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The Shaping of Traditions:
Agriculture and Hmong Society
(By
Gary Yia Lee, Ph.D.)
Published in Hmong Studies Journal,
Volume 6, 2005
Contents
1
Abstract
2
Introduction
3
Past
livelihood
4
The new cash crop : opium
5
The
contemporary system
6
Impact of agriculture on traditions
7
Conclusion
8
Footnotes
9
References
Abstract
This article argues that throughout Hmong history, Hmong
agriculture and the associated economic system have been
determining forces affecting and giving rise to many
social customs and religious beliefs. The paper provides
numerous historical and contemporary examples of how
Hmong agriculture practices in Asia have shaped
important aspects of Hmong culture and religious
beliefs.
Introduction
In
Marx’s view, the means of subsistence of a group of
people constitute the form through which they express
their way of life; and what they are depends on the
material conditions determining “what they produce and
how they produce” (Marx, 1965: 121, original emphasis).
This has been interpreted as meaning that for Marx, the
economy determines the structures and contents of the
institutions of society, but Engels has argued that
other elements are no less influential on the process of
social evolution even if economic conditions play the
major part in the last instance (Engels, 1970: 76 –77).
This theme has been explored further in regard to modes
of production in pre-capitalist societies by Amin
(1976), Godelier (1977), Gunn (1990), Meillassoux et al.
(1981), Hindess and Hirst (1975) and Terray (1972),
among others. Binney (1968: 549), for example, states
that with the White Hmong he studied in Thailand, “the
social system is largely dependent on the continuation
of the economic system.”
Although Marxist economic determinism may not be a valid
theoretical explanation of social organization for all
human societies, an attempt will be made here to see if
it is applicable to the Hmong. I will examine the way in
which Hmong people living in villages in the highlands
of China, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Burma usually make
a living as subsistence farmers and how this relates to
their social institutions in order to see how much
agriculture affects the making of Hmong traditions. I
will attempt to reconstruct Hmong agriculture through
historical sources to find the extent to which the
economy
influences, or is influenced by, other spheres of
living. While some may say that “you are what you
produce”, the Hmong may be better characterized as “you
are today what you used to produce in the past” as a
group, especially after their recent dispersion in
culturally different and economically complex Western
societies.
In
this paper, I take the Hmong to have originated only
from southern China where there is clear evidence of
their ongoing physical presence and mentions of them in
Chinese historical texts along with many traces of
Chinese cultural influences (in Hmong language,
religion, clan names and social structure), but not from
Mesopotamia, Russia, Siberia and Mongolia where no such
links exist, apart from speculations by fanciful
proponents of Hmong history.
Past Livelihood
The main feature of the economy in
Ancient China was the so-called “fire field”
agriculture, now more generally known as slash-and-burn
or shifting cultivation (Kolb, 1977: 30). The crops
grown were millet in the north, roots and tubers such as
taro and yam together with fruit trees in the southern
coastal area; and rice in the lower Yangtze and the Huai
Ho plain – all dated back to “the fifth millennium B.C.
as far as the available archaeological data are
concerned” (Chang, 1977: 473). In the Chou Dynasty (1050
– 265 B.C.) irrigation was adopted, with the result that
agriculture became sedentary and more productive than
was the case with the practice of shifting cultivation.
This new farming practice led to a big increase in the
Chinese population and the emergence of large towns and
cities, resulting in these Chinese urban dwellers
beginning soon to encroach into native regions.
As the frontiers of Han
Chinese society spread through land colonization and
military conquests, many of the non-Chinese tribal
inhabitants were pushed to higher grounds by Chinese
settlement in the bottomland and valleys (Stover, 1974:
67). Tribal fallows were transformed into irrigated
terraces by the conquering population, while the
original farmers such as the Miao
and other tribal groups continued to grow upland rice
and taro in shifting fields, supplemented by some
hunting and cattle herding (Kolb, op.cit.: 45). In some
areas dominated by the Chinese, the natives appear to
have gradually adopted
methods of intensive
agriculture. This differential pattern of responses to
Chinese domination may be influenced by the types of
country in which the Miao/Hmong
and other groups of native people were living rather
than other factors.
In
280 A.D., the natives of Hunan, among whom was a
sizeable number of Miao were reported to be paying tax
to the local Chinese authorities in the form of hempen
cloth. Ch’eh (1947: 21) sees this as indicating the
cultivation of hemp by indigenous peoples and the
existence of handicrafts. By 353 A.D. the native tax was
paid in grain, and this continued until 619 A.D. when
this grain tax was specified as a rice tax. During the
Sung Dynasty (960 – 1276 A.D.), tributes from native
chiefs to their Chinese lords included engraved copper
drums, cinnabar, rock crystal, timber, tiger skin, musk,
beeswax, native cloth and horses (Ibid: 60). Shifting
agriculture still predominated among native farmers, but
some irrigated terraces were also to be found. This
practice was believed to be widespread among them until
the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644).
The forms in which tax was paid seem to indicate an
indigenous economy characterized by the cultivation of
grains such as wheat and rice, foraging for copper and
timber as well as bee-hives; hunting for tiger skin,
horse-breeding, and cloth-making – a fairly extensive
range of undertakings for these predominantly
subsistence farmers. An increase in rice production
owing perhaps to the adoption of intensive irrigated
cropping from the Chinese was attested by the fact that
in 1002 A.D. Chinese officials in Hunan were able to
obtain a three year reserve of grain from the tribal
population in exchange for salt (Ch’eh, op.cit.: 61). As
early as the Tsin Dynasty (265 – 420 A.D.), the natives
had come to depend on Chinese settlers for salt and
fish, which means that economic interdependence existed
between the two groups, particularly in regard to the
trade of salt for tribal rice. At the turn of the
eighteenth century, the indigenous people were pushed
deep into the hills of misty weather and bamboo groves
by the Chinese to the extent that most of them could
only grow such dry cereals as sorghum, buckwheat,
kaoliang (sweet potatoes), beans and peas, and some
wheat. By this time, maize had also been introduced for
cultivation on the mountains of the inland Yangtze
region. It
probably originated from the tribespeople in the western
frontier area of China where it was reported to be
growing towards the end of the Ming period (Ho, 1975:
194 – 195). This new crop was later to become a major
staple for Hmong farmers in areas with insufficient
arable land or inclement weather for the cultivation of
rice.
Ch’eh (1947: 110) speculates that the necessity to
reserve land for food production arising from the
constant shrinkage of their territories, could also
contribute to the giving up by many native women of the
growing of hemp. Some turned to raising silk worms as a
means of making their own fabrics while others became
completely dependent on the purchase of Chinese
materials for their costumes. This is true equally of
those living in Kweichow, or Guizhou in today’s spelling
(Lombard-Salmon, 1972: 129 – 130 and 179). With the
diminishing of good cultivatable areas, the Miao were
reported to have turned their attention to domestic
animals as a serious complementary economic activity
with such animals as water buffaloes, horses, dogs,
goats, pigs, cats, fowls and ducks. Many of these
domestic animals were obtained from Chinese traders,
often in exchange for timber which was floated along
some of the bigger rivers to Chinese trading posts (Vaulserre,
1901: 53).
