| Customs |
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| Thursday,August 24,2006 Posted: 09:29 BJT(0129 GMT) |
1.Eating habits
Myanmar people usually eat rice noodles、wheat flour noodles or fried rice at breakfast. The lunch and supper are more formal at which they usually eat rice as staple food. The features of myanmar food is fatty, sour, spicy and heavy-flavoured.
2.Clothing
The myanmar costume is similar to that of Dai Minority of China. People wear cylindric skirts，which is called Longyi for men’s wear and Htamain for women’s wear. The jupe for men is a long sleeved collarless short jacket with buttons down the front, whilst a short jacket with buttons from upper right to lower left for women. Men wear Myanmar style hats on formal occasions, while women often do up their long hair and decorate it with fresh flowers. They put a kind of fragrant wood powder called Thanakha on the face, which is good for cooling, sunproof and skin care. All Myanmar people, except the armyman, wear slippers on all occasions.
3.Myanmar Names
There are no surnames in Myanmar people’s names. However, an appellation should be put before a firstname to distinguish different genders, ages and social positions. For the elder or men of high social positions, their names should be called with a prefix of U (which means uncle); for peers prefixed with a Ko（which means elder brothers）; for juniors prefixed with a Mao（younger brothers）. Similarly , a Du should come before the name of women who are elder or of higher social positions than you are (it means aunts); and a Ma for peers or juniors (it means sisters or girls) .
4.Religions
Over 85% of the Myanmar poplation are Buddhists. The Myanmar Buddhism(which is known as the Theravada Buddihism ) is from the same religion as the Chinese Buddhism (known as Mahaayaana Buddhism), but they are different factions. Myanmar Buddists are pious. They patter every morning and everning; they go to temple for pilgrimage and almsgiving every 1st and 15th of a month in Myanmar calendar. They dine monks at home or give alms in temples when there is a wedding, funeral or birthday ceremony. The Buddhism has a history in Myanmar of as long as thousands of years. It has penetrated into every aspects of social lives and helps form the deep-rooted ideology of the Myanmar people. However, the Buddhism is not made to be the national religion in avoidance of religions conflicts. Some minorties obtain Islamic, Catholic or Hindu religons. |
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