Non-Buddhist Dai in Xishuangbanna

                                                       by Jim Goodman

Huayao Dai in Mengyang market

       The usual assumption about the Dai ethnic minority in Xishuangbanna is that they are Buddhist.  After all, virtually every town and village inhabited by the Dai has a Buddhist temple.  I thought so myself on my first trip to Banna two dozen years ago.  What little information I had on the prefecture informed me that three main branches of the Dai lived here:  Shui Dai, Han Dai and Huayao Dai.  The Shui Dai lived near water (shui in Chinese), were the most numerous of the three and called themselves Dai Lu.  The other two lived away from streams and dressed differently and that’s all I knew at the time.

       At the end of that first trip, though, almost by accident, I learned that not all the Dai in Banna were Buddhist.  After visiting the tropical garden in Menglun, I opted to return to Jinghong via the northern route through Jinuoshan, intending to stop at Mengyang.  Nice route, much of it a nature reserve, but back then there was hardly any traffic.  I missed whatever bus was running and had to wait hours before I could flag down a truck.  I arrived in Mengyang quite late.

       I didn’t have much time in the morning, for I had a flight back to Kunming to catch late in the day.  The road back to Jinghong climbed over high hills just northeast of the city and took at least three hours.  I set out early to see the Mengyang attraction that inspired my stopover—the elephant tree.  This was a banyan tree in a grove at the edge of the town, whose roots thrust the tree trunk above the ground, with one part extending like an elephant’s trunk.  An eye had been painted on the part corresponding to the head, so that it did indeed resemble an elephant.

Huayao Dai woman carrying her load

Huyao Dai women in Mengyang

      With a couple of hours left until the bus departed, I looked around for a temple to photograph.  Mengyang’s not a big town, even now, but I couldn't find one.  I did spot a couple beautifully dressed women in the market, carrying their loads in baskets suspended from each end of a balance pole.  Someone in the market identified them for me as Huayao Dai, non-Buddhists, which is why no temple stood in the area. 

the 'elephant tree' in 1992

the 'elephant tree' in 2006

       They were certainly more colorful than any Shui Dai I’d seen so far.  The outfit comprised a tubular skirt, a shorter skirt above that, long-sleeved jacket, shirt and silver turban.  The garments were black, but embellished with broad sections of colorful embroidery, especially around the midriff and hips.  It is this feature that gave then the name Huayao Dai—Flowery Waist Dai.

       It was several years before I could make a return trip to Xishuangbanna, but that included another, more extended visit to Mengyang.  A newly built road skirted the hills and the journey only took 45 minutes.  The town hadn’t grown much.  It still had just one main road running through the town, with one side, which contained the market, full of cement buildings and the other side basically the original Dai village, with houses of wood and brick. 

       The only real change was with the elephant tree.  Now the grove had a wall around it and a ticket booth at the entrance.  The elephant tree itself, maybe because it was in danger of sinking or toppling over, was now propped up by stilts and the ‘trunk’ was encased in wooden planks.  Now it looked like a crippled elephant on crutches with its fractured trunk in splints.

Huyao Dai village and fish pond

       But this time I came not for the tree but for the villages.  Mengyang is a few hundred meters higher than Jinghong and the altitude gradually increases further north.  No Shui Dai villages exist in the district.  Huayao Dai villages dominate, but there are also a few Han Dai villages, including the closest one to Mengyang.  The Han in Han Dai means ‘dry,’ to indicate that this Dai sub-group lives away from streams and rivers.

       So do the Huayao Dai.  And another characteristic they share with the Han Dai is housing.  They live in mud-brick houses with tiled roofs, generally set on the ground and not stilted like those of the Dai Lu.  They surround their compounds with bamboo fences to keep the animals out and keep old-fashioned handlooms to weave and embroider their clothing components.  

Mannazhuang ladies

       In the early 21^st century the prefecture government chose one of the seven Huayao Dai villages in the district to be an official ‘cultural village.’  I was familiar with the concept.  Aini and Lahu ‘cultural villages’ used to lie beside the old road to Menghai.  But the new highway from Jinghong to Menghai ran right through the middle of these two villages, so as  ’cultural villages,’ replete with ticket booths and people ready to show you around, they ceased to exist.  The Jinuo had one, too, with a huge sculpture of the Jinuo goddess and a re-created traditional longhouse.  And of course, by then the Dai Park in Ganlanba had opened, with the highest ticket price.  But at least it had five villages to explore.

