Culture

	The Ha Nhi have a rich oral tradition, with their genealogies, folklore, and legends of a lost book from the Creator God.
	They typically live in small villages and practice subsistence agriculture. Crops in excess of their own needs are bartered. They plant rice and harvest fruit. They are experts in building rice terraces in upland areas, which are then irrigated. They use water buffalo for farming, and the buffalo has religious significance for them. Relatively few Ha Nhi grow poppies for opium production.

The clothing of the Ha Nhi women is unique.

Their headdresses are one of the most striking kinds in Asia. Embedded with tassels, fur, beads, and silver ornaments, they are worn by women and girls alike. They are removed only for cleaning or for washing the hair.

The Ha Nhi often paint their teeth black. Some assume that this is caused by the chewing of betel nut, but the dark teeth are at least partly cosmetic.

A tragic side of their culture is their belief that birth defects or multiple births are the worst of bad omens. This is a tragedy not just for the family, but for the entire village. Such newborn infants must be immediately suffocated, and their bodies immediately buried far into the jungle.

06/12/2003