| Abstract: |
This is an important work of ethnography and history dealing with the Pai-i, a Thai-Lu people of Yunnan along the border with Burma. The author, Professor of History at Fudan University in Shanghai, studied the group in the early 1940s when the Burma Road was being built in the area. The focus is on the Pai ceremony, a complex and ostentatious ritual central to the lives of the Pai-i people. The book includes considerable information about the political and economic lives of the Pai-i and the social organization of the state and village at a moment of transition.
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