Forest clearing for agriculture and the felling of trees
for commercial purposes led to extensive denudation of
mountain slopes and erosion, particularly when
reinforced by competition for these resources from the
more populous Chinese. To counter this problem, a few
groups of Miao and other minorities undertook the
reforestation of their environment with fir trees and
pines which were then used for sale and housing
construction. In Guizhou, the forests resulting from
this effort covered an area of 200
miles near the Hunan border (Lombard-Salmon, op.cit.:
128). In Guongdong and Guongxi, “thriving reforestation
projects” under clan communal management “have existed
for many centuries” (Walker, 1943: 352).
The New Cash Crop:
Opium
The earliest opium production in China can be traced
back to the T’ang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) in the
provinces of Yunnan, Sichuan and Kansu (Edkins, 1898).
During the Ch’ing Dynasty (A.D.1645 –1911), poppy
planting was reported to have spread to Guizhou and
Fujian. By 1836, it was grown extensively in Guongdong,
Fujian, Eastern Zhejiang and Yunnan. At this time, opium
addiction became so prevalent that most Chinese palace
guards, members of the civil service and the military
were smoking
opium. Partly, this was due to opium imported from
British India, which amounted to nearly 17,000 chests
(1,215 tons) per year in 1830 compared with 200 chests
(14 tons) before 1773 and with 4,000 chests (285 tons)
by 1790 (Campbell, 1920: 8). Between 1829 and 1839,
opium imports from India totaled more than 1,841 tons
annually, close to six times those for the period
between 1811 and 1812 (Owen, 1934: 80). By 1867, opium
consumption had risen to 3,903 tons from 333 tons in
1798 (Choutze, 1876: 323).
To
a great extent, the increase in the number of opium
addicts during the first half of the
nineteenth century could be attributed to the expansion
of Chinese domestic poppy cultivation. This is true
particularly of the peasant and worker addicts who
depended on local opium because of its cheaper price and
poorer quality compared to imported opium. An Imperial
edict prohibiting opium import, smoking and cultivation
was issued in 1800, but it could not be enforced as
there was a readily available and profitable market. As
buyers became more numerous, so did opium merchants and
poppy farmers.
From 1882, opium poppies were grown not only in the
hills, but also in the lowlands of parts of the
southwestern provinces of China. In Sichuan alone, it
was estimated that 850,000 acres of land were producing
23.5 million pounds of opium annually in the 1880’s
(Spence, op.cit.: 153-154).
In
1861, a British naval expedition up the Yangtse River
commented that above Guizhou, the poppy was cultivated
in addition to other crops, and “for many miles it was
the universal crop” (Sarel, 1861: 62-3). A French
expedition up the Mekong also found that opium was one
of the main products in the market of Yunnan city in
1868. It further said that opium cultivation had killed
so many bees that beeswax was eliminated as a trade
commodity (Garnier, 1873: 291). A large part of the
plain of Zhaotong, one of the biggest in Yunnan and
inhabited by Chinese as well as Hua (Flowery) Miao, was
under the poppy (Ibid: 342). An English geographer on a
journey by land and water across China in 1877, “noticed
the red flower of the poppy” in Sichuan where it was
largely grown by Chinese farmers along with crops such
as peas, beans, wheat and rape; and some districts of
Guizhou were under one crop, the poppy “as far round as
the eye could reach” (McCarthy, 1879: 491 and 496).
These accounts related to the cultivation of poppy in
China do not specify the ethnic backgrounds of the
growers. However, there is no doubt that the Hmong began
to produce opium in their hill enclaves not long after
its introduction by Chinese farmers. They might even
have been among the earlier farmers to exploit this cash
crop judging from the evidence that it was first
cultivated in abundance in the hills where many Hmong
lived before its shift to the lowlands with their
Chinese settlements. This conjecture is further
supported by the fact that the poppy was grown mostly in
the provinces with large numbers of Miao/Hmong and other
minorities.
Moreover, we know that the native population did not
have enough lands to produce grains for their needs, and
that they also had to trade with the Chinese for salt,
fish, fabrics and tools. In Guizhou, the basic “money”
in commercial transactions for the Miao/Hmong in the
seventeenth century was still salt as they were said to
dislike Chinese copper coins (Lombard-Salmon, op.cit.:
209). Yet salt was controlled by the Chinese
authorities. It was, therefore, inevitable that many
tribal people would adopt
opium as an exchange currency as they still do today in
parts of Burma, Laos and Vietnam.
By
the early nineteenth century, it was said that the opium
poppies cultivated by the Han Chinese had multicolored
petals while those of the Miao were of one color and
their fruit was bigger; and that Miao girls did not use
opium to seduce visitors as did Chinese girls of easy
virtue, because of a strict prohibition from their
elders and family heads (Ibid: 181). Nevertheless, the
Miao uprising of 1855-1881 against Chinese rule in
Southern China must have interrupted or even put an end
to opium cultivation in many areas, particularly when
the Miao were “suppressed with truly barbaric cruelty”
by Chinese troops (Meo Handbook, 1969: 13). An account
of a French expedition from Yunnan to Hanoi via Guizhou
and Guangxi in 1899 did not once refer to opium poppy
along the long journey, despite frequent mentions of
other crops and trading activities of the Miao as well
as descriptions of their gardens, rice terraces and
various fruit trees around their villages, including
ruins from their rebellion thirty years previously (Vaulserre,
op.cit : 26-58).
Following the suppression of their uprising by the
Chinese in 1881, many of them migrated to North Vietnam,
Laos and Thailand, bringing with them the cultivation of
the poppy and other traditional crops (Robequain, 1935:
84-86). This movement, mostly by the Hmong, is said to
have already begun in 1868 with ten thousand persons
from Guizhou, Yunnan and Guangxi, and continued
sporadically until 1965 (Lam Tam, 1974: 12). Some
settled near the border of China and Laos, through to
Thailand with a
few going as far as the southern most part of Yunnan
(von Wissmann, 1943: 28). In Laos, they are believed to
have established themselves “less than ten years” in the
high mountains before 1883 (Neis, 1885: 58). In 1894,
they are reported to have crossed the Mekong to Thailand
(Bernatzik, 1970: 29); and could be found as far west as
Tak by 1929 (Credner, 1967 : 167).
