Current Hmong Issues: 10-point statement
By Dr Gary Lee and Dr Nick Tapp

As researchers familiar with the Hmong in their global context, we thought it time to put to right and clear up some matters which have been of concern to many students, friends and interested people.

Judging by the frequency of your emails and questions to us, certain issues have proved to be the source of great concern and confusion! It is important to separate facts from opinions, so we have tried in the following to distinguish between what is fact and what are opinions.

1. On the meaning of the term 'Hmong'
Nobody is sure what the real, original meaning of this term is, although everybody may have their own ideas and opinions about it. Many peoples' ethnic names have no particular meaning, or have only meanings which are not important any more, or meanings which just refer to a particular group of 'people' living in, or originated from,
a particular place or country.

The same is true with the term 'Lao'. In the 1940?s, there was a political movement (the Lao Issara or Free Lao) which argued that the real meaning of the term 'Lao' was 'free', although there was no real historical evidence for this. Some Lao historians have also advanced the idea that the word "Lao" originated from another Lao term "dao" (meaning "stars") which became "lao" when used by Chinese speakers. This argument would have elevated the people?s status by linking them to a celestial origin. The same kind of
argument has been made for the term 'Hmong' which some have
taken to mean "free", although the Hmong language does not have an exact word that means "freedom".

It is a fact that nobody knows or can be sure of the real meaning of the term 'Hmong'. Probably it has no special meaning, except to refer to the people known as 'Hmong'. In our opinion, the term may once have meant something like 'us' or 'people', but that is only an educated guess. Our position is that we should stop seeking meanings to the name "Hmong", and that we should just be happy with being
known as Hmong, or Mong. The Americans, the French, the
Germans, or the Japanese are not bothered by what their names could mean. Why cannot the Hmong be the same?

2. On the difference between the term 'Hmong' and the term
'Miao' 'Hmong' is a word in the Hmong language. 'Miao' is a word
in the Chinese language. Because the Hmong did not have a written down language, there are no historical records about them. Therefore, we know nothing for sure at all, from the written Chinese records available, about the Hmong, because the Chinese only use the term 'Miao' and have no way to write the word 'Hmong' in their language.

In Southeast Asia, the word 'Miao' or 'Meo' has a very unpleasant meaning when used incorrectly. We should all resent and hate its usage and fight against the use of this term in Southeast Asia or overseas to refer to the 'Hmong'.

But in China, things are a little bit different. In China, 'Miao' is now an official government category of ethnic minority identity, which has no unpleasant meanings. There are three major peoples, ethnic groups or cultures, who the Chinese put under this word 'Miao'. One is the Hmong, another are the Hmu people in Southeast Guizhou province,
and the third are the Kho (or Qho) Xiong people of West Hunan province.

These three peoples, the Hmu, the Kho Xiong, and the Hmong,
although all called the 'Miao' by the Chinese, speak different languages and cannot understand each other at all. They have had different histories, different cultures and traditions. Perhaps, thousands of years ago, they were the same people since their languages are distantly related, but no one knows for sure. The only thing that is sure is that they are called 'Miao' by the Chinese, and
altogether in China they now number over 9 million people. But not all these 9 million Miao people are Hmong - only perhaps less than half of them.

Among the other Miao groups in China, the ones closest to the Hmong (although they still cannot understand each others' dialects) are the A Hmao people in Yunnan province. They are called Da Hua Miao or 'Great Flowery Miao' by the Chinese. Still these are not Hmong people, as they cannot speak the same language.

The Hmong people in China still speak very good Hmong, closer to Green Hmong than to White Hmong but with different tones and expressions. They live in parts of Sichuan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Yunnan provinces.

So in China it is OK to call Hmong people 'Miao' and the Hmong there do not seem to resent being called by this name. But we have to remember that not all the Miao in China are Hmong! Unfortunately, many writers just substitute the word 'Hmong' for any reference to 'Miao', resulting in a lot of inaccuracy about the Hmong in China.

