Colors and Crowds in Yuanyang County

                                                                 by Jim Goodman

Yi coming to Niujiaozhai on market day

       Variety is the hallmark of every characteristic of Yunnan Province.  This applies to its landscapes, climate, food, lifestyles, languages and especially its people.  One third of the population, occupying two thirds of the territory, consists of 24 different ethnic minorities.  And among the larger ones are numerous sub-groups that dress in different outfits.  For anyone into ethnic fashions, Yunnan is a treasure trove.

       The greatest ethnic diversity in the province is in the four counties of the Lower Ailao Mountains, between the Red River and the Vietnam border:  Honghe, Luchun, Jinping and Yuanyang.  In these counties the Han are a minority, only 12% in Yuanyang, basically confined to cities and towns.  The ethnic minorities have been living here more than a thousand years, cultivating in the same irrigated rice terraces that form such a dramatic backdrop to the area.  And for its landscapes, vibrant market days and ethnic variety, Yuanyang County is the best.

Yuanyang County terraces on a winter morning

       The usual way into Yuanyang County is via Jianshui, from where Highway S214 runs south to the Red River and crosses into the county seat before ascending into the hilly heartland.  About 20 km before it reaches the river, a long village on a flat top ridge with steep sides lined with terraces is visible across a valley to the west.  It is a foretaste of what’s to come.

       Yuanyang city is only about thirty years old, the result of shifting the county’s capital from the old Yuanyang in the hills, now called Xinjie, to the riverside Dai La village of Nansha.  At this location the government had more room to expand.  The original village still exists, though obscured from view by the new buildings. 

Yi village next to Xinjie

       From here the road passes a lot of banana groves and begins climbing.  It’s about 30 km to Xinjie and before long the traveler can see the famous rice terraces cut into the slopes of the hills.  During the dry season they are filled with water and reflect the colors in the sky.  After the planting in April they turn green until September when the crop ripens to yellow.  By November the harvest has emptied the terraces and they once again fill with water.

Nisu Yi belt ends

       In the late 90s, having completed my research of the northwest, I chose Ailaoshan as my next project.  This involved journeys to all its counties, but I spent more time in Yuanyang than anywhere else.  Inexpensive hotels were available.  The terraces and villages were a short walk beyond the urban zones.  Xinjie had several Yi and Hani-run restaurants and a daily presence of many minorities, well augmented on market days, which were every four days.  And frequent minibuses plied the routes back and forth to other village market venues or places to view the terraces.

Nisu Yi gitls wearing the"chicken hat"

       Yuanyang didn’t get much traveler attention then and I was usually the only foreigner in town or, if with a friend, we were the only two foreigners in town.  In winter some Chinese photographers showed up, aiming to take the ultimate terraces photo, when fog covered the lower parts of the hills and left terraces above them to catch the first sunlight.  I often did the same and in constant search of better angles got used to walking along the terrace walls with my knees lightly bent so as not to slip and fall into the water.

       During dry season visits, in late afternoon I liked to take hikes south of the city, heading straight where the main city road turned left at the southern bus station, and out in the rural area towards the terraces and villages, hoping for a dramatic sunset that splashed the water-filled terraces with golden hues.  Once in a while the sun slid behind thick clouds and I didn’t take any photos at all except of people on the trail walking home.  But sometimes, besides friendly greetings, they invited me to their homes for a drink or a meal.  And that always made my day.

Laló Hani mother and daughter

Laló Hani woman

       Hani and Yi villages dominated the Xinjie vicinity, with houses of mud-brick, usually two stories.  Most had flat roofs, sometimes with a small shed on top, but some Hani villages had angled thatched roofs and were called ‘mushroom houses’.  Some villages lay on slopes above their terraces.  Others were on more level ground, surrounded by their fields.  

Laló Hani heading home from the Xinjie market day

      Nearly all the county’s Yi belong to the Nisu sub-group.  As with the county’s other ethnic minorities, nearly all the women dressed in traditional style.  They wore a long-sleeved jacket, fastened on the right side, bright colors for the young and dark for the older women, over plain slacks.  The jacket featured broad bands of embroidered patterns around the shoulders, lapel and sleeves.  Sometimes silver studs covered the entire front.  They fastened it with a belt with large quadrilateral embroidered ends that hung over the buttocks, the most distinctive feature of the outfit.

Hani village just south of Xinjie

       The usual women’s headgear was a long strip of black cloth with a panel of embroidery at each end.  They wrapped it around their hair and tucked one end into the top and left the other dangling over the side.  The favorite of the girls, and even young married women, was the “chicken hat” (wúbi túmaw in Yi).  So named because of its intended resemblance to a cockscomb, it was a colored piece of hard cloth, cut to shape and covered on both sides with inlaid silver or nickel bulbs, cultured pearls or white pile embroidery, with spaces left open to form arabesques and spirals.

