Through Yunnan to India, 1895

                                  by Jim Goodman

 

       One of the consequences of the European conquest of most of southern Asia was an insatiable interest in the region’s geography.   European-made maps at the time were full of blank spots or, at best, rough guesses of the exact location and height of certain mountains and the sources and accurate courses of major rivers.  Ambitious individuals in the academic world sought to make their reputations by answering important geographical questions.

       By the late 1880s Great Britain had already taken over northern Burma and France had seized northern Vietnam and Laos.  That put both countries’ possessions on the border of Yunnan, at a time when Chinese central authority was in the throes of collapse.  Both wanted to open Yunnan up to trade, so information on the province was at a premium.  The only serious Western attempt so far to explore Yunnan was the French Mekong Expedition in 1868.

       Looking for a river route to China, the expedition found that way blocked by the impassable Mekong Falls in southern Laos.  The group continued anyway on foot and eventually entered Yunnan through Xishuangbanna.  From Jinghong they carried on to Kunming and wanted to turn towards Dali and reach the Mekong again west of Dali.  But Yunnan was engulfed by a brutal civil war and the explorers could not get permission to go west, which terminated their tour of the province.

       A generation later, at the beginning of 1895, another French expedition set out to explore Yunnan, planning to enter from Vietnam, head west for the Mekong River (called Lancangjiang in China) and follow it north to Tibet.  The organizer of this journey was Prince Henri d’Orléans, a veteran traveler already familiar with Madagascar, parts of western China and Cambodia.  He originally intended to explore Vietnam’s Central Highlands, but discovered others already had.  He preferred somewhere that was as yet unknown.  In Yunnan he would deliberately take a different route than his countrymen followed in 1868.

       Joining the Prince were Émile Roux, a navy acquaintance, and Pierre Briffaut, a French colonist from Hanoi.  The trio and their entourage sailed up the Red River from Hanoi to Lào Cai, crossed Yunnan in early February and sailed for three days to Manhao, which was as far as boats could go.  They then headed for Mengzi, site of a French Consulate, where they organized their supplies and needs for the next part of the journey. 

       From Mengzi they returned to the Red River, marched as far as Honghe and then turned south into the hills.  A landscape they had never seen before awaited them, of irrigated rice terraces up and down the slopes of the hills.  As this was late winter, the terraces were at their most picturesque, filled with water that reflected the sky.  The inhabitants were Hani, an ethnic group unfamiliar to the party, who believed them to be the area’s aboriginals.

       Both the Prince and Roux took copious notes everywhere.  Briffaud did not.  He was basically along for the adventure.  But he was assuredly a welcome companion around the campfires, especially when the going got rougher later on.  A devoted geographical statistician, Roux took down all the numbers for the latitudes, longitudes and altitudes, made short descriptions in a journal and later wrote up a fuller account in France.  This included other observations, like his description of how the Hani bowed deeply to them when encountered on the trail and carried on their backs loaded baskets using head-straps.  He described the entry gate to a Hani village, with its carved figures designed to keep out evil spirits, a custom still in practice in many Hani villages.

       The Prince specialized in natural studies and so recorded all the species of birds, insects, mammals and flowers he discovered on the way.  Linguistics was another major interest and he collected rudimentary vocabulary lists for over thirty languages and dialects.  Long before Joseph Rock, he discovered the Naxi dongba pictograph books and collected several of them, along with samples of the Yi language script.

       From the southwest corner of Honghe County the expedition turned west for Simao (now called Pu’er), the first town of any size since Mengzi, for a brief rest, more supplies and more information on what lay ahead.  Heading west towards the Lancangjiang, they enjoyed the scenery, especially when passing the white boulders jutting out of land and water at Cuiyun.  When they reached the river they turned north to follow its course however far they could.

       Actually, they rarely marched alongside the river and mostly kept a little to the west of it.  The group stopped for a break in Lincang, a small town of 5000 inhabitants, half the size of Simao, then continued to Yunxian and Fengqing.  Just past this town they crossed the Lancangjiang again and struck for Dali.

       In Dali they stayed with a French mission, where the explorers could speak French again for the first time since Mengzi.  They arrived the last week of May and made this a major stopover, staying over two weeks, especially enjoying the scenery of the lake, eating beef for the first time in many weeks, sampling the Lijiang wine known as yinjiu, and organizing the next phase of the trip.  Dali was still affected by the Muslim Revolt and supplies, including thirty mules, had to be procured in Xiaguan.  They also recruited nine Chinese, including one called Joseph, a Christian who had learned Latin.  The Prince had also studied Latin as a schoolboy and could remember enough to converse, more with use, and so Joseph wound up becoming their interpreter, remaining with the explorers the entire journey.

