CHINA -
The Ladies of the Lake
43 mins - August 1997
00.02.12 Here on the shores of Lake Lugu, which means ‘dive into the waters’ in Chinese, lives one of the few remaining matriarchal societies on earth. Almost a thousand years ago the Mosuo people settled here at the foot of the Himalayas. No one knows where they came from or why they came. Day dawns over the lake with prayers offered by women.....they dominate Mosuo culture as they have done for centuries.
00.02.44 Woman in green
In most cultures men and women make families together and the men go out and make a living. We are different. We are a matriarchal society, we, the women are in charge.
00. 02.55 Chicken running in the backyard
A matriarch lives in each Mosuo house. She’s an elderly woman who decides the destiny of all the family members.
00.03.00. Yashima is one such matriarch. At 65 years old, she has five children, two grandchildren....and smokes eighty cigarettes a day
00.03.18 (Woman lights a cigarette)
Yashima: I think men are not as good at being in charge as women are. They can’t do it. While women are in charge of everything, men only think about having fun.
00.03.36 At home, Yashima has absolute power. She manages the money of every member of her family, even the adults. She manages what jobs each one of them does, even their love lives. Less than a year ago, the matriarch forbade one of the children to have a particular girlfriend. .
00.03.53 Young man smoking
Yashima: They need my permission... what they can do Mama allows them to, what they can’t Mama forbids. Yes, once I forbade my son to have a girlfriend... if I there is something about the girls that I don’t think is good enough, I won’t allow the boys to see them.
00.04.13 Young man smoking sitting in a boat
The boy wasn’t very happy about the decision but he obeyed. The Mosuo marriage is a very special institution...it is not even called a marriage. It’s more like courtship because the couple never live under the same roof. The women stay at their mother’s house.....the men do the same. According to tradition they only meet at her house, at the end of the day.
00.04.36 Evening, images of a house.
00.04.42. Yadashe gets dressed. Music
00.05.02 Yadashe leaving the house, talking to a woman
For years Yadashe has been repeating this ritual, once or twice a week. He puts on his best suit and crosses the lake to go to the nearest village where his wife lives. It’s called a ‘visiting marriage’.
00.05.21 Man rowing
Yadashe: Once we lived in the mountains...later we moved to the shores of the lake and now we are fishermen. Amongst the Mosuo people it’s the women who are the bosses... we, the men, go out fishing or courting.
00.05.39 images of the mountain. Man still rowing
It looks like an easy life for a man, but it can be hard work. To reach his wife’s home, Yadashe has to row for over an hour.
00.05.51 Singing while rowing
Yadashe’s song: Steering the boat is up to the pilot.Growing the plants is up to the sun, the rains and good techniques.But what guides us in revolution is thoughts of Mao.
00.06.02 And it is with that thought that the lake crossing comes to an end.
00.06.07 Men getting out of the boat
00.06.08 In a Mosuo home, the rules of etiquette are strict....First, Yadashe has to greet his mother-in-law...matriarch of the family. His gifts of tobacco, tea and a bottle of spirits are well received... he is invited to sit in the guest’s corner and to taste some “hor d’oeuvres” before dinner.
00.06.27 eating
Yadashe hardly looks at his wife. The Mosuo people, like most Chinese, are shy about showing their feelings
00.06.40 Dizhi Latsuo getting water from the lake.Music
00.06.52 Dizhi Latsuo, the youngest daughter of Yashima, is so shy she can hardly mention her husband...despite the fact that the relationship has received the blessing of her family and of the fact that they have a son.
00.07.04 Baby
For the Mosuo people there are three sacred taboos: It’s forbidden to eat dog, it’s forbidden to eat cat and it is forbidden to talk about sex.
00.07.13 Woman laughing
Man leaving house
Dizhi’s husband lives in a village a few kilometres away. He’s the manager of a wood company. His job makes him a very eligible man....After all, not a lot of Mosuo men have a permanent job and especially a management position! Tsar Pito is well paid by Mosuo standards.
00.07.39 Man “sawing wood”
But like any good Mosuo man he hands over all his earnings to his mother. Whenever possible he goes to visit his wife but it is not always easy to find the time... at this carpentry workshop they work long and sometimes erratic hours.
00.07.56 Man hammering
Tsar Pito: There are no days off... we start work at eight in the morning, we have a break at twelve and start again at two o’clock... sometimes, if the material doesn’t arrive we have to stay behind to wait for it ... But sometimes we don’t have so much work to do.
00.08.21 Men hammering
Tsa Pito doesn’t see his wife more than once a week. He confesses that he has even considered breaking with tradition and living with her.
00.08.30 Tsar Pito: This is something to think about in the future when our son is older... if she came over here we would spend more time together and that would be good.
00.08.39 Woman in red by the wall. Man on the wall.. But Dizhi disagrees - she appreciates the Mosuo customs.
00.08.44 Dizhi Latsuo: we don’t argue if we are not together.
PAUSE
00.08.56 Woman holding baby. Man coming in
Tsar Pito hardly sees his son. The baby is just four months old but when he grows up, he will never call Tsar daddy. Because in the Mosuo language there is no such word. Mothers make decisions about their children’s future on their own. As far as education is concerned, they rely more on the support of their brothers than on their husbands.
00.09.18 Woman laughing holding the baby.
Tsar Pito: she only knows how to laugh... she is shy. She has never spoken to foreigners.
00.09.27 But there are other reasons for all the shyness. Dizhi Latsuo is not used to being in public with her husband. In three years of marriage, they haven’t even been for a walk around the village.
00.09.38 Tsar Pito: we rarely go out together in public.
00.09.42 Woman holding the baby
But it was in public that they met a few years ago. The Mosuo people like parties. Fire and dancing stirs lonely hearts, and relationships blossom.
00.09.49 Music, girls dancing by the fire PAUSE
00.10.26 Everyone knows the songs and the steps by heart....but at Mosuo parties people perform another traditional ritual. It’s known as ‘challenge singing’ and the women usually start, in their distinctive tones….
00.10.45 Men and women “challenge singing”.
00.11.16 People on the floor
Mosuo tradition goes that when a young woman is interested in a young man, she gives him a sign.... and then he must take the initiative...To begin with, the romance is kept secret... even the first meetings in the girl’s bedroom. Once upon a time young men would throw stones on the roof, so that their girlfriends could discreetly open the door. Even today each couple finds a way to conceal the affair. It only becomes an official relationship when the matriarchs of both families give their seal of approval.
00.11.50 Images of the village. Daylight.
00.11.56 But even here marriages don’t last forever. In Mosuo villages, divorce is common. And in most cases, the women are the ones to take the initiative.
