At the End of the Burma Road: the Dai of Dehong

                                                     by Jim Goodman

Welcome to Dehong

       A few months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 the Japanese Army had succeeded in occupying eastern China, forced the Nationalist government to relocate to Chongqing and began blockading all goods shipments to western China.  The government response was to quickly begin building a new road over the ancient Southwest Silk Road from Kunming to Burma, then still a British colony, to facilitate the supply of essentials and war equipment.  Hundreds of conscripted laborers lost their lives to landslides and accidents as the route crossed many mountains and rivers on its way to the terminus at the newly established border town of Wanding, in sw Dehong prefecture.

       So long as the British held Burma, every day a mass of vehicles coming up from Bhamo and Lashio crossed the bridge into Wanding bringing tons of supplies.  After the Japanese conquered northern Burma they closed the entry points into Yunnan and the Allied supply efforts shifted to delivery by air.  Traffic on the Burma Road didn’t reach the level of the first few years of its existence until the 1990s.  And it was still a two-lane, cobblestone road hosting every kind of local traffic—private cars, public buses, big, slow logging trucks, tractor-trailers and pony carts.    

Mangshi's mascots

       A new four-lane super highway opened in the 21^st century that ran roughly along the same route, but tunneled through the mountains instead, reducing the travel time from Kunming by over half.  Wanding was still a border crossing, but the highway stretched all the way to Ruili, a city that became a more important border post as trade with Myanmar dramatically increased.  But for non-business travelers just coming for a look at Dehong, the usual first stop is Luxi, the prefecture capital and largest city.

       Luxi is the Chinese name for the city and it means ‘west of the Nu (River).’  People in this part of Yunnan pronounce an initial n as l, which is why it is Luxi and not Nuxi.  The Dai name for it is Mangshi.   The modern city of Luxi was built on the western side of Mangshi, historically an important Dai administrative center, with authority over the plains and hills to the north and south.  The northern and eastern quarters of the city are still Dai neighborhoods and all the temples and pagodas lie east of the main business avenue.

       The city is the capital of a Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture, though, and so ethnic motifs influence the new city as well.  Many new buildings have Dai-style peaked roofs and Youyilu, the lane running from the main business street to the government guest house, features shop houses in individual Dai style, in various pastel colors.  The guest house itself is in a tasteful Dai style, in a quiet park near the Mangshi River. At the northern entrance to the city, on a tall, red pyramidal pedestal stand the golden sculptures of the Dai mascot peacocks.  One is crouching, the other raising its elongated neck into the sky; an unusual depiction for Dehong.

Mangshi's Dai quarters

       To publicize the multi-ethnic character of Dehong, the city removed its central market and built a park that features large stone statues of the men and women of the nationalities that reside in Dehong:  Dai, Jingpo, Achang, De’ang, Lisu and Han.  In the city’s southwest quarter is the Nationalities Park, with a garden, small zoo, a set of Jingpo painted Munao poles and a Dai village exhibition.  A few traditional Dai bamboo and thatch houses stand around a small pagoda and well and a staff of young men and women periodically practice or perform dances here.

shops on Youyilu

       Like their counterparts across the Myanmar border, the Dai in Dehong are Theravada Buddhists.  The oldest Buddhist monument in the city is Shubaota, the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda, in the compound of the No.1 Primary School in the southwest part of the old town.  Built in the mid-17^th century, one of Dehong’s trees took root on the pagoda itself and over the centuries part of its trunk crawled over the surface of the monument, today almost completely covering it.

       Mangshi’s three historic temples lie northeast of Shubaota.  Puti Temple, on Guangnanlu, built in the late 17^th century, is a red, wooden, wide, elevated structure with roofs of corrugated iron.  The entrance is circular, a feature common in Dehong temples.  Putisi is the most popular temple for local Dai Buddhists.  But just 150 meters down a side road the three-story, wooden Wu-in Temple, nearly as old, with tiled roofs, sits in a more attractive setting.  Towering tees flank the temple and an enshrined well lies in one corner of the large courtyard.  Within the temple the main image is of a crowned Buddha, in the style of a chakravartin (Universal Ruler).

dance rehearsal in Nationalities Park

the Tree-Wrapped Pagoda

       The third old temple in the vicinity is Foguangsi--Light of the Buddha Temple.  Erected in the 19^th century, it looks a bit different, in a style closer to Han temples, with ornately carved struts and roof awnings.  This temple seems to attract Han devotees more than Dai, which is even truer of the new Guan Yin Temple in the city center, built recently at the turn of the century.

