CHINA: The Yi & the Miao

Nominations for the presidium of China’s National Assembly were closed, or so everyone supposed, when up rose Ma Ching-oung, a rebel from the west. Ma could spin a prayer wheel, but he had never heard of Robert’s Rules of Order. Wrapped in his purple lama’s robe, his sharp eyes aglitter and his skinny arms aflutter, the delegate from Sikang Province cried hotly into the mike:

“There are candidates for parties, professions, provinces . . . why is there no candidate for the native tribes? … I demand equality or I’ll quit. . . .”

To the prompt support of grey-goateed Ma came passionate, pockmarked Yang Ti-chung, a Western-clad tribesman of the 71st generation from Kweichow. Yang said he represented 50 million Yi and Miao people, almost half the population of Sikang, Kwangsi, Szechwan, Yunnan and Hunan.* Yang invoked the shade of Sun Yatsen, also threatened withdrawal.

While the Assembly shook with cries of “Bravo!” and “Disrupter!”, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek scribbled an unofficial note to Provisional Chairman Sun Fo. Secretary-General Hung Lan-yu glanced at it, got silence, announced: “The delegate from Kweichow, Chang Tao-fan, voluntarily withdraws as candidate . . . and offers his place to his provincial colleague Yang Ti-chung.”

A Hsin Mm Pao reporter unkindly noted that Chang Tao-fan looked up attentively as he heard the news of his voluntary gesture for democracy. The Assembly applauded the solution. The Gissimo beamed. On the parliamentary bookshelf, Robert moved over for Chiang.

* The Yi and the Miao are among China’s aboriginal tribes, have resisted admixture for thousands of years although they were nominally “conquered” by the Han Emperor, Wu Ti (B.C. 140-87). The Manchu Emperor Ch’ien Lung waged savage war against the Miao in the 18th Century, but there has been no violent friction since, except for a brief outbreak in 1832. The tribesmen live mainly in the hills of far southwestern China. Both Yi and Miao have maintained their own tribal governments, customs and dress. They pan gold and hunt animals, trading metal and furs with the plains people for manufactured goods. They farm and raise sheep, spinning the wool into long capes. Yi and Miao women are heavily bejeweled with amber and jade, worked in silver. Most of them smoke long, thin pipes. Yi and Miao characters are written in a horizontal line instead of vertically like the Chinese.