00.12.06 Woman in pink: yes, it does happen my friend. For example, if the man is going out with many women the woman will throw him out and divorce him.
00.12.21 Woman in blue: When there is a divorce, the party that starts the proceedings has to compensate the other party.
00.12.26 Woman in pink: If they misbehave, we divorce them.
00.12.33 Images of woman in red and white. Green landscape.
Surprisingly, everyone here insists that there are hardly any arguments or lovers’ tiffs. Maybe it’s because the Mosuo are more practical than romantic.
00.12.44 Man with green hat
Man with green hat: I prefer women who are hard working, I don’t care if they are pretty or not.... basically, I like a talented woman, someone that knows how to take care of the chickens and of the pigs.
00.13.02 Images of a girl feeding the animals PAUSE
00.13.25 Older woman wearing blue scarf
More than eight out of ten Mosuos still live under the matrilineal family structure which dates back two thousand years. Men are the staunchest defenders of Mosuo marriages... which do have certain advantages.
00.13.40 Man wearing blue shirt: Our “visiting marriages” give us a lot of freedom. A couple only stays together if both sides see eye to eye.
00.13.55 Man wearing green hat
man wearing green hat: The big advantages are strong ties between sisters, and large families living communally. This way families find life easier financially.
00.14.10 Lake, mountains The ladies of the lake take precedence over the men in many ways. Children inherit their mother’s name and property. The family leadership is handed down from mother to daughter. But this supremacy comes at a price. Even in a society where women appear to get a fair deal, life isn’t as rosy as it seems.
00.14.30 Women working the land
Women have to raise their children almost entirely on their own and they’re the ones who have to go out and work... at home or on a farm. Never mind whether it’s heavy work.
00.14.41 Groups of men sitting down
woman wearing green: When they have time, the men help us but when they haven’t... they don’t.
00.14.52 woman wearing purple hat: In “visiting marriages” women suffer a lot.. the women do all the work and they resent that.
00.15.03 Man sitting down.
Mosuo men have a good life. The majority spend most of the day...resting
00.15.11 Man with a moustache
Man with a moustache: We do what we have to do...what women have to do, they do...this is our culture.
00.15.18 Man wearing green hat
Man wearing green hat: of course women work harder than men... we have no worries, a lot more freedom and we can go out and have fun.
00.15.23 Man smoking
Man smoking: I don’t work, I rest every day. I don’t need to help... I have lots of sisters, I don’t need to work..
00.15.31. Music. Woman carrying children. PAUSE
00.15.44 Men sitting down./ woman working Background music
In families where there are a lot of women, men don’t work... only in the families where there are no women do the men have to work. In most cases, Mosuo men just save themselves for their night-time visits to their wives!
00.16.19 Fire
In Mosuo villages, only the older women get to put their feet up... but some are treated as real queens.
00.16.23 woman laughing
Adjama, for example, has every reason to be happy. She has raised one of the closest families in the village. 9 children and as many grandchildren...which means there are many hands to make light work
00.16.34 Poster on the wall
Adjama doesn’t even know how old she is because she’s forgotten when she was born. But now she’s enjoying a life of leisure. She spends her days by the fire in the sitting room. With just a nod from her the whole family, men and women, will attend to her every whim.
00.16.53 Person sitting cross legged
She has already passed down the burden of raising the family to one of her daughters. Not the eldest but the one she thought most able.
00.17.01 Woman wearing sark scarf Adjama: In a Mosuo household the most intelligent is in charge. Mama doesn’t choose the eldest, but the one who’s got what it takes.
00.17.11 Woman in green entering the room
It fell to the second daughter to take over as leader of the family. Ludji is 32 and already carries out most of the duties reserved for the head of the family.
00.17.24 Woman filling bowls of water
Morning prayers are one such task.
00.17.32 All Mosuo homes have an oratory, where prayers are offered to one of the Tibetan Buddhist gods.
00.17.42 Man praying the drums
As each day dawns the lake fills with the sound of the drums and the scent of incense and pine trees.
00.17.51 Images of the lake. Voices of woman praying. PAUSE
00.18.15 Although they obey the teachings of the Buddhist Lamas, the Mosuo people worship a female God. Gemu, goddess of the lake. Each morning the head of the family burns pine needles by an image of the goddess.
00.18.31 Yashima
The Goddess Gemu was a very beautiful girl, who wore white and rode a white horse. She was very talented and had a good heart.
00.18.46 Images of the lake and the mountains
Each day the Mosuo people offer thanks to Gemu for the survival of their community. But most see that survival threatened.
00.18.54 Man fishing
Mosuo culture can no longer remain untouched by the outside world. Even the mountains can no longer protect it.
00.19.01 Busy street
The people of the lake may cling to their old ways, but just beyond the mountains development awaits.
00.19.12 Images of the mountain
The Mosuo people, like most of the ethnic minorities in China , live in close to abject poverty. Survival is precarious. The people can live off the land and the villages have electricity. But there’s little else. No running water and no sewers.
00.19.30 Images of children playing
Many of the Mosuo people have never had a bath in their lives, not even a dip in the lake. The young ones dream of a different life. Gezou is just eighteen, but a staunch admirer of Mao Zedong
00.19.44 Young man smiling
Gezou: I admire our leader. If he had never existed, we wouldn’t exist.
00.19.57 Young man tiding up
Gezou doesn’t want much from life: he’d like to have enough money to buy some new clothes and fix up the house where he lives with his mother. A house that he feels ashamed of. But he also dreams of something bigger.
00.20.11 Gezou: I would like to go away, to see other places, to have adventures. Here, I feel like a frog in the bottom of a well looking up at the sky.
00.20.21 Images of the sky and the trees The closest thing to heaven that Gezou has ever seen is the cinema,
00.20.25 Young men entering a house
or rather, this room with a TV and video. They’re the only ones in the village. Each night the programme of King Fu plays to a rapt audience.
00.20.36 people watching a movie. PAUSE
00.20.57 A front row seat in this fantastic plastic world made in Honk Kong costs 90 pence. It’s expensive but it’s worth it. Television does not reach the lake. Gezou would give anything to see a good action movie. But he’s under no illusions: without even a basic education, he couldn’t survive outside the village.
00.21.19 Images of sky PAUSE
00.21.29 Children singing
00.21.34 It has a musical air, but this is a Mandarin class. Every day Mosuo children and all the other ethnic minorities must learn the language of the Chinese majority at school. Although at home, they all speak their own dialect.
