by Jim Goodman
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| Junzhai |
As Lunar New Year approaches
in Yunnan travelers there, like anywhere else in China at that time, have to
make up their minds where they intend to spend the next several days. Plane, train and bus ticket possibilities
shrink hourly. Restaurants start
locking up for the holidays and I’ve spent New Year in cities where the only
place open to eat was a single noodles stall. Hotels in popular New Year getaway destinations in Yunnan
jack up the price for rooms and services, 500% in Jinghong, for example,
compared to ‘only’ 300% for the Water-Sprinkling Festival in April.
I faced this problem one
February when I was in Xishuangbanna to see the Jinuo Temaoke Festival. Being a solar calendar event, that year
the festival took place several days before New Year. But I didn’t want to pay the extra price for staying in Jinghong,
with nothing particularly interesting scheduled for the holidays anyway. So I decided to explore some place
where I’d never been and settled on Junzhai, in Lincang Prefecture, on the
right bank of the Nanding River, about 25 kilometers upriver from Mengding.
This city I knew from a visit
over a decade earlier, dominated by the Dai nationality, with a few De’ang and
Wa villages in the hills. I hadn’t
crossed the river then, but it looked similar to the landscape on the Mengding
side—rice fields and rubber tree plantations, backed by hills. On the map Junzhai is identified as a Wa, Lahu, Lisu and
De’ang autonomous district. Surely one of these minorities will be doing something
for New Year, I reckoned.
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| Dai woman,Junzhai |
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| elderly Dai woman, Junzhai |
An old friend and veteran
Yunnan traveler joined me for this excursion and we took the long and sometimes
grueling bus ride to Gengma, stayed the night and left for the Nanding River in
the morning. We continued to
Mengding to take a look, found it full of new buildings, all with Dai-style
angled roofs, fancy hotels and only one restaurant still open. Well, it was just two days before New
Year. We arrived at noon in
Junzhai, basically a one-street town, found a simple guesthouse and three small
restaurants still open, so for sure we could eat this night. Whether they would close from tomorrow
we didn't know yet, but I’d brought a duty-free bottle of 18-year-old Chivas,
so if the drink shops were going to close, too, we anyway had decent liquor to
enjoy for the holiday.
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| planting winter rice near Junzhai |
Most of Junzhai’s inhabitants
are Dai and some of them were busy planting the winter rice crop. We walked out of the town on the road
going upriver and passed two rather uninteresting De’ang villages. Their houses were modern ones of brick
and concrete, without any temple, and only a few women wore De’ang style
clothing, usually just the distinctive short jacket over a sarong.
At the end of Dabao, the
second village, a banner strung across the road welcomed everyone to the New
Year celebration ground. The venue
was a slope that stretched down to the riverside, where a wooden swing had been
erected and children were taking turns on it. Some tables had been set up between the swing and the stage
a little ways up the slope, but vendors hadn’t started laying out their goods
yet. The stage arrangements hadn’t
been finished yet, but one of the men overseeing the work hailed us over,
introduced himself and invited us to have dinner with them the following two
evenings. Well that solved the
food problem we might have had.
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| Junzhai rubber worker |
Returning to Junzhai, we
walked out the other end and down the road past the turn-off to Mengding and
came to a side road leading uphill.
A wooden gate straddled this road, with a buffalo skull mounted on the
overhead crossbeam. Got to be a Wa
village, we guessed, and headed up the hill. Fortunately, the climb was neither strenuous nor very
long. Unfortunately, the village
wasn’t Wa. It was Han and the
villagers were rubber plantation workers.
So much for our exploration that
day, but the following morning we discovered it was Junzhai’s market day, which
ought to attract some ethnic minority visitors, we assumed. Dai women tended most of the stalls,
the younger ones in modern clothes, the older ones in pale blouses and sarongs
and big black or white turbans. Vegetables,
grains, fruits, shoes and sandals, cheap clothing, New Year gift packages and
calendars were their wares.
A few De’ang women set up
stalls, but we didn’t see any Lahu, Wa or Lisu, or at least not anyone wearing
anything ethnic-style beyond the Dai and De’ang women. The latter we could recognize by their
waist-length jackets, with a little embroidery enhancing the back, but none
seemed particularly dressed up. No
jewelry and nobody wearing the rattan waistbands I’d witnessed on De’ang women
in the Mengding market years ago. They were very friendly, however, probably meeting foreigners
for the first time ever. Couldn’t
speak much Chinese, though.
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| De'ang vendor |
The market began shutting down
early afternoon, so we walked to Dabao next. The fairground there was all set up, vendors stocking goods
on their tables, rows of chairs in place in front of the stage, the swing by
the riverside active again. On the
slope above the stage were several food stalls, with small tables and stools at
each, serving ordinary meat, vegetable and rice meals, as well as such exotic
dishes as deer, dog and wildcat.
More food stalls, run by Dai vendors, lay beyond the rows of seats in
front of the stage. Beverages of
various kinds were also on sale here, plus a couple stalls offering games of
chance, like trying to loop bottles of beer with a small hoop tossed from ten
meters away.
After a late afternoon stroll
along the river we returned to the fairgrounds to see the man who invited us
the day before striding down the slope to greet us, his hands outstretched in
welcome as he happily escorted us to his table. We shared an opening round of drinks with him and his other
guests while waiting for the cooks to bring the ingredients of our meal. They seemed quite pleased to have
foreigner guests, obviously for the first time and all confessed they had never
met or even seen Americans or Germans before.
