Other Hill Peoples

As a remote border prefecture in a faraway province, Xishuangbanna received scant attention from government authorities. Little money was allocated to development and the Dai princes who ruled the plains had no incentive to improve the life of the hill people. When the People's Liberation Army marched into Banna in 1950 the hill people were among the poorest in the region. Having just experienced the lawlessness of the warlord era they were reluctant to move around much, even in the hills, or to have any interaction with outsiders.

The Kucong in southeastern Mengla County used to leave whatever animals they caught in the forest out on a publicly used trail and then hide in the nearby woods. Customers came, examined the game and left behind what they considered its equivalent in salt and cloth. After they'd left the Kucong emerged, collected the goods and returned home. Such was the nature of trade in remote areas before roads, vehicles and market days made it so easy.

Back in the villages might be relatively safe, but life was hard. In some villages people had to take turns using the few available farming tools, metal ones like machetes, hoes and rakes, for metal tools were beyond most people's affordability range. Malaria was prevalent in the plains, all the more reason to stay away from them. Smaller ethnic groups were on the verge of extinction, such as the Kucong, who were down to 50 households in 1950. Discovering this, Party cadres spent six years trying before they succeeded in persuading the Kucong to end their isolation and move to more fertile locations at lower altitudes. Closer to the clinics, schools and markets, the Kucong revived and now have a population in the thousands.

The Kucong have been classified as a branch of the Lahu. (Another group of them lives in Zhemi township in Jinping County.) Several ethnic groups are so small in number, a few thousand each, that they have not yet been classified as a branch of any recognised nationality. Such are the Sanda and Ake of the central hills and the Kami in the plains of southern Mengla County, though Kami villages and lifestyle are hardly distinguishable from the Dai.

Kucong

Among the recognised minorities, small numbers of Miao live along the borde: in Mengla. The Yao live north of them in the same county, the Zhuang in the same area but at lower altitudes, while the northern townships of Mengla County and the hills around Puwen, 10 km south of the Simao border, are home to a branch of the Yi. West of Jinghong and in the hills of Menghai County live the Lahu and Bulang. In the far west, next to Menglian County, are a few Wa villages and in the far north, near the Simao border, is a single Jingpo village.

The Lahu, who inhabit the hills of the western third of the prefecture, are shyer and more reserved than most hill people. Like the Aini and Jinuo they live in houses of wood, bamboo and thatch, raised on stilts. They have a reputation for being skilled hunters and are sometimes called Musoe by Banna people, a Dai word meaning "hunter." Specifically that means tiger-hunter, for the word Lahu in the people's own language means "specially roasted tiger meat." According to their mythology, once hunters from several nationalities collectively killed and ate a tiger. The way one of them prepared the meat was so special that he was called the Lahu.

Although long ago they adopted farming as their primary occupation, hunting still supplements their diet. They don't go after tigers anymore, or any big animal, and mainly shoot birds. But most Lahu houses still have a crossbow and shotgun hanging on the wall near the entrance. The ancient hunting mode even influenced the style of their personal appearance, for both sexes shave their heads, leaving a small tuft of hair at the crown, and cover the head with a black turban. They say this custom originated when hunting dominated their way of life and was to prevent tigers, bears or monkeys from catching them by the hair.

Most Lahu women dress in one of two styles. The northern-dwelling Lahu wear a side-fastened, long-sleeved, waist-length jacket with contrasting colour strips along the lapel and cuffs, plus trousers and a black turban. Further south the style, trousers and turban are the same, but the coat reaches to the knees. Basically black cotton, the coat is trimmed along the hems, cuffs and lapel with small appliqueed squares, triangles and other shapes in red and white. Silver bulb clasps are often used to button the side.

The Lahu have a special cult of the drum. In common with other animist minorities, they relate the drum to the reproductive power of the earth. Traditional villages have a drum-house, where two big, metre-wide drums, one considered male and one female, are accommodated. On the 8th day of the 2nd moon the Lahu present the drums with food and wreaths of flowers. At one point the priest tosses popped rice and tea into the air, which all present try to catch, believing it will bring them good luck.

