This video was taken ten years ago when I spent Christmas in this remote Hmong village, visiting a former student's grandmother and uncles. I've uploaded some of the video to our YouTube channel and it's always fun to see what comments people might make about different videos. The latest comment about this video was written in Hmong and stated, "kwv tij hmoob cas nej yuav txiv hlub ua luaj li os...hmoob lub neej uas txom 2 nyem...ib txwm."
Translated into English it says "Hmong Brothers, you guys are very sad/adorable. The Hmong lives are very tragic/ heartwarming... always."
It takes a lot of work to edit videos and upload video to YouTube and write a description that helps viewers understand more about the context of that particular video. But it's part of our mission and passion to help people understand Laos from multiple perspectives. And most of the time videos get viewed and no comments are give, but when we receive a thoughtful response like this it makes it all worth it. It's only through a "conversation" that we all gain a greater understanding of the world around us.
This comment in Hmong is really quite profound because it begs the question of how do the Hmong fortunate enough to have immigrated to other countries and living in better circumstances, think about their Hmong "brothers and sisters" still living their traditional lives in Laos? I don't think they get thought about a lot and I think that they are a diminishing reservoir of traditional Hmong culture and somehow the Hmong who are living in the fast lane of the 21st century in that US and other countries could/should be more appreciative and supportive of these Hmong, who for various reasons are still living their lives as Lao Soung, the Lao of the mountain tops. For better or worse...
In the Hmong storycloths we sell at our Yahoo store here, you can see so marvelously embroidered the kinds of traditional activities that make up the lives of the Hmong still living in these remote villages. We wrote a blog describing all the activities shown in one storycloth here.
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