00.21.47 teacher: It is difficult to teach children here, especially in Chinese classes. We have a bilingual system in which we teach half of the lessons in Mosuo. It means more time and more effort.
00.22.14 Children in classroom. Boy reading a book
The bi-lingual system is not the only hurdle young Mosuo children face.
00.22.49 Teacher: Compared with school children of other regions, these children have more difficulties with certain words and concepts that are easily understood by students elsewhere. Mosuo children have never seen those things, have very little experience that is why they have more learning difficulties than those from other regions.
00.22.52 Child with picture book Primary school books are full of places and situations that the lake children haven’t even dreamt of. Families look nothing like theirs. There are cities and cars: concepts these children almost can’t understand.
00.23.07 Teacher by the blackboard
In China 9 years of schooling is compulsory, but in Mosuo villages, few go for that long. Things have improved a lot. School is a long way away, a few kilometres from the lake, but it’s a new school.
00.23.19 Wang Xinwen, teacher: Our region falls short as far as education is concerned. This school was built last year and we only moved in at the beginning of this year. Before we had to teach in people’s houses. The school’s been going for 30 years but has never had a permanent site. Conditions were bad but now, with sponsorship from Coca-cola, things have got a lot better.
00.23.50 Group of children
These are the fruits of China’s economic reform. Over recent years , private companies have increasingly started to fund the building of schools.
00.23.58 Big sign
This sign says the school was a gift from coca-cola, the trailblazers of imperialism. Although most of the children have never even tasted the most famous soft drink on the planet.
00.24.15 Chinese flag. Children singing. PAUSE
00.24.33 Group of children
At the beginning of June, world Children’s Day is celebrated in all of China’s schools, including in this region. It makes the school part of the community. The festivities are the same everywhere. First a welcome is offered to the ‘New Pioneers’.
00.24.50 pioneers
This is the young communist organisation to which almost every child of school age belongs. Then comes a talent competition: the children partake in the favourite Mosuo past-time of singing, and it’s down to the teachers to give scores.
00.25.06 man talking with a microphone PAUSE
00.25.41 Wang Xinwen, Teacher: On the heels of the reforms the government started paying attention to the education of the country’s minorities. It spent a lot of money and gave local government more funding for education in comparison with funding for other sectors. The government has never scrimped on education. All over China, even the border regions, even the poorest regions like ours have a good school infrastructure.
00.26.16 Child with animals
But in spite of this lavish praise of the government’s education system, South East China is still scholastically backward. Most of the children have to walk many miles to school, and even if they finish primary school, it’s very unlikely they will carry on studying. Secondary schools are in the big cities, hours or even days away. Children like Hu will never become what they want to be.
00.26.48 Boy
Hu Wenxin: I want to be a scientist to build the country
00.26.52 At thirteen, Hu Wenxin is still in primary school but to carry on studying he would have to go to a town 80 km away from the lake. His mother could never afford to finance his studies.
00.27.11 Images of the lake and the mountain
The Mosuo families live off what the lake and the land produce. The village is surrounded by little vegetable-gardens and every home has a few cattle. They have to buy everything else they need. Soap, pesticides and rice. In this region, like everywhere else in China, they eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
00.27.35 Family eating rice
Every week Ludji, Adjama’s second daughter travels with the matriarch to the nearest market. The bus leaves at 12 o’clock, give or take an hour.
00.27.49 Bus travel and landscape PAUSE
00.28.02 Bus driver
It’s fifteen Kilometres to Yulin a small town where the Mosuo mix with other ethnic groups. The town grew up around an old Buddhist temple. Once upon a time it was home to dozens of monks educated in Tibet. Today there are just three.
00.28.16 Woman praying in front of the temple, music
00.28.33 The building has seen better days but has also seen worse ones. It was almost destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Today, it relies on public donations.
00.28.43 Voice saying it’s forbidden to film in or around the temple??
The temple is surrounded by the market and shops. It’s here that the inhabitants of the lake and the mountains come to stock up with provisions.
00.29.02 Images of the market
Mosuo women are experts in the art of haggling. Arguing over prices is a game to them... and it’s a lot more lucrative than the ones which excite the men back at home.
00.29.14 Men playing pool, men playing chess.
00.29.22 Ludji returns with a kilo of meat, rice, onions and lotion for head-lice. She says life has its ups and downs, but that she and her family can still get by.
00.29.35 Ludji: The cost of living is not too expensive, so we manage to survive. In the summer we make our living by taking visitors on canoe trips out on the lake. During winter-time we earn money by going out and collecting mountain mushrooms which we sell.
00.30.09 Man fishing
Like every other man in the village Dadupitzou has few responsibilities. In summer he leaves the mountains for the canoe. Every day he casts the net into the lake and every day he draws it out full of fish.
00.30.25 Apart from this task, he does little else. At 27, he hasn’t yet found a steady girlfriend.
00.30.38 Dadu: I would like to find a Mosuo girl with a good heart, one who’s pretty and talented... It is difficult for young men to find themselves wives. I don’t have a girlfriend, it’s difficult.
00.31.07 Men sitting down
And it’s getting harder. Over the past thirty years the ladies of the lake have given birth to many more boys than girls. A quirk of fate in what is probably the only region in China where baby girls are more valued than baby boys. To survive, Mosuo families have to raise future matriarchs. A household without a women is a household without a future.
00.31.30 Woman in green
Int: I just have two sons, no daughters, and for that reason I cannot allow them to have a Mosuo marriage. They need to bring their wives into the house.
00.31.47 Occasionally a Mosuo couple may live under the same roof: if a man has no sister to maintain the continuity of the family. Then it’s his duty to bring his wife to live with him so that she can become the next matriarch. Until a few years ago this problem was rare. Now it’s getting worse thanks to the Chinese government’s family planning policy. The one-child law applies to most urban areas. The government is a bit more generous with rural minorities: every woman may have two children.
00.32.15 Man eating
Nevertheless, birth control is slowly killing Mosuo culture which has always relied on large families. Now the women in the village are kept in check by the Women’s Health Service, with special task forces of women from local backgrounds. Any woman that becomes pregnant for a third time has to have an abortion. She may even have to pay a fine.
00.32.41 woman in green: In the past it was 300 or 400 yuans but now it is a thousand.
00.32.46 Woman working the land
That’s about £90. Women struggle to pay it on their own. Men won’t get involved in pregnancy.
00.32.57 woman in green: Men don’t do anything, women have to do everything. We have to travel to the Ninglang women’s hospital.
00.33.06 Woman in pink. Women have to deal with it on their own. They have to go alone to the clinic for women. It’s in Ninglang.
