Va

Tea

铁板烧茶 tiěbǎn shāochá — the leaf is roasted on an iron sheet or flat stone by the hearth, then dropped into boiling water; the taste is deliberately bitter, 苦茶

Crown growth

A flat scorched plate: a broad leaf pressed on iron, lying almost horizontally and tilted slightly back, edges burnt and curled upward like a boat, dark scorch marks across the surface. The only horizontal growth in the set

Headwear

No headwear — and that is the identifier. Long loose hair with a straight fringe, held by a wide plain rattan hoop. At 6 mm the silhouette is a mass of shoulder-length hair with no head volume at all: the only bare-headed figure in the whole set

Clothing

Short sleeveless top, short skirt with horizontal bands, stacked rattan rings at the neck and calves (the neck reads as a column while the waist stays free — this is how the Va differ from the De’ang), bare feet. In the hands a flat iron plate and a wooden paddle

Palette

Red and black in horizontal bands, each in three tones; indigo absent entirely — the Va are the only ones without it; rattan undyed, ochre. Hoops not to be painted green

Why this is not a caricature

Everything leaning toward headhunting and the ritual circle is struck out: no bull horns, no skulls, no wooden drum 木鼓, not a single shamanic object — it is precisely that layer that turns the Va into a savage attraction in other depictions. The hoop is plain and pattern-free, the rings in natural numbers. Bare-headedness is presented as a working norm, not as “primitiveness”: the words “primitive”, “wild”, “ancient people” are absent from the card by rule. Bare feet are shown without emphasis, as a detail of hearth work. The character is busy roasting, not dancing