Mung Sing is the home to more than 9 different ethnic groups, making it a remarkable repository of ethnic diversity and indigenous knowledge. The traditional clothing, handicrafts, livelihood systems and rituals of these ethnic groups are a valuable part of the province’s cultural heritage.
LOLO
The Lolo are the smallest minority in Muang Sing district, while they represent the largest ethnic nationality in Yunnan Province, south-western China, their original homeland.
As a result of the influence of their larger ethnic neighbours cultural practices of the Lolo vary greatly from location to location. In Laos this influence comes mainly from Tai Lue people. The language the Lolo speak in Laos can be considered as a mixture of the ancient Lolo language and Chinese.
Their economy is based on agriculture and animal husbandry, they are famous for breeding goats, sheep and horses. Besides rice, Lolo grow fruit trees around their villages and are also known as long distance traders, using their horses to transport goods over the mountains.
Traditionally the Lolo have a patriarchal clan system with two castes, the Black Bones and the White Bones. The latter were bonded labours to the Black Bones. The Black Bones used to be the land owners, while the White Bones worked as peasants, not being allowed to own production tools, not even a single knife. During the last century the Lolo society underwent severe changes, in socialist countries their old feudal systems were abolished and land was made available to all villagers.
The Lolo are considered animists, particularly concerned with bad and ancestral spirits. They are a very religious people and even their houses reflect this. There are usually two altars, one ancestral altar hangs on the wall at the left side of the house and the house spirit altar stands at the rear of the central bay.
In their belief system, mit do and ket do are the spirits that govern the world. Mit do is the master of the universe and created mankind. They worship the spirits of the water, trees, forest, earth and sky.
In addition Lolo people venerate their deceased ancestors, for which they maintain an altar in their houses, giving them food and drink daily.
The traditional head of the village is called Ho Nanoi, besides him there are male shamans (pimu), as well as male and female sorcerers. The shaman is responsible for important cultural and religious affairs in the village and organizes these events and rituals. The sorcerers specialize in curing illnesses by traditional methods. In every Lolo village there is a special house for the village spirit at the upper end of the village. The Lolo believe strongly in amulets and charms.
The life of the Lolo in Muang Sing is hard due to their recent arrival in the district. There is a lack of cultivable land and most of the Lolo work on the rice fields of other ethnic groups.
YAO (Mien)
The Yao are an old and widely distributed ethnic group with dozens of subgroups. It is believed that the ancestors of the Yao lived in China 4000 years ago. The main subgroup and the one living in Muang Sing are the Mien. The migration of the Yao from their place of origin, China, has been caused by infertile land, but also by the expansion of the opium trade and the reprisals of the Chinese government against hill tribe peoples. After the people’s revolution and the foundation of the Lao PDR in 1975 many Mien left the country for Thailand.
The Mien do not produce their own silk or cotton, but they are masters in the art of dyeing, embroidering and sewing their distinctive costumes. The men are skilled black- and silversmiths. They cultivate dry as well as wet rice, supplementing their diet with different kinds of secondary crops. The Yao in general are famous for cultivating opium poppies, but have been forced to give it up by the Lao government’s opium eradication program.
Mien villages are usually very small, from 15 to 60 houses. Similar to the Hmong they build their houses on the ground and these houses normally consist of three to four rooms.
Yao society is strongly patriarchal in its organization. The husband is the absolute commander of the family. Traditionally they were polygamous (men tended to have six to seven women) and favoured large households. Nowadays the trend goes towards monogamy. To add labour power to their household they sometimes adopt children from other ethnic groups, paying their parents, so that in some Yao communities adopted children make up a fifth of the total population.
The mainstream religion of the Mien is still uncertain and a matter of controversy. Some anthropologists consider it a complex system of animism, ancestor worship and an ancient form of Taoism. Mien Taoism includes guardian spirits for the family, which protect them against all kinds of evil spirits, disease, misfortune, etc. Women participate in religious activities to full extent.
Funeral service is a complex and expensive event in Mien communities. Funerals normally last for three days.
Silver is placed in the mouth of the deceased. After the body is washed and the hair is cut, the dead person is placed on a bier in front of the ancestral altar. Relatives and friends, wearing white stripes of cloth around their heads, meet for prayers. The body is then buried in a coffin unless the person died in an accident or due to any other unnatural cause, then the body is burnt.
TAI LUE
The Lue probably originated in Kwangtung province of south-western China. They have the oldest recorded history of all the Tai groups according to which the first Lue king was crowned 1180 in Yunnan province of China. He ruled the kingdom of Sip Sawng Panna, of which Muang Sing was a part. In Muang Sing they arrived around 701 A.D. With a population of nearly 120.000 the Lue form one of the largest ethnic groups in Laos, with their cultural centre in Muang Sing district.
