Akha Zhang - The Way of Akha

This is Akha Country, The Top Half of the World

There is a legend about the origin of the Akha: Once upon a time in Southern China, a terrible dragon was laying waste and ruin to the countryside, creating famines and disease and general chaos. The emperor of China offered his daughter and half his kingdom to anyone who could slay this dragon. For years the dragon continued to terrorize the land until one day an extremely clever dog tricked the dragon and destroyed it.

The emperor, not wanting to break his word, had no compunctions against giving his princess to the dog, but had second thoughts about relinquishing half of his kingdom. He consulted his ministers who advised him to look at his country from a different angle. Look at it from the side they said, give the dog the top half of your kingdom. And so it was done: the dog was given the high country. The offspring of the dog and the princess became the progenitors of the Akha people.

They have no written language. Legend tells that long, long ago there was a written language but in an extended period of famine, mice ate all the books and the written word was lost. Like unlettered people all over the world, the Akha have incredible power of memory retention. Each village has two headmen, one to deal with village affairs and one to deal with the outside world. A third essential man in the Akha social hierarchy is the Zhu Zhang, or historian and retainer of the Akha Zhang.

The Akha Zhang is a more than ten thousand line oral tradition. Literally it means ‘way of Akha'. The Zhu Zhang is an hereditary position. The Akha Zhang is handed down from father to son, or in the case of no son, to a nephew. Contained within the Akha Zhang is the accumulated knowledge of centuries. It rules every aspect of their life. It is the essential link of continuity in the Akha culture which must be maintained. The social structure is regulated by it; the ways of agriculture, the rituals and ceremonies, the proper way to worship the myriad spirits of land, sky and water, marriage customs and taboos, and clan histories and genealogy up to the present are maintained. In the same way they remember their migration routes through China, Burma, Laos and Thailand.

Akha Women Have the Most Ornate Dress of all the Hilltribes in SE Asia

Men and women live in separate sides of their houses, though women are allowed in the men's or common half of the house. Traditionally, after dinner, the children leave the house to play, court and play music on the flattest part of the village, set aside for such activities. This gives the parents some privacy and the chance to propagate more children in privacy, though a large percentage of children are conceived in the forest.

They practice slash and burn cultivation, sometimes walking miles from village to field. Around the villages a forest belt is maintained, from which they gather food, medicinal plants and firewood. Traditionally, men do the heavy work of land clearing and building houses but the women do the bulk of the farming. They rely on highland glutinous rice which grows on steep slopes and doesn't require much water.

To the Akha, rice has a soul - it not simply a cash crop. They are most careful not to do anything which might affect the soul of the rice in a harmful way. These rules are outlined in the Akha Zhang, along with the necessary purification rituals if any of those rules are broken. The location of fields, the proper way to clear and burn land and most importantly, the proper way to plant and harvest rice are all in the Akha Zhang.

In Field or Forest, the Akha are Equally at Home

An Akha week has 12 days. Each day must be taken into account for any activity and bad omens are heeded most seriously. To burn land on Tiger Day is inauspicious, as it will burn in uneven strips. Monkey Day is good, as is Pig Day. Other factors make days either auspicious or inauspicious: many activities can not be undertaken on the day someone is born or has died. When twins are born, it is considered a very bad omen and traditionally they are smothered immediately after birth. While this seems to most people heartless, like most taboos, it serves a good practical purpose – a woman can still do farm work while suckling one baby, but with two it would be impossible, and a small harvest would endanger the whole family and place more pressure on the entire village.

An Akha Woman and Children Returning From Work in the Fields

Except for some Christian converts, the Akha remain largely animist in their spirtual beliefs. They have a profound respect for nature and do not see themselves apart from it. More developed cultures look down upon the Akha as being unsophisticated and ignorant. But look at the wholesale greed and ignorance around you, the wanton destruction of nature, wars and wholesale human-bred grief, poverty and its ugly spawn. Going up or going down, there is a purpose and harmony in their lives which few ‘civilized' people will never, ever attain. The way of the Akha is a thread of continuity, of respect and morality, which should be a lesson to those who consider themselves educated and morally superior, in a world they have little innate understanding of and respect for.