Naxi Women

In 2010 I got to visit Lijiang, a city in Yunnan - China for the firm's offsite. The flights were painful to get there. Not only that we couldn't fly directly from big cities like Shanghai, Beijing or Guangzhou; even with the limited flights we couldn't fly together due to the company policy. My flights were: Jakarta - Hongkong (overnight stay) - Kunming (sh*tty airport and no one spoke English!) - Lijiang. And my return trip was: Lijiang - Shenzen - driving to Hongkong - another overnight stay - Jakarta.

But I had to admit that the scenery over there was marvelous. I'll show the picture in another post. But for now I'd like to share something that kinda made me feel a little bit... overwhelmed?

NAXI tribe is the native of Lijiang. When I was walking around the Old Town of Lijiang I saw a lot of old women walking hand in hand with similar clothes with some kind of a basket on their backs. I thought it was beautiful and interesting until I heard the real story behind it.

On the first day of our tour, our tour bus' guide was a young Naxi guy in mid-twenties who preferred to be called Daniel -- the English name that he chose after learning English. He revealed that in Naxi culture, it's the women who work their as*es off and make a living for the family while the men were not doing anything except socializing and drinking with their buddies! Naxi women also responsible to maintain a peaceful and harmonious family, thus I couldn't even imagine the physical and spiritual burden that they carried in their whole life!

On their dresses, seven patterns were embroidered to symbolize the spirits of Naxi women. If I wasn't mistaken, some stones were also hung around their waist to remind them of the responsibility (or should I say burden?) to carry the honor of the family. Since then, I saw them in a different light. They're holding hands to share the difficult life and the responsibility they were born with -- or at least that's my impression. The lines on their faces were the lines of wisdom and hard works until they were old. I couldn't hold back my tears when I saw 3 Naxi women were sharing a snack and then walked hand in hand along the stoned path of the Old Town in my second visit there.

If you think you have a hard life as a woman, think again. At least you don't have to work for your entire life. They do, physically and literally. And they're doing it not only for themselves. Perhaps it's for the sake of the culture they were born into, but they accepted their destiny and live their lives with dignity for the honor of their family. To that, I salute them.