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      

   

      

      

      

      

       

Yao Variety in Jinping County

                                                      by Jim Goodman

       Honghe Prefecture is a Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture and so either Hani or Yi officials occupy the top positions in the administration.  One of the two minorities, or both, resides in all of Honghe’s counties.  But in a few counties other minority nationalities are even more numerous than the Hani or the Yi.  Pingbian is a Miao Autonomous County.  Hekou, on the border with Vietnam, is a Yao Autonomous County.  And Jinping, next to it, is a Miao, Yao and Dai Autonomous County.

Landian Yao house near Mengqiao

       Several sub-groups of Hani and Yi live in various parts of Jinping County.  The Miao occupy remote mountain areas and Dai settlements dominate the plains in the south.  The Yao comprise 12% of the county’s population of roughly 350,000 and live mainly in the central and eastern parts.  All of Jinping’s ethnic minorities are still very rooted in their traditional culture, perhaps none more so than the Yao. 

       What makes Jinping special for anyone interested in the Yao minority is the presence of three major sub-groups, compared to the usual existence of just one sub-group in counties elsewhere in Yunnan.  They all speak the same Yao dialect and share the same mythology, history, religious practices and social customs.  They farm the same way, growing mainly rice, maize, bananas and cassavas, in the central and southern areas using the kind of irrigated terraces famous throughout the Ailaoshan area of the lower Red River. 

       The size and architecture of their villages will vary a bit according to sub-group.  More noticeably, the women’s clothing is quite different depending on the sub-group, which makes exploring Jinping Yao areas a great photo excursion, especially since practically all Yao females prefer traditional clothing and so do a large portion of the men.

Landian Yao ladies in Mengping

       The usual way into the county is from the Red River town of Manhao, in southern Mengzi County.  After crossing the river one option is to continue straight to Jinping city.  The other is to make a left turn and head southeast to Mengqiao, a small, nondescript district township with a couple hotels and restaurants, interesting only because the villages all around are mostly Yao.  Mengping, ten km further down the road, is just a large village, but holds market day every pig and snake day in the 12-day animal calendar.  The crowd is almost entirely Yao women, both sellers and buyers.

       The sub-group in Mengqiao district is the Landian Yao, the same as the dominant, black-clad Yao in Yuanyang and Luchun Counties.  But they live in simpler houses of one long building, thatched and sitting on the ground.  To the side of the house stands an open-air, roofed balcony.  Villages for the most part consist of clusters of such houses in a cleared slope below a forest.  Some families live outside the village perimeters, closer to their farms and several minutes’ walk from each other.

silver disc on a Landian turban

Landian woman and child, Mengping

       While the men here wear the same black jacket with coin-buttons and brimless black cap as their counterparts in Yuanyang and Luchun Counties, the Landian women dress a little differently.  They use the same black cloth for components cut and shaped the same way, but the jacket collar is white with black squares, the decorative acrylic woolen threads hang much further down from the collar, way past the waist, are fuller and white or pale pink instead of magenta.  They use the same thread to enhance their thin white belts and the ends of their shoulder bags.

twining thread outdoors,near Mengqiao

       The women’s headdress is also black cloth, like the western Landian, also rises above coils of black horsehair around the hairline, but is peaked, conical and pleated in the back.  The older women in the Mengping market wore their hair in a bun, wrapped in a medium-blue scarf and topped with an embossed silver disc or, if they didn’t own a silver disc, one of plywood or thick cardboard.

       Market day starts early and begins winding down around noon.  On the day I attended it was rather cool in the morning and the Yao women wrapped the woolen thread hanging from their collars around their hands to keep them warm.  But by the afternoon it was much warmer.  As I hiked by the banana plantations, rice fields and cassava patches along the rutty, unpaved road back to Mengqiao I passed several Yao houses where the women were out in the yard, enjoying the fine weather while they twined thread or stitched clothing.  And unlike the somewhat skittish women I met at the market (their first foreigner?) women along the road invited me into the yard for tea and a chat.

Hongtou Yao woman in Jinping

Hongtow Yao woman

       Returning from Mengqiao to the Manhao junction, a left turn takes one through the mountains to Jinping city, about 35 km south.  Jinping lies on a slope, doesn’t have any parks, but has good views from its edges and is blessed with a large ethnic presence, mainly Hani and Yao.  The nearest villages are Hani or Yao and the Yao in this part of the county are the Hongtou Yao.  Compared to the sedate apparel of Landian women, that of Hongtou Yao women is positively flamboyant.

unmarried Hongtou Yao woman

       Their name means Red-headed Yao and comes from the bright red, peaked cap worn by the married women.  It is held in place by a thick silver band around its base and the women knot the hair above it inside the cap, shaving any hair that might appear below the silver band.  This is the most obvious costume component, but not all local Yao women wear it.  Some prefer a plain, bulky black turban instead, crop their hair short, but do not shave it below the turban.  They are known locally as Baotou Yao, otherwise dress identically, and sometimes live in the same villages as the Hongtou.  Young girls of both groups leave their hair long and wear no headgear at all.

       Equally striking are the fully embroidered, shin-length trousers they wear under a long-tailed, black, front-fastened, long-sleeved jacket.  It is trimmed with embroidery along the hem, cuffs and lapel, though not as elaborately as the trousers or the fully embroidered shoulder bag.  The front is decorated with small colored pompoms along the lapel and fastened with simple coin-buttons or, if they can afford it, a row of rectangular silver buckles. The coat is held by a belt with colored ends draping over the buttocks.  Girls add a few embroidered tabs to hang from the belt.  On special occasions women wear silver neck rings, butterfly pendants attached to chains, necklaces with silver coins, and, like Landian women, silver earrings with an arrow piercing a hoop. 

