traditionDerung face marks
独龙族 · Chinese
Marked at twelve or thirteen, in a pattern some describe as a moustache
| Where it goes | face |
|---|---|
| Notes | Yunnan, in the gorges of the upper Salween and Irrawaddy. |
| Ink | Soot and water |
| Years between | 1967–2026 (59) |
about 1,800 – 1,960 · The last tattooed Derung women are elderly
27.8000, 98.3000 · OpenStreetMap
What it is
Yunnan: Derung women marked on the face at twelve or thirteen, in a tradition now carried by a handful of elders.
The long version
The same abduction story attaches here as in the Chin hills — that the marks were meant to make a woman unattractive to raiders. Inference — the story turns up wherever a colonising or dominant neighbour is in the picture, and it is always told about the women of the smaller group. It may be true in some places. It is also the explanation most convenient to everyone except the women wearing the marks.
Connected to
- Chin facial tattooing The same story told about another set of women.
Named here by
- Chin facial tattooing Another women's facial tattoo with an abduction story attached to it.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | cited | Derung people — Wikipedia (en) | |
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- Derung people — Wikipedia (en)
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there