When Muang Sing came under French control in 1904, the ruling Lue prince (Cao Fa) had built up good relations with the French, the Cao Fa was able to rule his small principality quite independently. His son who succeeded him in 1907 did not share his liking for the French. He led the Lue in rebellion against the French in December 1914. This rebellion lasted two years. The French army mounted three military expeditions against the Lue before they could restore order. They stripped the small principality of its independence and converted it into a simple district (muang) and established French administration.
The Lue have good craftsmen, especially silversmiths, the women are skilled weavers of a great variety of textile items. Lue people emphasize the importance of their agriculture, which is based on the growing of glutinous rice (khaw niyaw) and a wide variety of vegetables. Nowadays most Lue are still farmers, yet in Muang Sing they work for the government and are also engaged in trading.
Lue villages are well arranged and generally neat and clean. Their houses are built on poles and traditionally enclosed with bamboo mats and a thatched roof. Every Lue village has its own temple. Around Muang Sing the typical Lue temple has a gabled roof with two or three tiers, resulting in several elaborate eaves at different levels.
The Lue traditionally are monogamous, with polygamy for higher castes, until quite recently.
They adopted Theravada Buddhism during the fourteenth century. Nevertheless they hold up their ancient belief in natural forces, like spirits of rivers, forests and mountains. The village spirit (phi muang) is highly worshipped and a spirit house is normally erected in every village and annual sacrifices performed. There are also 32 guardian spirits who are worshipped during a 96 period, meaning three days for every spirit.
The Lue are proud of their many festivals they celebrate according to the Lue calendar. These are normally linked to Buddhism and the life of the monks. In the past it was compulsory for Lue youths to become monks, as schools did not exist and the local temple was the only place were young people could learn.
HMONG
The Hmong are an old and populous ethnic group. In Laos, they are the most numerous single ethnic group. Their history is marked by many armed struggles, rising first against the French colonisers, aiding the CIA in the “Secret War” against communist North Vietnamese troops and Pathet Lao. When the royalists lost the war in Laos and the Lao PDR was founded, ten thousands of Hmong had lost their lives and many took refuge in Thailand, the United States and France.
There are many different subgroups, normally characterised by specific patterns of design of their clothing.
Handicrafts have a traditional place in Hmong society. They have skilled carpenters and blacksmiths. The women still weave many of their clothing from hemp, for which theyare famous due to the elaborate and exquisite embroidery.
Hmong villages are still located mainly very high in the mountains, although some have recently been resettled in the lowlands. They build their houses on the ground, normally without windows and consisting of one large room with a partitioned sleeping area. Their agricultural activities are still directed mainly towards self-sufficiency, with extensive upland rice cultivation. Therefore the Hmong have been subject to many accusations of deforestation. During the twentieth century Hmong were also involved in large-scale poppy cultivation and in some areas it still plays a role in traditional Hmong economy. Every village in the mountains used to own poppy fields.
The Hmong’s social and political organisation is based on a lineage system, meaning that a lineage consists of families that can trace back their origin to a common ancestor. The other important social organisation is the family, but it’s more elastic than the lineage and can change through divorce and migration.
They believe in a variety of natural, ancestral and supernatural spirits, of which many are connected to the house. The floor of the house represents the world of nature, the roof and the rafters representing the realms of the heavens and in between is the world of man. Besides these spirits there are an array of other gods, deities, witches and demons. The Hmong are especially concerned about witches, who they believe to be able to bring evil upon persons or turn themselves into werewolves. Hmong women, when they start to feel they might be dying soon, make elaborate funeral garments in which they will be buried. This custom is still followed strongly; Hmong place great emphasis on being buried in their traditional costumes.
TAI DAM
The Tai Dam are a non-Buddhist group that still have an archaic Tai culture and social organization which reflects to a certain extent that of the ancient Tai people of the early first millennium.
Tai Dam women are well known for their weaving skills. The complex designs on hand-woven blankets and table clothes are sold throughout the world. Every Tai Dam household has at least one loom beneath the house, often two or more. The daughters learn the art of weaving already during childhood from their mothers. Tai Dam are very concerned about the conservation of their culture, especially as the younger Tai Dam seem to be discarding their traditional clothing and the habits of the Tai Dam.
The traditional house building style of the Tai Dam, especially the distinctive semi-circular turtle-shaped roof has been given up by the majority of the Tai Dam, nowadays constructing their roofs in a rectangular shape.
The agricultural strategies of the Tai Dam are quite developed. They are wet and dry rice cultivators, with their paddies normally terraced and with the use of an elaborate irrigation system. They also engage in industrious gardening, cultivating many kinds of vegetables, spices and fruits for home consumption. Their labour division is very egalitarian, the women and the men sharing the tasks, like working in the fields and taking care of the animals.
