by Jim Goodman
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| looking north from above Mengxing |
Most visitors to Xishuangbanna
spend their time in and around the city and on day-trips to the Dai Park, the
pagodas at Damenglong or various places west in Menghai County. If they venture into Mengla County at
all, it will be to Menglun, about 60 km east, just inside the county
boundary. The sprawling,
fascinating Botanical Garden is just across the river from the town and is
certainly worth the excursion. The
only other place in the county to see many travelers is Mengla city
itself. And these are people
passing through on the way to or from northern Laos and may not even stay long
enough to look at anything.
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| Dai girls in Manla |
Thanks to the new highway, the
journey from Jinghong to Mengla only takes about three hours, as it skirts
around the highest hills or tunnels through them. Buses on the old road took nearly the whole day, having to
climb a high mountain south of Mengxing, then up and down hills before the descent
to Mengla plain. Of course, it was
a far more scenic route, with views of the hills to the north and lots of
forest on the way. The new route
runs mainly through low hills full of rubber trees.
As the view from the mountain
pass just south of Mengxing indicates, the northern half of Mengla County is
much hillier than the lower elevations of its southern districts. Of the northern towns, Manla is
basically a Dai village turned into an administrative center. Xiangming, on a road branching west
just south of Manla, is the prefecture’s only Autonomous Yi District, mainly
inhabited by the Lalu branch of the Yi who migrated here from Jinggu County in
Pu’er Prefecture in the last decades of the Qing Dynasty. They also have settlements near Yiwu
and north of Manla. Some of them
moved on into northern Laos, where they are known as the Lolo, the original
name for the Yi. About 57,000 Yi
live in Xishuangbanna, comprising 5.6% of the population.
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| Longshi Jinuo village |
Their clothing
style—side-fastened tunic, usually blue, black trousers and turbans--and
housing type—timber posts, brick walls and tiled roofs--resembled that of the
rural Han in their original homeland.
They were not as distinctly different as the Miao and the Yao settling
in the county then as well, but coming in the area long before the Han had any
significant presence, they probably impressed the Dai as very different kind of
people.
Xishuangbanna’s Yi do
not share a couple of the most famous Yi characteristics common to bigger
sub-groups in the province. They
do not celebrate the summer Torch Festival. Villages do not have a bimaw,
the Yi spiritual specialist who keeps the traditional books written with the
unique Yi alphabet, covering myths, legends, pharmacopoeia, ritual rules, moral
aphorisms, and so forth. Like
other Yi, though, they keep an ancestral altar in a corner of the dining and
receiving room and make offerings at New Year and other occasions.
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| Yiwu |
In Xiangming the local
government last decade revived the Baishijia Festival, honoring Jin Xian, an
ancient martial hero. When drafted
into the army to fight a foreign invasion he promised his village he would
return by the next lunar New Year.
As it turned out, he didn’t show up until the 8th day of the
2nd moon. He was,
however, laden with decorations in recognition of his valor in combat. So the festival is held on that day to
celebrate his return. The revival
was a typical government-sponsored event, dominated by songs and dances, but
for once the traditional Yi costume was the fashion of the day. From 2011 the festival has also been
staged in Yiwu.
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| above the fog in Yiwu |
In the mountains west of
Xiangming, aside from a few stray Miao settlements, the villages are mostly
Jinuo, a mountain-dwelling people who only reside in three areas of
Xishuangbanna; here in the Kongmingshan area, as well as Jinuoshan and Mengwang
districts in Jinghong County. The
paved part of the road out of Xiangming ends after four kilometers and the dirt
road begins climbing uphill several km further from the large Dai village of
Manlin. After passing thick
forests full of flowering trees, interspersed with tea gardens, it reaches the
new Miao village of Andong. From
here a road north goes to Xinfa, and then on to Longshi, through the heart of
Jinuo territory.
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| tea gardens near Yiwu |
According to the prefecture
maps, this is a designated Scenic Area.
Longshi lies on a spur with a clear view of the blunt peak of
Kongmingshan directly west. The
Jinuo here do not ordinarily dress in their ethnic style and the characteristic
stilted houses that still prevail in Jinuoshan are absent. A few are modern style, but most are
simple wooden structures with corrugated iron roofs and satellite dishes for
their televisions. And perhaps because of the television
influence, only the older generation still uses the Jinuo language. Everyone else converses in Chinese. Like their cousins in Jinuoshan, they
cultivate tea rather than rice.
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| Yao man in the Mengla market |
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| Aini woman in Mengban |
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| the aerial ropeway walk |
The Yi who might be in town
dress in modern clothes, but a few Miao may also be around, the women
distinguished by their bulky, pleated skirt. Around 12.000 Miao live in Xishuangbanna, mostly in eastern
Memgla County, comprising 1.1% of the prefecture’s population. Like the Yi, they came here in the last
decades of the Qing Dynasty, migrating from Guangxi, but are a small fraction
of the over one million Miao in Yunnan and the over seven million throughout
China. They are not congregated in
any particular area in Banna, but scattered in the hills among other
minorities.
Forced migration has been a
theme of Miao history since ancient times. They settled in remote hills and secluded valleys until
expanding Han populations began encroaching on their territory. Then they would revolt, drive out the
Han and face massive military retaliation, forcing them to surrender their land
and move south. Originally from
central China, and there are still Miao communities in Hunan, different
sub-groups eventually settled in China’s southern provinces and over the border
into Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.
