by Jim Goodman
Ailaoshan—the Ailao Mountain
Range—begins in central Yunnan and runs along the south side of the Red River
all the way into northern Vietnam. Ailao
Mountain, at the top end, stands at 3166 meters, while its second highest peak,
Phansipan in Sapa, Vietnam, rises to 3143 meters. But most peaks range from 1500-2500 meters. Lower Ailaoshan—Honghe, Yuanyang, Luchun and
Jinping Counties—garners more traveler attention, especially Yuanyang,
for its ethnic diversity and its spectacular, water-filled rice terraces. Yet similar landscapes and branches of the
same minorities characterize the lesser known counties of Xinping and
Yuanjiang. .The third highest Ailaoshan peak is in western Xinping County, called Guo Snow Mountain, at 3137 meters.
Xinping is a Yi and Dai Autonomous County, which means over half the county’s territory is inhabited by these two ethnic minorities.
The Yi live in the hills of the western and southern districts, along with a few Lahu villages in the southwest and Hani in the south, while the Dai inhabit the lowlands of the river valleys
Xinping
City, the county capital, lies in a broad valley flanked by hills, 205
km southwest of Kunming and its population is almost entirely Han. Even before the end of the century it was thoroughly
modernized, with concrete skyscrapers and luxury hotels. No traditional buildings existed except for
the city’s one surviving attraction,
Dragon Spring, which doubles as Xinping’s wenhuazhan
(cultural center). Within the grounds
are Chinese-style pavilions and roofed walkways, a winding “dragon bridge” to
the center of the pond, with lotuses in the water and a pagoda on the
side. At the other end of the park are
the wenhuazhan facilities for
recreation, such as snooker tables and card tables with stools. The main component of the women’s
costume is a long, side-fastened, half-sleeved coat, usually dark blue or dark
green.
They add bands of appliqué and
embroidery to the borders of the neck, sleeves, lapel and hems, including the
inside border of the right front part of the coat.
When donning the coat they fold this end over
to expose the decorations and tuck it in a belt, with tasseled and embroidered
ends, that ties in the back.
They may
also add an embroidered strip of cloth over the stomach.
The coat is worn over a long-sleeved blouse,
also with decorated cuffs, and trousers.
A blue turban and a pair of embroidered shoes complete the outfit.
The other minority is an animist branch
of the Dai, divided into three groups—Dai Ya, Dai Sa and Dai Kat. Collectively they are known as Huayao Dai,
Flowery Waist Dai, after the splash of red and yellow colors around the midriff
of their traditional clothing. Basically
black cotton with colored trimmings, lapels, cuffs and waistband, the full
outfit comprises a tubular skirt, jacket, vest, apron and headgear. Designs of all three sub-groups are
different, but the components are the same.
The wide saucer-shaped bamboo hat with a pointed top is specific to the Dai
Ya. The Dai Sa wear a black turban and
the Dai Kat a conical bamboo cap. They live mainly along the Red River, in
villages containing 20-40 houses of unbaked brick on stone foundations, two
stories high, with flat roofs; like cubes on blocks.
Bigger
animals live on the ground floor, people above.
Residents reach the living quarters by ladders or iron staircases.
Bunches of fishing baskets hang on the walls
or from posts on the roof.
Pigs have
their own sties, usually concrete, grouped together at the edge of the village.
Ducks, geese and turkeys are the domestic
fowl.
Because stretches of low-lying flat land
are rare along this section of the river, Huayao Dai made farms on the lower
slopes of the hills by cutting terraces into them, usually reinforced with
stone, irrigated by streams engineered to direct water through all the terraces
and then through the village below. It’s the same system employed so famously in
Lower Ailaoshan. And as the Dai are the
oldest inhabitants of the Red River lands, they may have been the ones who
originated it. The Yi, Hani and others were
later migrants to Ailaoshan and the
irrigated titian (step terraces) are not part of their mythology or
traditional history prior to their arrival. The Huayao Dai house type was another
cultural export downriver, now common to many Yi, Dai, Hani and Zhuang villages
in Honghe, Yuanyang and Jinping. They
use the flat roofs to dry crops as well as sit outside to do some embroidery or
just relax in good weather.
The main town along the river is Mosha, which
holds a market day every Sunday. The
town’s residents are mainly Han, but all the nearby villages are Dai and market
day also draws Yi and Hani from the hills.
The older generations of ethnic minority women still like to dress in
traditional style, adding color to the market.
The youth are not so inclined.
However, when Huayao Dai culture is on
special display, like the Street of Flowers Festival 13th day of the
1st lunar month, their attitude changes. Held in Longhe village near Mosha, the event
highlights everything traditional, especially the women’s clothing and
ornaments of all three sub-groups. Young
women dressed in their best dominate the dances, with props from their daily
life like balance poles, fishing nets, baskets and pots. The skits include traditional courtship
routines and booths on the grounds demonstrate various aspects of Dai customs—spinning
and weaving, embroidery, making sticky rice, blackening teeth, tattooing, etc—and
even invite male guests to participate in a courting tradition wherein the
gorgeously dressed girl feeds the boy without him using his hands. Besides the Dai, the Yi, Hani and Lahu
participants also perform on stage. The
Lahu dance is quite unusual. Half-naked
males dance wildly around in a circle, blacken the faces of the girls nearest
to them and then engage them in a mock free-for-all. From Mosha a main road climbs south into
the highlands to eventually reach Malu, the last town before the border witj Yuojiang County.
This is largely a Yi
town, on a plain surrounded by steep, forested, largely uncultivated
mountains.
