by Brian Griffith
The Na, or Moso are a cultural community of about 40,000, who live inYunnan province, China, and have drawn a lot of recent attention for their traditions of sexual life. Some claim they represent an all but vanished female-centered age, and others think they're just slightly ahead of their time. In 1989, Dr. Cai Hua got to know people in 5 Na villages, and later published a book called A Society Without Fathers or Husbands: The Na of China, Zone Books, New York, 2001. The following explanations are based mainly on his book.
Basically, these people live mainly in matrilineal extended families, and practice fairly free sexual visitation between men and women of different lineages. Their primary mode of sexual life is something Cai Hua calls “polyandrogyny” (p. 259). People live with their birth families, brothers and sisters together. The siblings all help with any children the women have, and for love relations, men visit and women host lovers at night. Each woman has her own room, and can admit or exclude any lovers she wishes.
Cai Hua feels the Na are remarkable for their flexibility. Rather than having one expected mode of family and sexual life (such as monogamous married couples), in Na society “four modalities of sexual practices exist”. These are (a) “the furtive visit”, (b) “the conspicuous visit”, (c) “cohabitation of a couple without a ritual banquet”, and (d) formalized marriage. Option “a” is the most common.
The Furtive Visit
Cai Hua transcribes the Na term for lover or “special friend” as açia. Of such relations he explains,
… the furtive visit, as a modality of sexual life, is basically characterized by the following facts: the free will of each person is both necessary and sufficient to establish and maintain the açia relationship; the desire of one partner is enough to end it; a multiplicity of partners; and the discontinuity of the açia relationship. It includes four restrictions: a woman must not visit a man; a visitor must avoid the male consanguineal relatives of the woman he is visiting; daytime visits are forbidden; and the individuals who want the same person must not argue or fight.
Of course it is also taboo for persons of the same matrilineage to have sexual relations. It is even taboo for males and females of the same family to mention sexual matters to each other. Sexual life is considered very private, and therefore the family members most commonly practice the furtive visit. By custom, a man visits his lover after midnight, and disappears before dawn.
Cai Hua found the Na an extremely vivacious, yet shy and somewhat secretive people. Of course secrets get around in a small village. For example, “Adga was a beautiful and hospitable twenty-three-year-old woman. According to the villagers she had already had 102 açia, only one of which lasted for more than a year …."
From their initiation into womanhood at age thirteen, girls have their own rooms, and may accept lovers. Of course many mothers remain protective of their girls for some time. One mother accosted boys hiding in her girl’s courtyard after dark, saying “Come back later. She is still too young. She is only thirteen years old”. The boys answered, “That’s okay! By fooling around with us now, she’ll grow even faster and better!”.
The men are free to try their luck with any woman they like within a few hours walking distance:
… the further away a visitor lives, the prouder a woman is, because his journey proves the strong attraction of her beauty. The same holds true for a man: the more success he has in far-off villages, the prouder he is, because being welcomed far away from home is a testimony to his desirability.
Where two or more men want the same woman, most Na regard it as immaturity if one tries to control a lover or exclude other friends. “The Na have a saying, which reflects reality: ‘Your çia is also my çia and your çia is also my çia’”. And, “An attempt to monopolize one’s partner is always considered shameful and stupid, and the villagers will mock it for a long time”.
Of course there are some conditions on who can visit the local women, and some kinds of conflict are accepted as legitimate:
Guma, a young man from the sïpi stratum [of traditional ruling aristocrats], went to see a woman in Zhoshi without any advance warning to the men of the village. The men surrounded the house in the middle of the night while Guma was with the woman. They tied the feet of one to the head of the other and beat them. Guma realized that he had neglected the necessary protocol as far as the local men were concerned. The next day he brought 15 yuan and invited them for a drink. After this reconciliation, Guma was free to come and go as he pleased.
Any children born of these affairs are raised by the mother’s family, with help from her sisters and brothers. Naturally many lovers exchange gifts, but this tends to complicate the context of pleasure and love without any conditions. If economics seems to enter into it, then it may look like prostitution. During the hard years of the 1930s and the Japanese war, many caravans passed through the Yongning area, and many families were poor. Some women visited Tibetan merchants and received gifts of food for their families. An 81 year old woman spoke of that time with obvious shame. But another woman recalled,
Each time the Tibetan merchants came back to Yongning, we were happy, and we would meet them with chickens and with hay for their horses. They also brought us food. And they gave us clothing and shoes. When they left they gave us some money”, “Why were you happy?” I asked. “They were nice to us, and we liked them”, she responded. The woman’s description reveals that what we call prostitution she identified as an açia relationship.