Traditionally Tai Dam were organized in a feudal system and the aristocratic families were highly privileged. After the liberation and the emergence of the Lao PDR many of the old feudal Tai Dam families left the country and the feudal system was abolished.
The family is the basic unit in Tai Dam society, with the oldest male as the head of the household.
In the past, marriages were arranged by the parents, while today the young Tai Dam are much freer to choose their partner. There is almost no labour division in marriage; each partner is involved in all working activities.
Tai Dam are no Buddhists, a feature that sets them apart from many other major Tai groups. Their religious belief is mainly concerned with spirits, life essences and cosmology. The most important spirits are the spirits of the village, the ancestral house spirits and the spirit of the sky. According to their beliefs the body is composed of 32 khwans (life essences), found in 32 important parts of the body.
AKHA
The Akha originate in Central Asia, where their ancestors lived near the Tibetan border until the second century BC. At no time in their history did the Akha have a state or a linked area of their own. In Muang Sing District the Akha make up about 65% of the population. As in other places where Akha have settled, in Muang Sing they face different kinds of problems. Their level of education is quite low end even though they comprise the majority in figures of Muang Sing District they politically play a very minor role.
The Akha have no written history and traditionally do not use letters. Instead, their history is preserved in more than 10,000 lines of poetry, which for centuries have been memorized and transmitted orally by an unbroken chain of storytellers known as pimas. Their social organization is surprisingly egalitarian. The freedom of the individual, the family and the village are highly appreciated. The Akha still are strong followers of traditional religion. They believe in a great number of spirits, both benevolent and malevolent. The Akhazang (or “the way of the Akha”), the orally transmitted memory of their forefathers, describes life of the Akha on nearly every level. Rules of conduct and the whole memory of their history is included, as well as the Akha philosophy.
Each Akha village traditionally has three religious specialists. First there is the dzoema, who functions as the village chief. He is taking care of the villages’ sacred places and he is the one to lead various ceremonies. The boemaw is a sorcerer, who is called in when villagers are sick. He is able to communicate with the spirit that troubles the diseased person and to organize appropriate sacrifices to please the spirit. The third religious practitioner, the nyi pa, is usually a woman who will bring back the souls of villagers, which have been abducted by spirits.
Akha villages have some very distinct features, one are the spirit gates, erected on the upper and the lower sides of the village. They are supposed to guard the village from evil spirits and separate the world of the humans from the outside world. Another significant feature is the big swing that is normally built at a high point in the village and used in the annual swing festival in which the Akha celebrate their arrival on earth.
Life of the Akha has for a long time been dominated by subsistence farming. Rice is their “essence of life”. The lives of the Akha evolve around growing and harvesting rice. Rice plants are considered animated, female beings and the main part of the Akhas’ ceremonies are related to different stages of the rice cultivation. The Akha are nearly exclusively subsistence farmers, selling their surplus in Muang Sing, but in recent times they have started to grow sugar cane and rubber to sell to China.
TAI NEUA
The Tai Neua originated in China and moved to the Muang Sing area about 200 years ago and were involved in the early chiefdoms in Muang Sing in the 18th century. They spread out across the north of Laos and Myanmar.
The term ‘Nua’ (or ‘Neua’) means ‘north’ and is often used by Tai people as a general term for other Tai groups who live north of the designating Tai group. There are two Tai groups with the designation Neua in their group’s name: the Neua of China and Burma and the Tai Neua of Laos. In the Lao PDR there are only nine Tai Neua villages of which five are in Muang Sing district.
Today, Tai Neua women are still industrious weavers of cotton and fine quality silk “phaa sins” (long cloth worn as skirt) Many households earn additional income from their member’s weaving skills, selling the “phaa sins” as far away as the capital Vientiane. Tai Neua men are skilled weavers of bamboo mats, containers and baskets. Besides that the Neua work as agriculturists, growing wet rice, maize, cassava and vegetables.
Many Tai Neua have adopted the house design of their neighbours. Those living in Muang Sing, have adopted the Lue house design and build large wooden houses on stilts.
Traditionally the Tai Neua had a strong feudal social organization. Normally they live in monogamy. Polygamy existed for the higher class in Laos until 1985. The bride price depends on the wealth of the groom’s family and may range from a single chicken to six silver ingots, a buffalo, several pigs and plenty of rice wine. The newly married Tai Neua wife moves into the household of her husband.
