Ho Ts’ui P’ing is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethnology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Institute of Anthropology at National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. She has worked for many years in the Jingpo region of Yunnan and is the co-editor of State, Market and Ethnic Groups Contextualized (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, 2003). Her latest book, co-edited with David Faure, is Chieftains into Ancestors: Imperial Expansion and Indigenous Society in Southwest China (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).
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Social media has transformed the ways in which Kachin people and their kin groups across borders interact. This chapter describes the convoluted transformations and interactions that were made in these relationships during the ceasefire period, and their intensification since its collapse in 2011. Here, a Jingpo cultural leader, Hpauyam La-Awn, uses social media (transmitted by the Kachin News Group) to invite Kachin people everywhere to come to the manau in Ruili in 2014. The invitation is in Chinese but the cultural intent is understood.
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The slideshow to the right gives an idea of the extent of the Jingpo manau zumko and why it exerts a powerful influence on the perceptions of the Jingpo amongst the Kachin in Burma. These photographs were all taken at the Mangshi manau in February 2016. A new, super-sized manau ground was opened, including the first physical representation of Ninggawn Wa Magam, who shaped the earth and made it suitable for human habitation and considered the ancestor spirit in Jingpo/Kachin mythology. The event also included an elaborate stage show organised by an events company from Beijing, a large cultural conference and several world record attempts, including for the most people to eat Jingpo sticky rice together and the largest Jingpo drum made from a single piece of timber.
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