A Guest of the Cool Mountain Yi

                                                        by Jim Goodman

Yi festival in the mountains of Ninglang County

       Southwest China’s Yi nationality is the fourth largest ethnic minority in the country.  They inhabit mostly mountainous terrain in southern Sichuan, western Guizhou and Guangxi and throughout nearly all of Yunnan, where they form 11% of the province’s population, the most numerous of its 25 ethnic minorities.  Ancestors of Yunnan’s Yi founded the Nanzhao Kingdom, which vied for supremacy with Tang Dynasty China from the 7^th century for control of southwest China until both regimes collapsed in the early 10^th century. 

        Though the Yi permanently lost political power in Yunnan they were still the dominant ethnic group in the successor Bai-run Kingdom of Dali and remained so after the Mongol conquest in the mid-13^th century.  Only when the Ming Dynasty sponsored large-scale Han immigration to Yunnan did the proportion of Yi in Yunnan begin to reduce. 

Yi women in the Ninglang city market

            Contemporary Yi are not, and never really were, a homogenous nationality.  In Yunnan alone there are over two dozen sub-groups, residing in different kinds of ecological conditions, speaking five distinct dialects.  That much I knew myself before I ever visited Yunnan.  But on my first journey there the first Yi I wanted to meet were the Liangshan Yi, the Cool Mountain Yi of Ninglang County.  I had read about them already in a Peter Goullart account of his journey with a Black Yi aristocrat as well as when doing research on the Long March.  The Red Army had a memorable encounter with the same branch of the Yi in southern Sichuan.

       Maps of southwest China compiled by Western explorers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries marked the entire Liangshan area, the Greater Cool Mountains in Xichang, Sichuan and the Lesser Cool Mountains in Ninglang, Yunnan as “Independent Lololand.”  The designation Lolo, which translates as something resembling savage, was the pre-1949 term for the Yi.  While today all Yunnan Yi refer to themselves as Yi when speaking to outsiders, among themselves they use their own name for their sub-group:  Nisu in Yuanyang, Tuli in Weishan and Midu, Sani in Shilin, etc.  The Liangshan Yi call themselves Nuosu—the Dark People.  While they dominate Ninglang County, the Nuosu also reside in Lijiang, Shangrila, Lanping, Jianchuan and Yangbi Counties. 

Nuosu Yi villlage in early autumn

      “Independent” did not mean a separate state.  It was more of a no-go zone for outsiders, particularly Han, because the Liangshan Yi society was a slave-holding one and outsiders risked capture and sale as a slave.  It was a very complex one, though, and one’s status was not permanently fixed.  At the top were the Black Yi aristocrats, comprising about 15% of the people at most.  Below them were the White Yi, serfs to the Black Yi, around 50% of the population.  They did not have the privileges of the Black Yi and were often drafted to fight in the ceaseless feuds the Yi lords had with each other.  But they could not be enslaved or killed with impunity.

Cool Mountain Yi, in felted wool cape

       Two kinds of slaves ranked below the White Yi—field slaves and house slaves.  Unlike the situation in the pre-Civil War American South, the field slaves were actually better off.  They had to labor in the master’s fields, but could actually work their own private plot, make money and either buy their freedom or buy a slave of their own to work and then amass enough capital to, for example, buy out the slave’s whole family.  Meanwhile, their slaves could work their own plots and even buy a slave to work for them.  The lowest status in Nuosu society, therefore, was to be a slave of a slave of a slave.

       House slaves didn’t have that option, however, and their lives and conditions were subject to the personality traits of their owners.  Some were nice; some were harsh, even cruel, as attested by the display of torture instruments in the Xichang Museum.  After 1949, though, no “Independent Lololand” could exist.  The new Communist government, however, moved gradually to eliminate the slave system.  They began by winning over Black Yi slave-owners, already aware the system was doomed, to emancipate their slaves in return for positions in the new autonomous governing body. 

carrying water in wooden buckets

       Not all acquiesced, though, and the government was obliged to mount a military campaign in 1956 against recalcitrant Black Yi in remote areas.  It lasted two years and the cemetery in Ninglang is full of the graves of young Chinese soldiers who died in the campaign.  All that is a distant memory today.  But while the old slavery system is dead, the Nuosu are still one of the most conservative of Yi sub-groups. Typical characteristics associated with Yi culture—the mid-summer Torch Festival, the role of the ritual specialist called bìmaw (also spelled bimo), the use of the ancient Yi script—are not necessarily part of Yi life everywhere in Yunnan.  But with the Nuosu they are.

