The Dai People

In the plains along the major cities and in the slightly higher valleys of the foothills, wherever the land is fairly level and near a river or stream, live the Dai. They comprise 30% of Dehong's population, second to the Han's 48%. They are the same branch as their cousins across the border in Myanmar and there and in northern Thailand are called Shan, or Tai Yai. Dehong's Dai are Buddhist, like the Dai of Xishuangbanna, reside in the same sub-tropical environment and grow the same kinds of crops. But the differences between them are as distinctive as the similarities.

Dehong Dai villages lie near streams, averaging 40-50 houses and one temple compound, with clumps of bamboo on their edges, but also magnificent peepul, banyan and other long-limbed shade trees. Villagers take their rest breaks beneath their spreading branches. Their houses sit on the ground and are made of drab-brown brick with tile roofs, sometimes enclosed by a walled compound. Auxiliary buildings, and even the main houses of the less affluent, have walls of plaited bamboo and tin roofs.

Wells are housed in consecrated shrines, as in other Buddhist Dai areas, and the women carry water in buckets suspended at each end of a pole. They use the same method to convey crops from the fields or goods from the markets, with woven baskets of split bamboo instead
of buckets.

Men dress like the Han, but are often shirtless in the fields. Many tattoo their arms and chests. In former times they completely tattooed their thighs as well. Women wear the Dai sarong, usually black, with a long-sleeved, pale-coloured, side-fastened jacket. They tie their hair in a topknot and wrap it in a black silk, tubular turban or one of terry-cloth in pastel colours. Younger women may wear brighter colours and, like their counterparts across the border, apply thanaka powder, made from the soft outer bark of the tree of the same name, to their faces as a sunscreen and skin conditioner. Some young women wear it all the time, streaking the edges of it at the cheekbones, giving a feline accent to their facial appearance.

The Dai are skillful farmers, blessed with good fertility, reliant and abundant rainfall every year. They easily obtain two crops a year from their fields, in some places three. The rice from the Zhefang area has a national reputation and the pineapples are the best-tasting and most nutritious in the province. Dai cuisine is similar to that in Banna, with the various dishes prepared in the restaurants in the morning and, when appropriate, reheated before being served. Baked and sour foods are popular, spiced with chilli, coriander,lemon-grass, etc.

Because of its more northerly latitude, the Dai homeland in Dehong is a mite cooler than Xishuangbanna. It has not garnered the tourist attention that Banna has, but the Dehong Dai are perhaps more self-assured, polite, easy-going, refined, friendly and gracious than in Banna. A visitor feels welcome and comfortable everywhere in Dehong.