Introduction of Wa

Introduction of the Wa People

Introduction of the Wa People

The Wa people are a unique ethnic minority in Yunnan Province, mainly located in the southwestern part of Yunnan Province in Cangyuan, Ximeng, Gengma, Shuangjiang, Zhenkang, Yongde, Lancang, Yulian and other specifics, and partly scattered in the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture. There are more than 351,000 people, including more than 180,000 in Ximeng and Cangyuan Autonomous Counties. Originally called "Ka Wa", it was changed to its present name in 1963 with the approval of the State Council.

The Wa region is located between the Lancang River and the Salween River, and the southern section of the Nu Mountain Range. With overlapping mountains and very few flat dams, it is known as A Wa Mountain. The climate of the mountainous region is relatively complex and is rich in economic forests. Deep in the dense forest, inhabited by elephants, tigers, leopards, bears, deer, wild boars and other precious wildlife.

The Wa people call themselves "A Wa", which is one of the "Baipu" in the Zhou and Qin Dynasties. In the Qing Dynasty, there were different names such as "Gasha", "Hawa" and "Kawa". After the founding of New China, they were collectively called Wa, meaning "people living in the mountains".

The Wa have their own language, which belongs to the Wa branch of the Mon-Khmer language family of the South Asian language family. In the past, they have long used woodcuts and physical objects to keep track of things. 2 0 0 0 century 5 0 0 s created the Wa script.

The Wa are mainly engaged in agriculture, and are fond of drinking alcohol and chewing betel nut. Chewing betel nut makes many people dye their teeth black and lips red, which is a beautiful thing. Most of the drinking utensils are made of bamboo tubes. Whenever there are festivals, weddings, funerals, hospitality and deliberations, they have to drink according to the traditional etiquette, so there is a saying that "no wine is not a gift".

Wa people are good at singing and dancing. The common dances are "circle dance" and "pounding pestle dance", etc.





The Wa people can sing and dance well. The "Circle Dance" does not distinguish between men and women, young and old, and the dancers hold hands, sing and dance, making the atmosphere very warm.

History of Wa People

The legend of "Sigangli" is widely spread in the Wa area. The Wa in the Ximeng area explain that "Sigang" is a stone cave and "Li" is out, which means that human beings came out from the stone cave in the very early days. Legend has it that the Wa were the first to come out of the caves. The cave is located in the middle of the A Wa Mountains, about 60 miles west of Ximeng County, on a nearby mountain. To this day, the Wa in Ximeng and other places regard the stone cave as a "holy place". The Wa people in Cangyuan area interpreted "Sigang" as "gourd" and "Li" as "out", meaning that human beings came out from the gourd.

Although the Wa of various regions have different interpretations of "Sigangli", they all regard A Wa Mountain as the birthplace of mankind, and at the same time, they also reflect that they are the earliest inhabitants of the A Wa Mountain area. The "Sigangli" is the Wa people's recollection of their own life in the ancient cave.

Wa music

There are about 266,000 Wa people living in Yunnan Province. The Wa have their own script based on the Latin alphabet, and their language belongs to the Mon-Khmer group of the South Asian language family, and the Wa believe in primitive religions.

The Wa are known for their songs and dances. Whenever there are major religious festivals, the Wa people sing and dance for more than a few days in full costume, and the music is accompanied by wooden drums, bamboo drums and gourd shengs as the background, depicting the Wa people singing and dancing in front of a bamboo building.