       Among the Nuosu customs maintained is that of an almost ritualized form of hospitality.  For Ninglang’s Yi there are three kinds of guests and each type requires a separate kind of reception.  The most common is a fellow villager or other familiar guest, who will be seated by the fireplace and served with whatever is available, tea and potatoes usually, liquor occasionally. 

       The second category is the special guest, one of high rank or from some distance away.  For them the host slays a two-legged animal; a chicken usually, but it could be a duck or goose.  For the third type, a very rare guest from especially far away, the host kills a four-legged animal—small pig, sheep or goat. 

typical Yi log cabins

        Coming from Thailand, I qualified as the third type of guest in every remote mountain village I visited overnight.  In Ninglang Yi houses where I made regular visits every season or so for a few years, my hosts killed chickens.  Part of this hospitality routine was to take a prognosis of the event, while the chicken was being cooked, by inserting two toothpicks into two small holes in the chicken’s thighbone.  If the toothpicks leaned too close together that meant the guest was trying to take advantage of the host.  If they were too far apart it signified the host was trying to evade hospitality responsibilities.  If they formed a nice “V” (as mine did each time, fortunately for me and the hosts) then the visit would proceed harmoniously.

the hearth

       For the second and third type of guest, liquor is an integral part of the reception.  Overnight guests might bring their own, but the host is obligated to serve some.  But first he pours a bit into a small cup, moves it counter-clockwise around the hearth, then places it in a high place in the room as an offering to the ancestors.  Only after this does he serve some to his guest, with an exchange of toasts.

       Yi in the mountains of Ninglang County are not wealthy.  To welcome guests by slaying their animals is an expense beyond their ordinary budget.  Traditionally though, the guest acknowledges this by offering kàba, or compensation, before departure, three times, since it is also custom to politely decline twice.  Fully informed of this by my Yi friends I did the same, but the amount I was advised to give was always much less than the value of the food and liquor served me.  The Yi never seek to ‘profit’ from the encounter. 

raising a toast with maize liquor

       Along with the meat of the requisite animal, my meals with my Yi hosts included potatoes and buckwheat bread, two Cool Mountain staples.  Villages are sited too high up to grow rice, so buckwheat, barley and millet suffice instead, with some of it traded for rice in the markets.  They also grow maize, but its main use is for alcohol or animal feed.  Potatoes, turnips and radishes are the main vegetables; chickens, pigs, sheep and goats their main livestock.  They usually live in log cabins with tiled roofs, the hearth in the main receiving and dining room and bedrooms to the sides.  Overnight guests, however, sleep beside the fire.  

Yi girls dance at theTorch Festival

       Among the conservative traits the Nuosu Yi have retained, particularly among the women, is the preference for traditional clothing.  Females of all ages wear a long, cotton skirt, pleated from the knees down, each of the three or four wide sections a contrasting color; bright pastels for the younger women, darker tones for the older ones.  They hold it in place with a long, narrow, fringed belt, with a triangular purse, fully embroidered or appliquéd with crescents, whorls and spirals, bordered by necktie-shaped, decorated cloth tassels and suspended from the belt.  The purse and belt ends bounce against the skirt while she walks.    

       On the upper part of the body the woman wears a long-sleeved blouse with striped or embroidered cuffs and a silk or velvet vest.  Headgear depends on marital status.  Those married with children don a wide, rectangular black hat, while the unmarried or married without children wear either a flat, embroidered rectangular cloth held in place by tying the braids over the top of the head, or a large, rounded black hat, the edges trimmed with color bands, the hat held in place by a scarf tied over it and fastened under the chin.  For ornaments they will use strings of amber, coral and filigreed silver beads, disk-shaped earrings with attached pendants and embossed silver plates around the neck. 

