The Yi Torch Festival—Urban Celebrations

                                     by Jim Goodman

Yi from Fuheng district in Yangbi for the festival

       The summertime Torch Festival is the best-known annual event in the Yi people’s calendar.  With 11% of the population, the Yi are the largest minority nationality in Yunnan, with about 25 sub-groups and five dialects, living all over the province except the southwest borderlands.  Not all the sub-groups celebrate it, and the Bai and Naxi have a Torch Festival of their own, but most visitors think of it as a Yi festival, partly because of the massive publicity given to the extravagant celebrations of it in the Stone Forest.

       Several origin stories exist, but the one most common to Yi in central and western Yunnan attributes it to a hero’s successful defense against the wrath of a jealous god.  Accordingly, once upon an ancient time lived a famous Yi wrestler named Eqilaba, with a reputation for being invincible.  A jealous god in Heaven, determined to undermine his fame, dispatched a champion of his own to challenge Eqilaba.  The challenger lost his life in the attempt.

bridge in Longjiang Park, Chuxiong

       Furious, the god sent a swarm of insects to attack the Yi people’s crops.  Eqilaba organized the people and ordered them to light torches to drive away the insects.  It worked.  The people repelled the attack.  And ever since then, on the 24^th day of the 6^th lunar month, the Yi stage the Torch Festival to commemorate their victory.  Village or city programs may include wrestling matches, bull fights and horse races to enliven the day, and then conclude in the evening by lighting torches and dancing around a bonfire.

       I witnessed the Torch Festival of the Nuosu Yi in Ninglang city in the northwest on my first trip to Yunnan in 1992.   The following summer I attended a multi-village celebration of it in the mountains northeast of the city.  Some years later, when my research took me to other parts of Yunnan, I tried to see it with the Huayao Yi in Shiping County.  But just when all the participants, dressed in their finest, turned up at the venue it began to rain heavily and didn’t stop until morning.    

dinosaur display, Chuxiong Museum

       That was unlucky, but not unusual.  The 6^th lunar month is in the middle of the rainy season.  A few years later I scheduled another attempt, this time near Damedi, in Shuangbai County in Chuxiong Prefecture.  But a landslide had just recently cut off the village.  So I opted to take the earliest minibus to Chuxiong city and try to see it there.  Chuxiong is a Yi Minority Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, which means the folks in charge of the government are Yi.  They would be sure to sponsor something.  And the closer I got to the city the more the skies cleared, though they remained dark to the south.

the stage at the Yi nationality theme park in Chuxiong

       Chuxiong was never a popular tourist destination.  Most travelers in the 90s only knew it from a lunch break stop on the bus route from Kunming to Dali.  And by the end of the decade buses used the new highway and didn’t even stop in the city.  The city had little of interest; a couple nice parks, a single Buddhist temple, and a plethora of new, unimaginative, concrete buildings.  A statue of Miyilu, the heroine of the Yi Flower Festival in spring, was the only visible Yi motif in this capital of a Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

       By 2000 that had changed.  The city now had a new prefectural museum, one of the finest in the province, much of it—four floors in the central part of the complex--devoted to various aspects of local culture, predominantly Yi.  The ground floor displays all the items used in traditional daily life—tools and implements, baskets and containers, hunting and fishing gear and musical instruments.  There are also house models of the Yi and Chuxiong’s other minorities the Miao, Lisu and Dai.

selling Yi guitars in Longjiang Park

Yi bimaws in ceremonial clothes

       The second floor exhibits over fifty traditional clothing outfits, mostly women’s, from the prefecture’s Yi sub-groups, other parts of Yunnan and sub-groups from Guizhou and Sichuan.  The exhibit includes spinners, winders, looms and accessories like jewelry and embroidered shoulder bags.  The third floor features the books in the Yi alphabet used by the bimaw, or religious specialist, as well as grotesque wooden masks, painted gourds, lacquered bowls and other antiques.  The fourth floor contains books on Chuxiong and the Yi.

