The French, Miao and Yi in Mengzi

                                                      by Jim Goodman

former French Consulate in Mengzi

       Around a hundred years ago Mengzi was one of the most important cities in southern Yunnan.  It lies at the southern end of a long plain, 1000 meters altitude, extending all the way to Kaiyuan.  High mountains rise to the city’s east and from the edge of the plain south all the way to Vietnam.  Mengzi was the first major town on the trade route from Vietnam to Kunming.  It was also a depot for shipping the area’s minerals and tin to Kunming and other destinations north and south.  While it was always involved with such trade, Mengzi’s role dramatically increased with the establishment of a French presence in the late 19^th century.

       Beginning with the notorious Opium War in 1839, European powers began forcing their way into China’s commercial networks.  One concession led to another in the next decades, while Britain in Burma and France in Indo-China gobbled up territory that by the mid-1880’s extended up to the boundaries of Yunnan.  Political pressure on the ever-weaker Qing government led to the designation of Yunnan cities as “treaty ports” to handle international trade.  Foreigners were permitted to set up consulates and commercial offices:  the British in Simao and the French, from 1887, in Mengzi.

French coat-of-arms on the Consulate gatge

       This didn’t mean a heavy influx of foreigners into the two cities.  French travelers like Louis Pichon in 1892 and the Prince d’Orléans in 1894 reported but a dozen resident foreigners in Mengzi, only half of them French.  The foreigners generally got along well with the Chinese, who viewed their presence as a return to stability after the era of Black Flag banditry that came with the final suppression of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.  In their leisure the Mengzi expatriates went horseback riding on the plains, played lawn tennis and organized picnics and hunting parties in the wooded mountains.  Evidence of the town’s former glory lay around them in the form of public parks and buildings.  Pichon reported, “Temples are everywhere.”

former customs-house in Mengzi, first in the provine

       French residents in Mengzi handled the trade out of their colony Vietnam, but for the first few decades it was not an easy business.  From the border town of Hekou goods could travel by boat on the Red River only as far as Manhao and then had to be transferred to the backs of mules and ponies for the 60 km trek through the hills to Mengzi.  Exports went the same route in reverse and mainly constituted tin and opium.  Textiles and cotton were the prime imports.

       More foreigners arrived after the French opened the railroad line through Mengzi in 1921.  But the community never numbered very many, nor did French influence extend past the architectural style of a few buildings.  And they never built a church.  Today only the train station 12 km outside the city at Bisezhai, and within Mengzi a customs house, consulate, garden park and prison remain from the brief limited presence of the French in the heyday of European colonial empires. 

foreigners' prison

       These have survived since the French departure, however, and are among the city’s top tourist attractions today.  With their yellow facades, tile roofs and simple designs, they stand apart from the Chinese and modern-style buildings in the neighborhoods around them.  The former consulate is a long, two-story building with a low white fence in front of it and a taller white entrance gate.  The French coat-of–arms, flanked by a pair of rampant lions. is mounted at the gate’s center.

       A block away stands the old French customs house, a smaller, two-story building, same color, fronted by the same white fence and gate with the coat-of-arms on it as the consulate, with a balcony in the rear overlooking the lake.  A few blocks away lies the former French prison, a long, single-story plain building, deserted now, lined with bleak little windowless cells.  It’s not particularly big and I couldn’t find out how many prisoners it ever held at one time, or for what crime.  But part of the treaty granting the right of the French to a presence in Mengzi included criminal jurisdiction over non-Chinese.

South Lake pavilion

       Perhaps the foreigner community lived in Chinese houses, for no leftover French neighborhood exists.  The extant French buildings are all public ones.  With the onset of World War II and the closing of the railway, the French pulled out of Mengzi permanently.  The garden park became a Mengzi city park, but the other French buildings, aside from those at the train station, saw no contemporary use but survived as a legacy. 

       Besides the buildings, the French also left an intangible legacy.  Even though their commercial efforts never became very lucrative, thanks to their relatively brief presence, Mengzi was the first city in Yunnan to have such common modern institutions like a customs house, post office, telegraph system, international banking and foreign investment.

       Hardly any of the temples Pichon observed have escaped the destruction of modern development and fiercely secular political zealotry.  But in recent years its prosperity has been returning, especially after the Honghe Prefecture capital moved from Gejiu to here at the end of the last century.  Since Gejiu lies in a small, bowl-like valley blocked all around by hills, Mengzi, with its broad surrounding plain offered more room to easily expand.  Since then the city has tripled in size. 