       Mannazhuang, the official Huayao Dai cultural village, was a pleasant surprise; no ticket booth and no handicraft/souvenir shop.   I was there in the company of a Dai resident of Mengyang who wanted to practice his English.  When we arrived, several Huayao Dai women, in full traditional outfits, were standing in the lane next to our drop-off point.  They were a bit shy, surprised to see us and were probably wondering whatever could they possibly talk about with us?

preparing the warps threads

       With my new friend interpreting for me, I told them I lived in northern Thailand and was involved in the ethnic textile business and wanted to know whether they made their beautiful garments themselves.  They did, of course, and used a loom similar to that of the Shui Dai, and if I wanted to see how it worked, women were dressing the loom—preparing the warp threads—right this very moment just two streets away.

       This is the first task in the weaving process, whether it’s for sheets, pillowcases or clothing components, the only one requiring a group effort.  When we arrived at the courtyard a dozen women were at work.  The older women dressed in traditional clothes; the younger ones did not.  But a young woman sat at the bench, rolling the threads around a drum, while the other women attended to the threads, wound around five pillars in a shed. 

Huayao Dai loom

       Just in front of her another woman inserted thin sticks in the line of threads at intervals to keep them straight.  In front of them, several women untangled, straightened and brushed the warp threads before they were wound on the drum.  This particular bolt of cloth was to be 120 meters long, and the women took over an hour to complete the work after we arrived.  That done, the women dispersed.  The next day they would assemble the loom and mount the warp threads on it.

       We left for other houses where weavers were at their looms.  The Huayao Dai loom is a simple wooden contraption with two heddles, which separate every other thread, attached to two foot treadles.  The weaver sits on a bench at the rear of the loom, depresses one treadle to open a shed in the warp threads, then tosses a shuttle with the weft thread through it and pulls the reed forward a few tines to knock the thread into place.

       This kind of loom can only produce plain weave.  Huayao Dai clothing components are full of embroidery and this is done by hand on the loom itself during the weaving process.  The weaver simply ties in yarn of different colors into places on the warp, without using extra heddles.  As the patterns are both different and repetitive, she has to remember exactly which colored thread goes in where and when.  It’s a laborious job, but certainly justified by the result. 

embroidering on the loom

       Men weave, too, but baskets, not cloth.  As in other traditional villages, they are responsible for the heavy agricultural work like plowing and house construction.  They are also in charge of the rituals, usually held at the village ancestral shrine, a simple altar in a grove at the edge of the settled area.  Being animist, the Huayao Dai do not celebrate the Buddhist festivals of the Dai Lu, but the Han Lunar New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival instead.  They do not celebrate Poshuije---the Water-Sprinkling Festival—either, at least in their villages.  But they are one of the contingents in the multi-ethic procession of Poshuijie’s first day.

       For this occasion the women wear the circular, slightly upturned bamboo hat worn by the Huayao Dai in Xinping and Yuanjiang counties, rather than their own round cap lined with silver chains.  The round bamboo cap is better known in Yunnan as a component of the Huyaao Dai women’s outfit, the procession showcases the prefecture’s ethnic clothing for outsiders, so perhaps the Jinghong authorities ordered the switch in headgear.  It’s hard to think that the Huayao Dai women themselves chose to make the change.  But Xinping and Yuanjiang counties are where they came from originally, migrating to Banna in the last decades of the Qing Dynasty.

Han Dai in Jingne

       The other animist Dai sub-group, the Han Dai, is not part of the Poshuijie procession.  Their women do not dress as colorfully as the Huayao Dai, but have a distinctive outfit.  They wear plain black turbans, pastel-colored blouses and a black tubular skirt with a long black apron in front, trimmed with blue and white stripes along the edges.  Besides a couple villages in Mengyang, they also live in Jingne district, northwest of Mengyang.

       All but unknown to tourists, Jingne is notable for the outstanding traditional Dai stilted houses in the three villages close to the town.  These Dai are Dai Lu and share a temple in nearby Dazhai.  Neighboring villages, though, are Han Dai, with houses on the ground.  Like the Huayao Dai they also immigrated to Xishuangbanna in the late 19^th century, coming out of Jinggu County.  After I inquired about the Han Dai I’d seen in the town square, my hotel staff arranged a vehicle for me to visit the Han Dai village of Nafa, because there was wedding going on there. 

       I didn’t get to see any rituals, but did observe the wedding gifts—mostly household furniture-- piled up before the house where the feast was taking place.  As a guest, even an unexpected, uninvited one, I was immediately summoned to the feast.  The repast consisted of different pork dishes, sticky rice and several cups of rice liquor, accented by a spirited conversation about Dai in Yunnan and Thailand.  I had the distinct impression I was their first foreigner guest.