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| bridge over the Nanla River near Mengla |
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| well pagoda in Mengla |
Xishuangbanna’s 20,000 members
of the Yao minority nationality also live mainly in eastern Mengla County,
mostly from the Landian sub-group, who also reside in Jiangcheng, Luchun,
Yuanyang and Jinping Counties.
Their women wear a tight pair of black pants to just below the knee,
white leggings, a loose black jacket, a skein of bright magenta wool thread hanging
down from the neck in front and silver ornaments in their hair buns. They also shave off their
eyebrows.
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| pavilion at the Manlongdai bridge |
This Yao sub-group favored
locations at lower altitudes than most other Yao and except for the Yiwu
highlands established villages in remote valleys with nearby streams. Traditionally the Landian Yao built
one-story houses of wattle and thatch, with mud floors, and aligned them with
the stream, facing upstream. They
are concentrated around Manla in the north and Yaoqu in the center
A road along the
Nanla River north of Mengla comes to a fork after 27 km at Nazhuo. Another 11 km northeast lies Yaoqu, but
it is a modern town and the Yao around here do not dress Yao-style nor live in
traditional houses. However, the
fork turning northeast passes Naka, a typical Yao village along the Nanla
River, where at least the females still wear traditional clothing. They may also be seen at the market in
Mengban, a few km upriver, along with Miao and Aini.
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| typical Manlongdai house/restaurant |
The road from Mengla to Nazhuo
offers pleasant views of the river.
Parts of it are filled with half-submerged trees and thick forest flanks
the eastern banks. Fishermen ride
rafts of lashed bamboo poles, about three meters long and half meter wide. At bends in the river’s course the
mountains to the east are visible.
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| temple compound near Manlongdai |
About ten km north of Mengla a
side road turns west into a patch of virgin rain forest, one of the last
surviving in the prefecture. In
most cases, people have to appreciate the wonders of such a forest from a
ground-level viewpoint. From 2007,
another perspective became possible here.
An aerial ropeway adventure opened, offering a walk across planks
mounted twelve meters up in the trees, flanked by heavily netted sides and a
railing to hang onto while making the walk. Only a few people are allowed on the walkway at a time, and
it does sway a bit while used, but is perfectly safe. The view is both up and down at magnificent tall and
straight tree trunks, creepers, vines, epiphytes and a hundred shades of the
color green. The walkway ends in
full view of a jungle waterfall.
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| the interior of Manlongdai's temple |
In Mengla City, most of the
shops, restaurants, hotels and offices lie on the busy north-south road. The residential areas are off to either
side. The little central park is
busy mornings and evenings with local people practicing tai qi and other forms of exercise. On the hill above it is the local Buddhist temple
compound. Just down the street is
the Nanla Shopping Mall, with attractive buildings employing Dai architectural
motifs, like pagodas on the roof, that include a supermarket, several
boutiques, snack and drink shops and outdoor restaurants along the river. A Dai-style pagoda well stands at the
corner and a right turn here along Qingnianlu leads to the old neighborhood of
Mansai, a collection of traditional Dai houses, a few of which double as
evening restaurants.
The latter are popular with
visitors who stay overnight. For
afternoon meals, though, tourists and even Dai from other parts of the prefecture
tend to head for Manlongdai, just several km north, an 800-year-old Dai village
famous for its cuisine. With
scarcely any modern-style buildings around, just Dai-style stilted houses,
diners can relish their meals in an authentic traditional setting. Hosts serve them various locally
grown vegetables, raw and cooked, steamed fish, boiled and grilled chicken,
ground pork mixed with herbs and cooked in a bamboo tube, and Pu’er tea and
rice liquor to wash it all down.
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| Huilong Falls |
The village lies on the south
side of a narrow stream, with the rice fields on the other side. A modest wooden gate stands on one side
of the bridge across the stream, while on the village side is a very ornate,
red-painted gate doubling as a rest stop, decorated with carvings and a painted
peacock below the roof apex. Just
beyond the north end of the village is the old monastery, with wooden walls and
roof tiles, still the original building from centuries ago.
Just two km away another Dai
village, two centuries older than Manlongdai, has also retained its original
temple compound buildings. They’re
a little dilapidated and they use a bit of corrugated iron here and there on
the awnings above the ground floor.
Concrete pillars have replaced the wooden posts. The interiors are quite well preserved,
however, featuring lavishly painted altars, ceiling imagery and wall murals
internal and external.
In the jungle a short distance
from Manlongdai is the most hidden of all of the county’s little-known attractions—Huilong
Falls. The waterfall plunges about
a hundred meters from a tall cliff straight through the jungle. To reach this serene and lovely site
one has to find a guide to take one down a certain jungle path, then cross a
creek and fight through the bushes, perhaps startling a porcupine on the way, bend
under tree branches and crawl over boulders for about a half hour just to get
into a position to see five of its nine cataracts.
Similar unexplored jungles
still exist elsewhere in the county.
No doubt intrepid travelers In the future, driven by an insatiable
appetite for unspoiled natural beauty, will discover new waterfalls, caves and
scenic tucked-away ponds. The list
of Mengla County’s hidden attractions is bound to grow.
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| in the heart of a tropical rain forest |
*
* *
for more on Mengla County and its
people, see my e-book
Xishuangbanna: The Tropics of Yunnan
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