South Lake at night

       Much of the old town still survives, for the modern part of Mengzi, of wide boulevards and multi-story buildings, is a recent appendage.  Narrow, winding lanes and traditional shop-houses still characterize much of the eastern part of town.  Its most attractive spot is the 32,000 square meter South Lake (Nanhu), with lovely Qing Dynasty towers and pavilions standing on its islands and causeways.

       The entrance is near the north end, not far from the French customs house.  The largest building in the area, a graceful, three-tiered tower, stands just inside the entrance, beside a small connecting pond spanned by an arched bridge.  From its third floor windows one has a view of the whole lake, as well as the mountains beyond, with a stray Miao village or two high on their slopes.  A walk along this finger of land passes small pavilions with pink and white lotus flowers in the water beside them and leads to a park and a junction in the path.

       One path leads northeast to another small island and its own pavilion.  The other turns south past the garden and crosses another white marble arched bridge to a hexagonal, two-story pavilion, the second most attractive South Lake building.  The tiled roofs of the buildings, with upturned corners, have rows of small, attached lamps that are turned on at night, while spotlights illuminate the walls and the lake waters reflect the colors.

Miao in the maize fields

Yi in the city market

     This is the most tranquil part of the city and a beautiful refuge from the din of city life.  Occasionally boats ply the surface and a few people come to fish.  Students also come here to study, just like the Qing Dynasty scholars, who would even stay for several days and nights at one of the quiet pavilions to study for the state examinations that could, if they passed, assure them a place in the bureaucracy.

Yi at a Sunday market stall

       South Lake is also famous for being, three centuries ago, the birthplace of one of Yunnan’s most popular dishes—over-the-bridge rice noodles (guoqiaomixian).  At that time a scholar was staying at one of the island pavilions to study for his examinations.  His wife prepared his meal—rice noodles in chicken broth with thin slices of chicken and meat to be added and cooked to taste.  But by the time she crossed the bridge to his quarters, the soup was cold.  So she hit on the idea of adding vegetable oil to the broth, which kept it hot enough for him to cook the slices of meat.  The soup’s ingredients also include herbs, bean sprouts and other vegetables.  Mengzi was its birthplace, but nowadays restaurants in cities elsewhere in Yunnan serve their own versions of it.

       The mountains to the east and south of Mengzi more resemble those of Wenshan Prefecture, east of Honghe, than those to the southwest in Ailaoshan.  Often they are grouped in clusters of steep, conical limestone hills, uninhabited and covered with thick jungle vegetation.  The Prince d’Orléans dubbed one such set “the Cone Chain.”  Massive, menhir-like boulders jut up from the ground in relatively level areas.  Other areas are dominated by numerous small basins with no water outlet, locally known as “devil’s punch bowls.” 

Mengzi Miao woman

Muai in Mengzi for market day

     On Sundays Mengzi holds its regular open market, spread out over several connected neighborhoods in the old town.  Han and Zhuang villagers from the plains arrive early to set up their stalls. Miao and Yi from the hills and the remoter plains villages arrive by mid-morning.  With their presence the streets of Mengzi become a swirl of color, for the women of the Miao and the more numerous of the two Yi sub-groups are among the province’s most flamboyant dressers.

       A lavish use of embroidery and appliqué characterizes the components of a Miao woman’s costume.  It comprises a side-fastened, long-sleeved jacket, belt, apron, bulky pleated skirt hanging to the shins, leg wrappers and cap.  Red and white are the primary colors and though the hemp or cotton skirt is usually dyed indigo, with batik patterns in white, its surface is liberally covered with thin appliquéd bands of cloth.  Spirals and floral patterns make up most embroidery motifs.  A decorative strip 5-8 cm wide they wrap around each calf.  The long apron, also fully embellished, hangs from the waist to the hem of the skirt. On her head she wears a fitted, rectangular strip of embroidered cloth, with a row of pompoms at the front end, over the forehead, and the back end, which reaches to the neck.

older Yi woman with covered headdress

young Yi woman in Mengzi on market day

       One Yi sub-group lives in the hills southeast of Mengzi, but they are quite assimilated into the rural Han way of life.  Older women wear a decorative, embroidered bib that hangs around the neck and fastens in the back at the waist. Except for perhaps a turban, nothing else distinguishes this Yi costume.  The outfit is similar to Zhuang sub-groups in the county and over the border in Wenshan, but less elaborate.

