By Evan
“You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good.” Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Tiger's Mouth rice paddy terraces
When we left the brand new yet decrepit county capital of Yuanyang (元陽縣) sitting at 300 meters elevation on the bank of the dammed Red River to climb to the mile-high old county capital of Xinjie (新街鎮), we knew we were making a huge down payment of sorts. Fortunately the steep price for entry into the world of the Hani people turned out to pay extraordinary dividends.
After what seemed like an eternity of climbing, including one brief stop to help some women of the Elderly Council (老年協會) plant corn along a mountainside for villagers too old to work their own fields, we rounded the corner of a hill covered with buffalo and beheld the first city. To look at it, Old Yuanyang is just a dense line of dirty old buildings aligned along a winding ridge reminiscent of a Portuguese mountain village. The mountain dwelling Han Chinese of Zhejiang and Fujian tend to build their settlements in valleys near sources of water, and in fact, not a few include the word keng (坑), which means depression. The Hani and Yi of these parts, on the other hand, prefer to cluster villages on peaks overlooking their fields — at night lighting up the valleys like a Christmas tree laid sideways. This living arrangement is convenient for defense and landslide management, but it means that life revolves around permanent cycles of hard work. The difficulty of their situation, like a grain of sand in an oyster, has actually caused them to transform every aspect of daily life into something of pearly splendor.
Once we had time to leave the town and scramble off the highway at a place called Tiger’s Mouth (老虎嘴), the magnificence of what the Hani had done here unfolded below our feet. The mountains outside of Yuanyang, the same as for hundreds of miles north, south, and west, have been cut over thousands of years by hundreds of generations into staggered earthen pools. Mountain streams trickle through halved bamboo stalks to fill the topmost paddies, from which the water cascades through small slits down from paddy to paddy all the way to the bottom of the valley hundreds of meters below. Everywhere that has not been turned into a paddy is planted over in corn or soybeans. Almost nowhere is left uncultivated — no waste whatsoever. Sprinkled across the landscape are tiny thatched cottages (天棚), the size of a tool shed and tightly packed with wooden plank beds and farm implements, where the Hani live for weeks at a time during planting season or harvest. We spent a muddy several hours skimming the edges of the slope before darkness began to fall. To scale back out, we scanned the horizon to find four women in blue shirts and headscarves carrying loaded baskets climbing a nearly vertical footpath as fast as mountain goats. We traced to the path and climbed out huffing and puffing, and wondered just exactly how those old women had done it with such ease.
How does that get popular?
We soon thereafter came to find out that the Hani women always seem to be hauling something — babies, vegetables, bricks, anything — and not always the way you’d imagine. The babies they all handle neatly in self-tied cloth papooses, but for everything else they’re divided pretty evenly into two factions, the shoulder-strappers and the forehead-toters. What do I mean by forehead toter? I mean that they load a basket full of whatever and pick it up by wrapping its straps around their head and leaning forward, walking miles and miles with a godawful weight on their necks.
The idea of bearing a heavy basket around my neck was just too mysterious, and so two days later in Lüchun (綠春縣) the next county capital on a ridge, when I ran across a group of eight or so women aged 30 to 50 marching up and down the stairs like worker ants with loads of sand in bamboo baskets slung around their foreheads, I just had to go investigate. Why do you wear the baskets like this and not on your shoulders, I asked one of the older women. “We’re used to it. Try it yourself! (習慣了！你帶一回!)” And in no time I had a 50 kg basket of sand wrapped around my forehead with me squatting ready to pick it up. I had expected it to pull my neck off, but once standing, most of the weight was supported on my back. The hardest part turned out to be maintaining balance with my hands on the ties, especially maneuvering up seven flights of rail-less stairs around other women making brisk cycles. The second hardest part was all those women laughing at me as though I were wearing high heels and a dress. At the top, out of breath, I dropped my load in front the laughing women and a group of men who were shoveling, brick-laying, and otherwise building. Why do you make the women carry these heavy baskets, I asked? “Men do work, and women carry things (男人幹活，女人帶東西),” one man answered in between giggles. I suppose he meant that men do the skilled labor and women function as pack mules, but I guarantee you that seven story, 50 kg forehead haul sure felt like “work” to me!
