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The Lahu

Name: Lahu

Population: 645,000

Localization: In China, Yunnan Province, Simao, Lincang, Shuangjiang, and Menglian. Also in Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Lahu people inhabit the hilly regions of the southern part of Yunnan Province, and Thailand, Laos, and Burma

Introductory Articles in Ethnic China

The equalitarian Lahu: They still preserve in his cultural, social and religious life, numerous remains of the gender equality
Lahu history: From the women's kingdoms to the continuous uprising

The "History of the Lahu" reevaluated: every political action has a political purpose, and the results of academic works politically motivated must be deconstructed to separate the real facts from the political constructions.

Dog and snake in Lahu symbolic universe: They have several myths that remember the contributions of dogs to human welfare.

Creation myth of the Lahu: Creating Heaven, creating earth tries to provide a mythic explanation to the world where the Lahu people inhabits. To doing so the main episodes of the process of creation, creation of heaven and earth, sun and moon, and human beings.

Scholars Researches available in the Web

Liu Jing-Rong.- A Study on the Culture of the Dance of Lahu Nationality.

The folk dance of Lahu traces back long into the past. Its coming into being, evolution and development are closely related to its centuries-old cultural tradition. The widely popularized dances include "the Lusheng Dance"

Sombat Boonkamyeung.- The Lahu Symbolic Universe and Reconstruction of Ethnic Identity.

Chalathon Choocharoen, Pornchai Preechapanya and Andreas Neef.- Palong and Black Lahu Ecological Knowledge of the Sustainability of Forest Watershed Management and Agroforestry Ecosystems

For decades, land use practices of ethnic minority people in the uplands of northern Thailand have been blamed by many scientists and policy-makers as being unsustainable and causing degradation of natural forests and watershed functions.

TATSUKI KATAOKA.- THE FORMATION OF ETHNIC AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: A CASE STUDY OF THE LAHU IN THAILAND

Chupinit Kesmanee and Kulawadee Charoensri.- Case study on the effects of tourism on culture and the environment. Thailand.

Converging of a large number of tourists of different background on a historic monument or site and location of tourist facilities on the cultural heritage sites have often resulted not only in altering of the original.

Ma Jianxiong.- Local Knowledge Constructed by the State: Reinterpreting Myths and Imagining the Migration History of the Lahu in Yunnan, Southwest China. Asian Ethnology Volume 68, Number 1 o 2009, 111-129

This study aims to question such presumptions of locality by investigating how official history was disseminated locally and how it was reinterpreted and represented by Lahu communities as local knowledge for ethnographic research. Therefore, books on Chinese minority nationalities that were published thereafter all state that the Lahu in Yunnan came from the Qinghai Lake
area; "Lahu" in the Lahu language literally means "the hunter of tigers." The knowledge that "the Lahu came from Qinghai and were tiger hunters" has thus become firmly established in intellectual circles and is widely accepted in China. However, as a result of research conducted on the genes of the Lahu people in Lancang County, there are rather conflicting ideas as to the origins of the Lahu. The results of fifty-five sample cases revealed that their genes showed no evidence that they came from the north. In other words, genetically speaking, the Lahu should be a group that originated in the south.

James A. Matisoff.- Syntactic Parallelism and Morphological Elaboration in Lahu Religious Poetry.

Partly as a compensation for the homophony problem caused by the monosyllabicity of its morphemes, Lahu makes extensive use of compounding, adding phonological bulk to words by hitching extra syllables onto their roots.

Yoichi Nishimoto.- The Religion of the Lahu Nyi (Red Lahu) in Northern Thailand: General Description with Preliminary Remarks.

The majority of the Lahu Nyi are still followers of what is considered, both by outside observers and the people themselves, their "traditional religion"

Yoichi Nishimoto.- Myth and Ambiguous ldentity among the Lahu of North Thailand: Legends and the Loss of Letters

This study takes up the case of the Lahu of northem Thailand and explores the classification and categorization of the world by the Lahu as opposed to lowlanders and more over by two Lahu groups with different religious interest. This study assumes that the Lahu perception of the world is reflected in the myths or stores told by them.

Shanshan Du.- Frameworks for Societies in Balance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Gender Equality

Anthony R. Walker.- Cultural Exchange in Southwest China: The Mahoeyoenist Movement among Lahu Mountain People in Southwestern Yunnan

As for Lahu "religious" culture (in so far as the term "religion" presumes a major divide between sacred and secular worlds, is not in the Lahu context a particularly useful one), the indigenous situation, asalready observed, is one common throughout the greater Southeast Asia region.

Anthony R. Walker.- Shi- Nyi Lon: Great merit days among the Lahu Nyi (Red Lahu) of North Thailand.

This article describes three major ritual occasions in the annual ceremonial cycle of the Lahu Nyi, or Red Lahu, hill people among whom I lived for a number of years in the late 1960s.

Anthony R. Walker.- Sha- LaA Te Ve: The Building of a Merit Shelter Among the Lahu Nyi (Red Lahu) of the Northern Thai Uplands. Asian Folklore Studies, Vol. 44, 1985, 51-80.

In this article I examine an important ritual event which follows immediately after at least one, and sometimes all, of these shi- nyi lon-. This is the construction of a rest
shelter along the pathway to a Lahu Nyi village.

Sanit Wongsprasert.- Opiate of the People? A Case Study of Lahu Opium Addicts

There can be no doubt that the principal reason why people smoke is not only that opium is available but that a general sense of malaise and hopelessness pervades much of the highland world. Broad structural issues that define their precarious position in wider society exert an overall negative influence on their daily existence,

Books and references

A nice book about the Lahu: Du Shanshan's "Chopsticks only work in pairs"
Some books about the Lahu
Chinese Bibliography of the Lahu

Anthony R. Walker: Publications on the Lahu peoples 1968-2007: A complete bibliography of one of the most interesting scholars researching the Lahu.

Thesis and dissertations

Chaninthon Sawanaphakdi.- The Thai naturalization of the Lahu people in Chiang Rai province 2003

This study aims to find out the process and problems occurred in the status categorization process of Lahu people in Chiang Rai province as case study,

Amber Morris.- Selected Discourse Features of Lahu Si Folk Narrative

The object of this thesis is to apply these discourse features to four Lahu Si texts. Each of these texts are animal folk narratives elicited from native Lahu Si speakers in the Chiang Rai province of Northern Thailand. The goal of this thesis is to look broadly at several different aspects of discourse analysis of Lahu Si.

Upai Jasa.- Aspects of Discourse Cohesion in Lahu si folk tales. 2009

A discourse is a connected speech which contains sufficiently clear and specific cultural elements that tie it together into a unified whole. Thus, cohesion is the primary means to make a discourse coherent or allow it to make sense by using different types of grammatical devices.

Photo Exhibitions

Ethnic China photo exhibitions
Photo exhibitions about the Lahu

Music

Lahu music

Films and Video

Documentary Films about the Lahu
Available dvds and vcds about the Lahu
Image of the the Lahu in the cinema

Art and Handicrafts

The Lahu in the art
Art Exhibitions

Travel

Travel to Lahu lands

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