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COPYRIGHT 2004 Asian Folklore Studies
OVER THE PAST two decades, the term "Hmong" has come to be used internationally to refer to fiercely independent montagnards who have lived for centuries in isolated mountain villages throughout southern China and Southeast Asia (YANG 1975, 6). It has been proposed that they were the autochthonous inhabitants of central China (Yellow River basin) before the Han Chinese settled there during the third millennium BCE (MOTTIN 1984, 99). Military and population expansion into fertile lowlands by the Han eventually forced the Hmong to migrate southwards to the mountainous province of Guizhou, with an average elevation of four thousand feet above sea level. From that lofty region, the Hmong held out against the Chinese empire for more than two millennia, periodically establishing their own independent kingdoms until annihilation and genocide by the Qing Dynasty in 1776. There were subsequent Hmong diasporas to Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand.
The Hmong have long been called Miao (alternatively spelled Meo) by Han Chinese, who used the term as a general catchword to refer to all non-Chinese in the south in ancient historical works such as the Zhanguo ce (Intrigues of the Warring States) and Shi ji (Records of the Historian) (JENKS 1994, 32). The Chinese character is composed of the "grass" radical over "field," which may be interpreted to mean "rice-plant shoot" or "sons of the soil" (WIENS 1954, 73). This suggests an early status the Miao may have held as indigenous farmers. A leading Hmong intellectual, Yang Dao, believes that the word's meaning in Chinese is "barbarian" or "uncivilized" (YANG 1982, 6). It has been proposed that "these names are onomatopoetic designations for 'cat' and both carry derogatory connotations" (SCHWORER-KOHL 1995, 241). This refers to the fact that Meo, pronounced in a different tone, can mean cat in Vietnamese (MOTTIN 1984, 99) and in Thai (ENWALL 1992, 26). Many scholars claim that Hmong means "Free People" (BRITTAN 1997, 5; GIACCHINO-BAKER 1995, 50; CHAN 1993, 2; CONQUERGOOD 1986, iii) but a preeminent Western scholar has written that "as far as I know there is no evidence that would legitimate this claim" (MoTTIN, 1984, 99). A more literal translation would be "human being" (LIVO and CHA 1991, 1; YANG 1992, 253). What is indisputable is that the Hmong have vigorously resisted assimilation by dominant alien cultures throughout their long history. (1)
The indomitable will of the Hmong to maintain their own independent cultural identity through the vicissitudes of centuries of migration from political and military oppression finds symbolic expression in traditional ritual practices. These ceremonies not only symbolize the complex relations in the Hmong animist belief system, but also represent a social construction of remembering. This social memory articulates a collective experience (FENTRESS and WI CKHAM 1992, 25), giving a group a way to know the past and providing a basis for identity and an instrument for influencing the actions and practices of its members. Although the Hmong, together with other upland peoples, have been characterized as remote from the influence of the secularizing nation-state, they have not remained immune to a crisis of identity brought on by increasing integration into the global market economy. Yet they have not completely yielded to demystification; Hmong village ritual ceremonies serve to affirm the powers of locality and local spirits. What the Hmong regard as the central aspects of their culture, their kevcai, (usually translated as "customs," but can be more accurately rendered as "ways") are renewed by traditional New Year ritual ceremonies. These ritual practices constitute sites of contestation over what should be preserved and what must be rejected in Hmong culture, particularly within the context of modern secularization (TAPP 2002, 97).
