The Eastern Shore of Dali’s Erhai Lake

                                              by Jim Goodman

Golden Shuttle Island (Jinsuodao)

       A major reason for Dali’s popularity as a travel destination is its unrivaled natural setting.  It lies on a long, lakeside plain of roughly 2000 meters altitude, flanked by the heavily forested Azure Mountains, with snow-capped peaks over 4000 meters high. 18 streams tumble down the slopes and flow into the ear-shaped lake called Erhai, Yunnan’s second largest body of water, around 42 km long and 3.5-7.5 km wide.  The lower, mostly barren and ruddier Phoenix Mountains bound Erhai’s eastern shore, lying much closer to the lake, reducing the amount of land suitable for cultivation and therefore the number of villages.

      Most visitors to the area confine themselves to the western side of the lake.  Dali Old Town and most of the ancient pagodas, temples and historical relics lie here.  Cable cars take people to temples up the mountains for views of the lake and the plain, itself filled with Bai, Hui and Han villages, rice fields and vegetable gardens.  Butterfly Spring and popular tourist destinations like Zhoucheng, a Bai village specializing in tie-dyed fabrics, and Xichou, formerly an important stopover on the old Tea and Horses Road to Tibet, are in the northern part of this plain.

Bai houses on Jinsuodao

       All of these places will be swarming with visitors practically any time of year.  In contrast, except for Wase on market day and Nanzhao Island, a fancy theme park near Shuanglang at the north end of the lake, where large tour boats from Xiaguan make a daily call, the eastern shore of Erhai attracts few visitors. Yet an excursion there means a look at a traditional Bai way of life less disturbed by tourist influences or commercial development.  The few guesthouses are basically designed for simple overnight stays for itinerant merchants.  The restaurants mainly cater to fellow villagers too busy to cook their own food.  Fishing and farming constitute the traditional Bai way of life here.  On market days the people sell their products to each other and visitors won’t find tables hawking tourist souvenirs and fake antiques. 

       Almost directly across the lake from Dali Old Town is the eastern shore’s first attraction when coming up from Xiaguan—Golden Shuttle Island (Jinsuodao).   A rocky, narrow islet 1500 meters long, so named for its shuttle-like shape, low in the middle with a hill at each end, it lies a little offshore about 3 km south of the large Bai village of Haidong.  Ferries take visitors across to the island.  Most of its stone and gray brick houses, some with whitewashed walls, stand on the eastern side where the ferries land, beside a row of umbrellas shading vending stalls offering local products like dried fish, snails, herbs and a local acorn.

temple interior on Jinsuodao

       The hundred or more Bai families here depend mainly on fishing.  No real farms exist on the island, only vegetable gardens.  During the Nanzhao Era, coterminous with the Tang Dynasty, Jinsuodao was a summer retreat for the royal family.  The king had a palace here of red walls and yellow tiles, a fishing pier, garden and a tower for viewing the lake.  All that is gone now, but the view remains, especially from atop either of the hills.  You can see the Three Pagodas from here and the blue-gray massif of the Azure Mountains towering behind them.

       The island’s houses are typical Bai compounds, with walls of stone and gray brick and tiled roofs, like those across the lake.  A small temple houses the local protector deity, with a couple of unusual statues inside.  One depicts a man with ludicrously long legs and another a man reaching for a fruit with his abnormally outstretched arm.  The island also has some underground caves, famous for their use in the winter of 1872 to conceal remnants of Du Wenxiu’s army after his death in Dali and the collapse of his rebel state.

Haidong houses and farms

       Looking north from Golden Shuttle Island the shoreline bends sharply west at Haidong, a quiet and prosperous village with lush farms behind it, continues a couple hundred meters and then turns north again.  On the knoll above this latter turn stands the Sky Mirror Pavilion.  Originally this was another Nanzhao Era viewing tower, destroyed, rebuilt in later centuries and augmened by a temple to Guan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, who is a Bai favorite. 

       The three-tiered tower stands up the slope past a row of small pavilions leading down to the fancy, multi-roofed entrance gate next to the road.  Occasionally boats from Dali take tourists here for the ride and the view back across the lake.  But the usual visitors are Haidong villagers, who come not for the view but to worship at the Guan Yin shrine.  Bai farmers here primarily grow rice, but families have their boats, too.  And while depleting fish stocks means less fishing nowadays, the boats are still useful for transportation and gathering up the algae and lake surface moss that can be turned into compost for the fields.

