Dissertation, Chapter 2

Part 2

Names and Categorizations of Lisu
Types of Categories
Names and categorizations were of great interest to British and French travelers. British categorizations were often contradictory, being both cultural and geographical. But from 1900 on, ethnological ideas of linguistics became paramount. They hoped to use language to reveal the course of historical migrations of modern populations’ ancestors. They classified populations by language as a synonym for race {Leach 1965: 43}. Within the particular generalizations, they made subcategories based on language, territory, and political organization {Leach 1965: 44}. These categories differed from both Southeast Asian and Chinese ones. The Southeast Asian categories were based on lowland state conceptions of uplanders vs. lowlanders. These were often congruent with ethnic zonation (cf. {SUAN Secretariat 1990: 15, 37}. For instance, “Kachin” was a Burmese term for “barbarians” of the northeastern frontier, an area which was linguistically and politically polyglot, and which included upland groups such as Jinghpaw and Lisu in that category. Similarly, many Tai polities used the term khaa to refer to uplanders, which means ‘slave’ and later became a designation of a particular ethnic group. Another Burmese category referred to barbarians of a particular territory {Leach 1965: 41}. In the Chinese state, there was an emphasis on naming and detailed categorization. As a centralizing state, one of its key features was the making of categories, seen most clearly in the official naming of fifty-six nationalities in China after 1949 {Shin 2001}; see also {Shin 1999}. In this, the British and Chinese states shared a key trait of categorizing vis-à-vis the categorizations typical of Southeast Asian kingdoms such as Burma or Siam where categorizations were relational. That is, they used different types of categories; in one, groups such as Lisu and Kachin were separated, in the other they were combined. British categories were based on race or descent and language as a marker of race/descent while Southeast Asian lowland states’ categories were based on the perceived relation of uplanders to lowlanders.

Language and Ethnic Categorizations
Leach, however, demonstrated that those who speak a particular language do not necessarily share a particular culture and history; the history of a language, therefore, does not describe the history of a race, group, or tribe {Leach 1965: 47-48}. “Language groups are not therefore hereditarily established, nor are they stable through time” {Leach 1965: 49}. This is the nature of ethnicity in northern mainland Southeast Asia: people change their ethnic identity; it is an ephemeral category; specific ethnic identity at a given point in time is closely associated with relations with neighboring people and political. This has become the gold standard of ethnic studies in Southeast Asia. And yet, in some circumstances there is continuity over time. Ethnic impermanence is the norm and continuity is that which must be explained.
Language, both in cases of rapid change and remarkable conservatism, is a marker of social identity, one cultural badge among many that marks people off as either members of or hostile to a group {Leach 1965: 49}. In this context, categorizations tell us about localized language groups and ethnic identification and are useful primarily in terms of understanding ethnic relations rather than descent and primordial characteristics. Most writers spent much time discussing names – what people were called and what they called themselves. For Western travelers the goal was to categorize people in a framework of descent and relatedness of the various peoples of the region {e.g., Anderson 1871}. However, use of language and naming was not particularly helpful because of the variety of names and borrowing of vocabulary. For instance, the distinction between Lisu, Lahu, Lolo, and similar peoples was often not clearly marked. Early European explorers noted that the term ‘Lissou’ was widely used by many groups, so that its precise meaning was unclear to them {Baber 1882: 70} or that people called ‘Lisu’ were widely distributed throughout Yunnan. Categorized as people similar to Burmans in language, British explorers hoped to learn from study of Lisu about the history of the Burmese {Anderson 1871: 136}. Lisu were categorized, also, as a subvariant of Lolo peoples; Lolo (who are the most widespread people of this language group) were reported as comprising the bulk of the hill tribe population {Davies 1909: 389}. Where Lolo and Lisu lived together, the distinction between ‘Lei-su’ and ‘Li-su’ was sharply marked {Davies 1909: 384}. However, their language was so similar (as well as “manners” and “physique”) that Europeans considered them to be the same people {Baber 1882: 71}. Woni or Akha, Lahu or Lo-hei, and Li-so or Lisu were considered scarcely more than dialects of Lolo {Davies 1909: 337, 351}. Certainly, Lisu language was closely related to Lolo {Fraser 1922: 1}; some claimed that Lisu were a form of Lolo driven westward by Chinese expansion {Enriquez 1921: 72}. Fraser found similarities between Lisu and Burmese and Atsi Kachin, which he took as evidence of a common origin near Tibet, but concluded that Lisu language was most closely related to Lolo {Fraser 1922: iii, 1}, a conclusion supported by modern work on Tibeto-Burman linguistics {Matisoff 1986: 72}. More particularly, Lisu is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Burmic subgroup, which can be divided into the Burmish, the Gong, and the Niish subgroups. Other terms for Niish are Loloish and Yipho; Bradley now uses the term Niish because the other two terms are based on exonyms, while Niish is based on the autonym “Ni” (also expressed as “Li”) used by most of these groups (Bradley 1997b: 161).
Lisu language as a whole was marked by distinct dialectal variations in both Yunnan and Burma {Leach 1965: 45; Fraser 1922: 1}. Considering the distribution of Lisu peoples, it is not surprising that there were pronounced dialectical differences in Lisu. Only about 60% of words were constant among the dialects, according to J.O. Fraser; Eastern and Western Lisu, for instance, shared scarcely 50% intelligibility {Fraser 1922: iv}. Forrest also noted that the Lisu from Burma in his expedition could not easily communicate with the Lisu in the Upper Salween (1908: 261). In such cases, Chinese served as the lingua franca {Enriquez 1921: 71}. In contrast, Lahu served as the lingua franca in the Shan States and northern Thailand in the twentieth century {Hanks & Hanks 2001; Young 1961}. There were a significant number of Chinese loan words used among the Lisu people of Burma {Enriquez 1921: 71} but these loan words were evidently of recent adoption, expressing ideas connected with Chinese civilization. Southern Lisu told Fraser that Lisu further north in the Upper Salween used few Chinese words {Fraser 1922: 1}. Thus, a certain degree of language variation among the Lisu had to do with degree of interaction with the Chinese. The Lisu found in Thailand speak a dialect of Lisu that is heavily Sinicized in vocabulary {Matisoff 1986: 71}, quoting {Hope 1974}.

