by Jim Goodman
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| the FIrst Turn of the Nu River |
The
usual way to enter the Nujiang Canyon in western Yunnan is by road to Liuku,
the prefecture capital. Already
the scenery typical of Nujiang is apparent. High mountains topping 3000 meters flank both sides of the
river. Going north to the top end
of the canyon, the mountains just keep getting higher and often stand very
close to the river. By Fugong they
are over 4000 meters, peaks swathed in snow and by northern Gongshan County,
visible from Bingzhongluo, even crest 5000 meters. But it’s not only the mountains that make Bingzhongluo an
officially designated Scenic Area.
The district is also blessed with some of the best river scenery in the
province and home to an ethnic mix of Nu, Lisu and Tibetan communities,
attractions that can be savored even when clouds obscure the snow-mantled
peaks.
From
Gongshan Bingzhongluo is 43 km north.
The ticket booth for entry is just before Shuangla, about 7 km
south. From here the road rises
gradually until it is about two hundred meters above the river, passing what is
called the First Turn of the Nu River.
Here the river loops a plot of land backed by high cliffs that forms one
of the “toes” of Biluoshan, the mountain range on the eastern side of the
river. The road opposite is an
outstanding engineering feat, cut from steep mountain cliffs. In the beginning of this century it was
still a little hazardous drive, subject to sudden landslides, and passengers
all had to disembark and walk a kilometer or so around the loop. But after another kilometer we rounded
the cliff and got our first glimpse of both Bingzhongluo and the other “toe” of
Biluoshan.
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| Zanahong village, the other "toe" of Biluoshan |
Like
the First Turn village, this one, slightly larger, lay on a spur of land backed
by steep cliffs, but also connected to the other side by a suspension
bridge. The village, Zanahong, is
Nu, the farms spread out in front of the houses, with walnut groves at the
lower end. It’s about a
thirty-minute walk up a gradual slope past Lisu farms from here to the
town. Bingzhongluo lies on a long,
plateau-like spur as high above the river as the road at the First Turn. It’s basically a one-street town, with
a couple hotels and a few restaurants, only lively on Tuesday market days. Never mind the town, though. The natural beauty of the place just
demands exploration.
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| Bingzhongluo |
To
the northwest rises Kawagapu, 5173 meters high, the tallest peak in
Nujiang. The best view of this is
from the top of the mountain beside the road entering Bingzhongluo. A dirt road zigzags up the side, but I
used goat path shortcuts to ascend in an hour. From cabins at the end of the road it’s a short walk to the
platform enabling a bird’s-eye view of the First Turn of the Nu River. Returning to descend affords
appreciation of Kawagapu and the Bingzhongluo setting, as well as other snow
mountains of well over 4000 meters.
From
Bingzhongluo it’s a two-hour hike north to the Stone Gate, a pair of high
boulders with sheer cliffs flanking the riverbanks. A road was cut through the cliff on the western side,
continuing another ten km to Qiunatong, just beyond Wuli, a Nu village on the
Biluoshan side. Cut off by a sheer
cliff from Qiunatong, the people centuries ago hollowed out a trail in the
cliff through which residents and caravans could pass.
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| ancient trail to Wuli |
When
I first visited the area in the early 2000s caravans were still a part of life
in Bingzhongluo, one of the last places in Yunnan, transporting goods from
Yunnan to Tibet. The journey back
and forth took 15 days and could include up to forty animals. A new paved road past Qiunatong opened
a few years later, putting a virtual end to that tradition. Caravans couldn’t compete with trucks.
Depending
on which season, the scenery on the Nu River will vary. It’s always a swift river, full of
rapids, moving at a rate of up to seven meters per second in some places, but
the color and volume changes. In
the summer it is brown and full, though it never floods its banks. In the winter it is blue-green, running
at a lower level, sometimes exposing little beach-like slivers of white sand,
such as on the “toes” of Biluoshan and villages just south of the First Turn. Likewise, the land scenery will vary
with the seasons. Autumn features
patches of red and gold in the forested hills and spring sees the blooming of
umpteen kinds of wildflowers.
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| the Stone Gate |
The
villages adjacent to Bingzhongluo are Lisu, but most settlements in the
district are Nu, the aboriginals of the district, who migrated here a thousand
years ago from the Lancangjiang Valley (Upper Mekong) over the Biluo Mountains
to the east. They settled near and
above the river, built houses of wood with roofs of slate tiles, plowed fields
with two bullocks yoked together and used heated stones as one of their cooking
methods. The other major community
in the area is Tibetan, particularly in Puhua village, on the tableland just
north of Bingzhongluo, across a gorge cut by a stream running past the Nu
village of Jiasheng.
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| Nu houses and a passing caravan behind them |
The first Tibetan into the area was a
monk of the Karmapa sect from eastern Tibet, whose mission was to convert the
animist Nu to the Tibetan brand of Buddhism. He made Puhua his base and was soon joined by Tibetan
settlers. The move was part of an
expansionist campaign by lamas and officials in Diqing and Kangpu, on the
Lancangjiang, to extend not only their religion but also political control over
frontier areas beyond the direct reach of the Qing government.
Both
conversion and Tibetan immigration were slow but steady. In 1782 a temple and monastery went up
in Puhua, from where Tibetans administered the whole district. But they were not very kind to the Nu
converts, looked down on them as inferiors and forced them to pay land use tax
under the claim all the district’s lands that the Nu had been cultivating for
centuries actually belonged to the monastery. Finding life as Buddhists was not improving their lives, the
Nu began converting to Christianity when the first French Catholic priests
began proselytizing in Gongshan County from the late 19th century.