The economy of the Hmong migrants in North Vietnam and
Laos around this period appears to place equal
importance on rice, maize and opium (Savina, 1924: 11;
and Nguyen, 1977: 15). In areas further to the West, the
emphasis, at least in the literature, seems to have been
on the opium poppy. In Luang Prabang, Laos, the Hmong
were reputed to grow opium in their hilly retreats and
to “flood the whole country with their low quality
opium” (Neis, op.cit.: 58).
Across the Mekong in Chiangrai province of Thailand,
about 150 Hmong had settled on a ridge in 1905 and
“their favourite crop was clearly seen to be opium” (Seidenfaden,
1923: 192). Elsewhere in Northern Siam, other groups of
Hmong lived “on the cool heights of mountain tops in
comparative ease and plenty ... (cultivating)
principally the poppy” (McCarthy, 1888: 125). The motive
appears to be the same as previously in China: the need
for a light but valuable commodity that could be sold,
exchanged or
traded for money and other necessities which were not
available locally. This is in great contrast to those
who went to live in southern Yunnan where their economy
consisted of “fire-field rice cultivation, maize and
buckwheat” together with the grazing of goats and
buffaloes (von Wissmann, op.cit.).
This excursion into Miao/Hmong economic history,
admittedly partly speculative, suggests certain
consistencies or changes linking mythical times to the
most recent past. Clearly, the Miao/Hmong seem never to
have abandoned shifting agriculture and animal
husbandry. They have carried on with their own
handicrafts, especially in regard to cloth-making from
hemp and blacksmithing. Buffaloes could have been
adopted only since their adoption of irrigated rice
cultivation, following the example of the ever-expanding
Chinese. Horses appear to have been the basic means of
transportation for the Miao
throughout their long history in China
(Kolb, op.cit.: 44). For many of the non-Chinese people
in the southwestern part of the country,
their contacts with the Chinese could
only have meant their eventual adoption of a new mode of
production dominated by Chinese intensive agriculture
and socio-economic aspirations. Those who refused this
absorption were continually driven into more and more
shrunken territories suitable only for shifting
cultivation with all its economic and environmental
implications.
The Contemporary
System
During the five Dynasties (907-960 A.D.), the intensive
irrigated rice cultivation of the Chinese still competed
strongly against the shifting extensive agriculture of
the Miao/Hmong and other hill tribes for land in China.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, many minority groups
including ancestors of the Hmong had adopted Chinese
methods of agriculture. The acceptance of indigenous
people into Chinese schools and the public service also
led to further fusion of Chinese and native ways of
life, although always in favour of the Chinese. When
Chinese control over the Southwest of China became
complete in 1856, most hills had been transformed into
terraced fields and native settlements into Chinese
villages (Ch’eh, op.cit.: 140).
Those Miao/Hmong who resisted this assimilation,
retreated gradually to mountain fastnesses where they
carried out various forms of subsistence farming. It was
the descendents of this group who migrated to Indochina
and Thailand with the legacy of their shifting
cultivation which still remains with most of them today,
particularly in Laos and Vietnam. Those who stayed
behind in their original homeland in China appear to
have evolved an economy different in many respects from
the one in Southeast Asia. In mountain areas, in Western
Hunan, swiddening was still found before 1950, but there
were wet rice terraces along river banks and in the
valleys irrigated by means of water wheels. In both
these dry and wet rice fields, the Miao/Hmong usually
grew Indian corn, maize, buckwheat, kaoliang, millet,
rice and beans. Where the land was too steep or
unsuitable for grain crops, oil trees and tea
plantations could be found and sometimes could bring
high profits to their owners. Other cash crops were
tobacco, mulberries for silkworms, cotton and sugar
cane. Fish and bees were kept in addition to domestic
animals such as cows, horses and buffaloes, some of
which were traded with Chinese merchants (Ling and Ruey,
1947: 54-72).
In
Guizhou, according to de Beauclair (1970: 50), the Miao
had become “expert fish breeders” and where the land
surface allowed, they built terraced fields supported by
stone walls and irrigated with water from bamboo pipes.
They cultivated rice, maize, millet, turnips and various
gourds for use as containers. Other agricultural
products included beans, sunflower, tobacco, indigo,
cotton, capsicum, red pepper and a variety of
vegetables. They kept fowls and pigs, and used dogs for
hunting such game as bears, tigers, boars, badgers,
martens and muntjaks. Birds and mountain rats were also
caught for food.
In
northeastern Guizhou, the Miao still used the cross bow
in 1947, but those in the Southeastern part had
long-barreled guns, reportedly introduced by Chinese
soldiers in 1681. In the 1960’s, they could make their
own firearms, gunpowder, lead shot and even fuses from
bamboo fire. There was a complete absence of tuberous
plants such as sweet potatoes, taro, yams or hemp.
Instead, wet rice fields, fish-breeding, the cultivation
and use of cotton for cloth-making and the construction
of houses on stilts had been adopted. The culture of the
Miao in this region seems to have been strongly
influenced by neighboring Chuang and Tung tribes with
their pole dwellings, wet rice cultivation and
dependence on cotton (Ibid: 67-68, 82-86 and 90-94).
While the staple food for the Sheng Miao in Western
Guizhou was maize and buckwheat, other groups of Miao in
Northwest Yunnan and Northwest Guizhou used barley,
potato, millet and oats. Only central and Southeastern
Guizhou had much rice (LeBar et al., 1964: 67). Many
Flowery Miao in Sichuan had no farms, and tilled the
lands of the Chinese and Nosu, their powerful neighbours,
in exchange for material necessities (Hudspeth, 1937: 10
and 19-20). Those in a more fortunate position kept
cows, goats and sheep, because manure was needed to
fertilize their farms where in addition to other crops a
great deal of hemp was grown for weaving, although caps
and sleeping mats as well as winter jackets were also
made from sheep wool and goatskins.
At
least as far as Guizhou is concerned, the Hmong economy
was dictated by the physical limitations of their
environment because only 5 per cent of the province was
cultivatable, with rice being the most common crop, then
maize, beans, wheat, barley and millet. However,
“nowhere is more than one crop of rice grown and the
harvest is in September or October” (Mickey, 1947: 5).
This is a contrast to areas of Southern Sichuan where
the Magpie Miao had intensive agriculture with two crops
a year. While
millet, barley, buckwheat, maize, kaoliang, cabbage,
turnips and tea were grown by the fire-field method on
the mountain tops, rice and small quantities of beans,
hemp, indigo and tobacco were “raised in paddy fields on
the rare stretches of level ground, along the river
banks, and behind terraces laboriously constructed on
the lower slopes of the mountain” (Ruey, 1960: 144).
Near the border of Yunnan and Guizhou, the Hmong
agricultural scene seems to have changed again. Here,
among the Ch’uan Miao of Southwest Sichuan, the pattern
was akin to that of Northwest and central Guizhou. Rice
was the major food item for the well-to-do people but
the fields of the poorer ones were so steep that only
corn could be grown, supplemented by wheat, oats and
buckwheat. Beans, peas, onions, turnips, cabbage,
carrots and other vegetables were grown in gardens.