3. On the Hmong Kingdom in the past
This is a very difficult problem. Because there is no written historical record of the Hmong by themselves or by other people, we cannot know if they really had a kingdom or not from the available written records. There are Chinese records about the 'Miao', but we cannot be sure whether this term included the Hmong at that time or different groups. Probably, at most times in history, when the Chinese records referred to the 'Miao', they included some Hmong groups as well as many other non-Han Chinese minority peoples. But there is not even any Chinese historical record that the Miao (let alone the Hmong!) ever had a kingdom! Sometimes the Chinese records talk about 'Miaowang' or 'Miao kings', but mostly these were small local leaders who were fighting against the Chinese and trying to establish independence in their local areas, but who never succeeded in doing so.

This is not to deny that there could have been Hmong kings or kingdoms in the past. It is quite possible that ancestors of the Hmong (perhaps also called Hmong, perhaps not) lived in or had separate kingdoms of their own in southern China. But there is not one piece of historical evidence for it. So all we have are the oral legends and
stories of the Hmong themselves about their past to tell us about these kingdoms - not one written record, by the Chinese or any other foreign power in history, not one bit of archaeological evidence.

Our point is that there has not been any written evidence for the existence of Hmong kings or a state or kingdom in any part of the world in the past.

4. On the geographical origins of the Hmong
Again, nobody can be sure because there are no historical records of the Hmong! Different people have different ideas. In Louisa Schein's book Minority Rules (Duke University Press, 2000) about the Hmu people in Southeast Guizhou, China, she gives five different theories about where the Miao came from - the North, the South, the East,
the West, and the Centre of China (pp. 44-48).

There are stories of a northerly origin outside China, and stories that the Hmong came from a 'land of ice and snow' (Savina, Histoire des Miao, Hong Kong 1924, p.x). These stories probably originated from Western imagination, or from inaccurate transpositions of Hmong terms which were not well understood. For example, Savina translates 'dej npau' as 'snow and ice' when it should mean 'boiling
water', and the lines of the ritual of death (qhuab kev) where the soul of the dead person is led to join the ancestors (in Hmong 'nyob ntuj qhua teb nkig, ntuj txag teb tsaus', which should mean 'living where the sky is dry, the earth brittle; the sky is cold, the earth is dark') get
translated incorrectly as 'lie under burning skies on the scorched earth, under icy skies on the dark earth" (Ken White's English translation of Jacques Lemoine's French translation of the ritual in Kr'ua Ke : Showing the Way, by Jacques Lemoine, Pandora, 1983, p.8). These kind of mistakes have led writers to conjecture that the Hmong came from a land of ice and snow with long dark winter months (like Siberia or the North Pole) and before that, from a
land of 'burning skies' and 'hot earth' (like Mesopotamia in the Middle East). It is really unreasonable to base historical interpretations on these kinds of poetic and ritual materials, even worse when they are wrongly translated!

These kinds of errors and misinterpretations are very common in books about the Hmong, particularly with early missionary writers (who were trying to convert the Hmong to Christianity) like Savina who wanted to link the Hmong with a Biblical origin. This was despite the lack of any supporting evidence, except that it was noticed that some Hmong children were fair-skinned and had blue eyes (as if albino children were not also found in other non-European
groups). Sadly, they have been repeated again and again by subsequent writers on the Hmong, up to the present day.

Did the Hmong come from Mongolia? What evidence is there for this? Do the Hmong have anything in common with the Mongols? Many Hmong mistakenly believe that their ancestors originated from Mongolia, because of the similarity in the syllable "mong" in the two names. However, a closer examination reveals that the Hmong have nothing that would link them to Mongolia, not even anything that could be said to have been influenced by the Mongols such as words or religious rituals. They have no stories about a grassland
nomadic life involving horses and sheep like that in Mongolia, but there are many stories about tigers and jungles as commonly found in south China and Southeast Asia.

