Joseph Rock in Northwest Yunnan

                                  by Jim Goodman

dawn over Dayan, Lijiang's old city

       After a long and arduous journey overland starting from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, up through northeast Burma, into Xishuangbanna and then through Simao Prefecture to Dali and further north, Joseph F. Rock arrived in Lijiang in spring of 1922.  As a professional botanist who had made a solid reputation for himself working in Hawaii, Rock had an assignment from the U.S. Agriculture Department to collect specimens of a blight-resistant chestnut tree, to help alleviate a blight crisis with the tree in the American species.  He was also to collect seeds of any other previously unknown ornamental or useful plant, native birds and small mammals.   For Rock, the job gave him a chance to go to China, a long cherished dream.

typical red wooden Dayan houses

one of the canals running through Dayan

       Lijiang lay on a high-altitude plain (2400 meters) dominated at the north end by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (5596 meters), its heavily wooded slopes filled with thousands of different plant and flower species.  It was certainly an attractive place to work.  But although he frequently visited Dayan, the old town of Lijiang, for picking up supplies and taking photographs, he took up residence in Nguluko, a village close to the mountain and the last settlement north of Dayan. 

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain  and the Dry  Plain above Lijiang

       Fascinated by China since his teenage yehen he was still in Austria, (he had already learned to read the language) Rock was there at last, in the peak of health in his late 30s.  It wasn’t a very Chinese part of China, though, for most inhabitants were Naxi, a separate minority with their own distinct traditions.  Eventually, when he completed his botanical assignment, he got more involved in recording and studying Naxi customs, culture, history and especially their unique dongba tradition. 

       The dongbas were a kind of shaman, versed in myriad ceremonies minor and major, who read their prayers with the use of books with a mostly pictographic script, unique in Yunnan.  Over time, Rock with his meticulous devotion to detail, collected the books, learned to read them and translated many.  He also wrote a long and detailed two-volume history of Lijiang.

Dayan waterway

       Rock enjoyed both his work and that he was doing it alone, on his own terms.  He got along fine with his Naxi neighbors, learned their language, too, employing many of them, but did not develop; anything like friendship with them.  He taught them how to collect, preserve and press plants, taxidermy on wildlife specimens, how to cook Western-style food for him, assist his photography sessions and photo processing, but never hung out in a tavern for a drink with them or otherwise be socially engaged.  He was kind to them, looked after their health and family matters, but always viewed them paternally, likening the villagers to children, as he wrote in his diary, unsophisticated and innocent.

old town street

       Lijiang was not the only place with chestnut trees and when Rock felt his work crew was trained enough he took them on botanical caravans to Tengchong, Dehong and northern Burma.  Aside from his botanical work, the journey whetted Rock’s appetite for exploration.  When his work for the Department of Agriculture concluded Rock got jobs from National Geographic for organizing expeditions of discovery to remote parts of western China. 

Rock's photo of a Dayan market day

       Beyond Lijiang he traveled up to Deqing through Shangrila County and the forests of the Baima Mountains.  From Deqing he turned south through the Lancangjiang canyon to the Christian settlement of Cizhong.  From there he ascended the Biluo Mountains, crossed the crest of the range and descended to Dimaluo in Gongshan County.  Mountains still dominated the landscape, peaks of the parallel Gaoligongshan Range across the Nu River already visible. 

       It was certainly a photogenic route and Rock stopped often to take dramatic photos.  He chose his angles carefully and produced wonderful shots of scenery, hilltop churches, remote temples and local lifestyles, like caravan ponies being sent across the swirling rapids of the Nu River on rope-bridges.  

rural road in autumn

village north of Dayan

       Technically speaking, it was quite a chore not only to set up and take the photographs, but also to process and print them in the field.  The camera was big and bulky, required a sturdy tripod and used large plates with a very low film speed, and thus long exposures.  This was fine for still-life landscape shots, but for portraits Rock had to ask his subject to remain absolutely still for half a minute or more to avoid any possibility of blur.

Tibetan village, Deqing County

       On these expeditions Rock brought a portable darkroom tent where he developed the negatives and later made prints.  He dried them by pinning them to lines strung across the shadier parts of his campground.  If the expedition were to be a long one, he sometimes dispatched a couple of his workers to take the plates and prints back to Lijiang.