Ducks and geese were
raised in addition to other domestic animals.
Interestingly, dogs and black snakes were eaten by some
of the people, a rare occurrence among Hmong in
Southeast Asia. Some hunting took place in winter, but
there was no fishing or fish-breeding. No irrigation was
practiced, but manure was used abundantly on the dry
fields which were cultivated year after year owing to
the lack of arable land (Graham, 1937: 20-23).
It
is, thus, obvious that the Miao/Hmong in China carried
out shifting agriculture until 70 years ago,
supplemented by wet field terracing where possible. Even
after the establishment of the People’s Republic of
China in 1949, rice was still being grown in dry as well
as in wet forms, and poppies could be found in “remote
pockets” inhabited by minorities (Winnington, 1957 :
72). The introduction of farm communes in some areas was
said to have enabled a number of Miao in Hunan to earn
extra income from
the pressing of tea for oil and from rice hulling using
water power from mountain streams. Income was also
gained from brick-making and silkworm breeding (Hsimen,
1958: 26). Claims have been made that Miao/Hmong
agricultural productivity and livelihood have been
improved through the instigation of land reform and the
incorporation of peasant farms into cooperatives by the
current Chinese regime (LeBar et al, op.cit: 67-68; and
Teng, 1973: 44-45). Today, there is hardly any shifting
cultivation left in China, except in isolated areas near
the borders of Laos and Vietnam. It has been replaced by
sedentary dry upland agriculture that is combined with
pockets of irrigated rice growing. Much the same can be
said about the Hmong of Thailand.
In
Vietnam, it was claimed that the Hmong had benefited
from improved water supply,
government schools and medical care as well as salt
distribution – all rare benefits in the past. It is said
that apart from their staple crops, they now grow
medicinal plants instead of opium (Nguyen, op.cit. :
15-16). In many areas, they have been organized into
lowland farming cooperatives and were reported to have
given up shifting agriculture in the highlands so that
“their way of life has been completely renewed” (Lam
Tam, op.cit.: 59).
There is no way we can check the validity of these
claims, particularly with respect to the
cultivation of poppy. Refugees who
used to live near the border of northern Laos and
Vietnam in the late 1960’s told of an unbroken tradition
of opium production by Hmong inhabitants of the region,
even at the present time when the Vietnamese socialist
revolution had been established there for more than five
decades.
This opium was usually sold to Vietnamese army officers
whose troops were stationed in the
area. Today, frequent media reports on arrests and
execution of Vietnamese heroin and opium traffickers
also attest to the continuation of this tradition,
despite current efforts by the United Nations Drug
Control Program to encourage Hmong opium growers in the
border region of Laos and Vietnam to give up poppy
cultivation. As in China and elsewhere, a main motive is
the need for cash or exchange currency to obtain
imported goods, especially salt. Today, salt may be more
readily available than in the past, but it
still has to be bought together with other commodities.
The quest for salt has always been
a need for the Hmong as far back as they can remember.
The first recorded trade of salt between them and the
Chinese was during the Northern and Southern Dynasties
(311-580 A.D.). I have already made reference to this
trade in which Miao/Hmong used their rice to barter for
Chinese salt. The demand became so intensified that
local importation sometimes became insufficient until an
Imperial edict during the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.)
ordered that the salt needs
of
the indigenous people should be fully met. Because salt
was a government monopoly which led to excessively high
prices, smuggling by some natives occurred and its
suppression led to a four year revolt in Hunan in 1043.
A
factor in the adoption by the Hmong of opium production
in the past and possibly even today could be the
necessity to purchase salt, since they could not extract
it themselves and had to rely on traders. One cultural
consequence of the shortage of salt is that today many
Hmong foodstuffs are sour or pickled preserves, because
of the lack of salt in areas too distant from trading
centres. These dishes are said to include turnips, fish,
beef, pepper, eggplants and bracken (Ling and Ruey,
op.cit.: 76). After being
dispossessed of their traditional
lands, many Hmong and other indigenous people in
Southern China took refuge in isolated mountain areas
which were suitable only for shifting cultivation. The
need for outside goods has led in this way to the
development of cash cropping, namely opium.
Opium was widely adopted because it was light and easily
transportable across the rough terrains of the
highlands, it fetched a higher price than other crops,
and yielded income the first year it was grown. The
Hmong in Laos also cultivated the poppy to buy two key
metals they needed: iron and silver, which they used to
make farm implements and jewelry (Westermeyer, 1982:
44-45). Compared to rice and maize, opium was also the
most productive crop in term of monetary value with a
yield as high as six times that of rice for the same
cultivated land area, so it made sense for the Hmong “to
grow as much opium as possible” even at the expense of
rice and other crops (Cooper et al. 1991: 33).
From this historical examination of the
Miao/Hmong economy, various forces, which contributed to
the diversification of Hmong agriculture, can be
discerned.
It is evident that the Hmong have been
long-standing farmers, and have developed many firmly
held beliefs and practices related to the desire for
domestic animals and the cultivation of crops, be it
through shifting agriculture or irrigated terracing.
Evidence in China indicates that “they began planting
rice a long time ago” (de Beauclair, op.cit. : 82).
Maize and opium were probably adopted during the last
one to two hundred years, but they are today so much a
part of the Hmong agricultural system that different
ways of making use of these crops have evolved. This
applies particularly to opium, a crop that possesses
both cash and practical values to the Hmong to the
extent that they depend on it to satisfy their health
and other economic requirements above the subsistence
level.
The economy of the Hmong in traditional village settings
in Asia very much resembles that of shifting cultivators
in many pre-modern parts of the world today. No matter
how far back we look into the past, Hmong economic
patterns appear to be persistent in terms of the
agricultural sector dominating other forms of
production. The adoption of shifting cultivation as a
way of life is no doubt due to the nature of the
environment in which they are forced to live either by a
conquering majority of by pressure of land
competition with other groups of people. This results in
frequent migration because of the lack of suitable lands
for permanent agriculture and sedentary settlement. The
pattern of shifting farming has been adapted to the
cultivation of cash crops such as opium and tea, and is
sometimes supplemented by rice growing in irrigated
fields.
Despite the occurrence of these permanent fields,
swiddening was until recently the most common type of
resource exploitation so that it could be regarded
almost as a culture for the Hmong. This is still the
case in Laos where there is enough land to carry on this
age-old method of agricultural production. Shifting
farming has been practiced from time immemorial and
handed down from generation to generation, with little
or no modification of its techniques. Not only is it a
process by which the Hmong adapt themselves to the
available means of production, it also carries social
values and
religious customs which serve productive ends. Cohen
(1968: 42) defines culture as the artifacts,
institutions of organizations of social relations,
ideologies and all the “range of customary behaviors
with which a society is equipped for the exploitation of
the energy potentials of its particular habitat”. If
this definition is applied to the Hmong situation,
agriculture is obviously a dominant aspect of their
society and contributes to the formation of a large part
of Hmong traditions and social life. Let us now look at
the
ways in which agricultural production dominates or
affects the Hmong social formation.