       Finally on the move again, the group trekked past Erhai lake to Dengchuan and then turned west towards the Lancangjiang, via Yunlong.  When they reached the river they only followed it north a short distance before being seized with a new goal—to cross the Biluo Mountains to Liiuku for a look at the Nu River.  This was the name of the Salween River in China and virtually nothing was known about it.  Local people advised against it claiming the valley was full of dangerous vapors and the mountains inhabited by warlike Lisu.

       The explorers didn’t believe any of that.  Throughout the journey people had frequently told them to beware of the next destination, which always turned how to be a great exaggeration.  The crossing wasn’t easy and they had to spend a night in the forest, but descending to Liuku they did find the weather sultry and hotter, though they did not suffer any new health problems.  They turned north up the Nu River halfway to Chenggan, then crossed over the mountains to return to the valley of the Lancangjiang at Biaocun.  From here they could hike right along the river all the way to Deqing.

       Heading north again, they soon came to their first rope-bridge.  They’d never seen this unique way to cross the river, but the guides instructed them how to use it.  Not only the travelers, the mules and all the baggage had to be moved to the other side the same way, which took the entire day.  They would use more of these in months to come and the only mishap occurred below Deqing, when Roux’ pet dog, seeing its master swinging over the river, tried to follow him by swimming across, but the rapids swept it away.

       Sheer riverside cliffs popped up all along the trail, necessitating another rope-bridge crossing or a march up and over the blocking mountain.  Often these mountain paths were quite narrow and slippery and once two of the mules tumbled down the slope.  They recovered them fortunately.  Local inhabitants were mainly Lisu, a branch without the querulous reputation of Nujiang’s Lisu and were more than hospitable.  They assumed the explorers were government agents and unloaded their complaints to them.  They also wined and dined their guests, introduced them to the ‘one-heart drink,’ with a man and woman quaffing the rice-beer together sharing a single large bamboo cup, and treated them to dance shows.  

       While the route got more rugged the scenery grew ever more impressive, with views of distant, snow-capped mountains in view.  They stopped briefly at the French Lazarist mission in Xiaoweixi, again meeting old priests who hadn’t had a chance to speak French for ages.  They continued to the Naxi settlement of Yezhi and then on to the Tibetan lamasery at Kanpu.  By chance, they arrived in time for Huobajie, the summer Fire Festival celebrated by most ethnic minorities in the northwest.

       Three days later they reached Cikou, also a Lazarist mission with two old very welcoming priests.  Less harassed by Chinese officials, this was a more successful mission than Xiaoweixi, with a large number of Tibetan converts.  Upon arrival, though, the Prince fell ill with bronchitis and fever, requiring rest and medication for a few days.  Roux took the opportunity to satisfy his geographical curiosity with a trip to Deqing, taking along Joseph and one other.  He became familiar with Tibetan chortens made of slabs of rocks inscribed with prayer, barley flour (tsampa), bettered tea and the highest mountains in the province, but found the town itself unfriendly and without interest. 

       The Prince had recuperated upon Roux’ return and by now, with the Tibetans having made it clear the group could not enter Tibet, the explorers conceived an alternate ambition.  They would try to locate the sources of the Ayeyarwady River, which would be a new contribution to geographical knowledge of Southeast Asia.  Britain had seized northern Burma a decade earlier, but their maps had designated most of the extreme north as ‘unexplored territory’.

       The expedition marched up to Yanjing and then crossed the Biluo Mountains to their west, reaching the Nu River via Dimaluo, crossing by dugout canoes at a rare calm stretch of the river and stopping for a few days at Gongshan for rest and resupply.  At this stop they sent their mules back to Cikou with a few of the crew, for animals were becoming an impediment to progress the rougher the trail became.  They hired 24 Tibetans as porters, as well as a Dulong guide who also spoke the Nu and Lisu languages.

       To get to the ‘unexplored territory’ they had to go west from Gongshan over what decades later became the caravan route to Dulongjiang.  It was not much used back then and sometimes they had to reconstruct part of the trail or make dangerous detours along very narrow mountain paths, propped up by logs and boulders along steep cliffs.  For the first part of the journey they stayed in Nu villages, finding the people very polite, almost subservient in their desire to please, very poor materially, but healthy and strong, with several octogenarians each village, something rarely found elsewhere back then.

       More discoveries ensued when they climbed over the Gaoligongshan range and descended to the Dulong River Valley.  Many of the plant and tree species were different from those in Nujiang.  The river was blue-green and cold.  They learned that it began at the north end of Dulongjiang district, so was not a tributary of the Nu, but could be one of the sources of the Ayeyarwady.  By following it through northern Burma they would find out.