Location, Ethnonyms, and Ethnic Categorizations
Because ethnic categorizations were also based on territorial boundaries, they were important in British colonial plans to establish the boundaries of their colonial territory. The goal was to define territorial rights through such categorizations (see Forrest 1908: 239). Lisu as far south as Momien were perceived by British explorers as ‘replacing’ Kachin peoples living further east in northern Burma {Anderson 1871: 118}; others saw the Lisu as a mix of Lolo and Kachin {Davies 1909: 366}, in part because of perceived similarities in their religious practices {Forrest 1908: 261}; or as a “half-breed” race derived from the same stock as the similarly mixed Lahu {Rose & Brown 1911: 267}.
British ethnological categorizations were further confused by geographical variations in naming. Maru and Lashi people in Burma called the Lisu Lasi or Leur-seur. The Kachins called them Yawyin, and under this name they first became known in British colonial literature. The term Yawyin was supposedly a name given to the Kachin themselves by the Chinese (Ye-Jen or Ye-Ren), meaning savages; the Kachin in turn used this term for Lisu people {Enriquez 1921: 72}. Yawyin people were generally Flowery Lisu {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 201} except in the far north of Burma, where they tended to be Black Lisu who had migrated west from the Upper Salween. The Shan {Davies 1909: 391} called Lisu Li-hsaw or Cheli. Chinese called them Lisaw, except in the eastern and central parts of Yunnan, where they called them Lisu {Enriquez 1921: 72; Fraser 1922: 1}. It was the Chinese who made the distinction among White Lisu (Pe Lisu) and Black Lisu (He Lisu); Hwa (Hua) Lisu, or Flowery Lisu, was said to be based on the pretty and colorful dress of the women {Enriquez 1921: 72} but in fact the division between Black and White appeared to be based on whether they were influenced by Tibetan (Black) or Chinese (White) culture {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 176}. This distinction was picked up and formalized by Westerners. I will discuss these categories in the section on Lisu and Chinese relations.