Yao arrow earring

       Many Hongtou women still weave and dye their own cotton cloth, selling their surplus on the county market days.  But embroidery is a skill practiced by all and the most common spare-time activity.  They employ the cross-stitch method, making patterns with tiny x’s stitched into the cloth.  Most patterns have traditional names and meanings and a proper pair of trousers has to have certain patterns in certain rows, divided by lines that symbolize their terraces, though the bulk of the embroidery is left up to the skill and creative imagination of the woman herself.

       Hongtou Yao villages lie both close to the main commercial centers and in the remotest parts of the mountains.  They generally live in wide, one-story houses of mud-brick and wood, with roofs of thatch or corrugated iron.  The Hongtou Yao are avid market-goers, especially the women.  Villagers from nearby Jinping can be seen in the city any day, but especially on the market days, held every six days. 

       The county’s market day schedule runs north to south to west, one day apart; first Adebo (snake and pig days), then Jinping (horse and rat days), Nafa (sheep and ox days), Mengla (monkey and tiger days), Sanguocun (rabbit and chicken days) and finally Zhemi (dragon and dog days).  Enterprising Hongtou Yao women will take their cloth, herbs or whatever to many of these, particularly the string from Adebo to Mengla.  And while they wait for business they will inevitably keep busy with some kind of embroidery work.  They might also have their babies along, strapped across the back, wearing an embroidered cap festooned with charms to repel any lurking evil spirits.

Hongtou baby cap

Yao cloth market in Jinping

       In Jinping the market stalls begin around the center of the city and run all the way downhill and into every lateral street.  The Yao cloth merchants set up near the top, while those hawking vegetables, herbs, molasses or firewood set up further down, often right next to Hani or Yi women selling the same thing.  While the married women run their stalls the young women, in their finest outfits and decked with silver ornaments, manly wander the streets, stop for snacks and chats with friends and possibly keep an eye out for Yao bachelors.

       The Hongtou Yao also attend the market day in Adebo, the day before Jinping’s, but the next venues, Nafa on the Vietnam border and Mengla a little west of Nafa, only those Jinping area Hongtou making the market day runs turn up, and strictly as sellers.  A few Red Yao, who dress similarly, may come to Nafa from the Vietnam side.  But the large number of Yao who attend market days in Nafa and Mengla belong to the third major Yao sub-group in the county—the Sha Yao.

Sha Yao women in Nafa on market day

        Nafa is also known as Jinshuihe, which is actually the name of the river beside it and the border with Vietnam.  It’s a small town, only active on market day.  The border crossing is at a bridge about a kilometer outside town.  A few Vietnamese and ethnic minorities cross over for market day, but the main participants are a Hani sub-group different from the one in Jinping, two kinds of Miao and the Sha Yao.  

       On Mengla’s market day, about a half hour west, there are few if any from Vietnam attending, but the other minorities present in Nafa also come to Mengla, joined by the local Dai.  The Sha Yao are very numerous at both venues.  Some of the older ones set up stalls, but most of the younger ones stroll around in groups.  Encountering this third Yao sub-group after getting used to the ultra-colorful Hongtou Yao is almost like a return to the Landian look.

Sha Yao girl in Mengla

Sha Yao girl in Nafa

       Sha Yao women also dress in black, like the Landian, and decorate the front of the jacket with long, magenta woolen threads hanging down the center, though only about half as wide.  They also wear the same kind of silver ornaments, like the jacket fastener, neck rings, arrow earrings, often two pairs at a time.

       But several differences make the Sha Yao easy to distinguish from the Landian.  A long white apron, with a broad band of printed red and white across the top, is the most obvious.  A cotton cape of white or light blue is another.  Over this they usually sling red shoulder bags with blue sides.  The cap is a red-edged, black piece of cloth folded in three and laid across the top of the head.  They leave a brim of about 7 cm extending in front and wind a string over the brim and tie it under the hair bun at the back of the head.  The rest of the cloth falls loose in the back and hangs to the shoulders.  Females young and old wear the same headgear, in contrast to the Landian and Hongtou.

Longgu Sha Yao village

       Sha Yao settlements are more remotely sited, usually high up in the hills, than Landian or Hongtou ones and are generally much larger as well.  Longgu, for example, east of the Jinping-Nafa road about halfway between the two, an hour’s hike up a steep hill, holds nearly 300 houses, some of them within the forest at the edge of the village.  One of twelve Sha Yao villages in the area, growing mainly papaya, sugarcane and maize, its residents live in long, single story, mud-brick houses with thatched or tin roofs and an open-air balcony.  Stacks of firewood sit next to the houses and small picket fences enclose the yards around them.  Village men who’d just finished some threshing work invited me to have a meal with them while we chatted about Yao life and customs.  We had roast pork, cassavas, peppers and noodles, washed down with rice liquor, a typical Yao meal.

       In short, it was a day similar to a day spent with other Yao sub-groups.  Jinping Yao differ greatly in clothing and aesthetic taste and differ slightly in domestic life and the observance of annual festivals.  All other aspects of their culture, though, are common to all.  And one trait they also share is the habit of grace and hospitality to a guest.  Even unexpected total strangers are welcome.  It’s a custom that guarantees the visitor’s warm reception.

Hongtou Yao women bring in firewood for sale in Jinping.

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                               for more on the Yao and their Ailaoshan neighbors,

                                          see my e-book The Terrace Builders