00.33.23 Images of a city.
The closest Maternity Hospital to the lake is almost 100 kilometres away. Here, women are examined during their pregnancy and are taught about contraception.
00.33.34 Health worker
It’s a thorny area for doctors, since most of the population consists of minorities whose cultures set great store by large families. But doctors understand local sensibilities.
00.33.49 Health worker running
Li Wangfang, Hospital director: Most of the medical staff in this hospital come from this region. We were selected by the party and by local people to go abroad and get a university or professional education. Then we come back and serve our country, particularly in the field of family planning.
00.34.11 Here they’ve not only succeeded in reducing the level of deaths amongst mothers and new-born babies, but they’ve achieved the government objectives: a radical reduction in the number of births.
00.34.22 Outside of the hospital
MD: Once women have two children they have a choice about what kind of contraception they want to use. Generally it’s an intra-uterine device. Recently we’ve started using new methods, such as hormonal methods.
00.34.45 City
Ninglang is almost four hours drive from the lake. It is practically the only city the Mosuo have ever seen. Here they discover luxuries not found in the villages.
00.35.00 Images of the city. Music PAUSE
00.36.02 On the city’s streets, men and women from different ethnic groups mingle. The Province of Yunnan, is the region in China with the most ethnic minorities. Apart from the Mosuo there are twelve other groups with different languages and different traditions in Ninglang itself. They’re united by their poverty.
00.36.25 This remains one of the most underdeveloped parts of China, despite Beijing’s new policy on minorities.
00.36.33 Su Xang: Municipal GovernmentOfficer: The new policy consists of helping to cut poverty in the regions where the minority groups live. It has promoted the development of the regional economy so that the people’s living standard has improved. This is what the new policy means. It’s also about the preservation of the cultures and traditions of the minorities.
00.37.01 Statue of Mao
The buzz word seems to be ‘preservation’. But, between 1966 and the early 70's, the Chinese minorities fared ill under the cultural revolution. To solve internal wars within the party, Mao Tse Dong brought chaos on the country. The communist structure was being contaminated by a bourgeois ideology and had to be salvaged at all costs.
00.37.25 group of people dancing Mao ordered the people to rebel against all forms of authority as well as against the ghosts of the past: their culture and traditions.
00.37.39 Images related to the cultural revolution.
00.37.45 The most fanatical followers of Mao did not think twice. They closed schools and universities, persecuting artists and intellectuals, destroying temples and monuments. The Red Guards even over-ran the remote Lake Lugu.
00.37.58 Young man
Tang Weijian, Governer of Ninjang: Around 1973-1974 they forced us to practise monogamy, they forced man and wife to live together. Large families were destroyed on the pretext that they were a sign of the feudal system. Families were forced to split up into smaller units and their lands were occupied. When the families were divided there were no longer enough houses for everyone. Once large families were separated they faced terrible poverty. Small families have a much harder time trying to survive.
00.38.49 It was with a great sense of relief that years after the cultural revolution the Mosuo could once again return to their traditional lifestyle. Men returned to their mother’s homes and women regained the leadership of their families.
00.39.03 But one revolution is followed by another: the Mosuo are now struggling to survive both the strict family planning policy and the new influx of tourists.
00.39.15 Images of lake
Tang Weijian: Up to the year 2000 we hope to see in Lake Lugu about 230,000 tourists. 120,000 visitors will come from all over China. But we also hope to attract Australians, Italians and tourists from other European countries.
00.39.41 Images of the lake and the mountains
Yunnan’s government wants to transform Lake Lugu into a tourist site, with the Mosuo people as it’s main attraction: one of the last matriarchal communities in the world.
00.39.53 Images of women
Int: Along with the tourism we promise to do everything in our power to try and preserve the traditions and customs of the Mosuo people. Their traditions, most notably their architecture and dress, must be preserved. The government has set aside some funds for the Mosuo.
00.40.18 car passing fast. Tourists.
But the invasion has already begun. In Lingen, the lake village closer to the main road, there are already signs of tourism. There are guest houses which are true skyscrapers compared to the other houses. They have no bathrooms as local tradition demands but visitors are already beginning to come. They come from the nearest towns and sometimes even from Beijing. The Xau family was the first to open a guest house.
00.40.50 People eating
Int: I hope there will be more visitors coming, that way all the villagers would make more money. I would like my village to have better conditions. At the same time it is important to maintain Mosuo tradition, our matriarchal culture. If the traditions disappear, then tourism will disappear anyway.
00.41.21 Tourists by the lake
For now, the tourists will not go beyond Lingen Village. In the other Mosuo villages, life is as it always has been. Children are still frightened by the sight of a stranger. But some dream of tourism and the money it will bring. The Mosuo are aware that their culture is threatened.
00.41.43 Image of a horse
woman in blue: Maybe it will mean that our kind of visiting marriage will die out.
00.41.53 Man with green hat
men: I think we should keep our traditions but when the tourists arrive I am not sure we will be able to. The new generation is probably going to change.
00.42.05 Young man
young men: The “visiting marriage” is a thing of the past. It is going to end. Maybe things won’t change during my generation but in a few years tradition will be different.
00.42.23 Music, lake PAUSE
00.42.34 Lake
Everything changes. And almost every Mosuo dreams of other mountains, other waters, another world.
00.42.42 Young man in blue
Young men: I want to see the world, in this place living conditions are not good. I want to go to Beijing
00.42.48 Woman laughing
Young woman: I have never been anywhere
00.42.53 Man with brown hat
I would like to travel, to go to Kunming, to Tongling, but I have no education...
00.43.09 Woman in green:
I would like to leave, to see how things are outside.
00.43.17 Men with brown hat I would like to learn to drive a dong fen truck
00.43.25 Images of cars. Music PAUSE
00.44.27 Images of piglets.
It’s been almost a thousand years since the lake has awoken to the sound of Mosuo voices. The people that came from the other side of the mountains to create a kingdom of women in the country of the concubines. In the villages of the lake the matriarchs preside over their people. But the future of the Mosuo hangs in the air, as uncertain as a trail of smoke.
00.44.53 Cigarette smoke. Woman singing
00.45.27 Reporter: Cristina BoavidaCamera: Lauro Cepa
00.45.33 Editing: Jose ribeiro da silva
00.45.39 Sound: Joao Ganho
00.45.45 Graphics: Jose Pedro Rosado/Ricardo Espirito Santo
00.45.50 Production Secretary: Isabel Mendonca
00.45.57 Interpreter: He Hingxia
00.45.59 Translation (INTO PORTUGUESE) Zhang Weimin
The Ladies of the Lake
43 mins - August 1997
00.02.12 Here on the shores of Lake Lugu, which means ‘dive into the waters’ in Chinese, lives one of the few remaining matriarchal societies on earth. Almost a thousand years ago the Mosuo people settled here at the foot of the Himalayas. No one knows where they came from or why they came. Day dawns over the lake with prayers offered by women.....they dominate Mosuo culture as they have done for centuries.
