Pumi

Tea

Pumi-style 罐罐茶 guànguànchá: drunk at least three times a day — morning, midday, and evening tea; leaves are placed in a small clay pot 茶罐 and boiled down to a thick bitterness. The second method is the oily one: a piece of butter or lard, a pinch of salt, and pumpkin seed kernels 瓜子仁 are put into a wooden tea cylinder 茶桶, topped with boiling water, and stirred with a stick 打茶棍 until the fat disperses into the water. The description applies to the Lanping Bai and Pumi Autonomous County and to Ninglang, where the Pumi live in compact clusters.

Crown growth

A squeezed brew in the fist: a handful of steamed leaves pressed into a dense rounded lump with FOUR deep grooves from the fingers; the surface is smooth, matte, dark olive, with a dark drop of infusion swollen along the lower edge. At 6 mm the lump’s outline is scalloped, in four lobes, rounded on top: a squat cork with ragged leaf edges and a cut-off top belongs to the Bulan, loose grain — to the Tujia, a layered block with a sharp edge — to the Kazakhs; here it is a monolith with grooves, without a cut or layers.

Headwear

黑布大包头 — a documented large wrap of black cloth, laid not as a flat disc: the coils run narrow and tight around the skull, never exceeding its width, the crown is covered, and the final coil is thrown DIAGONALLY across the crown in a single oblique band and tucked at the left corner of the nape. The slot for the lump is a gap in the crown; the oblique band hugs its base from the side and does not lie over the growth.

Outline at 6 mm. A closed wrap with an oblique roll: a low wrap hugging the skull, the crown covered, and over the coils a single oblique roll-band lies diagonally across the crown from the right temple to the left corner of the nape; from the gap above it rises a lump with grooves. At 6 mm — a smooth closed head with one oblique crossband and a scalloped lump. Distinguished from Aya by the closed crown, from the Tujia by coils not rising into a tower and staying within the skull’s width, from the Menba by the edge above the brow being even all around, without the wedge-shaped notch, from the Nu by the bridge standing over an open crown there, while here the band lies on a solid wrap, from the Dai by the absence of a slanted tower with a band on the shoulder.

Clothing

A hemp shirt with a high collar, wide trousers, a woolen embroidered sash, and a white goatskin hide-cape on the back.

Palette

Black cotton wrap, white goat wool, honey-toned wooden bowl, dark brown infusion with an oily sheen.