Jinuo–China’s Last National Minority

He told me so many stories, and it never occurred to me to ask for his name. Shame on me, I know. But I remember the stories. Who wouldn’t, when the storyteller pulled out a shotgun with a barrel almost four feet long?

The conversation sprang out over corn liquor, after a dinner of stir-fried green beans, potatoes and eggs. The storyteller, a sinewy guy with bronze skin and dark spiky hair, was the youngest son in the Jinuo family we were boarding with for the night.

A day’s hiking through tropic jungles, across rubber tree plantations and rice paddies in Xishuangbanna at the South end of China’s Yunnan province sent us into this Jinuo village at the hillside the Youle Mountain.

The Jinuo people, with a population of 20,000, is often called the “last minority nationality” in China, as they are the last ethnic group to be given the status of national minority by the Chinese government.

Officials like to visit Jinuo villages. It’s good politics to be seen among members of the smallest national minority. Every year, a national leader attends the Jinuo celebration of the Iron-Forging Festival, which is the equivalent of Han Chinese’s Spring Festival and Westerners’ Christmas, to show that Beijing’s warmth shines on every remote corner of the country. Local officials visit Jinuo villages from time to time to bring their care. “And they like game animals,” the young Jinuo storyteller informed us, holding the gun erect on his lap. “We made the gun ourselves, and it can kill wild hogs.”

Pun intended, there is a catch. It is illegal to kill wild animals, and those gastronomical officials are supposed to enforce the law. So the hosts hide the guns and bring out the game dishes. They tell the guests that the beasts died of natural deaths. Occasionally the diners bite into bullet scraps. Some officials who are serious about their duties would ask what they were. “We just pretend we don’t know and raise a glass to toast the greatness of the government,” the storyteller said with a smirk.

He had traveled around the country as a traditional Jinuo dancer with a circus and speaks good Mandarin. The dim radiance from the light bulb hanging down from the ceiling beam cast his shadow long on the wooden wall. A hint of red peeked out on his tanned face. Stories kept flowing with the corn liquor flowed.

The legend goes that the Jinuos had an epic battle with the Dais, the largest ethnic minority group in Xishuangbanna. The Dais won. They drove the Jinuos up into the mountains and occupied the fertile plains. The Jinuos and the Dais don’t marry each other.

A Jinuo woman weaves to make traditional dresses.

“The Dai written language is like worms crawling on banana leaves,” our storyteller scorned.

But wormy characters beat no character at all, right? The Jinuo language is oral only.

“We had a written language a long time ago,” the storyteller informed us eagerly. According to folklore, all the Jinuo wisdom and characters were written on a roll of ox hide, and one Jinuo man was the assigned keeper. One day, he crossed a river with the hide in his pocket. The hide was soaked, so he made a fire to dry the hide. “The more he roasted the hide, the better it smelt,” the storyteller said over laughers. Finally, the starving currier succumbed to the temptation and ate the hide. “There went out written language.”

Most Jinuos live at the Youle Mountain, but a small tribe reside a dozen miles away. “They were stragglers when our ancestors came and found this land.” On their way to their final settlement, Jinuo folklore goes, some members of the pioneering tribe caught crabs in a stream and started boiling their catch. They expected the crabs to become pale as other meat would do, but saw them turn red instead, so they kept boiling. The troop started moving again, and planted a banana tree to mark the location of the crab-boiling lingerers.

The author in traditional Jinuo dress.

Banana trees grow extremely fast, “so after just an hour, the tree grew a few inches, and the people left behind thought days had passed and there was no hope to catch up. They stayed and built around the spot where they boiled the crabs.”

His parents were cooing and humming to the kids. His wife bustled about, cleaning around the house and pulling blankets out of a closet to arrange a makeshift bed on the floor.

She was a silent and busy figure. The lighting was too dim and she never got close enough for me to see her face.

“Getting a wife isn’t easy,” the young man took a swig of the corn liquor, cast a glance at his woman and said. In older days, a Jinuo man had to work as a laborer for three years for the family of the woman he’s pursuing in order to win the parents’ consent. “Now the levy has been reduced to a year.”

So he had to get up early everyday to clean up around the house. During the day, he worked in their rubber tree plantation (“Her dad would complain, if I got up later than he did.”). And in the evening, he was the old man’s drinking buddy (“Once we both got so drunk that we passed out under the table.”). And only brief leaves were allowed (“I came back home for the Iron-Forging Festival. I stayed for three days and he was upset.”).

But the payoff was terrific. Not only did he get a wife, she also came with a thousand rubber trees. And it looked like he’d never have to do sweeping or cooking again, with her whirling around taking care of things.

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