ABSTRACT
De’ang is a Mon-Khmer-speaking people who, known for their tea farming livelihood, reside in the subtropical monsoon uplands of southwestern Yunnan bordering with Myanmar. For the De’ang, tea is not only a traditional farming crop for their market exchange, but is also an embodiment of their cultural memories and religious practice. This chapter demonstrates that the De’ang often use tea as an important object of Buddhist offering rituals to yield merit for their lives. This ritual practice produces what the author called ‘merit-landscape’ in their living space. Based upon the author’s ethnographic research, this chapter argues that the merit-landscape making conceived in De’ang tea-offering rituals exposes an ecological image with indigenous cultural practices. The manner in which the De’ang balance their morality and the scale of their tea farming in their living space in relation to the impact of development on their transregional livelihood reflects their way of keeping a sustainable relationship between people and environment.