Hani in tie-dyed imdigo

Hani woman in Huangcaoling

       Nisu myth attributes the origin of the wúbi túmaw to a story of two young lovers caught in the forest by the Prince of Devils.  First he killed the young man, then tried to capture the young woman.  She fled through the forest, with the Prince of Devils in hot pursuit, until she came to a village in a clearing.  A cock crowed, which stopped the demon in his tracks.  A witness to that, she guessed the demon was afraid of roosters.  So she grabbed it, chased off the demon and ran back into the forest to where her lover lay.  The cock crowed again and the young man came back to life.  Ever since then Yi girls wear the hat in honor of the rooster, to symbolize good luck and happiness in love.

Hani women in Majie district

       To make the floral, spiral, arabesque and other patterns on the jacket, belt ends and headgear, the Yi used paper stencils cut by specialists and sold at market days.  Xinjie’s market day always had tables selling the stencils, while at several other stalls women sold Nisu jackets, headgear and belts.  Hani women also ran stalls with Hani jackets, headgear, vests and bolts of cloth.  And a couple stalls sold silver ornaments, mostly those used to decorate jackets and hats—rings, buckles, coin buttons, chains and pendants.

Hani girls in Niujiaozhai

       Several subgroups of Hani live in the county.  Around Xinjie and south as far as Panzihua live the Laló Hani, whose women wear dark blue or black jackets, fastened on the right side, over blue or black trousers.  Bands of appliquéd designs in light, contrasting colors go around the cuffs, upper sleeves, neck, shoulders and calves.  Married women don a heavily fringed headscarf, held by a silver clasp in back, under which hangs a long, silver studded tail, 5 cm wide.  Unmarrried girls dress in brighter colors and wear no headgear.

       A slightly different style prevails among the Goho Hani of Huangcaoling district, southwest of Xinjie.  Goho jackets feature embroidered and silver-studded lower sleeves and are tied with a belt with big tabs hanging over the buttocks, similar to that of the Nisu, usually with spiral designs.  And the cap is a round one, with silver studs in the front and pendants on the side.

Niujiaozhai Hani in the Xinjie market

Dai woman and red sticky rice

       In the western part of Yuanyang County, around Shalatuo and Niujiaozhai, the Hani women’s jacket resembles that of their Nisu Yi neighbors, but hangs in the back over a separate cloth underneath.  The lower end and corners of this piece are heavily embroidered, as are the lower parts of the trousers.  It’s also tied with a belt with the ends draped over the buttocks, though these are either triangular or 10 cm-wide embroidered strips.

Xinjie on market day

       Just west of Yuanyang city, in Majie district the Hani wear similar bright jackets, but some attach a tie-dyed indigo section to the front.  A subgroup closer to Xinjie favors the tie-dyed cloth for the entire jacket.  Nisu Yi in Majie dress like those in Xinjie, but the ‘chicken hat’ is always studded with silver.  And in the eastern districts, besides Laló Hani, one can meet the Black Hani, who also dominate northern Jinping County and tie their artificially lengthened braids in a coil on top of the head.

       On market days, all these costume variations and embellishments made the moving crowds a constant swirl of color.  And with the fancy Yi and Hani belt ends, headgear tails and embroidered baby-carrriers, the women could be just as attractive from the back as from the front.  Around 80% of those attending were women and probably 95%, young and old, would dress in traditional style.

Landian Yao women in Xinjie

Nisu mother and child

       In the south, Huangcaoling held its market day on Friday and the Dai La town of Huangmaoling on Saturday.  Depending on the12-day animal cycle, Majie, Panzihua and Galiang hosted market day every six days, while Niuzhaozhai, Shalatuo, Xingcun and Xinjie staged it every four days.  They were always crowded, even in the rain.  Though the activity at each resembled that of every other venue, it was worth the journey just to see the ethnic variety and ever more views of a spectacular landscape, especially Panzihua, with a great view of the vast valley known as the Tiger’s Mouth.

Nisu Yi pattern stencils on sale in Xinjie

       My own favorite was Xinjie’s, every dragon, rat and monkey day and attracting the largest and most ethnically diverse crowds.  Starting from the center of town near the bus station and stadium, stalls and layouts spread down the steps and all along the long ridge forming the lower part of the city.  Besides the Nisu and Laló Hani, three or four other Hani subgroups would turn up, as well as Dai La and Zhuang from villages lower down on the road back to the Red River. 

