Ua Neeg (Shamanism)

    Welcome Back! This is yet another discussion about one of Hmong major ceremonies. Today it will be about Ua Neeg or Shamanism.

    Ua Neeg is done when there is a major sickness that is life threatening and you are either being cured or being aided into curing or wanted to help protect the family from sickness and bad energy. This is when they kills pigs and a man or woman will be sitting down on a long bench that is design for them to perform their rituals. The ritual could take hours. When Ua Neeg, the person went into the spiritual realm and deals with the spiritual being. This help the person understand what going on. The person doing the ritual will be speaking in a different language.

Soul Calling

Welcome Back! Today I will be discussing about Hu Plig or also known as, Soul Calling. This is a tradition that we do since way back.

   When doing Soul Calling, it usually take place by the door. It is to let the spirit know that it is where it will be entering. Soul Calling is accompany by a chicken for sacrifice afterward for the spirit to eat for the long journey home.

    Soul Calling is usually done when someone is recovering from a sickness or when there is a newborn baby in the family or when you just got marry into a new household or when you have a major surprised that really scared you. This Soul Calling is to let your spirit know that you are safe and that it should come home to which was your body. It is to lead the spirit back home and let you recovered.
    Hu Plig or Soul Calling usually takes place next to the front door, but it can also took place to where you were badly scared that your spirit might of either flew away or got stuck there. Soul Calling is one of the major ceremony that we Hmong people do. When Soul Calling is taken place, we will use poetic language. 


Well until next time! Bye!

Fashionista on Broad!

    Welcome Back! Today I will be addressing about the Traditional Hmong Clothes. There are a varieties of Hmong clothes from very traditional to modernize Hmong clothes. From the early post, the different dialects such as Hmong Daw and Hmong Njua have different clothes to differentiate to two dialects. 
   
    Hmong Daw have a black shirt with blue sleeves to go along with a white skirt such as the picture below. This clothing helped other Hmong Daw speakers to know that the person or the group of people spoke their dialect. It will be easier for the Hmong Daw people to recognize their own group as Hmong Daw can't understand Hmong Njua. 

   
    As for Hmong Njua, their outfit are that of a black shirt with design sleeves. Their skirt consist of a design with red, black and green fabric to differentiate them from the Hmong Daw people. With language barrier, it is easier for them to stay within their own group of people that spoke the same language to avoid confusion. 

    These clothes are more of the traditional clothes as modern Hmong clothes have many different styles and pattern and are that of a mix and match like some outfit below.

    I hope you enjoy and like some of the outfits! Until next time, Bye!

 

Mother Language

    Welcome Back! In the early post, I talked about the history of the Hmong people. Today I will be explaining the language of the Hmong.
    The Hmong language mostly spoken today are Hmong Daw which is White Miao. This dialect is most popular in today Hmong society as 60% of most people and younger generation spoke this dialect. Another dialect is Hmong Njua which is Green Miao. This language is more of the older generation and about 40% of the Hmong speak this language. Hmong Daw(Duh) and Hmong Njua(Draw) came from the Miao language also known as the hmongic which was widen spoken by some ethnic group in Southern China and Southeast Asia. Hmong language is closely related to Mein and some other related language to the Hmong language are Hmu, Qo Xiong, Bunu, Pa-heng, She, Mun, and Biao Min. The Hmong language is a minority in China and about 2 people spoke this language.  
    

     
    Personally being Hmong myself, I spoke these two dialects in my every day life. My father side spoke Hmong Njua(green) and my mother side spoke Hmong Daw(white), so I was able to speak two dialects. From personal experience, Hmong Daw and Hmong Njua sometimes conflicts against each others as one word spoken in Hmong Daw can be say and interpret differently in Hmong Njua. This always cause me confusion between the two dialects. For example if my mom were to say the stainless steel kettle which is lus Qws(Lu-Qu), I wouldn't understand as I known the kettle as
lus Hwj Kais(Lu-Fuu-Kai).
   
      
 

Story Telling of Ancient History

    Hey Guys and Girls! Ready for some story telling time. Today I will be talking about the History of the Hmong and how they came to be. It start out with a  princess falling in love with a poor servant. Their love was forbidden as she was royalty and he was just a nobody. They eloped into the mountain and slowly created a colony there. Just kidding, that not how it goes.
    The actual history of the Hmong people dated all the way back to ancient China roughly around 4,000-3,000 bce. According to the archives and archaeologists, the Hmong or Miao people live near the Yellow and Yangtze river who are one of the first people to cultivated rice. 

          The Hmong or Miao struggle to gain independence as the Imperial China surpassed smaller ethnic group and kingdom to unite the Chinese people. The Hmong live in remote area in China until Chinese ruler used unnecessary forced to outweighed the Hmong and other small ethnics group opposition. This cause the Miao Rebellion which account a large amounts of Hmong to migrated to the mountain area of Southeast Asia. Those area were known today as Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar. That how they Hmong or Miao people started.

(Miao)

(Hmong)

   

  

Hi, Hello!

Autobiography:
   
    Hi, nice to meet you. I'm Mai Thao, a freshmen in college. In this blog, I will be writing and informing my viewers about the Hmong People and its Culture and subjects relating to my topic. I hope you enjoy the little information I give and look forward to my blog, as I will be posting every Friday.  Thank you!