Wa etiquette

The Wa people are generous and hospitable, welcoming guests with wine as the first thing to do, believing that no wine is not a gift. The Wa people have many different customs of hospitality and toasting. One of them is that the master of the toast first drinks a mouthful of wine to dispel the guests' various preconceptions, and then passes it to the guests to drink in turn. The guests must drink the wine to the guests and try their best to drink it dry, so as to show that their hearts are frank and sincere, otherwise they will be regarded as disrespectful to the masters; another form is that the hosts and guests squat on the ground, the hosts pass the wine to the guests with their right hands, and the guests receive it with their right hands and pour it on the ground a little bit or pop the wine on the ground a little bit with their right hands, which is meant to be honoring the ancestor. Then the host and the guest drink the wine together. The Wa folk have the custom of not honoring wine to those who do not know the heart and are not kind. Whenever a son goes out and a guest leaves, the host has to make a "gift to relatives". That is, to the relatives or guests toast, when the master with a gourd (wine container) full of wine, first drink a mouthful, and then sent to the guests or away from the mouth of loved ones, the guests need to drink to the bottom of the gourd, in order to show affection, friendship never forget.

Wa Celebration Festival

Wa used to generally believe in the primitive religion of animism, and some Wa in some areas believed in Buddhism, and almost all festivals were accompanied by sacrificial activities. In addition to killing chickens and pigs, the traditional rituals also involve plagiarizing oxen. For example, on the Sowing Festival (the month of Qi Ai in the Wa calendar and the third month of the Gregorian calendar), the whole village gathers together to plagiarize cows, and the plagiarism ceremony is presided over by the owner of the donated cows. At that time, the owner of the cow stabs the cow's heart with an iron plough and kills it, and then the beef is divided equally among the customers to offer to their ancestors. The bones of the cow go to the owner, and the skull is considered a sign of wealth. After the ancestor-sacrifice ceremony, the family eats lunch and starts sowing dry grains.

"Avalanche Nanni" is the tongue candle old and welcome the new year festival, to be selected in the last month of the Wa calendar year, the sacrifice of Ohio, the night of the four night, the whole walled village of the head man, young and strong men, are to gather to the walled village king's house, and to raise money to buy a pig, chicken each one slaughtered, the family with a small gabion table end to go to the pot of glutinous rice, a piece of poop, etc. to the king of the walled village to pay homage to the year, sacrifices to the gods and ancestors. ancestors. Afterwards, they present each other with a piece of poi and congratulate each other. At dawn, they offer sacrifices to the sacred tree, and start hunting, fishing for fish and shrimp, in order to make good luck in the new year.

Other festivals, such as the New Water Festival, the new fire, pull wood drums and other activities, to kill chickens, pigs and sacrifices. Among them, Ramu and the larger scale of the ritual, the whole process to more than ten days, the need for the whole family to celebrate together with wine, before and after the Ramu drums may not eat ginger, but also with banana leaves, rice, bowls and chopsticks, and so on.

Religious beliefs and festivals

In the past, Wa religious rituals in a year started from water sacrifice, always praying to ensure that people have water for food and good weather in the coming year. During the water festival, all the men of the village would participate in it, and the priest would pray for the newly drawn water and receive the first tube of water, which would then be used to cook rice in the house of Wulang, who was in charge of water management. Some families also hold a separate festival to pray for water for their own families. In addition to water sacrifices, every year, also held in the village as a unit of the old fire festival. In Cangyuan County, Nuoliang area to take fire, rub out the new fire when the sound of earth cannons to celebrate, and then take the lighted torch to the home to raise the fire. In addition, sowing, hunting, etc. should be held to burn chopping rituals, in the event of natural disasters, the plagiarized cattle lifting rituals.

Before liberation, the most important religious activities of Wa were "pulling wooden drums", "chopping cow's tails" and "hunting heads to offer grain".