00.02.44 Woman in green
In most cultures men and women make families together and the men go out and make a living. We are different. We are a matriarchal society, we, the women are in charge.
00. 02.55 Chicken running in the backyard
A matriarch lives in each Mosuo house. She’s an elderly woman who decides the destiny of all the family members.
00.03.00. Yashima is one such matriarch. At 65 years old, she has five children, two grandchildren....and smokes eighty cigarettes a day
00.03.18 (Woman lights a cigarette)
Yashima: I think men are not as good at being in charge as women are. They can’t do it. While women are in charge of everything, men only think about having fun.
00.03.36 At home, Yashima has absolute power. She manages the money of every member of her family, even the adults. She manages what jobs each one of them does, even their love lives. Less than a year ago, the matriarch forbade one of the children to have a particular girlfriend. .
00.03.53 Young man smoking
Yashima: They need my permission... what they can do Mama allows them to, what they can’t Mama forbids. Yes, once I forbade my son to have a girlfriend... if I there is something about the girls that I don’t think is good enough, I won’t allow the boys to see them.
00.04.13 Young man smoking sitting in a boat
The boy wasn’t very happy about the decision but he obeyed. The Mosuo marriage is a very special institution...it is not even called a marriage. It’s more like courtship because the couple never live under the same roof. The women stay at their mother’s house.....the men do the same. According to tradition they only meet at her house, at the end of the day.
00.04.36 Evening, images of a house.
00.04.42. Yadashe gets dressed. Music
00.05.02 Yadashe leaving the house, talking to a woman
For years Yadashe has been repeating this ritual, once or twice a week. He puts on his best suit and crosses the lake to go to the nearest village where his wife lives. It’s called a ‘visiting marriage’.
00.05.21 Man rowing
Yadashe: Once we lived in the mountains...later we moved to the shores of the lake and now we are fishermen. Amongst the Mosuo people it’s the women who are the bosses... we, the men, go out fishing or courting.
00.05.39 images of the mountain. Man still rowing
It looks like an easy life for a man, but it can be hard work. To reach his wife’s home, Yadashe has to row for over an hour.
00.05.51 Singing while rowing
Yadashe’s song: Steering the boat is up to the pilot.Growing the plants is up to the sun, the rains and good techniques.But what guides us in revolution is thoughts of Mao.
00.06.02 And it is with that thought that the lake crossing comes to an end.
00.06.07 Men getting out of the boat
00.06.08 In a Mosuo home, the rules of etiquette are strict....First, Yadashe has to greet his mother-in-law...matriarch of the family. His gifts of tobacco, tea and a bottle of spirits are well received... he is invited to sit in the guest’s corner and to taste some “hor d’oeuvres” before dinner.
00.06.27 eating
Yadashe hardly looks at his wife. The Mosuo people, like most Chinese, are shy about showing their feelings
00.06.40 Dizhi Latsuo getting water from the lake.Music
00.06.52 Dizhi Latsuo, the youngest daughter of Yashima, is so shy she can hardly mention her husband...despite the fact that the relationship has received the blessing of her family and of the fact that they have a son.
00.07.04 Baby
For the Mosuo people there are three sacred taboos: It’s forbidden to eat dog, it’s forbidden to eat cat and it is forbidden to talk about sex.
00.07.13 Woman laughing
Man leaving house
Dizhi’s husband lives in a village a few kilometres away. He’s the manager of a wood company. His job makes him a very eligible man....After all, not a lot of Mosuo men have a permanent job and especially a management position! Tsar Pito is well paid by Mosuo standards.
00.07.39 Man “sawing wood”
But like any good Mosuo man he hands over all his earnings to his mother. Whenever possible he goes to visit his wife but it is not always easy to find the time... at this carpentry workshop they work long and sometimes erratic hours.
00.07.56 Man hammering
Tsar Pito: There are no days off... we start work at eight in the morning, we have a break at twelve and start again at two o’clock... sometimes, if the material doesn’t arrive we have to stay behind to wait for it ... But sometimes we don’t have so much work to do.
00.08.21 Men hammering
Tsa Pito doesn’t see his wife more than once a week. He confesses that he has even considered breaking with tradition and living with her.
00.08.30 Tsar Pito: This is something to think about in the future when our son is older... if she came over here we would spend more time together and that would be good.
00.08.39 Woman in red by the wall. Man on the wall.. But Dizhi disagrees - she appreciates the Mosuo customs.
00.08.44 Dizhi Latsuo: we don’t argue if we are not together.
PAUSE
00.08.56 Woman holding baby. Man coming in
Tsar Pito hardly sees his son. The baby is just four months old but when he grows up, he will never call Tsar daddy. Because in the Mosuo language there is no such word. Mothers make decisions about their children’s future on their own. As far as education is concerned, they rely more on the support of their brothers than on their husbands.
00.09.18 Woman laughing holding the baby.
Tsar Pito: she only knows how to laugh... she is shy. She has never spoken to foreigners.
00.09.27 But there are other reasons for all the shyness. Dizhi Latsuo is not used to being in public with her husband. In three years of marriage, they haven’t even been for a walk around the village.
00.09.38 Tsar Pito: we rarely go out together in public.
00.09.42 Woman holding the baby
But it was in public that they met a few years ago. The Mosuo people like parties. Fire and dancing stirs lonely hearts, and relationships blossom.
00.09.49 Music, girls dancing by the fire PAUSE
00.10.26 Everyone knows the songs and the steps by heart....but at Mosuo parties people perform another traditional ritual. It’s known as ‘challenge singing’ and the women usually start, in their distinctive tones….
00.10.45 Men and women “challenge singing”.
00.11.16 People on the floor
Mosuo tradition goes that when a young woman is interested in a young man, she gives him a sign.... and then he must take the initiative...To begin with, the romance is kept secret... even the first meetings in the girl’s bedroom. Once upon a time young men would throw stones on the roof, so that their girlfriends could discreetly open the door. Even today each couple finds a way to conceal the affair. It only becomes an official relationship when the matriarchs of both families give their seal of approval.
00.11.50 Images of the village. Daylight.
00.11.56 But even here marriages don’t last forever. In Mosuo villages, divorce is common. And in most cases, the women are the ones to take the initiative.