Yi women with torches ready to light

lighting their torches

       It is not just an ethnic museum, though.  Rooms around the center are devoted to other topics.  One features the prefecture’s fauna, its reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects and mammals and another the extinct creatures of the past, such as the dinosaur skeletons found in Lufeng County and the remains of ancient man.  There’s a calligraphy room, exhibiting elegant brushwork as well as thin pieces of wood shaped into Chinese characters.  Another hall features ceramic and bronze artifacts from the Zhou Dynasty, with paintings beside them that show how they were used.

Yi singing group performing in Chuxiong

       The other major change in the city was the recently completed construction of an elaborate park northwest of the city on the other side of the Longchuan River.  With the wordy name of The Park of the Ten Month Calendar Culture of the Yi Nationality in China, this was the new venue for the Torch Festival.  Previously, the celebrations were held in the roundabout with the Miyilu statue.  But this was now covered by an overpass complex and the statue removed. 

       The park’s name refers to the pre-modern Yi calendar that divided the year into ten, 36-day months.  The month contained three ‘weeks’ of twelve days, each named after an animal in the Yi zodiac.  The Chinese also have a twelve-day cycle with each day named after an animal, but the two zodiacs are slightly different; the Yi pangolin day being one example.  The Torch Festival back then was Yi New Year Day.

Yi dancers at the Torch Festival

      It seems everything in this park was intended to be big and impressive.  Enormous blocks of carved stone stand at the entrance, depicting dance scenes from the Yi Laofuzhuan (Dressing Up as Tigers) festival in Shuangbai County, flanked by a huge bronze drum replica.  Dominating the rear of the park is a tall, carved column, surrounded by smaller ones, on top of a monumental edifice of walls and stairs. 

       The city’s Han, who form at least 90% of the population, also enjoy the Torch Festival as a holiday of their own   On this day red lanterns and vertical banners decorated shops and offices.  Stages went up in Longjiang Park for performances by singers, jugglers and magicians, street vendors were everywhere and some Yi men set up stalls selling ‘moon guitars’, gourd-pipes and flutes.  Since the government-sponsored program would not begin until after dark, early arrivals from the Yi contingents in the prefecture, dressed in their finest traditional clothing and ornaments, wandered the urban streets and parks.

the festival bonfire at Chuxiong

       At sunset people began heading for the park.  The program was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. but got delayed until after 10, when the fireworks launched from tall buildings in the city center had already been illuminating the sky.  Then a group of Yi girls, in red jackets and turbans, climbed onto the stage in front of the columns and lit their torches.  They strode offstage to a central bundle of faggots in a big iron cauldron in the plaza as other Yi contingents followed them, including a few bimaws dressed in fancy ritual garments and miters.

       The bimaws seemed to be there just for show, for they didn’t actually do anything.  (In traditional village celebrations, aside from morning ancestral rites performed by the senior lady of the household, the Torch Festival never involved any ceremonies.  It was a secular event, full of games, songs and dances.)  The young women tossed their torches into the pile of faggots and soon a bonfire was blazing.

Yi visitors in the Yangbi park

       Performers still occupied the stage for a while—solo singers, duets, comedy skits and groups of traditional Yi singers and musicians.  Finally the stage action concluded and the Yi sub-group contingents in the square commenced ring dances around the fire.  The activity continued past one a.m., both here and in the city.

       Most Yi-inhabited areas hold the Torch Festival on the 24^th day of the 6^th lunar month.  The exception is Dali Bai Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, where the Yi follow the Bai custom of marking it on the 25^th day.  This gave me the chance to see it again the day after the Chuxiong affair.  I left in the morning for Yangbi, 38 km from Xiaguan, the nearest Yi-administered county in Dali Prefecture.  Thanks to detours because of road repairs and construction of a new road from Xiaguan to Yangbi, it took most of the day to get there.

torches in a Yangbi street

Yangbi statue of Miyilu

       Yangbi is a much smaller city than Chuxiong, notable for its old bridge, traditional Hui quarter and indigenous-style mosque.  The rest of it is a rather run-down modern city with the only Yi symbol being its own Miyilu statue.  It is a Yi-run county, though, so its local government sponsored the celebrations, meaning sub-groups from all the county districts would be paid to come to the city for the event.