Where the Lahu inhabit the higher slopes of the hills, and the Dai the plains and valleys, sometimes the lower slopes are home to Bulang villages. More often the Bulang's higher-dwelling neighbours are the Aini, for Bulang-dominated townships are mainly in the southern Bulang Mountains and in western Menghai County's Bada and Xiding townships. The women dress similarly to the Dai, with long sarongs, usually black, green or red, and tie their hair in a top bun. They also don loose-fitting, long-sleeved jackets, sometimes a black turban, with the younger women in white or bright blue jackets, the older ones in black.

Bulang

Besides costume and house type-bamboo, wood and thatch, on stilts, with an adjoining verandah-the Dai influence is evident in Bulang music, dance and religion. The Bulang are Theravada Buddhists, though perhaps not as religious-minded as the Dai. Other than that, the Bulang lifestyle is roughly the same as that of their Aini and Lahu neighbours. They raise dry rice, vegetables and especially Pu'er tea, for which they have devised three ways of processing: souring, baking and loose-processing.

In the souring method they boil the fresh tea leaves, keep them shaded and moist until they are mouldy and sour, then bury them in bamboo tubes for a month. This is the tea they keep for themselves, for they like to chew and eat the leaves, which they say helps digestion. Tea from the other two processes they sell in the markets. One is to stir-fry the leaves, then bake them in bamboo tubes. The other is to boil or stir-fry the leaves, then spread them on a mat to dry in the sun.

Besides tea leaves, Bulang also like to chew tobacco. And smoke it. Men like the pungent variety in short pipes. Women smoke the milder stuff in long pipes. When chewed, the tobacco is mixed with quicklime and the shavings of a certain tree bark. Betel-chewing is also popular among women. It blackens their teeth, but also strengthens them against decay.

The last major ethnic group in Banna's hills is the Yao. Two main branches reside in Mengla County. The Landian live near the Lao border and in the northern townships, close to Jiangcheng County. The Mien occupy the central and southern parts of Mengla, especially around Yaoqu township, 35 km north up the Nanla River from the county seat. They are easy to distinguish from each other. Landian Yao women dress mainly in black-jacket, trousers and head-dress-with only magenta thread lapel decorations and silver clasps and neck rings adding any colour to the costume. The Mien women wear black, too, but the entire front of their trousers is fully embroidered with intricate cross-stitch patterns. The long jacket's front lapel is decorated with a thick ruff of red or magenta wool thread, and the ends of the turban are also embroidered.

Both Yao sub-groups live across the border in northern Laos. The Landian also have villages in Honghe and Wenshan Prefectures. A portion of the Mien have migrated into Thailand and Burma, the only Yao group to move that far west. The heaviest concentration of Yao settlements are east of Yunnan, in Guangxi, western Guangdong, southwest Hunan and southern Guizhou. Among the mountain people the Yao are considered the most Sinicised because their literature, mostly religious texts, is written with Chinese ideographs and the deities and rites are recognisably Daoist. Some villages even keep a set of old paintings of the Daoist deities, which are brought out and displayed at major rituals.

The Han influence is the classical one, not the contemporary one. The Yao are one of the most conservative minorities and least assimilated. The females still shave their eyebrows and prefer their traditional costume for everyday activities. They just put on more silver ornaments for festivals and weddings. Yao men might also dress in traditional style, which is not so colourful as the women's-plain black vest with embroidered pockets and silver clasps on the lapel for the Mien, plain black jacket with Chinese-style fasteners and a black, Muslim-like cap for the Landian-but the Yao are one of the few ethnic minorities where a substantial portion of the men dress in ethnic style.

While the Yao raise the same crops as other hill people in Banna, and build houses out of the same materials, they set them directly on the ground, not raise them on stilts. Ancient customs still determine their relations with one another, such as who may speak to whom and how. The festivals are still observed in a big way, especially Panwangjie, the 16th day of the 10th moon, which honours their mythical ancestor. And courtship is still very formal, involving Daoist-influenced tests of the young man to determine whether he is enough of a man to have a wife. One of these, for example, involves rolling off a platform onto a plank a metre below. The initiate passes the test only if he keeps his hands clasped around his knees throughout the fall.

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