THE HAINANESE MIAO 45 



in hollowed-O'Ut tree trunks lined with leaves of the wild 

 banana. Every man has his hunting knife, carried in a 

 wicker pouch at his back. The chopping knives for clearing 

 the forest are heavier. Every family seems to have at 

 least one gun, a clumsy, heavy, old-fashioned type, used in 

 hunting. The pig trough is a hollow log, the family wash- 

 basin a cross section of a big tree rudely scooped and hollowed 

 out. The rice mortars too are cross sections of trees, and 

 the mallets are wooden, not even stone-tipped, in most cases. 

 The ever-present bamboo and rattan make the rice sieves, 

 the woven baskets used as chicken coops, the beds, and the 

 little baskets swung from the roof beam, in which the baby 

 is put when it is not on its mother's back or in a hammock- 

 like piece of cloth. The fishnets are woven of the native 

 hemp, as are the bags which the women swing across their 

 backs and use to carry corn, sweet potatoes, other tubers, 

 or anything they happen to wish to move. Water is carried 

 in rude wooden buckets, possibly in kerosene tins, if a family 

 has somehow came into possession of such articles, in small 

 earthenware jars, or in 'three foot length sections of large 

 bamboo. These latter are used if the water must be gotten 

 from a very shallow stream, as three or four of them lashed 

 together hold almost as much as a bucket and can be laid 

 down flat in the stream. Clothes are washed at the river 

 side, on flat stones. 



The people make their living by farming, depending on 

 hunting and fishing to supplement their food supply. Dif- 

 ferent from the Chinese, they know northing of fertilizing 

 their fields except by the use of wood ashes. Neither do 

 they know how to raise rice in paddy fields, but plant only 

 the upland glutinous rice, of which they have ten or eleven 

 varieties, most of them white. They clear the steep moun- 

 tain sides by cutting out some of the brush and smaller 

 timber, burn off the place, dig up the ground with their small 

 hoes, and raise two or three crops of rice, maize, and sweet 

 potatoes. When the rice is ripe it is cut and bound in 

 small bundles. These bundles are placed in racks under 

 thatched roofs to dry and sweat and later stored in the 

 rice rooms in the houses, and beaten out and pounded as 

 needed. When the fertility in one place is exhausted they 

 go to another hillside and repeat the process. When all the 

 hillsides within easy distance (what they call "easy distance" 

 would be four hours' w r alk for a foreigner) are used up they 

 have no recourse but to move their whole village, so move 

 they do. One advantage of course is that the housewife does 

 not need to clean her domicile, and the smoky, grimy house 

 of several years' use can well be left — but it is a bitter life. 