00.12.06 Woman in pink: yes, it does happen my friend. For example, if the man is going out with many women the woman will throw him out and divorce him.
00.12.21 Woman in blue: When there is a divorce, the party that starts the proceedings has to compensate the other party.
00.12.26 Woman in pink: If they misbehave, we divorce them.
00.12.33 Images of woman in red and white. Green landscape.
Surprisingly, everyone here insists that there are hardly any arguments or lovers’ tiffs. Maybe it’s because the Mosuo are more practical than romantic.
00.12.44 Man with green hat
Man with green hat: I prefer women who are hard working, I don’t care if they are pretty or not.... basically, I like a talented woman, someone that knows how to take care of the chickens and of the pigs.
00.13.02 Images of a girl feeding the animals PAUSE
00.13.25 Older woman wearing blue scarf
More than eight out of ten Mosuos still live under the matrilineal family structure which dates back two thousand years. Men are the staunchest defenders of Mosuo marriages... which do have certain advantages.
00.13.40 Man wearing blue shirt: Our “visiting marriages” give us a lot of freedom. A couple only stays together if both sides see eye to eye.
00.13.55 Man wearing green hat
man wearing green hat: The big advantages are strong ties between sisters, and large families living communally. This way families find life easier financially.
00.14.10 Lake, mountains The ladies of the lake take precedence over the men in many ways. Children inherit their mother’s name and property. The family leadership is handed down from mother to daughter. But this supremacy comes at a price. Even in a society where women appear to get a fair deal, life isn’t as rosy as it seems.
00.14.30 Women working the land
Women have to raise their children almost entirely on their own and they’re the ones who have to go out and work... at home or on a farm. Never mind whether it’s heavy work.
00.14.41 Groups of men sitting down
woman wearing green: When they have time, the men help us but when they haven’t... they don’t.
00.14.52 woman wearing purple hat: In “visiting marriages” women suffer a lot.. the women do all the work and they resent that.
00.15.03 Man sitting down.
Mosuo men have a good life. The majority spend most of the day...resting
00.15.11 Man with a moustache
Man with a moustache: We do what we have to do...what women have to do, they do...this is our culture.
00.15.18 Man wearing green hat
Man wearing green hat: of course women work harder than men... we have no worries, a lot more freedom and we can go out and have fun.
00.15.23 Man smoking
Man smoking: I don’t work, I rest every day. I don’t need to help... I have lots of sisters, I don’t need to work..
00.15.31. Music. Woman carrying children. PAUSE
00.15.44 Men sitting down./ woman working Background music
In families where there are a lot of women, men don’t work... only in the families where there are no women do the men have to work. In most cases, Mosuo men just save themselves for their night-time visits to their wives!
00.16.19 Fire
In Mosuo villages, only the older women get to put their feet up... but some are treated as real queens.
00.16.23 woman laughing
Adjama, for example, has every reason to be happy. She has raised one of the closest families in the village. 9 children and as many grandchildren...which means there are many hands to make light work
00.16.34 Poster on the wall
Adjama doesn’t even know how old she is because she’s forgotten when she was born. But now she’s enjoying a life of leisure. She spends her days by the fire in the sitting room. With just a nod from her the whole family, men and women, will attend to her every whim.
00.16.53 Person sitting cross legged
She has already passed down the burden of raising the family to one of her daughters. Not the eldest but the one she thought most able.
00.17.01 Woman wearing sark scarf Adjama: In a Mosuo household the most intelligent is in charge. Mama doesn’t choose the eldest, but the one who’s got what it takes.
00.17.11 Woman in green entering the room
It fell to the second daughter to take over as leader of the family. Ludji is 32 and already carries out most of the duties reserved for the head of the family.
00.17.24 Woman filling bowls of water
Morning prayers are one such task.
00.17.32 All Mosuo homes have an oratory, where prayers are offered to one of the Tibetan Buddhist gods.
00.17.42 Man praying the drums
As each day dawns the lake fills with the sound of the drums and the scent of incense and pine trees.
00.17.51 Images of the lake. Voices of woman praying. PAUSE
00.18.15 Although they obey the teachings of the Buddhist Lamas, the Mosuo people worship a female God. Gemu, goddess of the lake. Each morning the head of the family burns pine needles by an image of the goddess.
00.18.31 Yashima
The Goddess Gemu was a very beautiful girl, who wore white and rode a white horse. She was very talented and had a good heart.
00.18.46 Images of the lake and the mountains
Each day the Mosuo people offer thanks to Gemu for the survival of their community. But most see that survival threatened.
00.18.54 Man fishing
Mosuo culture can no longer remain untouched by the outside world. Even the mountains can no longer protect it.
00.19.01 Busy street
The people of the lake may cling to their old ways, but just beyond the mountains development awaits.
00.19.12 Images of the mountain
The Mosuo people, like most of the ethnic minorities in China , live in close to abject poverty. Survival is precarious. The people can live off the land and the villages have electricity. But there’s little else. No running water and no sewers.
00.19.30 Images of children playing
Many of the Mosuo people have never had a bath in their lives, not even a dip in the lake. The young ones dream of a different life. Gezou is just eighteen, but a staunch admirer of Mao Zedong
00.19.44 Young man smiling
Gezou: I admire our leader. If he had never existed, we wouldn’t exist.
00.19.57 Young man tiding up
Gezou doesn’t want much from life: he’d like to have enough money to buy some new clothes and fix up the house where he lives with his mother. A house that he feels ashamed of. But he also dreams of something bigger.
00.20.11 Gezou: I would like to go away, to see other places, to have adventures. Here, I feel like a frog in the bottom of a well looking up at the sky.
00.20.21 Images of the sky and the trees The closest thing to heaven that Gezou has ever seen is the cinema,
00.20.25 Young men entering a house
or rather, this room with a TV and video. They’re the only ones in the village. Each night the programme of King Fu plays to a rapt audience.
00.20.36 people watching a movie. PAUSE
00.20.57 A front row seat in this fantastic plastic world made in Honk Kong costs 90 pence. It’s expensive but it’s worth it. Television does not reach the lake. Gezou would give anything to see a good action movie. But he’s under no illusions: without even a basic education, he couldn’t survive outside the village.
00.21.19 Images of sky PAUSE
00.21.29 Children singing
00.21.34 It has a musical air, but this is a Mandarin class. Every day Mosuo children and all the other ethnic minorities must learn the language of the Chinese majority at school. Although at home, they all speak their own dialect.