The plain fact is, nobody knows for sure where the ancestors of the Hmong came from, so different people may have different explanations. Maybe future scholarship will throw more light on this question. But because the word 'Hmong' was never written down in Chinese historical records, proving whether the Hmong had a kingdom, or whether they came from the east or the north, will probably never be possible. Nor are there any archaeological ruins
which could be claimed to be Hmong or to show the origins of the Hmong, as they do not seem to build lasting monuments or distinctive structures anywhere.

In our view, based on what we have read or heard, the original home of the Hmong may have been somewhere around the Yellow River basin in China, for Chinese classics referring to a legendary history some 4000 years ago mentioned the 'San Miao' or 'Three Miao' living in that region. If these 'San Miao' of the very early Chinese
historical records had anything to do with the 'Miao' referred to much later in Chinese history (which is not proved), and if those historical 'Miao' included some Hmong (which is not sure, but possible), then perhaps the Hmong originated from this region. A Chinese origin does seem quite likely for the Hmong, as there are many religious and
cultural similarities between the Chinese and the Hmong which would suggest that the Hmong have always been in close contact with the Chinese, rather than any other people. As pointed out by Bradley (in his book The Languages of China, Princeton University Press, 1987,
p.282), many ancient words are shared between the 'Miao' and Chinese languages; 'Such words indicate that there was early, intimate contact between the ancestors of the Miao and the Chinese'. And Hmong stories and rituals often mention the Chinese (Suav), with one folk story even saying that the ancestors of the Hmong and the Han Chinese were once two brothers worshipping at the same ancestral grave (see D.C. Graham, Songs and Stories of the Ch?uan Miao, Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1978, p. 27). So,
in our opinion, China is the most likely homeland of the Hmong. However, since the word 'Hmong' was never written down in history, it may never be possible to solve this question.

5. On Hmong Kinship and Surname System
Traditionally, Hmong kinship organisation in Southeast Asia (and now among those living in Western countries) is structured around the clan or surname (ib xeem) and lineage (ib tus dab qhuas) system. The clan system is based on the surname used by one's paternal kin group. A lineage is based on membership in a descent line which can be traced
to a known ancestor and shares a common set of ancestral rituals, while with a clan no exact links can be traced beyond the sharing of a surname.

Mottin (in his book Eléments de Grammaire Hmong Blanc, Bangkok, 1978) identifies nineteen clans with twenty clan surnames (because one clan has two surnames in Green Hmong). For the White Hmong, only eighteen clans and eighteen clan surnames can be found, but the Green Hmong have fourteen clans. The White Hmong have five clans (the choj, faj, tsheej, vwj, and xem), which are not found among
the Green Hmong while one Green Hmong clan (xoom) does not
exist with the White Hmong.

These surnames are:

Green Hmong: tang/hang (haam), heu (hawj), khang (khaab),
chang (tsaab), kue (kwv), lee (lis or cai), moua (muas or
zaag), thao (thoj), cho (tsom, vang (vaj), xiong (xyooj),
yang (yaaj) and kong (koo).

White Hmong: chao (choj), fang (faj), heu (hawj), kha
(khab), kong (koo), lo (lauj), lee (lis), moua (muas), thao
(thoj), chang (tsab), cheng (tsheej), cho (tsom), vang
(vaj), vue (vwj), se (xem), xiong (xyooj) and yang (yaj).

The clan system is used by the Hmong to identify people they are or are not related to. All people bearing the same surname are supposed to be related to each other, even though there may not be any known blood ties between them. This entails the same social obligations towards each other as if they are members of the same family. When a stranger from the same clan visits, you are supposed to treat him
and offer him hospitality as if he is your own close relative. Thus, traditionally a Hmong man can visit other Hmong men anywhere and expect to be well received by them. However, members of the opposite sex within the same clan are forbidden to marry each other, and can only marry Hmong from another clan or surname group.

