| People | loba · |
| Region | Tibet, Lhoyü: Mainling and Mêdog counties in Nyingchi |
| Role | historical storyline |
Tea
Barter trade at the Himalayan border: the loba carried their main craft to the Tibetan side — fine rattan and bamboo weaving — along with hides, pepper, and mountain wild plants, and took in return salt, grain, and compressed 边销茶 biānxiāochá coming from the north. The loba grew no tea and led no caravans: their tea connection was border barter in Mainling (Nanyi township) and Mêdog, where the brick was broken on the spot and carried away in pieces, in their own woven baskets. This is how Mainling’s ethnography is documented: weaving is the commodity, tea the counter-commodity.
Crown growth
A woven basket-measure the size of a fist: fine rattan check weave, no lid, open top, with a dark chip of brick tea and a pinch of rock salt visible inside, and a twisted rattan cord along the upper rim. It differs from the cibik plank box in that there is no lid at all, and the upper rim at 6 mm reads as a ragged open ring of weave rather than a straight solid edge.
Headwear
A coarsely woven rattan band across the forehead and temples, with a thick twisted cord along the edge, and from the back extends ONE wide stiff tongue of weaving that runs down the back to the shoulder blades and shields the neck from rain and sun. The crown is open, the growth stands free, and the weave hugs it in a ring.
Outline at 6 mm. A band with a nape tongue, and now there is just one: a thin line across the forehead plus a single flat stiff strip of weaving down the back to the shoulder blades. pushinka has left this seat — nothing hangs down her back, and the ends flare out on either side of the face. It differs from bayczi in that the tail is single and stiff and wide, from solonka (Drung) in the absence of a hanging basket weight on cords, from zharok in that the strip ends at the shoulder blades rather than running the full height, and from myatka in the absence of a pointed spire above the crown.
Clothing
A hemp vest reaching to the hip, a woven belt, a large rattan backpack on a strap, bare feet.
Palette
Honey ochre of rattan, gray-beige hemp, dark chestnut tea chip, off-white salt.