Exceptionel rich decorated neck ring from the Golden Triangle 04.05.1857
The 3 faces on each side of the central plate is that of an old man who is going to change into a dragon after his death. Therte is story Miao people believe, that good people can turn into a dragon when they die.
An old man was told by a story-teller that he would turn into a dragon. After he died, his family buried him. They were so curious that they dug him out after a few days. But too soon, when they opened the coffin, they found a dragon with an old man's head. (cit. Berringen2006 page 116).
Miao, mountain-dwelling peoples of China, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Thailand, who speak languages of the Hmong-Mien (Miao-Yao) family. Miao is the official Chinese term for four distinct groups of people who are only distantly related through language or culture: the Hmu people of southeast Guizhou, the Qo Xiong people of west Hunan, the A-Hmao people of Yunnan, and the Hmong people of Guizhou, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Yunnan (see China: People). There are some nine million Miao in China, of whom the Hmong constitute probably one-third, according to the French scholar Jacques Lemoine, writing in the Hmong Studies Journal in 2005. The Miao are related in language and some other cultural features to the Yao; among these peoples the two groups with the closest degree of relatedness are the Hmong (Miao) and the Iu Mien (Yao). (Source: Encyclopedia Britannica)
