The people say
Elderly age is resigned and the New Year is coming,
Once a year
people have to sow dry grains in March,
Since the day we left the gourd
the old man has set this rule.
At this time of year when the cuckoo is calling
we kill the pigs and slaughter the cows
and choose an auspicious day to sow the grain
because the grain is passed down from the millet finches
-it is not easy to come by.
May the weeds in the ground grow less and less,
May our stalks grow stronger and stronger,
May the leaves of the grain turn upside down and face outward
May the ears of the grain bend home.
May our grain1
One bouquet fill a province
One handful have a pack,
The family can't carry it all
The crowd can't carry it.
May it be dry before it is sun-dried
May it be clean before it is raised,
Didong2, the whole family will eat it
Dijie3, the whole village will eat it.
The mountains are golden,
The grains are ripe everywhere,
it is the grains that raised us to adulthood.
It is full of both the joyful mood after a good harvest and the gratitude for the grain. Another song reads:
May our grains
One pom full of one province
One handful of one pack
Family members can't finish carrying them
Many people can't carry them
Let women sweat
Let men toil
Old barn filled with rice
New barn filled with beans
Full of bamboo barn
Overflowing the wooden barn
This is an auspicious day
We are the ones who call for your souls
To ask the gods for your souls
Grain souls, millet souls
All the souls of the crops
Grain souls
Don't turn up the road
Don't go down the road
Follow the straight path through the mountains
The straight path of the hills. The straight path
Return to the warm room
Return to the clean granary
Hey, souls
Souls of grain, souls of millet
Call you again and again
Gather ye round the winnowing-pan
Stand ye at the meal-table
We'll let you hear the good word
We'll restore you to your inherent dignity.
We? drink you and cook you
It is that we are afraid that you will go with those who carry large baskets,
that we will run with those who carry small baskets
We cannot let you drift about
Not that we will let you fall and be frightened.
We lighted the millet
We scattered the grain
Let the canopy of the grain be large
The steep slopes can be fluffy
Let the leaves of the millet be long
The rocks can be grown
Let the kernels of the grain be full
Let the corn bracts be large
Let the grain kernels be as many as the sand of the river
Let the heaps of grain be As big as a mountain bag
Pile after pile.
Let the ears of grain be as long as a girdle,
Let the ears of millet be as long as a turban
May the grains of grain be as big as a cow's head,
Let the millet be as big as a stump.
The Wa inhabited the Gaoligong Mountains and the Lancang River area 2000 years ago along with the ancestors of the Brown and Deang ethnic groups. It was one of the "Hundred Pu" in the pre-Qin period. In the Tang Dynasty, it was called "Pu Zi Barbarians", in the Song Dynasty, it was called "Pu Barbarians", in the Ming Dynasty, it was called "Gurar", and in the Qing Dynasty, it was called "Gurar", "Hawa". They called themselves "Wa", "Ba Raoke", "A Wa", etc., all of which meant "people living in the mountains". The local Dai and the foreign Lao, the Shan call them "Ka Wa", and "Ka" means slave in Dai language, so after the establishment of the People's Republic of China, they are uniformly called Wa. The Wa have the custom of headhunting, and the last recorded headhunting took place in the late 1950s. The Wa say their headhunting was instigated by a Dai conman.
The legend of "Sigangli" is widely circulated in the Wa area. The Wa in the Ximeng area explain that "Sigang" is a stone cave and "Li" is to come out, which means that human beings came out from a stone cave at a very early stage. Legend has it that the first people to come out of the cave were the Wa. The cave is located in the middle of A Wa Mountain, about 60 miles west of Ximeng County, near the mountain. So far, the Wa people in Ximeng and other places regard the stone cave as a "holy place". The Wa in Cangyuan area interpreted "Sigang" as "gourd" and "Li" as "out", meaning that human beings came out from the gourd. Although the Wa in various regions have different interpretations of "Sigangli", they all regard A Wa Mountain as the birthplace of mankind, and at the same time reflect that they are the earliest inhabitants of the A Wa Mountain area. The "Sigangli" is the Wa people's recollection of their own ancient cave life.
