Does a long-necked woman wash her neck? Why?

The long-necked ethnic group is composed of a Padan ethnic group of Karen ethnic group bordering Myanmar in northern Thailand, which can only be seen in Meihongshun town. In fact, the neck length of the "long-necked woman" is no different from that of ordinary people, except that the clavicle and scapula are sunken by copper rings.

custom

According to their custom, when a girl is five years old, she will put a copper ring around her neck and limbs with a copper ring of 1 kg. From the age of ten, she will add another one to her neck every year until she is twenty-five. People with long necks think that the longer a woman's neck is, the more beautiful it is. So from the age of five, these rings can only be added up, they can't be taken off, and they must be worn for a lifetime. When you sleep at night, only the vertical ring at the back is removed, and the other rings are not removed. Take a bath every few days, and several people help each other to clean the cloth between the ring and the neck.

In many books, it is wrong to lengthen the neck slowly because of the support of these rings. In fact, the length of the neck has not changed much. The role of these rings is to depress the shoulders by gravity and make the neck look long. So when they need to see a doctor and have to take it off temporarily, their necks will shrink back, instead of dying as some books say.

Once wearing copper rings, these women will be bound for life, because their neck muscles will become very fragile, and without copper rings, their necks will be in danger of breaking. They think that the ancestors of mankind, men are dragons, women are phoenixes, and dragons and phoenixes are the noblest and most supreme, saying that people born in the world should pursue being dragons and phoenixes.

In the past, most people with long necks grew their necks because of superstition and customs. Nowadays, apart from customs, it is mostly because of livelihood-to attract tourists. Long-necked people have three villages in Meihongshan, and the largest village has more than 200 people. Their cultures are exactly the same, just look at one.

It takes more than 100 b to drive from Chiang Mai to Mei Hongshan, which takes 7-9 hours. More than 800 b by plane, half an hour. It is absolutely possible to go back and forth to Mae Hiroko in one day, and it takes at least three days by car. Flying is equivalent to spending money to buy time, which is still cost-effective for people who travel abroad. For thousands of years, people who have daughters at home have to put copper rings around their necks since they started to develop their bones at the age of five. There are three and five at first, and then it will increase every once in a while until a dozen or twenty copper rings stretch and deform the neck and spine.

Since 10 years ago, hundreds of Badong tribe members have been living in refugee camps on the border between northern Thailand and Myanmar. Although they are illegal immigrants, because of their unique tourism value, they have a foothold in Thailand and their lives are much better than those of other tribal refugees. Long-necked girls deal in all kinds of souvenirs. They live entirely on tourism.

history

For centuries, the Kaye people have lived in eastern Myanmar. 1948 They were invaded and oppressed by Rakhine people and had to flee to a foreign land. Although they live in refugee camps in northern Thailand, they are still trying to maintain their language and traditions. It is a typical custom of Keyang people to let women wear copper collars around their necks.

Some people say that women in Keyang dress up like this to look like a long-necked dragon, and they are regarded as the father of all things in the world by Keyang people. Others say that this weird costume is to scare away hungry tigers wandering in the forest. It is also said that the Keyang people deliberately lengthened their wives' necks in order to prevent being kidnapped by hostile tribes.

There is also a saying that this kind of clothing is a legacy of male chauvinism, because a man can easily kill his wife immediately by taking off a copper ring. But most people think this statement is wrong. Nowadays, Keyang people live in matriarchal society, and no one has explored the origin of this custom, because people have mainly regarded it as a symbol of beauty and wealth. It is also for this reason that Kayan people continue to put bronze collars on little girls when they are five years old.

There is another story. According to legend, residents have angered the gods before and sent tigers to eat woman. So they decided that all girls should wear bronze neck rings for self-defense. Every woman with a long neck knows how to clean her neck with herbs. Only a few times in her life did she take off the copper ring around her neck, that is, she got married, gave birth to a child and died. Usually, they will not easily let outsiders see the appearance of taking off the copper ring, even if they are very close to their husbands.

This process is not complicated. After the girl received a few hours of massage, someone skilled in this technology wrapped a copper ring around her neck, and the cross-sectional diameter of the copper wire could reach 1.5 cm. After the ceremony, the girl's family will invite the whole village to celebrate. For the next few months, the girl will always wear those copper rings, waiting for her neck to change.

When the neck is used to these copper rings, it is necessary to replace them with tighter copper rings and add more. Keyang women can wear up to 25 bronze collars, weighing between 5 kg and 10 kg. These copper collars can stretch the neck under the support of the clavicle until the girl enters puberty and her body is completely shaped.

Women in Keyang think this custom is completely acceptable. "It was painful and heavy at first, but in the end I always got used to it." Mobo, a Kayan, said: "The most bitter thing is that the copper ring is very hot when it is hot." At this time, only a dip in the river can cool the copper ring. If you don't do this, even if it gets cold, the copper ring heated by the sun will still transmit waves of heat to the whole body.

Tourists visit

Keyang women, a peculiar ornament, attracted curious European tourists. Every year 1 1 to February of the following year, about 200 tourists visit the refugee camps set up by the Thai authorities for Kayan people every day. In Yefengsong province, which is only a few kilometers away from the Thai-Myanmar border, tourists have to pay 35 francs each to enter the refugee camp.

At present, charging tourists for visiting is the only source of income for these Keryang people, but they can only get half of the total income, and the rest falls into the pockets of Thais. This is a profitable industry for Thailand. 1997, they even forcibly brought some Kayan women to the Payao refugee camp in northern Thailand for an exhibition.

According to the South China Morning Post, "their families said that they were betrayed like slaves, earning only 28 francs a month, and they had to dress up to satisfy the tourists …" There, tourists could satisfy their curiosity with a few pence, but no one really cared about the fate of these long-necked women in Myanmar.

So don't wash.