Nuosu Yi group in Yangbi

       Rather than the bundles of long wooden sticks of Chuxiong, the torches here were mostly structures of colored paper in several tiers, with pennants on each side, like the Bai torches, and stood at intervals in the streets.  Dark clouds were already filling the sky when I arrived, making the torches’ bright colors stand out.  By the time I got my hotel room night was beginning to fall and the procession to the central stadium was about to begin.

       Four different sub-groups participated, wearing distinctly different outfits.  The least colorful of them dressed mainly in black and white with sparse embellishment.  The men wore long-sleeved white shirts over dark pants and an open black vest.  The women wore the same shirts with sleeveless, knee-length black tunics trimmed in blue over black trousers, with a wide white belt.  Women of another sub-group wore knee-length, side-fastened tunics, blue on top and black on the bottom, with thick, multi-colored, appliquéd bands around the collar, hems and lower sleeves. 

       The female contingent from the western district of Fuheng wore brighter, flashier tunics and aprons, covered with appliquéd strips and embroidery.  Complementing this were their round black caps with a silver band along the bottom and colored pompoms sticking up from them.  Their men wore plain white shirts and black pants.

Nuosu Yi girl

Nuosu Yi man

       Finally, the cast included the Nuosu Yi from the northern part of the county.  I knew and had written about them in Ninglang County, but didn’t know they also lived this far south.  The women dressed in long, tri-colored skirts, vests and long-sleeved blouses and the same very wide-brimmed hats as in Ninglang, or the flat cloth head cover with a front brim that is more common in Xichang, Sichuan.  The men wore black turbans, embroidered vests and black woolen capes.

another Yi contingent in Yangbi

       When all those in processions had filed into the stadium and taken up positions around the central torch, two Nuosu Yi youths, shirtless and in wide-legged trousers, beat drums and cavorted around the torch.  Then two of their women came out to give a bowl of rice-liquor to each of the men charged with lighting the torch.  Because it had been doused with paraffin already, the torch caught fire easily.  One of the Yi groups then commenced dancing around the burning torch.

       Soon it began raining, though that didn’t dampen the dancers’ spirits, especially the lead male wielding a long curved sword.  But when it got heavier the audience fled for shelter and the dancers stopped.  After 40 minutes the rain was just a slight drizzle, so the dancers and crowd returned and all the contingents got their turn.  The torch had continued burning and folks added more paraffin-soaked rags to keep it going.  In spite of the rain, the dances were quite vigorous and no one slipped on the wet pavement.

taking rice liquor before lighting the  torch

lighting the torch in the Yangbi stadium

       From the top of the bleachers men set off a series of fireworks.  While not as plentiful as in Chuxiong, they were quite spectacular and closer to the audience.  The dance groups occupied other areas of the stadium besides around the main torch and continued for another couple of hours.  Out in the city streets, the torches that had been standing all day were now piles of cinders, while youths with mini-torches prowled the streets with resin in one hand to toss onto the torches to make them flare up whenever they met anyone in their path.

       Around midnight the activity began slowing.  The stadium emptied of dancers and observers.  The last shops still open shuttered their doors.  The kids with the flare-up torches ran out of resin powder.  Reveling was over.  It was time to retire, review memories of the day and sleep secure in the knowledge that, being Yi, they will be able to enjoy it all again next year.

Yi waiting to add their bundles of sticks to the Chuxiong bonfire

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By Tractor-Trailer to the River of Golden Sand

                                                      by Jim Goodman

on the road north of Tanhua

       When I first visited Yunnan in 1992, the province had already been partially open to foreigners for several years.  They could visit established tourist destinations like Kunming, the Stone Forest, Dali, Lijiang and Jinghong, but little else.  But by then, the open-door policy was proving successful and over the next few years the government allowed foreigners into several more counties every season.

       Enough attractions existed in and around these popular sites to warrant extensive exploration and return excursions.  But once I began to make my trips to Yunnan regular, from then on as it turned out, I included at least one newly opened county every itinerary.  To guide my choices I thumbed through the coffee-table picture books on the province I bought from Kunming’s Foreign Languages Bookstore.  