Impact of Agriculture on Traditions
A
tradition is a way of thinking, behavior or practice
that is followed by a group of people from one
generation to the next as something they value,
something that works for them or makes their life
meaningful in the physical context in which they live.
Where many such traditions become a coherent set of
social usages or customs, they form the basis of a
people’s culture. In this sense, how much can we say
that Hmong traditions are formed by beliefs or practices
derived from their economic system, namely shifting
agriculture?
a.
Hmong use of time
Many Hmong traditions are affected by the agricultural
cycle in which the Hmong in their village settings are
involved. How big and when to carry out one’s wedding,
funeral and household rituals depend very much on one’s
wealth and ability to afford them – both of which are
determined by one’s economic - agricultural
productivity. In this context, agriculture does not
necessarily determine the contents and performance of
these traditional practices. However, the timing of
these events is very much influenced by the Hmong
farming system, especially in regard to the New Year
celebration.
New Year is a time for enjoyment, for welcoming the year
ahead and saying good-bye to the one that has just
passed. More importantly, however, it is a time for
resting, for putting down all tools and spending a few
days in the company of family members, relatives and
friends chatting, drinking (for the men), feasting,
paying respect to village elders, making offerings to
ancestors, and courting through singing love songs or
playing the ball game (for young men and girls). It is
also the time when one is free from the exigency of
economic activities to pay visits to relatives in
distant villages, particularly the parents of one’s wife
(“mus xyuas niam tais yawm txiv”). New Year can last
from a few days to one to two weeks. With so many
important activities for different age groups in the
village, how is New Year determined by the Hmong’s mode
of production? Here, we can see that agriculture
definitely dictates when New Year should be celebrated –
usually in November when most Hmong would have completed
their rice and maize harvests while their opium poppy
plants are still only in full bloom but not yet mature
enough for tapping. In settlements or with households
where these agricultural harvests have not been
completed, the New Year celebration may be postponed to
the following month.
Another example of how a tradition is shaped by
agricultural activities is the Hmong courtship system,
especially the timing of its occurrence. Hmong young men
and girls normally start courting each other at the age
of 16 onwards, but most of their romantic encounters
take place after dark when all household chores like
dinner and cleaning the family home and dishes have been
completed – the latter being the responsibility of older
girls and young married women in the household. When the
girls have gone to bed, then young men who wish to court
them would start going to the girls’ houses and talk to
them through the cracks in the timber wall outside the
girls’ bedroom. If they are well known already to each
other and if the girls’ parents allow, then the boys may
go inside the house and chat with the girls in front of
the fireplace.
The reason for this activity to take place at night is
because these young able-bodied persons are needed for
farming work during the day. Sometimes, courting may
take place at the girl’s farm during the day if a boy is
free from agricultural work for his family, but this is
usually rare. Some may attribute the night-time courting
to the fact that Hmong young people are too shy to court
each other in front of the girl’s parents, or that they
may find the dark of the night more convenient for other
more adult activities. Nevertheless, night-time courting
as a Hmong tradition is clearly dictated by the division
of labor between the old and the young together with the
family’s preoccupation with urgent agricultural work
during daylight hours.
b.
Hmong
Belief System
The most important sphere of Hmong society, which is
greatly influenced by farming, is the Hmong belief
system. Hmong believe in spirits, which comprise
“tamed”, or household ancestral spirits, and “wild”
spirits or those which dwell in trees, rocks, streams
and other places of nature. Calls and offerings are made
to both categories of spirits to obtain their protection
in any major undertakings, including all forms of
agriculture and trade. Human beings possess souls, but
“crops, domestic animals,
silver, gold and money also have souls; and if people
can attract these souls to come to live with them, then
they will prosper” (Chindarsi, 1975: 31). Because of
these strong beliefs, the Hmong have many ceremonies for
spirits and souls. In agriculture, these rituals consist
of offerings of paper and incense to the nature spirits
of a site selected for swidden during clearing in order
to prevent their interference in work. Before planting,
a simple call with the burning of 3 incense sticks may
be made near a stump or any
prominent area in a field to ask for spiritual
cooperation and help. This act is performed by the owner
of the swidden or by the spiritual head of the household
or the lineage, with the promise that an offering will
be given later if the crops grow well or are free from
natural calamities, and if the yield is satisfactory.
Based on my own observation of the Hmong in Thailand
(Lee, 1981: 163-166), such a promise is usually honored
at the end of the harvest season, and may consist of a
chicken, some paper money, a few glasses of rice wine
and some incense sticks together with the appropriate
incantations of thanks. In any one year, quite a few
chickens may be killed for this purpose. Each household
would have a roughly made
straw altar in every swidden for agricultural ceremonies
of this type. It can also sometimes be found in wet rice
fields. However, it is not mandatory that all households
observe these ceremonies. If a crop fails, then no
offering will be made.
Sometimes, no calls for spiritual assistance are made
for the purpose of having good harvests. If a crop grows
well enough, nothing of a religious nature will be done.
When a crop does not grow or is ravaged by pests, then
household and “wild” spirits may be invoked to come and
give their protection. If the situation improves, an
offering similar to one described above will be given at
the end of the agricultural cycle. This practice holds
equally for wet rice and maize when there are droughts
or recurrent storms. If these natural mishaps are severe
enough, a direct offering of chicken may be made without
first calling on the protection of the spirits with the
promise of a sacrifice. In no instance are there any
other animals offered apart from young chickens.
Thus, supernatural beliefs involving agriculture include
the attribution of agricultural success or failure to
the goodwill and interference of spiritual forces.
According to Chindarsi, the encountering of certain
types of snake, a tiger or other wild animals of a
vicious nature during the clearing of a field is seen as
an indication that the spirits of the area do not allow
the use of the field and new site will have to be found
(Chindarsi, op.cit.: 55 –56). Before a farmer burns a
newly slashed swidden, the spirits are asked
to
move temporarily elsewhere until the work is completed.
On the last trip to take a harvest home, the household
head will call on the souls of the crop (“plig qoob plig
loo” – pli klong pli laung) to come home with him so
that next year they will bring more harvest. Similar
customs are reported elsewhere. For instance, the Black
Miao of China, are said to make offerings to the spirits
of the granary and to abstain from noisy amusements such
as the playing of the reed pipe from the time of
planting until the
harvesting of rice (de Beauclair, op.cit. : 82).
