China's last but one matriarchy: The Jino of Yunnan

Hidden in the tropical mountains of China's southern reaches lives one of the most fascinating of China's minorities: The Jino. With a population of merely 21,000, they are one of the lesser known ethnic groups in China, and in the past were often confused with the surrounding minorities. The study of their culture began only in the last decades of the 20th century and unveiled to the world a people marked by the strength with which they had preserved their matriarchal customs, and by remarkable adaptation to the tropical mountains they inhabit.

The shadow of their former matriarchy, and of their goddesses, was to be found everywhere in the Jino life and culture, like a giant umbrella that spread out over their villages and colored all their principal activities. Its influence was especially prominent in their myths and legends, as well as in the spiritual life that directed their everyday activities: farming and hunting, house building, village ceremonies, and rituals.

The apparent simplicity of their society slowly unveiled a complex technology developed through hundreds of years of adaptation to their environment - technology that allowed them to continuously inhabit lands that otherwise would have been fit for habitation only for a short time. At the heart of this technology was a reverential respect for mother earth, embodied especially as the Goddess of the Fields and the Lady of the Beasts, It also entailed an exhaustive knowledge of the different kinds of soils, adapting responses to changing climatic conditions, and seasonal oscillations, and knowledgable management of the different rice varieties. Their ideas about the characteristics of their soils basically correspond with modern geological classifications; their calendar of 11 months (designed to remember the main steps in the creation process of the goddess Amoyaobai) aligns perfectly with their agricultural activities; their knowledge of more than 100 varieties of rice allowed them to utilize every natural resource to its optimum.