       The much larger Yi sub-group is scattered in the hills around Mengzi and in the mountains southeast as far as the northern districts of Pingbian County.  These Yi women wear a side-fastened, long-sleeved, waist-length black jacket over blue or green trousers, with an apron that covers the thighs.  Over the jacket they wear a sleeveless vest that reaches to just below the breasts in front and to mid-hip in back.  The jacket sleeves, lower part of the trousers, the entire vest exterior, and sometimes the apron as well, are elaborately embroidered and appliquéd, red being the color most deployed.

Yi girl dressed to impress

       The women wear two kinds of headdresses.  The more common one, for daily use and for going to the market, is a rectangular cloth, heavily embroidered, tucked so as to stick up in front and back.  It is placed on the head just behind a silver-studded band about 4 cm wide over the forehead.  For special occasions, or simply to show off and attract young men, young women, in place of the cloth bonnet, don a fan-shaped crown of mounted red pompoms.  From either side hang long bunches of red pompom tassels.  Married women may also wear this stunning headdress, but as they get older they wear it in public covered by a large, tasseled kerchief.  The Yi say this is because the woman recognizes that her youth has passed, and now not beauty, but experience and prudence are her outstanding personal qualities.

       A few Miao women run market day stalls selling Miao clothing components to other Miao, including some modified traditional styles designed to appeal to more modern-thinking young Miao women and girls.  A few Yi and Miao women might also be selling medicinal herbs grown or gathered in the vicinity of their villages.  Other than them, though, the Miao and Yi at the Sunday markets are buyers looking for good prices on essentials.  In fact, they may roam throughout all the market areas before making their purchases.

        They are not particularly interested in the city’s historical buildings or even, since they are animist, the temples and pagodas, much less the new modern neighborhoods.  For them Mengzi is a place to shop and hope for bargains.  The local residents will brush up against them in the markets and can probably distinguish who is Yi and who is Miao.  But they rarely know anything else about them.  For them the city’s attractions are those around South Lake and perhaps a favorite restaurant in the new city.  Travelers to Mengzi thus have a great advantage over those who live in the city or out in the county.  They can appreciate all these things.

South Lake after a very rare Mengzi snowfall

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       for more on the cities of Honghe Prefecture see my e-book The Terrace Builders  

Buddhist Yi and Other Gengma County Surprises

                                                            by Jim Goodman

      

White Pagoda in Gengma

  Back in the late 90s, when I developed the ambition to explore all parts of Yunnan, Lincang was practically an unknown prefecture.  I hadn’t met anyone from there and didn’t know any travelers who’d been there, either.  It wasn’t part of any guidebooks, even Chinese ones, and all I could find in the bookstores was a single thin booklet, mostly about its industry, border trade and development.  While some Yi and Lahu lived in scattered areas in the north, most of the minority-inhabited areas were in the southern counties.   For my first venture into the prefecture I chose Gengma, because it was a Dai and Wa Autonomous County.

       Coming from Baoshan into the northern part of Lincang Prefecture, the scenery was a drab landscape of largely denuded hills and concrete towns.  The road was not very good and it took all day to reach Yunxian.  But halfway from there down to Gengma, on yet another slow road in dire need of improvement, the landscape changes.  The hills are more forested, the higher mountains closer, villages further apart and mostly Dai instead of Han, with pagodas gracing small hills next to the settlements.    Sugarcane is the dominant crop in the fields, supplying the sugar mill in Gengma city, mustard and rice also grown.

Dai women in Gengma

       Gengma sits on a small knoll in one of the shallow valleys amongst the low, surrounding hills.  Ethnic Dai dominate the city’s population.  Each neighborhood has its own name and these are signposted at all the intersections in the residential zone.  A large painted stone sculpture of a peacock, the Dai mascot, stands in front of an old and sprawling banyan tree in the middle of the city and two Han-style ornamental gates mark both ends of the commercial district.

       Dai women, from adolescence up, both in Gengma and the rural villages, dress in old-fashioned Dai style.  The traditional everyday outfit consists of a black sarong, usually velvet but sometimes cotton or silk, a white terry cloth turban and a side-fastened, long-sleeved jacket with rounded hems front and rear.  Jewelry they generally save for special occasions, but most wear small gold, barrel-shaped ear plugs about one cm diameter.  Many wear shoes that are embroidered with cross stitch designs or appliquéd with cutouts coincidentally resembling Sani Yi patterns east of Kunming.

lessons at Mangkang Temple

       Buildings within the city are uninspired concrete structures, but Gengma does have two outstanding old Buddhist monuments.  One is the lone white pagoda on a slope above the middle school, built in 1472.  It is in a style similar to those in Dehong, a tall central spire surrounded by smaller spires on two levels.  The other is the Zongfo Buddhist temple next to the pond in the city park.  First constructed a year later, it is a long and attractive building with prayer banners hanging down from the rafters at the entrance and scenes from Journey to the West carved on its doors.