       The Dulong people were even poorer than the Nu, but also very hardy and strong.  They were shorter than Nu or Lisu and were apparently related to the Nu, for their language was similar and unlike Lisu.  Many, though not all, of the women had tattooed faces, a custom allegedly adopted to discourage marauding outsiders from kidnapping their women.  They lived in hamlets of less than ten thatched roof houses.

       Several Dulong men joined the expedition, replacing Tibetan porters who did not want to travel to Burma.  Some were familiar with part of what lay ahead and either knew which routes were the less strenuous or how to quickly clear a new trail to replace one washed out by a flood or blocked by a landslide or construct a new bamboo bridge.  When food supplies ran perilously low a few Dulong took their crossbows to the jungle and returned with a few big birds.

       The trail was the worst yet taken, full of various obstacles, with signs of human habitation rare.  After crossing the Telo River, a major tributary of the Dulong River, they marched six days without meeting anyone.  Finally they arrived at Putao, run by a Khamti chieftain, whom they had to persuade/bribe that they were not British spies.  At least they could eat decent meals again but had to surrender almost all personal belongings, except their boots and rifles, to pay for supplies. 

       They left Putao for India, but Roux suddenly got very sick and had to stay in a village while the Prince continued to India and arranged relief.  Roux recovered and the group carried on to Assam, India, reached Sadiya and from there could go by boat all the way to Calcutta.  Back in France, the Prince d’Orléans and Roux both wrote up their adventures and became academic celebrities for having proven that Yunnan’s Dulong River was indeed a major source of the Ayeyarwadi River.

 

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New Gods for Frontier Peoples: Missionaries in NW Yunnan

                                                               by Jim Goodman

Lancang River Valley south of Diqing

       In recent years adventurous travelers in NW Yunnan have been trekking over the Biluo Mountains from the Lancangjiang Valley to Nujiang.  The route connects the village of Cizhong in Diqing County with Baihanluo and Dimaluo in Gongshan County, Nujiang.  It is roughly the same route taken by the French Irrawaddy Expedition in 1895 and early 20^th century explorers like F. Kingdon Ward and Joseph Rock.   The unusual aspect of this journey is that whether it begins from CIzhong or from Dimaluo, it runs from one Christian settlement to another, the legacy of intrepid 19^th century French Lazarist missionaries.

       The pioneer figure in this story was Père Charles Renou, who arrived in Yunnan in 1852 and headed at once for the northwest.  Intending to proselytize among Tibetans, he first had to learn the local dialect.  Posing as a Chinese merchant, he stopped at Dongzhulin Monastery, southeast of Diqing, befriended the lamas and learned the Tibetan language.  Two years later he crossed the Biluo Mountains and ended up in Bingzhongluo. 

TIbetan wearing a crucifix

       Cognizant of power politics in the area, Renou befriended the richest landowner and secured a fief from him in Bonga Valley, just over the Yunnan border inside Tibet.  His first Catholic converts were the slaves he purchased and emancipated from the landowner.  He augmented this number over the next three years with more purchases of mainly orphans and children sold by heavily indebted Nu families.  After baptizing them he enrolled them in a school, run by an ex-monk, to learn to read and pray in Tibetan. 

       Bonga Valley was practically uninhabited when Renou arrived.  The local Nu people believed it was the abode of malevolent tree spirits and feared angering them by cutting down the spirits’ homes.  Renou instructed them to keep uttering the names of God and the Virgin Mary to repel the spirits.  He was taking a chance, for if anything bad happened after the villagers cleared the woods the mission’s reputation would plummet.  Nothing did, however, so now the villagers reckoned the priests were more powerful than the local land spirits.

Nu Catholic, Shuangla

Pengda church, Gongshan County

       By 1858 the mission staff had expanded to five priests and the Christian community was growing so fast it frightened local authorities, including the landlord who had given Renou the fief and now wanted it back.  He took his case to the abbot of Menkong and then organized a gang that attacked the missionaries’ residence and burned down all their buildings, belongings and the documents concerning the rental of the fief.  The missionaries fled south to Puhua Monastery, where the local abbot gave them sanctuary.

Xiaoweixi Catholic Church, built in 1870

       That same year, though, China signed the Treaty of Tianjin, which gave Western missionaries the right to work in the interior.  It took nearly four years, but Renou won his case at Menkong, got his fief back and from then on paid rent to Menkong Monastery instead.  With this verdict the prestige of the foreign missionaries soared.  Nu villagers, whether animist or Buddhist, chafing under the harsh tax demands of their Tibetan overlords, now saw the missionaries as potential protectors against local authorities.  They also found the missionaries, many of whom had prior medical training, far more efficient dealing with illness than their own shamans.  They began converting en masse.