       Never in a hurry, fascinated by everything exotic he encountered, he also traveled in grand style, intentionally designed to impress folks along the way.  Besides the contingent of workers and aides, the caravans included armed guards.  These were turbulent times in southwest China, with warlord armies and local armed gangs on the loose.  He brought a portable rubber bathtub so he could stay clean and a fully outfitted kitchen for his cook to prepare his Western food.  His meals were served on a proper dining table with Western chairs and Rock always dressed for dinner, even though he rarely dined with a guest, and listened to Western operas and symphonies on his portable phonograph.

Baimashan forest, Deqing County

       He was passionate about detailing everything he witnessed, eager to learn the precise meanings and intentions of the rituals, for example.  At times he included so much detailed esoteric information that his editors felt that they had to take much of it out.  Rock fumed, but in the end worked out some sort of modus vivendi with National Geographic.  They sponsored more expeditions to even further remote places in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai, where he discovered new unknown mountains and recorded elaborate Tibetan rituals.

Meiile Snow Mountain group, highest in Yunnan

       All that suddenly came to an end with the Wall Street crash at the end of 1929 and the beginning of the Depression.   National Geographic could no longer financially support expeditions like Rock’s.  The explorer lost his job. 

         Rock returned to his Nguluko home and absorbed himself even more in Naxi history, traditions and religion.  In his view the village dongba tradition, unique to Naxi culture, was in danger of extinction.  Rock was already familiar with it and had written one National Geographic article about it early in his career.  Now he decided to record and preserve for posterity everything he could learn about this tradition, from the purpose and meaning of every ritual detail to the deciphering of the manuscripts.

Rock's portrait of a Naxi woamn

Rock's portrait of a dongba in action

       He was on the alert for any kind of dongba rite anywhere in the vicinity and was there with his camera and notebooks.  Some were simple, involving a single dongba and lasting less than a day.  Others, like special funerals, required a group of them and a series of rites, maybe even with dances, that carried on for several days and nights. 

Lion Mountain rising above Lug Lake

       In his eagerness to get everything exactly right he won the confidence of his informants.  Once, very early in his studies, the performing dongbas asked him not to photograph the rites so as not to upset the attendant spirits.  Rock put away his camera and just took notes.  When it was over, and they agreed that the spirits were no longer around, he persuaded them to re-enact the rites for his camera.

       Not many Westerners were ever in Lijiang in the 1930s, other than a few temporary travelers.  Dayan had two Christian missionaries and a church, but they made no converts the entire time they were there and Rock usually avoided them.  Peter Goullart, a White Russian emigrant, was the only other Western resident.  He had a government job forming co-operatives and personally a naturally gregarious personality who enjoyed socializing with the locals in the Dayan wine shops.  Rock, of course, was the opposite, quite content at being a loner with his own worthy mission. 

Rock's retreat at Lugu Lake

       Rock viewed Dayan as a place already compromised culturally by Chinese Han influence. He fretted the same would happen to Naxi culture in the villages, with the demise of the dongba tradition.  He went to Dayan for supplies or research or photography, but for social calls only occasionally when he felt unbearably lonely and craved some time with fellow Westerns.  The encounter might just be for a dinner or an overnight stay and then we was back to his research work.    He got along with Goullart, but didn’t cultivate a friendship with him.  Rock also knew Edgar Snow, the American reporter covering the Chinese Revolution, and traveled through central Yunnan with him.  Snow was a bit of a libertine compared to Rock, and his willingness to indulge in some of China’s illicit pleasures shocked the rather sanctimonious Joseph Rock.

A Yongshan and his family

       With his dongba informants Rock kept a strictly professional researcher relationship.  In all his time in northwest Yunnan the only true friend he made was A Yongshan, the tusi (local magistrate) of Yongning, who lived on Nyorophu Island in Lugu Lake, northeast of Lijiang and the most beautiful body of water in Yunnan.  As the tusi’s guest Rock stayed in the island palace in an environment of peace and natural wonders, perfect for working on his manuscripts and enhanced afterwards by his long and interesting conversations with his host.

