Background, Training Reports

Mangshi Town

The Mangshi Town, Da-wan Village being one of its villages, is the largest town in Luxi County and even in Dehong Prefecture, enjoying an area of 427.5 square kilometres and having a total population of 140,000, the majority of whom are Dai and Han, intermingled by a small number of Jingpo and De’Ang.

The Dai people living in Myanmar have a different name of Shan and live mainly in the Shan State. In Luxi County, Dehong Prefecture, Dai people are a major ethnic minority group, who live in fertile valley areas such as Mangshi Town, Fengping Town, Zhefang Town and Xuangang Township where crops grow well and transportation is convenient. Therefore, Dai people are relatively rich compared with other ethnic minority groups, even richer than most of the Han people living on farms.

Dai Village

Dai is a major ethnic group in Mangshi Town and they live in rich fertile valley areas. We choose a Dai village this time not only because we wanted to include a different ethnic group in the project, but also because Dai youngsters are facing serious problems concerning HIV/AIDS and drug use.

Da-wan Village is located in the north of Mangshi Town, 2 km away from the county city. There are 183 households in the village, totaling 883 villagers, of whom 871 are Dai, and the rest are Han. There are 410 women in this village.

The village used to suffer a lot of loss of life due to drug abuse and HIV/AIDS. But after some years of propaganda work by the local authorities, now there are fewer villagers using drugs. Now there are 9 drug users and 9 HIV carriers (the 9 HIV carriers are not necessarily the 9 drug users, though some of them are doing drugs and suffering from HIV/AIDS at the same time.)