Chiem Meng Saephan
The Zaangc Nyuon* period was the time when the Mien still lived in China. At that time it was difficult for humans to grow up. When a baby was born, it would take sixty to seventy years before the child reached marrying age. Even at seventy years old, the person was still considered a child. People grew up slowly, but people lived for a long time. It was the Zaang Nyuon period.
It was the custom for great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to all live together. Since it was difficult for people to die, they lived too long. When people got old, and the children didn’t want to take care of them anymore, they would eat them. They were cannibals. Humans ate humans. If an old person couldn’t work, the children would eat them.
One day when a family was moving into a new house, the children said to the grandfather, “Grandpa, many people came to help us build our house. You have lived too long. We need to fix you to eat. We need to use you for our feast to thank the guests and workers.
The grandfather thought, “I have lived for a long time, and I cannot die. If they really want to eat me then they can.”
So he told the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, “Grandchildren, you said you need me for the feast. I need to get some bamboo string to tie knots in the rafters to repair the house. Otherwise, there won’t be anything for you to remember me by.”
So the grandfather climbed up a ladder to the rafters above the living room to tie three remembrance knots. He had tied two knots and was about to tie the third. One of the grandchildren was getting impatient and called, “Grandpa, you’d better hurry and come down or else I’m going to throw my spear up!”
The grandfather said, “Wait a second. Just let me finish tying the last knot. I’ve only tied two knots!””
“If I wait any longer, the meat’s going to smell rotten!” said the grandchild. And he threw his spear up and killed the grandfather to eat.
Later came the Haac Nyuon*** period which was during the time when Dorngh Hungh, the Mien king or sky king, lived. In this period, people did not live as long as during the Zaangc Nyuon period. They only lived about one-hundred twenty years. But the children still didn’t want to take care of their parents. During this period, they no longer ate humans. If they didn’t want to take care of the old people, they took them far away and left them to die.
One day a man and his son made a back-basket to carry the grandfather to a place where they could throw him away. They took the grandfather to a faraway place to leave him there. The father built a fire for the grandfather.
When they left the grandfather there, the father left the basket as well. The son asked, “Father, you carried grandpa here in the back-carrying basket, but you aren’t bringing the basket back. How will I find a basket to carry you away in later?”
The man suddenly realized, “Now I carried my father here to throw him away. Later, my son is going to carry me here to throw me away, too. That would be terrible!”
After thinking about it, he decided to put his father back into the basket and take him home.
Because of his son’s words, he realized he shouldn’t throw his father away. This is the period when Dorngh Hungh ruled the world. People were no longer cannibals during this period.
It was also during this time that Dorngh Hungh went to look for a son-in-law. He didn’t want a Mien son-in-law. He only wanted a Chinese son-in-law. He found a Chinese son-in-law, but he was tricky and wicked and always tortured the king’s own sons. He got the king’s sons into trouble and tricked them so they didn’t get to feed and take care of their father, the king. The Chinese son-in-law took care of the king instead. The king felt sorry for his sons, so he told them that they needed to move out and live on their own to get away from the wicked son-in-law.
At this time there was a fortune-teller that came to make predictions. He said to the king, “You say you want to split up the family, and you have told your sons to move out, but you should not let your children stay here on the lowland farms. If they live in the lowlands, your son-in-law will torture them and make them slaves and servants. I think you should tell them to move into the mountains.”
The fortune-teller felt pity for the Mien and helped the king paint the Mien spirit paintings, and he made the ancestral record books for the Mien to carry with them so they could continue their traditions. The children took the spirit paintings and ancestral records and moved up to the mountains.
When the family split up, the king told his son-in-law, “Since you don’t want my sons to take care of me, wherever they go in the mountains, you’ll need to send people to carry cooking pots to them. If my sons carry pots with them now, they might get broken, and their children won’t have any pots for cooking food to eat.”
From then on, Mien began to do spirit and funeral ceremonies. Prior to that, when a person died, people just threw the body away. No one did any funeral rituals then.
In each village in the mountains, Mien stayed until the soil in the fields looked white and there was no more jungle to cut down. Then they had to move to another village. When they had used the land until it no longer grew crops, they followed the Mekong River south toward Vietnam and Laos.
In addition, there had been a revolution in China, and it was rumored that the Mien people would be killed. The Mien were afraid to stay in China.
In Laos, two brothers became leaders. The younger brother took half of the Mien and moved to Thailand. The older brother took half and stayed in Laos. When the Mien escaped from Laos to Thailand because of war, they found many Mien families with the same clans and same ancestral records already living there.
* Dorngh Hungh is pronounced dong hung. The final ‘h’ is a tone marker and is not pronounced.
* Zaangc Nyuon is pronounced sang, with a low tone, nyuon. The ‘c’ is a tone marker and is not pronounced.
* Haac Nyuon is pronounced ‘haa’, with a low tone, nyuon. The ‘c’ is a tone marker and is not pronounced.