       By 1863 the mission seemed to be on a firm trajectory for future success.  Renou handed over management of it to his staff and trekked over the mountains to the Lancang River valley, the Upper Mekong.  Setting up in Cikou village, a mostly Tibetan settlement south of Diqing, after his long and patient efforts, in 1867 the villagers replaced their Buddhist monastery with a Catholic church.  Three years later, having been joined by other Lazarist missionaries, who began working further downriver, a second Catholic church went up in the Naxi village of Xiaoweixi.

       Both the Cikou church and the one in Xiaoweixi were built in classical Chinese style and resembled modest, Mayahana Buddhist, walled temple compounds.  The Xiaoweixi church is still the original building, two stories high, tiled roofs, with an added, triangular roof on top, with upturned corners and a cross at the apex.  A rather simple altar stands inside at the other end of the entrance and the flanking walls feature posters of the Stations of the Cross.

Baihanluo Catholic Church

       Back in Bonga Valley, however, mission affairs suddenly took a turn for the worst.  Nu converts assumed they no longer had to pay taxes and land rent to the Tibetan overlords.  Ecclesiastical authorities in Menkong forbade conversions, ordered Christians to renounce the new faith and forced villagers to pay tax and debt bills.  Those who refused were killed or ran away further south.  Raiding parties burnt everything in Bonga Valley. 

       Because of the ongoing Muslim Revolt in Yunnan, the French Legation in Kunming could not get the government to do anything and advised the Nujiang priests to abandon their efforts north of the Yunnan border and lay low for a while.  In the Lancang River Valley, however, the Lazarist missionaries expanded their activities north and established churches in Diqing, Yanjing, Batang and Kangding.  With the end of the Muslim Revolt in 1873, French priests were able to join their compatriots in the new missions.

       However loyal their flocks might be, beyond the parishes the priests faced the very secular dangers of banditry and ethnic nationalism.  Unknown assailants murdered Yanjing’s Père Brueux in 1881.  Six years later an armed Tibetan uprising provoked the burning of the churches in Diqing, Yanjing and Batang and the desecration of Brueux’s grave.  The missions in Nujiang were unmolested at this time and in 1882 priests began proselytizing in Baihanluo, in the Biluo Mountains south of Bingzhongluo.

Dimaluo on a Sunday morning

       In 1904 French priests erected a church in Baihanluo, in a style that resembled a Tibetan dzong, the kind of building used by nobles and high-ranking lamas.  Converts saw it as a Catholic dzong, with the implications of an authority greater than that of local officials.  Though they may not have seen its establishment as a political challenge, the current group of French missionaries was an entirely different set than their predecessors in Bonga Valley.  So were the lamas of Puhua in Bingzhongluo.  The friendly relations between the two that had marked Renou’s time had turned hostile. 

       That same year witnessed the Younghusband Expedition, when British military units from India marched into Tibet and occupied Lhasa in August, forcing the Dalai Lama to flee to Mongolia.  Poorly armed Tibetans suffered heavy casualties opposing them.  After imposing a trade treaty on Lhasa, the British returned to India and the Dalai Lama returned.  But resentment over the Expedition, especially in the eastern, Kamba-inhabited part of Tibet, combined with fury over the foreigners’ burgeoning influence on people who were so recently subservient to Kamba lords and lamas, burst into violence. 

CIzhong Catholic Church

       Aroused by lamas in Diqing and further north, armed Tibetan gangs attacked the Christian communities, killed Cikou’s two priests and burned down its church, as well as the rebuilt churches in Diqing, Yanjing and Batang.  Egged on by lamas in Menkong, Puhua monks joined the rebellion and organized an attack that destroyed the Baihanluo church.  Kamba warriors also attacked Chinese posts up and down the Lancangjiang Valley, prompting the Qing government to dispatch troops to restore law and order.  The government campaign took two years to quell the rebellion.  Control of Diqing changed hands twice, resulting in mass revenge killings by both sides.  In Nujiang Qing forces crossed the mountains to Baihanluo, marched on Bingzhongluo and burnt down the Puhua Monastery.  The revolt in Nujiang subsided quickly, but the government stationed a garrison in Baihanluo to watch over the peace.

