| People | De’ang · 德昂族 Dé’ángzú |
| Region | Yunnan, Dehong Prefecture and Zhenkang County on the border with Lincang |
| Role | growers |
Tea
酸茶 suānchá the De’ang way: large-leaf Yunnan material, wilted in a bamboo tray without sun, steam fixation 蒸茶杀青, rolling, packed into bamboo, anaerobic fermentation for 50–70 days, then pounded 舂制. The technique 德昂族酸茶制作技艺 was added to the national list in 2021 and included in the UNESCO nomination of 2022.
Crown growth
A short two-strand twisted braid made of pounded, steamed leaf: two strands twisted together into a single rope rising slightly above the skull, its top end torn so the fibres show. No curl, no bud, just a braid, because after pounding the mass pulls apart into strands.
Headdress
A low dark wrap with a slot, and along its entire lower edge, a ring of small wool pompoms hanging down to ear level. At 6 mm the silhouette reads as a headband with a fringe of individual balls: Yanta’s wrap is solid and sits entirely below the crown, Suncha’s shaggy mass stands above the head like a ragged haystack, and here it is a thin band with a row of discrete dots underneath. Unlike Bulan’s wrap, it is no wider than the skull and has no side coils.
Clothing
The key feature is not on the head but at the waist: 腰箍 yāogū — five lacquered rattan hoops worn over the clothing, giving the silhouette a barrel at the waist. Plus a black jacket with two rows of red piping, a striped tube skirt, leg wraps, and a shoulder bag. In the hands, a bamboo stalk stoppered with a leaf shoot.
Palette
Black body in three tones, red piping in two threads, hoops lacquered in red, ochre and black, one silver point at the clasp. No green goes into the headdress — the wrap is black-brown.
Why this is not a caricature
The waist hoops are treated as a work belt, which is what they are, not as an exotic oddity: there are five of them and they read clearly, not twenty turning the silhouette into an attraction barrel. Festive silver sets are not used at all. The clan epic 达古达楞格莱标, which traces the people to a tea leaf, is condensed on the card to a single line as something the bearers themselves tell, not as our finding, and no sacred attributes from it are depicted. The character is busy doing something — pulling a stalk from a pit — rather than posing: a working posture avoids the register of the “happy singing minority” that any set of bright costumes slips into. Since 2026-08-15 the ethnonym has been published openly — in the character’s name and in the file name.