A few notes from my very brief trip to Lijiang in Yunnan province (photos have been posted):
- The Han Chinese (of which I am a member) is the largest Chinese ethnic group, and contributes to 91% of the total population on the mainland. There are 56 officially recognized ethnic minority groups in China constituting the remaining 9%. And after visiting Lijiang, which is home to many of these minorities, I discovered that even though everyone is classified as Chinese, these sub-groups can vary dramatically from each other in terms of tradition, culture, communication, food, dress, and X-box playing habits.
- Lijiang is composed of folks mostly from the Naxi minority. Rule of the thumb here is: if it looks like a Han, walks like a Han, and quacks like a Han…in Lijiang, it’s probably not a Han. A lot of the old Naxi culture has been withered away and consolidated into a few tourist traps. It was surreal to see a senior dongba, or Naxi leader, do a traditional song and dance on stage with dozens of flashbulbs popping off. I had to take a picture of it.
90+ year old dongba wooing the ladies
- One other defining trait of the Naxi people is that the women are the ones who find a mate and propose marriage. The man must then “give” himself to her and pledge himself to a life of, well, basically doing jack shit. The Naxi women not only do the money-making and the cooking and the cleaning, tradition calls for them to physically carry their husband into their home on the night of their wedding. I was so intrigued by this that I had a slew of questions for our guide, Xiao Zhang, a diminuitive young Naxi woman who was about to get married at the end of the year.
Me: So, is this groom-carrying thing, really true?
Xiao Zhang: Yeah, I’m working out every day until my wedding so I can be strong enough to carry him home.
Me: Do you have to carry him all the way back from the wedding site?
Xiao Zhang (laughing): No, just from where you get off the car to the apartment.
Me: What if the apartment is not on the first floor?
Xiao Zhang (pausing): Shit, looks like I’ll have to work out even more than I originally thought.
Me: That sounds pretty damn cool, think I could get hitched to some girl out here?
Xiao Zhang (looking me over): Probably not. Unless she’s Xena the Warrior Princess, you’ll be hard pressed to find someone to carry you on their back.
Me (crying and running away): You’re so mean! I hate you!
- While the Naxi men have it pretty good, it’s the Mosuo dudes (another minority group) that have it the best. In a Mosuo village, there are no fathers, only uncles! Sounds like one of those IQ riddles, doesn’t it? It’s not; basically, there is no such thing as marriage in the village. Men “pay a visit” to single women at night, and then leave the next morning. This happens continuously until the woman gets pregnant and has a kid. The kid grows up not knowing who their father is; he or she is raised by the mother. All the men in the village are known as “uncles” (in the West these men would be known as “scumbags”) to the children, who have no idea who their biological father is. And now that I think about, they don’t know who their biological brothers and sisters are, either! Talk about the antithesis of feminism! Where can I sign up?!
My dad and I excited about moving to Yunnan and being uncles…j/k!