Prior to when a new crop of rice and maize is eaten for
the first time, some of it is cooked carefully and is
offered to the household and ancestral spirits before
being consumed by the household members. This is
referred to by Graham (op.cit.: 51) as “the ceremony of
tasting new grain” (“noj mov nplej tshiab”). Usually a
chicken or small pig is killed for the ceremony and all
the ancestral spirits are invited to join in the feast.
This ritual is observed only among those who grow their
own crops in recognition for the protection of their
ancestors and in reverence for their importance in the
spiritual
world of the household. Those who do not grow these
crops do not make this offering. Among the poor, this
first-fruit ritual consists of the offering of a cake
made of the new grains of rice or corn, and no animals
are killed nor is anyone invited for a meal. In some
settlements, the first cucumber to be picked for the
year is also offered to household spirits, but the
practice has not been reported among other groups of the
Hmong.
It
has been stated that the Hmong do not have many
agricultural rituals and that most of the existing
practices are desirable rather than obligatory since
those who observe them are fewer than those who do not (Chindarsi,
op.cit. : 56; and Geddes, 1976 : 168). However, this is
not always the case in some areas where every household
often carries out ceremonies in at least some of its
bigger swiddens. These ceremonies are not obligatory,
but the Hmong appear to place great faith in them. The
fact that they require only chickens, rice wine, paper
money and incense means that they are affordable, unlike
other rituals offered to ancestors involving the killing
of oxen and pigs. The practice of these rituals may be
more prevalent in areas of Hmong settlement with
declining agricultural productivity, which leads to
uncertainty about one’s livelihood and increased need
for supernatural interventions. Calling upon spiritual
guidance and help provides the farmers with at least
some psychological assurance in a situation where crops
are subject to the whim of the weather and to poor soil
conditions. Rituals of this nature may have the purpose
of integrating the efforts of the workers and giving
them confidence with “the belief that divine aid is
available” (Norbeck, 1964: 216).
Malinowski (1915: 636 and 1921) even goes so far as
stating that magic is a technological aid in material
production, providing initiative and stimulus to
producers and setting their pace of work. If this view
is adopted, the Hmong may be said to use magic as a
means of production to supplement their own labor and
implements in their attempt to achieve successful crops.
As Evans-Pritchard (1965: 45) suggests, however, the
chief benefit from the performance of a rite may not be
to secure practical ends but
to
prevent tension or anxiety from rising among the
believers. Rituals thus act as economic incentives and
as a prevention of conflicts. Firth (1951: 133 and 139)
has pointed out that central to the understanding of an
economic system is the nature of incentives or forces
which move people to take certain courses of action
rather than others. The choices they make are influenced
by at least four factors: (1) the dictation of
group or national opinions; (2) the convention of work
organization; (3) the values given to time, labor and
the products of labor; and (4) the efficiency of the
means of production. Purely economic motives are not
sufficient explanation, and we will need to examine also
the relationship between socio-cultural inducements and
material forces operating in the economic sphere.
c.
Hmong
Migration, Labor Division and Gender Roles
Having established that agriculture is closely related
to Hmong religious beliefs, let us now look at the links
between agriculture and Hmong social structure, as well
as their forces of production and the distribution of
goods. This interrelationship is nowhere more evident
than when the Hmong have to migrate for economic reasons
and their clan structure is changed as a result; or when
they have accumulated goods and savings that help
elevate their social position, thereby differentiating
people on the basis of wealth. Moreover, agriculture
also requires careful management of time and the forces
of
production through mutual help, labor exchange and the
division of labor, thus setting a paradigm on the
allocation of certain specific tasks to specific members
of a family’s work force on the basis of age and
gender.
The Hmong tradition of moving settlement every few
decades after the land around their old village became
exhausted, has been attributed to the need to find new
farming land. This pattern of migration in time of peace
and the lack of a sedentary residential tradition are
often dictated by an economic imperative – the
never-ending quest for agricultural land and other
economic opportunities. Although this migratory
tradition has largely stopped in countries with heavy
pressure on land use like China and Thailand, it has not
prevented individuals or families from moving from one
place or even one country to another to look for new
economic prospects. For Geddes (1970: 1-11), the
commitment to opium growing by the Blue Mong of Thailand
in the 1960’s was the major factor in their residential
instability through frequent moves from one settlement
to another in search of new poppy fields, in the fusion
and fission of some households or lineages, and in clan
dispersion during different stages of their migratory
lives.
Usually, Hmong economic migration is made with members
of one’s clan or with the idea of joining them in their
settlement. In such a context, the clan or lineage
remains intact and mutual support between its members
can be maintained. Sometimes, however, a few members may
decide to migrate, while others stay behind or join
relatives elsewhere. In this case, clan fission will
occur. If these original members of a clan become
separated for a long time over great distance without
contact, they will
eventually forget their original affiliation and their
clan rituals. Over time, some members will even change
details of these rituals so that they can no longer
trace each other through the ritual system. This clan
dispersion and ritual change are often found among the
migratory Hmong of Southeast Asia, a change in the
social structure brought about by economic factors. If a
family becomes separated from other lineage members
through migration and does not remember its lineage
rituals anymore, it may decide to join another group by
the same clan name but with a slight difference in the
mechanics of its ritual performance such as nine piles
of meat instead of five for the door-spirit ceremony.
Such a family will then have to adopt the rituals of the
adoptive group in order to become part of their lineage.
It is in such a circumstance that clan or lineage fusion
takes place. It is not unusual to find changes that
occur in this manner to the clan and social organization
of the Hmong – again very much the result of economic
factors requiring people to migrate and to change
ritually in order to gain acceptance in an expedient
manner. Where there are no economic needs that force
them to migrate, there will not be change to their clan
rituals and composition. As stated by Geddes (1976:128),
“a settled condition would mean not merely a change in
economic patterns but a considerable alteration in
social life as well.”
In
situations where productivity is high and a family
manages to accumulate large amounts of savings, the male
family head may decide to increase its farming outputs
by increasing the size of its labor force. This can take
two forms: (i) paying for hire labour, or (ii) acquiring
additional wives and having larger families. Some men
may marry more than one wife for other reasons, but it
is often economic success that enables them to engage in
polygamy, usually to show off one’s economic status
while also increasing the family work force pool. Thus,
“additional wives are gained by economic success which
in turn they facilitate” (Geddes, 1976: 128). In this
manner, agricultural productivity through the
cultivation of opium and other cash crops can be said to
have given rise to the Hmong’s institution of polygamy
and its survival. Unless there is law or sanction
against it, it can be expected that the rate of polygamy
will be low or non-existent in places where economic
productivity is low and most producers are poor.
Polygamy, agricultural productivity and a high-yield
ecology are therefore closely interrelated.
