Tribasia Blog

We left the comforts of Jinghong city (Xishuangbanna area, southern China) to go trekking alongside the Burmese border.
We started off with the usual few hours' ride on a local bus followed by an overnight stay at the small bricked town of Bulanghsan (literally meaning: the mount of the Bulang), where we indeed met many Bulang people.

Rather than folk lullabies at bedtime, we were treated to the blasting sound of overzealous karaoke singers.
In the early hours, we were awoken by the town's speakers relaying news from the national radio (propaganda starts at home!). With bags under our eyes and sore ears, we were ready to leave Bulangshan.

It took us another 20 minutes and a dozen enquiries with locals to find the path leading towards Yako, our intended destination. We were finally on track!
Our enthusiasm got crushed when 5 minutes out of town, we were stopped by soldiers at a military checkpoint. With our smattering of Chinese and their abysmal English, we quickly understood that they would not let us go through. When I asked them 'Why?', the answer was '"No why'. It made sense, we were in China after all!
We then opted, with a bit of hesitation, to become strategic and bypass the checkpoint.

How? We sneaked through by hiding in the fields behind trees and bushes besides the military station. Our strategy was risky but it paid off. We were able to come back on the dirt path at some point and free to trek -although we did watch our backs.
We first went through a traditional Bulang village with houses built on stilts still made of wood. We had little time to explore it as we still had another 7 hours' walk ahead of us.

We then went up and up and up until we reached a viewpoint overlooking a luxuriant valley with a wall of mountains in the distance. Behind these mountains laid Myanmar/Burma. We were that close to it but not up to some illegal border crossing. Instead, we kept on the track for another 2 hours before meeting a Hanni man and thereafter a group of Akha women in the fields pointing us to a shortcut. It took us another 2 hours to reach a village, which we believed was Yako.

Instead of it, we realized by conversing (or shall we say hand talking?) to a local woman that we had landed in Bupa, a village from the Hani minority. Luckily enough, we were only 5 minutes away from our intended destination. We went to Yako for a walk around the village but in the end we preferred the atmosphere of Bupa.

Besides, the lady we had met had offered us to provide us with accommodation for the night. She was a 55-year old Hani lady with three grown-up married daughters and a house spacious enough to welcome us. Her husband came back from working in the fields just before night fall.
We spent a lovely evening in their company. Our dinner consisted in bowls of boiled rice, pickled vegetables, fried greens and sweet pumpkin.Yummy!

The following day, we left our hosts after breakfast to trek onto our next destination: the village of Guangming. We walked again up and up and up. Our shoulders were starting to feel the weight of our bagpacks quite badly.

Fortunately, this time the trek was a shorter one and we arrived three hours later in what we thought was Guangming. It wasn't! We were instead in a beautiful Akha village surrounded by the jungle on one side and vegetable patches on the other - shame about the dogs!
Luckily again, we were only a short stroll from our final destination: Mengshuo. From there, we rode to Damenlong and then onto our starting point, Jinghong, for a nice shower.
We cannot tell you how good it felt to walk without a bag pack the following day! :))

Labels: Akha, Bulangshan, China, Damenlong, Guangming, hani, Trekking, Xishuangbanna, Yako

After spending a couple of days resting in Jinghong, the capital city of Xishuangbanna, southern China, we decided it was time to go for some good old exploration! We left Jinghong in a local minivan to visit one of the smallest -officially recognized- minorities in China: the Jinuo.

Numbering 20,000 individuals, Jinuo township is the only area in the whole Chinese territory where this minority can be found in numbers.
Their villages are sitting on top of hills, surrounded by lush tropical vegetation.
We visited a traditional wooden longhouse on pillars where many families could live under the same roof. A long hearth is built at the centre of a common room. A series of private rooms for each family were built either side of the building entrance for some privacy.
This type of structure is on the wane as Jinuo's way of living have changed. In the last ten years, they have built invidual homes and opted for long-lasting cement and bricks instead of wood for building them.

Jinuo clothing takes months to weave. Both man and woman's cotton clothing were dyed using traditional techniques with natural plants. Men wore long white-legged pants with a sleevless jacket and a fitted tubular headdress whereas women wore a long-sleeved jacket, a knee-length skirt and a white pointy headdress. They used to adorn their pierced earlobes with flowers. The more flowers you could fit inside, the better. Now again, the young generation has discontinued such practice.

Traditionally, the woman's pointy hat is adorned on its back panel with colourful embroidered shapes. The fitted knee-length skirt and short-length top are also richly embroidered with colourful stripes.
The young generation sports sun and star-like embroidered shapes on their outfit and sometimes opt for cheaper silky materials instead of cotton for their clothing.

Unlike most minorities, the Jinuo people have no festival of their own but they follow particular customs when it comes to wedding ceremonies and the likes. They also have a rich dancing and singing culture.
The Jinuo language has not written form. The young generation can speak it but we realized that they were not fluent. The Jinuo's main language is now 'putonghua', i.e. mandarin.

The Jinuo are undoubtedly losing their distinctive way of living. Another micro-culture is going down the drain...

Labels: China, ethnic minorities, Jinuo, tribal, Xishuangbanna