Indigenous Mountain Folks Aini and Jinuo

The Dai account for just over a third of Xishuangbanna's inhabitants. The Han are only slightly less numerous, concentrated in the three large cities, though there are scattered Han settlements up in the hills. But the mountains are the main abode of the other third, the non-Dai minorities, people like the Aini, Jinuo, Lahu, Miao, Yao, Bulang and Yi. The Aini and the Jinuo are the most publicised, partly because they inhabit the mountainous areas closest to Jinghong. While the Jinuo are a small community, confined mostly to the hills around Jinuoshan township and a few areas in northern Mengla County, the Aini are dispersed in all three counties and have the largest population of any hill people in the prefecture.

The Aini are a branch of the Hani, who split from the parent group fifty generations ago to establish themselves as a separate sub-group. People in Banna generally know them as Aini rather than Hani, but they call themselves Akha, with some 30 sub-groups of their own. Starting out in the hills near Dian Lake, they migrated south, crossed the Red River and continued into the northern Lao provinces of Phong Saly, Luang Nam Tha and Bokeo, and slightly southwest into Xishuangbanna and southwest Simao. About 200 years ago or more they began moving into northeast Burma and in the early 20th century began establishing settlements in northern Thailand.

The original homeland, though, the place where they evolved their traditional way of life, was in Xishuangbanna and the counties of Lancang and Menglian, just west. The Aini developed a complex set of rules, taboos and guidelines to embrace every aspect of their lives. The goal is to maintain the harmony which nature requires to enable them to eke out a living in the harsh environment of the hills.

Traditionally the Aini way of agriculture was slash-and-burn, making new rice fields every two years, letting the old ones lie fallow for a decade or more until they were ready to be used again. Most of the year's festivals were associated with key events in the rice-farming cycle. Rice had a soul, according to Aini beliefs, and the field where it grew had a spirit-owner who must be kept placated.

Aini

Spirits were innumerable. Some were potential allies. Others were fickle and fearsome. But there were ways to deal with these spirits, from propitiation to avoiding any behaviour among themselves likely to arouse a spirit's wrath. Hence the rules, customs, social codes and the special remedies. The Aini traditionally marked off their own, human world from the realm of the spirits by a pair of simple wooden gates at the entrance paths to each end of the village. Basically a crossbar over two upright poles, they could be more elaborate on top, have carved figures and objects attached to the poles, or be decorated with bamboo chain-links.Villages also erected a big swing every late summer, replacing the old one, but now activated for the 3-day Swing Festival.

Only the poorest and most remote Aini still practise slash-and-burn agriculture. In fact, many villages have abandoned rice farming altogether and raise the three most common cash crops in Banna-tea, sugar cane and rubber trees. Consequently the rice-associated festivals have lapsed, as well as much of the traditional belief system, following decades of ideological assault. Nevertheless, a majority of Aini villages are more or less traditional, which architecturally means houses of wood and bamboo on stilts, with an attached open balcony, and a roof of thatch or wood tiles.

The Aini woman's costume is one of the most striking in the prefecture. Women wear a short, blue-black cotton skirt, pleated in the back and flat in the front, leggings, a halter, long-sleeved jacket, shoulder bag and lots of beads and silver ornaments. The jacket, bag and leggings are often highly embroidered and decorated with seeds, beads, shiny green beetle wings, pompoms and feathers. But the outstanding piece is the head-dress. Each sub-group has its own unique style. in general it comprises a fitted round cap, lined with rows of beads or seeds, perhaps silver coins and studs, and may have an attached piece on the back or the top which is also festooned with silver studs, coins, pompoms, etc.

Most older women still like to wear the Aini costume, the younger generation less so, though they do dress up for the festivals and weddings. Some villages have reinstalled the gates and all of them still have the big swings. Villages nearest the big towns or enriched by rubber tree plantations (southwest Mengla County, for example) are the likeliest to have assimilated into plains culture. Further away and on into Menglian and Lancang Counties the old traditions still dominate the lifestyle.

The same cannot be said, however for the Jinuo. In the past their material culture in many ways resembled that of the Aini. They practised slash-and-burn agriculture to grow upland dry rice. They also grew tea, the introduction of which Jinuo myth credits to Zhuge Liang. They used the same kind of spring traps and cages for hunting in the forest and the same wood and bamboo to make their domestic utensils, baskets and containers and build their houses. But the house itself was very different. Raised on stilts, made of bamboo and wood, it was a long structure with several small rooms in the interior hall, on each side of a row of five or more hearths.Related families lived together, but each had its own hearth.

Jinuo

Jinuo women wore long-sleeved jackets, a white peaked cap, calf-length skirt and leggings. Both jacket and skirt feature many strips of contrasting bright colours. Men wore a light-coloured vest or jacket and white turban. The women wove the cotton cloth themselves on backstrap looms. When a girl reached maturity she started wearing a daobi, a half-metre wide strip of cloth around the waist and over the longer skirt.

Historically the Jinuo were one of the most reclusive peoples in the area, staying aloof in their hills, rarely venturing out of them. But in 1942, reacting against a Guomindang demand for a new "tobacco tax," the Jinuo revolted and persuaded other hill-dwelling minorities to join them. Organised and led by the Jinuo, this general uprising of the hill folks in central Banna took a year for the government forces to finally suppress.

Afterwards the Jinuo reverted to their normal isolation until 1957, when the government built the road from Mengyang to Menglun, right through their homeland, and established the first primary school in Jinuoshan. The still mysterious Jinuo were declared a minority nationality in 1979. Schools were set up in all major villages and from then on the assimilation process picked up momentum.

Jinuo who benefited from the economic reforms began making new houses of brick and wood, in the general rural Han style. The longhouses disappeared nearly everywhere and the only ones an interested visitor could examine were the models put up in Jinghong's Minority Nationalities Park and the new re-creation erected in Longshuai, on the highway, 18 km east of Jinuoshan. Some villages still employ bamboo and wood for domestic architecture, in the Aini style and for single-family occupancy. But except, maybe, on big festival days, it's a rare Jinuo woman who wears the traditional garments, other than the shoulder bag. Jinuo still get together for the annual traditional celebrations, but the younger generation does not even speak the Jinuo language.

TOP