...village, Muang Sing District, Luang Namtha Province. Today, they also live in Vietnam and China.

Many are Buddhists, but still follow elements of their traditional animist religion. They believe in spirits, the most important being the spirit of the village, followed by the spirit of the house. The latter is the spirit of the person who first died after moving into the house. In Tai Neua villages there is still a sasana pam (shaman) who cures diseases and is supposed to shield the villagers against misfortunes. The Tai Neua brought scriptures from China, which they still use in their Buddhist ceremonies and often you can see paper rolls hanging from the roof of the temples.

Today, Tai Neua people do not wear their traditonal costumes any longer, but their elders still recall the design of the garments. According to them Tai Neua women wore a black Phaa Sin with a broad red band at the upper part and thin vertical red stripes on the body and lower part. Particular symbolic motifs were very important in Tai Neua textile design. Several of these symbols and anthropomorphic figures belonged to an era of spirit cults, tattooing and saerfices. Furthermore the traditional costume consisted of a narrow, long-sleeved bodice with two rows of silver clasps, shaoped like butterflies, down the front of the bodice, leaving half the back bare.