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Updated: June 23, 2025
At dawn the atmosphere is impregnated with a thick fog, which, as the sun rises, descends in dews so abundant that trees, plants, and grass drip as from a recent shower of rain. The population of Siam is still a matter of uncertainty; but it is officially estimated at from six to seven millions of souls, comprising Siamese or Thai-Malay, Laotians, Cambodians, Peguans, Kariens, Shans, and Loas.
Three hundred men had been killed, at the storming of the stockade; but a far greater loss took place in the retreat very few of the Shans ever regaining their country; the greater portion perishing from starvation, in the great forests through which they travelled in order to escape the Burmese authorities, who would have forced them to rejoin the army.
The little creature threw up its heels joyfully to find itself free, then cantered off among the trees, and they saw it no more. By this time the Shans had swallowed their rice, and were ready to seize their poles. All sprang aboard, the Shans and Me Dain grasped the boating-poles, and the craft was soon being driven steadily up stream. For some time Jack watched the boatmen with deep interest.
I made a sketch of cottages at Sinkan. The blue and black of the Shans, and light blue colours of the Chinese dresses, begins to tell more distinctly among the tulip colours of the Burmans. The men here are armed with swords.
Thus the peculiar Kayan custom of tatuing the thighs of women has a close parallel in the tatuing of the thighs of men among all Burmese and Shans; and the Kayans may well have adopted the practice from them.
Then from Burmah side come women carriers, Shans, I think, old and young, in dark blue clothes, short petticoats and tall turbans; they come sturdily up the hill and joke with the Chinese coolies as they pass without stopping down the zigzag path into the bamboos, by the path our ponies and people have already followed.
The Shans, for instance, have the habit of tattooing their faces and legs and centre of their chests, while, their scanty clothing not permitting the use of pockets, they carry upon their backs little baskets of wicker-work, in which are placed their knives, tobacco, and such other articles as a pocket might have accommodated.
This is the Arracan pagoda, one of the most famous shrines in Burma, and the one most frequented by the Shans and other hill tribes, whose time of pilgrimage occurs "between the reaping and the sowing." There is no ascent to this temple, which, through a series of ornamented doorways, is approached by a long flat corridor, which, as usual, serves the purpose of a bazaar.
It is populated chiefly by Shans. The bulk of these interesting people now live split up into a great number of semi-independent states, some tributary to Burma, some to China, and some to Siam; and yet the man-in-the-street knows little about them. One cannot mistake them, especially the women, with their peculiar Mongolian features and sallow complexions and characteristic head-dress.
But they have not exterminated the aborigines, nor have they assimilated them to any degree. To-day the tribes constitute more than one half the population, and an ethnological map of Yunnan is a wonderful patchwork, for side by side and yet quite distinct, you find scattered about settlements of Chinese, Shans, Lolos, Miaos, Losus, and just what some of these are is still an unsolved riddle.
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