First the Daba "chanted the Road Leading Ceremony, when he told the story of the Moso people and explained to Grandmother how to find the road to our ancestral land. Then he led the ceremony we call Washing the Horse, and Ache and I ran after the crowd of mourners who followed Grandmother's soul as she took her last ride around the village. Grandmother's soul was made of straw and wearing a beautiful blue dress, and it was sitting on a magnificent horse with feathers and flowers in its mane." The next day Grandmother was cremated.
Uniquely, the Moso are matrilineal, and don't practice marriage. Instead, women take lovers for as long as they want. (This is unusual in that there is no economic connection between the two families.) Women stay in their mother's house, men sometimes spend time away trading.
The author was born in 1966, and ends up visiting Beijing. So not only do we get the first-person experiences of someone from a very different culture, we get to see how she views yet another different culture.
An interesting story of an interesting woman, full of cultural details that didn't get in the way of the story. Although Yang Erche Namu's experience is not really typical for the Moso, her story illuminates their way of life.
-- David Dunham Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein --__--__--
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