       The Dai wore short-sleeved black jackets, fastened on the right side and trimmed along the lapel. sleeves and hem with bright color bands.  The plain black skirt reached to the calves, which were bound with embroidered wrappers.  The Zhuang dressed much like the Nisu, but with ruffled trimming to the jacket collar and different headgear.  Usually some Landian Yao turned up, too, standing out from the colorful crowd by their all black garments—tight trousers, loose jackets, headdress cover.  The only color component was a skein of magenta thread hanging from the collar down the front of the jacket.

Xinjie on market day

Zhuang mother and daughter

       Farm crops, fruits, vegetables and household goods comprised most of the merchandise on sale.  Yet there were always busy Yi and Hani stalls selling traditional clothes and cloth for making them.  Some odd traditional medicine plants and woods were also available and for snacks one could try steamed buns, the grilled bee larva or sticky red rice.  And wash it down with a cup of rice liquor.

Hani clothing stall in Xinjie

       Around three p.m. the crowds began to thin, as those living far away began to pack up and go.  Local Yi and Hani might hang around another couple hours.  And I would head for the rural road south of the town to get photos of them walking home towards the setting sun.  Sometimes I even got a photogenic sunset,

       After the turn of the century the scene began changing, particularly in Xinjie.  In 2002 the very scenic terraced fields around Panzihua, the Tiger’s Mouth, won the national government’s support for its bid for UNESCO recognition as a World Heritage Site (eventually awarded 2013).  That prompted the city government in Xinjie to make some drastic changes.  It ordered the leveling of the central bus station and the stadium, to be replaced by a three-story Cultural Center.  The place where all the minibuses parked now had a stone model of the terraces, with life-sized bronze sculptures of farmers and buffalos in them. 

       The main streets into the city were widened and the market venue altered.  Instead of the continuous line of stalls from the center down through the ridge in the lower section of the city, now the market day areas were scattered in separate, disconnected spots.  Attendance on the day I witnessed was only about a quarter of that in the so recent past.  But other market days were as full and lively as ever.  And the wonderful rice terraces flanking the city were untouched.  Yuanyang was still a county replete with color, in the landscapes and in the amazing diversity of its peoples, colors that would never fade.

sunset on the terraces south of Xinjie

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               For more on Ailaoshan and its people, see my e-book  The Terrace Builders

The Tropic of Cancer and the Hani in Mojiang

                                                           by Jim Goodman

view of Mojiang from the Tropic of Cancer Park

       The Tropic of Cancer, 23 degrees north of the equator, the line that forms the southern boundary of the earth’s temperate zone, runs right through the city of Mojiang, Yunnan.  The city is the capital of a county on the eastern side of Pu’er Prefecture, lying west of the Ailao Mountains that run along the right bank of the Red River.    What lured me to the area was not so much its geographical significance as the fact Mojiang is an Autonomous Hani County, the uppermost part of the Ailao Mountain range where they reside.

       Though it is the only strictly Hani autonomous county in the prefecture, the Hani are not the only minority nationality living in it.  I discovered this right away when I rode a bus to Mojiang from Mosha, on the Red River in Xinping County.  Upon departure the road climbed into the forested Ailao Mountains and after about 30 km swerves around Dajianshan, 2278 meters, and enters the county on the high plain around Malu village.

market day in Malu

       This is Yi territory, inhabited by a sub-group whose dwellings, of mud-brick walls and wooden posts on stone foundations with tiled roofs, and clothing resemble those of Yi in southern Chuxiong Prefecture.   The women dressed in a colorful jacket with an apron in front, the lapel, upper sleeves and apron borders heavily embroidered, with a sliver-studded stomacher across the waist, black trousers and turban.

       The men wore ordinary modern clothes, but both sexes might also don the goatskin coat.  Made from the skins of two goats, also popular in Chuxiong Prefecture, especially Dayao County, it hangs open in the front and reaches to the knees.  In the summer people wear the fur side out and in the winter the fur side in.

Yi woman in the Malu market

Haoni woman above Bixi

       It was market day when we passed through Malu, so progress was quite slow.  Stalls were up all along the main road and people wandered among them oblivious of the vehicle traffic.  Beyond Malu, the road begins a long and slow descent towards Mojiang.  It passes the attractive Buka Reservoir, a long and narrow body of water surrounded by forested hills, and then runs by Hani settlements perched on hillsides above their terraces.