Puyi Temple

       The Dai in Dehong call themselves Dai Luang, or Dai Yai in their own language, the same appellation applied to their ethnic cousins in Myanmar and northwest Thailand.  To outsiders they are also known as Dai Neua and Dai Mao and more recently as Chinese Shans, closely related to the Shans across the border in Myanmar. They had an independent set of small states until the Ming Dynasty, becoming officially part of China in the 15^th century, though remaining relatively autonomous under their own saopha rulers until the inauguration of New China in 1949.

       Dai sub-groups also live in other parts of Yunnan and those in the southern parts of Lincang and Pu’er Prefectures also call themselves Dai Neua, except in Menglian, home of the Dai Lem, and in Xishuangbanna, another Dai Autonomous Prefecture, who are mostly the Dai Lu, also Theravada Buddhist.  But the Dai dialects in Banna and Dehong are quite different, such that except for small talk, they are mutually unintelligible.  In fact, even the alphabets are different.

        Dehong Dai villages lie near streams, averaging 40-50 houses and one temple compound, with clumps of bamboo on their edges, but also magnificent peepul, banyan and other long-limbed shade trees.  Villagers take their rest breaks beneath their spreading branches.  Their houses sit on the ground and are made of drab-brown brick with tile roofs, sometimes enclosed by a walled compound.  Auxiliary buildings, and even the main houses of the less affluent, have walls of plaited bamboo and tin or thatched roofs.

Wu-in Temple

       Wells are housed in consecrated shrines, as in other Buddhist Dai areas, and the women carry water in buckets suspended at each end of a pole.  They use the same method to convey crops from the fields or goods from the markets, with woven baskets of split bamboo instead of buckets.

       Men dress like the Han, but are often shirtless in the fields.  Many tattoo their arms and chests.  In former times they completely tattooed their thighs as well.  Women wear the Dai sarong, usually black, with a long-sleeved, pale-colored, side-fastened jacket.  On special occasions they don a jacket of gold silk.  Girls and single women wear their hair loose, but married women tie their hair in a topknot and wrap it in a black silk, tubular turban or one of terry cloth in pastel colors.  Younger women may wear brighter colors and, like their counterparts across the border, apply thanaka powder, made from the soft outer bark of the tree of the same name, to their faces as a sunscreen and skin conditioner.  Some young women wear it all the time, streaking the edges of it at the cheekbones, giving a feline accent to their facial appearance.

Chakravartin Buddha

married Dai women

       The Dai are skillful farmers, blessed with good fertility, reliant and abundant rainfall every year.  They easily obtain two crops a year from their fields, in some places three, thanks to irrigation canals running alongside the fields.  The rice from the Zhefang area, about 40 km southwest, has a national reputation and used to be part of the tribute sent to the imperial court in Beijing.  The pineapples are the best tasting and most nutritious in the province.  Dai cuisine is similar to that in Banna, with the various dishes prepared in the restaurants in the morning and, when appropriate, reheated before being served.  Baked and sour foods are popular, spiced with chili, coriander, lemon grass, etc.

young Dai women in Mangshi

      Dehong was one of the first areas in Yunnan open to foreigners, but rarely received any, as most tourists preferred Dali and Lijiang and anyway, the road to Dehong was a long and rough ride in the 90s.  It seemed only people so fascinated with Yunnan that they wanted to see all of it, like myself, bothered to take the trouble.  In the trips I made there towards the end of the decade and beyond I never saw another foreigner.  I’m sure others came at other times and probably enjoyed it just as much, for Mangshi people seemed well prepared to make the foreign visitor’s stay a very pleasant one.

       Everyone everywhere was polite, smiling when greeting me, whether in a shop or a park.  At the Nationalities Park I arrived during a dance rehearsal and one of the staff members rushed a chair for me to sit and served me a cup of hot tea to enjoy while I observed the action.  When U visited temples the monks insisted I share tea and cigarettes.  If a ritual happened to take place when I was there, the devotees invited me to join them for a vegetarian picnic afterwards.  When I ate in Dai restaurants the owners brought me samples of other dishes than what I ordered, just to try.  Inevitably, of course, I wound up asking for a plate of one of these samples, either then or at the next meal.

traditional-style Dai village house

       Dehong Dai have tenaciously clung to their ethnic identity, even after government-sponsored Han immigration into the area in the 1950s, the depredations of the Cultural Revolution and the influence of rapid modernization in recent decades.  The preference among the women for traditional clothing, among all Dai for Dai-style cuisine, the maintenance of old customs and respectful social intercourse, the use of the Dai language at home and in the markets, as well as the continuation of religious practices all reflect this.