Ethnonyms
Lisu called themselves ‘Lisu’ or ‘Liso’ {Davies 1909: 391}, except for the people of Yuan ma, who called themselves Lihpaw {Fraser 1922: iv}. Fraser says ‘lisu’ means ‘the people who have come down’ {Enriquez 1921: 72}, although it is also the name of a common pheasant with a beautiful swaying tail, found in the Upper Salween, the Kalij pheasant (Lophura leucomelana), a point made to me by an old Lisu man in Thailand. However, most people appeared to use location as a self-appellation, particularly the widespread Tibetans or Tibetanized peoples {Davies 1909: 384}. People who appeared to be the same called themselves Nei-su, Lei-su (Lésu), or Ngo-su in different locations {Davies 1909: 389}; for instance, Lolo identified themselves by a range of such ethnonyms, although the “Ngosu” were said to speak disrespectfully of the Lésu {Baber 1882: 66-7}. Independent Lisu also referred to themselves as “Anu,” meaning cross bowmen, although this was likely a clan name {Rose & Brown 1911: 268}.

Lisu and Ethnicity: Summary
The Lisu case illustrates the interplay of language, location, and naming, and the difficulty of classifying people along ‘blood’ or descent lines when so many appear to have had shared origins but also to have adapted to the political and economic conditions in which they lived. For instance, many of the Lisu population living in the west (Burma) or the southern edges of Lisu distribution in Yunnan identified themselves as Chinese although they may not have been of Chinese “blood” by British standards. It gave them a specified status in the network of ethnicities. Many Lisu had Chinese surnames with no Lisu equivalent and claimed to be of Chinese origin, having ‘turned’ Lisu in Yunnan, a process that Fraser observed in his decades in Yunnan {Fraser 1922: iii}. Leach mentions that a certain “low class” group of Shan were once Lisu, having entered Shan society as mercenary soldiers {Leach 1965: 39-40}. In the region around Tengchong, Lisu men wore Chinese dress {Davies 1909: 368}, yet there was a saying that sometimes Chinese ‘turn into tribes people’ but that the tribes people ‘never turn into Chinese’ {Fraser 1922: iii}. In contrast, “along the Burmese border, no Lisu or Kachin is ever ashamed of his nationality” {Enriquez 1921: 72}, reflecting very different political structures and cultural categorizations at that place and point in time. Of course people did in fact change ethnic identity in Burma and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
These short references foreshadowed Leach and decades of anthropological discussion of ethnicity and ethnic identification in Southeast Asia. People ‘turned’ into something else depending on the local political economy and cultural relations, not precepts of immutable blood and nationality. Observers began to see that ethnicity was not primordial, not fixed and stabilized by the categorizations of states. Classifications and categorizations, the process of labeling and organizing, could not explain groups of people in northern Southeast Asia, neither who they were nor who they claimed to be. Other explanations had to be considered and when the concept of petrified primordial ancestry fell, it fell to its opposite, a transient, unstable ethnic identity,
Leach claimed that the key features in ethnicity were territorial location, “relative sophistication,” and economic organization {Leach 1965: 39-40}. I argue that the key features are, rather, political economy and intergroup interactions, which subsume Leach’s key features. Ethnicity can be about resource control, about the means of making a living and the possibilities of environmental conditions. Adaptation to social and economic conditions, an apparent expediency, can be pivotal. Lisu working as mercenaries for Shan found it expedient for some reason to become ‘low-class’ Shan; Chinese and Mon traders in Thailand found it useful to maintain separate identity to avoid the obligations of reciprocity among kin that would have prevented accumulating profit {Foster 1988}. In this light, ethnicity appears simply to be chosen for advantage, until the classificatory, stabilizing tendency of states becomes involved {Wolf 1982}. But it is political economy rather than simple economy and economic advantage the is key, because of the importance of social relations in the generation of ethnic identity. Economic conditions, particularly trade, had much to do with political conditions – warfare, extent of control of various polities, and the nature of those political conditions, e.g., tribute or taxation. Also vital is how indigenous peoples in their particular political structures interacted with actors in neighboring polities, a matter of relative strength, hegemony, and density of interactions, rather than “sophistication.” Finally, there is the prior text of a society. Ethnic adaptations can never be purely exigent.
Of most significance to understanding the social structure of Lisu who migrated southwards was that those who passed through Burma and into Thailand were a more Sinified population of Lisu peoples. This was by assimilation more than by blood, although some intermarriage, particularly of Chinese men into the family of local leaders, accompanied assimilation (see Giersch 2001). Therefore, the Lisu in the southern regions, and thus the ancestors of Lisu living in Thailand, had adopted and been influenced by Chinese language and culture to a greater extent than had the Lisu of the north. These former were the “Flowery Lisu,” but their term for themselves is “variegated” or “brindle” (see Hutheesing 1990a: 34}, indicating perhaps their mixed cultural position far more than their colorful, supposedly flowery dress.