Nafa Han Dai village

       When a young woman came to refill my liquor cup, and I asked her, as I did in Mannazhuang, whether she made her own clothes, she at once offered to show me how.  The house loom was just a few meters away, so she sat at the bench, worked the heddles and treadles and demonstrated how cloth was made.  I was already quite familiar with this, but the important point was the pride she took in showing me her weaving.

       Besides the animist Dai, one other sub-group lives in Banna—the Paxitai.  They are Muslim by religion, but ethnically Dai.  Manlanhui is the main settlement, 8 km east of Menghai.  The community traces its origins to two Muslim missionaries from Weishan who came here in the mid-18^th century seeking converts.  This site was on the tea caravan route and they set up a ferry on the river in front of the village, which was probably a lot bigger back then, and made a living from ferrying goods and people.  They married local Dai women and became the ancestors of the Paxitai.

Han Dai women in Nafa

Han Dai weaver

      Manlanhui’s mosque exhibits both Arabian and Chinese features.  The onion-shaped minaret dome is clearly Middle Eastern style, but the tiled roofs and general layout are more characteristic of Chinese Hui mosques.  The villagers observe Ramadan and Friday prayers, but are not very strict.  Very few women wear headscarves and in general dress like their Buddhist neighbors.  The village has become wealthy thanks to the tea trade and modern cement houses have replaced their former dwellings, which were on the ground, not stilts.

       The other Paxitai village lies on the dirt road 5 km west.  Called Manzhanhui, it is newer, with residents who originated last century from Lancang County.  The mosque is totally Arabian style and not as attractive as that in Manlanhui.  Both Paxitai communities have been expanding their connections to the Hui minority—the Han Chinese Muslims.  Mostly this results in Hui-sponsored Islamic Studies programs. But the Dai Muslims still identify as Dai.  So do the Huayao Dai and Han Dai.  In Xishuangbanna, ethnic identity supersedes religion.  

Manlanhui in 2002  

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for more on the Dai in the area see my e-book Xishuangbanna: the Tropics of Yunnan

       

The Jinuo People Honor the Blacksmith

                                                            by Jim Goodman

Jinuo girl

    Of China’s 55 recognized minority nationalities the Jinuo of Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Prefecture were, in 1979, the last to be granted official status.  Never a very numerous people, today scarcely 22,000, before that they were considered a branch of the Dai nationality, though they had little in common with the Dai.  The Jinuo language is part of the Tibeto-Burman family, the people are animist, not Buddhist, and for the most part tea cultivators, not wet-rice growers.

    The Jinuo were among the earliest migrants to Xishuangbanna coming into the prefecture from the north.  Jinuo legends claim that the people originated from a group of soldiers attached to the army of Zhuge Liang during the 3rd century C.E. in the campaign against Meng Huo, a tribal leader controlling much of Yunnan at the time.  This particular detachment fell asleep at one point on the march and when the group woke up they discovered the main army had already moved out. 
    When they caught up they were not allowed back into the army.  But instead of having them executed for dereliction of duty, Zhuge Liang ordered them to settle down on the spot where they fell asleep.  The legends also say Zhuge Liang gave them seeds for tea trees as a compensation for their expulsion.  This was supposed to be somewhere between Pu’er and Mojiang, but it is doubtful Zhuge Liang’s forces marched that far south, so more likely the spot was further north.

Jinuo men

    At any rate, the group did not stay there long.  After the army had departed they moved south.  How soon afterwards they moved into Xishuangbanna is not certain, but nowadays, unlike the other major ethnic groups here, there are no Jinuo villages anywhere beyond Xishuangbanna.  Most settled around Jinuoshan, near Mengyang, with smaller numbers around Kongmingshan, west of Xingmeng, and in Mengwang district.
    Contemporary Jinuo are familiar with the Zhuge Liang story, but their own traditional mythology puts their origin right there in Jinuoshan.  And they have more than one version.  In the first, a great flood washed all the way up to the hills, drowning everyone as it rose.  The goddess Amo Yaobai instructed a young man and young woman to escape the deluge by enclosing themselves in a big drum.  The drum floated on the floodwaters while everyone else died.  When the waters receded the drum landed at the foot of what is now Bapo village.  The couple cut their way out of the drum and set foot on the land.  Amo Yaobai then gave then seeds for rice and for tea.  This couple, then, was the progenitor of the Jinuo people.