Haoni woman on the road

older Haoni woman in Mojiang

       Different sub-groups of Hani live in the county but they all speak a similar dialect, which is quite unlike that spoken by Hani in Honghe, Yuanyang and other places further down the Ailao Mountains, which is close to that spoken by the Aini sub-group in Xishuangbanna.  The sub-group north of Mojiang, concentrated above Bixi, is called Haoni and their women wear a distinctive outfit. 

rural Mojiang County above Bixi

       They wear ordinary modern trousers and long-sleeved blouse.  Over this is a short-sleeved jacket, waist-length in the front and knee-length in the back, dark blue or black for older women and white for younger ones.  If white, it is heavily embroidered with red designs on the sleeves and back. On their heads they wear a tall turban, fastened with their braids across the front and with hair braids hanging far down the back.

       From Bixi the road descends further, through an area of Han villages, until it reaches Mojiang, about 12 km further.  Mojiang lies in a natural bowl with mountains all around and two small hills in the urban area.  It’s predominantly Han-inhabited, mostly full of modern buildings, but with an old-fashioned neighborhood left and a park with a pond and elegant pavilions.

astronomical observatory, Tropic of Cancer Park

       The southern hill is the site of the Tropic of Cancer Park.  Climbing the staircase I passed a niche of carved red sandstone pillars and, near the tip, a circle of white Stonehenge-like pillars about 1.5 meters high.  On the summit is a monument with a spiraling exterior staircase, evocative of the ancient Lighthouse of Alexandria.  A row of red bricks marks the actual Tropic of Cancer line here and I could actually walk the line through this monument. 

       Near this stands a large stone sundial and behind it is the domed astronomical observatory with a large telescope inside.  With nothing to obscure the view, it’s a perfect place to observe the heavens as well as the city and its setting.

tower over the Tropic of Cancer line

pavilion in the Mojiang city park

       Mojiang is a small city.  Nearby gold mines gave it some prosperity in the past, but it was not a major stop on the main trade routes through the province.  Caravans on the Tea and Horses Road did not come here.  The French Mekong Expedition passed by in the late 1860s, during the Muslim Revolt that ravaged Yunnan for several years.  Mojiang appeared to have been spared the depredations suffered by other cities like Ning’er and Pu’er and the French were pleased to find the local inhabitants extremely hospitable.  The city officials even provided them an escort to their next destination.  This tradition seemed to have continued to today, for I found Mojiang people very friendly and helpful.

water wheels in the river near Nanwen

       Mojiang hosts market day every five days.  Besides the local residents and Han villagers from the valley, many Hani turn up; the Haoni and two other sub-groups.  One came from villages south of Mojiang, around Nanwen, on the Aomo River.   The women wore dark blue jackets, knee-length trousers, wrappers around the calves a belt with a brightly embroidered sash hanging down the back and a black turban festooned with lots of bright yarn.  Their villages are much lower than those of the other sub-groups and they also use water wheels for farms along the Aomo River.

       The other, Bukong Hani, I would meet on a return trip to Mojiang a couple years later.  I had a task to perform, to deliver some books by a Hani teacher friend to his colleague in the Mojiang Middle School.  After I introduced myself and mentioned my interest in Hani culture, he invited me to a local restaurant with a few of his fellow teachers, all Hani.  We had a leisurely meal, lots of rice wine and talked about the Hani I had met in other parts of Yunnan.

Bukong Hani house

       One of the teachers came from Longba, a town southeast of Mojiang.  He informed that a Hani village a little beyond Longba, called Dameido, would be celebrating Hani New Year the next day.  As in the mountains of Yuanjiang County, where I had just observed it, the Hani in Mojiang hold it in November, rather than at Lunar New Year, though on different days in different districts. 

       With a couple days to spare before I had to return to Kunming, I set out early morning on a bus to Longba, a ride about an hour and half through open countryside.  From here, continuing east, the road is rougher and soon amongst the hills and terraced farms.  The road ended at Zhaogaisu, with Xiaomeido village just across the stream.  At the latter settlement the first Hani I met were three men departing for Dameido, so I joined them.

terraced farms of Dameido village

       The landscape is not as dramatic as north of Bixi or further down the Ailao Mountains, like Yuanyang and Luchun Counties.  The hills are smaller, the terraces less steeply angled and not always irrigated.  Domestic architecture, however, is quite different from that of Hani villages elsewhere in Mojiang and next-door Honghe County.

       The Bukong Hani, the name of the area’s sub-group, live in block-like, mud-brick houses with flat roofs and a notched ladder connecting the lower floor roof with the upper roof.  They resemble those of the Huayao Dai in Xinping County and those of the Yi and Hani in Yuanyang and Jinping Counties, but with no shed on the roof.  No doubt they lay out crops here to dry, but my arrival didn’t coincide with any harvest.  Instead, I saw local residents sometimes ascending to the roofs just to sit in the sun or do some stitching. 

on the flat roofs of Dameido village houses

       Dameido lay on the other side of the ridge, about a twenty-minute walk.  I didn’t have a contact name to look up.  When I asked for one the evening before, my Hani hosts told me it wasn’t necessary.  Hani people are very hospitable.  Just show up and someone will invite you to stay with them. 

