AN HOUR LATER, we were back on the paved road. I thanked my guide for such a memorable few days and crossed his palm with the equivalent of 50 bucks for his help. I waited for a bus heading back to Chinghung and finally caught a ride on a tour bus. It was heading back to Chinghung, but it was going the long way. About halfway, it stopped to let passengers stroll through a Chinuo village a few hundred meters from the road. It was a strange experience, and one that I wouldn’t want to repeat. The Chinuo are one of China’s smallest ethnic groups as well as one of its more primitive. They weren’t even recognized as an ethnic group until 1979. At last count there were eighteen thousand Chinuo living in China, all of them in forty or so villages in the mountains north of Menglun. The Chinuo call this area “the place the Chinese couldn’t find.” Obviously, they’re going to have to change the name. In any case, they weren’t at all happy to have a dozen Chinese tourists and a foreigner walking through their village. As we approached, the doors of the village long house closed, and the Chinuo stayed inside until we were gone. But that didn’t mean I didn’t hear any Chinuo stories.
While no one knows how long the Chinuo have been living in Hsishuangbanna, if you ask the Chinuo, they’ll tell you they have been there since the great flood. Yes, the great flood. It would be hard to find a people anywhere on the planet without a memory of that event, and the Chinuo are no exception. Here is their version of the story, which I read in a book I bought in Chinghung: a long, long time ago, not long after the world was created and life began, the waters of the world’s oceans began to rise, and people began to drown, and the parents of Ma-hei and Ma-niu decided they had to do something to save their son and daughter. They hit on the idea of making a huge drum, and the father went into the forest to cut down a tree. But as soon as his axe cut into the tree’s bark, the tree cried out in pain. This was back when people could still communicate with other life forms. It was also when people still respected other life forms. When the father tried another tree, the same thing happened. And it happened ninety-nine times, until the father finally gave up and returned to his house.
Now it was his wife’s turn, and she went out into their yard and bowed down in front of a huge loquat tree. The tree had supplied them with its fruit for many years, and now the wife asked it for its wood. The tree wanted to help the family out, but to help would mean its own demise. What to do? Well, the loquat tree was a truly kindhearted tree, and it agreed. The father and mother then cut it down and made a huge drum. They then put their two children inside along with a little rooster and some food and kissed them goodbye as the floodwaters swept them away—the parents to a watery grave, and their children, Ma-hei and Ma-niu, to the wide-open sea. And the sea was all the children saw for nine days and nine nights, until finally the little rooster crowed, and Ma-hei and Ma-niu woke up and discovered that their drum had come to ground on a mountain. They got out, and as the waters receded, they started to explore the adjacent valleys. But except for an old tree, there was nothing: no plants, no animals, and no people. Fortunately, they still had a single gourd seed left over from their provisions. They planted it, and it soon covered the mountain with its vines and gourds, which they lived off of. The days went by, and so did the years, and the handsome Ma-hei and lovely Ma-niu grew old.
Finally Ma-hei said to Ma-niu: “Ma-niu, we’re the only people left. If we don’t have children, the human race will die out.” But Ma-niu said, “How can we do that? Brothers and sisters can’t have children.” Ma-hei scratched his head, then suggested, “Why don’t you ask the old tree in the forest if we can have children?” Well, Ma-niu couldn’t think of anything better, so she walked into the forest to ask the old tree. But while she was pushing her way through all the vines that covered the ground, her brother took a shortcut and reached the tree first and hid behind it. When Ma-niu arrived and asked the old tree what to do, Ma-hei made a voice like a tree and said, “What else can you do? Go back and multiply.” So Ma-niu went back, and told Ma-hei what the tree had said. Ma-hei acted sufficiently surprised as well as more than a little pleased, and he led his sister into their hut to multiply. But it was no use. They were simply too old.
And so Ma-hei and Ma-niu resigned themselves to being the world’s last humans. As they grew older, they devoted what little energy they had to collecting enough gourds to eat. Then, one day, they brought back an especially large gourd, and Ma-hei started to cut into the gourd with his knife. Suddenly a voice from inside the gourd cried out, “No, don’t cut there. I’ll die.” Ma-hei lived in the old days when spirits were everywhere, even in gourds. He turned the gourd over and tried another spot, and another voice cried out, “No, don’t cut there. I’ll die.” Well, this happened several more times, until finally the voice of an old woman cried out, “Cut here. My name is A-p’i K’ao-k’ao. I’m old. It’s okay if I die, as long as my children survive.” And so Ma-hei cut into the spot where the voice had come from and made a hole in the gourd. And out of the hole came four humans. The first was the ancestor of the Pulang people. The second was the ancestor of the Han Chinese. The third was the ancestor of the Tai people. And the fourth and last to come out was the ancestor of the Chinuo people, whose story this was. In fact, “chinuo” means “last to come out.” And to this day, the Chinuo still honor the old woman in the gourd from whom they are all descended. Before every banquet or festival, they set aside a bowl of rice and invite A-p’i K’ao-k’ao to join them. That’s the story of the great flood, and any Chinuo will tell you that was the way it happened, assuming they open their doors for you.