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Mosuo Minority, Yunnan, China
   

 

 

The Mosuo as the last living matriarchal society in the World :

The Mosuo are one of the 56 official Chinese ethnic minority living within the boundaries of China. Their homeland lies on the borders of Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, few mountains away from Tibet. The Mosuo are considered by anthropologists to be matriarchal, because they are still living in accordance with the the principle that women hold the most important place in the Society. Estimated population of Mosuo is around 50000 people today.

The women of the first generation are between sixty and eighty years old. The Women of the second generation are between forty and sixty years old. One woman of a group of sisters has been elected by the clan members to be the matriarch. With the help of her sisters, she cares for the economic and social affairs of the clan-house. She is the administrator of all possessions of the clan: the house, fields, domestic animals and food, as well as the horses, which are mostly used by the men of the clan, her brothers and sons.

The women of the third generation are between thirteen and forty years old. At about thirteen years of age, after the ceremony of initiation, girls are considered to be full members of the clan and are given the key to their own rooms. This young generation of women does the hard work in the fields and gardens. They are also occupied with love, pregnancy, and motherhood. Their traditional custom was to have mutual marriage between two clans, but this form has ceased to exist. Today, each woman chooses her lovers as she wishes. Love affairs are easily begun and easily broken off without problems for the young woman and her children because they are all at home in their (grand)mother's house.

Once a year, the young people of the region go on a pilgrimage to their sacred mountain. There they have a dance festival to honor Gan mu as the great Goddess of Love. On this occasion, the young women choose a new lover among the young men. The men do not initiate the choice themselves. The elected lover has the right to visit his love at night in her private chamber in the house of her clan. But the next morning at dawn he must leave because he has no right to live with her, not even to eat there. The custom is that every person eats where she or he works. The man works in the house of his mother, where he is at home. Thus, every evening the brothers leave the clan house and the lovers enter, and every morning the lovers leave and the brothers come back. This is the classic matriarchal visiting marriage, which still exists among the Mosuo today. A Mosuo man has his rights and duties in the house of his mother, not in the house of his love, where he is only a guest.

The ancient religion of the Mosuo, the matriarchal layer, centers on their belief in the divinity of Nature. This is most directly expressed through the veneration of Gan mu, the sacred mountain, which is regarded as the Goddess of Love, and for Shinami, the sacred lake, seen as the Mother Goddess. Nature is regarded as female, as the great Creatrix. The later, patriarchal layers of religion, to which they have been subjected, have not succeeded in suppressing these basic beliefs.

When the Tibetans conquered them, the Mosuo were forced to adopt Lamaism, the Tibetan variation of Buddhism. Under the disguise of Tibetan buddism religion, the Mosuo were allowed to continue the veneration for their Goddess Gan mu until today. Later, their region was conquered by the armies of the emperors of China and became part of the Chinese empire. But even now the Mosuo have not adopted the patriarchal Chinese patterns, and in their remote area, they could not be forced to do so.

 

 

 

Mosuo people live all around Lake Lugu and the plain of Yong Ning, few kilometers away from the lake. In the language of the Mosuo, Lake Lugu is called Shinami, which means "Mother Lake"; Shinami is a goddess, too.

 

  

 

Here, at an altitude of nearly 3000 meters, the Mosuo live by gardening and fishing in their sacred lake. Half of the border of the lake (average depth 50 m) belongs to Sichuan Province, the other hallf belongs to Yunnan Province.

 

  

 

The "crocodile" shaped-head peninsula that lies in the Lake.

 

  

 

Typical Mosuo house. Every window is a room where a girl lives.

 

  

 

Another house build at the very edge of the lake.

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

Men ride these small horses to accomplish their daily duties.

 

 

 

 

Children help at house-tasks... here, getting a small pig roasted.

 

 

The children belong exclusively to the mother and her clan. The brothers of the young women take care of the nieces and nephews, who are regarded as their children, too, because they share the same clan name. The uncles of the children fulfill the role of social fatherhood, which is typical for matriarchal societies. Biological fatherhood makes no sense to the Mosuo, socially or spiritually.

 

 

All persons within each clan-house have the clan name of the eldest woman, the clan mother. These names are, for example: "Tiger Mother," "Snake Mother," "Cougar Mother," "Tree Mother," and so on. The names, as well as the common ownership of the house and the land, are exclusively inherited through the female line.

I had the chance to talk with this old Mosuo woman and to be invited to visit her house, shown in the photo hereunder.

 

 

  

 

 

The old lady's house is all made of wood, and in the center of the main room, there is a fire and an autel for praying. A hole in the roof acts as a cheminey.

 

 

Above photo is a tomb, holding burried bodies. Mosuos people live next to their dead people. Children make up the fourth generation and are regarded as reborn ancestresses or ancestors who have returned into their own clan. The children come from the realm of the ancestors, not from a man of another clan; therefore they are sacred.

This belief in direct rebirth is basic in matriarchal religion, and the veneration of ancestors is part of this belief. The ancestors, who are held in good memory, will soon come back as little children. As the Mosuo say, "she will come back as a young girl."

 

 

 

Mosuo people's original way to write uses pictograms. These have not changed much through hundreds of years. It exists dictionaries from Mosuo language to Chinese language.

Very early chinese characters, few thousands years ago were pictograms comparable to the above ones, as they were also a symbolic description of natural elements.

 

 

At the present time, the Mosuo are under great pressure due to the modern development of China. Their ancient culture is threatened by the continued exploitation of their environment. Roads are being built, electricity installed, and the beauty of Lake Lugu and the "matriarchal women of the Mosuo" are being marketed for Chinese tourism.

 

 

To reach Mosuo people's world, get ready to spend 5-7 hours by car from Lijiang city in narrows, zigzagging and somehow uncomfortable and dangerous roads (70% of the way is paved as above). 1/4 of the way is also frequently spread by stones falls from the mountains which scare taxi drivers ....