7.30am is not a
good time to ride motorbikes up to mountain villages – particularly in the rainy
season with the track churned with mud and very slippery. But the welcome we
received in the mountains made up for the cold, the wet and the fear. Many
tribes live in Southern Shan State, among them the Pa-Oh, Danu, Palaung, Shan and
Taung Yo. We were visiting the Pa-Oh people at Nan Tai on their market and
would go on to visit another Pa-Oh village: Kyauk Su, then slide down the
mountain to a Danu village: Lamaing.
The people of
Kalaw are mostly government officials, so they are not growing crops, but they
do host the five-day market in turn with the villages of Aungban, Pindaya, Pin
Laung and Heho. Aungban is a distribution centre and not famed for any
particular crop. Pindaya, with limestone caves filled with thousands of Buddha
images, grows tea on its slopes. In Heho they grow two types of the famous
dragon fruit: the outside of the first is yellow and the other red. Inside, one
is pink and one is white. Dragon fruit are expensive (K700 each ca 70 cents),
but useful in medicine for hypertension and diabetes.
All the tribes
have their own customs, dress and language and most cannot understand the
language of a village quite near. A way to recognize some tribes is the colour and
way of tying their turbans: the Pa-Oh women wear orange or red turbans. They
fold the long scarf over and round in such a way that a little of the fringed
end of the fabric sticks out with a jaunty air. They wear black clothes: a
short jacket over a longer jacket and a ¾ length longyi.
There is a
traditional reason why their clothes are black. The Pa–Oh believe their mother
was a dragon and their father was a Weik Za. Weik Za are not arahats (who have attained the goal of
the religious life), nor nats (animistic
spirits), but they are invested with certain powers: for example they can
change a small stick into a weapon. After meditation, they may tell people to
do as their dreams tell them. It’s unlikely they would dream of building a paya, but they should do ‘what they can’
and this will be acceptable to the Buddha. Even more unusual is their tradition
that the female dragon had two eggs, one black and one white. Somehow the white
egg was crushed. It was the black egg from which the Pa-Oh emerged and this is
the reason that their whole outfit is black.
As we entered the
market we were offered small, savoury, pemone
made from bean powder, onion and salt. They were delicious, but when we
tried to pay, we were told that the Pa-Oh custom is to give visitors something
to eat or drink on arrival. They would accept no money.
The people here
grow all their own food, with the exception of meat. We learned that they ate
‘fake’ meat! We could hardly believe how a large bag of fawn-coloured globular ‘biscuits’
costing K200 (20 cents) (for the whole bag) and made from wheat flour, was a
meat substitute, but we were assured that most people ate them and they did
taste like meat! Later I tried them but having been a vegetarian for so long I
could not tell if they tasted like meat or not!
On one stall was
a pile of what looked like short, black, licorice sticks. These we learned were
made from the sap of a particular tree. The people collected the sap and let it
evaporate over time. The result was a chewy substance. Apparently it is the old
people who use it most – in their betel quid. It makes their lips red and it tastes
bitter, but is obviously palatable to them.
Nan Tai is high in the mountains where the Pa-Oh grow hill rice and
wet rice. The latter was planted following the contours of the land. This, as
all their agriculture, made a pleasing pattern on the face of the mountains. In
addition to rice, the Pa-Oh grow grow cabbages, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic,
ginger, chillies, spring onion and herbs such as coriander. They also sold
cheroots made by the Palaung, another hill tribe.
Back on the motorbikes
and sliding through thick mud we came to
Kyauk Su another
Pa-Oh village. Here, most of what they grew was for their own consumption for
the whole year: hill rice, oranges, ginger and garlic are the main crops and if
they had a surplus of anything, for example, beans and chillies, they sold them
on the market. Garlic grows in abundance and takes only three months to grow.
Apparently, it doesn’t like much water, so they plant it in the dryer months of
March and April. Traders sometimes came to the village and they bought in bulk.