village in Jinuoshan

     Another myth credits the origin of the Jinuo to a widow with seven sons and seven girls.  These children married and as the original clan grew it divided into matriarchal and patriarchal villages.  Today Jinuo society is completely patriarchal, but that has apparently only been true for the last three centuries.
    Neighboring people called them Youle, after the mountain that dominates Jinuoshan district, where most of them lived.  They were mainly tea cultivators, which they traded for rice, though they did grow a little rice of their own, along with cotton, bananas and papayas, and supplemented their diet with wild game, fruits and vegetables from the adjacent jungles.
    Traditionally their villages were small, sited in isolated places in the mountains, only in contact with the lowlands when they went down to market their tea.   Most people lived collectively in longhouses.  Their leaders, and ultimate authorities in maters of ritual, custom and the arbitration of disputes, were the oldest male and the oldest female in the village.  People were poor and lived a harsh life of bare self-sufficiency.
    Like other hill peoples, they compensated for this with a rich cultural and community life.  Mutual aid was built into their environment.  When hunting parties went on a foray, while the choicest parts of the game they bagged went to the hunters who brought it down, the rest of the meat was distributed to all the families in the village.  Families helped each other at harvest time and banded together to fend off wild animals like elephants, boars and buffaloes threatening any of their fields.

Jinuo girls all dressed up

    The unmarried youth belonged to male and female bachelor associations that sponsored collective rites of passage for new members, usually at age 15, when boys shaved their heads except for three tufts of hair and girls stopped braiding theirs and wore it in the adult style.  They also underwent tattooing.  Girls had simple tattoos, like geometric patterns, applied to their lower legs.  Boys favored more elaborate designs of animals, flowers, the sun, moon and stars, applied to both their arms and their legs.  Youths worked at their individual domestic or field tasks and met at night for informal song and dance sessions near the communal house.   They chose songs from a vast traditional repertoire and accompanied them with a three-string lute, bamboo flutes of two, four or six holes, bamboo Jew’s harps and upright bamboo xylophones, comprising seven tubes of different lengths and diameters. 

      Marriage was by free choice and girls often initiated the romance.  Jinuo custom laid no restrictions on pre-marital sex, and in fact, some villages erected small huts for the privacy of this activity.  When they had a child the couple formally married, an event celebrated by the entire village. Then they moved into a separate cubicle in the communal longhouse and were expected to remain faithful after that.  Divorce, while theoretically possible, was very rare.

Nowadays Jinuo families live in separate houses

    1979 was a watershed year for the Jinuo.  Their recognition as a separate minority nationality coincided with the dismantling of the communes and the acceleration of changes wrought by economic development, like the extension of roads and electricity, the growth of markets and the boom in tea prices.  This process also brokered major cultural changes among this formerly isolated people.

    Now that they could earn more income by having been allowed to opt out of the communal farming system, they began to abandon their communal domestic system as well.  Slowly but surely, individual families left the longhouses and built their own individual dwellings.  These were stilted houses of wood and bamboo, in the standard general style of Xishuangbanna, though by the end of the century more often of brick or cement, with roofs of corrugated iron.  By the end of 2003 the longhouse was just a memory.  The last Jinuo families living in one moved out of it that year.
    The new villages were bigger than the old longhouse-based ones.  People were not as intimately involved with each other simply because there were perhaps three times as many now in a single settlement, in separate houses and neighborhoods, not all together in a single building.  The youth associations faded away and people sought entertainment from radios and televisions instead of traditional songs and dances.

weaving with a back-strap loom

    Nevertheless, Jinuo ethnic consciousness survived these changes.  The people still take pride in those peculiarly Jinuo characteristics that distinguish them from others.  The ethnic costume is one of the most obvious.  From bolls collected off the cotton trees on their farms, women spin thread and then turn it into bolts of cloth up to half a meter wide on a simple back-strap loom. Then they cut up the bolts and stitch the pieces together to make the costume components.
    The main men’s item is a short, long-sleeved jacket, basically white, with a few vertical and horizontal red pinstripes and a band of red on the lapels, hem and around the middle of the jacket.  Thicker bands are on the sleeves at the elbows and just below the shoulders.  A brightly embroidered disk representing the sun might grace the back of the jacket, just below the neckline.  They wear these with a pair of simple trousers, traditionally knee-length, a round embroidered cap or a black headscarf and a shoulder bag in a design similar to the jacket.
    The women’s jacket reaches to the hips.  The lower part only is white with red lines and bands, while the upper part is basically black with many horizontal bands of red, blue, green and yellow.  The sleeves are blue with red cuffs and a pair of embroidered sun disks enhances the back at the shoulder blades.  They were a breast-cloth under this, the top part heavily embroidered in cross-stitch designs.  The wraparound black skirt, with a band of bright color and embroidered flowers along the hems, drops to the knees.  Black or red and white leggings cover the legs from knee to ankle.  On their heads they wear a peaked, cowl-like cap, mostly white, with red and black lines and bands, falling to the shoulder blades.  They also carry shoulder bags of the same style as that worn by the men. 

