Dai

Tea

竹筒香茶 zhútǒng xiāngchá — steamed maocha is packed into a freshly cut joint of sweet bamboo 甜竹 and roasted over charcoal, then the stalk is broken open; separately 糯米香茶 with an herb that imparts a sticky rice aroma

Growth on the crown

A smooth cylinder of compressed tea: a regular column with a cut top and a single spiral seam along its side — the imprint of a bamboo joint. The only regular geometric growth in the set, and this sets it apart from Bulan with his shapeless stopper

Headwear

A long narrow scarf wound HIGH and at a SLANT, with a slot for the cylinder; one end hangs loose and rests on the shoulder. At 6 mm — the only tall asymmetric mass tilting to one side: Ugolek’s hood is symmetrical and distributes weight over both shoulders, Bayczi’s kerchief gives two short ends down the back, while here it is a tilted tower and ONE wide band falling forward across the shoulder

Clothing

A very narrow short jacket in a light tone, a long fitted tube skirt, a linked silver belt, flat sandals. A basket on shoulder straps behind the back, in the hands a freshly cut bamboo joint and a short cutting knife — a working knife, short, sheathed on the belt

Palette

The only light palette in the set: sand, pale pink, bleached blue, white — each in three tones; the silver of the belt is fine-flake. No green on the headwear — the scarf is cream-blue

Why this is not a caricature

The Dai are kept light deliberately: in the set they hold the contrast, and this is a compositional decision, not an “exotic brightness.” The clothing is working, everyday, without ceremonial embroidery and without a single ritual item; the temple theme is not touched at all. The Dai are a cross-border people, related to the Thai, Lao, and Shan, so the card says nothing about membership in the list of the PRC’s peoples and has no ordinal number: it only states where bamboo is cut and how tea is made. The knife is given as a tool for cutting bamboo, short and sheathed — no weapon reading. The dangling end of the scarf lies on the shoulder and rests on it, not hanging as a cantilever: precision in construction matters just as much as in ethnography