Tradition of the Kreung tribe: each girl “invites” anyone into her hut until she finds the one (5 photos)

The Kreung are a people of about 20,000 people who live in the Ratanakiri province in northeastern Cambodia.





This tribe is historically a matrilineal animist people. That is, they still worship various spirits, and trace their family exclusively from the maternal line. But despite the matrilineal nature of the culture of the Kreung people, villages are often ruled by a council of elders or a male headman.

The women of the tribe are very revered, however, this does not make them lazy. Every day they farm rice, look after the house and children, and perform other household duties such as fetching water and raising pets. Men are responsible for hunting and performing most of the physically demanding agricultural work. Including construction.



The daily lifestyle of the tribe is quite interesting as their villages consist of bamboo huts located around a central meeting house. These huts built can range from huge to small single-family structures. They can be built close to the ground or on stilts.

However, the Kreung tribe has become famous throughout the world for its rather unusual tradition of “love huts”, where every young woman must move out at the age of 15-16 years and invite any man of her own free will. Yes, it sounds a little crazy for the 21st century.

But what kind of tradition is this?





What do you think will happen if you build a young girl her own house where she can live and invite as many boys as she wants?

This may sound like a recipe for broken hearts and unplanned pregnancies, but the Kreung tribe considers the practice a centuries-old tradition that they have no intention of breaking.

That is why, for several hundred years now, every girl who has reached adolescence is required by her father to build her own bamboo hut away from her home, where she has the opportunity to invite any men there.

The tribe believes that a "shack" like this is the best way for their daughters to gain experience and also find true love.



And it is important to note that girls are the main ones in this tribe. Only they can issue an invitation to their hut, often just to talk. But any man can expressly declare his desire to visit the hut, and then receive consent or refusal.

It is also important to add that the Kreung tribe has no connection to nationality. Local girls can invite foreigners and even ordinary tourists to their huts. By the way, Chinese tourists use this most actively (but more on that below).

There is no violence among the Kreung people. Men there are not aggressive and do not get offended if, after an invitation, they do not get what they wanted. Because they are taught from childhood that girls should be treated with great respect and respect, because their people are matrilineal.



Sometimes it happens that a girl is in a relationship with several at once, so that after some certain time she can choose only one.

Unwanted pregnancy in such situations is not uncommon, but usually the groom whom the girl chooses raises the child as his own.

However, with all this, in recent years the unusual Kreung tradition has been gradually dying out. After all, their huts are threatened by several factors:

Modern technologies;

Modernization;

Relocation of young people.

Most of the young girls in the Kreung tribe are increasingly gaining access to modern technology, social media and generally becoming more modernized. They do not want to live in primitive conditions, and are trying to get the opportunity to leave their home.

And Chinese tourists often take advantage of this, who come in hundreds every year to the villages of the Kreung tribes (in search of wives) to “stay” in such a hut and then invite this girl to live with them in a large city (usually in China). And girls very often agree, because moving from a bamboo hut to a big city with a rich Chinese groom is quite profitable. A man of (even) average income by Chinese standards is a very rich man for the Kreung tribe. But for local Chinese women - not rich enough.So, many Chinese often look for wives everywhere except in their homeland.