       The temples are most active on the 8^th, 15^th and 23^rd days of the lunar month and especially at the annual festivals.  These include the Water-Sprinkling Festival in mid-April and activities associated with the opening and conclusion of the three-month Buddhist retreat season during the monsoon.  At any time of the year they may also be the venue for a poi, a local festival occurring at the dedication of a new image or the renovation of a temple.  In the past local rich patrons sponsored such events, partly for religion, partly for prestige.  Nowadays they are generally village communal affairs, everyone tithed for the costs.

ritual to the Land Spirit at Mukang village

       Buddhism came to Dehong only in the 17^th century.  Some of the original animist beliefs are inevitably still part of local religious mentality.  This became apparent to me on a visit to Mukang, a Dai village 9 km north of Mangshi.  I arrived on a Buddhist holy day and peered through the round entrance while the congregation, divided by sex, recited sutras and kowtowed to the Buddha image.  Afterwards the women moved to the courtyard, carrying little bottles of water and rice liquor, crouched in ranks with their backs to the temple, and prayed while periodically pouring libations of water and rice liquor onto the ground to honor the Land Spirit.

       Dai culture in Dehong did not remain impervious to Han influence.  Weddings nowadays, with the bridal headdress, red candles and procession, are hardly distinguishable from Han weddings.  The Dai bury their dead, unlike most Buddhist Dai, who cremate the body.  Unlike other Dai, they have an opera tradition, too, like the Han, but though the singing style is similar, the Dai version eschews the elaborate make-up and the costumes are classic Dai style.  Yet in most other aspects the Dai continue to follow the cultural norms established centuries ago.  This includes mutual respect between the sexes, abstention from loud, boisterous, rude or impolite behavior and, good news for travelers, a warm and hospitable reception for guests.

rural landscape outside Mangshi

                                                                    * * *                         

        

THE ALPHABETS OF YUNNAN

                                                      by Jim Goodman

    The Chinese writing system has been used in Yunnan since the Han Dynasty, over a thousand years before Yunnan became integrated into the Chinese state polity.  The system, of course, is ideographic; that is to say, its characters represent ideas or words, not the sounds of vowels, consonants or syllables like the letters of an alphabet.  The advantage to ideographs is that people can still read them no matter which dialect of Chinese they may speak.  The disadvantage is that they are so complex and take so long to learn.  It wasn’t until relatively recently in history that the majority of the Chinese population could read and write ideographs.
    Yunnan was originally occupied by non-Chinese people, from many different ethnic groups and sub-groups.  Even today one-third of the population of the province is non-Han, living on two-thirds of the territory.  The government recognizes 24 minority nationalities and the larger ones all have several sub-groups and dialect differences.  Most of their languages have no written system, although many of these ethnic groups believe they used to have one, but it got eaten, lost, destroyed or whatever.   This was a tribal tragedy, for it made them ever since feel inferior to those who did have a writing system.

dongba pictographs

    However, four of Yunnan’s ethnic minorities—the Naxi, Shui, Yi and Dai—did have writing systems.  Granted, except for Dai, these systems were only known to the ritual specialists.  But in the case of the Naxi and Yi, these specialists produced thousands of books, a great number of which have survived, covering much more than rituals and religious injunctions.  They include myths, legends, fables, riddles, puzzles, romances, war stories, moral tales, philosophy—in short, they are like works of ancient ethnic literature.    
    The best known of these native writing systems is the Naxi dongba script.  Said to be the invention of Dongba Shilo, a Bön shaman in the Baishuitai area several centuries ago, dongba script is a pictographic system that uses simplified pictures of the area’s flora and fauna, such as just the head of animal, and stick figures of humans that when in motion signified verbs; altogether depicting about 3000 words.  Additionally, about 700 simplified glyphs represented sounds or grammatical elements, such as tense.