In 1796 (the first year of the Jiaqing period in the Qing Dynasty), the Wa, together with their neighboring ethnic groups, raised the flag of righteousness in the Menghuang Tusi area in opposition to the Tusi, who "forced them to pay exorbitant taxes for years on end", and at one time occupied the area under his jurisdiction. This uprising intermittently insisted on more than ten years, to the Qing dynasty and the Dai reactionary to the heavy blow.
Toward the end of the 19th century, British imperialism began to invade the A Wa Mountains. The Wa people resolutely opposed the Sino-British "China-Burma Undecided Boundary Clause", and led by the Yonghe Tribe, united with other tribes, severely punished the invaders and treasonous scum who shot the Wa people, and thwarted the conspiracy of the imperialists to make the Wa people detach from the motherland.
After the Xinhai Revolution, the Wa people struggled against the Yunnan warlords and Kuomintang reactionaries, and finally got rid of the feudal rule of the local reactionary tusi after 1940.
In 1934, the British imperialists entered the Banhong and Banzhi areas under the threat of force and monetary inducement, in a bid to plunder the rich silver and aluminum mines in the A Wa Mountains. As a result, the "Banhong" incident, which shocked both home and abroad, broke out. The Wa people, who "would rather die in battle than surrender", crushed the enemy's plot and united more than ten tribal ethnic armies to converge on Banhong, plagiarizing oxen and taking oaths, which dealt a severe blow to the enemy's arrogance.
During the Anti-Japanese War, the Wa people raised the anti-Japanese flag and organized a guerrilla army to crush the Japanese attack.
Language and writing
The Wa language belongs to the Wa Deang branch of the Mon-Khmer language family of the South Asian language family, and there are three dialects of Bu Raoke, A Wa and Wa, each of which in turn has a difference in the vernacular. The Wa language is related to the Deang and Brown languages, and is more closely related to the Dai language, with about 10% of the vocabulary borrowed from the Dai language. Before liberation, there was no writing in Wa, except in some areas where a script spelled with the Latin alphabet was used. People often used corn grains, knotted ropes, carved wood and other methods to keep track of numbers and events. Since the Wa had long been interacting with the nearby Dai, Lahu and Han, some of them learned Dai, Lahu and Chinese. After the liberation of China, the Third Task Force for the Survey of Minority Languages of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with the Steering Committee for Minority Languages of Yunnan Province, conducted surveys and analytical studies on the Wa language and widely solicited opinions, and formulated the Wa (then known as Kawa) Script Program (draft) based on the Latin alphabet, which was approved for trial use. the draft was revised in 1958, and the program continued to be promoted and popularized with the publication of popular reading materials. During the ten years of turmoil, the trial implementation of the Wa script was interrupted. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, the trial run was resumed and some reading materials such as the Wa-Chinese Concise Dictionary were published. The implementation of the Wa language has provided a scientific recording and writing tool for the development and prosperity of Wa society, economy and culture, and has been welcomed by the Wa people.
Literary Arts
Wa folk literature is rich and colorful, with vivid myths and stories, beautiful and touching poems, and historical legends. The most popular myth is "Sigangli". There are two interpretations of "Sigangli", one of which says that "Sigang" is a stone cave and "Li" is out, i.e., people come out from the stone cave; the other says that "Sigangli" is a gourd, i.e., people come out from the stone cave; another says that "Sigangli" is a gourd, i.e., people come out from the stone cave. The other says that "Sigang" is a gourd, that is, people come out of the gourd. Despite the different interpretations, all of them regard A Wa Mountain as the birthplace of human beings. There are also such myths as "The Ancestors of Humanity", "The Great Snake Spits Things Out", "The Source of All Things" and so on. The Wa people have also created many stories that have been passed down orally to glorify goodness and justice, and to attack treachery, hypocrisy and treacherous thinking and behavior. Among them, "The Old Herald and the Crocodile" is the most representative. The poems are very rich and their contents mainly reflect people's production, living customs, love, sorrow and joy.
