Most of the converts tend to make a radical break from their pre-Protestant life;
this has an unintended consequence of separation from the groups to which they once
belonged. One young non-Christian Hmong told me that he was willing to be my
guide and interpreter in his home village but not in the neighbouring one. This
was not because of the inconvenience of distance — the two villages are separated
from each other by a 20-metre wide road yet belong to two different administrative
units — but because of mutual antagonism: ‘I can’t even come close to these guys
— the Christian Hmong — not to mention talk to them. They don’t want to talk
to us. If they talk, they call us “the long tails” (bon dài ̣ đuôi).’ This is a term of mockery
developed since Protestantism was introduced to the Hmong. The Protestant
Hmong ridicule the non-Christian Hmong for still dragging behind them the long
tail of traditional burdens. I observed in several communes young Hmong
Protestants who refuse to pursue or marry a non-Protestant partner. Some explained
that this was because ‘they [the non-Christian Hmong villager] laughed at us and
ridiculed us as “Hmong with wings”. They often provoked us by shouting to their friends in our presence “Look! Look! They are flying!” or ‘Why don’t you stay home
and eat your Lord’s words instead of coming here to work in the field?’ The reference
to ‘wings’ and ‘flying’ is a way to shame the converts because when they first listened
to FEBC’s programme, many of them had mistakenly interpreted the Christian message
as being about the coming of the Hmong King. Practising to fly was one of their
most extreme preparations for the return of the King.