Pu’er City | Shreds and Patches

Feb 7

Shoulder Bags and Ethnic Identity in Southern Yunnan, China

I am happy to announce the opening of a small exhibition titled Shoulder Bags and Ethnic Identity in Southern Yunnan, China. For such a small exhibition, the project has gathered in a large team of collaborators. Thanks go to all of them!

The exhibition is now open in the Scholars’ Commons at the Wells Library on the Indiana University Bloomington campus. The exhibition presents a purchased collection made by Wuerxiya and I in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and Pu’er Prefecture-Level City in Southern Yunnan, China during December 2023. Learn more about the exhibition at: https://libraries.indiana.edu/shoulder-bags-ethnic-identity-southern

The cover of the catalogue, *Shoulder Bags and Ethnic Identity in Southern Yunnan, China*.

Accompanying the exhibition is a thirty-five-page color catalogue co-authored by Wuerxiya, Jackson, and Touhidul Islam and designed by Emily Bryant. Published by the Material Culture and Heritage Studies Laboratory, it can be downloaded for free from the IUScholarWorks Repository: https://hdl.handle.net/2022/33339

At right, a woman walks away from the camera. Seen from the back, she wears the clothing of the Jinuo people, including a white, pink, and orange shoulder bag, which rests on her left hip. At left, also seen from behind, is another women in commercial clothing. The two women are in conversation while walking towards a bamboo grove on a deck. — Wuerxiya (left) and Tang Haiyan (right) discussing Jinuo clothing. Ms. Tang wears a should bag in Jinuo style. Jinuoshan Junuo Ethnic Township, Jinhong City, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan, China. December 24, 2023.

IU Libraries digital promotion image for the exhibition “Shoulder Bags and Ethnic Identity in Southern Yunnan, China.

The exhibition will close May 19th 2025. Special thanks to IU Libraries for hosting it!

Jul 5

Nuogang Ancient [Dai] Village

Nuogang Ancient Village, Jingmai Administrative Village, Huimin Hani Ethnic Town, Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Pu’er City, Yunnan, China

Visited December 27, 2023

This is the twenty-fifth post in the series: Villages and Towns of the Southeast Asian Massif

Approximately: 22° 11′ 39.4074″ N, 100° 0′ 16.128″ E

Jul 3

Mengben [Dai] Village

Mengben [Dai] Village, Jingmai Administrative Village, Huimin Hani Ethnic Town, Lancang Lahu Autonomous County, Pu’er City, Yunnan, China

Visited December 27, 2023

This is the twenty-third post in the series: Villages and Towns of the Southeast Asian Massif

Approximately: 22° 12’ 3.96” N, 100° 3’ 0.107” E

May 29

“Field Huts” Among the Upland Tai and Dai

I am presently reading a chapter in the monumental Fowler Museum exhibition catalog The Art of Rice: Spirit and Sustenance in Asia (Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003). It is “Rice Harvest Rituals in Two Highland Tai Communities in Vietnam” by Vi Vǎn An and Eric Crystal. I was drawn to this essay because it contextualizes a kind of basket-like plaited bamboo object used in ritual contexts among the related Tai peoples of Southeast Asia and Southwest China. More on that eventually Here I just take a minute to make note of another material form of interest. The name that the authors of this catalog chapter use for it is “field hut” and that seems like a suitable English name. The authors picture one in their figure 7.2 on page as shown here:

Figure 7.2 in An and Crystal (2003, 120). “A field hut stands in the distance in a dry-rice field. “Photograph by Eric Crystal. Ban Ðôc, 2000. [See screenshot image above for the full Vietnamese diacritics.] On a pole to the left of the hut is the kind of woven bamboo item that I am studying. The house shown here is of concern to the authors because it is a focal point for a rice harvest ritual of one of the two groups of Tai that they discuss.

My photographs of such field huts in the uplands of Southwest China are often poor because they are taken through the window of a moving van or bus, but I have taken a stead interest in them throughout my visits to the region. Most recently, I saw many of them in the fields and tea tree groves on Jingmai Mountain in Pu’er [Prefecture-Level] City, Yunnan, China. The best example among my photographs from this most recent of my trips is probably this one:

A “field hut” in a mixed-crop truck garden lower down on Jingmai Mountain. Photograph by Jason Baird Jackson. Near Balao in a predominantly Dai and Hani area. December 27, 2023.

These kinds of buildings get mentioned here and there in the ethnographic literature for the broader region. I hope to return to them someday and here I note them as just another interesting aspect of the region’s vernacular architecture. Those who know me and know eastern Oklahoma will recognize my interests in such buildings in the comparative case of ceremonial ground and church family camps.