The imagination of the Kino people in Xishuangban Yunnan Tour No. 2

Number of days: 5 days
Time: September
Average cost: 3000 yuan
With whom: With friends
Updated: 2020.09.23

The imagination of the Kino people in Xishuangbanna Yunnan Tour No. 2

Before going to Xishuangbanna, I thought that this Xishuangbanna should be mainly a natural landscape. I don't know if I don't go, but once I go, I know that although Xishuangbanna has natural customs, the animals in the national forest park and the plants in the botanical garden left a deep impression on me, as if I could still taste some philosophical cognition in it, which will be described in the next article.

To be honest, this short trip to Xishuangbanna was more about national customs. The Dai ethnic group in Xishuangbanna has something to say, it is an ethnic minority in the country, but it is a big family in Xishuangbanna, and the Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture is named after the Dai ethnic group, which shows its mainstream status of the ethnic group.

Dai Customs Garden

in Xishuangbanna

When you go to Xinjiang and Tibet, most of them look at its natural landscape, and the problem of ethnic groups seems to be often ignored. The reason is simple, Xinjiang is dominated by Uyghurs, and Tibet is dominated by Tibetans. This trip to Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, because Yunnan is a multi-ethnic province, it has too many ethnic groups, and you are not familiar with any ethnic minority, but it can arouse your attention to national customs.

I really didn't expect that there were 51 ethnic minorities in Yunnan, and 52 ethnic groups including the Han Chinese. There are 56 official ethnic groups in China, and Yunnan is simply a microcosm of the distribution of Chinese ethnic groups. Xishuangbanna, located on the southwestern border, has a population of more than 1 million and has 13 ethnic groups.

On the second day of arriving in Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna, the tour guide informed that today you will be arranged to visit a Kino village in a place that you will feel strange. I was really surprised, this short trip to the Keno cottage made me know for the first time that there is a Keno ethnic minority in China. It has a population of just over 20,000 and was not recognized as a nation until 1979. In other words, since 1979, the Chinese national family has been composed of 56 ethnic groups.

Kino picture

>This Keno tribe that jumped into my mind for the first time really made me endlessly curious, which can be described as imaginative. A population of more than 20,000 is a nation, so is there a population bottom line based on the basic criterion for determining a nation? Which is the least populous ethnic group? Moreover, this Kino ethnic group was not recognized by the state until 1979, and the ethnic group has national recognition, is there still some ethnic group that has not been recognized? Going back to the bottom of the matter, which nation does the title of our Chinese nation refer to? When did we start using the title of Chinese nation?

After experiencing the experience of picking, tasting, and buying tea in Keno Village, and strolling through the tea tasting hall with photos and tea products on the surrounding walls, my thoughts have always been entangled in this national concept.

Keno Village

Kongming

worshiped by the Keno people

Keno legend

Keno tea

leaves

Traveling thousands of miles and reading thousands of books, all the confusion about concepts naturally needs to be answered through relevant literature. There are too many imaginations to describe in detail. But there are two answers that are particularly worth mentioning, one is where did the concept of the Chinese nation come from? Is there still some ethnic group that has not been recognized?

The concept of race has a long history, but the concept of nation is very modern. It turned out that this concept of the Chinese nation came from the modern scholar Liang Qichao, who proposed the concept of the great nation that laid the foundation for today's concept of the Chinese nation.

Liang Qichao picture

Liang Qichao's study

Liang Qichao's concept of China

Are there any ethnic groups that need to be identified? When I checked the literature, the answer was yes, and there were many ethnic groups that needed to be recognized by the state, far beyond my imagination of this question. These ethnic groups include Cai people, Orange people, Cai people, Laopin people, Bajia people, Sherpa people, Turkman people, Mosuo people, Kemu people, Qing people, etc. Maybe after the national census, the big family of the Chinese nation will change from 56 ethnic groups to 57 ethnic groups.