Blang of the Xishuangbanna Tea Mountains and Their Ancient Trees

In the tea mountains of the far south of Yunnan, in Xishuangbanna near the borders of Burma and Laos, live the Blang, a small mountain people famed as growers of tea. An Austroasiatic people kin to the Wa and the De’ang, they dwell on the forested slopes above the Dai valleys, tending ancient tea trees that are among the oldest in the world, and joining the Buddhism of their Dai neighbours to the older worship of the spirits and the tea.

This account follows the Blang from their ancient origins among the aboriginal peoples of the southern mountains, through their tea villages and their life on the slopes, into their Austroasiatic language, their Buddhism and the worship of the spirits, and the tea, the sour pickled tea, and the festivals that mark them. It ends with the Blang of today, a small people of the tea mountains whose ancient trees have brought new fame, keeping their tea and their customs alive in modern China.

The Tea Growers of the Southern Mountains
Blang, Bulang, and the Name of the People
The Blang Tongue and Its Austroasiatic Kindred
The Tea Mountains of Xishuangbanna
The Villages, the Elders, and the Old Order
The Village, the Clan, and the Bonds of the Blang
Buddhism, the Spirits, and the Old Rites
The Tea, the Tattoo, and the Ways of the Blang
The Tea Makers, the Weavers, and the Planters
Rice, Tea, and the Table of the Mountains
The New Year, the Tea Rites, and the Feasts
From the Ancient South to the People of Modern China
The Blang in Modern China

The Tea Growers of the Southern Mountains

In the tea mountains of the far south of Yunnan, in Xishuangbanna and the neighbouring hills near the borders of Burma and Laos, live the Blang, a small mountain people famed as growers of tea. Numbering around a hundred thousand, they dwell on the forested slopes above the valleys of the Dai, in a warm and misty country whose ancient tea trees, tended by the Blang and their kin for many centuries, are among the oldest in the world.

The Blang belong to the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic family, kin in the deep past not to the Tibeto-Burman and Tai peoples around them but to the Wa, the De’ang, the Khmer, and the other Austroasiatic peoples of Southeast Asia. This sets them apart from most of their neighbours and marks them, with their kin, as among the oldest inhabitants of the region.

Their forebears are held to have dwelt in these southern mountains from very ancient times, one of the aboriginal peoples of the borderland between China and Southeast Asia, and they took up early the growing of tea on the forested slopes, planting and tending the tea trees whose leaves became famed across the region and beyond. The Blang are counted among the first cultivators of tea in the world.

To speak of the Blang is to speak of a small Austroasiatic people of the southern tea mountains, growers of tea and farmers of the slopes, followers of the Buddhism of their Dai neighbours mingled with the worship of the spirits. Living among the Dai, the Hani, and their other neighbours in the warm hills of the far south, they hold their own place among the peoples of China as keepers of the ancient tea.

Blang, Bulang, and the Name of the People

The people are known as the Blang, or in other renderings Bulang, the name they give themselves, and it is by this name that the state recognises them as one of its nationalities. The name is their own word for who they are, binding together the small communities of the tea mountains, and it is borne by the Bulang mountains, one of the famed tea ranges of Xishuangbanna, named for the people.

In the old records the Blang and their forebears appear under various names, at times grouped with the Wa and the De’ang, their Austroasiatic kin, for the three peoples are near relations sprung from a common stock. The modern surveys marked the Blang as a people in their own right, distinct in tongue and custom, under their own name.

The Blang are close kin to the Wa and the De’ang, so near in the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic world that their languages are related and their origins shared, yet the Blang are a distinct people with their own name, their own home in the tea mountains, and their own traditions bound to the growing of tea and to the Buddhism of the south.

Whatever the rendering, Blang or Bulang, the people know themselves as one, a small folk of the southern tea mountains, keepers of their tongue, their tea, and their festivals. The name Blang marks them among the peoples of China as kin to the Wa and the De’ang, an Austroasiatic people of the warm hills of the far south.

The Blang Tongue and Its Austroasiatic Kindred

The Blang speak a language of the Mon-Khmer branch of the Austroasiatic family, kin in the deep past to the tongues of the Wa and the De’ang, and more distantly to Khmer and Mon, and quite unrelated to the Tibeto-Burman and Tai languages of their neighbours. This ancient linguistic kinship, reaching far to the south, marks the Blang as among the oldest inhabitants of the southern mountains.

