Investigative / Enterprise In-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
Portraits of Matriarchy: Where Grandmothers Are Still in Charge
Life around Lugu Lake鈥攈igh up in the Himalayas, straddling China鈥檚 Yunnan and Sichuan provinces鈥攈as been changing rapidly. Until relatively recently, the Mosuo, a Chinese ethnic minority of about 40,000 people, enjoyed hundreds of years of relative stability in a complex social structure that values female power and decision-making. Most famous among Mosuo traditions is the practice of the 鈥渨alking marriage鈥: women may choose and change partners as they wish. Mosuo children stay with their mothers鈥 families for life, and men only visit their female partners by walking to their houses at night.
Because the head of a Mosuo household is always a woman, responsible for all financial decisions and the passing of the family name and property, the Mosuo are often characterized as a matriarchal society. Reality is a little more complex. For example, women hold no official political power. Yet according to Chuan-Kang Shih, an expert on the Mosuo and an anthropology professor at the University of Florida, the Mosuo social system is underpinned by a fundamental belief that women are more capable than men, mentally and even physically.
My portraits focus on older Mosuo matriarchs, the dabu, who carry on despite outside pressures. Since China’s Cultural Revolution in the past century, when the Mosuo religion was forbidden and couples were forced to marry, this social system has faced challenges. Fewer Mosuo women are able to sustain a way of life traditionally centered on large, matrilineal clans sharing their household income.
A cover protects the produce. The kitchen of Asa Pure.
Shuzhi Naje, from the village Dingjia Wanzi: 鈥淢y children did not go to school and cannot speak Chinese. When they were young, the school was very far away, and we had no money for the fees. Now, my granddaughter can even go to college in Lijiang. I hope she will come back home after finishing her studies, but I do not know.鈥 Sergei Dorma, from the village Shankua: 鈥淲hen the Red Army came after 1959, they stole so many things from us. We were not allowed to practice our Daba religion anymore. They burned our monasteries and our prayer books. From 1975 on, the Chinese even forced us to give up our marriage customs; they called it One Husband, One Wife campaign. We had to marry in the Chinese way and start to live together. That was against our custom of the walking marriage.鈥