Carving, painting and weaving have high artistic level and national characteristics. The ancient cliff paintings of Wa have been discovered one after another, and the famous Cangyuan cliff paintings are very rich in content, depicting the hunting, dancing and laboring scenes of the ancient Wa people, and the composition of characters, animals and birds is concise, rough, unrestrained and unique, which is of great value to the study of the history of the Wa people, and it is an invaluable art treasure.
Clothing
Wa Clothing
The clothes of the Wa people in Ximeng are mostly made of cotton and linen that the Wa women themselves weave, and there are clothes, pants, skirts, blankets, satchels, betel nut sacks, and head wraps, etc., as well as cloths, clothes, cotton blankets and so on that have been purchased from outside the ethnic groups. Decorations are made of silver, tin headbands, hand bands, collars, earrings, bracelets, as well as bamboo, rattan made of waist bands, foot bands and strings of red, white, blue and other colors of beads strings. These are worn together to form the unique dress culture of the Wa people in Ximen.
The male costumes of Wa ethnic group in Ximeng are more or less the same in all villages. In the past, men used to keep a bunch of hair on the top of their heads, knotting it or spreading it behind their heads. Most adult men used to wrap their heads in black or red, green or yellow cloth, with black being the most common. The head man, magic eight, singers, beheading heroes and prestigious beads of rice, the old man wrapped red head. Wear long-sleeved collarless or sleeveless collarless tight-fitting black cloth lab coat, lapel coat, rich people with silver buttons; poor people with cloth knots buttons, pants are mostly black, short and wide, pants under the legs and knees. Used to wear bracelets, collars and strings of beads, shoulder satchel, waist wear knife and long knife, holding a pike or crossbow, like tattoos.
The Wa women's costumes in Ximeng are of various styles, and because of the different tribes and ethnic clans living in the region, there is a more obvious difference between the costumes. This difference can be seen in the female costumes of "Le Wa", "Buraoq" and "Wa", a dialect area.
The "Le Wa" dialect area is mainly located in Mowo, Yuesong, Xinfang, Zhongcheng, etc. The Wa women in this area wear shawls or collarless short clothes, collarless and sleeveless short tight-fitting gowns, revealing their navels, and wearing folded openings underneath a long skirt or a short skirt (a skirt can be used as a long skirt or as a short skirt; a skirt that can be used as a short skirt is a short skirt when it is folded; a skirt that is folded in half is a long skirt when the distance between the folds is staggered. ) Keep shawl-length hair, tie silver, tin or gabion headband, wear earrings, neck collar and several strings of colorful beads, waist tie multiple black lacquered rattan scorn waist hoop and several strings of colorful beads, arm wear hand hoop, wrist wear bracelet, knee ankle wear black rattan ankle hoops, calf wrapped in a cloth cover.
The "Buraoq" dialect area is mainly distributed in Tudi, Taoluo, Awa Lai, and Never Lok, etc. The Wa women in this area wrap their heads in black wraps, wear earplugs or earrings, wear collars and strings of beads around their necks, and wear long-sleeved corsets with open skirts underneath.
The "Wa" dialect area is mainly awarded to Wenga Ke, Ban Tong, Yongha, Wangmo, etc. The Wa women in this area wear conical silver bubble bead hats, earrings with large earrings, collars, dozens of bead strings tied around their waists, long-sleeved short clothes, and tube skirts with red color and green and black stripes underneath, and a belt tied in the middle of the skirts.
Wa clothing is simple and rugged, with bright and generous patterns and colors, fully reflecting the natural beauty of the human body. Especially the Wa clothing of Yue Song Township has shown a tendency to gradually represent the whole Wa clothing, and at present, performers of Wa songs and dances in China tend to wear the clothing styles of this place.