Unlike the tonal languages that surround them, the Blang tongue is, in the manner of its Austroasiatic kin, not truly tonal, and its sounds and its grammar set it apart from the speech of the peoples around it. It is spoken in dialects across the scattered communities of the tea mountains, the everyday tongue of the Blang villages.

For most of their history the Blang had no writing of their own, and their store of song, legend, and lore was carried by memory and by mouth, while for the affairs of religion the script of the Dai, in which the Buddhist scriptures were kept, served among those Blang who took up the faith. The great body of Blang tradition lived in the spoken and the sung word.

In the modern age standard Chinese has spread through schooling and daily life, and the Blang, living among the Dai and their other neighbours, often know also the Dai tongue, so that many are bilingual or more. As a small people among larger neighbours, the Blang face strong pressure on their Austroasiatic language, and its keeping among the young is a matter of concern for those who cherish it.

The Tea Mountains of Xishuangbanna

The homeland of the Blang is the tea mountains of the far south of Yunnan, above all in Xishuangbanna and the neighbouring hills, near the borders with Burma and Laos. The greater number live on the forested slopes of the famed tea ranges, among them the Bulang mountains named for the people, above the warm valleys held by the Dai, in a country of mist, forest, and ancient tea.

This is warm, wet, sub-tropical highland, its slopes clothed in dense forest, drenched by the summer monsoon, and famous across China and the world as the home of the ancient tea trees of Pu’er, some of them centuries old, tended by the Blang and their kin on the mountain slopes. The Blang settled the higher slopes, above the Dai of the valleys, where the tea and the forest gave them their livelihood.

On these forested slopes the Blang built their villages of timber, bamboo, and thatch, often raised in the southern style on posts, clustered among the tea gardens and the fields, and among them, for those who took up the Buddhist faith, the temples of the Dai form of Buddhism. The famous old Blang village of Zhanglang, high on the Bulang mountain, stands among the ancient tea trees.

Rooted to the tea mountains of the far south, and gathered on the slopes above the Dai valleys, the Blang made their homeland in the warm forested hills of Xishuangbanna. It is a land of forest, mist, and ancient tea, of hillside village and tea garden, where a small Austroasiatic people kept its tongue, its tea, and its festivals among the mountains of the south.

The Villages, the Elders, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Blang lived in their mountain villages as growers of tea and farmers of the slopes, under the sway of custom, the guidance of elders, and, in some places, the native chiefs of the Dai lords in whose domains their hills lay. Each village was a community of households, ordered by the ties of kin and the authority of the old and the wise.

Theirs was a life of the tea garden and the slope-field, for the Blang tended the ancient tea trees on the forested mountains, gathering the leaves that became famed across the region, and cleared land on the slopes for rice, maize, and other crops. The growing and selling of tea was a mainstay of the Blang, and their tea was sought by the traders who came to the mountains.

The village was guided by its elders and, among those who took up the Buddhist faith, by the monks of the temple, for the Blang built no wide state of their own and lived under the Dai lords and the empire. Authority rested on age, on wisdom, and on the leading of the rituals, whether of the old spirits or of the Buddha, rather than on inherited throne.

Governed by custom, by elders, and by the monks and the native chiefs, the Blang lived as growers of tea and farmers of the southern slopes. A small Austroasiatic people of the tea mountains, keepers of the ancient tea and of the worship of the spirits and the Buddha, they held to their ways through the long centuries in the warm hills of the far south.

The Village, the Clan, and the Bonds of the Blang

Blang society rests on the village and the household, the bonds of kin that tie families together on the forested tea slopes. Descent is reckoned through the father’s line, and the village, often a community of related families, was the largest everyday unit of Blang life, guided by respected elders and, among those who took up the Buddhist faith, by the monks of the temple.

The Blang built no wide state and knew no king, and authority within the village rested on age, on wisdom, and on the respect owed to those skilled in custom and ritual, whether the elders who knew the ways of the spirits or the monks who kept the Buddhist faith. The ties of kin and the bonds of the village were the frame of Blang life among the mountains.

Marriage was made according to custom, marked by the exchange of gifts and by feasting, and the songs of courtship gave the young a voice in the choosing of their matches. In the old days the tattooing of the young, above all the men, at the coming of adulthood was a custom of the Blang, as of their Dai and other neighbours, a mark of the passage to maturity.

Women worked beside the men in the tea gardens and the fields and, as weavers, clothed the household in the cloth they made, and the dress of the Blang women, dark and adorned with silver, marked them among their neighbours. Through the village, the kin, and the ties of faith and custom, the Blang individual was bound into a close community of the tea mountains.