       Having already had encounters with some of the Yi minority sub-groups, I decided to visit very different Yi in Dayao County, in northwest Chuxiong Prefecture.  Nobody went there because it was not en route to somewhere else.  Except for Dayao city itself, it was a Yi-dominated county, with different related sub-groups, and that was sufficient to lure me. They would show up at the Sunday market and particularly dominated the hills north of the city.

the Yi style in Guihua

        After a couple visits to Tanhua, where most Yi women dressed in traditional style and both sexes wore goatskin jackets and everything seemed pretty old-fashioned, I decided to go further north, where other Yi sub-groups lived.  Also motivating me was the fact that at the end of the road, such as it was, was a Dai district on the Upper Yangzi, in Yunnan called the River of Golden Sand (Jinshajiang).

       Back then that was certainly an off-the-beaten-track adventure.  The only public transportation was a weekly bus, several days off, so I had to pay for a ride with a logging truck going north of Guihua, the next major settlement and my destination 50 km away.  A couple foreigners had briefly been to Tanhua, so I was told, but no one went beyond, so I would be the first to visit remote ethnic minorities as well as rural provincial government officials.  As it turned out, the latter were more interesting than the former.

       Above Dayao the unpaved road zigzagged along the eastern slopes of Tanhua Mountain, at each turn providing views of mountains and distant villages perched on the ridges and just below the cliffs.  To make parts of this road, workers had to carve or blast through sheer walls of rock, with 70 degrees gradients on either side.  Aside from the views, I also appreciated the skill of Chinese road engineers.

Guihua town, Dayao County

       About an hour out of Tanhua the road crosses the last extension of Tanhuashan and the scenery changes abruptly.  The mountains are steeper, less forested, heavily terraced and rather densely populated, compared with the Tanhua area.  The road slowly winds down to the river valley below Guihua, visible nearly an hour before arrival.  The town sits on a ridge above the river, mainly comprising wide, mud-brick houses with wooden beams and tiled roofs, typical rural Yunnan style.

       I checked into a local cheap lodge, but before I could settle in and finish my coffee a representative of the local government arrived to invite me to stay in a private room in their quarters.  He also introduced the local middle school English teacher Li Hui to accompany me on my tour of Guihua.   That consisted of walking around looking for good photo angles, as this was the middle of the week and not much was happening anywhere, other than on the farms outside of town.

the 'family history' coat

       All that changes on Saturdays, when Guihua holds its market day and Yi from the hills stream into town.  I couldn’t stay that long, unfortunately, so couldn’t assess how popular traditional clothing might still be in the district.  Judging from how few Yi women wore it in Guihua and the villages nearby, and what Li Hui told me, it seemed to be less common than in other districts in the county, such as Tanhua and Santai.

       Two traditional Yi styles prevail in the district.  The more common one resembles that of the Tanhua Yi, the women wearing a side-fastened, long-sleeved jacket, embroidered apron, shoulder bag and plain black trousers.  Older women’s jackets are solid color and plain while the younger generation applies wide bands of colorful embroidery and appliqué on the sleeves and along the lapel.  Both the apron and shoulder bag feature bright red embroidered flowers.

       Very different is the outfit worn by the women of a small Yi sub-group north and west of Guihua.  Over an ankle-length black skirt trimmed with bands of bright appliquéd designs, they don a long-tailed jacket with wide bands of different cutout designs on the sleeves, front and back.  The patterns chosen for the back of the coat symbolically represent events in the wearer’s family history.  Thus, no two coats are identical and while they may only wear them on special occasions, every woman makes herself one because custom demands they be buried wearing it after they die.

the Yi 'chicken hat'

       For headgear, Guihua Yi women inclined to dress traditionally may don a simple black turban or a colored headscarf.  But a more common and striking choice in the area is the brightly embroidered ‘chicken hat.’  Shaped like a coxcomb and often worn sideways, with the head and tail above the ears, similar ‘chicken hats’ are popular with other Yi sub–groups in the province (Nisu in Yuanyang, Tuli in Weishan). 

       The origin of this hat is an ancient tale of two lovers pursued 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 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.