Songs and Dances
Wa Songs and Dances
The Wa people love songs and dances, and their songs can be heard everywhere in Wa villages. Whenever there is a festival, people even dress up and sing and dance day and night for several days. Common dances include the circle dance, the rice pounding dance and the water carrying dance. The Circle Dance is performed by men and women of all ages in a circle, holding hands with each other or putting their arms on each other's shoulders, turning in a counterclockwise direction, and singing and dancing at the same time. At the same time, there are a few men leading the song, and the crowd responds with the lyrics, which are often made up on the spot. The rice-pounding dance and the water-carrying dance fully express the hard-working and optimistic character of the Wa people and their love of life. Musical instruments include copper drums, elephant-foot drums, rattling gabions, flutes, three strings, wooden drums and lushengs.
Wa folk songs are rich in labor songs, custom songs and love songs, and multi-voice folk songs have "playing tunes".
The Wa folk songs are mostly in the feather-tone and levy-tone modes, and the melodies are often in La, do, re, or so, do, re, as the backbone tones, with a low pitch area and a narrower range of tones. The termination is characterized by homophonic repetition. The rhythm is mainly in two beats. The structure is mostly a single section corresponding to the upper and lower phrases or a double section composed of two pairs of upper and lower phrases, on the basis of which there are small changes in the repetitions; in some cases, a phrase is added at the beginning of the piece or at the end of the piece, a phrase is added to the liner notes. The form of singing is mainly solo or a leader and the crowd, in which the leader's improvisation is light and strong, and the part is fixed. Whenever there are celebrations and entertainment, they are accompanied by simple dance movements and percussion. The lyrics like to use the picaresque technique and like to increase the straight narrative.
In 1964, in a Wa Mountain military and civilian celebration, the lively and cheerful scene inspired Yang Zhengren, a soldier of the Wa Mountain Army in Ximeng, to write "A Wa People Singing New Songs". In the past 40 years, "A Wa People Sing New Song" has been sung all over the country.
Musical Instruments
Wa Wooden Drums
Wooden drums: sacred to the Wa people, they have become an indispensable musical instrument in folk dances. The "Wooden Drum Dance" is rough and bold, with a resounding rhythm, which expresses the simple folklore of the Wa people.
Piccolo: Piccolo is a Wa wind instrument, popular in some villages of the Wa Autonomous County in Ximeng, Yunnan Province. It is made of bamboo, with a tube length of about 16 centimeters, a square blowhole, and four holes for blowing horizontally. The sound is high and bright. When blowing, the right thumb is used to block the hole at the left end of the tube, the index and middle fingers press on the two holes, and the left index and middle fingers press on the two holes. The middle finger of the right hand often opens and closes quickly to produce vibrato.
Dang bamboos: when bamboos, with a length of 18 centimeters, tube diameter 1.5 centimeters of white bamboo production. Do not leave the bamboo flute joints, no flute plugs, no spring. Blow hole on the large and small, four square holes on the tube. Mostly played by men.
Bamboosi: Bamboosi, a favorite instrument of Wa women, is made of bamboo tubes without joints, 45 centimeters long and 1.90 centimeters in diameter. The upper edge has a triangular mouthpiece and no reed. There are four round holes on the pipe. When a Wa man encounters his beloved woman, he first blows a song with the dang bamboos to draw attention to the tune of a mountain song, then sings a love song to express his love, and if the woman is also interested, he plays it back with the bamboos, followed by a duet.
Um Choo: Um Choo, made of bamboo, has two kinds of holes: round and square. There is no spring, and it is mostly loved by middle-aged and old women of Wa, who are good at expressing sadness, and it is used in funeral ceremonies.
Religion
In the past, the Wa believed in many gods, and the primitive religion of the spirit of all things was widely believed, especially by the Wa of Ximeng. This is mainly because in a long historical period, the Wa had extremely low productivity, could not explain natural phenomena scientifically, and could not get rid of the disasters brought by nature and diseases, thus generating a fearful mentality.