Yi women on a mountain trail

traditional Nuosu woman's purse

        Among the women, traditional clothing is not just for special occasions but is the norm for everyday life--fieldwork, tending to the animals, cooking, fetching water, chopping wood and going to the market.  Men usually dress in modern style clothes, but may wear a dark turban and both sexes wear the distinctive Yi woolen cape.  Most common is the felted, A-line type called vombaw.  More expensive types are from woven wool:  the vahlah—fringed at the knees—and the heavier jyeshi—pleated top to bottom. 

Nuosu Yi girl, Ninglang County

        Ninglang is a Yi Autonomous County, so Yi officials run the administration, subsidize the annual Torch Festival celebrations in the city and encourage the maintenance of Yi traditions.  While Yi officials, teachers, businessmen and so forth may no longer themselves cling to the old animist world-view, their womenfolk are still steeped in it.  I once attended a traditional ritual expulsion of evil spirits in the house of my Yi friend, an English teacher in Ninglang, whose wife insisted on the ceremony due to some domestic bad luck in recent days.

       A young bìmaw in his late 20s conducted the rites beside the hearth, wearing a special round bamboo-frame woolen hat, reading incantations from a Yi-language manuscript.  Then he poured a bit of water on the coals to create steam, grabbed the sacrificial cock and waved it through the steam to purify it, moved it clockwise over the hearth to retain the good spirits in the house, counter-clockwise to repel the bad ones, and several times over the host couple’s heads to expel evil and prevent nightmares.

       Continuing recitations without the use of the book, the bìmaw next knocks the chicken senseless, slices it through its mouth, breaks the left wing bone at its shoulder and cuts a hole in the skin at that spot.   After more incantations the bìmaw picks up the dead animal, puts his mouth over the hole at the shoulder and blows hard.  This makes the cock crow as if it were alive, which makes any lingering evil house spirits take fright and flee.  Just to be sure, the bìmaw repeats the procedure several minutes later.

young Yi bìmaw

       The final act is to throw the cock and the sacrificial knife outside the door.  If the blade and the cock’s head and feet point away from the house, as it did the time I witnessed, the rite is deemed successful.  If they point towards the house the bìmaw has to repeat the rite with a fresh chicken.  When successful, the host gives the bìmaw a bottle of liquor and some money, placed in a bowl of buckwheat flour.   Then they all dine together when the hostess cooks and serves the chicken.

       With an attitude typical for Nuosu men, however secular-minded and well educated they may be, my Yi friend saw no reason not to participate in this “superstitious” event.  For him it was a positive occasion showcasing his people's time-honored customs.  The bìmaw’s youth testified to the continuing strength of Yi culture. It takes several years to qualify for the role of theYi ritual specialist and obviously the next generation was keeping the tradition going.  And though my friend may not have believed in the true efficacy of the ritual, it was fine with him that the women and children did.  The rites restored their sense of worry-free domestic harmony.  And that’s a bonus for the non-believer as well.  Being modern doesn’t mean you have to stop being Yi.

Nuosu Yi woman--pride in the traditional look

                                                                        * * *

           for more on the Ninglang County Yi see my e-book Children of the Jade Dragon 

      

       

Rockets Over the Plain of Jars

                                                             by Jim Goodman

       The Lao province of Xieng Khouang lies northwest of Vientiane, bordering Vietnam’s Thanh Hoá province on its eastern side.  Most of it consists of an elevated plateau of 1100 meters altitude, surrounded by largely deforested hills rich in mineral deposits.  Hmong and Khamu live in the hills, while Tai Phuan, Tai Dam and Tai Daeng, along with Vietnamese and Chinese, live in the plains and towns.  Farmers grow rice and vegetables, supplement their diet with hunting, fishing and gathering, raise cattle and in many ways reflect the kind of lifestyle prevailing in the rest of the country.

the Plain of Jars

       Two physical features, however, distinguish Xieng Khouang from every other province in Laos.  One is the presence of hundreds of big stone jars on the plateau, called the Plain of Jars because of this phenomenon, relics of a mysterious vanished Iron Age civilization.  The other, a relatively recent transformation, is the existence of thousands of bomb craters all over the province, a legacy of the Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s.

       A road does connect Vientiane with Phonsavan, the provincial capital, and it has been improved in recent years, but it’s still a long, grueling ride by bus.  Twenty-one years ago, when I made my visit, the short, inexpensive airplane ride was a more attractive alternative (and still is).  By taking the flight I soon became acquainted with Xieng Khouang’s second outstanding feature—the craters.  They were everywhere, not just around the populated areas, but also on hillsides, next to creeks, in places where there was no possible target.  It was if the bombs sought to destroy the water supply and obliterate the pastures that fed the cattle.

