HISTORY OF THE BULANG

The Bulang one believes that he is progeny of the peoples called Pu, who were living in this area from at least the dynasty Qin, or approximately 2200 years ago. For it, it is considered that with the Wa and the Deang, with which ancestors share, there are the peoples that for much time go inhabiting this region.

Towards the dynasty Tang they are met like "Puzi" meng. According to the news of the travelers in that epoch they were still hunters and recollectors.

From the end of the dynasty Yuan, some of the Bulang, which live in the Xishuangbanna prefecture, stay under the domination of the Tusi (local Leaders of the proper minorities, which Dai was governing on behalf of the emperor). It is for it that they begin getting a big religious, cultural and political influence of the Dai. Influence that is evident even nowadays.

Those who live in Lincang and Simao support more clearly the distinctive features of the culture Bulang.

During the dynasty Ming they are leaving a life based on the hunting and compilation to transform in farmers. The differences between the Bulang that live in an area or in other one, they are more and more marked, since some evolve in parallel with the culture they have and others to the Dai.

In the literature of those years the Bulang are said:
"It has the dark body, they live on top of the mountains. Garment, wedding and funeral as Bai Luoluo." "They Mount on horseback without bridle, walk barefooted, they are good archers." "They Live on top of the mountains, which grounds cultivate, burn the mountain and cut the trees. They cultivate every field several years."

It is possible to be said that during the dynasty Qing, the last dynasty, all the practically placed Bulang are already, occupying a territory very similar to the current one. Still nominally submitted, they got up in numerous occasions against the Tusi and the emperors who were representing. The most important perhaps is the raising of the year 1861, when Bulang de Mojiang joined the Hani that had already rebelled against the imperial domain, supporting his rebellion for 7 or 8 years.

Before 1949 the society was quite unequal.
In the area of Lincang and Simao there was a well established feudalism. The ground had lost the communal property, except the cemeteries, and there had developed a private ownership that had put big grounds quantity in landowners' hands, which were renting them to the peasants at excessive prices. In the years of the Republic China there was instituted the Ba-Jia, a system destined to control better to the minorities of the area.

In Xishaungbanna they continued in the last stages of the primitive society, and in the first ones of a nascent feudalism. The economic development was much minor. Under the domination of the Dai, which there were naming hereditary chiefs, whom they were calling "Ba", which was governing several villages, and they were gathering the taxes for the Tusi.

The villages, which understood between 20 and 100 families, were supporting the communal property of the ground of cultivation, the forests and the grasslands. And although they all could use the grounds, nobody had the right to sell them. Nevertheless, in the epoch of the revolution they were passed it was doing a privatization of the ground, of what a newly arisen class of landowners were taking advantage.

In 1958 the popular communes were implanted in the area Bulang, cooperatives being established. Since then, under the influence of the Chinese Communist Party there take place big economic transformations and a big modernization of the life of the Bulang that it is still not possible to foresee that it will have consequences for his future.

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