Trade and Economy
Views of Lisu as an isolated, uncivilized tribe are further challenged by historical evidence of Lisu contacts. They were a people who were involved in trade, perhaps as an integral part of their adaptation to the unstable ecological conditions in which they lived as well as a historical contingency of their relationship with Tibetan peoples. Living along the trade routes between China and Tibet, incorporated into the spheres of these polities and economies, they participated in at least the edges of this economy based on trade, as robbers, porters, guards of passes, leviers of tolls, and in all cases eager to trade with outsiders. In these roles, Lisu and other uplanders were exposed to a wide range of people and cultures (cf. Samuel 1993: 145-6).
People at least partly dependent on trade for survival learned a variety of languages. Linkages among the various and varied peoples of northern mainland Southeast Asia is illustrated by d’Orleans’ experience of traveling across northern Burma in Shan and Kachin territory. Negotiating passage through these chiefdoms proved more difficult than traversing the rough terrain of western Yunnan and Eastern Tibet. To negotiate passage, he had to depend on a gold miner translating from Chinese to Tibetan; a native mountain porter translating from Tibetan to Lisu; finally, a local man who spoke Lisu and Tai speaking to the Shan chiefs of Hkamti Long {d’Orleans 1896: 306}. And how did d’Orleans make himself understood? He spoke Latin to his Chinese assistant! The Lisu and others in this region clearly had close relations with neighboring peoples, whether or not of the same ethnolinguistic group; note that Lisu, Yi, and Tai joined in the 1802 uprising at Yongbei Ting. Many Lisu in these southern regions spoke at least some Chinese {Hertz 1912: 83}, as noted previously.
Western travelers in northeastern Burma and western Yunnan frequently met Lisu on the roads, in the markets, and were even visited by Lisu seeking trade opportunities {Anderson 1871: 358}. Anderson recounts Lisu gathering around him in Bh mo trying to get silver and meeting young women above Tengchong carrying heavy loads of vegetables, firewood, and large wooden planks for sale in the lowland markets {Anderson 1871: 135, 297, 300, 318, 363, 378}. Even independent Lisu living in small, feuding, egalitarian, autonomous villages, with no knowledge of Chinese – the model of the primitive village – were eager to trade. The item most in demand was cloth, and for this they offered to trade rice, maize, honey, a chicken, and salt {Forrest 1908: 250}. Traders even further north brought in cotton, opium, salt, and goats in exchange for lac, beeswax, “some drugs,” and a little gold dust from the Lisu {Forrest 1908: 254}. Near Shigu, many western Yunnan peoples including Lisu came to market to trade {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 23}. Trade was profitable, albeit risky, due to feuding and the lack of an overarching government to prevent taxation at every pass {Forrest 1908: 254}. Further east on the Mekong/Salween divide there was a salt bazaar in which ‘wild’ Lisu traded with lowland peoples such as the Minchia {Forrest 1908: 256, 257}. The most important trade in the uplands of Kham was for salt; local people often sold corn for it {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 23}. People were dependent on trade to get salt, especially necessary because goiter was prevalent in the region {Goullart 1955: 71}, especially in the north {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 183, 185}. Rock reported goiter as widespread in the Lisu villages he visited {!Rock 1947: 399-400}.
Travel along the Salween was difficult and severe, and Forrest claims that there was no regular communication along it. But several east-west passes crossing the north-south divides allowed trade between the Mekong and Salween, and from there into Upper Burma and Tibet. On their return, much further south between Chengjia and Tengchong, Forrest’s party crossed into Burmese territory via a narrow and difficult pass used occasionally by salt porters and claimed as the territory of a few scattered Lisu {Forrest 1908: 260, 264}. These routes were likely also useful to traders who wanted to avoid the Chinese frontier stations where they would be expected to pay customs duties. To the outsiders these were impossible routes, but there is clear evidence of extensive trade ebbing and flowing depending on economic and political conditions. Lisu and their neighbors were not isolated, self-subsistent people.
Further south and in Burma, where agriculture was more productive and political conditions safer, regular trade of small quantities was possible. Lisu supplemented their subsistence by selling firewood, timber, vegetables, incense, and hempen cord to Chinese living near their markets. Lisu were already growing much opium by the early twentieth century {Fraser 1922: vi}. Under the right conditions, trade between Burma and Yunnan flourished. Caravans of hundreds of mules came down into Burma from the hinterlands of Yunnan, bearing items such as smoked ham, pigs’ bristles, persimmons, and walnuts, in exchange for silk and cotton thread, salt, needles, buttons, and cheap necklaces. At this point, they often carried opium from Yunnan and smuggled back jade from Burma. Trade was interwoven with networks of allies, friends, and long-term trading partners on whom one could depend {cf. Giersch 2001: xx; Samuel 1993: 94, 123-125; Stevenson 1981: 36}. In one case in Nam Tamai (far north Upper Burma, adjacent to the Upper Salween of Yunnan), a series of transactions between a Chinese trader and a Lisu man consisted of: a goat; a piece of cotton cloth; a jar of liquor; a cow; six viss of numrin (the root of Coptis teeta used in Chinese medicine); seven viss of numrin; six rupees of cash; and a quill of gold dust. It took a day of arbitration to figure equivalencies {Leach 1965: 146}. This bespeaks a long-term trading relationship in which there was a great deal of trust, and was embedded in a net of social relationships. Such trading friendships were also a bulwark of Tibetan trading.

