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The Jingpo nationality, with a population of about
121,900, live in compact communities mainly in Dehong Prefecture
and Lushi County of Nujiang Prefecture .A few of them are
distributed in Tengchong County of Baoshan Simao Prefecture .Their
ancestors were a branch of the Diqing tribe. The "Luoxing" and the
"Xunchun" tribes in the Tang Dynasty were their ancestors. they
call themselves "Jingpo", "Zaiwa ", "E-lang" and "Laqi". Since
they live in mountain areas, they are often called "Shantou" which
means "the top of a Mountain", and the names given by Hans are
also related to their distributions. After Liberation, they were
named the Jingpo the Jingpo nationality. They use
two languages, namely the Jinpo and the Zaiwa languages, which
belong to the Tibeto-Burman Branch of the Sino-Tibetan Language
Family (Jingpo Branch). The primitive means of communication were
popular among the Jingpo people, of which the typical ones
included making marks on wooden boards as records and expressing
feelings by giving different plants . In 1957, the new Jingpo
characters were created. The Jinpo people engage
mainly in farming, and sometimes in gathering and hunting as well.
They are fond of drinking wine, chewing tobacco, Luzi and betel
nuts. They believe in a primitive multi-god religion, and a few of
them are Christians. The Jingpo women usually wear
short black coats, and purplish red tight woolen shirts. On grand
occasions, they dress themselves up with numerous colorful beads,
silver bulbs and silver pieces. Some women have bamboo rattan
hoops painted black or red on their waists. The men usually wear
black round-collared coats with buttons down the front, short and
loose trousers, and black or white turbans. The two ends of the
turbans with embroidery or small floss balls. They bring their
ling knives and haversacks wherever they go. The
most important festival of the Jingpo people is the MunaoZongge
festival. "Munao" is a Jingpo and "Zongge" is a Zaiwa word. Both
of them mean singing and dancing together. It falls on the 15th of
January on the lunar calendar and lasts three days. |
