The Jinuo (Jino) Nationality

The Jinuos, with a population of over 18,000, live principally in Jinghong County of the Xishuangbanna area, Yunnan Province. The nationality boasts a very long history. "Jinuo" is a selfª²given name meaning "people who respect uncles." Generally speaking, the Jinuos are pantheists who practice religion in its primitive form and worship nature as well as their ancestors. The Jinuo language, for which there is no script, belongs to the Tibetoª²Burman family of the Sino-Tibetan language system. The Jinuos used notch wood in order to record events.


The Jinuo nationality is named after the Jinuo Mountain in Xishuangbanna - a subtropical area blessed with a favorable climate and covered with exuberant virgin forests. The murmuring streams and brooks, and the thick sweet-smelling woods make life there enjoyable. For thousands of years the Jinuo people have been living in the peace and serenity of this paradise.

Generation after generation the Jinuos set up their homes in the primeval forest. Their houses are two-story buildings made of bamboo and wood, with the ground floor used as animal sheds or as storage. Meals are cooked at the fire on the upper floor. At dinner time the whole family sits at the table by the fire. According to a traditional Jinuo custom, the head of the family has to face the fire while the guest stays closest to it. Over dinner, the host frequently offers to fill the guest's rice bowl, but each time he makes it a fairly small amount. Now and then, he helps the latter to the dishes on the table.

Jinuo women are expert at spinning and weaving. In the open by the outskirts of the stocked village or on the path between the fields, they can be found spinning smooth yarn with the spindle out of the snow-white cotton. The yarns are fed into the loom to make the famous home-spun textile Kandao Cloth. Junuo men usually wear trousers or shorts, black and white checkered, collarless jackets opened on the front with no buttons. The back of the jacket is embroidered with patterns of the sun.

Jinuo women dress in frontª²opened, collarless jackets checkered in blue, red, yellow and white over a embroidered bra in the shape of a heart. Besides, they wear short skirts laced with red cloth on the edge, and pointed cap with its back reaching the shoulders like a cape. The well tailored dress in its harmonious colors looks best when worn especially by young Jinuo women.
Lush-green bamboo groves are seen everywhere in the Jinuo Mountain and a large variety of bamboo trees grow there. Jinuo men excel in weaving bamboo articles. With thin strips of the wood, they can make excellent handicraft - different kinds of utensils from cigarette boxes to thread and needle containers. The ingenious Jinuos have in fact created an admirably unique bamboo culture. The Jinuos always carry along with them some bamboo articles or bamboo-plaited pieces of equipment.
Qiker, a percussion instrument made of bamboo is one that must be played at music festivals and on the occasion of joyful celebrations. It was first used by hunters to convey messages when they captured wild animals. According to the legend, once they succeeded in hunting, the hunters would chop off several bamboo tubes that can produce different scales of sound. Then they would click the tubes while making their way back to the stockaded villages. People in the village could tell by the different manners of sound what the caught animals were. Later, the bamboo tubes were refined and developed by some folk artists into today's seven-scaled instrument that sounds pleasant and melodious.

In the 12th month of the lunar calendar, when flowers are in full bloom in the Jinuo Mountain, the whole village indulges in merry-making. On hearing the beats of the cattle skin drums, people can not help dancing what they call the "Sun-drum Dance." According to the Jinuos' legendary tales, in remote antiquity the heaven and the earth were in a mass and there were floods everywhere. Nobody but the brother Banhi and his sister Banhong survived the disaster by seeking refuge inside a huge cattle skin drum. For the purpose of keeping the circle of human life going they had to get married and latter gave birth to many sons and daughters, and thus became the first ancestors of the Jinuos. Therefore, every December in their calendar the Jinuos, full of gratitude for the "Sun-drum," would celebrate good harvests by beating cattle skin drums and dancing happily around them.

To the Jinuo people, the sun-drum is not only a musical instrument, but also a most divine object to worship. Every stockaded village has a couple of sun drums - the Father drum and the Mother drum. Around its top and bottom edges are some wooden bars in radiation, symbolizing sun rays. The Jinuos see the drum as an incarnation of divine spirits and therefore take it as the symbol of their village. They worship it in hope of good harvests and prosperity.

Ceremonies are held for boys and girls turning fifteen years old to mark the beginning of an important stage in their lives. From this age onwards, they are supposed to dress and behave as an adult. At the ceremony, parents give their sons and daughters a whole set of working tools and clothes especially prepared for this occasion beforehand. Girls have to wear adult-like hair dress. At a "grown-up" meeting, the patriarch of the village leads the youngsters in singing their national epic, gives them lectures on moral norms and codes as well as those about hardship of life and labor. Their formal village membership then starts at the moment the ceremony is over. That means they now have the right to participate in all public activities and are free to make social contacts and even seek their lifeª²long partners. On the other hand, it also means they have to bid farewell to the carefree boyhood or girlhood to take up more and more social responsibilities.

The Jinuos, so accustomed to the closed, quiet life of the mountainous area, feel no longer content with an idyllic country life. With the wisdom and a daring courage unique to the mountain inhabitants, they are ready to open up a pathway to their national development.