Sky Mirror Pavilion

        Continuing north of the Sky Mirror Pavilion, the next major village along the shore is Wase, a sprawling Bai village with, like Haidong, a picturesque islet just offshore a few km south.  Opposite the hamlet of Haiyin, much smaller than Jinsuodao, the islet is called Xiaoputuo and holds a single, beautiful, two-tiered temple beside a huge leafy tree nearly the same height.  Perched on a platform several meters above the water, its curved roofs with upturned corners contrast against the distant mountain slopes to the west.  The scene is prettiest in the early morning, when the first sunrays strike the island.

Xiaoputuo

        Nearby Wase, is noted for its market days, held on calendar dates ending in 0 or 5.  With lots of available farmland beside and beyond Wase, especially to the east, villagers depend more on farming than fishing, especially in recent years.  Many small boats lie overturned along the shore north of the settled area and the bigger vessels with the tall masts rarely sail out onto the lake.  The boats docked in the harbor on market days are those carrying villagers from other lakeside settlements and tourists from Xiaguan or Dali.

        However, not everyone has abandoned fishing and people in tiny little makeshift boats, floating on blocks of Styrofoam or the inner tubes of truck tires lashed together, still paddle through the offshore waters, using small nets and traps to catch fish.  A few others use rods and cast their lines from the shore above Wase.

fishing near Wase

       Goods sold on market days are mainly farm products like rice, maize, vegetables and spices.  Farmers sell the spices mixed, with samples of the various mixtures put in little piles on a table in front of the packaged products.  Farm tools, baskets, trays, coils of rope, footwear, household pots, pans and utensils and snacks like deep-fried shrimp, sweets and cakes also go on sale.  Local vendors begin setting up in the market square near the pier from 7 a.m., though the scene is relatively quiet until nearly 9:00, when it starts getting crowded.  A stall selling Bai music videos starts playing them and this loud background music continues the rest of the day.

Wase village

       Around 11:00 the tour boat from Dali arrives, discharging a group of mainly backpackers, who dart around the market area looking for photo-ops, perhaps grab a bite to eat at one of the restaurants and have to return to the boat about 1:30.  The lake surface starts getting pretty choppy in mid-afternoon and since it’s a long journey back to Dali, the boat skipper insists, on the grounds of safety, on an early departure.  And by the time it gets close to the western shore white-tipped waves already dominate the lake surface.

market day in Wase

       Back in Wase, those who came by passenger boat also have to leave before the water gets too rough.  They don’t have as far to go, of course, so they can stay longer than the tourists.  By 3:00, though, activity in Wase starts to wind down.  Visiting villagers are departing and only local residents and those who live within walking distance still remain.  By 5:00 they are all gone, too, and the stalls in the market square have all been dismantled.  Without any bars or nightclubs, Wase now reverts to its post-market peace and quiet.

       Beyond Wase, the last northeastern sector of Erhai is part of Eryuan County, including Shuanglang, the next major stop up the eastern shore and arguably the prettiest Bai village in the entire area.  The residential area lies at the base of a small hill and spreads over a claw-shaped, flat peninsula that juts out from the middle of the village.  Farms lie around and behind the hill, but until recently Shuanglang was primarily a fishing village, especially active in late summer, when fleets of boats set out onto the lake.

the peninsular part of Shuanglang village

       Nowadays, it looks like tourism will soon become the biggest earner in the local economy.  Just south of Shuanglang lies a small offshore island.  On my first visit to the village twenty years ago the island was empty and boats only went there to cast nets and lay fish traps off the shore.  By the end of the decade, after a massive tourist company investment, the place became a theme park called Nanzhao Island.  It features a massive palace, central market square, exhibition hall and various sculptures, including a marble Avalokitesvar, supposedly copied from an ancient model.  But it stands 17.56 meters tall, the biggest marble statue in the world, and we can be pretty sure that’s several times the size of any original model.      

