La women.  Even the younger generation wears it, though they may opt for a shorter, knee-length sarong with a band of embroidery and appliqué around the hem.  In the slack time of the year, when agricultural activity is not so demanding, in Dai La village lanes girls may gather in a group while they embroider shoulder bags and leggings.  And in another house an older woman may be ginning cotton, spinning thread, or weaving cloth on a narrow loom.

Dai woman from Qimaba

       In the southern part of Yuanyang County the Dai La also inhabit the upper Tengtiao River valley down to Huangmaoling on the main Yuanyang-Laomeng route.  Dai La villages lie next to and around this township, which holds its market day on Saturdays.  But in Laomeng and the rest of Jinping County the Dai are the White Dai sub-group, while in Luchun County the only resident sub-group is the one in Qimaba, unrelated to any other Ailaoshan Dai.  This large township of over 200 houses lies in the center of Luchun County, 65 km southeast of the main Luchun-Jiangcheng route from the turn-off in the western corner of the county.

      All the county’s Dai live in Qimaba, an isolated township in the most forested and least populated section of the county.  Its residents migrated here in the late Qing Dynasty from their original homeland in Shiping County.  They call themselves Dai Neu-a, the same appellation as the Buddhist Dai in Lincang and Dehong, though they are animist like most other Ailaoshan Dai.

       The population lives in two-story houses of mud-brick, with tile roofs and an adjoining open balcony.  The roofs do not cover the entire house but leave an open space in the middle, directly above the sunken courtyard on the ground floor just inside the entrance.  This space, roughly 20 meters square, holds the household’s water tanks and has a drain in the center to convey the waste water outside into the channels that run through all parts of the town.  Here families do their washing and bathing.  The kitchen lies behind it and the dining area to the side.  Two bedrooms lie adjacent to this, while other sleeping and storage quarters are upstairs.  In back of the house are the sties for pigs and pens for ducks and chickens.

in the terraces of Qimaba

       The town lies above a broad fan of stone-reinforced terraces, on a gradual slope of around twenty degrees gradient, reaching all the way to the edge of the cliff above the river.  Water flows from one terrace into another.  But the Dai have also cut channels throughout Qimaba’s neighborhoods and directed the water to flow alongside almost every stone path.  No house is far from running water and for most households it is right outside their front doors.

       Most of the women in Qimaba, young and old, wear their distinctive Dai outfit, comprising a heavily embroidered bodice that reaches to the hips, worn under a waist-length, black long-sleeved jacket with colored sleeves, fully embroidered on the back, and over an ankle-length tubular skirt.   These components are the same for all ages, though younger women embroider the hem of the skirt as well.

White Dai house in Laomeng

       The headdress differs, though.  The younger women and girls wear a black cloth on the top of the head, the front trimmed with rows of silver studs and old silver coins.  Long tassels of pink woolen thread cascade down either side.  On older women the black cloth rises up over a frame at the back of the head, decorated with silver coins, triangles of studs and embroidery.

       Almost all the Dai of Jinping’s Tengtiao River valley and its tributaries, from Laomeng on downriver into Vietnam, belong to the sub-group called White Dai.  They live in medium-sized villages beside or just above the rivers, raising mainly rice and vegetables, supplemented by fruits and sugar cane.  In Laomeng, their first settlement in Yunnan, they also cultivate vegetables in the dry season on the sandy banks of the Tengtiao, which here changes its name to the Laomeng River.

White Dai woman, Mengla district

       Unlike the flat-roofed, mud-brick dwellings of the Dai La, White Dai houses resemble those in Xishuangbanna.  They are made of wood and bamboo, sit 1.5 to 2 meters above the ground on stout wooden stilts and have roofs of thatch.  An open balcony extends from the front entrance, used for drying crops, hanging laundry or strips of dyed cloth on the rails to dry, for spinning and winding thread, or just for sitting in the sunshine and fresh air.  Interiors are capacious and cool, with a central hearth and a couple of walled-off bedrooms in the far end.

       In the back yard may stand a small ancestral altar—a bamboo cubicle with a thatched roof about 1.5 meters off the ground.  Usually a large group of these stands together in one area of the village.  In addition, villages also have a large shed housing the ceremonial drums, which are beaten throughout the New Year festivities.

