Who is Wa de Manhui?

The highway that goes from Menghun to the Big Bridge, in the western region of the prefecture of Xishuangbanna presents the typical scenery of the communities Dai of the area. Aside they are a villages succession you give and to other the fields where these cultivate his rice.

There is 20 ó 30 villages along this highway, separated scarcely by a few gardens or a small hillock. In each of them many people do not live, scarcely 150 ó 200 persons.

Between these seemingly equal villages, there is one that is different. His inhabitants do not admit how You Give, do not celebrate the holidays of the Dais, do not speak the language dai and do not believe in the Buddhism Theravada of the Dais.

They are autonamed Wa, and the nearby populations who they know different, also they call them Wa.

His clothes nevertheless are similar to those of the Dais, as well as there are his houses and his economic life centred also on the cultivation of the rice and some vegetables.

In his external aspect, a detailed examination perhaps discovers that his skin is slightly darker than that of the Dai, an almost imperceptible difference.

They say to have no religion, although there has not been realized any study that could confirm his words.

They celebrate neither the holidays of the Dais nor those of the Was, but those of the Chinese Han. The New Year is for them the most important celebration.

When one asks them from which they come. They say: "We go down above the mountain approximately 20 years ago. There another three villages Wa stay still."

They are only 150 persons. Including the population of three villages in the mountain, perhaps come to the 500.

They do not know that in a few hundreds of kilometers of them another people named Wa lives. If one day they had relation with them, also they have forgotten it.

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