Nanzhao Island and lakeside restaurants

       Tour boats from Xiaguan bring dozens of Chinese tourists here every day.  Besides seeing the palace and statues, they can examine a traditional Bai house, buy deep-fried snacks in the square and watch the inevitable ethnic song and dance show.  For a genuine cultural experience they could skip the artificiality of the island and explore Shuanglang instead:  plenty of Bai houses here, as well as temples, markets, people in ethnic clothing, the same snacks and food and the same magnificent view across the lake.  They don’t, though, because organized tourism means organized presentations of whatever attractions are in the area.  Tour operators here believe they are supposed to be professional shepherds. 

       In recent years Yunnan’s railway network has extended from Xiaguan to Lijiang.  Shuanglang now has a station on this line and will surely draw more tourist attention.  Twenty years ago, pre-Nanzhao Island, only local Eryuan County buses went there and from Dali you had to get off a north-bound bus at Jiangwei and flag down one coming from Eryuan to get to Shuanglang.  It had a couple cheap guesthouses and maybe half a dozen restaurants or noodle shops. 

       Even before the train line opened Shuanglang was already much more accessible.  To visit Nanzhao Island one had to pass through or by Shuanglang and its natural attractions encouraged returns, this time for the village alone.  Now that it has been ‘discovered’ by both national and international tourism, the conditions that made Shuanglang such a genuine attraction may begin to erode.  New hotels have been erected, including a couple of high-end luxury hotels, restaurants line parts of the waterfront and Dali-style souvenir shops can’t be far behind.

Shuanglang market day

       You can hardly blame the local Bai for getting in on the tourist business.  Their big earner in the past—fishing—is no longer viable.  In fact, this year the government temporarily banned fishing in Erhai, due to depleted stocks and contamination.  The old fishing vessels that fascinated me in the past no longer line the docks of the peninsula.  Only small passenger boats ply the water these days.  Shuanglang’s farms are still productive, but of course, families are bigger now, everything is more expensive than before and some kind of income has to replace what they once earned from fishing.

       How much the coming transformations in Shuanglang, and later on in the rest of the eastern shore villages, will affect local people is up for speculation.  The Bai are a very conservative people.  They celebrate more festivals, follow more ancient customs and retain more of their traditional aesthetic and cultural views than most of the province’s minorities.  That’s held true in recent times even on the western shore of Erhai, the most heavily tourist-mobbed area in the prefecture.  So there’s a good chance Shuanglang’s new popularity will not entirely undermine local traditions.  And who knows?  Maybe the lake will revive and the people can renovate their boats and go fishing again.  Anyway, in the meantime, they still have their splendid location at the most scenic spot on Erhai Lake.

fishing boat in Shuanglang, 1994

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The Third Month Fair in Dali

                                                   by Jim Goodman

    Of all of Yunnan’s many annual festivals, the Third Month Fair in Dali ranks as the biggest.  In a good year around a half million people swarm into the city for the event, beginning on the full moon (15th day) of the third lunar month and running at least one week.  While the festival features a variety of entertainment—concerts, stage shows, songs, dances, horse races and equestrian shows—its main draw is the variety of goods, especially medicinal herbs, for sale in the special market created for the event at the foot of Zhonghe Peak of the Cangshan Mountains, just across the road from the old town’s West Gate.   A great number of the Bai and Yi minorities from Dali and surrounding counties come for the fair, but the crowd is dominated by Han from all over China, here not so much for the shows as for the opportunity to buy items like rare medicinal plants, for which the province and the Dali vicinity have long been famous.

