Southern Shan State

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.