Junzhai’s not exactly on the
usual tourist trail in Yunnan and none of our fellow diners had ever been
further than Mengding or Gengma.
And on any given day, actually, neither Mengding nor Gengma is likely to
have any Americans or Germans in the city. What they know about either country is whatever they have
derived from state-run television.
Other than both countries were rich, they didn’t have a clear impression. Nor did they attempt to make up for
that by asking a lot of questions about our countries.
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| De'ang woman |
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| De'ang women in Junzhai |
Instead, we talked about
things that mattered more to them—rice, rubber, floods—and what brought us to
Junzhai. Never been here, so curious. Where have you been? Well, Mengding, Gengma, for starts, as
well as De’ang villages in Dehong, where they live in stilted houses. And a host of other places in the
province. So we could discuss
Yunnan and that’s something we both knew about. Yes, wonderful Yunnan, they assented, with mountains and
valleys and ethnic minorities like our own De’ang right here in good old Dabao,
which may not seem like much to seasoned Yunnan explorers but was going to be
real special tonight and tomorrow night because it is our New Year and we take
it seriously.
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| The show began with a Tibetan dance. |
So they
were very moderate in refilling our liquor cups, lest we get too drunk to enjoy
the show. A little after dark the
seats began filling with spectators, fresh from their own banquets at
home. As special guests we were
escorted to the middle of the front row.
After a short speech by a district Party official the show commenced.
Performed by local troupes and
district villagers, consisting of several costumed dances interspersed with
solo performances, the show was remarkable for having not a single De’ang dance
or song, though the host village was De’ang. The first act was a Tibetan dance, with girls wearing blouses
with extra-long sleeves that they waved through the air. Next came a Uygur number from Xinjiang,
the first of three throughout the night, with men in long caftans and women in
billowing pants and matching, bare-midriff blouses.
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| Uygur dance performer |
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| Disco dances were part of the show. |
Other Tibetan dances, with
leaping men in off-the-shoulder coats, a Nosuo Yi dance from nw Yunnan, solo
singers and instrumentalists and a couple of modern disco numbers comprised the
rest of the night’s program. The show concluded long before midnight, but as no
fireworks were scheduled the fairground stalls began closing down shortly after
the show’s end. We returned with
the crowd to Junzhai and opened my bottle of 18-year-old Chivas to toast the
New Year with a tumbler of whiskey each.
To our mild surprise the next
morning, the official New Year day, most of the small shops, including the
little restaurants, were open for business, even if customers were very
few. We took a leisurely walk
upriver to Dabao, arriving just after mid-day. The hike made us hungry, but the fairground stalls were all
open, including the food stalls with the exotic menus. Not getting this opportunity very often
anymore, I couldn’t resist having a meal of grilled deer and wildcat. The other stalls offered pork and chicken,
but we would get that in the evening anyway.
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| Wa dancers performed the second night. |
That we did, as our hosts
graciously plied us with one dish after another of various parts of these
animals, punctuated with cups of rice liquor and convivial conversation. How did we like the show last
night? Wonderful. It was totally unexpected, meaning,
they thought, we didn’t expect a show at all before we came, and meaning, as we
thought, we didn’t expect a show in Junzhai to be dominated by dances from
Tibet and Xinjiang. And
tonight? Tonight was going to
feature a Wa troupe, not from Junzhai district, but from the mountains near
Gengma.
Once again, after the meal we
were seated in the middle of the front row. Six district Party officials sat on one side of the stage and
rose when the young female emcee for the night introduced them to the
audience. Then she introduced
their American and German guests and we had to stand and make a slight bow to
acknowledge the polite applause around us. Then the show could begin.
It was a lot better than the
night before. The various Wa
troupes--young female, young male, older female—were better coordinated, more
practiced, more exuberant, too.
Aside from occasional solo singers (including the emcee herself) the
performances were all Wa, even the instrumental soloists. The young Wa women, in their
traditional, hand-woven, wraparound skirts and blouses, stole the show with
their energetic choreography, incorporating bits of the Hair Dance in most
numbers.
About two-thirds of the way through
the show the emcee grabbed the microphone in between sets to tell the audience
that life in Junzhai district was getting better every year. There was cleaner water, greater
prosperity, etc. “Do you know
why?” she asked the crowd. Nobody
responded. “Do you know why?” she
repeated, looking around at the people.
Still silence. “Because of
the Communist Party!” she shouted.
At that the Party officials seated on the side of the stage stood up and
vigorously applauded.
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| energetic Wa dance troupe |
No one else did. The emcee looked a little embarrassed
but the officials sat back down and the show resumed. Lethargic audience?
No, for after another sight of Wa girls tossing their long black manes
around in another sprightly dance the crowd applauded loud and long. After the last act the audience rose
from their seats and joined the performers in a ring dance, led by musicians on
lutes and gourd-pipes.
The crowd broke up after about
a half hour and we joined the walk back to Junzhai. Back in our lodge we uncorked the whiskey and drank toasts
to our holiday good luck--a New Year venue where we paid no surcharge for the
hotel, better meals than we had imagined, genuine rural hospitality where
strangers become honored guests, an unexpected small town public celebration
and the bonus of a stunning performance of wonderful Wa dance troupes. Happy New Year indeed.
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| children enjoying the New Year swing |
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