page_title: Wa States
hierarchical_section_title: Wa States
caption_attribution_description: Wa woman brocade clothes. Clothing exhibited in the Yunnan Nationalities Museum, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
context_page_description: The Wa States was the name formerly given to the Wa Land, the natural and historical region inhabited mainly by the Wa people, an ethnic group speaking an Austroasiatic language. The region is located to the northeast of the Shan States of British Burma, in the area of present-day Shan State of northern Burma and the western zone of Pu'er Prefecture, Yunnan, China.
  Practically the whole Wa region is rugged mountainous territory with steep hills and deep valleys. There were no urban areas. A section of the historical Wa territory was included in the state of Manglon, one of the Shan States. Sir James George Scott visited the Wa States around the turn of the century and wrote about the place, taking pictures of the people and the houses of the area as well. Considered a distant and inaccessible border area by former empires, the British census of 1901 did not include the Wa States, so statistics regarding a population over 50,000 in 1911 are estimates.
  The oral tradition of the Wa people claims that their territory had been much larger in the distant past, an assertion that is confirmed both by Shan and Yunnan Chinese sources.
context_section_description: The Wa States was the name formerly given to the Wa Land, the natural and historical region inhabited mainly by the Wa people, an ethnic group speaking an Austroasiatic language. The region is located to the northeast of the Shan States of British Burma, in the area of present-day Shan State of northern Burma (Myanmar) and the western zone of Pu'er Prefecture, Yunnan, China.
  Practically the whole Wa region is rugged mountainous territory with steep hills and deep valleys. There were no urban areas. A section of the historical Wa territory was included in the state of Manglon, one of the Shan States. Sir James George Scott visited the Wa States around the turn of the century and wrote about the place, taking pictures of the people and the houses of the area as well. Considered a distant and inaccessible border area by former empires, the British census of 1901 did not include the Wa States, so statistics regarding a population over 50,000 in 1911 are estimates.
  The oral tradition of the Wa people claims that their territory had been much larger in the distant past, an assertion that is confirmed both by Shan and Yunnan Chinese sources. The Wa also regard their ancestral territory as being at the centre of the inhabited world. Nowadays part of the area of the former Wa States is included in Wa State, an unrecognised state within Burma.
caption: Traditional Wa female dress and bangles. Yunnan Nationalities Museum.
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