northern entry gate to the fairgrounds

    The Third Month Fair is also one of the oldest festivals in Yunnan, having originated back in the 7th century during the reign of Xinuluo in the early days of the Nanzhao Kingdom.   The state was small then, basically just present-day Weishan and Midu Counties, and it would be another hundred years or so before Dali became its capital.  According to local legend, the plain beside Erhai Lake at that time was under the control of a monstrous demon named Luosha.  On the full moon day of the third month the goddess Guan Yin came to the area in disguise, tricked and imprisoned Luosha in a sealed cave and freed the local Bai people from his ravages.  In gratitude, every year on this day the people came to the foot of Zhonghe Peak, the site of Guan Yin’s triumph, to honor her and leave offerings.  As festivals imply crowds, and crowds draw merchants, eventually the event morphed into an annual trade fair that eclipsed its original religious significance.
    A more romantic account ascribes the origin of the Fair to a love affair between a fairy princess and a local fisherman.  She was the third daughter of Erhai’s resident Dragon King, who fell in love with and married a poor, but industrious and honest fisherman named Ashan.  Some months after their marriage, she invited him to accompany her to the Moon Festival, changed into a dragon and flew him there.  Changing back, she walked with him past a fantastic landscape, the likes of which he had never seen, to a pair of blue trees, 
    Suddenly people began arriving from the four corners of Heaven, riding lions and phoenixes and then setting up a fair.  Stalls offered coral, gemstones, pearls, clear liquor and rare elixirs and special food from the mountains and the seas.  After getting over his initial bedazzlement, though, Ashan noticed the market didn’t offer any farming tools or fishing gear, which disappointed him.

herbs and spices on sale at the Fair

    He mentioned that fact when narrating his adventures to his fellow villagers when the pair returned to earth.  He suggested the people set up their own fair for farmers and fishermen.  His princess wife seconded the idea and then proposed they simply move the Moon Festival to Earth.  Villagers then planted two trees at the foot of Zhonghe Peak and inaugurated a modified Moon Festival of their own.  Supplementing the rare and precious items from the market on the moon, the people added farm tools, livestock, fishing gear and medicinal herbs.
    Simply because people started coming from great distances to attend, the Fair grew in duration from a single commemorative day to a whole week.  And to keep the crowds in a good mood to stay longer and buy more goods, Fair organizers enhanced the event with various kinds of entertainment.  In recent times stages have gone up at each end of the market area and a stadium built north of the fairgrounds for the group dances, horse races, archery contests and equestrian shows. 

Dali West Gate, decorated for the event

    Nowadays the Fair is bigger than ever.  Thanks to airplanes, trains and buses people can reach Dali easily from all over the country.  Old town merchants this week hear the Chinese language spoken a hundred different ways.  Besides the chance to buy medicinal plants and animal parts that they cannot find in the places they live, they come for the attraction of Dali itself.  Lying at around 2000 meters altitude, backed by the Cangshan Mountains with 4000+ meter-high peaks, adjacent to the blue waters of Erhai Lake, a walled city with significant historic value, with its classic Chinese and Bai-style architecture, Dali is one of Yunnan’s premier tourist destinations.   And in April the weather is warm and balmy, hardly ever raining, when it’s still cold in most of China.
    The city gets all spruced up for the event and merchants start setting up a day or two earlier on the slope outside the western gate.  Just opposite this tower a smaller gate marks the entrance to the northern road to the fairgrounds, while four blocks south another gate marks the southern road up the hill.  Shops or stalls line the roads gong up to the fairgrounds, which is just below the wooded area.  But activity remains rather slight until after the official opening at the stadium on full moon morning.
    The stadium starts filling up by sunrise, but for those too late to get inside Dali TV films the event, so they can watch it on their hotel televisions for the next few nights.   After the speeches the show consists of several performances by large dance troupes of Bai or Yi in costumes that combine the elements of several sub-groups.  None of them are actually traditional, but instead modern creations, choreographed in forms of bursting stars, geometric patterns, etc, sometimes with three troupes at once.  The equestrian shows that follow are more interesting, with riders climbing on the shoulders of the jockey and each other, sometimes seven on a single horse.

Tibetan herbal medicine vendor

    The show concludes by noon and the crowd then swarms into the fairgrounds.  Besides medicinal herbs, concentrated at the southern end of the grounds, stalls offer various kinds of food like dried beef and mutton, sweets, pastries and pickled vegetables, as well as farm tools, nets and musical instruments, with a few restaurants set up at the north end.  While most of the crowd consists of Chinese Han visitors, ethnic minorities make up a large portion, mostly the prefecture’s Bai and Yi sub-groups, but also those from further away, like Naxi from Lijiang, Tibetans from Shangrila, Lisu and Miao.