00.21.47 teacher: It is difficult to teach children here, especially in Chinese classes. We have a bilingual system in which we teach half of the lessons in Mosuo. It means more time and more effort.
00.22.14 Children in classroom. Boy reading a book
The bi-lingual system is not the only hurdle young Mosuo children face.
00.22.49 Teacher: Compared with school children of other regions, these children have more difficulties with certain words and concepts that are easily understood by students elsewhere. Mosuo children have never seen those things, have very little experience that is why they have more learning difficulties than those from other regions.
00.22.52 Child with picture book Primary school books are full of places and situations that the lake children haven’t even dreamt of. Families look nothing like theirs. There are cities and cars: concepts these children almost can’t understand.
00.23.07 Teacher by the blackboard
In China 9 years of schooling is compulsory, but in Mosuo villages, few go for that long. Things have improved a lot. School is a long way away, a few kilometres from the lake, but it’s a new school.
00.23.19 Wang Xinwen, teacher: Our region falls short as far as education is concerned. This school was built last year and we only moved in at the beginning of this year. Before we had to teach in people’s houses. The school’s been going for 30 years but has never had a permanent site. Conditions were bad but now, with sponsorship from Coca-cola, things have got a lot better.
00.23.50 Group of children
These are the fruits of China’s economic reform. Over recent years , private companies have increasingly started to fund the building of schools.
00.23.58 Big sign
This sign says the school was a gift from coca-cola, the trailblazers of imperialism. Although most of the children have never even tasted the most famous soft drink on the planet.
00.24.15 Chinese flag. Children singing. PAUSE
00.24.33 Group of children
At the beginning of June, world Children’s Day is celebrated in all of China’s schools, including in this region. It makes the school part of the community. The festivities are the same everywhere. First a welcome is offered to the ‘New Pioneers’.
00.24.50 pioneers
This is the young communist organisation to which almost every child of school age belongs. Then comes a talent competition: the children partake in the favourite Mosuo past-time of singing, and it’s down to the teachers to give scores.
00.25.06 man talking with a microphone PAUSE
00.25.41 Wang Xinwen, Teacher: On the heels of the reforms the government started paying attention to the education of the country’s minorities. It spent a lot of money and gave local government more funding for education in comparison with funding for other sectors. The government has never scrimped on education. All over China, even the border regions, even the poorest regions like ours have a good school infrastructure.
00.26.16 Child with animals
But in spite of this lavish praise of the government’s education system, South East China is still scholastically backward. Most of the children have to walk many miles to school, and even if they finish primary school, it’s very unlikely they will carry on studying. Secondary schools are in the big cities, hours or even days away. Children like Hu will never become what they want to be.
00.26.48 Boy
Hu Wenxin: I want to be a scientist to build the country
00.26.52 At thirteen, Hu Wenxin is still in primary school but to carry on studying he would have to go to a town 80 km away from the lake. His mother could never afford to finance his studies.
00.27.11 Images of the lake and the mountain
The Mosuo families live off what the lake and the land produce. The village is surrounded by little vegetable-gardens and every home has a few cattle. They have to buy everything else they need. Soap, pesticides and rice. In this region, like everywhere else in China, they eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
00.27.35 Family eating rice
Every week Ludji, Adjama’s second daughter travels with the matriarch to the nearest market. The bus leaves at 12 o’clock, give or take an hour.
00.27.49 Bus travel and landscape PAUSE
00.28.02 Bus driver
It’s fifteen Kilometres to Yulin a small town where the Mosuo mix with other ethnic groups. The town grew up around an old Buddhist temple. Once upon a time it was home to dozens of monks educated in Tibet. Today there are just three.
00.28.16 Woman praying in front of the temple, music
00.28.33 The building has seen better days but has also seen worse ones. It was almost destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Today, it relies on public donations.
00.28.43 Voice saying it’s forbidden to film in or around the temple??
The temple is surrounded by the market and shops. It’s here that the inhabitants of the lake and the mountains come to stock up with provisions.
00.29.02 Images of the market
Mosuo women are experts in the art of haggling. Arguing over prices is a game to them... and it’s a lot more lucrative than the ones which excite the men back at home.
00.29.14 Men playing pool, men playing chess.
00.29.22 Ludji returns with a kilo of meat, rice, onions and lotion for head-lice. She says life has its ups and downs, but that she and her family can still get by.
00.29.35 Ludji: The cost of living is not too expensive, so we manage to survive. In the summer we make our living by taking visitors on canoe trips out on the lake. During winter-time we earn money by going out and collecting mountain mushrooms which we sell.
00.30.09 Man fishing
Like every other man in the village Dadupitzou has few responsibilities. In summer he leaves the mountains for the canoe. Every day he casts the net into the lake and every day he draws it out full of fish.
00.30.25 Apart from this task, he does little else. At 27, he hasn’t yet found a steady girlfriend.
00.30.38 Dadu: I would like to find a Mosuo girl with a good heart, one who’s pretty and talented... It is difficult for young men to find themselves wives. I don’t have a girlfriend, it’s difficult.
00.31.07 Men sitting down
And it’s getting harder. Over the past thirty years the ladies of the lake have given birth to many more boys than girls. A quirk of fate in what is probably the only region in China where baby girls are more valued than baby boys. To survive, Mosuo families have to raise future matriarchs. A household without a women is a household without a future.
00.31.30 Woman in green
Int: I just have two sons, no daughters, and for that reason I cannot allow them to have a Mosuo marriage. They need to bring their wives into the house.
00.31.47 Occasionally a Mosuo couple may live under the same roof: if a man has no sister to maintain the continuity of the family. Then it’s his duty to bring his wife to live with him so that she can become the next matriarch. Until a few years ago this problem was rare. Now it’s getting worse thanks to the Chinese government’s family planning policy. The one-child law applies to most urban areas. The government is a bit more generous with rural minorities: every woman may have two children.
00.32.15 Man eating
Nevertheless, birth control is slowly killing Mosuo culture which has always relied on large families. Now the women in the village are kept in check by the Women’s Health Service, with special task forces of women from local backgrounds. Any woman that becomes pregnant for a third time has to have an abortion. She may even have to pay a fine.
00.32.41 woman in green: In the past it was 300 or 400 yuans but now it is a thousand.
00.32.46 Woman working the land
That’s about £90. Women struggle to pay it on their own. Men won’t get involved in pregnancy.
00.32.57 woman in green: Men don’t do anything, women have to do everything. We have to travel to the Ninglang women’s hospital.
00.33.06 Woman in pink. Women have to deal with it on their own. They have to go alone to the clinic for women. It’s in Ninglang.