Worship of ghosts and gods
In the Wa people's conception, mountains, rivers and living creatures, as well as all unexplained natural phenomena, have "souls" or "ghosts and gods". They do not distinguish between "ghosts", "gods" and "ancestors", which are the same concept. They believe that "ghosts and gods" dominate everything in the world and bring people peace, danger and happiness, so they worship them. The most worshipped by the Wa in Ximeng is "Muyi Ji". The Cangyuan Wa call it "Meiji" and regard it as the supreme deity that dominates all things and the "big ghost" that creates all things and creates animals, plants and people. Every year, the Wa hold religious rituals to it and sing and dance to please it. The wooden drums are played so that it can hear the sound of the drums and come down to be worshipped. When a new house is completed, bamboo benches are built to clear "Muyi Ji" and all the ghosts and gods to help get rid of all kinds of disasters brought about by nature and diseases. "Muyigi" holds the power of human life. Dreaming of it is a good omen, such as dreaming of being pulled by it is the omen of death. Therefore, one's every move should not violate it, otherwise it will be unfortunate. Folk believe that "Muyi Ji" is the supreme deity, it is like light, like fire, like air, omnipresent, omnipotent. It has a lot of sons: the earthquake called "Grazium", the ascension of the tube called "Daluan" and so on. These gods and spirits are divided into large and small, but there is no relationship of domination, but only their own duties, the big ones control the big things, and the small ones control the small things. Therefore, when something happens, one should sacrifice to what kind of ghost in order to get rid of the disaster and get blessings, while sacrificing to other ghosts and deities is useless. For example, if you have a stomach ache, you can only sacrifice to "Hong", but if you sacrifice to "Muyi Ji", it is useless.
Sacrifice
"Yoheilawong" (according to the meaning of the new water), also known as "Pukai Tie" day. Legend has it that when human beings come out from Sigang, they can't speak or make sense, and only after they have washed their faces by the river can they speak, and this is the day of "Pukai Tie". Therefore, no matter where the Wa people migrated to build their villages and strongholds, they would first fish for a trough to receive water, thus forming the Wa Calendar, which holds the activity of receiving new water on January 3 every year. On this day, the whole village does not go down to the ground or travel far away. Early in the morning, the little wolang who is in charge of the water festival in the walled village sounds a wooden drum to summon all the people in the walled village. Each family brings a bowl of rice to Xiaowolang's house. Strong men carry bamboo and follow Mooba to the head of the water source to repair and replace the water tank. Mooba placed a burnt rat as a sacrifice by the water source and recited some words. When the water from the new kakei flows into the village, the oldest man in charge of the water will first take the water to the house of Komoro, who is in charge of the water, to cook rice for everyone to eat, and then only after that will each family be able to take the water for their own use.
Sacrificing the valley is one of the most sacred rituals of the Wa, a form of "blood sacrifice" in which human beings are sacrificed. The whole process of the sacrifice usually takes ten days, and except for one or several families who plagiarize the oxen to raise the sacrifice, all the people in the village enter into the carnival season, beating gongs and drums, singing and dancing. Until the liberation of China, this custom has been abolished in most of the Wa areas in China and is now extinct.
Dwellings
Wa dwellings
Wa villages are mostly located in the mountains. In the past, the Wa had the custom of sacrificing the heads of hunters to the wooden drums, and the villages would kill each other and fight with each other, which required the strength of the group to resist. Therefore, the Wa have a strong sense of community. They often form cottages of dozens or hundreds of families with one or several surnames. There are trenches, ditches and two to four gates around the cottages. Walled ditch, is to enter the walled gate of the tunnel, about 20 meters long, 2 to 3 meters deep and wide. The trench is even deeper and wider than the trench, which surrounds the fortress. Along the two sides of the trench and the trench, there are dense thorns, which make it extremely difficult for people, animals and wild beasts to cross over, and the only way to enter and leave the fortress is through the fortress gate.