Lisu Subsistence in Yunnan
Little is documented of Lisu subsistence in the mid-nineteenth century. Forrest’s comments were typical of the state view of swiddening people:
The people are also exceedingly lazy; in the spring they do a few days’ work in scraping a patch of soil, just large enough to yield subsistence, and in planting their maize; then in early October they put in a few days’ more work, getting in their crop and cutting their hemp, or looking after their tobacco patch. All the rest of their lives is spent in eating, sleeping, and squatting round the hearth, varied by a rare expedition to get wood for a crossbow, poison for their arrows, or a stock of salt or wild honey. Under these conditions it is not surprising that, in spite of the sparseness of the population and the great extent of land suitable for maize and other cultivation, famine is of frequent occurrence {Forrest 1908: 262}.
It is worth noting that Forrest traveled in the upper Salween immediately following harvest, when there would have been relatively little agricultural work and hard upon a famine in which most domestic animals had been killed for food.
Chinese chronicles similarly mentioned Lisu as a “primitive” tribal people living high in the mountains and subsisting by hunting, gathering, and “crude” subsistence agriculture {Lee 1979: 48}. They lived in small villages in the high mountains, often at the sources of streams with plenty of dwarf bamboos {Davies 1909: 392}, at ranges of 5000 to 7000 or 8000 to 9000 feet, but preferring 6,000 feet (depending on reports) among groves of pine, oak, dwarf bamboo, and flowering shrubs {Forrest 1908: 244; Rose & Brown 1911: 251; Fraser 1922: iii}. Houses in non-Sinified villages were of one, two, or three rooms, made of logs and raised on piles, with a verandah and a stone hearth in the center around which most families’ activities took place {Forrest 1908: 248, 262}. Villages were small, crowded, and surrounded by big clumps of bamboo. Cattle were kept underneath the house {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 196, 203}. However, in one case where the village had terraced rice fields, the village was larger, about ninety households {Forrest 1908: 254}. Further south, houses were built on the ground with a floor of beaten earth {Rose & Brown 1911: 260} often with a porch supported by a stone plinth. Three rooms were the norm: a common room, a bedroom to the side, in which valuables and grains were stored, and a kitchen in the room to the other side. This style was the same as to Chinese-style housing in Yunnan {Fraser 1922: v-vi}. The main items of technology in Lisu villages were the huge crossbows (nu-kung according to Forrest) with ‘poisoned’ arrows, and looms for weaving hempen cloth. Each household generally had a large iron pot (likely a trade item), wooden bins and bamboo baskets to hold the years’ grain, bamboo water tubes, and some low stools {Forrest 1908: 262}. In all but the loom and huge crossbows, this is very similar to Lisu in Thailand in the late twentieth century.

