Economy
The Mosuo are primarily farmers. Subsistence is mostly based on agriculture. Farmers work "seven hours a day and seven months a year". In the past, they cultivated oats, buckwheat, and flax exclusively. This changed under Han influence at the end of the nineteenth century. Since then, these farmers have also cultivated, among other things, corn, sunflowers, soybeans, potatoes and other vegetables such as pumpkins and beans. Potatoes were their main staple for a while until the mid-twentieth century when they began growing rice. Today it makes up more than half of annual production.
Mosuo also have a collection of livestock. Since the early twentieth century, they have raised buffalo, cows, horses, and goats which originated from Han and Tibetan regions. However, their preferred stock is pigs. Pork plays several important roles in Mosuo society. It is fed to guests, is the obligatory offering at funerals, and used as payment or reimbursement. Hua 2001 insists that it is “a kind of currency and...a symbol of wealth”.
Once a year, regions of Mosuo males gather for a livestock fair. They travel for miles on buses, horses, or foot to attend. Here men sell and trade livestock to supplement household incomes.
The Mosuo fish on Lake Lugu and also set land-based fish traps; however, they do not use motorboats, and catching fish in open water using their very primitive gear is not easy.
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Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“Quidquid luce fuit tenebris agit: but also the other way around. What we experience in dreams, so long as we experience it frequently, is in the end just as much a part of the total economy of our soul as anything we “really” experience: because of it we are richer or poorer, are sensitive to one need more or less, and are eventually guided a little by our dream-habits in broad daylight and even in the most cheerful moments occupying our waking spirit.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)