The Wa houses are bamboo and wood structures with thatched roofs. People live upstairs and raise animals or pile up firewood downstairs. There are three doors: the main door, the guest door and the ghost door. The main door is the door through which people enter and leave the house. The guest door is located at the side of the building for guests to enter and exit. Ghost door and the main door opposite, when doing ghosts only with, usually avoid this door in and out. Inside the building, there are three fire pits: the main fire pit, the guest fire pit and the ghost fire pit. The main fire pit is the host family cooking, roasting fire, sleeping in daily life commonly used fire pit. The Ghost Fire Pond is only activated when there is a big ghost or a dead person in the house. The guest fire pit is for guests to roast fire, and the guest accommodation is also by the guest fire pit. The Wa housing construction process is primitive and rough, close to nature.
The Wa people display their own plagiarized cow skulls on the wall next to the main door to show their wealth. The Wa display the skulls of beasts they have hunted on the wall next to the ghost door to show that the ghosts bless them with a good harvest.
Editing
Life Customs of the Wa People
Diet
The Wa people eat rice, grain and small red rice as their staple food, and they like to make delicacies such as rotten rice with chicken meat, quail meat soup and beef pickles. There are also old women who specialize in distributing rice during village activities and religious rituals. They are reputable, know the history, understand the rules of the ceremony, and are familiar with the members of the village community, so they are able to distribute the rice in a fair manner without omission or duplication, and guests from outside the village are also given special care.
Rotten Rice: The Wa in the Ximeng area do not distinguish between staple food and side dishes, and almost all of them, rich or poor, eat rotten rice, which is made of rice, vegetables and salt and pepper boiled together to make a thicker, thinner rice. After the rice is cooked, the whole family squats around the main fire pit, and the housewife serves the rice in wooden bowls and distributes it to her family. Generally, the rice is divided at once, according to the amount of food each person has. When the rice is divided, outsiders are present and can also get a share. The Wa do not drink boiled water and are accustomed to drinking cold water.
Bitter Tea: The Wa use a large sand pot to make bitter tea, or a large teapot if there is no sand pot. Tea leaves, usually crude green tea, or homemade big leaf tea, cooking a tea put tea one or two or so. Slowly cook on the fire like cooking vegetables, to cook through the tea, and cook to the pot of tea only three or five mouths left until the remaining mouths is the bitter tea. Drinking used to lift the can to drink. In Cangyuan Nuoliang area of Wa, the newly boiled tea is so thick that it almost becomes tea paste, and half a mouthful of it is enough to quench the thirst. The bitter tea cooked in this way is as colorful as the Chinese medicine soup simmered in it, and although it tastes bitter when you drink it, you feel cool after drinking it, and it has a miraculous thirst-quenching effect on the Wa people, who work in the fields far away from the walled villages in the hot climate.
Bubbling Wine: Bubbling wine is also a favorite drink of the Wa people. In the years of good weather and good harvest, the Wa people not only brew bubbling wine on New Year's festivals, but also brew bubbling wine in every household on weekdays. When guests come to the door, the host pours fermented red rice into a wine barrel, fills it with spring water, covers it with bamboo shoots and leaves, and soaks it for a quarter of an hour, then inserts a wine pipe into the bottom of the barrel, applies the principle of siphoning, and places the barrel on a high level, so that the wine flows out and is introduced to the bamboo cup. The master first tastes the first mouthful, and then toasts the guests in the order of their seats. Bubbling wine is also a symbol of friendship in Wa customs. For a long time, the custom of giving each other bubbling wine has been passed down. When someone in the village gets married, relatives and neighbors with the same surname will give the newcomer with bubble wine. The hosts, on the other hand, brought out buckets of the wine for people attending the wedding party to drink.