woman's cap and ear ornaments

    Modern clothing has become more common for everyday wear in Jinuo villages, but a decent percentage of both men and women, young and old, still prefer to don part or all of their traditional outfits both at home and in the fields.  They may be more likely to wear it, or at least the jacket and shoulder bag, when going to the markets and attending village weddings.  And of course at festival time most Jinuo will dress fully traditional style, including the odd ear ornaments worn by both sexes, such as small tubes of bamboo, woolen thread or pompom balls, or even plucked flowers.
    While they no longer live communally in a single building, contemporary Jinuo villages are still tightly knit social units.  Each one houses a large village drum mounted on a stand. The drum symbolizes the sun and the spikes around its rim are the sunrays.  The Jinuo consider it sacred and only use it for special rituals and festivals.  The most important of these is the Temaoke Festival in winter, formerly in the twelfth lunar month, now fixed for 6-8 February by the solar calendar.  At this time villagers bring the drum on its big frame to the village square and place a table of offerings in front, holding chickens, egg, wine, tea and rice.

village elders, who preside over the festival events

    While prayers to the sun, represented by the drum, constitute an important part of the festival, it is actually staged in honor of the blacksmith.  Temaoke in the Jinuo language means “iron-forging festival.”  In ancient times primitive societies always regarded the blacksmith as a kind of magician, able to harness nature’s powers to create tools and weapons that enabled people to obtain what they needed to live from nature’s resources.  The Jinuo trace their origin, and that of the festival as well, to ancient times and credit the blacksmith with playing the major transformative role in their history.  Thanks to the blacksmith, the Jinuo got the tools and implements needed to sustain their lives by hunting and farming.

pouring libations to the drum

    The most important sacrifice takes place at the blacksmith’s home.  On the first morning of the festival he goes to the senior village woman’s house to recount the dream he had the previous night.  She then interprets the dream for what it will mean for the coming year’s harvest.  Dreams of swelling rivers and blossoming trees are good portents, for example, while deserts and barren trees are not.  A feast in her home follows this event.  Then the blacksmith, accompanied by his apprentices and one member of the senior lady’s family, returns to his workshop, kills a chicken and spreads its blood and feathers on his anvil, smithy and tools.  His family cooks the chicken and while dining the blacksmith mimics his work, shouting, “hammer out the old year, hammer in the new year.”

blackface 

    The main public event takes place in the village square and includes ritual homage to the drum and a set of traditional dances.  A large crowd attends, dressed almost entirely in Jinuo style, with a few variations, such as girls with knee-high, heeled boots or in blue jeans instead of skirts, or men wearing neckties embroidered with Jinuo motifs.  One by one a few of the senior males, escorted by a young man and a young woman, approach the drum and pour a libation of rice spirits on the top of its rim.  The performance show that ensues portrays the history of the Jinuo people through the medium of dance.

    The first act features a troupe of men in blackface and rags, some playing females, representing ancient, primitive Jinuo in the harsh times before they had a blacksmith.  A few carry a big drum suspended from two balance poles.  The others wield sticks, swords and pack-baskets and in the dance mime scraping and digging the earth, looking for something edible.  The blacksmith dance follows this one, with men swinging hammers as they move around an anvil and a tray of offerings.  The next act features men with plows, then ranks of women wielding hoes.

dancing with hoes

    After these skits, the elders wheel the drum on its stand into the center of the square.  Lines of men and women wave their tasseled drumsticks while they dance and a few men and women beat the big drum.  The show concludes with a big ring dance.  Action continues at the fairground, where traditional clothing items, shoulder bags, silver ornaments, tea and snacks are on sale until late afternoon, when the crowd returns to their homes to indulge in a grand feast of chicken, field crabs, ground pork cooked in bamboo tubes, fish baked in banana leaves and, naturally, plenty of liquor.
    Nowadays villages don’t actually need a resident blacksmith anymore.  People can get their tools, weapons, knives, axes and anything made of metal from the markets.  But Temaoke is not just a festival that honors the blacksmith.  Temaoke today celebrates the history of the Jinuo people and the maintenance of their strong sense of ethnic identity.  

(for more on the Jinuo and other people of Xishuangbanna, hill and plain, see my e-book Xishuangbanna:  the Tropics of Yunnan)
 

dance depicting ancient, pre-blacksmith life

 
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