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The Jino ethnic minority
 Numbering 18,000 in all, the Jinos live in the
Jinoluoke Township of Jinghong County in the Xishuangbanna Dai
Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province.
The language of this ethnic minority belongs to the Tibetan-Myanmese
group of the Chinese-Tibetan language family. Its structure and
vocabulary have much in common with Yi and Myanmese. Without a written
language of their own, the Jino people used to keep records by
notching on wood or bamboo.
Jinoluoke is a mountainous area stretching for 70 kilometers from east
to west and 50 kilometers from north to south. The climate there is
rainy and subtropical with an average annual temperature of 18 to 20
degrees. The rainy season lasts from May to September with July and
August having the heaviest rainfall. The rest of the year is dry.
Jino land is crisscrossed by numerous rivers and streams, the longest
being the Pani and the Small Black rivers. The major crops are upland
and wet rice and corn. The famous Pu'er tea grows on Mount Jino.
Jinoluoke also has a long history of cotton-growing and is abundant in
such tropical fruits as bananas and papayas. Elephants and wild oxen
roam the dense primeval forests which are also the habitat of monkeys,
hornbills and other birds. Jinoluoke is also rich in mineral
resources.
History
 It is said that the
Jinos migrated to Jinoluoke from Pu'er and Mojiang or places even
farther north. It seems likely that they still lived in a matriarchal
society when they first settled around the Jino Mountain. Legend has
it that the first settler on the mountain ridge was a widow by the
name of Jiezhuo. She gave birth to seven boys and seven girls who
later married each other. As the population grew, the big family was
divided into two groups to live in as many villages, or rather two
clans that could intermarry. One was called Citong, the patriarchal
village, and the other was Manfeng, the matriarchal village. With the
passage of time, the Jino population multiplied and more Jino villages
came into existence.
Until some 40 years ago, Jino people from far and near still went to
offer sacrifices to their ancestors in the matriarchal and patriarchal
villages every year.
The Jino matriarchal society gave way to a patriarchal one some 300
years ago. But the Jinos were still in the transitional stage from a
primitive to a class society at the time the People's Republic was
founded in 1949.
Most Jinos are farmers. In 1949 they still cultivated land by a slash
and burn method, not knowing how to irrigate their crops. Land was
communally owned by clans or villages and farmed collectively except
in some villages where land was privately owned.
The Jonos are great hunters. When men go out hunting, they shoulder
crossbows with poisoned arrows or shot-guns. They are also experts in
the use of traps and nooses to catch wild animals. They hunt in groups
and divide the game equally among the participants. But the pelts of
animals go to the men who shot them. While the men hunt, the women
gather wild fruit in the forests. Edible herbs are also collected for
soup.
The early ancestors of the Jinos, united by ties of consanguinity into
a big family, dwelled in the Jizhuo Mountains in very ancient times.
But the social structure of the Jinos had changed by 1949. The basic
unit of society was no longer the clan by blood-ties following the
emergence of the communal village in which people of different clans
lived together. The
 boundaries of the villages were marked with wooden
or stone tablets on which swords and spears were carved. The land
within the boundary was communal property, and each village was
inhabited by at least two clans whose members could intermarry. Two
elders were elected to take care of village administration as well as
sacrificial rites and production. Each village was a small,
self-contained world.
Primitive egalitarianism still manifests itself to these days in Jino
customs. The meat of wild beasts brought back by hunters is divided
equally among all adults and children in a village. Even a small deer
is cut into very tiny pieces and shared out among all the villagers,
including the new-born. Because of low crop-yields resulting from
primitive farming methods,there was always a shortage of grain for
three or four months every year. But despite that, the Jinos stored
what little grain they had in unguarded straw sheds outside their
houses, and never worried that it would be stolen.
Zhuoba (the village father) and Zhuose (the village mother) were the
leaders in a communal village. Being the oldest people in the village,
they were respected by all. They became village leaders by virtue of
their seniority, not because they were brave in war or eloquent in
speech. No matter how mediocre they might be, even if they were blind
or deaf, they had to serve as village elders so long as they were the
oldest people in the community. After their death, the next eldest in
the same clan would be chosen as successors.
 Their functions were tinged with time-honored traditions or religion.
For instance, the yearly sowing could only begin after the elders had
animals slaughtered and offered to the spirits at a ceremony during
which the elders put a few seeds in the soil, before the other
villagers could start sowing on a big scale. The elders also fixed the
dates for holidays. The beating of a big drum and gong in elders'
homes ushered in the new year, and all the villagers, young and old,
would rush to the elders' homes to sing and dance. |
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