If
agriculture is a determinant aspect of the Hmong’s
ability to increase their work force or to accumulate
goods and social status, it directly affects the
structuring of their society by differentiating its
members on the basis of wealth. Agriculture is thus the
main factor in promoting the existence of the “prestige
sphere” identified by Dalton (1971: 14-16) in which
economic and agricultural goods play an important role
in major life events. The more goods displayed,
exchanged or used during ceremonies marking certain
turning points of life, the more they improve one’s
social position and status in society, thus enhancing
one’s prestige.
In
the pastoral environment where the Hmong make their
living, the level of productivity depends on both the
available means of production (land and tools) and the
relations of production or relations between the
producers/workers (members of a household unit, wives
and children). For the Hmong, these relations of
production may result from marriage or the fusion of
households and clans, supplemented by hired labor and
other forms of work organization.
Cooper (1980) distinguishes “five basic forms of work
organization” among the Hmong of
northern Thailand: (i) cooperation, (ii) direct paid
labor, (iii) indirect paid labor, (iv) commercial labor,
and (v) labor exchange. Apart from household and family
labor, cooperative labor and labor exchange are the most
common forms among shifting subsistence farmers with the
unit of production being the nuclear family or the
extended household and with simple tools used in all
forms of production. Economic undertakings are thus
based on social relationships within these two primary
groups, and cooperation rarely extends beyond the
household level. Cooperative work involves people
pooling their energy and tools together to perform a
task designed for the benefit of the group involved as a
whole, such as a village getting together to build a
bridge or a common fence that belongs to the whole
community. Labor exchange involves members of two or
more families taking turn to work on each other’s fields
for a specified number of days. This is a common method
of gaining extra labor when the task at hand has to be
completed quickly such as planting or harvesting.
More enduring than communal work organization and labor
exchange is the division of labor within each family
work unit. The Hmong division of household labor is
based on age and gender. The aged and the young are
given lighter tasks while the more able-bodied adults
are given work that is heavier and more time-consuming.
The following agricultural and household tasks are
usually allocated to both men and women: clearing
undergrowth to prepare field, planting, weeding,
harvesting, and carrying crop home. The men are
generally responsible for: cutting trees to clear a new
field, burning the
felled trees and other dry vegetation to prepare a
field, ploughing and caring for horses and cows. Tasks
that are assumed by women only include feeding domestic
animals, cloth-making, cooking, cleaning and washing up.
Older children of both gender assist with: caring for
pigs, chicken and other animals; collecting firewood and
water; pounding rice, grinding maize, and caring of
younger children (Cooper et al., op.cit.: 38). In
addition to this household division of labor, men are
given the roles of village conflict
resolution and family ritual performance. It may appear
that Hmong men assume more roles and responsibilities
than women, but in reality the women are the ones who
have to work the hardest and longest. They get up at the
first crows of cocks (the Hmong’s natural alarm clock)
in the early morning to cook for their families and
their pigs while the men continue their sleep. They are
also the last to go to bed after finishing pounding rice
for use the next day, or sweeping the floor of the
house.
This structuring of roles and responsibilities in the
Hmong household under situations of shifting cultivation
is again dictated in the main by the agricultural base,
the need to ensure the best use of available manpower
and the maximum economic returns for the family unit.
This is despite gender roles being based also on
ideologies derived from a Confucian male-dominated
society as is the case with the Hmong whose social
organization is modeled much after that of the Chinese.
d.
Hmong Life in the Diaspora
After 1975, most of the 240,000 Hmong who fled the new
communist Laos to seek asylum in Thailand found
permanent settlement in various Western countries. As a
dispossessed people used to a pastoral way of life, most
Hmong prefer to live in the hills with a cool climate
and lush vegetation, in locations which allow them
access to farming, animal husbandry, hunting, foraging
and some fishing. For this reason, about 3,000 Hmong
decided to go to French Guyana where they could resume
life as farmers
in
a tropical environment, and where they could also
continue their tradition of hunting for game in the
nearby forests. In France, a large number moved to the
southern city of Nimes where they eventually managed to
dominate the local vegetable growing business. In
Australia, more than half of its 1,800 Hmong population
moved to North Queensland where they could grow bananas
and live in a rain forest environment, the only area in
the country which reminds them of their former farming
life and homeland
in
Laos.
The majority of the 180,000 Hmong who resettled in urban
America were initially resigned to factory work and a
life in overcrowded cities, but soon migrated to small
towns where they engaged in market gardening such as
those who now live in the Central Valley of California,
or in Wisconsin. Smaller numbers later migrated to
Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma or South Carolina and
nearby states to do chicken farming. The more
forward-thinking Hmong see this as a regression to a
pre-modern life. For others, this return to agriculture
gives the people involved the freedom to work for
themselves, to make a living in a sector in which they
are skilled in or where they will obtain more financial
benefits. It is also an ideal opportunity to satiate
their nostalgia for the imagined homeland, they’re
longing for familiar landscapes that have shaped so much
of their traditional way of life.
Among the traditions, which the diasporic Hmong find
difficult to change, but which put them at odds with the
new societies are spiritual healing practices through
shamanism and funeral rites. In Laos, they have been
able to practise freely their religion of ancestor
worship, traditional medicine, and their elaborate
funerals. In the West, however, the social environment
is very different. There are laws prohibiting the
slaughtering of animals in the home as required by Hmong
ancestral rituals and healing ceremonies. The most
common use of animals by the Hmong is for the
“soul-calling” ceremony when a person falls sick and the
sickness is believed to be caused by the soul having
been taken from the body by evil spirits. In such a
case, a young chicken is killed so its soul can be used
for exchange with the soul of the sick person, a remnant
from the old belief in evil spirits living in nature and
the need to give them offerings.
An
anachronistic aspect of Hmong diasporic life is the
continued use of traditions that harp back to a
subsistence pastoral mode of production, despite the
Hmong now residing in complex and highly urbanised
environments and making a living from occupations far
removed from agriculture. Beliefs in spirits continue
along with most of the traditional rituals associated
with these beliefs. During funerals, for instance, the
soul of a dead person is still given an offering of
cattle and pigs to take to the Afterworld
to
be raised and used in time of hardship. A Hmong funeral
is a major social event lasting up to a week or ten
days, especially if it involves an elder in the
community and when the family has access to money as in
the USA where funeral-pooling funds are common among the
Hmong. Often, more than ten oxen are slaughtered as food
for visitors and sacrificial animals for the dead
person, even in the face of offending
neighbours and local authorities. The offering is made
while the animals are still alive, so it has been
difficult but not impossible to hold proper Hmong
funerals in the diaspora where funeral homes are usually
quiet places for a short one-hour mortuary service and
not the killing of large animals and ritual performance
that last up to three days.