    The dongbas wrote their manuscripts on local paper, made into thin, rectangular books.  They were not complete manuscripts, however, but abridged versions or detailed summaries.  When using the book in a ceremony the dongba didn’t so much as read it but use it as a guide to the keywords of the ritual, story, etc. and fill in the rest of the text by memory, from having done the exercise so many times already. 

pictographs decorating a Naxi house

    The revolution in 1949 put an end to the dongba tradition, for the new regime saw it as backward and superstitious.  The practice survived in remote areas, but the production of manuscripts did not.  In the Reform Era of the 80s traditional ethnic culture was back in favor again, but the mind-set that prevailed when dongbas were active community members was not part of the revival.   The last surviving dongbas went to work not as ritual specialists again, but at a government office as translators of old manuscripts.  Nevertheless, with ethnic pride back in full swing, the dongba script has seen new use in modern painting, carpet weaving designs and city signboards, even if nobody can really read it. 

    The least known writing system in Yunnan is that of the Shui nationality.  They inhabit a few places in counties next to Guizhou Province, where over 90% of the community resides.  Called Shuishu, the system was known only to ritual specialists and its books dealt only with geomancy and divination.  Denoting some 500 words only, the characters are sometimes simple pictographs, other times similar to simple Chinese ideographs but backwards or upside down.  Shuishu books are very small, more like manuals, and the use of them has all but ceased.
    The most widely used ethnic writing system was the script used by the Yi.  They are the largest minority nationality in Yunnan, comprising about 11% of the province’s population.  They are divided into some two dozen sub-groups and speak five major dialects.  But they have a single writing system, used by nearly all sub-groups, and it is a true alphabet, albeit a syllabic one.  The Yi claim it developed in the Tang Dynasty, though the oldest inscriptions are 15th century.

Yi language book

    The use and knowledge of this script was also, like the Naxi and Shui, restricted to the ritual specialist, or bìmaw.   Actually, he was more important than the Naxi dongba.  In fact, he was the second most important person in the village, after the chief, for he was the reference, the authority, by virtue of the information contained in his books, on all matters of culture, custom and precedent.
    Originally the Yi script contained 1840 letters, but with a few thousand regional variants.  In the 1970s the government sponsored a project to standardize the script, based on that used by the Nosuo Yi in the Liangshan Mountains in Xichang, Sichuan and Ninglang County, Yunnan.  Besides the regional and dialect differences, there was also a problem with the Nosuo Yi books.  In this Yi stronghold feuding was traditionally part of Yi life.  The bìmaws sometimes tried to protect the information in their books, like the spells and magical formulas, which might fall into enemy hands, by writing it in code, making up their own variations of the traditional letters. 

   In the end, the project group came up with a system of 785 letters and produced a Yi-Chinese dictionary several inches thick.  A traditionally conservative people, (with the Nosuo Yi that’s almost fiercely so) the Yi revived the bìmaw tradition in the 80s, with even young men taking up the task of learning the script and, more importantly, using it to make new books.  

palm-leaf manuscripts, Xishuangbanna

   The writing system used by the broadest spectrum of society, and not restricted to the ritual specialists, was that used by the Dai; more specifically, since some of Yunnan’s Dai are animist, that used by the Buddhist Dai.  Two scripts, both true alphabets, came into use in the 13th-14th centuries, one for the Dai Neua of Lincang and Dehong and one for the Dai Lu of Xishuangbanna. 

   The Dai Neua script resembles the one used for the Thai language.  Originally it lacked tone indicators and letters for certain vowel sounds.  After the establishment of the People’s Republic the government backed a local committee that reformed the alphabet by introducing tonal marks and new letters to indicate vowel sounds not previously identified by a single letter.  The government officially introduced the new system in 1956.
   In Xishuangbanna, the Dai Lu adopted the alphabet introduced by invading armies from Lanna in northern Thailand in the 14th century.   Though somewhat more cursive, it resembles the Burmese script used today.  As in other Buddhist Dai areas, boys in the villages entered the monastery at an early age and monks there taught them how to read and write.  The longer they stayed the more literate they became.  The Dai script was used for all religious manuscripts, most of which were Buddhist sutras.  But the manuscripts also covered folklore, history, mathematics, medical knowledge, astrology and farmers’ almanacs.

inscribing on a palm=leaf manuscript

   Monasteries kept this literature on palm leaf manuscripts.  Artisans making these used the long narrow leaves of the royal palm tree.  After cutting the leaves and shearing the ends to make them straight, they boiled them in a large wok, which took away the green color.  The next step was to flatten and dry them in the sun.  After that they were ready.  Another specialist used a stylus, shaped like a big, thick pencil, to inscribe the text, then rubbed ink into the lines of the letters.  When that process was concluded the final step was to rub a thin coat of oil over the leaf, to help preserve it. 

