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From The Nation, December 20, 2003
A plant that is central to Hmong beliefs
By Mukdawan Sakboon
Ye Sae Yang, a villager of Phaya Pipak village in Chiang Rai’s Khun Tan district, is an ethnic Hmong.
Like his fellow tribe members, and other Hmong people in Laos, Vietnam and China, Ye grows the fibrous plant ganchong in his field. The Hmong need this plant’s fibre to create textile products and it is also used as an integral part of the Hmong funeral ceremony.
Known as ma in the Hmong language, ganchong is more important due to its role in the funeral rites for the dead than its part in creating clothes for the living, said Saychamphone Moua of the organisation Concern Worldwide in Laos. He is also Hmong.
An elderly ethnic Lua inaugurates the conferences to bless the course of ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia.
Traditional Hmong beliefs hold that the ganchong’s fibre is used to wrap the feet of the dead so that the individual can then go back to the deity that told them to be born in their mother’s womb.
The fibre is vital because on the way back to the underworld, the dead must pass through two mountains, one full of caterpillars and the other dreadfully cold. The fibre will serve as protection for the feet from the caterpillars’ hairs and the cold, said Saychamphone.
“If the dead can’t pass through these mountain paths, they are believed to return to haunt their families and won’t find their way to the underworld,” Saychamphone told the regional meeting of ethnic communities in Southeast Asia held recently in Chiang Mai.
Even though ganchong comes from the same family as marijuana, it is a different plant.
Some ethnic minority groups in Southeast Asia – including the Hmong, Akha, and Lisu tribes in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, and the ethnic Hmong, Yi, Naxi and other tribes in China – have traditionally used this fibrous plant to produce their textiles. The plant is grown from May to December in Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, and in January and February in China.
Generations of these ethnic minority groups in the Southeast Asian region have long known the difference between marijuana and ganchong. And they have never abused ganchong for narcotic purposes, reports Chupinit Kesmanee, a former researcher for the now-defunct, Chiang Mai-based Tribal Research Institute.
He insists that there is no evidence that Hmong people have grown this plant for sale or for use as a narcotic substance. Certain government agencies have even promoted the production of this hemp as a strategy for community income generation, he said.
However, Ye was arrested by Chiang Rai police on November 4, and he was charged with growing marijuana, which is prohibited by Thai law. Unfortunately, the Thai police who arrested Ye did not seem to know the difference between ganchong and marijuana or, if they knew, simply didn’t care.
A Hmong girl in her traditional skirt made of ganchong.
Participants at the ethnic minority conference called on Thai authorities to drop the charges and release Ye unconditionally. They also formed a working group of indigenous craft-makers.
This group will petition the Thai government and police as well as other United Nations agencies to make the difference between marijuana and ganchong clear.