Hunting and Fishing
Lisu have been characterized as people with a strong tradition of subsistence hunting. This continues even today in the areas around Tengchong {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}. They hunted extensively and foraged in the forest for items such as mushrooms {Daniels 1994}. Wild honey was a very significant food item {Forrest 1908: 248, 262; Rose & Brown 1911: 256, 265}. They hunted bear, panther, and barking deer and partridge. Big game might take six to seven days to track, but small game such as the Khalij pheasant abounded {Rose & Brown 1911: 251-2}. Hunting was carried out in part to prevent animals from damaging crops {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}. But there was an element of travel and adventure in hunting. Groups of hunters might travel far in pursuit of game; Stevenson wrote of encountering and hiring a Lisu hunting group from Yunnan as porters {Stevenson 1981: 39}. Other game included macaques, wild boars, and porcupines.
Game does not appear to have been common in portions of the Upper Salween {Forrest 1908: 245}, but whether this indicated a consistent feature of local ecology or over-hunting is unclear. There is no mention of commercial hunting or foraging and in fact Lisu appear to have specifically refused to sell such items {Anderson 1871: 363; Daniels 1994}, but in modern times commercial hunting has taken hold despite attempts by provincial authorities to prohibit all hunting {Harris & Ma 1997: 171, 173}. Further south, Lisu hunted a great deal, primarily the barking deer that was very prevalent in mountains in which they lived, but hunting was secondary to agriculture {Fraser 1922: vi}. Nevertheless, hunting was still an important part of Lisu culture in modern Yunnan. Men rarely traveled without hunting implements; they set snares and traps as well as hunting with crossbows and later guns. No animals were tabooed. In modern times, at least, the only animal not hunted was the common gibbon, but only because people considered its call beautiful and useful for weather forecasting. Many traditional Lisu deities were related to specific animals, and even professed Christians propitiated these deities {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}.
In far north Upper Burma (between Tra-mu-tang, 28 on the Salween, and Sukin, where Kingdon-Ward spent some time), Lisu, Maru, and Kachin caught fish by trapping {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 194}. At Sukin, south of Tra-mu-tang, Lisu fished by the method of hanging baited hooks at intervals along thick ropes strung across the river, catching as many as seven to eight fish per line. The fish were quite large, and Lisu here lived to a great extent on a fish diet. They also procured firewood from the river as driftwood, washed down the river for six to seven months of the year as big trees {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 220-1}.

Animal Husbandry
Lisu raised cattle and needed grazing land in many regions {Daniels 1994}; they also raised sheep {Rock 1947: 335} and either raised or hunted pigs {Rose & Brown 1911: 256}. To the north, around 28 , local people crossed west over the Salween to buy cattle {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 222, 224}. In Kham, cattle were raised and paths were blocked with hurdles to prevent them wandering too far {!@Kingdon-Ward 1986: 199}. Frequent feuds erupted over cattle theft {Forrest 1908: 242; Rose & Brown 1911: 255} as well as control of transit points (see river crossing story, below, and Rose & Brown 1911: 255). Mules and ponies, necessary for transport, were not common in 1905 even in trading entrepôts. The dearth of dogs, goats, pigs, chickens, or other domestic animals Forrest noted was the result of famine in the preceding season and should not be taken as typical. Later, Rose & Brown noted pigs, goats, sheep, and dogs {!Rose & Brown 1911: 265} and Fraser mentioned horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens {!Fraser 1922: vii}. In modern times, Lisu in Yunnan raised a mixture of cattle, goats, pigs, and chickens {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}.

Liquor
The Lisu proclivity to drinking liquor fermented from millet or maize was much commented upon. Supposedly, they used these grains for liquor even if they were short of food grain {Anderson 1871: 355; Forrest 1908: 264; Dick 1987: 36}. It was a thick white maize liquor. It appears that in inclement weather or when there were visitors, it was the custom to drink heavily at the house of the most prominent leader of the village {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 204}. Further south, they drank rice beer. Both old men and women drank, and far more than young people. They especially drank a great deal at weddings. The Chinese, according to Fraser, had a saying: “Lisu for liquor; leeches for blood” {Fraser 1922: v}. People became quarrelsome while drunk {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 204; Fraser 1922: v}.