Dali Bai girls running a stall

    Dali Bai women are the most recognizable, for their ethnic style of clothing-- white pants, long-sleeved, side-fastened red, blue or green tunic with matching apron and red and white headdress with a long white tassel--is one of the main images used in tourist literature advertising the place.  They tend to wander the fairgrounds in groups of three up to fifteen, often dressed in matching color tunics.  Bai women from Jianchuan wear a maroon vest over a blue blouse, a longer apron and a cap of several layers.  Those from Heqing are less colorful, maroon vest over white blouse and an army cap.
    The largest group of Yi is the still very traditional Tuli sub-group, from the hills south of Xiaguan and from Midu and Weishan Counties.  Their women dress in bright colors, green and red dominating, and wear tall turbans, plain black  or heavily embroidered and decorated.  Other Yi groups, such as the dance troupe, hail from Yangbi County, just over the Cangshan Mountains, notable for the lavishly embroidered aprons the women wear.
    The southern part of the fairgrounds is the busiest, a zone dominated by stalls hawking medicinal plants, spices, seeds, herbs and animal parts.  Tibetans run many stalls here, also

Bai women from Jianchuan

colorful Tuli Yi woman

selling, besides herbs and exotic animal parts like seahorses and starfish, butter churns, decorated yak and buffalo skulls, saddle carpets and animal pelts of fox, red panda and leopard cat.  Yi, Bai and Han also manage stalls here, their herbs packed in big bags with the tops open and the odors of their contents wafting into the air, making this area the most fragrant in the Fair. 
    While entertainment proceeds regularly throughout the week at several venues, the second morning features one-time only performances by local Bai and Yi.  The Bai put on a spectacular dragon dance, with two dragons, one black, one golden, with women carrying the dragons.  One woman baits the dragon, which moves around in

Bai Dragon Dance

Bai Fan Dance

various patterns, sometimes ducking its head under its writhing tail, or coiling under its raised head.  Other dances feature red lions and the use of props like riding whips or fans.  The Yi perform ring dances, women on the outside, men on drums and gourd-pipes in the middle.
      Both shows are over by noon, and the area doesn’t see any more, but a short distance away is the mini-stadium set up for performances by village orchestras from the vicinity playing traditional dongjing music.  The groups number about 25 and usually include at least one female musician, who may double as singer.  Each orchestra performs about an hour, two in the morning, three in the afternoon. 
    At the other end of the grounds, near the top of the southern entrance road,  are two more entertainment venues.  A huge tree stands near the edge of the medicine stalls and from a makeshift stage in front of it Bai and Yi singers, male and female, solo or in duets, take turns performing, with a small Bai troupe puts on dances in between the songs.  And about 70 meters down the slope other troupes and soloists perform on a regular stage, with curtain, flanking one of the market lanes.
    The staged dances are sometimes traditional, sometimes new, even if in ethnic dress.  Bai troupes of women dance with props like parasols, fans lutes and water jugs, each set choreographed differently but often ending with one lady hoisted high above the rest of the group clustered at her feet.  Miao girls perform wearing typically Miao pleated skirts and fancy silver headdresses from Guizhou province.  Yi troupes from Yangbi put on various shows, soloists perform on flute or gourd-pipe and a group of local Han girls do a modern dance in short, tight, slanted skirts and matching, off-the-shoulder halters—the sexiest stage costume of the week.

Non-ethnic dances are also part of the show.

    The stage shows take place in the afternoon and, after a short break, again in the early evening.  But nothing stays open very late in the fairgrounds and attendance is much smaller.  During the day, though, it can be difficult to move around on the main market lanes.  People are constantly stopping to examine goods or jamming up to watch the stage shows, putting their children on their shoulders to give them a better view.  This blocks the view of those behind them, of course, but other than that, in general the crowds are well-behaved.  Nobody is in a hurry, nobody pushes, and nobody tramples on the feet of others.

Dali Bai troupe on stage at the Fair

    It’s no wonder, then, that the Third Month Fair grows in popularity every year.   The physical setting alone is one of Yunnan’s most splendid and the area is replete with genuine attractions that bring in tourists year-round.  The abundant presence of ethnic minorities in their best traditional clothing during the Fair sprinkles the crowds with color and accents the already exotic atmosphere of the event.  The array of goods on sale and the variety of both merchants and customers makes a day’s wandering through the fairgrounds one of continuous fascination.  And as a bonus, a visitor might just find that special herb or plant that will treat or cure a long-standing ailment.  That alone would make the trip worth it.    
                    

dongjing orchestra singer

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