Phonsavan girls

       Actually, there never was a campaign specifically targeting the creeks and pastures.  The objective was to disrupt the funneling of supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  But often then pilots encountered thick clouds over the Trail and couldn’t see any targets.  They had to return to Vientiane, but were not allowed to land with any bombs still on board.  So they just dropped them over the last province en route, not really caring where they fell, nor even bothering to find a worthy target.  Thus the Xieng Khouang landscape is more pockmarked with craters than anywhere else in Laos. 

       Even worse, the US dropped 262 million cluster bombs on Laos, a large proportion of them on the Plain of Jars, and 80 million failed to explode—a permanent hazard to the population decades after the war ended.  Xieng Khouang, along with Phong Saly and Hua Phan provinces to the north, were longtime Pathet Lao strongholds.  And since guerrillas favored jungle bases, US planes also splattered the province with herbicides and defoliants, while opposing forces on the plain planted mines and launched rockets against each other.

young women in the market

Hmong woman selling porcupine

       There are still lots of no-go places in Xieng Khouang, where unexploded ordinance and leftover mines make passage too dangerous.  The original capital was all but demolished by the war and a new one, Phonsavan, now serves as capital and main commercial center.  A town of about 35,000, it boasts a lively, interesting market that, two decades ago, offered such unusual items as forest rodents, deer, porcupine, wild chickens, jungle roots and tubers and opium poppies.  Opium cultivation was still legal then and small patches of poppies stood in the nearest villages.  A few years later the government outlawed the plant and nowadays you won’t find it for sale in the market.  Practically everything else sold then is still available, though perhaps fewer porcupines.

stone jars scattered on the plain

       Phonsavan is a quiet and friendly town, but its only real lure is its proximity to the ancient stone jars.  The jars lie in several locations, but some are in or close to no-go zones.  Three large and safe sites are south of the town and the easiest to access.  The jars, of sandstone and other local stones, vary in height and diameter from one to three meters, placed in no particular order, some cracked or split or fallen.  None have lids, though they may have originally had lids of perishable material.

       Legends that the jars were used to make rice liquor to celebrate an ancient conqueror’s victory and theories that they were for smelting metals have been discarded in favor of a general consensus that they were burial jars.  Excavators have found fragments of teeth and human bones in them. Puzzles remain, though, about the precise use of them as burial jars.  Were the corpses interred there ad left to decay under a presumed lid?  Were they cremated inside?  Why are the jars so many different sizes, with too many smaller ones to imply a great proportion of child deaths?

       Even more nebulous is whatever happened to the people who constructed them.  The sites date to the Iron Age, about 500 BCE to 500 CE, but whoever made them left no trace of cities, temples, building foundations of any kind, artifacts or written records.  They simply disappeared and existing historical records for the area appear only from the 11^th century, when Tai Phuan migrated to the area from further north.  They became Buddhists and established a state that was sometimes subjected to Luang Phabang, sometimes independent, and prospered by being on a major trade route north to Yunnan, east to the Vietnam coast, south to Cambodia and west to the Mekong.          

Site !, closest to Phonsavan

       It was also vulnerable to invasion from all directions.  Vietnamese forces sacked it during the Tây Sơn Dynasty in the late 18^th century.  Siamese soldiers occupied Xieng Khouang in 1777, 1834 and 1875 and forced large portions of its inhabitants to relocate to places under more direct Siamese control.  Not long after this, Chinese Black Flag bandits, remnants of the suppressed Taiping Revolt in southern China, attacked Xieng Khouang and destroyed its temples.  Things calmed down during the Colonial Era, but after the Second World War ended, insurgency action commenced and continued after the French departure, turning the province into a major theater of hostilities until 1975.

Leftover war material serves as fenceposts.

       The war wrought incredible damage on Xieng Khouang, completely destroying its capital, littering the area with UXOs and killing off much of its vegetation.  But with its conclusion people went back to a life more like that of their grandparents’ time, before all the conflicts started.  There were places they dare not tread and maybe had to watch what they hoed, but they could carry on something resembling a normal existence.  They even made use of some of the war’s detritus by using bomb canisters and artillery shells as fence posts, flowerpots and hotel decorations. 