Yi house in Guihua

       In my engagements with the Yi women I met in Guihua I persuaded a couple of them to sell me their shoulder bags.  One featured the big embroidered flowers typical of the Guihua style.  The other was cross-stitched, like the bags in Tanhua.  Li Hui apparently mentioned this while we dined with the Party officials that evening.  After a few rounds of corn liquor one of them proposed that I set up a factory in Guihua to produce Yi embroidered shoulder bags for export.  They would allow me 70% ownership.      

       I explained that traditional handicraft work was not something done in a factory, but at home and in the field whenever time was available.  Besides, I was a petty trader, at best, and in fact more of a collector, with no idea how to market Yi shoulder bags. 

Dacun village, on the road northi of Guihua

       Undaunted, perhaps ambitious to secure a business relationship with the first foreigner in Guihua, he next proposed I build a paper factory.  My first thought was the horrific effect that would have on the clean stream that ran below the town.  But I didn’t mention that.  I told him the area didn’t have the right trees.  In fact, it didn't have hardly any trees at all, of any kind.

        The conversation soon shifted to other topics and the evening was quite convivial.  My hosts tried to arrange a jeep to take me to Wanbi.  Unfortunately, the Party was having an important meeting in Beijing at that time and Party officials in districts throughout the country had to have their own meetings to discuss the Meeting.  The jeeps were busy fetching people from remote villages to attend the meetings, both Guihua’s vehicles and those of Wanbi.

the main street of Upper Wanbi

       Wanbi lies 88 km north of Guihua and the logging trucks only went to a depot about half way.  So my hosts arranged the only available transportation—a tractor-trailer (tuolache).  I had to pay 200 yuan and Li Hui would accompany me to smooth the way with the Wanbi officials.  I was familiar with these vehicles.  I’d seen them bring people to market day in Dayao, for example.  But that was on paved city streets.  The road ahead was unpaved all the way and had been pretty bumpy riding in the relative comfort of a truck up from Tanhua.  Nevertheless, there was no other choice.

       By tractor-trailer is probably the least comfortable way to travel.  The driver sits on a small, three-wheel tractor in front and passengers sit or stand in the four-wheel trailer behind.  It was too rough to sit and even standing we were continuously jolted.  Moreover, though it was a fine spring day, the wind was fierce and blew the dust from the road all over our bodies, baggage and camera.  I often had to call for a pause, just to give my bones a chance to settle down.

Lower Wanbi and the river in the morning

       The rough and rollicking journey took most of the day. The scenery was much the same as around Guihua, with farms, pastures and villages dominating the largely deforested lower mountain slopes.  We crossed the last ridge, descended to Wanbi on the river and arrived in time to check in at the government lodge and have dinner with our gracious hosts, the local Dai government officials.

       There was no shower in the building, but they arranged basins of hot water and towels for us to wash off the dirt from the ride.  The Party was holding meetings here, too, so they would be busy until Sunday, when it would be possible for me to cross the river.  Li Hui and the driver returned to Guihua next morning and I had two days to explore the vicinity on my own.

   

Dai woman in Wanbi

the Jinshajiang near Wanbi

       Wanbi has two parts.  Upper Wanbi is the original Dai village, sited on a slope above its terraced fields, with a view of the Jinshajiang and other Dai villages.  Its main street is lined with wooden shop houses, while the residential neighborhoods feature houses of wooden frames, rammed earth and tiled roofs, occasionally thatched, like those of the Yi villages south of the ridge.   They get two crops a year, wheat in winter, rice in summer, use water buffaloes as draft animals and raise goats.

Lisu girl at the Binghai ferry port

       Wanbi Dai are animist, so no temples stand in the area.  The old folks told me they think they came up from Xishuangbanna or Myanmar many centuries ago, but they also claimed that before Wanbi they lived north of the river.  I tried out several Thai phrases, but the only similarity was kin khao (“eat rice”), which they pronounced jin khao. However, those who had been to Banna said they could understand most of the Dai dialect they heard there.