A Hani woman of Lüchun stitching her "train"
Beside their work ethic, the women of Yuanyang and Lüchun stand out most in their apparel. Out here, you see, the women believe strongly that “you are what you wear,” and the vast majority conform strictly to the traditional patterns of their people’s clothing codes. That is to say, there is a general pattern to adhere to for each group — black pants and dark blue hats for the Hani of Yuanyang, black/blue pants with a bright shirt and pink/white double layered “trains” for the Yi of Yuanyang, and black turbans with red tassels and matching “trains” for the Hani of Lüchun. However, outside of just a general pattern which identifies you as part of a certain group, the women are allowed to choose their own details and colors, making for vast, interesting differences among even small groups of women in the same family. However, as I was told by a Hani tailor in Lüchun, “wearing all that is a big hassle,” and many city women wear it only some of the time or on formal occasions and by a woman in stilettos in a tea shop, “It’s ok for those country women (農村女人)” to dress traditionally, but the “working class (單位的)” like herself had moved on.
Speaking of progress, one mustn’t forget that this is after all the 21st century, and sooner or later all traditions do tend to go the way of the hatchback Chevy. After a long walk down the ridge spine that is Lüchun, I ended up at the door of a drink shop / bar with the tin rolling door half open and walk in to ask if they can sell me some juice. Two men in their 30’s are sitting at a table eating and inform me that it’s a bar, and that it didn’t open until much later. However, the short, muscular one wearing a purple t-shirt and gray slacks told me he’d be offended if I didn’t sit down with them for a drink with them on the occasion of the national holiday of Labor Day (五一勞動節), which I had completely forgotten. He introduced himself as Old He and his friend, chubby with disheveled hair and a half open, short sleeved button-down shirt, as Old Hu. Old He was full-blooded Hani and works for the Organization Department of the county party office (黨縣委組織部), which he was quick to remind me is not the same as the government. Old Hu worked for the Department of Animal Husbandry (畜牧局), inspecting live animals for diseases and illegal hormones at the market. Old He’s girlfriend was the owner of the little two-story bar which had been open for four months, and Old Hu was married to a Han woman who lived in Jianshui (建水縣) over 200 km away with his daughter, whom he sees only every so often.
Old He poured everybody a glass of sweet, red bayberry alcohol (楊梅酒), ordered the 16-year-old girl working there to make us tomato eggs and mushrooms, and started up talking, something he did in a manner characteristic to someone in the government, using way too many catch phrases for natural conversation. “There are pros and cons to drinking (喝酒有利有弊),” he said. “The upside is that you can make friends, but the down is that you harm your body (利就是能交朋友，以酒交友嘛. 弊就是對身體不好),” he says before he lights a cigarette. Old He said for fun he almost every day engages in the trilogy (三部曲) of dinner and drinks, then karaoke and drinks, followed by barbecue and more drinks. Lao Hu joked that Lao He is extravagant (奢侈) because he spends the people’s money (what a joke!), but for the most part remained quiet except for compulsively toasting me whenever there’s a gap in conversation. Thankfully, neither was interested in getting me wasted at 3 in the afternoon, since as Old Hu put it, “We like to enjoy our alcohol, not like those northerners (我們喜歡慢慢品酒，不像北方人一口乾).” I liked them immediately.
I started asking questions about Hani culture. Old He, who had worked in the party for over 10 years and Kunming for five, spoke excellent Mandarin and was very excited to explain things to his new foreign friend. As for the clothing, He explained that the turban (包头) and the “train (尾巴)” on back of the women’s outfits are a matched set (配套). It is their traditional obligation to wear both once they get married (talk about an easy identifier for “off limits”). If the woman is not very traditional, she can get away with casual clothes most of the time but should still don the turban and train when in the company of their husband’s family. As I had heard before, he explained that they can sew any patterns or colors they want, as long as they adhere to the general pattern of their tribe (支系). What do you mean, tribe? “There are at least ten different tribes of Hani in the Lüchun area (綠春縣有十多個哈尼支系)” all speaking a slightly different language and preferring slightly different base colors. Old Hu then informed me that if I wanted to see the most colorful outfits of all the different tribes, I should come to the Sunday market the following day to get an eyeful. Old He added a final point that he wouldn’t want his wife to wear the turban every day, but he’d insist that she wear it in the presence of his parents and that she never dine at the same table with him and his parents, per an old Hani tradition.
