It is for such
to bear with me in what I shall say. There are thousands of men in the
West who are entirely ignorant of men in China other than the ordinary
_Han Ren_, and if I enlighten them ever so little, then this chapter
will have served an admirable end.
In North-East Yuen-nan the tribes I came most in contact with were:--
(i) The Miao or Miao-tze, as the Chinese call them; or the Mhong or
Hmao, as they call themselves.
(ii) The I-pien (or E-pien), as the Chinese call them; or the Nou Su (or
Ngo Su), as they call themselves.
Probably the Nou Su tribes are what Major Davies calls the Lolo Group in
his third division of the great Tibeto-Burman Family; but I merely
suggest it, as it strikes me that the other branches of that group,
including the Li-su, the La-hu, and the Wo-ni, seem to be descendants of
a larger group, of which the Nou Su predominate in numbers, language,
and customs. However, this by the way.
It may not be common knowledge that in most parts of the Chinese Empire,
even to-day, there are tribes of people, essentially non-Chinese, who
still rigidly maintain their independence, governed by their own native
rulers as they were probably forty centuries ago, long before their
kingdoms were annexed to China Proper.
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