Buddhism, the Spirits, and the Old Rites

The religion of the Blang joins two worlds, the Buddhism they took from their Dai neighbours and the older worship of the spirits and the ancestors that runs beneath it. Many Blang embraced the Theravada Buddhism of the south, the same form kept by the Dai, building temples in their villages, sending sons to become monks, and keeping the festivals and the merit-making of the Buddhist year.

Yet beneath and beside the Buddhism ran the older faith, the worship of the spirits of the forest, the mountains, the rivers, the fields, and above all the tea, and of the ancestors of the village and the household. Offerings and rites, led by the elders and the ritual specialists, kept the spirits content and secured their blessing on the tea, the crop, and the health of the people.

The two faiths lived side by side and often mingled in the Blang world, the temple and the monk for the Buddhist rites and the merit-making, the elder and the spirit-specialist for the propitiation of the spirits and the honouring of the ancestors. The great festivals joined the two, and the life of the people was ordered by both the Buddhist calendar and the older rites of the spirits and the tea.

In the modern age the old faith has weakened under the pressures of a changing world, yet among the Blang the Buddhism of the temples endures, and the worship of the spirits and the ancestors, above all the spirits of the tea and the mountains, remains at the root of the people’s sense of themselves. The joining of the Buddha and the spirits is the mark of Blang religion.

The Tea, the Tattoo, and the Ways of the Blang

The heart of Blang tradition is tea, for the Blang are among the most ancient of the tea-growing peoples, and the tending of the old tea trees, the picking and drying and preparing of the leaves, and the drinking and offering of tea run through the whole of their life. A famous Blang way with tea is the making of a sour or pickled tea, the leaves fermented and eaten as well as drunk, a distinctive custom of the people.

The Buddhism of the south, with its temples, its monks, its festivals, and its merit-making, is a great tradition of the Blang who took up the faith, joined to the older worship of the spirits and the ancestors. The rites of the tea, the offerings to the spirits of the mountains and the gardens, and the honouring of the forebears run beside the Buddhist calendar.

In the old days the tattooing of the young at the coming of adulthood was a custom of the Blang, as of their Dai neighbours, and the dress of the women, dark and adorned with silver, and the ornaments of the people marked them at the festivals. Song and dance fill the gatherings, and the Blang share in the festivals of the wider Xishuangbanna world.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the growing and drinking of tea, the courtship and the weddings, the Buddhist festivals and the rites of the spirits, and the honouring of the ancestors. Through the tea, the Buddhism, and the worship of the spirits, the Blang mark the passages of life and the turning of the year in ways carried down from their forebears in the tea mountains.

The Tea Makers, the Weavers, and the Planters

The great craft of the Blang is the growing and making of tea, in which they are among the most ancient and skilled of peoples. The tending of the old tea trees on the forested slopes, the picking of the leaves, and the drying, rolling, and preparing of them into the teas for drinking and for trade were the mainstay skills of the Blang, and their tea was famed across the region and beyond.

A distinctive Blang craft is the making of a sour or pickled tea, in which the tea leaves are fermented and pressed and kept to be eaten as well as drunk, a food and a delicacy peculiar to the people and their kin. This use of the tea leaf as a food, and the many ways of preparing the tea, mark the Blang as a people who made tea the centre of their life.

The women of the Blang wove and dyed cloth, favouring a deep dark colour, and sewed and adorned the dress of the household with silver ornaments, and the making of a woman’s dress was a labour of care. The building of the houses of the tea villages, the plaiting of bamboo, and the carving of the tools of daily life rounded out the crafts of the people.

The building and adorning of the Buddhist temples, for those Blang who took up the faith, drew on the arts of the Dai Buddhist world, and the making of the ritual objects served the religious life of the people. Yet it is for the growing and making of tea above all, and for the sour tea peculiar to them, that the crafts of the Blang are known, an art bound to the ancient tea of the southern mountains.

Rice, Tea, and the Table of the Mountains

The food of the Blang is the food of the southern tea mountains, built on rice grown on the slopes and, where the land allowed, in the terraced valleys, with maize and other crops on the higher ground. Rice is the heart of every meal, and a well-loved way of cooking it is in a length of fresh bamboo, roasted over the fire so that the grain takes the fragrance of the green wood.

To the rice is added a relish of vegetables, gathered greens, beans, and the produce of the garden and the forest, with meat as the food of festivals and welcome. The Blang share in the pungent and sour cooking of the south, fond of the chilli and the fermented, and the forests of their mountains yield wild plants, herbs, and game to enrich the table.

