History of Shan Churches in Burma 1861-2001 - Khamkoo

Shan people and their culture 14
These huge balloons are made of local Shan paper or rags, and are of different sizes and shapes,
some human, some animal, some just fanciful products of imagination.
Hospitality
Shan are very hospitable people. They always open the doors of their home to visitors, passerby
or strangers. Even though they have never met or known each other before they offer a place to rest or
stay for a night or two or even for a week. They believe that taking care of the guest is good deed and
can earn great merit. At least the visitors or strangers are offered a cup of cold water or hot green tea
when they come into the house. Stranger who has happened to be at home at mealtime is always invited
to the table. When a stranger comes after mealtime, the visitor is always asked if he has had his meal. If
not yet, the host use to prepare meal for the visitor.
Leslie Milne said, “A poor Buddhist nun whom I thus treated, she was so grateful that for days
she supplied me and my servants with vegetables and fruit. Her gratitude also taking embarrassing form
of coming to say her prayers – presumably for me – in my bed room when I was dressing.”
A small bamboo stand on the side of the road covered with a tiny thatched roof shading water
pot is a common scene in Shan village. Women and girls use to fill the water pots with water every day.
The water is freely available for passerby. They have been taught that a cup of cold water given to tired
and thirsty wayfarers brings much reward in the future life.
Tattooing
Tattooing proper had been practiced in most parts of the world though it was rare among
populations with the dark skin color and absent from most of China (at least in recent centuries).
Various people believed that tattooed designs could provide magical charm, protection against sickness
or misfortune. Some considered tattooing could make people having power, free from evil and danger.
Some might even think as a beauty. Some tattoo were useful as identity of a person’s race, rank, status,
or membership in a group. Tattoos had also been found on Egyptian and Nubian mummies dating from
about 2000 BC. After the advent of Christianity, tattooing was forbidden in Europe but it persisted in
the middle east and in other parts of the world.
Tattooing was a culture that existed in the Shan for centuries since they were in mainland
(China). Shan believed that, because of wars, they were going to be separated from one another and
scattered all over the world. In order to be able to recognize one another in the future they started
tattooing one another as an identification mark. That’s why tattoo can be found on the body of Shan,
Tai Ahom, Thai, and Laotians. 25 It is somehow an identification of the Shan race. Whenever people see
tattoo on his body he is recognized and accepted as a person belong to Shan race. A Shan boy was
considered to have reached manhood when he has been tattooed. When a boy reached the age of 11 or
12, the earliest age, a tattoo artist was invited to tattoo his body and limbs with designs of animals,
flowers, geometric patterns or the Tai written script. 26
In the past all male must have tattoo. Without tattoo he was not considered a matured man or
brave man but considered as immature and coward. Women did not like a man who had no tattoo.
There was a saying, “Yellow leg, get back away from our fields, otherwise our spirit of the field will
flee.” In those days a man with no tattoo can hardly find a wife. Some tattooed from neck to ankle
covering the whole body. Some only had tattoo on arms and small tattoo on the chest and back. The
tattooing instrument is a single split needle set in a heavy brass socket or a few needles tightly tied
together. No ink but the bile from the gall of bear was used in tattooing the skin. Women seldom
25 History of Tai and Tai Country by Khoe Sean, published by Mok Ko Soi Leng Printing Press, Yangon 1996, p96
26 China’s Minority Nationalities edited by Ma Yin, published by Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1994 p265