       Like the craters viewed from the airplane window, the canisters walling off the vegetable patches were instant reminders of Xieng Khouang’s turbulent past.  Craters even marked the areas with the jars, like the one I saw at Site 1, sign-posted “US Bomb #2” (my driver was unable to find out where was US Bomb #1).  But none of that seemed to affect the local people’s attitude towards tourists, even Americans, when Laos opened the province to foreigners in the early 90s.  Like other newly opened Lao destinations, Phonsavan was a Sabai di City and travelers everywhere were greeted with smiles and welcomes.  No one expressed any resentment about the war damage.  That was already relegated to what seemed like a distant past; even more so now, two decades later.

       Phonsavan is most interesting in the morning, when villagers arrive from beyond town to buy or sell things in the open market.  Merchants wheel their products into town on wooden carts and use the latter to display their goods.  Women tend to dominate the crowd and many dress in traditional clothing, like the embroidered sarongs worn by the various Tai sub-groups.  Next to the town lies a lake at the foot of a couple of large, mostly barren hills, with fancy wooden houses near the summit and cemeteries in several locations on the slopes. 

Phonsavan Buddhist temple

       You get good, broad views of the town and the surrounding area from the top of this hill.  Distant mountains rise more than a thousand meters above the plain.  Some have caves where both guerrillas and local residents took refuge during the bombing campaigns.  The caves didn’t automatically guarantee safety, though, and in one tragic instance bombs sealed and destroyed a large cave sheltering a few hundred people, all of whom died. 

       Xieng Khouang’s Buddhist Tai Phuan are still the largest ethnic group in the area.  They did not rebuild all the grand temples destroyed by 19^th and 20^th century wars.  But post-war Phonsavan has its own modest temple, on stilts, as do Tai Phuan villages in the vicinity, distinguishing them from settlements of the Tai Dam and Tai Daeng, who are animist.  They are in roughly the same style as Therevada Buddhist temples elsewhere in Laos, featuring angled, sloping, tiered roofs, thick supporting posts and the typically carved shutters depicting kinarees and other celestial beings.  By the time Xieng Khouang started receiving visitors the Lao government had relaxed its former fiercely secular attitude and became more tolerant of religious expression.  Buddhism thus made a comeback, monasteries once again filled with monks and devotees resumed their religious customs, duties and the enthusiastic celebration of their festivals.

rockets on display in Ban Sawn

       My own visit to the province late in the month of May coincided with a rocket festival in the nearby Tai Phuan village of Ban Sawn.  My driver to Jars Site 1 had informed me of it, scheduled for the next day.  I arranged to get there early morning, just as the villagers were erecting the scaffolds to launch the rockets.  People from other villages participated as well, bringing their own rockets and marching to Ban Sawn behind a file of musicians playing gongs, drums and bamboo reed-pipes, dancing all the way, some of the men carrying beer bottles full of strong rice liquor and taking occasional swigs en route.  Others made the journey packed in the backs of pickup trucks.

monk conducting rituals iside the tent

       While some of the men upon arrival immediately set out to choose a site to erect the launching scaffold for their rockets, other people headed for the huge, silk saffron tent near the center of the village.  Inside the tent monks carried out rituals for devotees to witness and join.  A makeshift altar stood in the center flanked by cases with shelves full of gifts from the faithful, textiles, betel boxes, rice containers and money trees, spilling over to the sides of the officiating monk, a rather young man distinguished by his elaborate red miter, embellished with spangles and gold embroidery, with flaps down to his shoulders.

       Religious rites had been going on since the official start of the festival two days earlier.  The purpose of the festival is to bring on the rainy season and it probably predates the arrival of Buddhism in the area.  It does not mark any particularly Buddhist event, but for the Tai Phuan, like their cousins the Lao, who also stage rocket festivals both in Laos and northeast Thailand, essentially animist activities are endowed with a Buddhist veneer. 

monk adding the fuel

firing the rocket

      The first two days of the festival feature processions, rituals, music and dance.  Rockets are displayed on tall bamboo stands and on this day removed to the launching scaffold, which is more like a wide ladder propped up against a tree.  The rockets are basically thin bamboo poles several meters long, wrapped in bright colored paper and shiny foil, filled with gunpowder.  Monks fill the fuel tube wound around the lower part of the rocket and then men hand it up to a comrade on the ladder, who fixes it to the top of the launching scaffold. 

