1. Clothing customs
Most of the clothing of Nu men and women is made of linen. Women generally wear linen robes with open fronts, wide chests, and ankle lengths. At the interface between the front and back of the clothes, Garnish with a piece of red trimmed cloth. Young girls like to add an apron to the outside of the linen robe and embroider various laces on the edges.
Men generally wear linen robes with an open front, broad chest, and knee length. A cloth belt or rope is tied around the waist, and the front part above the waist is pulled up to facilitate loading. Both men and women of the Nu people pay attention to decoration. Women use corals, agates, beads, shells, silver coins, etc. to make beautiful headdresses and chest ornaments and wear them on their heads and chests. Wear coral earrings on your ears, and like to wrap your head with blue cloth or floral scarf.
Men have long hair, wrap their heads with green cloth, and wrap leggings with linen. They like to carry machetes on their waists, crossbows and arrow bags on their shoulders.
2. Living customs
The staple food of the Nu people is corn. The Nu people in the northern part of Gongshan also learned from Tibetans how to grow highland barley and oats and eat highland barley noodles. A small number of Nu people are influenced by Tibetan lifestyle and sometimes eat butter tsampa. In addition to chicken, fish, pig, sheep and beef, the non-staple food also includes hunted game. Nu people generally like to cook thick rice porridge with vegetables and game cooked in it, which is delicious.
Both men and women of the Nu people like to drink and drink heavily. Nu houses are divided into two types: wooden houses and bamboo strip houses, which are built by laying wooden boards or bamboo strip mats on wooden piles. There are usually two rooms, with the outer room for entertaining guests and a fire pit, with an iron or stone tripod placed on the fire pit for cooking. The inner room is the master's bedroom and food storage, and outsiders are not allowed to enter.
Extended information:
The Nu people call themselves "Nusu" (Lushui), "Anu" (Fugong), "Along" (Gongshan) and "Ruorou" (Lanping), consider themselves to be ancient residents on both sides of the Nujiang and Lancang rivers.
They may have two origins: the Nu people in Lushui County (formerly Bijiang County) call themselves "Nusu", which has the same pronunciation and meaning as the "Nuosu" called "Nuosu" by the Yi people in the Liangshan Mountains today. Yuan Dynasty documents state that They and the Yi people in today's Xichang and Zhaotong areas are collectively called "Lulu Man", while the Nu people in Fugong and Gongshan counties may come from the ancient residents of Gongshan area in the north of the Nujiang River who called themselves "Along" or "Long".
This part of the Nu people and the Dulong people had a close kinship relationship in ancient times. To this day, the Gongshan Nu language and the Dulong language can still talk to each other. Due to long-term exchanges, these two groups of people gradually got closer in the Nujiang area, influenced and integrated with each other, and gradually developed and formed today's "Nu people", but each of them still retains some of its own characteristics.
In the Nu area, rivers gather and mountains overlap. The Lancang River, Nu River, and Dulong River run through the territory from north to south. The east bank of the Nu River is Biluo Snow Mountain, and the west bank is Gaoligong Mountain, with thousands of cliffs and continuous snow peaks. The Nujiang River Valley is low-lying, with an altitude of only about 800 meters. The difference between the valley and the mountain top is more than 3,000 meters, forming my country's famous Nujiang Grand Canyon.
People's Daily Online—Nu people