“But I think I’m seen as an oddity because I’m not from here, and I live alone, rather than with a family. “All Mosuo women are, essentially, single,” she says. As an unmarried woman in a community where marriage is non-existent, Waihong felt at home. If it runs its course, the usual reasons for staying together – for the children, societal or financial reasons – don’t apply. In the absence of marriage as a goal, the only reason for men and women to have anything resembling a relationship is for love, or enjoyment of each other’s company. Her longer stays – she now lives with the Mosuo for a few months, three or four times a year – gave her the chance to discover more about this private, often misunderstood community. “I grew accustomed to shuttling between Singapore and Lugu Lake, navigating a hectic city life and a different rural rhythm in the mountains,” she says. Ladzu’s uncle, Zhaxi, a local character and successful entrepreneur, offered to build her a house. She became godmother to Ladzu and her brother, Nongbu. Her visits grew longer and more frequent. A teenage girl, Ladzu, had offered to teach her the Mosuo language, which is passed down orally, and introduce her to her family. I was once made to wait before talking business with an elderly Mosuo man until he had bathed his family’s twin baby girls and changed their nappies.”Ī few months after her first trip, Waihong returned to Lugu Lake. “Boys think nothing of looking after their baby sisters, or taking their toddler brothers by the hand everywhere. “Mosuo men are feminists by any standards,” says Waihong. In fact, along with elderly maternal great-uncles, who are often the households’ second-in-charge, younger uncles are the pivotal male influence on children. Although men have no paternal responsibilities – it is common for women not to know who the father of their children is, and there is no stigma attached to this – they have considerable responsibility as uncles to their sisters’ children. The men provide strength, ploughing, building, repairing homes, slaughtering animals and helping with big familial decisions, although the final say is always with Grandmother. Women own and inherit property, sow crops in this agrarian society, and run the households – cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. “For Mosuo women, an axia is often a pleasurable digression from the drudgery of everyday life, as well as a potential sperm donor,” says Waihong. But couples never live together, and no one says, “I do”. These range from one-night stands to regular encounters that deepen into exclusive, life-long partnerships – and may or may not end in pregnancy. A man’s hat hung on the door handle of a woman’s quarters is a sign to other men not to enter. Men and women practise what is known as a “walking marriage” – an elegant term for what are essentially furtive, nocturnal hook-ups with lovers known as “axia”. Who the father of their children is, and there is no stigma attached to this The nuclear family as we understand it exists, just in a different form.” It is common for Mosuo women not to know But this isn’t how the Mosuo see it – to them, marriage is an inconceivable concept, and a child is ‘fatherless’ simply because their society pays no heed to fatherhood. “Children are born out of wedlock, which in China is still unusual. Young Mosuo are brought up by their mothers, grandmothers, aunts and uncles.įrom the perspective of an outsider – particularly one from China, from where the majority of tourists come – the Mosuo are “condemned” as a society of single mothers, says Waihong. She discovered that Mosuo children “belong” only to their mothers – their biological fathers live in their own matriarchal family home.
Warm, curious and quick-witted, Waihong made friends quickly. It was inspiring.’ Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Guardian
But is it as utopian as it seems? And how much longer can it survive?Ĭhoo Waihong … ‘The Mosuo seemed to place the female at the centre of their society.
#Kingdom under fire 2 na free
An ancient tribal community of Tibetan Buddhists called the Mosuo, they live in a surprisingly modern way: women are treated as equal, if not superior, to men both have as many, or as few, sexual partners as they like, free from judgment and extended families bring up the children and care for the elderly. This progressive, feminist world – or anachronistic matriarchy, as skewed as any patriarchal society, depending on your viewpoint – exists in a lush valley in Yunnan, south-west China, in the far eastern foothills of the Himalayas. Men are little more than studs, sperm donors who inseminate women but have, more often than not, little involvement in their children’s upbringing. Grandmother sits at the head of the table her sons and daughters live with her, along with the children of those daughters, following the maternal bloodline. I magine a society without fathers without marriage (or divorce) one in which nuclear families don’t exist.
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