The wooden drums were originally the music drums used by the Wa primitive clans, and they were also a kind of sacrificial vessels. Later, the wooden drums were used as alarms in wars, accompaniment in dances, and drums as horns when convening the masses for deliberation, and the wooden drums were then deified as the divine instruments to the sky, and therefore, many villages have built the wooden drum houses specifically for the wooden drums. Wooden drum room is a small shed, the roof of the human zigzag, to bamboo stacked and become, similar to the roof tile. Frame with a fork and bamboo frame, no walls, built a pair of wooden drums (male and female, female drums, male drums, small). Some of the head for the wooden drum room, with a sack will be wrapped in the head tied to the roof of the wooden drum room. If a new head is hunted, the old head is first sent to the head pile outside the fence gate, and when a ghost is sacrificed, the new head is then taken into the wooden drum room by the priest. The wooden drum room is actually a primitive temple of the Wa, and they have to plagiarize oxen and sacrifice drums before sowing every year, and change the drums once a year or once every three or four years. The wooden drum is made of a thick tree, the thick end of which is the tail and the thin end of which is the head, and the upper two sides are hollowed out, and a pair of wooden drums*** are dug in four places, and because of the different depths dug in each place, four different sounds can be emitted when they are struck. When the new drums are replaced, the men and women of the whole village work together to pull the new drums down the mountain, which the Wa call "pulling the wooden drums". From making wooden drums to pulling wooden drums, religious ceremonies should be held. Before starting the work of making wooden drums, oxen should be plagiarized and sacrificed, and the priests should recite incantations to the effect that: we pull back the wooden drums, cut off the heads, plagiarize oxen and sacrifice them to you, in the hope that we will be blessed with good harvests, be free from attacks by foreign villages and have a good life, and that if we are bullied by foreign villages, we will take revenge. After the sacrifice, the head, limbs and neck of the ox are given to relatives and the rest are equally divided among the participants. During the sacrifice of wooden drums, young men and women sing and dance day and night.

Wa Marriage Customs

Wa marriage is monogamous and rarely polygamous. In the past, Wa marriages were free choice plus the words of parents and matchmakers. The main condition for Wa to choose a spouse is to see whether the other party is strong, hardworking, simple and comparable in appearance, followed by the family's economic condition. Wa people with the same surname do not get married, and if people with the same surname have gender relations, it is considered to be treasonous and will offend the "social god", so that the social god will severely punish the whole village people, and add all kinds of disasters, such as droughts, floods, winds, fires, and diseases, etc. If people with the same surname ***, or if they are not married to each other, they will not marry each other. If people of the same family name ***, or people of the same family name want to get married, the whole village people have to punish them to carry out the "扫寨" (get rid of) ceremony, and then the god of the community will forgive them.

In the past, the Wa believed that the best marriage was the aunt-cousin marriage, and that the uncle's family had the right of first refusal. In the past, the Wa believed that the best marriage was that of a cousin, and that the uncle's family had the first right to choose. Wa marriages have to go through the "string of girls" to fall in love freely and get married only after the betrothal and wine delivery. Weddings are usually held in the fall, and it is not appropriate to hold weddings after the Spring Festival.

Wa youngsters are usually 16 or 17 years old when they start "stringing girls". The "string of girls" can be a collective activity or a solo one. The girl's sleeping place is also not fixed, today in their own home to sleep, tomorrow night to another family and partners to sleep, sometimes a person to sleep, sometimes three to five a group of lodging in a place. "String girl", that is, the young man to the girl's residence to play. The girl for the "string" of young men, regardless of whether the young man is interested in, have to get up to sit with. If they don't, they will be considered rude. The young men usually visit the girls after 10 o'clock in the evening, and if the girls are doing chores such as cutting and cooking pig food, the young men have to help. Older people will not interfere when they see a young man coming to visit, and in fact, parents also like young men to visit their own girls. When a girl reaches a certain age, she has to get married. If a young man doesn't come to string his own girl, his parents will be unhappy, and if a girl reaches a certain age, her parents will be very worried because they are afraid that the girl will lose face, and they are afraid that the girl will be married off to another village. The Wa people all like their daughters to marry their own young men, and there is a saying: " Don't splash out the good vegetable soup, a good girl can't be married to another village." The girls are usually sitting by the fire and talking and laughing. If a young man comes to the girl's place (bed) string, it is considered immoral. If the time to string late, the girl has gone to bed, the young man into the house will first burn the fire, and then wake up the girl. When the girl gets up, she sits by the fire and talks and laughs with the young man. Sitting by the fire is just talking and laughing, and it is impossible to fully express one's feelings and demands, because there are several other companions along with her. The hope of the sentient being then rests on the combing of the hair.