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| Nu woman with Nujiang-style pipe |
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| young Nu woman in traditional style |
Finding
the new religion encouraged Nu insubordination, the Puhua lamas organized
attacks on the churches in the early 20th century. This provoked Chinese military
intervention, the destruction of the monastery (rebuilt afterwards) and the
incorporation of Bingzhongluo district into the provincial administration. A century later ethnic and religious
animosities have long been extinct.
Nu and Tibetan intermarry.
Some Tibetans are now Christian, while some Nu are still Buddhist,
including a few of the monks at Puhua.
When
the Tibetans first brought Buddhism to Bingzhongluo, the Nu discovered an
interpretation of the world that was far more complex, organized and
encompassing than their own simple animist concepts. As a people who’d been beyond the perimeter of Chinese culture,
the Nu also felt the Tibetan religion to be the product of a society more
powerful, advanced, sophisticated and prestigious than anything hitherto
encountered.
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| TIbetan monastery at Puhua |
For
the Nu, proof of Tibetan cultural superiority was in the latter’s ability to
establish political control over people who greatly outnumbered them. Besides Buddhism, the Tibetans also had
a martial tradition. The Nu did
not. Tibetans also used better
tools and were better farmers, passing on their knowledge to local Nu, which
enabled them to increase agricultural production. Tibetan influence on the Nu persisted even after the Nu
adopted Christianity. Tibetan chortens stand in the fields of
Christian Nu villages and strings of Buddhist prayer flags flutter across the
canyon next to the Christian Nu village of Jiasheng. Many Nu women dress in the Tibetan style, with long-sleeved
blouses and the colorful, horizontally striped apron.
The
Nu have their own traditional style clothing, featuring a vertically striped
wraparound long skirt with a distinctive, subtle arrangement of subdued
colors. Women weave the cloth on a
back-strap loom, which can be hooked up to a house post, tree trunk, or even
the back of a tractor-trailer. The
cloth is also used for blankets, headscarves, shoulder bags and vests worn by
both men and women.
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| on the trail to A-rong's cave |
The
unique colored stripe pattern Nu people attribute to their ancient culture-bearing
heroine A-rong. She created the
design after watching a sunset.
The Nu also credit her with inventing the rope-bridge, supposedly
because she was enamored by a young man on the other side of the river. With a giant crossbow she fired a line
fixed to an arrow to the other shore, fastened her end to a tree and scampered
across. She also introduced
irrigation canals and other agricultural methods and was renowned for both her
beauty and her intelligence.
These
qualities aroused the ardor of a local bandit chief who tried repeatedly to woo
her. Meeting constant rebuffs, he
then seized her and sealed her in a cave near Bingzhongluo, where she died and
turned into stone. Time passed and
eventually the Nu built a shrine to her in this cave and instituted an annual
festival in her honor on the 15th day (full moon) of the 3rd
lunar month. Nowadays it is the
biggest event of the year in the Bingzhongluo area, celebrated by the Nu from
all the district’s villages. The A-rong
story is something every Nu knows, so whether they are Christian, Buddhist,
animist or atheist, they will come to her cave-shrine this day because it’s
kind of Nu National Day.
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| Tibetan hostesses welcome devotees |
The
Nu call it Xiannujie, Heavenly Maiden Festival, but it is also known as the
Festival of Fresh Flowers for the many wildflowers blooming at the time that
are also part of the offerings at the shrine. In its contemporary version the event includes a stage show
of Nu, Tibetan, Lisu and Dulong dances in the town and a lively market scene
with merchants hawking goods ranging from cheap manufactured items brought up
from Gongshan to ethnic minority handicrafts, Tibetan antiques and
paraphernalia, fruits, kebabs, snacks, rice spirits and beer.
The
main event, though, is the visit to A-rong’s cave shrine, where the host for
the day is not Nu, but the Tibetan village of Puhua. Devotees begin the one-hour hike there from Bingzhongluo
from early morning. The route
bends around and behind Puhua, affording a fine view of that village and Stone
Gate rising beyond it. Halfway to the cave, devotees pass through an entrance
gate erected by the Puhua hosts, where four beautifully dressed young Tibetan
women offer people welcoming cups of refreshment—water first, then rice beer,
finally rice spirits. From there
it’s still a long walk to the cave, but the spot is soon visible thanks to the
many lines of prayer flags strung from the trees above it.
Inside the cave flower offerings,
especially azaleas, ears of corn, representing the agricultural knowledge
A-rong introduced, and votive lamps surround A-rong’s shrine. Overhead droop two long stalactites
said to be A-rong’s breasts. Water
slowly drips off the ends of these and some devotees collect these drops in
glass jars, which takes several minutes to fill, and smear it on their heads
and faces, drink it or take it home for private ritual use. Others prostrate before the shrine or
circumambulate it a few times and kowtow afterwards.
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| circumambulating A-rong's shrine |
On
a slope below the cave devotees next stop at the tent erected for a group of
Puhua lamas conducting prayers with the aid of old books and the occasional
addition of flute, drum and viol accompaniment. One monk offers rice-beer to anyone who comes inside to pray
or to listen. The scene around the
cave stays active until late afternoon, for Han and Lisu from further down the
canyon, as well as Nu from more distant villages, continue to arrive.
Back
in Bingzhongluo the returning crowds explore the markets, sample the snacks,
watch the dances, get drunk and hop buses going south. By ten p.m. the shows are over and only
the die-hard revelers remain around the few drink and food stalls still
operating. The next day city
cleaners dismantle the stage and sweep the streets. The Nu put away their ethnic clothing until the next
excuse. Color and excitement
concluded, the town reverts to its usual level of minimal activity and all
that’s left to enjoy on a normal day again in Bingzhongluo is, well, the
utterly magnificent scenery.
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| young Nu woman collects water from the"breast" of A-rong |
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