And the rocket soars to Heaven.

       Right after ignition, the rocket blasts off spewing thick smoke and, barring misfire or accident, soars into the heavens, reminding the gods it’s time to bestow the annual rains.  Some of these rockets can fly right past the clouds and continue for several kilometers before falling to earth.  Observes judge them by how high and how far they reach, as well as by what kind of trail they leave across the sky.  

       The launching is not without risks.  If the rocket fails to fire it’s quite a loss of face for those who brought it.  Even worse, it could streak off in the wrong direction, maybe even into the crowd, rather than into the sky, causing casualties that rudely reminded people of those other kinds of rockets from the 60s and 70s.  And on the spiritual side, it would not be sending signals to Heaven.

       Such accidents are extremely rare, fortunately, and the festival spirit is mostly celebratory.  It has its rituals, but for the villagers there’s always a good reason to make merit.  They may not believe that their rockets really do bring on the rains, but the event is full of entertainment and a good excuse for a rousing round of revelry.  After all, when the rains do come it’s then the season of hard work and little or no leisure.  The Rocket Festival is the last opportunity before that to have fun.  It’s not surprising that it’s still as popular as ever.

revelers at the Rocket Festival

                                                                       * * *

Farewell to the Four Thousand Islands

                                                                       by Jim Goodman

typical scenery in Siphandon

       In southern Laos, just above the Cambodian border, the Mekong River suddenly splits into separate streams that swirl around an archipelago the Lao call Siphandon—Four Thousand Islands.  Then it tumbles over the Khone Falls, a broad, massive cataract on the eastern branch and a series of falls over rocky terrain on the western side.  In recent times this has become a popular tourist excursion, a unique scenic area, famed as one of the most tranquil, laid-back places in the country and one of the last homes of the Irrawaddy dolphin.

       Siphandon’s residents are farmers and fishers, living the same way their ancestors did ever since it was first inhabited.  Nothing much ever happened there throughout most of its history, other than seasonal phenomena and religious and life-cycle ceremonies.  For a while though, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the Siphandon area attracted intrepid explorers and adventurers seeking to breach the navigation barrier of the Khone Falls and make the Mekong the River Road to China.

river scene near Don Khon

       After an unsuccessful assault on Danang in 1957 and withdrawal to the south, French military forces finally seized Saigon in 1861 and pressured the Vietnamese government the following year to cede the city and its surrounding Mekong Delta provinces.  The next year they compelled Cambodia to become a French protectorate.  But back in Paris the government wasn’t sure keeping Cochinchina, as the southern third of Vietnam was called, was such a good idea.  Saigon was far from being the great commercial port it would become later and the rural area was still sparsely populated.  How could such a colony prosper enough to be worth the costs of maintaining control of it?

       Opposing this view was that propagated by the most enthusiastic imperialists, who argued that the Mekong River was the route to the riches of China.  They didn’t really know much about the river, other than it originated somewhere up on the Tibetan Plateau, or the nature of its course down through Yunnan in southwest China to eventually reach the South China Sea.  So they advocated exploration up the river to verify their claim and thus provide justification for keeping the new colony.

on the edge of the Four Thousand Islands

       In 1866 the French government authorized the Mekong Expedition to explore as far up the river as they could go.  Under the command of Doudart de Lagrée, consisting of six French explorers, including Francis Garnier, one of the most vociferous proponents of the expedition, three interpreters and about a dozen soldiers and militiamen, the group departed Saigon in two steam-powered gunboats on 5 June 1866.

       It was easy enough getting to Phnom Penh, taking an excursion up the Tonle Sap River to see the ruins at Angkor Wat and returning to Phnom Penh.  But when they proceeded upriver to Kratie they had to change to canoes and get past the Sambor Rapids, the first great obstacle to free navigation on the river.  Then, crossing into Laos they encountered the Khone Falls.  Here the cataracts spanned a width of eleven kilometers, with jagged boulders separating falls that were often twenty meters high.  It was an awe-inspiring view, but totally depressing as well, for the falls appeared insurmountable, demolishing the River Road to China dream.