       The men dress in modern style, but most women prefer their traditional outfit of blouse and black sarong.  On special occasions the women also don a long-sleeved, front-fastened jacket in solid pastel colors, fastened with silver butterfly clasps.  They often wear these jackets on market day in Laomeng and further east in Jinping and the largely Dai district of Mengla in the south.

Dai Lu in Mengla, Jinping County

       Besides the White Dai, residents of three villages near the hot springs a few km south of Mengla are Dai Lu, immigrants from Xishuangbanna a few decades ago.  Their women dress like Banna women and they are the only Buddhist Dai in all of Ailaoshan.  Buddhist proselytizers never reached this area and all the rest of Honghe Prefecture’s Dai are animist.

      Dai villages all have a spiritual leader who conducts ceremonies on behalf of the community, mainly at annual festivals. Employed more often is the mogung, the specialist handling affairs of the unseen world, such as expelling evil influences, or calling back wandering souls and directing the souls of the deceased to the world of the afterlife.  The role is similar to that of ritual specialists among their neighbors in the hills.  The Dai also share the hill peoples’ taboos, domestic etiquette and life-cycle ceremonies, including most aspects of the all-important funeral ceremony.

       Where they differ is in the concept of the afterlife and in their attitude towards the faults, misdeeds and the darker side of the personality of the deceased.  For the Dai the afterlife is similar to the current life, in that people who were farmers or teachers or something else in their life will be doing the same work in the afterlife.  But a few differences exist.  Elders will become children again.  Children will take on the roles of adults.  Daily life and work will be characterized by complete harmony and happiness.  Those who have had a full life, meaning they created descendants to carry on the family line, will all enjoy this kind of afterlife.  Those without descendants will have to make do with another place, called Li in Dai, a sort of limbo, somewhat less comfortable.  But it is not an unpleasant place and the idea of Hell, so prominent among the Buddhist Dai, has no place in the animist Dai conception of the afterlife.

White Dai New Year

Dai Lu festival dance

       The unique part of the Dai funeral ceremony takes place just before the coffin is removed for burial.  Usually this is three days after death, but no one may be buried on a monkey day or on the animal day on which they were born.  After the lamenting, the visits of relatives and friends, the condolences and feasts, the last act is the Song for Sending Off the Dead.  A mogung, or anyone familiar enough with the deceased to want to do it, takes a seat beside the corpse and begins a long song that narrates the life of the deceased, his or her achievements, virtues and memorable good actions.  All faults, misdeeds, even crimes, are ignored, for once a person dies, everything is forgiven.

drumming for the White Dai New Year

       As for public events, each sub-group has its own festivals.  Places like Nansha, next to the county capital of Yuanyang, and Mengla stage a government-sponsored one-day Water-Sprinkling Festival.  The Dai Lu celebrate it with the performance of dances by the young women in each of the three villages for three nights. Near the end of the second lunar month the Dai in Zhemi host the Men’s Festival, commemorating a time in their history when the men were all off at war and missed New Year.  When they returned late the women staged a new festival to compensate them for missing the other one. 

       All Dai in the area mark the Lunar New Year with celebrations that begin the last morning of the old year and conclude three days later.  Ritual bathing, feasting, processions, rituals and noises expelling evil spirits and drumming are the festival features, details varying from valley to valley.  But whatever the event, it is done with gusto. The Dai know how to make their rituals enjoyable events.  These are people who perceive life as Heaven on Earth and the afterlife as Earth in Heaven.

young Dai women in Qimaba, Luchun County

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

Xishuangbanna: the Tropics of Yunnan

    
 by Jim Goodman

     For most of its history Xishuangbanna existed as an autonomous state on the remote southern periphery of China, run by the same Dai family since the 12th century. Lying in the tropical zone, on the northern rim of Southeast Asia, with flora and fauna not only unlike the rest of China, but even unique in Yunnan province, it has had close ethnic and cultural relations with its neighbors in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos.

     The valleys are home to the Dai nationality, while several ethnic minorities inhabit the hills. Xishuangbanna: the Tropics of Yunnan narrates the history and development of the Dai people, their culture, society and religion, from ancient times through the period of incorporation into the Chinese state. It also covers the characteristics of the lifestyle, culture and celebrations of the peoples of the mountains, as well as the economic and political changes of recent times and their effects on both hill and plain. The book contains over 280 photographs.

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Link to My book on Amazon Kindle

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Link to LULU

 http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/xishuangbanna-the-tropics-of-yunnan/14069400