00.33.23 Images of a city.
The closest Maternity Hospital to the lake is almost 100 kilometres away. Here, women are examined during their pregnancy and are taught about contraception.
00.33.34 Health worker
It’s a thorny area for doctors, since most of the population consists of minorities whose cultures set great store by large families. But doctors understand local sensibilities.
00.33.49 Health worker running
Li Wangfang, Hospital director: Most of the medical staff in this hospital come from this region. We were selected by the party and by local people to go abroad and get a university or professional education. Then we come back and serve our country, particularly in the field of family planning.
00.34.11 Here they’ve not only succeeded in reducing the level of deaths amongst mothers and new-born babies, but they’ve achieved the government objectives: a radical reduction in the number of births.
00.34.22 Outside of the hospital
MD: Once women have two children they have a choice about what kind of contraception they want to use. Generally it’s an intra-uterine device. Recently we’ve started using new methods, such as hormonal methods.
00.34.45 City
Ninglang is almost four hours drive from the lake. It is practically the only city the Mosuo have ever seen. Here they discover luxuries not found in the villages.
00.35.00 Images of the city. Music PAUSE
00.36.02 On the city’s streets, men and women from different ethnic groups mingle. The Province of Yunnan, is the region in China with the most ethnic minorities. Apart from the Mosuo there are twelve other groups with different languages and different traditions in Ninglang itself. They’re united by their poverty.
00.36.25 This remains one of the most underdeveloped parts of China, despite Beijing’s new policy on minorities.
00.36.33 Su Xang: Municipal GovernmentOfficer: The new policy consists of helping to cut poverty in the regions where the minority groups live. It has promoted the development of the regional economy so that the people’s living standard has improved. This is what the new policy means. It’s also about the preservation of the cultures and traditions of the minorities.
00.37.01 Statue of Mao
The buzz word seems to be ‘preservation’. But, between 1966 and the early 70's, the Chinese minorities fared ill under the cultural revolution. To solve internal wars within the party, Mao Tse Dong brought chaos on the country. The communist structure was being contaminated by a bourgeois ideology and had to be salvaged at all costs.
00.37.25 group of people dancing Mao ordered the people to rebel against all forms of authority as well as against the ghosts of the past: their culture and traditions.
00.37.39 Images related to the cultural revolution.
00.37.45 The most fanatical followers of Mao did not think twice. They closed schools and universities, persecuting artists and intellectuals, destroying temples and monuments. The Red Guards even over-ran the remote Lake Lugu.
00.37.58 Young man
Tang Weijian, Governer of Ninjang: Around 1973-1974 they forced us to practise monogamy, they forced man and wife to live together. Large families were destroyed on the pretext that they were a sign of the feudal system. Families were forced to split up into smaller units and their lands were occupied. When the families were divided there were no longer enough houses for everyone. Once large families were separated they faced terrible poverty. Small families have a much harder time trying to survive.
00.38.49 It was with a great sense of relief that years after the cultural revolution the Mosuo could once again return to their traditional lifestyle. Men returned to their mother’s homes and women regained the leadership of their families.
00.39.03 But one revolution is followed by another: the Mosuo are now struggling to survive both the strict family planning policy and the new influx of tourists.
00.39.15 Images of lake
Tang Weijian: Up to the year 2000 we hope to see in Lake Lugu about 230,000 tourists. 120,000 visitors will come from all over China. But we also hope to attract Australians, Italians and tourists from other European countries.
00.39.41 Images of the lake and the mountains
Yunnan’s government wants to transform Lake Lugu into a tourist site, with the Mosuo people as it’s main attraction: one of the last matriarchal communities in the world.
00.39.53 Images of women
Int: Along with the tourism we promise to do everything in our power to try and preserve the traditions and customs of the Mosuo people. Their traditions, most notably their architecture and dress, must be preserved. The government has set aside some funds for the Mosuo.
00.40.18 car passing fast. Tourists.
But the invasion has already begun. In Lingen, the lake village closer to the main road, there are already signs of tourism. There are guest houses which are true skyscrapers compared to the other houses. They have no bathrooms as local tradition demands but visitors are already beginning to come. They come from the nearest towns and sometimes even from Beijing. The Xau family was the first to open a guest house.
00.40.50 People eating
Int: I hope there will be more visitors coming, that way all the villagers would make more money. I would like my village to have better conditions. At the same time it is important to maintain Mosuo tradition, our matriarchal culture. If the traditions disappear, then tourism will disappear anyway.
00.41.21 Tourists by the lake
For now, the tourists will not go beyond Lingen Village. In the other Mosuo villages, life is as it always has been. Children are still frightened by the sight of a stranger. But some dream of tourism and the money it will bring. The Mosuo are aware that their culture is threatened.
00.41.43 Image of a horse
woman in blue: Maybe it will mean that our kind of visiting marriage will die out.
00.41.53 Man with green hat
men: I think we should keep our traditions but when the tourists arrive I am not sure we will be able to. The new generation is probably going to change.
00.42.05 Young man
young men: The “visiting marriage” is a thing of the past. It is going to end. Maybe things won’t change during my generation but in a few years tradition will be different.
00.42.23 Music, lake PAUSE
00.42.34 Lake
Everything changes. And almost every Mosuo dreams of other mountains, other waters, another world.
00.42.42 Young man in blue
Young men: I want to see the world, in this place living conditions are not good. I want to go to Beijing
00.42.48 Woman laughing
Young woman: I have never been anywhere
00.42.53 Man with brown hat
I would like to travel, to go to Kunming, to Tongling, but I have no education...
00.43.09 Woman in green:
I would like to leave, to see how things are outside.
00.43.17 Men with brown hat I would like to learn to drive a dong fen truck
00.43.25 Images of cars. Music PAUSE
00.44.27 Images of piglets.
It’s been almost a thousand years since the lake has awoken to the sound of Mosuo voices. The people that came from the other side of the mountains to create a kingdom of women in the country of the concubines. In the villages of the lake the matriarchs preside over their people. But the future of the Mosuo hangs in the air, as uncertain as a trail of smoke.
00.44.53 Cigarette smoke. Woman singing
00.45.27 Reporter: Cristina BoavidaCamera: Lauro Cepa
00.45.33 Editing: Jose ribeiro da silva
00.45.39 Sound: Joao Ganho
00.45.45 Graphics: Jose Pedro Rosado/Ricardo Espirito Santo
00.45.50 Production Secretary: Isabel Mendonca
00.45.57 Interpreter: He Hingxia
00.45.59 Translation (INTO PORTUGUESE) Zhang Weimin