Sometimes traders would pay in advance for crops. This is helpful to people who
have such little access to money.
Nayon, which is
June or July in the Myanmar lunar calendar, is the time for the six or seven
villages around this mountain range to have a festival. Some villages seem to
have theirs alone, but the majority has events to share. We were told fire
rockets, musical performances and plays were popular - especially when
accompanied by rice wine.
Most of the Pa-Oh
houses are built of split bamboo and have two storeys. Upstairs are the living
quarters of the family. Downstairs is where the family’s three or four buffalo sleep
at night. The buffalo are tied to posts and when they rub against them, it
feels to the folk upstairs like an earthquake arriving. It seems buffalo are
not interested in rice, potatoes and ginger, for they were being stored inside
the buffalo’s quarters.
Upstairs we
entered the family house. A lively fire was alight in the middle of the floor,
but there was no chimney. Consequently every wall and beam in the room was
black with the soot of ages past. Above the fire were hung various useful tools
and a gourd that will become a water container when the fire has dried it out.
The room behind was for the parents and a much larger room off to one side was
for the children and other relatives who might be visiting. This room also
contained the Buddha altar beautifully decorated with Blue Lady Orchids.
Each of these
mountain villages has a primary school and one has a secondary school. We were
surprised therefore to see eight children of primary school age having a great
time with a skipping rope. Why were they not at school we wanted to know: we
were told if they want to go to school, they go. If they don’t want to go to
school, they don’t!
The Pa-Oh
villagers here are self-sufficient. All they need to buy is meat and salt. The
crops they grow are without artificial fertilizer (the buffalo are useful for
this). One of the customs of this village is that every 15 days, the women of
one quarter of the village prepare monhinga
and feeds the rest of the people. After 15 days it will be another quarter’s
job to feed the whole village.
When the rice
has been harvested, the head of the village calls in a nat spirit saya who is a teacher and specialist in the interpretation
of the village nats. Villagers make
offerings and pray to the particular nat
for a really good harvest for next year. But they want the nat to know they are praying and making offerings: this is why they
need the nat saya. It is only this
person who can interpret the reply and relay the answer to the people.
Each time it
rained we darted into a house and were made welcome by the owner. One elderly
gentleman was 83 years old and still had his teeth. He was minding the children
whose parents were working in the fields. When the showers ceased we returned
to the motorbikes and our slippery ride.
Last we visited
Lamaing, a Danu village at the foot of the mountains. Here they were growing only
a small amount of rice, but hundreds if not thousands of cabbages and
cauliflowers to be sold on the five-day market. They also grew: guava, choko,
capsicum and lemon grass. We saw hundreds of mustard plants. Still at the
seedling stage, they will be planted out and, when mature, sold to distributers
in Aungban. In Lamaing, the Danu had moved up to small, motorized tractors, so
they had no need for buffalo.
The Danu, like
most of the tribes-people wear their ornate traditional outfits only at
festival times. From photos, we learned that a Danu woman would wear a mauve longyi with red and black horizontal
stripes and a mauve satin blouse decorated with bow-like fastenings. Her black
folded turban, fringed in gold, hung decoratively down to her shoulders. The
Danu men are less colourful. They wear a beige outfit with a simple yellow
towel turban.
The Danu are
Buddhist. They speak a different language to the Pa-Oh and they can’t
understand each other. However, here at Lamaing the language was similar to Burmese,
with only some difference in pronunciation, so Win Kyaing could understand and
translate for me. We learned there are Danu at Pindaya, Kalaw and Aungban, but
nowhere outside the Southern Shan State.
Villagers who
live in the mountains, come into one of the towns for the 5-day market to buy
whatever they need and to sell their produce, which is mainly fruit and
vegetables, but could include fish and chicken. The Palaung and Shan women sell
two types of tea: black tea and green tea. The former is the higher grade. It
is cut during the dry months of November and December. The green tea, which is
cheaper quality, is harvested in the rainy months of July, August and
September.
