by Jim
Goodman
Chuxiong lies between Kunming and Dali.
Its position marked it as a major stop on the
ancient caravan route to Myanmar, the old Burma Road, and the city is probably
just as old as Kunming and Dali.
It was
long known as Lucheng, the Deer City in Chinese, or Elu in the local Yi
language, after the myth of its founding.
Accordingly, in ancient times a spotted deer descended from Heaven, ran
in a specific circumference, then vanished.
The local people observing this considered it an auspicious sign and
built a wall along that line, enclosing what became the city of Lucheng.
The best view of the city is from Elu Park,
on a nearby mountain to the west, which also features high cliffs, strange rock
formations, and groves of camellia trees that blossom in February.
The original wall and all the old
buildings have disappeared, so there are no traditional neighborhoods to
explore.
However, nowadays a
multi-building provincial museum on a knoll in the western part of Chuxiong is
well worth a visit.
The different halls
feature well-labeled displays of the prefecture’s flora and fauna, minerals,
minority nationalities’ clothing and artifacts, ancient tools and weapons, plus
a room full of dinosaur skeletons.
Across the highway just northwest of the
city lies the recreational and cultural park with the long name of The Park of
the Ten Month Calendar Culture of the Yi Nationality in China.
Several tall carved stone pillars dominate
the park, supposedly in the style of the area’s ancient Yi inhabitants.
The annual Yi Torch Festival in July is
staged here with great fanfare.
Although
the Yi comprise only about 18% of the prefecture’s population, divided into
several sub-groups, they reside on over half the territory.
This qualifies Chuxiong to be an Autonomous Yi
Prefecture, where the top figures in the government are Yi.
The Yi minority nationality is the
largest in the province, comprising 11% of the population. Yi sub-groups inhabit every part of Yunnan
except Dehong in the southwest. On my
first two trips to Yunnan in 1992 I visited Sani Yi in Shilin County and Nuosu
Yi in Ninglang, observed Duli Yi in the Xiaguan and Dali markets, the Nisu Yi
on a brief trip to Yuanyang, and bought photo books featuring other Yi
sub-groups to whet my appetite for more encounters with them.
On my third trip to Yunnan, March 1993,
with a friend along who was mainly interested in the northwest, I arranged for
our journey to stop first in Chuxiong in time for the Yi Festival of Flowers,
held the 8
th day of the 2
nd lunar month.
The event also takes place in a big way in
Dayao County, in the mountains northwest of Chuxiong, but when we learned of a
closer venue at Zixishan, a protected forest about 10 km west and then south 30
km into the mountains, we opted for that.
The museum and park weren’t built until the end of the decade, so we had
no reason to spend time in the city.
Zixishan is home to the Camellia Research
Center, which also had a small guesthouse with comfortable rooms and electric
blankets. We arrived in late afternoon
and stayed the night. Next morning our
Yi hosts took us down the mountain to their home village. After a hike through the forest we came to a
more open hill area, a reservoir and terraced farms filled with ripening yellow
mustard flowers. The village lay on a
nearby promontory overlooking the pond and the terraces, with a view of a Miao
village in the distance.
Yi houses resembled those of the rural
Han, only without compound walls, made of mud-brick with wood posts and tiled
roofs, wide, two stories, with the kitchen and receiving rooms on the ground
floor and the sleeping rooms upstairs.
Sheds in the yard housed the animals, mainly buffaloes, used for
traction and milk, pigs, chickens and goats.
Besides food, they raise goats for their skins, which are made into
sleeveless jackets, worn with the fur on the inside in cold weather and on the
outside when it’s rainy.
Our hosts served us a meal of mainly
different meat dishes, washed down with a liberal amount of rice liquor.
Fortunately we didn’t get too drunk to climb
back up the mountain afterward., Though it was slow going, we could choose good sites to take breaks and stare at the hills, valleys, trees and waterfalls..
Back at the lodge we had a similar meal and after
several more rounds of drinks went to sleep easily.
The temperature dropped considerably, but we had electric blankets. Early next morning we were off to the
festival site, which lay several km away following a motorable dirt road
through the pine forest. The name of
this event is Chahuajie in Chinese, which literally means Camellia Festival,
and is dedicated to the Yi heroine Miyilu for her role in ridding the area of a
vicious tyrant who kept demanding young Yi women for his perverse
pleasures. Miyilu volunteered to meet
him, but when they were alone together she drew out a hidden knife and stabbed
him to death. She fled the palace, but
the tyrant’s guards caught up with her and slew her under a white camellia
tree. Her blood stained the tree’s roots
and from then on the flowers came out red.