A recent phenomenon with the Hmong in Laos and Thailand is
the adoption of new surnames. Some families have chosen to use the name of their great grandfather (e.g. Bouasao, or Yangtu ? we are using fictitious names here) as the group's surname. Others have used Thai or Lao names such as Rattakul or Lilavanh. With a new name like Yangtu or Lilavanh, one can still guess that the name is derived from the Yang or Lee/Li clan. However, with names such as
Bouasao or Rattakul, it is impossible to know. Because of this, it is possible that people bearing the Bousao name could be originally from a Vang clan, but now with the name Vang gone they can easily violate the Hmong taboo of not allowing members from the same surname group to marry each other, for there then would be nothing wrong with a Vang marrying a Bouasao after a few generations. And it is possible that such a couple could easily be related by blood, except that one did not choose to change his or her surname while the other did. How would the Hmong deal with this phenomenon?

One negative aspect of Hmong social organisation into tightly knit clans based on different clan names is that it often mitigates against political unity into a single nation under a single leader. Does anyone know this not to be true during the past two centuries of Hmong armed resistance and struggles for freedom? Political unity is
usually strong in the initial stage of a crisis, but tends to crumble when members of one clan become distrustful or resentful of another ; for example, rivalry between the Lo and the Lee clans in Laos, or between the Yang and the Vang in post-1975 for those in the diaspora. The Hmong all crave for and talk about unity, but have they ever achieved it? Often, outsiders know and exploit this lack of unity for their own political end ? and to the Hmong?s own detriment.

6. On the current number of Hmong in the world
According to Michaud and Culas (in Culas, Lee, Michaud and Tapp eds. Hmong/Miao Studies, Silkworm Books, forthcoming), the 1990 census in China shows that people who call themselves "Miao" total 7,383.622 (0.65% of the total population) with a break-down as follows: 3,666,751 (11.3% of the provincial population) in Guizhou; 1,568,951 (2.6%) in Hunan; 895,704 (2.4%) in Yunnan; 533,860 (0.5%) in Sichuan; 426,413 (1%) in Guangxi Zhuang; 200,764 (0.4%) in Hubei; 51,676 (0.8%) in Hainan; 5,988 (0.01%) in Guangdong; and 33,515 in other provinces. There are no figures just
for the Hmong, but as stated above, only less than half of all the 'Miao' people in China are Hmong. It is now estimated that the current total Miao population in China is 9 million.

For Southeast Asia, Thailand has 124,000 Hmong (or 0.21% of
the total population), Laos 315,000 (6.08%), Burma (Myanmar) 2, 656 (0.01%), Vietnam 558,000 (0.87%). Sources: McKinnon and Michaud (2000), based on official figures gathered at national level. Burma : extrapolation based on the 1931 census (Bennison 1933). Thailand : 1995 figure (TRI 1995). Laos : 1995 figure (Lao National
Statistical Centre 1997) Vietnam : Census of 1989 (Khong Dien 1995). China : figures for the Miao in general (TPCPRC 1993).

It is difficult to know the exact figures for Hmong in Western countries, but in our estimates there are now some 190,000 Hmong living outside Asia, with:

France 15 000
French Guyana 1 800
US 170 000
Canada 1 200
Australia 1 600
Argentina 250
NZ 150

If any readers have the latest demographic records for Hmong in any country, we would appreciate receiving this information so we can use it to correct the above figures.

7. On Hmong Family Size
Large families are found in most traditional Hmong settlements. Many couples have at least 5 to 7 children, and some polygamous couples may have more than 10 children, depending partly on how many wives some male family heads may have (usually two, but rarely more than three wives, and most marriages are monogamous).

People have asked about the reasons for this seemingly high
fertility rate? The major reason is the Hmong's desire to have sons - like people in any patriarchal society. In their traditional village setting, they are farmers who toil from dawn to dusk for all their lives. There is no retirement pay-out they can depend on, except the support of their families and children when they reach old age. The
Hmong's worst fear is that there may not anyone to care for them when them grow old. Daughters marry and move away to live with their husbands, so only sons would be left to do this task. Moreover, only sons have the duty to make food and paper-money offerings to their parents after the latter's death so that they will not go hungry in the Afterworld. Such beliefs give the Hmong a real fear of destitution.