       The majority of Yongning District’s inhabitants are Mosuo, a branch of the Naxi minority nationality.  The primary difference between them is that the Mosuo are still mostly matrilineal, with property owned by the women and passed on to the daughters.  Mongol armies conquered the area in the 13^th century and Kubilai Khan left some of his officers behind to govern the territory.  These men married Mosuo women, but within their clan retained the Mongol patrilineal inheritance system.  This clan, the A, was the smallest of the five Mosuo clans, so that matrilineality still characterized nearly 90% of the Mosuo.

self-portrait in native garb

from the northern shore-- Nyoropho (top)

       With his innate aristocratic, mandarin prejudices, Rock considered the Mosuo system primitive.  The Mosuo had no marriage ceremony to formalize sexual relationships, employing the ‘walking marriage’ custom wherein the male only comes to the female at night, returns to his own mother’s house in the morning, and all children belong to the mother’s side.  This left the woman free to change partners to try to get pregnant, since it didn’t matter who the father was.  Rock simply assumed that meant they were naturally promiscuous.

       Rock didn’t go to Lugu Lake to research the Mosuo, anyway, but as a place to relax and put his Naxi research findings in order.  From Nyoropho he had a direct view across the 2700 meters-high lake to Lion Mountain, rising to over 4000 meters on the northwest shore.  He rarely left the island on his sojourns there and relished the relationship he had with A Yongshan, his best friend in China.  Unfortunately, this friend died in the summer of 1933 and Rock never found an equivalent replacement.

witness to a dongba rite

      Rock took solace in his work, for he was convinced of its importance.  Other scholars were specializing in Tibetan studies but he himself was the only one working with the Naxi tradition.  Besides, he didn’t particularly like Tibetans; interesting rituals but as a people dirty and uncouth.  He didn’t like the Yi in the mountains, either, partly for the same reasons but also for their slave system.  He was never inclined to visit them, but given Rock’s mandarin pretensions, one wonders what might have happened had he visited a village and been hosted in grand style by a Black Yi aristocrat.  Maybe he would have learned about the bimaw, the Yi dongba equivalent, and the Yi books with a separate alphabet, covering Yi myth and history, legends, prayers, riddles and pharmacopoeia.  A change of opinion, then?

       Rock quite liked Naxi people, however, and maintained friendly relationships with his staff and his neighbors.  The aim he had set for himself, to record the entire history of the Naxi nationality, translate the dongba manuscripts, record and explain all the traditional rituals, was enormous.  And in view of the cultural threat coming from modernization and assimilation, Rock was in a race against time.  He devoted as much time and energy to his projects as humanly possible, until the new post-Revolution government in August 1949, forced Rock to pack up his boxes of research and leave China.  He was never allowed back.

       Just as Rock had foreseen, changes soon overtook the old ways.  The dongba tradition was all but forcibly wiped out, surviving only in remote villages.  Decades later, with the launch of the Reform Era, minority culture was no longer disparaged.  It didn’t mean every ancient practice revived, but it did enhance pride and interest in ethnic culture and history.  For the Naxi, with a very unique history and culture, the prime source of information is the work of Joseph F. Rock, the prescient preserver of their ancient traditions, a man who worked passionately to achieve just this kind of legacy.

Dayan 45 years after Rock's departure

                                                                   * * *           

.  for more on Joseph Rock, Lijiang and the Naxi, see my e-book Children of the Jade Dragon

Heqing Remake

                                           by Jim Goodman

downtown in new Heqing

       Heqing has never garnered much traveler attention.  The county lies between Dali and Lijiang, northeast of Erhai Lake and the city is closer to Lijiang (43 km) than it is to Dali (145 km).  Both a good highway and a train line run through Heqing County to connect Dali with Lijiang, but the scenery, while pleasant, is not particularly stunning until the traveler crosses the high mountains at the northern end of the county and heads towards the snow mountain backdrop of Lijiang. 

lake in northern Heqing County

       The airport servicing Lijiang is actually just inside Heqing County, but passengers inevitably head for Lijiang and give Heqing a miss.  It’s close enough to Lijiang that day trips are easy, but visitors to Lijiang become so involved with sights there, even when they recognize the artificiality of so much of what they see, that they don’t consider excursions anywhere else.  Meet Bai people?  They can do that in Dali.

