Many people, on first hearing of the Mosuo (摩梭), think at once of a "Kingdom of Women" or a "matriarchal society", and imagine that men have no status there. That is a misunderstanding. Mosuo society is neither patriarchal nor matriarchal; in scholars' words, it "values women without belittling men" (重女不轻男) — the mother heads the family's economy and daily life, the maternal uncle handles ritual and sacrifice, and men have their own world and their own dignity; the two are relatively equal.
Mother's Bone, Father's Blood: The Origin of Life Is Female
The Mosuo hold a strong idea of "mother's bone, man's blood" (母骨男血), which is the opposite of the understanding in a patrilineal society. They believe that the origin of life is the female, the mother, the root and bone. The conception of a life first takes shape in the mother's body; through ten months of pregnancy, the form — including the skeleton, the flesh, the features — matures within the mother.
As for the seminal essence the father provides, the Mosuo hold that it is not important: that essence changes and flows away; even if not used, it naturally disappears and naturally replenishes itself — it is a state of passing, not a fixed product. The female is different: she nurtures a life with her own organs and her own blood and water, so the source of life is the mother's body.
This idea permeates the language. In Mosuo, large, beautiful things take the suffix "mi" (母, mother): the mother house is "ri mi" (the mother's great house); the Mother Lake is "xiena mi"; a big tree is "sizi mi". Small things take "ruo" (男, male): a stone is "lu ruo"; a sapling is "sizi ruo". "The mother is the great" has become a fixed way of thinking — but it carries not the slightest disparagement. The small being designated by the male term is yet another way matrilineal culture permeates daily life.
The Mother Holds the Purse, the Uncle Holds the Ritual
In a Mosuo family, the mother leads everything, while the maternal uncle handles ritual; locals describe this household as "the uncle holds the ritual, the mother holds the purse".
The woman who manages the economy is called the "ri mi dabu", which you can understand as the housekeeper — she controls the family's income and outgo and arranges production and daily life. Men are away driving horse caravans and trading, or driving vehicles for transport; the money they earn they hand to the mother or the eldest sister. Asked whether they feel it is not worth it, Gewa Genruo, an 80-odd-year-old former caravan man, answers crisply: "How could that be? They work the fields at home just as hard; otherwise, what would we eat out on the road?"
The maternal uncle's role lies in ritual and sacrifice: choosing a house foundation, calculating auspicious days for felling timber, weddings and funerals, the coming-of-age rite, and escorting the soul back to the ancestral land — all these require the uncle or a Daba (达巴) to preside. In a matrilineal family, the uncle raises his sisters' children, while his own children are raised by the uncle on the other side — the roles of father and uncle are exchanged between two households.
A Man's World: Horse Caravans, Chicken Feet and Lovers
Mosuo men have their own life and their own emotional space; they are not marginalised as outsiders imagine.
In the past, the most important path open to a man was to lead a horse caravan and trade. There is a Mosuo proverb: "The Han grow rich by their land; the Mosuo grow rich by their horses." From the tusi (chieftain) and head steward down, with their horse trains, to the common people with their own caravans, you could say the Mosuo knowledge of the outside world was carried on horseback. Gewa Genruo began driving horses for others at 16, going from Lijiang, Dali and Baoshan as far as Myanmar, and via Gongshan and Fugong into Tibet, Nepal and India — a round trip taking a year, a journey staked on life itself. He drove horses for more than ten years before he earned enough to buy 5 horses; at 31 he finally had his own caravan.
The caravan men have a song that has come down: "I carry a wooden bowl stained with years; where, I wonder, can I drink a bowl of hot tea? I grip a cold long knife; where, I wonder, does some danger await me? If I meet some unforeseen storm, take my wooden bowl and my long knife back to the temple." When their life is about to end, what they think of is returning the tools of survival and of conquest to their spiritual home.
There is a very moving custom in Mosuo families called "chicken feet". Locals slaughter a pig only once a year (in the 10th lunar month, made into preserved pork and cured meat to last the year); on ordinary days the best meat is chicken. Every time a chicken is killed in the home, the sisters set aside the best chicken foot for the brother who is away from home. When he returns, the wall of the mother house is hung with row after row of dried chicken feet — and at such moments, these men who have conquered high altitudes often burst into tears; however bitter and weary the road, it all feels worth it. Gewa Genruo says: "Every time I came home, what moved me most were those chicken feet left for me. Though they are dried and can no longer be eaten, that is their affection."
As for lovers: under the Walking Marriage (走婚) system, Mosuo men, like Mosuo women, are emotionally independent, with no possessive bond. Gewa Genruo had two beloved women in turn; one bore him a son and two daughters and lives in the same village, but he has never looked after them — that is the children's uncle's task; the son of his other lover often comes to visit him. Both of his lovers have passed away, but he is not lonely: in a four-generation matrilineal household, his sisters and his nephews and nieces are his kin.
Changes Today
As tourism has seeped in, the popular tourist areas such as Luoshui (落水) and Lige (里格) have almost no strict gender division of labour — whoever does a job depends on convenience, and work is not necessarily divided into "men's work" and "women's work". But in most Mosuo farming communities, the ancient division of labour still holds; even within the clans of a whole village, people exchange labour and co-operate, and especially at planting and harvest time you can still see those lively scenes of collective labour.
"Valuing women without belittling men" is not a slogan; it is a way of life that has continued for more than 1,600 years. Within this structure there are no mother-in-law–daughter-in-law conflicts, no quarrels between husband and wife, no property disputes — women manage the affairs of the home, men manage affairs outside, each with their own dignity, each with their own world.
Related reading: Walking marriage is no legend: the truth about Mosuo marriage and family · The Mosuo mother house and hearth: faith and life in a log house