These material and religious fears are the real reasons most Hmong couples try to have sons and may go on trying if most of their children happen to be daughters. In the process, the families may become large before the parents realise it. It is not because they want many daughters to get bridewealth payments. It is not because they want many children so that they can occupy large tracts of agricultural lands.

Education and conversion to other religions that do not demand ritual offerings to ancestors, may help to reduce Hmong family size. With recent problems relating to the lack of farming land and the need to send their children to schools (requiring much money), many Hmong couples in Southeast Asia have now started to become interested in
family planning and wish to reduce the number of children they have. As they become more aware of the many other good things around them, many Hmong married women now want to know how they can stop having children - whom they love but for whom they have to toil day after day for the best part of their lives.

8. On the Hmong as Destroyers of the Environment
The Hmong are often accused of destroying forests and watersheds, because they live in the highlands and practice shifting cultivation. In their search for new farming lands, they are said to have denuded large areas, leaving only grasslands and drying up streams and rivers that used to provide water for crop irrigation in the lowlands.

In fact there are strong arguments that shifting cultivation by itself does not lead to deforestation (given plenty of land and few people), and that deforestation is not the main or only cause of droughts and floods. However, in Laos and Vietnam there are plans to move Hmong to the lowlands (and many forced relocations have already taken place), because it is still believed they destroy the environment, but there are no lands available there for this and many Hmong also prefer to live in the cool climate of the hills. With increase in population and a lack of farming lands, even in the highlands, many Hmong in Laos have moved from their traditional areas to Bokeo or
Borikhamxay provinces to take up wet rice farming. So far, only those with money or with overseas relatives to send them money have been able to do this, as they have to buy wet rice lands from Lao farmers. Many also complain of the hot weather there which makes them sick and too weak to farm. What is to be done?

In Thailand, for more than 20 years now, the Royal Forestry
Department has stopped Hmong farmers from clearing new lands for farming, and has planted pine trees on mountain areas traditionally used by the Hmong. This has forced many of them to adopt commercial cropping (growing cabbage or flowers), or fruit tree plantations (lychee or peach). The new commercial enterprises necessitate the use of water for irrigation, and chemical agents as pesticides and fertilizers. The Hmong have been taught to do this by other Thai government agencies responsible for tribal welfare or
agricultural development. Their hard work and initial success have allowed Hmong families to build better houses and to buy pick-up trucks or motor cycles - items that many lowland farmers cannot afford. This has created much resentment, leading the Hmong to be accused of overusing water and causing drought in the lowlands, and poisoning lowland water sources through the pesticides and
fertilizers they have to use to support their new farming methods. And they only adopted these new methods because there was so much pressure on them from the Thai Government and other agencies to give up shifting cultivation and the opium poppy!

In Doi Inthanon, Chiangmai, groups of lowland Thai have taken the law into their own hands by putting up road blocks to prevent the Hmong and other hill tribes from taking their produce to the market (Chatvanichkul, in Tai Culture International Review, December 2000, pp. 165-168). The Hmong were also blamed for causing forest fires so that they should be moved from the area by force (even though
these fires were later found to have been lit on purpose by their accusers - interview by Gary Lee with Hmong leaders in Doi Inthanon, October 1998). In Pak Klang, Pua, a group of lowlanders went to the Hmong village in 2000, burned down houses and destroyed lychee trees which had taken the Hmong more than 10 years to grow. Such wanton acts were also carried out against Hmong villagers in Tak and other provinces. A recent article (21 May 2001) in the local Thai "Chiangrai Newspaper" (Nangsupim Nakhorn Chiangrai) published a feature article accusing the Hmong of having large families so as to overpopulate northern Thailand, of
destroying the Thai environment and all forms of wildlife.