Khone Phapeng Falls

       After hiking around the falls the Expedition team rested in Champassak and continued upriver to Yunnan, mostly on foot, its purpose now simply exploration.  Lagrée died in China and Garnier, subsequently convinced the Red River would be the River Road to China, lost his life during an abortive assault on Hanoi in 1873.  A decade later though, the French successfully seized Hanoi, then Huế, and forced Emperor Tự Đức to confirm Cochinchina as a French colony and the rest of the country as a French protectorate.  They also moved into Laos around the same time, competing with the British, who would soon grab Upper Burma. 

       If it wasn’t going to be the River Road to China, the French still fancied the Mekong as the link between upper and lower Indochina and, perhaps the River Road to the Riches of Laos, like timber, for example.  In the mid-80s they started blasting rocks in the Sambor Rapids and by 1887 steamboats could reach the Khone Falls.  New attempts to find a way through the falls failed and French officials slowly began to consider trans-shipment from below the falls to a point above them.

the retired French locomotive

       In 1893 the French decided, in line with their ‘gunboat diplomacy’ at the time with Siam, contesting sovereignty over Laos, to put gunboats on the Mekong above the Khone Falls.  This also involved finding a way past the falls.  They began laying tracks from Don Khon’s southeast corner to the northern end of the island, a distance of five kilometers.  But when the boat coming up from Cambodia was disassembled for trans-shipment in 1894 there were only enough rails for three kilometers.  Laborers hauled the cargo over the track for the three kilometers while others removed the rails from the section just traveled, relayed them to the front and laid them down on the rest of the track until its terminus.  Finally they reassembled the components and the French had their gunboat on the Mekong.

the bridge linking Don Khon with Don Det

       This feat did not stop everyone from thinking this was not the only way to get past Khone Falls.  In 1902 Peter Hauff, a Norwegian adventurer who moved to Saigon as a young man, managed to steer a 16-meter boat up and over the Khone Falls.  This was an astounding achievement, but didn’t lead to any reassessment of the possibilities for regular commercial traffic through the falls.  Hauff shortly afterwards organized the dispatch of 1200 logs in rafts from Luang Phabang all the way to Saigon.  Amazingly enough, despite the obstacles along the route, the rafts made it.  But this, too, turned out to be a one-off accomplishment.  No one followed him up.

trees on the trail beside Somphanit Falls

cataract of the Somphanit Falls

        The French eventually filled the rest of the Don Khon track with rails, brought in a locomotive in 1897, which could haul up to twelve cargo-laden cars over the tracks, and in 1920 built a bridge to Don Det and extended the line to the north end of that island.  But the train never saw a lot of service, though it remained in operation until 1940.  It sometimes transported river travelers coming up from Saigon and going to Luang Phabang.  But that journey took 35 days and required eight changes of vessels, longer than it took to go from Saigon to Marseilles.  The French eventually abandoned their commercial ambitions for the country.  Laos wasn’t the Land of Riches after all.  It was the Land of Lotus-Eaters.  When they finally departed the only evidence left of their presence in the Four Thousand Islands was the abandoned railway line. 

twilight at Siphandon

       Years later, when Laos opened the country to tourists in the 1990s, the Four Thousand Islands began attracting a new kind of explorer—tourists.  Highway 13 linked Pakse with Ban Khenat village, in the heart of Siphandon, from where travelers boarded small boats up to Don Khong or down to Don Det.  A luxury hotel went up on Don Khong, the large island at the north side of Siphandon, from where tourists could take a boat ride south through the islands down to the falls.  The great majority of visitors, however, were budget-minded backpackers, heading for the cheap guesthouses on Don Det and Don Khon.  In the early 2000s you could get a room for a dollar a night and share a bathroom/shower or, for just two dollars, a room with its own shower. 

beginning of the Somphanit Falls

       Rooms were furnished with a bed, table and chair, mosquito net and oil lamp, for there was no electricity anywhere except one up-market hotel on Don Khon that had its own generator.  Guests there had hot water, lights and refrigerator.  Backpackers didn’t think they needed such amenities.  They didn’t stay up late anyway, for early morning was the best hiking time.  Fishing boats were out early, buffaloes wading offshore, birds fluttering in the trees.  Walking along the shores of Don Det and Don Khon gave you great views of the little islets speckling the river surface, especially in the dry season.  More of them were visible then, some just little clumps of grassy earth a few meters wide, others long and narrow and some big enough for a small hamlet.