Betel nut chewing: a very common hobby among the Wa of Ximeng. Almost everyone, men and women, young and old, carries a betel nut bag or a betel nut box with them. When resting after labor or talking on weekdays, they carry a piece of betel nut in their mouths. Their betel nut is not the fruit of the tree, but is boiled with the leaves of the jatropha tree and lime. As it is easy to make, most people know how to do it. This kind of betel nut chews for a long time the teeth will gradually turn black and the color will not fade for a long time. According to the Wa, this method not only stains the teeth black, but also protects them from insects. In the Tang Dynasty, there was a record of "black-toothed barbarians" in the southwestern part of China's Yunnan Province, which probably refers to the Wa ethnic group whose teeth are blackened by betel nut chewing. The Wa people regard black teeth and red lips as beautiful, and believe that the blacker the teeth, the more pleasing to the eye.
Marriage Customs
Wa marriages are characterized by monogamy (or polygamy in the case of some wealthy people in history), but also by non-marriage of the same family name, marriage of aunts and uncles and transfer of rooms. The Wa people are relatively free to marry, and have the custom of "stringing girls", in which a young man starts to "string girls" when he reaches the age of seventeen or eighteen, and holds a wedding ceremony after the betrothal.
The Wa family is patriarchal, and women generally live with their husbands. Before the marriage of Wa young men and women, the men have to work for the women's family for a period of time, less than a few months, more than one or two years, as a compensation for marrying off the women's girls. This form bears traces of the transition from wife-habitation to husband-habitation.
Young men and women generally choose to get married in the idle season: one is in the fourth month of the lunar calendar, i.e., the Wa hold the ritual activity of cutting the tail of the cow to cover the month before the wooden drum house; the second is between September and December, from the completion of the repair of houses to the sun deck to the sacrifice of the water ghosts during this period of time. When a Wa girl gets married, her parents have to prepare a dowry for her. The dowry mainly consists of clothes, covers, textile tools and production tools. The silver jewelry worn by the girl when she gets married is not accompanied by the dowry, but takes the form of borrowing and wearing, returning to the mother's family after one or two years of borrowing and wearing, or the groom's family pays for the purchase.
The Wa marriage ceremony is relatively simple and lasts for three days. On the first day, the man and the woman each invite their own villagers to have a meal of wine and rice. On the second day, the man sends a bride-price to the woman's family, which contains part of the cash, part of the wedding supplies and gifts for the woman's family. On the third day, the parents hold the girl's hand and send her to the man's house with the bridegroom's team. When the bride arrives at the man's house, the Mooba kills the chicken and reads the gossip, and blesses the newlyweds.
Historically, some places in the Wa tribe retained the custom of robbing the bride: the male party took the opportunity of the girl's labor outside and invited his partners to rob the girl back to their own homes before holding the wedding. This custom is now rare. The Wa now practise monogamy, and historically there have also been polygamy. In polygamous families, the first wife has no special status in the family, and the second wife is not discriminated against.
In the past, the Wa also had the custom of transferring houses. When a husband died, his wife could transfer his house to his younger brother, and if the younger brother was married, he could also be transferred to his younger brother's concubine with the consent of his sister-in-law and brother-in-law. If the woman is not willing to transfer her house, she may marry another woman, but the new husband's family must pay a bride price to the brother of the deceased husband or to a family of the same name. If the husband and wife are not in harmony, they can also divorce, but if the man initiates the marriage, the bride price will not be returned; if the woman initiates the marriage, the bride price will be returned.
The Wa form of love, "Comb-head Love Story"
The Wa form of love, "Comb-head Love Story", is very unique and interesting, and it is a kind of special flavor that integrates love, music, song, dance, etiquette, and morality, and it is a manifestation of the unique culture of Wa. It is an expression of Wa's unique culture.
The "combing love story" is an important element for Wa young men and women to choose their lovers. The Wa people living in the subtropical jungles of the Lancang and Nujiang Rivers, in addition to not being allowed to marry with the same family name, can fall in love after learning to farm. The love affair between "Sino" (young man) and "Avalanche" (young girl) is usually carried out during the fall harvest and winter and spring. When the moon comes out of the mountains to light up the bamboo buildings, "Sino" changes into clean clothes, hangs a satchel on his shoulder (which contains gifts for "Bengge" and tobacco etc.), takes a musical instrument in his hand (xylophone or lusheng, flute), and asks a few friends to join him, playing and playing the instrument to the "Bengge". "Bengge" home to "string", to enjoy the "comb the head of the love story" of the music, to seek a life partner.