However, he then explained very proudly that, “We’re progressing in the direction of the Han, becoming sinicized (我们哈尼族正在往汉族发展，在汉化)” and pointed at his own clothes as proof. Two minutes later he contradicted himself, “If we’re talking about courtesy to guests, Yunnan is number one, since we’re all minority populations out here! (要讲热情，云南还是第一，因为少数民族多!)” I suppose he did give me fair warning by telling me he works for the party Organization Department!
A little while later, He’s girlfriend comes back carrying bags of vegetables. She was tall, about 30, and ruggedly attractive, little crow’s feet on the corners of her eyes, wearing capri pants and a tight white tshirt. She was a modern kind of girl and even a little sassy in her exchanges with Old He, who nevertheless maintained complete control over her. I tried to talk to her for courtesy’s sake, but she only eeked out a few passing words to me. I stood up to let her sit, but Old He pushed me back down into the chair, saying, “Don’t worry about it, she has things to do (不用，她有事情要做).” A minute later while discussing the local tea, Old He screamed to his girlfriend, “Go make us some tea! (去給我們泡茶!)” She obediently brought us out three steaming cups of green tea, from which He and Hu didn’t take one sip. Looking right at her, I said thank you, but Lao He responded for her, “You’re welcome! (不用客气!)” This was a little disconcerting to me since we were sitting in her bar and eating her food. I’m not sure how many girls back home would call her condition “progress,” but at least he wasn’t not going to make her wear the turban all the time once they’re married (I just hope she doesn’t plan on eating dinner at the adult table!).
On the third glass of bayberry wine, Old He invited me out to KTV and drinking at 11pm, a little too late for me, so I thanked them profusely and headed back to the hotel to rest up before the market the next morning.
Elegance in traditions?
And just as promised, the morning market did not disappoint. Whereas during the week, Lüchun is a quiet town mostly full of “modern” inhabitants, on Sunday the country folks invade, changing the usual lingua franca of Mandarin dialect into the all-Hani-all-the-time show. Women in every color of Hani outfit — as well as a few smatterings of Yi (彝族) and Yao (瑤族) — flood the lower half of the town where the vendors are set up. Down in the animal market section, where pigs outnumber humans, I found old Hu and his colleagues immunizing and tagging baby porkers. His voice was so gone from drinking, singing, and smoking the night before that he could hardly talk, which made me glad for my decision not to hang out with them. We photographed the spectacle for over an hour before packing up our stuff and finally rolling on down the line.
I love this stretch of Yunnan provincial highway 214 so much because to me, it’s like going back in time to a world where values are completely different. From the terraces that have transformed the mountains the way coral transforms a seabed, to the intricate and beautiful clothes which are the pride of the still traditional women, to the elegant mountaintop village homes, it is an emphasis on handicraft that typifies the region. It is this emphasis on “craft by hand (手藝)” that philosopher and “Last Confucian” Liang Shuming (梁漱溟) defined as the soul of Chinese culture, or what gave it strength over other cultures. Liang disdained what he saw in the early 1900′s as the culturally corrosive Western influence of “craft by technology (工藝)” — that which removes the tradition and art from creation and replaces them with procedure and science. Ironically, just about the only places to find traces of said traditional “Chinese” values are in the areas dominated by “minorities (少數民族),” or ethnically non-Chinese Chinese. Sure, they’re being influenced by mainstream culture just as much as, say Orthodox Jews in New York City, but at least the old ways have not been completely marginalized…yet.
- Hani women of two different tribes getting into it about something at the Lüchun Sunday market
It should also be noted that while places like Lüchun inspire us, it is in the end impossible for us Westerners to pass ultimate judgment on the locals. While what they have is beautiful like a wild peacock, the lifestyle that it comes from — an austere existence of bitter work and inflexible values — is hardly one I would feel at home in. And while I’m sure the Hani are in a much better position than we city folk to survive bad times, I doubt a member of their society could have invented the computer, without which this post could not have been written.
*Title borrowed shamelessly from James Howard Kunstler’s novel World Made by Hand
