Phunoi Erotic

The name is a Lao label, not their own: phu noi means something like "little people," and it stuck to a cluster of Tibeto-Burman speaking highlanders in what is now Phongsaly Province, at the far northern tip of Laos. What turned those scattered hill communities into a single people was less shared ancestry than a shared job. For generations they guarded the mountain frontier for the kings of Luang Prabang, and in return received recognized rights to their land. That bargain with lowland power, renewed under different masters, is the thread that runs through Phunoi history. In recent decades the Lao state has listed them officially as Singsili, because many found the older name demeaning, but Phunoi remains the name in most of the literature.

Their language belongs to the Bisoid cluster of Southern Loloish, inside the Sino-Tibetan family. Its nearest kin are small languages scattered over four countries: Bisu in Thailand, Cong in Vietnam, Laomian and Sangkong in Yunnan. At home in Phongsaly it sits among Akha, Tai Lue, Khmu and Yunnanese Chinese speakers, and nearly everyone also speaks Lao, which is steadily gaining ground among the young. Village dialects differ enough that some linguists count several Phunoi languages rather than one.

What sets the Phunoi apart from most of their upland neighbors is Theravada Buddhism, picked up long ago from the Tai Lue and Lao. Villages kept temples and sent boys to be novices, while ancestor rites and territorial spirits ran alongside. In the 1960s, as the Pathet Lao consolidated its hold on Phongsaly, a campaign carried by Buddhist monks and backed by the revolution pushed villages to give up spirit cults, and many discarded their ritual objects outright. Phunoi men had served as soldiers and go-betweens for the French, then joined the revolutionary side in large numbers, and afterward they held a share of provincial posts well beyond their headcount.

The old economy was hillside rice on rotating swiddens, plus tea: the ancient tea trees at Ban Komaen, outside Phongsaly town, stand in a Phunoi village. Since the 1990s, state pressure against shifting cultivation and the pull of roads, schools and markets have emptied many mountain settlements. Families have moved down to Phongsaly town, Oudomxay, Luang Namtha and Vientiane, where they blend quickly into Lao urban life. A people numbering only a few tens of thousands is now spread thin, and the question of what stays Phunoi once the hills are left behind is one they are answering in real time.