The Phu La , a Tibeto-Burman language group, lives in mountainous
areas of Lao Cai, Lai Chau, Son La and Dien Bien provinces in the north.
Its population is nearly 11,000.
The group lives in stilt
houses but a small part chooses earth houses. The group believes every
land lot is guarded by a deity, so before building a home, a family must
obtain approval of such deity. After choosing a site for building its
home, a family leaves for one night some dozens of rice paddies covered
with a bowl on the land lot. The next morning, if the paddies stay the
same, it means the site is good for building a home. If they change
their positions or are missing, it is a bad omen and the family is
supposed to find another place.
The Phu La has a taboo of
building a home on the date of death of their parent or the date of
birth of their child. They are not supposed to start construction on the
day of the tiger or monkey either, which are believed to be bad days.
A Phu La family often builds its home in the 10th or 11th
lunar month after the harvest time so that its relatives and villagers
can give a helping hand. But the family has to prepare building
materials such as wood, bamboo, thatch or palm leaves months earlier.
A Phu La traditional home, which often overlooks a stream or
river with a mountain at its back, has a simple structure, consisting of
three parts with the middle part being the largest. The house has two
main roofs and another two covering the gables. The frame consists of
two main columns, two small columns for supporting the walls and another
two at the gables, which are all fixed in the ground. These columns are
tied with bamboo strings or through mortise and tenon joins to purlins
and crossbars. The crossbars are big bamboo trees tied from the roof top
of one side to the roof foot of the other. The house has a reed floor
and bamboo wattles.
A Phu La home has two stairways leading
to two doors at the two gables which are opposite to each other, with a
stove in the middle. The stairways do not have stairs as they are made
of three or six apricot trees fixed together, with one end propped on
the floor and the other end on the ground. The main door is for
receiving visitors and the sub-door leads to the place storing the rice
mortar and water containers.
The middle part of the house is
where most of the family activities take place. This part has cua ma
(window of spirits) which is a bamboo wattle placed outside a narrow
window in the back wall. Cua ma faces the direction of the main
stairway and lies opposite the main stove and perpendicular to the
mountain in the neighborhood. Family members are believed to be troubled
by the spirits of the dead and get sick if cua ma is placed not
opposite the stove while the family’s wealth is believed to get
dispersed if cua ma is placed diagonally with the mountain. All
formalities of belief are conducted by the family at cua ma with
offerings put on banana leaves on a winnowing basket placed on the
floor.
The family’s stove is placed in the middle of the house –
the kitchen. Above the stove is a small shelf where maize and rice
seeds and dried food are kept. The kitchen is not only for cooking but
also serves as a place where the family gathers in the early morning
before going to the field and in the evening after a working day. The
Phu La ’s traditional new rice ceremony is held in the family’s kitchen.
The Phu La has strict taboos related to cua ma and the
stove. A visitor is supposed to neither turn his back to the stove nor
lean against cua ma . Breaching this, he will be fined according to
each clan’s rules.
The left part of the house is divided into
smaller rooms as the bedroom of the parents and places for storing
valuable possessions and family utensils. Half of the front part is to
keep food containers.
Outside the house on the left side is placed the
rice mortar. This is also the cooking place and where women do
embroidery in idle time. Under the floor are kept farming tools and
cattle and poultry.
A small part of the Phu La still lives
in earth houses which have a similar structure like stilt houses. An
earth house has between three and five parts with two doors. It also has
four roofs, two main columns and two or three small columns. The
kitchen and breeding facilities are built separately from the house.
The Phu La ’s shift from nomadic to sedentary life together with its
cultural exchange with other ethnic groups has resulted in changes in
the structure of its traditional house. A Phu La home nowadays bears
cultural traits of the Thai characterized by the structure of columns
and beams.-VNA