Our visit to Xieng Khouang coincided with the Hmong New Year. The most visible aspect of the Hmong New Year and the most captivating for outside observers is the courtship ritual that involves adolescent boys and girls tossing a ball (pov pob). Girls start by tossing the ball underhand in small groups and interested boys join with them to form long parallel lines of participants facing each other. Traditionally when one of the partners drops the ball, they are required to give the other person a small token or ornament. In order to recover the lost item, the boy or girl will sing to the other person. Although we saw some occasional singing it appears that, in the current iteration of the tradition, ball tossing is just a chance to engage the object of your affection's attention and woo her. The pictures and videos below clarify the explanation above. For those of you wanting to learn more about the Hmong, the definitive source can be reached by clicking here.
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