After the young men and women talked to each other, the young man patted his head "please" the young girl to comb his hair. If the girl is a person, the young man is a few people, the girl will take turns to give a few young man combing, if a few girls and a few young man, by the girl's own choice to whom to comb, or let the young man to ask the girl to comb their own head. The girls take turns combing the hair of several lads, and if there are several girls and several lads, the girls choose who to comb their hair, or the lads ask the girl they like to comb their hair for them. It is usually the young man who speaks first and gives the girl something, which varies from a comb, a towel, silver bracelets, earrings, rings, or a few dollars. If the girl accepts, she will not mind the young man to send things whether expensive, this is only as a witness of true love, love token. If the girl is not willing to accept it, the young man will force her to accept it and return it to the young man after a few days, so that the young man will not be offended. Wa young men and women are free to fall in love, a young man can fall in love with several girls at the same time, and a young girl can also accept the courtship of several young men at the same time. After a long period of interaction and mutual understanding, a young man can break up with other girls after he has decided that a girl is the most suitable. After the girl decides that she is the most suitable one, she will return all the gifts from the other young men. Wa young men and women are married through free love on the basis of mutual understanding. This is also one of the reasons why Wa marriages are relatively strong and divorce is rare. As long as the young men and women are in love, their parents cannot stop them. If the parents are strongly against it, the two lovers can escape from the village and stay in the wild for a few days, "popcorn will not pop", so both parents have no choice but to hold a wedding for them.

Male and female youth in the process of love, dream, often make love termination. Wa people believe that when they fall in love, if they dream of big forests, banana forests, or sinks with running water, or picking melons and fruits, etc., it is considered to be an auspicious omen, and they will be happy after marriage. Since the dream foretells good omen, the love affair is even closer. If you dream of a tiger, a falling tree, a broken bridge, being swept away by water, or if you dream of being in love with your lover in a new dress, it is considered a bad omen, and the two of you will not be able to get married. If they are forced to become a couple, it will not last long, so they must break up before it is too late in the process of falling in love. In the past, the Wa also had the custom of taking off the head of the bag. If a young man fell in love with a girl, he would take off the girl's head of the bag (of course, the young girl was also interested in the young man), take it back to his home, and announce it to his parents that his family would be able to kill chickens to look at the chicken's fortune-telling and to decide whether it was lucky or not in order to settle the marriage.

Marriage is a free love affair, and you can get married after the engagement. In the past, the marriage age of Wa young men and women was generally 20 years old for men and 18 years old for women. The dowry of a girl is generally luggage, clothes, backpacks, hoes, sickles, shovels, etc. Some parents also give their daughters a bamboo, and the woman's parents give the man's father a tube, and the man's mother a skirt as a rite of passage. Some places in the wedding, the groom to the female uncle to send gifts, gifts are generally 3 yuan 50 cents, or 7 yuan 50 cents, to pay the odd, but also add a pair of shoes, a tube of Pa, the rich can also add a lying blanket. Some places when the marriage, the groom also sent the bride's mother milk money, because the girl is to eat the mother's milk grew up, now the girl grows up to be married to someone else's home, so, to the mother to pay a little milk money as a rite of passage.

