Hani

族About this people

The Hani people inhabit the deeply folded mountains of southern Yunnan between the Red River (Yuanjiang/Hong He) and the Mekong (Lancangjiang), primarily in the Honghe Hani and Yi Autonomous Prefecture. Their most celebrated achievement is the Hani Rice Terrace landscape of the Ailao Mountain area — thousands of terraced paddies stacked from river valley to mountain summit, fed by a gravity-fed canal system drawing water from the forested summits. The Honghe Hani Rice Terraces were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2013.

The Hani maintain the terrace system as a living cultural landscape: villages of thatched mushroom-shaped houses (moguzhu) occupy the mid-slope zone between the forest above and the terraces below, and the community manages the water distribution according to customary rules. The agricultural calendar is marked by major ritual events: the Kuzhaza (Hani New Year) festival in autumn coincides with the rice harvest; the Angmatu (long-street banquet) festival in the sixth lunar month sees entire villages dining together on tables set along the road.

Hani women's clothing is elaborate: indigo-dyed cotton or hemp embroidered with silver ornaments, colourful pom-poms, and beads. Each village community has distinctive embroidery patterns and headdress forms that identify the wearer's origin. The oral literary tradition includes long narrative songs recounting the history of the Hani migrations south from the Tibetan Plateau.