Agriculture
Lisu primarily practiced swidden agriculture and British explorers commented on how heavily cleared many of their slopes were, as well as on the existence of grasslands in areas where they lived {Anderson 1871: 364; Davies 1909: 36; Rock 1947: 335}. In Yunnan and Nam Tamai, grassland swiddening was typical. However, grasslands may have been more related to local climatological conditions than to swiddening. West in Burma, monsoon forest swiddening was the norm, given much greater rainfall in this region {Leach 1965: 22-23}. In one area just north of 26 30' on the Salween in Yunnan, Lisu constructed elaborately terraced rice fields {Forrest 1908: 253}. In some areas along the Salween (below 26 15') in Burma, there were irrigated rice terraces and some Lisu lived in this region {Leach 1965: 22-23}. However, irrigated fields were rare, in part because Lisu lived too high for ease of irrigation {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}. The burning of swidden fields resulted at times in lethal fires {Rock 1947: 335}.
Around Sukin (just below 28 ), households were separated by fenced garden plots with pumpkins and runner beans growing up poles {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 214}. Here, there were fields of red buckwheat among steep pine-clad slopes {!@Kingdon-Ward 1986: 195-9}. Kingdon-Ward claimed to have found mountain rice up to about 9,000 feet; the stems had a lot of sugar and people chewed on them like sugarcane. There was crimson-flowered millet used for bread, Chinese peaches, sorghum, oranges, and quinces. A kind of yam was also extensively cultivated on the steep hill slopes interspersed among buckwheat and sorghum. The crops and vegetation here were similar to those found in northern Upper Burma {Kingdon-Ward 1986: 205}. Others reported that barley was the chief crop in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, followed by wheat, and that far north rice was almost unknown (Davies 1909: 386; Forrest 1908: 262). Kingdon-Ward, however, was a botanist and probably understood more of local vegetation and agriculture. Linguistic evidence is that Lisu, like other Burmic speakers, planted a wide range of grain crops, including rice, foxtail and panicled millet, sorghum, buckwheat, barley, wheat, and Jobs’ tears; and corn or maize after the sixteenth century (Bradley 1997: 162-163).
A little further south, maize, millet, and buckwheat predominated with some rice {Forrest 1908: 253; Rose & Brown 1911: 256, 265}. Rice was grown in terraced fields where water could be controlled. Even in Yunnan south of 26 30', maize was the main food crop although some rice was available {Forrest 1908: 244, 250}. More recent observers state that Lisu planted maize and dry rice in the south/central parts of Lisu settlement in Yunnan {Harris & Ma 1997: 171}. Harvest was in January {Davies 1909: 36}. Independent Lisu grew tobacco in the lower and warmer clearings by rivers, which was avidly smoked by men and women in pipes {Rose & Brown 1911: 265; Kingdon-Ward 1986: 186}.
Further south in the Kachin Hills, subsistence patterns remained largely the same. The staple crops were rice, tobacco, corn, and some opium (Anderson 1871: 83). Their subsistence pattern remained largely the same. Most planted by swiddening; a few had irrigated paddy fields. Most lived in districts and at altitudes too cold to cultivate rice and so their chief crops were maize and buckwheat. They also planted subsidiary crops of potatoes, hill sesame, hemp, indigo, and whatever else suited local conditions. Opium was grown wherever its cultivation was not prohibited. The types of subsidiary crops imply that Lisu were cultivating for the market, although outside observers considered them subsistence farmers. Some villages kept home gardens and orchards of fruit trees {Forrest 1908: 254}. By the 1920s, when Lisu in Burma had been more closely incorporated into the British colonial system, their form of agriculture had been categorized as one destructive of forests, and the British made great efforts to keep them out of their territory (see case of Bernardmyo Plateau, below). Fire was not without its dangers. At times, fires could rage out of control and this destroyed not only forests but lives. Rock recorded instances in the 1920s in which uncontrolled fire swept up behind three Lisu men and their sheep and killed them. In the season for clearing fields the horizon was hazy from the smoke of fires {!Rock 1947: 335, 349}.
In defense of swiddening, Lisu claimed (and rightly, I might add) that the soils they cultivated were too poor to support permanent agriculture, but observers such as Fraser attributed Lisu dependence on swiddening to being too lazy to compost and use manure to fertilize their fields (1922: vi). Furthermore, it appears that their form of land use was rotational rather than pioneer, in stark contrast to the pattern in northern Thailand in the twentieth century. That is, ideally land was planted for up to two years then fallowed for ten to twenty years before being used again. However, with increasing population, the land around settlements was being worked out more quickly, and the Lisu then migrated to other, more forested areas {Fraser 1922: vi}, which were of course less densely populated.

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