Wa families are formally equal in status. ***The same maintains a complete family, but in practice the idea of husband's right is more prominent. In the family, agricultural production, weaving, gathering, cooking and housework are all undertaken by women. Women have no control over family property, and they are not allowed to participate in religious activities or political deliberations in the family or village, and even if they are present, they do not have the right to speak. Women may participate in social activities, such as singing and singing. Once a woman is married, she must strictly abide by the rules of womanhood, or else she will be repudiated by her husband. If the couple's relationship breaks down, they can get a divorce, and whichever party initiates the divorce first, the woman can only return empty-handed or with the dowry accompanied by her mother's family. If there are children, they are to be raised by whomever they are with, and the other party has no responsibility for their upbringing. In the past, when a woman remarried, the new husband paid the bride price paid by the former husband at the time of the marriage. Now the social status of women has improved and gradually they enjoy equal rights as men.

After a Wa man gets married, he can separate his family and set up another gateway. If there is only one son in the family, he will live with his parents. If there are several brothers, the old men will choose the one they think has the best heart to live with them, while the other sons will live alone. The son who stays in the "old house" is the first heir to the property, and the daughter has no right of inheritance.

Wa Clothing

The Wa people worship red and black, and most of their clothing is made of black and decorated with red, basically retaining the old mountainous ethnic characteristics. Wa women have distinctive decorations and are fond of wearing big earrings, wide bracelets and thin rattan rings, which signify the strong character of Wa people who are rough and bold.

Comparatively speaking, there is nothing special about men's costumes except the black bag on the head. But like tattoos, most of which in the chest tattoo cow head, wrist tattoo bird, leg tattoo mountain forest pattern. Going out, often satchel flower cloth bag, wearing a long knife or musket, giving people a sense of majestic and powerful.

And the women's attire features clearly distinctive. The most prominent is the head about 3 centimeters wide silver hoop, long hair; wearing indigo collarless lapel right overlay and horizontal strips of flower tube skirt. She wore a wide red cloth belt and dozens of thin rattan hoops around her waist. The ear hangs big round earrings, and the neck wears a big silver collar and a thin necklace. Older people, like to wear about five centimeters long umbrella-shaped ear tube, the top of the tube is also engraved with a variety of patterns. Some women in the ear tube inserted with flowers and herbs, some put on the yuan, go out to the market, take with you, it is very convenient.

In the Wa settlement of Ximeng, no matter how rich or poor the women have a pair of wide bracelets, set on the wrist for many years. The bracelet is about five centimeters wide and is made of silver. It is engraved with delicate patterns and patterns, beautiful and shiny, and it is the favorite ornament of Wa women.

Wa Diet

The Wa use rice as their staple food. The Wa in the Ximeng area like to cook vegetables, salt and rice in one pot to make thicker rice. The Wa in other areas eat more dry rice. They eat three meals a day when they are busy, and two meals during weekdays. Chicken congee such as camellia porridge is the top quality of home-cooked food. The dry rice is eaten now and pounded, and men, women, children and old people eat chili peppers, and the folk have the saying that "no chili peppers can't eat enough".

The meat of the Wa people mainly comes from family rearing, including pigs, cows and chickens. In addition, they also have the habit of hunting rats and insects. In some areas, the Wa also have the habit of eating insects, including bamboo chrysalis, red caterpillars parasitized on plants and grasses, broom worms and more than ten kinds of winter melon worms parasitized on winter melon trees. In general, the edible insects are boiled with rice to make porridge with vegetables, salt and mixed chili pepper, which is spicy and delicious.

Wa beekeeping is relatively common, but the method of beekeeping is very special, first use a section of hollowed out logs, sealed at both ends, leaving several small holes for wild bees to come in and out of the forest or under the rafters of the house, so that they can reproduce and make honey, and cut them 2 or 3 times a year to eat with the pupae of the bees therein.

The Wa generally enjoy drinking wine and bitter tea. The wine they drink is home-made "soaking water wine". Drinking water wine is not only harmless to the body, but also beneficial to health. It is only in recent decades that the low tribes started to drink soaked white wine.

Wa people love to drink bitter tea. Some of the bitter tea is boiled to a great extent, almost becoming a tea paste. Although the bitter tea is bitter in flavor, it has a cool feeling after drinking it. For the Wa in the hot climate area, it has a magical thirst-quenching effect.