A
story recently circulated that a Hmong woman who died in
Chicago was given sixteen
sacrificial oxen, so many that she could not look after
them all in the Afterworld and had returned to take a
nephew to go and help her. At least, that was how the
nephew’s sudden death at an early age was explained. The
persistence of these funeral customs points to the
Afterworld, the world of the Hmong ancestors, being a
pastoral heavenly place where animal husbandry is a
major economic activity. Again, this seems to indicate a
leftover impact of an old mode of economic production
that has been strongly
engrained in the Hmong psyche, culture and ritual
system. For the Hmong living a radically different life
in the West, Hartley (1988: 1) puts it aptly when he
writes in a different context that “the past is a
foreign country: they do things differently there” In
saying this, I am not implying that the past and its
cultural traditions are now irrelevant, but only try to
point out the depth of influence exerted by agriculture
and its
associated practices on Hmong traditions, even in new
post-modern situations.
Conclusion
It
is obvious that agriculture is closely interrelated with
other aspects of Hmong society. The Hmong have developed
a productive system suited to their needs within their
restricted environment, and they possess simple farming
tools, which require only the use of human labor, apart
from work animals such as horses, buffaloes, or oxen.
Where domestic manpower is insufficient to meet their
agricultural demands, hired workers are employed
particularly in the production of opium when this used
to be grown a few decades ago. Agriculture is
incorporated into the social system through the medium
of the household and its members acting both as
producers and consumers of farming goods, and it is
supported by the religious system which sanctions and
gives value to many of the agricultural activities.
While it may still be the case for the majority of Hmong
in the homeland in Laos and China that “you are what you
produce”, this no longer holds true for those living in
the diaspora in Western societies where it may be more
correct to say that “you are today what your ancestors
did for a living long ago”.
In
this paper, I have used the Marxian concept of a mode of
production as consisting of an economic base, a juridico-political
superstructure and an ideological superstructure
(including religion), with the economic base being the
determinant factor (Terray, 1972: 97-98). From my
discussion of Hmong agriculture and its impact on
traditions in other spheres of Hmong society, it is
evident that the economic base has been determinative in
shaping many Hmong beliefs and practices, especially in
the religious sphere. This is true of the Hmong in
general insofar as other spheres of their society are
constrained by the capacity of the agricultural base to
sustain them. This would agree with the view
advanced by Lefebvre (1972: 15) that the economy
determines social relations only in the sense that it
puts limits to the activities and performance of groups
and their members in different areas of their lives by
imposing shackles around them and by arresting their
potentialities through the lack of economic means to
achieve them.
The Hmong traditional economic system provides not only
economic gains for its participants but also cultural
and religious benefits derived from social customs and
religious rituals that evolved from the people’s
agricultural practices and ecology. Judging by the
agricultural rituals they observe, it would appear that
dry shifting cultivation was dominant over other forms
of production. In this sense, many
Hmong traditions have been shaped by dry land
agriculture, but their development has also been
restricted by the remote geographical confines in which
the Hmong have been forced to live or the constraints of
subsistence farming they have adopted. To this extent,
agriculture is clearly a determinant force in the last
instance in Hmong society, affecting and giving rise to
many social customs and religious beliefs.
Footnotes
As pointed out by Chang (1977:37-38),
it is only since 1950 B.C. that written materials
are available, which enables us to provide a
chronological order for events in Chinese history.
Before this date, the history of ancient China is
based on myths and legends, which lead to much
confusion and arguments as to what actually did
happen. For a reconstruction of this primeval
period, especially with regard to the San-Miao, see
Karlgren (1946: 204-255). Chinese historical dates
are still confusing, but whenever possible I have
followed those recorded in Elvin (1975:15).
The terms "native" or "indigenous"
are used to denote people who inhabited different
regions of China prior to the invasion of the Han
Chinese. This is in accordance with usage adopted by
Chinese writers referred to in this article.
Chinese sources never mention “Hmong”
but only “Miao”, a name used today for the Hmong,
Hmu and Khoxiong in China. However, “Miao” in
historical times includes many other non-Han Chinese
people. In this paper, I employ the term in its
Chinese context and it may not necessarily refer
only to the Hmong.
The descriptive “Miao/Hmong” is used
here with a slash rather than a hyphen as in
“Miao-Hmong” to conform to the categorisation of the
Hmong as a Miao subgroup and not as two
interchangeable terms.
Personal communication from Mai Lo Yang, my
mother-in-law, whose close relatives are today
living in northern Laos. Further evidence on the
cultivation of poppy in this area is given by Mr.
Nhia Long Lee who left a son and married daughter
there before coming to live in Australia after the
new Lao communist regime came to power in 1975.
My
mother, for instance, recalls that in the 1940's her
father and other men in their village had to make a
twoweek
return trip by horse into Vietnam from Laos to
exchange their opium for salt, often traveling at
night because it
was
too hot during the day. In years when their opium
crop failed, the villagers’ major fear was that they
would not
have
salt and would be forced to borrow from others - a
step most are reluctant to take. Hudspeth (1932:
265), Ling
and
Ruey (1947: 75-76) and de Beauclair (1970: 86) all
found a scarcity of salt among the Miao in various
provinces
of
China, sometimes so much so that "people fortunate
enough to buy it lick it much as a Western child
will lick a
barley sugar stick" (Hudspeth. 1937:
11).
It has been said that the Hmong of Laos were forced
to grow opium because France which controlled
Indochina
from 1883 to 1954 imposed an opium tax on them in
order to earn revenues to finance its local colonial
ventures
through the Opium Monopoly, started in 1897 by
French Governor-General Doumer (McCoy, 1973: 74).
This is an
issue which needs further research as most of its
details are lost in history and the passing of the
older Hmong.
McCoy sees opium as the main economic force that
kept the French in their dominant position,
describing Hmong
leaders like Touby Lyfoung and Gen Vang Pao as mere
colonial opium broker or CIA opium warlord. He
attributes
the Hmong rebellion 1918-1921 lead by Pa Chay Vue to
“French mismanagement of their opium dealings with
the
Meo” (Ibid. : 77). However, Gunn (1990: 157) who
studies the rebellion from first-hand French
colonial
documents explains its causes as the Hmong
“proclivity” to seek political autonomy and their
religious belief that
the “liberator” or messiah they had been waiting for
had arrived in the form of Pa Chay – an explanation
which
accords more with the Hmong’s own version. Gunn (op.cit.:
160-167) shows that French colonial tax was
collected
in money form, and French dealings with Hmong opium
were in the regulation of its sales through the
Opium
Purchasing Commission, thereby controlling the price
that growers could obtain through the Commission’s
middlemen and lowland brokers. According to my own
mother (interview, 4 August 2005), tax after WWII
was
paid to the French in any form people could afford:
money, jewellery, opium and domestic animals. The
tax was so
heavy that a year’s opium harvest was barely enough
to meet her parents’ tax obligations. Poor parents
with many children were forced to pawn or sell some
of them to get money to pay their tax. The local
Hmong chiefs who did
the collection apparently kept most of what they
collected, especially the opium.
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