There are variations on this
tale. The Dayao version has Miyilu
volunteering to marry the tyrant and when he happily agrees she offers to share
wine with him as a toast to their betrothal.
Miyilu is wearing a poisonous azalea in her hair and secretly dips it
into the wine, rendering it lethal. When
the couple drinks the wine they both die.
She is buried beneath a camellia tree.
Her brother comes to look for her, learns what happened and cries so
much over her grave his tears turn to blood, which stains the roots of the
camellia tree and turns the flowers red.
After we quaffed our cups we proceeded
to a lane flanked on each side by Yi girls dressed in gorgeous traditional
clothing and Yi boys playing trumpets, long-necked lutes, guitars, flutes and
gourd pipes. When we reached the beginning
of the lane the boys in front raised their long trumpets and blared out a
welcome. The boys commenced playing
their instruments and the girls began singing old melodies in their
high-pitched voices. When we had
completely passed through this ‘Yi gauntlet’ (as we nicknamed it) the music and
singing stopped, but resumed as soon as the trumpets announced the next set of
guests.
With the second group we encountered the
women wore a long-sleeved, hip-length jacket, fastened on the right side. It was black, with wide bands of embroidery,
of camellias and other motifs, along the hems, cuffs, collar and sleeves. Over it, suspended by silver chains around
the neck, was a bib similar in shape, but longer, down to the hips, and tied with
straps around the back. It also featured
embroidered camellias. Instead of caps
or turbans, they wore their hair in buns with a wide ornamented silver band
around it and chains and clasps holding the bun in back. The hair jewelry was often very antique, handed
down by females from one generation to the next, only worn on special occasions
and never sold, for that would break the line of continuity the jewelry
symbolizes.
Jackets worn by the third Yi sub-group
were also long-sleeved, side-fastened and reached to below the hip. A wide black band was across the waist,
setting off the bright colors and lavish embroidery strips of all parts of the
jacket. Even more eye-catching was the
headdress, a round turban festooned with rows of cowry shells stitched like
crosses around the brim and beaded tassels in between.
After all the guests were in place the program began with a dragon dance, followed by several speeches and then recessed until dusk. Folks wandered off and prepared meals on campfires. We joined one Yi group for a rough-and-ready repast of pork, chicken, vegetables and several toasts of rice liquor. Around dusk the music show commenced, to go on for hours. It was certainly a color spectacle. Even the instruments were ornamented, with
thin strips of embroidered cloth tied to the ends of the guitars and
lutes. The guitars were often made by
the players themselves, or perhaps their fathers, as some had an old
patina. They were of wood, with
low-relief painted floral designs on the front of the body and a carved dragon
head at the end of the neck.
Lads on their instruments started each
group, playing and dancing energetically in a circle. Girls joined in and began singing to the
melodies with their distinctive high pitch voices and quivering extended
notes. Girls of all three sub-groups
joined the circles together. The dancing
grew ever more vigorous, for these were youth, after all, and this was what
they came to do. By the time it was
fully dark there were many such circles, competing in frenetic cacophony,
dancing until they just couldn’t go on any longer.
Several small fires around the grounds
provided warmth for the spectators. A
few stalls sold snacks and rice liquor was passed around among the men, though
not the musicians and dancers. The
performers continued until very late.
Finally exhausted, they joined the groups around the fires to relax and
socialize. Around midnight those still
around could enjoy the screening, on a huge sheet draped between two big trees,
of a Yi movie.
We were back in
the comfortable Camellia Research Center’s guest house by then, to enjoy a last
drink with our hosts and an easy sleep under the electric blankets. In the morning we took a last invigorating
hike around the area, passing creeks and waterfalls, spotting a fox in the
woods, enjoying the mountain air and scents.
But we were off to Dali that day.
Other attractions in the vicinity, like a venerated 600-year-old
camellia tree and a 500-year-old temple compound, we had no time to see.
Zixishan also
has nurseries for camellia, rhododendron and cherry trees. A new hotel was going up at the time next to
one of the more accessible reservoirs and work was in progress daily to upgrade
the road from the highway. Perhaps
Zixishan would become a tourist destination for nature lover travelers. As an officially preserved forest, it will
always have its trees, its camellias, creeks, animals and, hopefully, will
always play annual host to the spectacular Yi Flower Festival.
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