Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Read Online Textbook Ana Maria and The Fox Liana de La Rosa Ebook All Chapter PDF
Read Online Textbook Ana Maria and The Fox Liana de La Rosa Ebook All Chapter PDF
Rosa
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/ana-maria-and-the-fox-liana-de-la-rosa/
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
blue, with an occasional touch of red in the skirts. The girls wear
their jackets open down to the waist; but married women wear a kind
of felt apron suspended from just above the breast. This felt is made
of wool, which is beaten until it reaches the required thickness and
density and becomes a solid mass. The cloth of which the jacket is
made has a shiny surface like sateen, which also is produced by
beating. Some of them wear thick twisted coils of scarlet thread
wound twice round the head and fixed with a scarlet wooden comb.
I got my interpreter to make a list of the different Miao tribes living
in the part of the province we visited. He did this at the dictation of
one of their number. The various Miao-chia (chia means “family”) are
mainly named on account of differences of clothing, especially as
regards colour, but also sometimes by their occupation, as the
“Shrimps” (Sa Miao), so called because they sell fresh-water fish and
shrimps; the “Magpies,” called after the birds, because their dress is
black and white; and the “West of the Water Miao” (Hsen-hsi Miao)
because they live on the west of the river that we crossed between
Anshunfu and Ta-ting: they are said to number only six villages.
Page 130
The Miao people were invited many years ago by the missionaries
to learn to write their own language in romanized script, but they
refused, saying they preferred their children to learn to read and
write Chinese. It is obvious that this would be far better for them from
a practical point of view. A Miao who knows Chinese thus can make
a good living by translating Chinese contracts or official documents
for his neighbours.
The religion of all these tribes is mainly animistic, but the Lolos
have priests, though not temples. The priests have tents, divided into
two parts, of which one is holy and the other holier. Their sacrifices
have to be of flawless creatures, cows and fowls. Their creed might
be summed up as “I believe in evil spirits, necromancy, ancestor
worship and a future life.” By far the most potent factor in their
existence is terror of demons. All their existence is overshadowed by
fear. There are all kinds of horrible demons of various colours, green
and red and blue: some have dishevelled hair and some have hair
standing on end. To add to the horror, although they are like men in
appearance, they are invisible. They shoot arrows of disease and
send bad dreams to men.
My MS. gives
Dr. Henry’s
Chinese
This is just a sample of their ideas; now I will give a sample of their
habits. They have big carouses on the open mountain slopes. A man
desirous to enter into relationship with a girl will watch his
opportunity for seeing her alone, and give as a signal a wide
sweeping movement of the arm: if she acquiesces she will go to the
carouse. These do not take place at stated intervals, but a party of
young men will go off with girls in groups of twenty or thirty and sit
round a big fire, singing their amorous ditties. These are mostly of a
coarse nature not suited for publication, but Dr. Henry has translated
the following song by girls working in the fields addressed to boys:
Page 125
A Roadside Restaurant.
Page 140
The funeral rites, which take place in the fields, include the burning
of buffaloes’ horns, cows’ bones, etc., on a kind of altar.
Our stay among the tribes and all we heard about them led us to
believe that they are capable of becoming a valuable asset to the
empire, and the progress now being made in civilizing them is most
encouraging. Some have even been sent as elected members of the
first Parliament of the Chinese Republic. They have proved
themselves capable of taking literary degrees on the same footing as
the Chinese. One of the most powerful viceroys in Western China
was a Nosu. In S. Pollard’s book, In Unknown China, he mentioned
the interesting fact that he had obtained (through a friend) the
opinion of the brilliant Dr. Wu Ting Fang (formerly Chinese Minister
at Washington) as to the position of the tribes in the new five-
coloured flag. He places them in the red bar, which stands first of the
colours, reckoning them as Sons of Han, namely among the
Chinese.
Chapter VI
The Province of Hunan
—R. Browning.
Chapter VI
The Province of Hunan