YANG Dao has referred to the Hmong New Year celebration as Tsiab Peb Caug, (1992, 300). It has been described as
the only Hmong religious ceremony shared by the entire community .... Shamans performed ritual sacrifices to placate the spirits of the forest and field, to honor house spirits, dead ancestors, and the souls of the living members of the family, as well as the souls of the family's livestock.... The festival lasted for three days. And except for the time reserved for ritual sacrifices, during those three days Hmong, young and old, visited friends and relatives, ate and drank, and played games from dawn to dusk. (QUINCY 1995, 110-11)
Currently, Hmong New Year celebrations in northern Thailand no longer coincide with the lunar calendar, but have been adapted to fit the Western calendar; also celebrations are not limited to three days, but take place during an entire week, December 26 through January 1, with different villages within a locality rotating festivities so that neighboring villages can attend each other's events. (2) A central function of spiritual renewal is conveyed by this description:
Of the various farming-related ceremonies in the Hmong annual lunar cycle, the New Year Celebration (naj peb caug) [an alternative Hmong term] was the most elaborate and important.... Standing as a spiritual and material marker between the old year and the new, the ceremony is aimed in general at removing the evil influences that had assimilated during the previous year and ensuring an adequate supply of good fortune for the next. All the specific rituals performed during the celebration involved expiation, supplication, and sacrifice intended to reassemble the ancestral souls and familiar spirits back at the village to secure their spiritual assistance for the coming year. (SCOTT 1982, 67)
Hmong New Year sacred rites include the traditional sweeping of each house to drive out all the evil spirits and misfortunes of the past year; the Lwm Qaib ceremony (JOHNSON 1992, 152; no translation provided), during which a rooster is sacrificed and blessings are pronounced for health and prosperity for a particular household during the New Year. Nusit Chindarsi has asserted that "all the sacrifices are done individually for each household, and there is no communal ritual for the whole village" (CHINDARSI, 1976, 139). However, this assertion does not account for the Ntoo Xeeb ritual ceremony, celebrated by the Hmong, when all heads of households congregate on the first day of January to perform a rite promoting the welfare of the entire village.
Presentation of this eyewitness account of the ritual Hmong New Year's Ntoo Xeeb (3) ceremony addresses several concerns. Firstly, although the entire New Year festival is generally recognized as the most important ritual occasion of Hmong village life (LYNCH 1999, 22; LIVO and CHA 1991, 8; SCOTT 1987, 37), no detailed description of the Ntoo Xeeb ceremony exists. Past scholarly discussions of Hmong New Year celebrations have focused on pav pob, public ball-tossing courtship games between unmarried boys and girls (LYNCH 1999, 31; YANG 1992, 301; BARNEY 1980, 21), and other social activities such as tuaj lub, top-spinning and hitting duels played by boys and young men (WILLCOX 1986, 98), public singing contests between women (CATLIN 1992, 44), crossbow shooting competitions (men), and traditional wooden-cart racing (boys). Furthermore, a thorough description and analysis of the Ntoo Xeeb rite, which is conducted by a Txiv neeb muag dawb shaman, affords an opportunity to distinguish between different functions and categories of Hmong shamans.
We have found only one Western scholarly reference to the sacred Ntoo Xeeb ritual ceremony: "Sometimes the spirits of particular trees are propitiated, especially at the New Year. These are known as the ntoo xeeb, or trees, which have their roots above ground" (TAPP, 1989a, 61-62). The specific Ntoo Xeeb ceremony described in this text was conducted by the elders of Ban Mae Sa Mai (Mae Sa Mai village), located in Tambol Pong Yareng, Mae Rim District, Thailand, approximately thirty kilometers north of Chiang Mai, and has been held on the first day of January for over two decades, reflecting the calendrical influence of the modernizing Thai national project. This village of over one thousand five hundred White Hmong inhabitants was settled nearly fifty years ago by refugees from Yunnan province in southern China, fleeing the Communist regime. There are currently more than eighty thousand Hmong living in northern Thailand (BOYES and PIRABAN 1989, 11).
Access to this sacred ritual was gained through the assiduous efforts of my collaborating colleague, Dr. Bussakorn Sumrongthong. By doing joint field-work reflecting two distinct cultural perspectives (as a Western-trained academic and a traditional Thai musician), we endeavored to learn local truths about this specific ceremony, in order to understand particular manifestations of the Hmong ritual belief system. This entailed exhaustive on-site interviews with expert practitioners and informants, and frequent follow-up sessions between translators and researchers to confirm preliminary understandings.
PART I--PREPARATIONS FOR THE CEREMONY
At 9:30 AM, January 1, 2001, we leave Mae Sa Mai village (located at five thousand feet above sea level), and begin to climb up...
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