   When the Chinese government began devising or reforming writing systems for its ethnic minorities in the 50s it opted to ‘modernize’ the existing Dai script rather than introduce a new one based on English letters.  But in later years of political upheaval, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, government cadres discouraged the use of either alphabet, old or new, and even the public use of the spoken language.  After the Reform Era and its more favorable attitude towards ethnic traditions, the use of the Dai alphabet returned, only it was the old, original script rather than the new one.  But that use remained restricted to the monasteries and once the monks or novices left they had no further need for it. 
   Elsewhere, with the non-literate minorities, the Chinese introduced alphabets based on English letters, using letters, rather than diacritical marks, to indicate tones.  They were not the first to do so.  Western missionaries like Pollard in the northeast and Fraser in the far west, had introduced alphabets for the Miao language of western Guizhou and northeast Yunnan and the Lisu language in Baoshan and Nujiang.  They also employed English letters, but differently than the Chinese did later on.

Fraser's Lisu alphabet on a Nujiang church

   In Pollard’s and Fraser’s systems, the sounds of the vowels a, e, i ,o, u are that of those vowels in Italian.  To represent vowel sounds that were different, as well as consonants not represented by a single letter in English, they used English letters printed backwards or upside down.   Basically these alphabets were devised to publish Christian literature and Bible translations, but they survive today, because the Miao and Lisu in those areas are still Christian and can read the lyrics to the hymns they sing at Sunday services.  For both languages the government devised scripts to replace the Pollard and Fraser ones, but these never caught on and were only ever used on bi-lingual government office signs.

   If Yunnan’s ethnic minority alphabets were going to be restricted, as customary, to religious specialists or religious works, they would be of only marginal interest in a contemporary world dominated by the Chinese and English writing systems.  But they are also part of Yunnan’s ethnic revivalism, a phenomenon shaping the province’s history for the past two decades.  And in some cases, the use of these alphabets has extended beyond their traditional class of users and been pushed in new directions.

Yi language class, Bainiuchang, Ninglang County

   In Ninglang County the local Yi government successfully lobbied for an “experimental” bi-lingual school, in which primary students the first few years could be taught in the Yi language, then gradually introduced to instruction in Chinese.  The chosen school was in Bainiuchang village, in the eastern mountains of the county, with over 200 students.  In addition to the bi-lingual primary grades instruction, about 25 of the students received daily classes in the written Yi language.  The school used books printed in Xichang in the Yi script, dealing not only with stories and history, but also science and mathematics.

   In Guangma village, Luchun County, the local school in 1994 began instruction in the Hani language up to the fifth grade.  Twice a week all the students took classes in reading and writing the Hani language, with the alphabet the government devised for them, which was actually based on the Luchun dialect.  So far, publications in the Hani language have been folk tales, mythology, stories about the origin of customs etc, mainly in the line of preservation rather than new, modern literature.  But that’s a task they feel must not be neglected.  The Hani-language  new literature can (and will) come later.

books in the Hani language

   Yunnan’s minorities have become highly conscious of their ethnic identities in recent decades.  They have revived, and have tried to maintain, much of the tradition that was officially attacked and undermined so many years.  Naturally indigenous writing systems would be part of this revival.  But beyond being an issue of cultural preservation is another aspect in examining why a people preserve an alphabet and make books that can only be read by a small number of people.
   When Samuel Pollard was preaching to the Miao they were suffering from the oppression of Yi landlords and Chinese officials, both of whom looked down on the Miao as less civilized human beings.  And both of them had writing systems—the Yi alphabet and the Chinese ideographs.  Then Pollard introduced his alphabet.  Quickly the Miao could read and write, too.  Theirs was now, like that of the Yi and Chinese, a literate culture.  Consequently, their status, in their own eyes, shot up to match that of the Yi and Chinese.  The Miao were now their civilized equals.  
   The lesson from this was clear.  There are two kinds of peoples in this world:  literate (with writing systems) and non-literate.   Doesn’t matter how many people can read and write the system.  Literate people look down on non-literate people.  It also doesn’t matter from where a people got their writing system, only whether or not they had one at all.  And if or when they did, well then, they were part of the upper classes of humanity.

                                                                         * * *