Burma image, WA0033. Nung girl smoking Dunhill pipe. P. R. In this picture, this Nung girl is wearing a head cloth, which is usually associated with Hkahku women's costume. Green wrote of the Nung peoples he referred to as 'Cis-Nmai Nung' (those who lived on the west of the Nmai river, towards the Sumprabum/Putao region in the north of what is today Kachin State) in his Dissertation for Cambridge University in 1934 that: *****The Cis-Nmai Nungs are in appearance very similar to the Nungs. They have, however, during the last eight generations absorbed much more Hkahku culture. Influential Nungs have in cases married Hkahku or Duleng women. The men's kit, although generally made of hemp is in design similar to that of the Hkahku. The youths bob their hair and the old men now wear Hkahku tartan pugrees. As usual, the women are more conservative and generally dress in a similar way to their Nmai cousins. A Hkahku embroidered waist band is often added and the breast cloth is sometimes seen. The young girls wear their hair long with a fringe on the forehead. The married women part their hair and tie it in a bun on the nape of their necks in Manipuri fashion. Like the Hkahku the women wear little jewellery. More than two necklaces are unusual, and cowries are nor used. They fasten their skirts on the right in Nmai fashion. [J H Green, Dissertation, 1934:216-217]
*****This Nung girl, therefore, would appear not to conform to Green's ideal of Nung women being more conservative in their dress and has adopted a Hkahku head cloth in the same way as was apparently becoming popular among Nung men in this region [see Photo 0037]. She is wearing bamboo tubes as earplugs [see Photo 0004] but she has not chosen in this case to use the bamboo as a receptacle for carrying her betel nut, etc. It was quite common for Nung women and men to smoke tobacco in a pipe.
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