       Lower Wanbi is the administrative town, full of drab concrete buildings.  But it is on a knoll close to the river, the main attraction.  Rice fields lay beside the town all the way to the riverbanks, but on the other side the steep hills are practically barren of any kind of vegetation.  The river is in places turbulent, but at other sections placid enough for fishermen in small boats to cast nets.  Huge boulders bank the river periodically, while in other places it laps along stretches of white sand.  Colors on the river and the hills vary throughout the day and are richest in late sunny afternoons.

crossing the river at Binghai

       After breakfast noodles the district chairman drove me to Binghai, 10 km upriver, where several small boats ferried people across the river that day to attend the weekly market on the other side.  The crowd on both banks was mostly Dai, but also Han and Yi, with some Lisu from settlements high up in the hills on both sides of the river.  Except for a few older women in dark, side-fastened jackets and black turbans, the Dai wore modern clothes.  Older Lisu women dressed similarly to older Dai women, but some of the younger women wore a distinctive, brightly colored jacket. 

          The regular ferry had engine trouble at the time, so people were taking rowboats instead.  We wound up paddled across in a dinghy made from inflated tire tubes.  Beside the marketplace several tractor-trailers were parked and I fretted I’d have to ride one of those to the nearest highway.  But my host, who insisted on paying for everything, found a truck to take me instead.  I departed thanking him for his hospitality and in particular for the final service of securing me a truck to take me to the highway.  One tractor-trailer adventure was quite enough.

Jinshajiang--the River of Golden Sand

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Discoveries in Dayao County

                                                                            by Jim Goodman

the White Pagoda on a hill next to Dayao City

       Chuxiong, in between Kunming and Dal, is officially a Yi Autonomous Prefecture because the Yi minority nationality, though constituting only around a quarter of the population, resides on more than half the territory.  The Yi are the largest ethnic minority in the province, 11% of Yunnan’s residents, divided into a few dozen sub-groups and five major dialects.  But most travelers skip Chuxiong.  It doesn’t have the spectacular scenery of areas further west, like snow mountains, mighty rivers and picturesque lakes, so the only Yi the average visitor encounters in Yunnan are those in Lijiang and Dali prefectures, the Stone Forest near Kunming and maybe Yuanyang. 

8th century White Pagoda

      The Chuxiong government earlier this century tried to play up the Yi aspect of its territory with the construction of a Yi theme park on the northern side of the capital, exhibits in its fine new museum and promotion of the annual Torch Festival.  Still, that hasn’t resulted in a burst of Yi cultural tourism.  Chuxiong City is easy to access, but Yi villages are far away in the hills, requiring a little time and effort, and in many areas, especially the northwest quarter of the prefecture, quite unspoiled and solidly rooted in their traditional lifestyle.  

        Dayao County is a fine example.  Besides its several Yi sub-groups, who live relatively the same way but dress very differently, the county also features a couple famous religious monuments.  One is the White Pagoda, so named for its color, on top of a small hill next to Dayao city.  It is also known as the Bell Stick Pagoda, for its shape resembles the stick used to strike bells in a Buddhist temple.  Built in the Nanzhao Era in the 8^th century, rising from an octagonal platform 18 meters high, it has stood erect through major earthquakes over the centuries, its only scar a meter-long crack near the top.

bronze Confucius in Shiyang

       The other religious monument of note is the huge, 2.5 meter-high bronze image of Confucius, housed in a temple in Shiyang, 36 km west of Dayao.   Made in the early 17^th century, it took over nine years to cast.  Weighing around 1000 kg, this statue of the seated sage, crowned and holding a tablet, flanked by dragons, is the only extant bronze Confucius on the mainland of China.  Shiyang means Stone Ram, named after something like that found when digging a great salt well in the town many centuries ago.  The town lies along a narrow river with Buddhist and Daoist shrines on the slopes of the south bank hill, some in caves, with odd statues like a scowling, bearded man ripping open his abdomen to reveal a Buddha inside and a clean-shaven man splitting open his face to show another one underneath. 