       The bridge connecting the two islands was still in place and you could follow the old French railway line from one end to the other.  The old locomotive stood in a field on Don Khon, but the railway tracks had all been removed, used as fences by the villagers or to span narrow creeks.  From the bridge a trail ran along the west side of Don Khon, following a rocky branch of the river and the several cataracts of the Somphanit Falls.  The trail stayed high on the bank with a clear view to appreciate the power of the river as it roared over the boulders.   

Somphanit Falls has several cataracts.

       To see the Khone Phapeng Falls on the eastern side of Siphandon is a different experience.  You have to take a boat to a viewing stand below the falls.  There’s no way to walk along the route of the falls, which span a wider section of the river than the ones on the western side of Don Khon.  The sound of the Khone Phapeng Falls is much greater, almost deafening, and standing on the viewing stand you can try to imagine just which route Peter Hauff used to take his boat up and over the falls and how he managed to convey his orders to his crew.

       Besides the river scenery, Siphandon’s other main attraction is the presence of the Irrawaddy dolphin in the pool of water along the border with Cambodia.  Less than ninety dolphins swim in this part of the river.  To see them you boarded a boat at the former loading dock at the south end of Don Khon, got a temporary visit permit from the Cambodian border police and then spent an hour or so afloat scanning the waters around you for glimpses of the dolphins as they broke the surface of the water for an intake of air.  The dolphins did this rather quickly and mostly all you saw was the back and fin creasing the surface and then submerging, and that you caught mainly from the corner of your eye.  Occasionally you could see the entire body and in any case the only hours you could be confident of spotting them were just after sunrise and just before sunset. 

Don Det early morning

              Unfortunately, it’s going to get even harder to see any dolphins at all soon.  Already an endangered species, when construction begins this year on the Don Sahong Dam the dolphins seemed doomed to extinction.  The dam will straddle the Hou Sahong channel between Don Sahong and Don Sadam, right above the dolphins’ habitat.  This is the principal upriver migration route for the dolphins and other river species of fish, such as carp and catfish, including the pladuck, a rare type of catfish that can reach three meters in length and weigh up to nearly three hundred kilograms.

       Supporters of the project, mainly Lao government officials and spokesmen for the Malaysian engineering company contracted to build it, say that the removal of traps from other channels will induce the fish to use these instead.  Opponents argue that has not worked in other cases where dams blocked traditional fish migration routes.  The project will also divert a large portion of the river that runs over the nearby Khon Phapeng Falls, considerably reducing its majesty, and permanently submerge parts of the archipelago, obliterating the unique scenery of the entire southeast quarter of Siphandon. 

Siphandon sunset

       Dam advocates say the country is poor and has few exploitable resources besides waterpower.  The completed dam will generate 260 mw of electricity, which will be sold to Thailand and Cambodia.  Opponents counter the benefits are not worth the environmental damage.  It will destroy the nature of what the Mekong Secretariat in 1994 described as “an ecologically unique area that is essentially a microcosm of the entire Lower Mekong River…Such a site is so rare in nature that every effort should be made to preserve all of Siphandon.”

       Twenty years later that recommendation has been ignored.  Removal of traps from other channels and evacuation of people from the construction vicinity began this month.  At least the people will have someplace to go and start life afresh.  As for the fish, particularly the dolphins, they will have to endure the blasting of rocks in and below the Hou Sahong channel, intense industrial activity, changes in the water flow, constant disturbance, disorientation and stress. 

       How the dam project will affect the rest of Siphandon is difficult to predict.  Certainly fewer tourists will come, as there will be less to enjoy.  The dolphins face a gloomy future, though.  Like the evacuated farmers and fishers they’ll have to bid farewell to the Four Thousand Islands.  But they are not likely to find a new place to live.  They won’t have the option that humans have.  They’ll just become extinct, like the pterodactyl, the ichthyosaur, the saber-toothed tiger and, apparently, the human duty to preserve the natural beauty of the earth.

"a site so rare in nature"

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