       And that’s how it went.  One of my walking companions took me to his uncle’s house in the upper part of the village.  The path was higher than the settled area, so we had to climb down a notched ladder to get to the lanes between the houses.   His uncle immediately invited me to stay the night.  New Year had just begun and folks were killing pigs and preparing dishes for the evening feast. 

       We had tea and jiu (rice liquor) inside on a hard mud floor, cabinets lining the walls, large jugs of rice wine in front of them and the kitchen to the right just inside the door.  A bedroom on this floor was graced with a wooden window frame with carved floral designs.  Upstairs were more bedrooms, one of which I would use, and from the roof I had a great view of the stars later that night.

Bukong Hani women on the first floor roof

      My host Mr. Li claimed Dameido was a thousand years old.  Every house was in traditional Hani style, with the only exterior modern intrusion being a single rooftop satellite dish.  The men dressed in modern clothing, but most women and many girls still preferred the traditional look.  They wore indigo-dyed, hand-woven cotton jackets over trousers.  The jackets fastened in the front and were decorated with silver chains and coin buttons.  Around their heads they wrapped a turban with embroidered ends.  Young women and girls festoon the front of the turban with colored threads.

       After a late afternoon tour of the village it was time for the banquet.  Before it began an older woman went to several corners of the ground floor with a basket of seeds, scattering some in each spot as an offering to the spirits    We then commenced dining on several pork dishes, including the fat, blood soup, a few vegetables, rice and jiu.

       The special dish for the occasion was a sweet dumpling called tangyuan in Chinese.  When preparing these the Hani first cook three of them, each marked as representing people, animals and crops.  Whichever pops up first out of the bowl they’re cooked in indicates good luck in the coming year for whichever of the three the dumpling represents.

Bukong Hani girl

Bukong Hani woman

       Mr. Li had several guests, so it was a typically long and drawn out meal.  We talked about Yunnan and Thailand (they weren’t curious about America).  Nobody spoke English here, their Hani dialect was incomprehensible to me, so we conversed in basic Chinese, at a level I could more or less understand.

       After this first day of feasting, the second day was devoted to entertainment.  The previous evening the villagers had erected a sturdy swing in the center of the village near the middle school and next to the basketball court.  It had a strong crossbeam supported by two tripods, with two ropes hanging down and a board connecting them. 

Mr. Li entertaining his guest before a meal

riding the New Year swing in Dameido

       People rode it standing up, alone or in pairs, and doing knee bends to go higher.  By mid-morning the scene was crowded with youths eager to swing.  Such was the demand for a turn that each rider only got to execute three or four movements and thus didn’t get very high.  But everybody had a good time and no one tried to hog the time and swing longer than anyone else.

       After a couple hours the kids started drifting off to lunch, as did I.  I walked back to Mr. Li’s house and passed a shirtless man sitting on a stool and a Hani woman massaging his back with jiu as a treatment for a skin rash.  So they don’t just drink the stuff.  When I arrived, Mr. Li brought out his bow and two-stringed instrument and, while the women prepared the food, entertained me with a few tunes.

Hani woman in Dameido

       Then we had our meal, resembling that of the night before.  I reported what I saw around the swing and mentioned that only about a third of the girls wore Hani clothes.  He replied that the percentage would likely go up tonight for the dances.  Unfortunately, I had to return to Mojiang.  The third day involved visits to relatives, both within Dameido and to other villages.

       One of Mr. Li’s guests said dances would also take place in Zhaogaisu and there was a bus from there to Mojiang at 4 a.m.  Zhaogaisu was where I had to go first anyway, but when I got there folks told me no dances that night and no bus next morning.  Fortunately, a truck gave me a lift all the way to Mojang. 

       The following day I took a bus back to Kunming to keep my appointment.  Naturally, my recent experiences with the Hani of Dameido kept reverberating in my memory.  And I also recalled that dinner in Mojiang, when one of the teachers told me not to worry about not having a contact in Dameido  because “The Hani are very hospitable.”  Yes.  I’d just had proof.

the Hani village of Dameido

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for  more on Mojiang and the Hani see my e-book The Terrace Builders

Mojiang is one of the stops on Delta Tours Vietnam’s journey from Kunming to Jinghong.  See the schedule at https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/kunming-to-jinghong