Burials
Wa burials are carried out in two ways: earth burials and wind burials. Normal deaths in the village are buried in the earth, while violent deaths outside the village by headhunters or other accidents are buried in the wind. The coffin for earth burial is made of whole wood with a groove and a lid, and the coffin is wrapped with a bamboo mat at the time of burial. When a child dies at home, the body is left for two days; when an adult dies, the body is left for three days; when a respected old man dies, the body is left for more than three days. Before the dead body is put into the coffin, the coffin dance is performed and the coffin is knocked day and night until the dead body is put into the coffin for burial. In the past, the Wa had the custom of sacrificing the heads of hunters or stealing the heads of the dead to the wooden drums and dry valleys, therefore, the normal deaths in the walled villages were buried in the vegetable gardens in front of the houses or under the sundecks of the houses, so as to prevent them from being stolen. Outside the walled village to make up the headhunting or other accidental deaths, the dead body is not lifted home, but after the violent death of the body wrapped in white cloth, take a bamboo platform, the dead on the bamboo platform, style burial. Walled in a normal death, the whole village to stop labor for a day. If a pregnant woman died in childbirth or someone was headhunted and other unnatural deaths in the village, the village stopped working for several days. No matter whose family died, relatives and friends, all the cottage households to send a bowl of rice and people to help do the funeral. The day of the dead man's burial, we should ask Benzai (sorcerer) to do ghost, plagiarized cattle, kill chickens and pigs, the master of the pig, beef to relatives and the Walled City of the families.
There are also some Wa walled villages that no longer have the custom of hunter's head, so instead of burying people within the walled villages, there are special graveyards to bury the dead.
Taboos
No horseback riding into the village, must dismount at the entrance of the village; taboo on others touching the head and ears; taboo on entering the wooden drum room arbitrarily; taboo on people not being able to cross from the fire pit, feet not being able to hitch on the tripod, and not being able to knock the tripod with a wood stick. Taboo give young girls decorations; taboo guests in the house sitting women sitting drum pier or counting money; if the door to put a wooden pole, indicating that the family has a patient, the women at home to give birth to a child, taboo outsiders to enter. Jealousy: can not ride into the village, must be dismounted in front of the village; Jealous of other people touch the head and ears; Jealous of sending people chili, eggs, pepper; Jealous of arbitrary access to the wooden drum room; Jealous of giving the young girl decorations; Jealous of guests in the home to sit on the drums of the women sitting on the pier or counting money; if the door in front of the put a wooden pole, indicating that there is a patient in the home, Jealous of outsiders to enter. Jealousy: chicken, dogs, pigs, cows, horses, not out of the day to buy or slaughter the above livestock, but the purchase is auspicious. Avoid: white chicken, rat meat, bee children can not treat guests. Taboo: the first bowl of wine or tea to guests, to drink to show that no poison. Taboo: pregnant women are not allowed to eat meat food from animals slaughtered for calling souls and dedicating to the gods.
Etiquette
The Wa people are bold and hospitable, welcoming guests with wine as the first thing to do, and believing that no wine is a rite of passage. The Wa people have many different customs for toasting their guests. 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 master; another form is that the master and the guests squat down on the ground, the master passes the wine to the guests with his right hand, and the guests take it with their right hand and pour it on the ground a little bit or pop the wine with their right hand on the ground a little bit, 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 also has to make a "gift to relatives". That is, to the relatives or guests to toast, when the master with a gourd (wine container) full of wine, first drink a mouthful, and then sent to the guests or far away from the mouth of the relatives, the guests need to drink to the bottom of the gourd, in order to show affection, friendship never forget.