Daoist sculpture, Shiyang

       Shiyang is actually more of a religious center than Dayao itself.  Aside from the temples around the White Pagoda, the only other religious monument is the late Qing Dynasty six-tiered pagoda on the hill at the south entrance to the elevated plain around Dayao.  The city still had a lot of old wooden, two and three-story tile-roofed wooden buildings when I first visited it over twenty years ago, friendly inhabitants, mostly Han, an active artistic scene of sculptors, painters and silk carpet-weavers, all yearning to attract foreign appreciation and business.  Bars and entertainment venues were few and social life revolved around private visits among friends. 

       On Sunday market day this all changed.  Han villagers from the plain and Yi from the hills swarmed into town.  They came on foot or bicycle, led or rode ponies, pulled carts, pushed wheelbarrows or took tractor-trailers.  They set up stalls in the main market area and along New Road, selling grain, fruits, walnuts (the county is famous for these, especially the soft-shelled variety from Tiesuo, northwest of the city), cloth, shoes, mountain herbs, silver ornaments, tools and crockery. 

Yi in Dayao for market day

Santai Yi girl

       Most sellers and shoppers were Han, but the Yi formed a sizable percentage and their traditionally dressed women brightened up the crowd scene.  Most of the Yi were from villages to the east and south of the city, the females dressed in long-sleeved, pastel-colored blouses, black vests, black turbans, plain trousers and a short, thick apron embroidered with big flowers.  Some may also wear a goatskin vest, a characteristic garment of Yi in Chuxiong prefecture.

       Both men and women wear these. They make them from the skins of two goats, expertly stitched together, that reach to the knees, hang open in the front and, though worn all year round, last for several years.  In the cooler months they tend to wear the fur side against the body and the leather side out.  When it rains they reverse the vest and wear the fur side out.

Santai on market day

       A few of the Yi will be from sub-groups north or west of the city.  The most colorful outfit belongs to the Yi women around Santai, to the west.  They wear the brightest blouses in the area, appliquéd with many rows and bands elaborately embroidered with flowers and arabesques.  They accent this with several long silk aprons in front, of graduated sizes, different hues and patterns.  This is worn over ordinary trousers and shoes and usually topped, incongruously, with an olive green army cap. 

       Santai lies along a junction of two streams west of Tanhua Mountain, surrounded by high hills.  On the 28^th day of the 3^rd lunar month Yi in this area celebrate Fuzhuangjie, the Dressing Up Festival, also known as the Yi Fashion Show.  On this occasion they show off the best traditional clothes they own, gather in Santai town for an all-day market scene, then go to nearby Guola village on the hill above at night for several hours of singing and dancing.

Tanhua market day

       Yi from Tanhua district, directly north of Dayao, may also be in Dayao for market day, but in fewer numbers, for Tanhua also holds its market day on Sunday.  And while there may be a few Han merchants from Dayao and Shiyang in attendance, here the crowd is overwhelmingly local Yi.  The village lies on the southern slope of a ridge, dappled with peach and pear trees.  Just beyond the lower part of the village are a small cave and a modest waterfall. 

       Tanhua houses are typical of rural Yunnan, made from mud-brick and wood, with tiled roofs, two stories, on stone foundations.  The interior walls are often stone, the floor earthen and the wooden doors and shutters might feature carvings.  The people raise wheat, maize, beans, buckwheat and potatoes and tend goats, the main meat dish in the area. 

Yi at his doorstep, Suimo village

       Higher than Dayao, the weather is always cooler and one local Yi custom I learned on a fairly cold, drizzly, pre-market morning when invited inside to “come sit by the fire a while.”  The Yi here always keep live coals in the hearth so that they can get a fire flaming quickly when they come back inside.   My gracious hostess served me tea and warm, unleavened wheat bread until the rain ceased and people had begun arriving for the market.

       Tanhua market day differs from those around Dali or in Ailaoshan, where the great majority of the people in attendance are women.  Here, as in other market day venues I witnessed in the county, as many men show up as women.  Trails lead out of Tanhua in several directions and a couple villages are visible from the upper end of Tanhua.  But many of those who come hail from places three or four hours away and leave home as soon as it’s light enough to see the path. 