Where is the evidence for these accusations? Are the Hmong the only highlanders? The Thai and Lao highlands have always been occupied by many ethnic groups, including lowland people who have moved upland following recent population pressure in the lowlands. Why target only the Hmong? How can the Hmong, local authorities and lowland people cooperate to work and live peacefully together?

9. On Hmong political ambitions
Some Hmong want to have a country of their own so they can bring together other Hmong who are now scattered in different corners of the world. Some have formed political groups to fulfil this dream, although where this place they want for themselves is never made clear. The Chiangrai Thai newspaper cited above claims that northern Thailand would be the target and that this separatist movement was being assisted by educated overseas Hmong. Is this real or are
people only trying to stir up trouble for the Hmong?

Hmong messianic movements have always talked about the coming of a Hmong kingdom, but there have been many such messianic groups or advocates that did nothing but talk and dream their messianic dreams. Not many people have taken them seriously and they have been mostly harmless. The danger is that outsiders with their own political agenda use the Hmong to cause trouble for their own aims ? like the so-called "Red Meo" war in Thailand in the 1960?s which was actually led by lowland communist Thai using the Hmong as cannon-fodder. Similar exploitations of Hmong political
ambitions also occurred in Laos.

But even if some Hmong were to carry out their political dreams, let us consider how realistic this would be. To begin with, the Hmong are not a united group of people living in one place. They are small groups of minorities living in different countries under different regimes. Their first loyalty is to their country of birth or adoption. They cannot be motivated to come together, and do not have the leadership and the resources to do so. Secondly, the Hmong in each of the countries they now live in only form a very small proportion of the total population (see figures above) ? all less than 1% (except
in Laos where their number is 6% of the national population). Such dreams, or fears, of Hmong political unity, are in our opinion not based on reality or on what the Hmong can and want to do ? to live with dignity in peace and harmony with other people. When they took up arms in the past (be it in China, Laos or Thailand), this was
only to defend their persons and properties, but never to take over the country or lands of other peoples.

10. On any other issues
Please email your concerns or written contributions.

Conclusion
We hope that the above statement has helped you in your search for basic knowledge on the Hmong. Some of this information is based on what we consider to be factual evidence, others on what we see as something closer to the real acceptable situation rather than on claims which have been influenced by myths or political motives. We have not presented the many varieties of Hmong cultures, as this is
a complex subject and much of it is already available in many other publications. However, there is a great deal of confusion and muddled thinking here as well. For example, a group known as the Yochio Hmong is often described. These Hmong people, who lived in Guizhou province, actually call themselves the 'Hmong Ntsü'. But
the Chinese call them Yaqie Miao, or 'Magpie Miao', after the dark blue and white colour of their women's clothing, which they thought resembled magpies (see Ruey Yih-fu, 'The Miao: Their Origin and Southward Migration', Proceedings of the International Association of Historians of Asia Biennial Conference, 6-9 October 1962). So the term 'Hmong Yochio' is a mixture of a Chinese word ('Yaqie) and a Hmong word ('Hmong'), which has never actually been used by
anyone.In this short statement, we have presented some facts, and
where we are not sure of the facts, we have made clear that it is our opinions which are being expressed. There are still many uncertain aspects to the life of the Hmong in different parts of the world, and we invite all who are interested to do your own research and to share your information with others ? even through this website!

As anthropologists, we are happy to assist with advice. Dr Nick Tapp is a Senior Fellow with the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University. He has researched on the Hmong in Thailand and in China, and has published widely on them, including a book Sovereignty and Rebellion: the White Hmong of Northern Thailand (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1989). His latest publication, The Hmong of China: Context, Agency and
the Imaginary has just been released by Brill (Leiden, 2001).

Dr. Gary Lee is an anthropologist who obtained his Ph.D. in
social anthropology from the University of Sydney, and worked as a Senior Ethnic Liaison Officer in the New South Wales government, Australia, for many years. He has researched on the Hmong in Thailand, Laos, and Australia, and specialised in issues of social structure, development, and migration. He has published many articles on these subjects.

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