The Kingdom of Women
Imagine a people whose language has no word for " marriage" or "husband." Just such a tribe lives in the remote mountains of southwestern China. Lake Lugu, known as the "Country of Women" is home to the Mosuo, one of the few remaining matriarchal societies left in the world.
Mosuo culture revolves around women: the women make all the important decisions, control the family's resources, and pass their surnames onto their children. Rather than marry, a Mosuo woman takes many lovers over her lifetime, and the resulting children will always live with her. While the Mosuo language has a word for "mother", there is no word for "father" and Mosuo children refer to all older men as “uncle”.
Getting to Lake Lugu isn't easy, and the isolation from the outside world helped the tribe keep their customs and culture until a few years ago, few outsiders had ever heard of Lake Lugu or the Mosuo.
But after anthropologists first started to document the tribe's customs, word got out about the uniqueness of their culture and the beauty of the lake. These reports attracted travelers and, at times, this once-isolated paradise seems filled with tourists who've come to gawk at the locals. |