Chewing betel nut is a common hobby among Wa men, women and children, and usually they chew a piece of betel nut in their mouths when they are resting from labor or chatting. The betel nut chewing is a substitute for cooking with the leaves of the ma oak and lime, and it is said that chewing betel nut has a tooth-healthy effect.

Typical foods are: camellia rice, fire-roasted snake meat, green peas fried ants eggs, fried woodworm and so on.

Wa Architecture

The furnishings in Wa housing are simple, with no tables and chairs, bamboo mats and wooden boards as beds, no bedding, only cotton blankets or linen sheets as covers, wooden pillows, and clothes to sleep on.

The housing of Wa is different in different regions. In areas where the Han Chinese have a greater influence, there are generally grass and wood houses with four walls on the ground, and there are also grass houses with earth walls and individual tile houses. In most Wa areas, the structure and shape of the houses are similar to those of the Dai, and the building materials are bamboo (bamboo canes, bamboo poles, bamboo sheets, bamboo gimlets, etc.) and grass (thatch, rafters, ridge-tans, wooden boards, etc.). The tops of the wooden pillars are kept as tree forks to support the beams, and the beams are then supported by some thin bamboo and then covered with thatch to form an elevated "bamboo building". The house is divided into two floors, the upper floor to live, the lower floor for livestock, poultry activities, individual iron households are also downstairs with a wind box and a set of tools for iron.

Women are not allowed to grab men's hair, men can not touch women's feet; taboo on others to touch their heads and ears.

Counting banknotes in Wa homes is considered unlucky and will lead to disaster.

Wa Religion

The Wa people in Ximeng and other places generally believe in the primitive religion of the spirit of everything, because in the past, the productivity of the Wa society was extremely low, and the people could not get rid of the disasters brought about by nature and diseases, and thus had a fearful mentality towards natural phenomena and diseases, believing that the mountains and rivers, creatures, and all natural phenomena that they did not understand had a "spirit" (or a "spirit"). They believed that mountains, rivers, creatures and all natural phenomena that they did not understand were dominated by "spirits" (or "spirits", "ghosts", "gods") and that these "spirits" would bring them harm. These "elves" will bring people safety, danger and good fortune, so they worship these fictional abstract powers. The most worshipped by the Wa of Ximeng is the "Muyi Ji" (called "Meiji" by the Wa of Cangyuan), which is regarded as the supreme spirit that dominates all things. It is like light, like water, like air, omnipresent and omnipotent, opening up the sky, opening up the earth, managing earthquakes, and thundering. The Wa ancestor "Greno" is the son of "Muyigi", and there are also "Dana" who is in charge of water, "Dana" who is in charge of wind, and "Dana" who is in charge of water. "Dana, who is the master of water, Dawu, who is the master of wind, Dawa, who is the master of trees, Siobu, who is the master of valleys, as well as the spirits who bring all kinds of diseases to human beings, are all sent by Muyigi. "All of them are under the command of Muyi Ji. Therefore, the Wa tribe plagiarizes pigs, cattle and hunts heads for blood sacrifices in order to feed Muyigi, and "pulling wooden drums" is to invite Muyigi to accept offerings, as well as to build bamboo benches to invite Muyigi to sit on them during the completion of a new house. The new house is also built with bamboo benches to invite "Muyigi" to sit and watch the dance, in order to pray for "Muyigi" and all the ghosts to help get rid of all kinds of disasters brought about by nature and diseases.

In the past, the Wa people believed in primitive religions and held many large-scale "ghost worship" ceremonies every year. So the wooden drum became a unique sacrificial tool. Pulling wooden drums is a grand activity in which the whole village has to participate. It is usually held during the first month of the solar calendar. At that time, the magician (shaman) calls the people of the village by firing a gun and striking the drum. Rituals and plagiarism activities.