In dress, dialect and
lifestyle they are close to the Yi of Chuxiong Prefecture.
They even wear the goatskin jackets popular
among Yi further north.
It’s made from two
goatskins stitched together, sleeveless and open in the front,
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Aside from the goatskins, the men dress
in modern clothing, but most women retain the traditional look. This outfit features a black vest over a
long-sleeved blouse, apron, silver-studded stomacher, black trousers and black
turban with colored ends tucked into the top.
The vest hangs open in the front, with brightly embroidered lapels,
fastened by a long row of silver coin-buttons. The other main road out of Mosha runs
southeast along the Red River into Yuanjiang County and the capital
itself.
The scenery is pleasant and the
valley wider.
Halfway to Donge inside
Yuanjiang County the road passes some eroded bluffs sculpted by the wind into
tall pillars.
It’s designated the Mosha
Earth Forest, though nowhere near as big or spectacular as the Earth Forest in
Yuanmou County.
From Donge the scenery
is drab and marred by the smoke of small factories along the way.
Yuanjiang City lies at one of the lowest
elevations—520 meters—in the province, making it one of the warmest. Low mountains across the river are devoid of
forests or any vegetation, but the plain around the city is richly irrigated
and agriculturally productive. Because
of its open location far from the hills the city and vicinity can be subjected
to brisk winds, especially in spring, gusting In the afternoon and howling all
night. In a drab town of utilitarian concrete
buildings only one traditional structure still stands--.
—an ornate, two-tiered hall at the edge of a pond in the city center. Pavilions with tiled roofs with upturned
corners stand in the winding walkway from the land to the hall, which itself
serves as a public reading room. Yuanjiang is the administrative seat of
a Hani, Yi and Dai Autonomous County.
Several Hani groups live in the mountains to the south, the Yi in the
eastern hills and the Dai along the river.
Two sub-groups of Dai reside in the county: the Dai Ya branch of the Huayao Dai and the
Dai La, a differently-dressed group more common downriver in Honghe and
Yuanyang. The women wear side-fastened
jackets with lots of color across the lapel and sleeves, worn over black
tubular skirts with brightly embroidered leg-wrappers. They live in the same kind of houses, but as
the riverside plains are wider here they mostly avoid hillside terraces and
raise fruits, sugarcane and vegetables in addition to rice. Yi women dress like the Yi in Honghe
County, wearing simply a side-fastened jacket of pastel color, moderately
embellished along the lapel, plain trousers and wraparound headscarf. Besides the older Dai Ya women, they are the
next likely minority group to visit the city.
The Yuanjiang market may also have a few stalls or street displays run
by Bai minority women from Yinyuan district, 40 km south.
The town itself is a nondescript boring
place only interesting on its weekly market day, when Hani come in from the
hills. But in the Yinyuan plain are
eight Bai villages, descendants of Bai who fled Dali during the wars that
engulfed the crumbling of the Nanzhao Kingdom in the early 10th
century. They speak a Bai dialect
similar to Dali’s and live in houses with open courtyards behind the compound
wall, Bai-style garden at one end with ornamental and medicinal plants, murals
on the walls and an open-fronted main receiving room, very much like the Dali
area.
On a small hill near one of the villages
stands a thousand-year-old tree. Its
trunk is so wide it takes eight men clasping hands with their outstretched arms
to encircle it. Red Guards destroyed the
temple that was once next to it, but at least spared the tree. Nowadays every year in the 3rd lunar month
Bai villagers organize a procession to the tree and perform rituals in front of
it. From Yuanjiang a good road runs east
about ten km to a Dai village next to a reservoir and then turns south and
zigzags up the hills, which rise at
least a thousand meters above the plains. After reaching Yangjie the road somewhat
straightens out and remains high on the slopes.
From here to Nanuo, another 35 km southeast, the landscape begins to
exemplify typical Ailaoshan terrain, with
steep slopes covered with water-filled terraces, speckled with tightly
clustered Hani villages. The land just
east of Nanuo is the most spectacular section and has been officially
designated a Scenic Area.
The Hani live in mud-brick houses with
tile roofs, usually, but not always, two stories and without a compound
wall. The kitchen and dining-reception
room are right inside the front door.
Sleeping quarters are upstairs. Some
houses also have small balconies, where family members and guests may sit and
relax. While the youth and men ordinarily dress
in modern clothes, most married women prefer the Hani traditional outfit. They wear black cotton trousers, fastened by
a belt with long embroidered or tasseled ends hanging over the buttocks,
long-sleeved blouse and short-sleeved jacket, black around Yangjie and more
often white around Nanuo, with some embroidered red stitch lines.. Coin buttons run down the jacket
front, with silver clasps at the collar, but it’s usually worn open.
When the French Mekong Expedition passed
this way in 1868 they enjoyed a wonderful reception from Yuanjiang’s mandarins. These were the first foreigners Yuanjiang
folks had ever seen. When the French
party reached the plains near Yuanjiang the city officials marched to greet
them at the head of a party that included two hundred soldiers and porters
to escort them to Yuanjiang. Some
carried banners, others big character posters welcoming the members of the
expedition. When they reached the city
cannon boomed and an orchestra played. A century and a half later, foreigners
are traveling everywhere in Yunnan and nearly every city has had experience
with them. In many highlands areas,
though, a foreign arrival is still a special event. There won’t be any marching band or
procession to meet them, but the traveler will find the people friendly and
eager to make the encounter a memorably good one. For Ailaoshan people, hospitality is part of
their nature.
* * *
For more information on all of
Ailaoshan, see my e-book TheTerrace Builders
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