Pengdang Catholic Church interior

       Having survived the mayhem, the missionaries rebuilt their church, but in a different style, less resembling a dzong.  The new wooden building was narrower, with folding screened shutters in front, painted archway and belfry façade, a single two-story tower over the entrance, with upturned roof corners and a white cross mounted on top.  Recently renovated with freshly painted exterior frescoes, it still stands there today.  In the valley below, the church at the mixed Tibetan-Nu-Lisu village of Dimaluo, built several years later, features the same style of construction.

       Over the next couple of decades, as more French missionaries augmented the existing band of priests, the growing Christian Nu community built churches at Qiunatong, Pengda, Pengdang, Shuangla and Cikai.  These were more in a kind of Sino-European style, with square bell-towers, columned fronts and lavishly painted interiors.  The former animosity that characterized Nu-Tibetan relations faded away and converted Catholic villages like Qiunatong and Dimaluo had both Tibetan and Nu residents.

Tibetans leaving Cizhoing church on Sunday

       A few years after the suppression of the Kamba revolt in the Lancangjiang Valley, French missionaries returned to Cikou and called on their congregation to construct a new church, this time in stone, in the village of Cizhong, a few kilometers upriver. The new building looked more like a rural French church, except for its Chinese-style belfry tower.  Over 20 meters tall, the tower is twice as high as the nave, while both feature narrow, European-style, arched windows on their sides.  Engraved on the arch above the church entrance is a New Testament Latin quotation, calling upon the suffering laborers in the world to seek refuge in the Lord.

       Within the nave, arched columns left and right of the entrance divide the interior into three sections.  At the end of the columns the main altar honors Jesus and smaller ones left and right are dedicated to the Madonna and Child and St. Joseph.  The walls display illustrations of the Way of the Cross and the spaces above them, as well as the ceiling, feature Tibetan-style paintings of pheasants, clouds, lotuses, yin-yang symbols and very Oriental dragons.  Construction concluded in 1921 and the government garrisoned thirty soldiers there to protect it from marauders.

       In the following years, while Civil War raged across most of China, the mission continued its life undisturbed.  Besides religious and architectural concepts, French priests also introduced the very European practice of grape cultivation and wine production, both in Cizhong and downriver in Xiaoweixi.   They also accumulated a large library of books in both French and Chinese.

reading prayers outside the Dimaluo church

       With the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, missionaries anywhere in Yunnan were forced to evacuate.  Protestant missionaries in Nujiang took some of their converts with them when they fled into Burma, but the Catholics tended to remain when their priests departed.  The new government proved to be less iconoclastic out on this far frontier than was expected, even during the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution, and the small Christian communities carried on as best they could without their priests and ministers.

       The inauguration of the Reform Era and the opening of China to the outside world, including tourists, did not mean the return of the foreign missionaries to Cizhong and Nujiang.  Their Sunday services continued without their presence, as they had for decades.  Rather than a Mass, though, these consisted of listening to spoken or recorded sermons and collective praying and singing. 

hymnal salvaged from the Cikou fire

       At Cizhong for example, the only ecclesiastical official was a rector, who was not permitted to hold Mass.  So the congregation assembled inside, men on one side, women and children on the other, and sang hymns, using partially burnt manuscripts, salvaged from the Cikou fire, like the Book of Psalms, De Profundis and Cantique au Sacré Coeur, translated into Tibetan.  The congregation alternately sang and chanted the verses, sometimes sounding like a row of monks at prayer time, sometimes like a medieval European choir.

       The place has also recently attracted a greater number of tourists.  It’s certainly an attractive village, at the base of high mountains beside the roaring Lancang River.  About 75% of its residents are Tibetan, 20% Naxi and 5% Han.  Naxi architecture, rather than Tibetan, dominates the house designs.  One of its characteristics is to suspend a carved fish beneath the apex of the roof at each end, which symbolized the element of water as a protective device against the element of fire, as in a lightning bolt striking the house.  Christian house owners have replaced this with a carving picturing a dove, the Catholic symbol of the Holy Spirit, their own protector.

dove on a  Christian house in Cizhong

       Guesthouses may have arisen, and trekking parties are stopping here on their way to and from Dimaluo, but this new attention is not likely to affect the traditional influence of Christianity on Cizhong’s mostly Christian population.  They have a resident priest now, who arrived from Inner Mongolia a couple years ago, to hold Mass and make the exercise of their religion more authentic.  They hold fond memories of the missionaries, influencing their hospitable receptions of Western visitors.  And they still cultivate grapes and make wine, a secular legacy of the French priests, and something they can share with their Western guests.

riverside Nu CatholicChurch at Pengdang

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                      for more on DIqing's TIbetans, see my e-book Living in Shangrila