       With its wide, slightly sloping, tiered roofs with upturned corners, the temple reflects the Mahayana Buddhist style of its Han neighbors rather than that of Dai temples in Xishuangbanna, with their tall, steeply sloping roofs.  Gengma’s Dai are Theravada Buddhists, though, as in Banna and Dehong.  Their monks and novices dress in orange robes and the lay folk follow the same ritual Buddhist calendar as their counterparts in Southeast Asia.

Zongfo Temple

       Not every Dai village has a temple, though.  A few might have a pagoda in the vicinity, but usually the village has a central sacred spot, marked by a specially carved post and altar.   The nearest temple beyond Gengma was at Mangkang, about seven km south, in a similar style as at Zongfo Temple.  About a dozen monks and novices resided there when I visited, arriving at a moment when an older monk, prayers tattooed on his arms, was instructing the boy novices on reading and reciting the Dai language prayer books.  He used a long pointer to indicate which words the boys mispronounced (though not to hit them with when they did so).  In another corner of the hall boys were studying texts, while outside the teenage novices were at leisure, whittling or riding roller skates.

monk at leisure, Mangkang Temple

      Since they serve communities outside that don’t have their own temples, both Meangkang Temple and Zongfo Temple are quite active at Guanmenjie and Kaimenjie, the opening and closing festivals of the Buddhist retreat season.  As for the city, ordinarily Gengma is a rather quiet and unhurried place.  But every five days it hosts an open market day, when villagers from both hill and valley swarm into town and its commercial area hums with activity.

       For a city of such modest size (you could walk from one end to the other in less than an hour) the market day area was quite large, comprising three large adjoining squares in the city center and a number of lanes branching out to the main street, Gengmadajie, between the entry gates.  The squares and adjoining lanes, even Gengmadajie, fill up with so many stands and stalls that there is just barely enough room for the customers and passers-by. 

       Every sort of local product is on sale:  straw for roofing, ropes, jungle herbs, all kinds of edibles both raw and prepared, spices and seasonings, stools, cloth, wood, thread, brooms, tools, sugarcane, tea, molasses and even rabbits.   Local Dai dominate the food markets, hawking noodles, fruits, hot and sour salads, pickled delicacies and bean gelatin.  In slacker moments some of them work on embroidering or appliqué for their next pair of shoes.

market day iGengma

       One of the squares is allotted to animals, mainly pigs and buffaloes.  While it doesn’t take long for a buyer to decide whether a pig is worth buying, those purchasing buffaloes were more particular and closely examined both the feet and the teeth before making up their minds.

       As I expected, many Wa women came down to Gengma from hills to the east and south.   They were easy to recognize with their darker skin tone, red and black sarongs, ear studs three times bigger than those worn by the Dai women, sometimes augmented by diamond-shaped silver pendants.  And they all seemed to be addicted to tobacco, smoking ii constantly in long silver pipes.  As elsewhere in Yunnan, the Wa women in Gengma for market day were quite friendly and I wanted to visit one of their villages on any return trip to Gengma.

examining a buffalo

       Of course, since Gengma was a Dai and Wa Autonomous County I expected Wa to show up on market day.  But they were not the only non-Dai minority in the market.  Two kinds of Lahu showed up in their traditional outfits, as well as Lisu from the same sub-group as western Dehong and a few Jingpo, in modern clothes but recognizable by the silver-studded Jingpo shoulder bag common in Dehong.  None of the maps I had on ethnic distribution in Yunnan indicated there were any Lisu or Lahu at all anywhere near Gengma, so there were discoveries to pursue someday in the county.

Dai food stalls o market day

       Women of one Lahu group wore a long, side-fastened black jacket, with thin, multi-colored strips lining the lapel and in bands around the sleeves and cuffs, and plain black trousers.  They carried shoulder bags of bright, thin, horizontal stripes in many colors and on their heads wore a round red cap. 