       Unlike Tanhua, where the women seem to compete with each other to see who can wear the most gorgeous outfit, the Yi in Tanhua market were not quite so inclined.  They have a traditional ensemble that is at least as attractive as Santai’s, but most of them rarely wear more than a few elements of it for market day.  For sure this will include the goatskin vest, but also, like the vest used by both sexes, intricately embroidered, fringed and heavily tasseled shoulder bags.  They are fairly large and their bright colors contrast sharply against the dark goat fur of the vest over which they are draped.

Tanhua Yi shoulder bag 

       The embroidery on every shoulder bag is unique, and they can be of any color, but the overall design follows an ancient tradition, in which the patterns and their arrangement have symbolic, religious significance.  The central motif represents the sky god, the paramount deity in local Yi religion.  He is the first god worshiped in any ceremony and his permission must be sought before the Yi honor any other deity in their pantheon, which includes gods of the mountains, the forests, hunting, autumn, grain and marriage.

       The blocks and patterns around the central motif represent the yin-yang principle.  Lines that divide the inner patterns from the outer ones are known as tiger paths.  Various trees, stars and other motifs fill the area beyond the tiger paths.  Several tassels hang on each side where the strap meets the bag and a long fringe, of one or several colors, is attached to the bottom.  Great variation exists in the patterns, colors and motifs deployed and some women achieve a high degree of artistic talent making them.  Since the bags are always in public view, with people constantly comparing and evaluating them, reputations for fine embroidery get established.  One can ask who is the best embroiderer in the village and be given a name at once.

       To embroider their bags the women use the cross-stitch style, in which the motifs consist of tiny x’s.  For their long-sleeved, side-fastened, hip-length jackets the decorative strips use a more pictorial style, with rows of flowers, whorls and arabesques, similar to the Santai style.  They can be just as lavishly embellished as the latter, though the dominant background color is usually red or blue rather than golden yellow.

Yi woman in Tanhua

the Yi style in Tanhua

       The main stylistic difference from the Santai outfit is the combination bib-apron worn over the jacket, with large, fist-sized flowers embroidered on the lower part.  An ornamented silver chain holds the top part around the neck, while a belt, with several embroidered cloth tabs attached, fastens it in the back.  Rather than an army cap the women wear black turbans lined with rows of silver studs in front and the tail ends elaborately embroidered and fringed at the ends.  They tie it in a way that shows off the ends and add a few thread tassels above the right ear.  In the village environment of shades of brown and green, the traditional Tanhua outfit stands out in resplendent contrast.

       While the entire ensemble is not part of everyday wearing apparel, it is all but obligatory for major public events like weddings and festivals.  Besides important Han events like New Year and Qing Ming, Yi villages in the county also stage their own Torch Festival programs.  But one event—Chahuajie-- draws Yi from all over the area to Tanhuashan, the 3657-meter high mountain just above Tanhua village.  Held the 8^th day of the 2^nd lunar month, its name translates as Putting Up Flowers, honoring the ancient Yi heroine Miyilu and is also celebrated in other parts of the prefecture by other Yi sub-groups, albeit with a slightly different story behind it.

belt tabs at the back of the apron

       Long ago a powerful, wicked lord kept demanding young Yi women for his depraved pleasure until the brave Miyilu offered herself in marriage, intending to slay him in the process.  According to the Yi in the hills close to Chuxiong, Miyilu killed the tyrant on the wedding night and fled.  But his relatives caught up with her and murdered her beside a white camellia tree.  Her blood stained the roots and the camellia has been red ever since.  The Tanhua version has her offering to marry him while pinning a poisonous azalea flower to her hair.  She asks the lord to join him in a drink, secretly poisons the liquor with the azalea and when they imbibe they both die.

       In commemoration the Yi mount azaleas and camellias on their doorways and then assemble in a grove on the slope of Tanhuashan.  There they witness rites conducted by their bimaw (ritual specialist), watch a dramatic re-enactment of the tale, a different Tanhua girl playing the part of Miyilu every year, then make flower wreaths, break up into groups for feasting and in the evening indulge in singing and dancing, featuring boys playing the ‘moon guitar’ and girls singing in high-pitched, undulating voices, until long past midnight.  It’s a welcome break from their ordinary life of farming and herding and a proud re-affirmation of their Yi identity.

the traditional style in Tanhua

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