A History of the Lahu in China

China is a united country made up of various ethnicities; indeed, there are 56 officially recognised ethnic groups that call China home. The largest numbers of these minority groups are the Zhuang, the Han and the Manchus, but the smaller groups have just a rich and fascinating history of their own.

As of 1990, the Lahu has a population of 411,476 and can be found across Yunnan's Lancang Lahu Autonomous County and neighboring counties such as Menglian, Shuangjiang, and Simao. The Lahu have their own language which belongs to Yi branch of the Tibeto-Burman Austronesian of the Chinese -Tibetan Phylum. For a long time, messages were passed by woodcarving the western alphabets that western priests had used. However, in 1957, an alphabetical script was created for them. Due to their frequent contact with the Han and Dai people, a large amount of the Lahus can also speak Chinese and the language of the Dais.

There are several branches of the Lahu family; the main groups are the Lahu Na, the Lahu Shi, the Lahu Nyi, and the Lahu Shehleh. All refer to themselves as Lahu instead of their individual sub-group identities. Lahu is the name they have given to themselves due to their long practice of hunting tigers. ‘La’ means ‘tiger’ and ‘hu’ means the method of roasting and eating. ‘Lahu’ in their own language can be translated as ‘roasting tiger-meat on a fire’.

The agricultural living of the Lahu is a combination of farming, raising domestic animals, gathering, hunting, and fishing. While many Lahu have engaged in altering degrees of intensive agriculture (irrigated wet-rice), slash-and-burn cultivation of hill rice, wheat, and buckwheat stays a noteworthy pattern of Lahu livelihood, especially for those in Burma and Thailand. The growth of cash crops, such as tea in Lancang, has also been increasing since the 1980.

There is a saying which is common among the Lahu, “"Hus-band and wife do it together" (phawd mawd nud ma ted gie te) and the often cited metaphor," Chopsticks work only in pairs”. These sum up the gendered allocation of labour among the Lahu. Married couples tend to own their properties jointly and practice a monogamous marriage. “The Lahu kinship system is fundamentally bilateral, although there are varying degrees of matrilineal or patrilineal skewing in different regions or subgroup”.

The main god of the Lahu is Xeul Sha and they practice an animalistic faith, although Mahayana Buddhism was introduced in the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 CE), only a small proportion has converted to this. According to Lahu creation myths, the supreme god is actually a pair of male and female deities who emerged simultaneously. Since they exist only as a pair, they are frequently addressed in the Lahu vernacular by the single proper noun, Xeul Sha.

The Lahu are descended from the ancient Qiang tribe, who immigrated to present day northern Yunnan from northwestern China early in the third century CE. The emergence of the Nanzhao Kingdom forced the Lahu to move south. From the 18th century onwards, the Lahu are first mentioned in Imperial records as a distinctive ethnic group.

Like with many of the other ethnic groups in China, the Lahu underwent significant changes during the period when Chairman Mao was in power and the Cultural Revolution. These changes were not only political, but they suffered radical socioeconomic changes as well. But despite these, the Lahu have “since the dissolution of communes in Lancangi n 1982 Nevertheless, since the dissolution of communes in Lancang in 1982 Lahu married couples have regained their authority in managing the production and labourers of their households, reviving their ideal of "husband and wife do it together."

Bibliography:

Du, Shanshan (2000) “Husband and Wife Do It Together”: Sex/Gender Allocation of Labor Among the Qhawqhat Lahu of Lanchang, Southwest China, American Anthropologist, Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association.