Tea holds a place at the Blang table unlike that among any other people, for the Blang not only drink their famed tea but eat it, in the sour or pickled tea made by fermenting the leaves, a food and a delicacy of the mountains. The drinking and the offering of tea is a mark of hospitality and runs through the daily life and the rites of the people.

Rice wine and other home-brewed liquors are the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at the festivals, and offered to the spirits and the Buddha. From the bamboo-roasted rice and the wild plants of the forest to the drunk and eaten tea of the mountains, the food of the Blang is rooted in the tea gardens and the forested slopes of the far southern hills.

Pu-erh tea, the crop of the Blang mountains

The New Year, the Tea Rites, and the Feasts

The festivals of the Blang join the Buddhist calendar of the south with the older rites of the tea and the spirits. Among those Blang who took up the faith, the great Buddhist festivals, the new year and the days of merit-making, are kept as among their Dai neighbours, with the visiting of the temple, the offering to the monks, and the gathering of the community for feasting and joy.

The new year, kept in the manner of the south, is a great occasion, with the sprinkling of water, the offerings, and the gathering of kin, and among the Blang the festivals tied to the tea, the rites at the planting and the picking, honour the spirits of the tea gardens and pray for a good crop. These tea rites, peculiar to a people of the ancient tea, mark the turning of the tea year.

The rites of the spirits of the mountains, the forest, and the ancestors bring their own observances, with offerings and ceremonies led by the elders and the spirit-specialists, and the whole community gathers for the great festivals with song, dance, and feasting. The Blang share in the festivals of the wider Xishuangbanna world, joining their Dai and other neighbours.

The passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, the wedding marked by feasting and song, and, in the old days, the tattooing of the young at the coming of adulthood. At all these occasions the dark dress and silver, the tea, the songs, and the rites of the Buddha and the spirits bring colour and devotion, so that the Blang meet the great moments of life and the year with feast and rite.

Musical instruments of the peoples of Yunnan

From the Ancient South to the People of Modern China

The Blang are held to be among the most ancient inhabitants of the southern mountains, an Austroasiatic people dwelling there, with their Wa and De’ang kin, before the Tibeto-Burman and Tai peoples came, kin in the deep past to the Mon and Khmer of Southeast Asia. Their forebears took up early the growing of tea on the forested slopes, and are counted among the first cultivators of the tea that became famed across the world.

Through the long centuries the Blang lived in their tea mountains under the sway of the Dai lords of the valleys and, more distantly, the Chinese empire, growing tea and farming the slopes, and from their Dai neighbours many took up the Theravada Buddhism of the south, joining it to their older worship of the spirits. The tea of their mountains was carried far by the traders of the old tea routes.

The border country of the Blang, near the frontiers of Burma and Laos, was a land of many peoples and of the old caravan routes by which the tea of the mountains went out to Tibet and beyond. Through the changes of the centuries the Blang kept their tongue, their tea, and their festivals in the warm hills of the far south.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Blang were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China. The modern age has brought roads, schools, and the reach of the market to the tea mountains, and above all a great boom in the trade of the ancient Pu’er tea, whose old trees, tended by the Blang, have become prized and costly, drawing the people into the wider life and economy of the country.

Tea fields before Buddhist symbols in the Blang country

The Blang in Modern China

Today the Blang number around a hundred thousand, living still chiefly in the tea mountains of the far south of Yunnan, above all in Xishuangbanna and the neighbouring hills, on the slopes above the Dai valleys. A small Austroasiatic people of the tea, they remain rooted in the forested mountains where their forebears tended the ancient tea trees, among them the famed old village of Zhanglang on the Bulang mountain.

Modern life has come to the Blang mountains above all through the great boom in the trade of the ancient Pu’er tea, whose old trees, tended by the Blang for centuries, have become prized and costly across China and beyond, bringing a new wealth and fame to the tea villages of the people. Roads, schools, and the market have come with the tea trade to the once remote slopes.

The same forces bring change and strain, for the tea boom and the pull of the towns draw the people, and standard Chinese and the Dai tongue press upon the Blang language, which, as the speech of a small people among larger neighbours, is among the more fragile parts of their heritage. The keeping of the language and the old customs is a matter of care.

Yet the Blang carry their heritage with pride. The ancient tea and the sour tea peculiar to them, the joining of the Buddha and the spirits, the dark dress and silver, and the songs and festivals of the tea mountains endure as marks of who they are. A small Austroasiatic people of the southern tea hills, keepers of some of the world’s oldest tea, the Blang keep their tea and their customs alive in modern China.