To Dong Hai
Pu Na, also known as Cui Chu, is an ethnos that has long practiced wet rice farming as its name suggests (Pu Na means wet rice farmer in Tay-Thai language) and resided in various areas of the provinces of Cao Bang, Lang Son and particularly Lai Chau.
People of this ethnic group live in hamlets along water streams or river banks and in small valleys at mountain feet, where they can farm wet rice, mainly long-grain plain rice, one crop a year, with rice seeds being sown in the fourth moon, rice seedlings transplanted in the fifth and rice harvested in the ninth or tenth moon.
Pu Na people have, since their early days, expertly applied wet rice farming techniques with the use of ploughs and harrows for soil preparation. Seeds are carefully selected after the harvest, sun-dried then stored before being used for new harvests. Formerly, people used to replace rice seeds once every three years. They have attached importance to building irrigation systems with canals in effective service of their rice farming.
Besides wet rice farming, Pu Na people have also developed terraced fields for the cultivation of maize, potato, cassava, beans and vegetables. Moreover, each family has a plot of garden around the house, where vegetables, peas, pumpkins, gourds are grown to supply food for people’s daily meals and animals as well.
Poultry and cattle rearing has played an important part in Pu Na people’s daily life. Each family ranches dozens of buffaloes as draught animals and for meat, several hogs for meat and several swines and dozens of poultry. Some families keep bees as a side line, with tens of hives that yield several dozens of liters of honey a harvest. Hunting, fruit and vegetable picking and gathering as well as fishing are of no economic significance but only as sources of supplementary foods for their daily meals.
Handicrafts have long been developed to a fairly high level, particularly loom weaving which turns out delicately patterned and colorful brocade articles, as well as bamboo and rattan weaving.
Each Pu Na hamlet accommodates between 15 and 20 earthen houses and is inhabited by people of different lineages and even of other ethnos. A traditional house of the Pu Na people is often roofed with alang grass and consists of three compartments partitioned with bamboo wattles or wood planks. The house is also divided into many small rooms. Erected right in the middle of the house is the ancestral altar. The left compartment includes the cooking place, guests’ room, the house master’s room and unmarried sons’ room. The right compartment is reserved for old women, unmarried girls, the bride’s room and flour hand-mill. Both compartments are structured with shelves to keep rice, maize and domestic utensils. The kitchen is arranged in a separate compartment annexed to the house’s right gable.
In front of the house is a small yard used to sun-dry paddy, rice straw and stem. Next to the yard is a small vegetable garden. Poultry coop, cattle stable and pigsty are located further outwards.
The Pu Na society has developed at a fairly high level with differentiation into distinct social classes. Each hamlet often had one or two landlords (called “pan day”), who owned a lot of fertile fields, cattle and big houses, who hired laborers and leased land for rent.
Each hamlet was headed by a chief, called “pin thau”, who was often a land-lord responsible for tax collection, military conscription, handling of lawsuits and disputes in the hamlet. Poor people in the hamlet, who were labeled “cay giang”, had to hire their labor to the landlords and were heavily exploited.
Each Pu Na lineage is headed by a chief and consisted of a number of small patriarchal families. Often living in each family are people of three generations: grand parents, parents and children; and the family properties are common. Only sons are entitled to inherit the properties when their parents die. Girls, when getting married, are given a small portion of property as their dowries.
Patrilocality is common among the Pu Na community. About three days after the wedding, the newly wed couple revisit the bride’s parents, staying there from the morning till afternoon (not overnight) before returning to the groom’s. However, matrilocality is also a practice of the Pu Na people, thereby, the wedding cost shall be equally divided between the two parties.
It is customary for the Pu Na people that pregnant women must stay in dark rooms for one month, going in and out through separate doors. After being born for three days, an infant has to go through a ceremony, asking for his/her name from the Goddess. If on the day such ceremony is held, a stranger visits the house, another ceremony must also be held for the baby to be adopted by such stranger.
When a person dies, Pu Na people shoot gunfires or beat drums as a death announcement. After that the dead person is carefully shrouded in cotton gauze. The duration from the shrouding to the time the corpse is laid in the coffin is about three hours during which the dead person’s kith and kin shall neither eat nor drink. After the corpse is laid in the coffin, the bereft shall ask a sorcerer to find the good date for the burial. Usually the corpse lies in state in the house for at least five days, during which, the mourners have to keep a vegetarian diet. If good hour and good date is chosen for the burial, the corpse will be temporarily buried in the graveyard with a thin layer of earth on the coffin while a fake coffin will be laid in the house for 5 to 7 days for memorial service before the corpse is officially heaped with earth. The dead bodies are buried often on high airy places such as mountain slopes with the heads turning upwards. Pu Na people are not accustomed to disintering for reburial or organizing death anniversaries.
In their spiritual life, the Pu Na people still preserve many rituals in agricultural production. They include “pat ban” praying for bumper crops and good health to people and animals, new rice festival, lunar new year, “Han Thu” (on the third day of the third moon), “Doan Ngo” (the fifth of the fifth moon), “Trung Thu” (on the 15th of the lunar August), etc. Yet, for them, the biggest festival is “Chenh Soc” (on the sixth of the lunar June) during which chicken are killed in a number corresponding to the number of sons in the family, then worshipping is held before such sons are fed with the chicken.
Though with a small population, the Pu Na people have preserved for themselves a system of their own customary laws based on their own customs and practices. They have been formulated, developed and transformed during the process of formulation, development and transformation of an ethnos. Fully aware of and applying the systems of customary laws of ethnic minority people to building a cultural life and laws in their areas are extremely necessary for disseminating the State laws and making them be closely associated to and effectively serve the building of an abundant, healthy, peaceful and happy life in hamlets of the Pu Na people.-