Many are Buddhists, but still follow elements of their traditional animist religion. They believe in spirits, the most important being the spirit of the village, followed by the spirit of the house. The latter is the spirit of the person who first died after moving into the house. In Tai Neua villages there is still a sasana pam (shaman) who cures diseases and is supposed to shield the villagers against misfortunes. The Tai Neua brought scriptures from China, which they still use in their Buddhist ceremonies and often you can see paper rolls hanging from the roof of the temples. The peacock plays an important role in the Tai Neua belief system, in the past they decorated their clothing with peacock feathers and their traditional dances feature peacock imitations. They are very concerned about tourists coming to their temples and touching sacred statues and objects.
Khamu
The Khamu arrived in northern Laos and Thailand in the early first millennium AD, making them one of the earliest inhabitants in the region. They settled in northern Laos even before the first Lao penetrated into the country’s present territory. It is still a mystery from which direction the Khamu migrated into their present habitats.
When the Lao arrived in the area they pushed the Khamu out of the valleys into higher land. Since these early times the Lao used the term Kha or Kha Khamu, a pejorative expression meaning “slave” or “savage”. For many centuries the Khamu were the traditional slaves of the Lao.
With a population of more than half a million the Khamu are, next to the Lao majority, the largest single ethnic group in Laos.
There are several subgroups of Khamu, each with its own name and distinctive dialect. Apart from the Ksak subgroup in the southeast of Luang Prabang, which have almost completely given up their Khamu language and adopted the Lao language, the other subgroups are bilingual with many of the younger generation even literate in Lao.
Traditional Khamu villages can be found in low mountainous areas and forested valleys. The houses are build on low wooden stills, about 1 to 1,5 meters above the ground. The walls are made of bamboo mats without windows, the roof is covered with thatch. Traditional Khamu villages have a communal house, where young adolescent boys live and where men gather for important discussions or to work together on crafts. Nowadays many villages move closer to the lowland, giving up some of their traditional customs.
In the past the Khamu have only cultivated dry rice in swiddens, but have now also adopted wet glutinous rice cultivation from lowland Lao. They also grow maize, cassava, gourds, eggplants, peanuts and vegetables. Besides that the Khamu grow tobacco and brew whisky for self-consumption. They keep a few buffaloes, cattle and goats. Pigs and poultry are kept in larger numbers. Their economy is supplemented by hunting, fishing and gathering wild forest products. Squirrels and other small rodents are caught, delicacies which are sold alive in the markets or at the nearest road to passers-by.
The Khamu live in nuclear families with monogamy as the predominant form of marriage today, but polygamy used to be common among the wealthier Khamu men.
The Khamu believe in several spirits and every village has a guardian spirit. Spirit gates are erected over the entrance to Khamu villages and special houses are built to make sacrifices. The Khamu practice a form of ancestor worship. Every village has a shaman and several sorcerers. The Khamu follow the agrarian cycle and practice several ceremonies for a good harvest. They bury their deceased in the forest. To avoid any possibility that the soul of the dead returns to the village, the burial party proceeds in large circles on its way back to confuse the spirits.
PHUNOI
The name Phunoi is originally a derogatory name meaning “minor people”, but the Phunoi themselves have different legends explaining the origin of their name. Information about the history of the Phunoi is rare, but it seems they originated in the Tibetan highlands.
Their settlements are usually located near streams in forested mountain areas. They do not plan the layout but build their houses irregularly within the village boundaries. Today the Phunoi settlements are permanent but in the past they had both a permanent and a temporary residential area, the temporary for the people whose swidden fields were too far from the village and who would therefore be leaving the village.
They cultivate both wet and dry rice and raise a variety of animals. Gathering and hunting still plays an important part, as well as collecting bamboo and wild vegetables in the forest.
Decisions in the village are taken by the naiban (a headman who governs the village according to the Lao administrative system), assisted by a council of elders or notables and the religious priest.
Today the Phunoi live in nuclear family units. The father is the head of the household. Phunoi men are monogamous, only very rich men can afford to have one or two minor wives. The bride price in Phunoi marriages is generally quite high, including old French Piasters, livestock and rice whiskey. Divorce is permissible in Phunoi society, as long as both agree and the family property is divided into three parts, one of them going to the wife. If the fault is considered on the wife’s side, she loses all claims to all goods.
Most of the Phunoi still practice their traditional religion, a blend of animism and ancestor worship. They believe that their natural surroundings are controlled by supernatural beings and a spirit is associated with many features, natural and man-made. The spirits have to be placated with sacrifices to encourage them to bless the village. Especially during planting and harvest season sacrifices are held in honour of the village spirit.
Their deceased are washed, dressed in their best clothes and placed in a wooden coffin. Traditionally, grains of silver or gold, nowadays normally French Piasters are placed in the mouth of the deceased.
Website Statistics
