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Middle Eastern influence on the Hmong? We wear turbans on our heads. The men's pants reflect a middle eastern background..
sounds very very superficial. can you elaborate more on these two superficial similarities? im very skeptical about it.
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book by Keith Quincy "Hmong History of a People" (ORIGINS)
The first Westerners to make contact with the Hmong in China were Catholic missionaries. This occurred early in the seventeenth century. The missionaries quickly learned there were two groups of Hmong, the "raw" and the "cooked". These were Chinese labels, not Hmong. The cooked Hmong were those who had assimilated into the Chinese culture and settled in the lowlands, living among the Chinese. The raw Hmong lived up in the mountains and had never accepted Chinese ways. The Chinese described them as wild barbarians who would cut a stranger's throat at the slightest provocation. While this terrifying description deterred most missionaries from attempting to make contact, a few hardy souls threw caution to the wind and sought them out.
It was not easy. For one thing, the Chinese did not always know exactly where to find them. Only lowland Hmong, who sometimes traded with their highland brothers, knew their exact location, and they were reluctant to guide strangers to these hidden redoubts. Then there were the hazards of the journey. The mountain routes were serviceable for montagnards accustomed to tightrope walking over mountain crests and adept at grasping vines for support while ascending nearly vertical trails that zigzagged up mountain sides. For ordinary lowlanders, however, the trip was both harrowing and exhausting.
The few missionaries who did secure guides and endured the trek were richly rewarded, for the people they found were unlike any they had ever seen in China. Contrary to the popular image of the raw Hmong as a race of bloodthristy brigands, the missionaries found them to be a gentle and generous people. The Chinese were right about one thing: the raw Hmong did not follow Chinese ways.
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They did not even use chopsticks, but ate with spoons like Europeans.
Spoons have been used by many cultures since the dawn of time as a vital eating tool. don't tell me the chinese only had chopstic for eating soups.
if one culture uses spoons for food,thurs make them more alike the europeans. then he might as well say that the rest of cultures that uses spoon are europeans also.
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Their children played many of the same games as European children: hide-and-seek, shuttlecock, marbles, and spinning tops.
when did hide-and-seek became a european only game?
and shuttlecock is not a european game either. actually it was originated in ancient China in the Han dynasty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JianziJianzi (毽子) is a traditional Asian shuttlecock game which originated in ancient China in the Han dynasty. In English, both the sport and the object with which it is played, are referred to as "shuttlecock" or "featherball".QUOTE
And particularly striking was the fact that many of these "raw" Hmong looked like Europeans; red or blond hair was not uncommon, and more than a few had blue eyes.
i would like to see some pics of those so called european looking raw hmongs.
While such encountes naturally invited questions about Hmong origins, the missionaries did no more than the Chinese to provide answers. This is not to say that Chinese historians had nothing whatsoever to say about the Hmong. Quite the contrary. The Hmong play a predominant role in early Chinese history where they are described as an ancient people who occupied the fertile Yellow River basin long before the Chinese themselves migrated into the area. Though Chinese histroians must have considered the possibility that the Hmong had migrated into China, there is no mention of it in their ancient histories. Instead these texts simply characterize the Hmong as the first enemy of the Chinese. The Hmong figure most predominantly in the narrative accounts of the numerous military campaigns mounted against them over the centuries following the establishment of the first dynasty.
And so matters stood until the beginning of this century when Father F.M. Savina was sent by the Society for Foreign Missions, headquartered in Paris, to spread the word of God to the Hmong of Laos and Tonkin. As a priest, Savina was naturally dedicated to the divine mission of saying Hmong souls; but Savina was a scholar as well, fascinated by Hmong culture and history, and committed to unraveling the mystery of their origins.
Savina not only mastered their language but spent years developing a romanized Hmong script, for the Hmong had no written language of their own. He also studied their religion and customs and recorded their legends which had been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years, many presumably unchanged except for minor variations. For perspective he studied anthropology, comparative religions, and linguistics, constantly factoring what was known about other peoples, ancient and modern, into what he knew about the Hmong.
By 1924 he felt confident enough to publish his views on the origins of the Hmong in his Histoire des Miao. Savina emphasized three facts about the Hmong which he believed were the keys to their origins: their physical appearance, their language, and their legends.
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(Blond Hair and Blue Eyes)
In appearance the Hmnong are, Savina writes, "pale yellow in complexion, almost white, their hair is often light or dark brown, sometimes even red" or "corn-silk blong", and a few even have "plae blue" eyes. All of this, he argues, "disbars them from belonging to any other race of China." Savina concluded that these northern European traits were not only evidence of a mixed racial background "somewhere between the white and yellow races," but, more importantly, suggested that the original homeland of the Hmong lay outside of Asia.
yeah,really.......so european looking
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Modern anthropologists have also noted the presence of Europeans traits in Hmong populations, though instead of light skin and hair, they stress facial features such as the absence of an epicanthic eyelid fold, narrow faces, and aquiline noses. Recent studies of Hmong in Laos and Thailand have led anthropologists to classify them as the most Caucasian population of Southeast Asia.
light skin? thats weird most the hmongs i know are rather dark skinned, and se asian looking. i wonder if those anthropologists are nazi racist
and about the most Caucasian population of Southeast Asia based on what? um....lets see,Genetic?no. language? no. culture?another no.
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While most Hmong today are light skinned, few have blond hair or blue eyes. If such Hmong are n ow a rarity, long ago they may have been the rule rather than the exception.
thats a lie. most hmongs are pretty tanned and there is no evidence to blue eyed hmongs.
here are what people says on amazon about this book.
unreliable, December 1, 1999
Reviewer: Robert Entenmann (Northfield, MN USA) - See all my reviews
It is unfortunate that there is no good history of the Hmong published in any Western language. Keith Quincy must be commended on his effort, but it is disappointing. He is not a professional historian. The first chapter in particular, ostensibly dealing with the Hmong experience in China, shows his unfamiliarity with Chinese history and inability to use Chinese sources. (The story of the "Hmong" king's defeat by China actually concerns the conquest of the Jinchuan people, who were not Hmong.) Quincy uncritically uses an unreliable account by F. Savina, _Histoire des Miao_ (Hong Kong, 1924). For a better study of Hmong in China see Robert Jenks, _Insurgency and Social Disorder in Guizhou_ (University of Hawaii Press, 1994). The rest of the book is a little better, but must be read with caution and cross-checked with other sources.Considered by most to be one of the less reliable texts to work from, I nevertheless found many interesting elements within it, that, when combined with additional research, yields some fine and fun reading.