       The other Lahu group wore side-fastened jackets of medium blue and heavily embroidered or appliquéd in the front.  This they combined with blue, knee-length shorts, embroidered around the hems, like the outfit worn in Nanmei, over in Lincang County, where they were probably from.

       Market days are essential for a traveler to know who lives in the vicinity and might be worth a visit.  I didn’t learn where all the Lahu and Lisu lived, but found out that traditional Wa villages lay on the way east to the snow mountain Daxueshan and Buddhist Wa lived past Mangkang.  On my return to Gengma a year ad a half later I planned a Wa village excursion in between market days in Mengsheng to the south (smaller, less interesting) and Gengma two days later (as lively and colorful as the first time).

Lahu woman in Gengma

Wa woman in the market

       Unfortunately, landslides had just blocked the way to Daxueshan and heavy rains made the route out of Mangkang all but impassable.  Forced to turn back, my driver suggested we go instead to a Tu minority village called Mangyou.  Tu minority?  Never heard of them.  Let’s go.

Lisu and Dai

       The road was just as muddy as the route to the Wa villages, but we could get to Mangyou because the villagers had covered the last stretch with a bed of bamboo sticks.  Rice, maize and sugarcane fields surrounded the village and the hills were largely deforested to make room for farms.  Most houses were stilted, with angled, thatched roofs and adjoining open balcony, like those of the Wa.  A few had corrugated iron roofs and some were brick, but with an elevated attached balcony. 

       The women wore a side-fastened, plain blue jacket for everyday use, over a black, calf-length sarong over black leggings and on their heads a black turban with the fringed end hanging over one side.  For special occasions they don a jacket trimmed with color bands around the cuffs and rows of solver studs along the lapel.  Younger girls dressed in Dai-style blouses and sarongs, sometimes matching, and many tied their hair up like Dai girls in Gengma.  The men, of course, dressed in ordinary modern clothes.

       Villagers were shy upon our arrival, but soon a local family invited us inside for a chat and a glass of local rice liquor.   And that brought a small crowd along.  We entered a sparsely furnished room, with a bed along one wall, and crouched on the floor beside the fireplace in a slightly sunken square in the center.  An iron cooking tripod held a kettle above the coals and a split bamboo tray hung above the hearth, to hold bamboo utensils and containers and such to be hardened by the smoke.

Mangyou Yi village

       It resembled the hearths of Wa , Lahu or Aini houses I’d visited elsewhere in Yunnan.  But the large stove-oven in the kitchen reminded me of Hani houses in Ailaoshan.  Wooden buckets and mortars and half-gourd water pitchers lay along the wall beside it.  There were no tables, chairs or stools.  Family and guests crouched together around the hearth, guaranteeing automatic intimacy.

       While we conversed I showed them pictures I took of people in the Gengma market my first trip.  After looking through them they asked me if I had any photos of Yi people.  I replied I didn’t know what they looked like.  Well, they were Yi, as it turned out, though Gengma folks called them Tu, their sub-group name.  This was the only Yi village in the county, though they said another Tu/Yi village was near Mengjiao in Cangyuan County.

Yi woman in Mangyou

       Already familiar with Yi culture elsewhere in Yunnan, I asked them if they had a bìmaw, the Yi ritual specialist, and celebrated the Torch Festival.  No, they celebrated Guanmenjie and Kaimenjie, because they were Buddhist.  They migrated here sometime in the Qing Dynasty and adopted the religion of their Dai neighbors.  They didn’t have their own temple, just the sacred village center pillar like Buddhist villages, Dai or Wa.  For festivals and important religious events they went to Mangkang Temple. 

       I didn’t ask whether any of their boys went down to the temple to be novices for a while, but their claim they followed Buddhist precepts in guiding their lives seemed genuine.  They were certainly as polite and mild-mannered as the Dai households I’d visited around Gengma. 

sacred village post and altar

       Much of the conversation had to be translated through one of the men who could speak Chinese.  The younger generation knew more Chinese than their elders, but it was the elders with whom I talked the most.  The women knew some Dai language from their market experience, but basically conversation among the villagers was all in Yi.

       Mangyou villagers are Buddhist, like the Dai, and live in houses like those of the Wa, yet still proudly identify themselves as Yi, even though they cut themselves off from other Yi centuries ago.  Within their own community they have tenaciously retained their Yi language for everyday usage.  By now it must be practically a separate dialect from that spoken by Yi in Dali Prefecture.  They keep it alive because it is their link with their past, exemplifying how language alone can define ethnic identity.

Mangyou Yi  woman dressed up for market day

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