I had seen on
many markets in Asia, bunches of small, brown fruit with a furry finish. I learned
they were Hnin fruit. Seeing my interest, the stallholder peeled off a furry
jacket and offered it for me to try. Inside, was a transparent, sweetish,
white-grey layer of fruit, but it was around an enormous pip. So there was little reward compared to the
amount of work involved!
Many
stallholders were selling sweet-corn cobs, in fact the whole of the huge Northern
and Southern Shan plateau had field after field of sweet corn. We noticed women
customers peeling off the ‘skin’ around each cob and when we saw how much she had
to carry already in her woven basket, we guessed she needed to keep down the
load. To my surprise, after they exposed the cob, I saw only one was yellow, the
rest were coloured mauve, grey, blue and white. They call the yellow one Taiwan
sweet corn, whereas the other colours are Myanmar.
Possibly the
most unusual products on the market were brown powder and short sticky sticks.
The brown powder is from the fruit of the Kin
Pong tree. This made soap for washing oneself and for shampoo. Boiling the sticky
bark of the forest tree: Htan shaw makes
another shampoo. The villagers beat the bark and then boil it until it almost
evaporates: this also makes a shampoo.
Kalaw and the
surrounding mountains are the land of pines. Marching up and down every hill
are rows upon rows of pine trees scenting the air. The wood is used for many
purposes, even down to the smallest twig and one stall had for sale small
bundles of short sticks tied with twine. This proved to be kindling: a great
fire-lighting help given the annual rainfall here.
A surprise for
me was to learn that betel, chewed happily by many Myanmar people, has several
varieties. Each chew of betel is wrapped in a special leaf. This leaf,
curiously, is not from the same tree as the betel nut. The leaf is bright green,
attractive and shining and grows on a scrambling vine, often supported by a
trellis. Customers were buying perhaps 30 of the leaves at a time, which
presumably, was enough to keep them relaxed for the next five days. Had they been
buying betel quid – rather than just betel leaves - the leaf would have been
smeared with a dribble of the most important ingredient: white liquid lime, which
may itself have added ingredients, according to the seller or the wishes of the
customer.
The betel nut,
grown on a tall, slim palm tree and is very attractive. A bag of it on the
betel man’s stall, displayed it dried and cut in half. The nut is much the same
size as a walnut. It is a fawn-pinkish colour with a darker pattern running
through it. Another bag displayed the nuts chopped into small pieces. They
would be sprinkled over the lime. But the possible ingredients don’t stop
there. A customer may choose to add tobacco to his betel or even tobacco that
has been steeped in honey.
We visited the
Pa-Oh and the Danu in their villages and saw photographs of what they wore on
festival days. We saw the Taung Yo on the 5-day market, but though they used to
wear their traditional costumes to the market, we didn’t see one. To learn more
of them we visited the Shan National Cultural Museum in Taunggyi about 50
kilometres from Kalaw. The woman are
less sequined than the Palaung, but their black, short, v-necked dresses still had
lines of sequins crossing and making patterns. The Taung Yo man’s attire comprised
simple beige coloured pants with the traditional Myanmar man’s jacket fastened down
the front with simple frogs. He wore a towel turban. All the women carry finely
woven baskets and they are almost bent double as they carry full baskets from a
strap around their forehead back up the mountains.
There are three
races of Taung Yo who are the same in many respects, but not in pronunciation
of their language, so they cannot understand each other. Some Taung Yo are
Buddhist and some believe in animistic nats.
As well as
costumes, the museum displayed Shan national instruments: one comprised seven
drums ranging in size down from about 15” across to perhaps 3” across.
Curiously, if the handle connecting the drums was moved, each of the drums
sounded at the same time. The Shan accompany the drums with cymbals lavishly decorated
with red, yellow and green streamers. The Shan also play a flute and an unusual
instrument called a harp, but was unlike a European harp and more like a three
stringed banjo.