       Most of Heqing County’s people are Bai, especially in the plains and towns, but they dress differently and practice some different customs than the Bai around Dali.  The women favor more subdued colors and Heqing hosts no Third Month Fair nor any Torch Festival action.  They celebrate other festivals, yet live in houses similar to those in Dali, follow Bai traditions in general and cultivate.

Bai women returning from the fields

       Heqing city lies on a long plain backed by mountains to the east and west and higher ones to the north.  According to local mythology, the plain used to be covered in water until a monk subdued the dragons causing the flood and enabled human settlement.  Over a thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Dali Kingdom Era, settlers founded the city.  When they erected the first pillars, pairs of cranes alighted on them and congratulated the people for their victory over the dragons.  So they named their city Heqing—“he” for cranes and “qing” for congratulations.

taking home the hay

       The Mongols conquered Dali in the nid-13^th century, though that probably did not affect Bai life in Heqing.  When the Ming Dynasty ousted the Mongols’ Yuan Dynasty in 1366, Yunnan became the last Mongol stronghold.  But in 1381 the Ming general Ma Ying defeated the Mongols near Songgui, south of Heqing city and drove their forces out of the province altogether.  The Bai of Songgui commemorate this with a Horse and Mule Fair the 22^nd day of the 6^th lunar month.

       Throughout the Ming and Qing Dynasties many Bai from Heqing sought work in Lijiang city, whose Naxi residents hired them for manual labor considered beneath them, mainly as porters and house builders.  Village Naxi built their own homes, using stone foundations, wooden beams, tiled roofs and sun-dried, mud-brick walls in a style distinct from that of the Bai.  But urban dwellings aped the Han Chinese style, used more wood, with fancy carved gates and other embellishments.  Not carvers, carpenters or masons themselves, Lijiang residents employed Heqing Bai for this work. 

old-fashioned city restaurant

noodle making in the old town

       Eventually migrant Bai workers also settled in several villages in Jinshan district, east of Lijiang city, on what is considered the best agricultural land on the plain.  Today Jinshan is an Autonomous Bai District, with houses in the Dali-Heqing style, clothing like that worn in Heqing, Bai traditions still followed and a farming output that exceeds that of their Naxi neighbors.

local Bai girls in Heqing

Yi woman from Liuhe in Heqing

       Heqing remained quite peripheral to political developments until the 20^th century.  He Long’s Red Army division passed through here in 1935, winning hearts and minds and then went on to Shigu, crossed the River of Golden Sand and continued to Zhongdian to spend the winter.  Until the Communists won the war in 1949, Heqing experienced conflict between government forces and pro-Communist guerillas and the rise of powerful bandit gangs that plagued the last years of Nationalist rule.  Particularly annoying was that led by Lokyun, an ex-army officer who claimed to be a revolutionary ‘third force,’ opposed to both the communists and the government.

White Yi women in Heqing for market day

       His gang seized Yongsheng that year and demanded submission from Heqing and Lijiang.  Heqing’s leaders welcomed Lokyun, whose army then seized all the rich people to hold for ransom and ransacked all of Heqing’s houses.  Lijiang people, suspicious of these ‘revolutionaries’, resisted.  Aided by Tibetan allies, the Naxi thoroughly defeated Lokyun’s attack and killed most of his soldiers.  Lokyun regrouped eventually, but never returned to the Heqing or Lijiang area.

       Nearly five decades later I made my first visit to Heqing.  Having already been everywhere in the Lijiang Plain, I decided on an excursion to the original homeland of the folks I met in Jinshan.  About 25 km south of Lijiang the road crosses into Heqing County and enters the long plain, running between a pair of small lakes halfway between the boundary and the city.  Bai villages stud the area on both sides of the road, but the flanking mountains exhibit so sign of settlements.

shop-house in the old town

       Village houses look somewhat different from those of Naxi villages, though they use the same materials.  They resemble those of rural Dali, minus the marble and with less use of stone, set close to each other, with a high back wall, usually windowless, Dali-style arabesques painted beneath the apex of each roof end and a small lion mounted over the roof’s center.  For wealthier house owners, especially in the Bai neighborhoods of the city, the compound gate will feature carvings under the roofs, sometimes of vegetation or animals.  The entrance door will have an arch above it, perhaps paintings on the wall and banners inscribed with Chinese characters hanging down at each side of the door.

       Heqing then had two distinct sections, old and new.  In between stood the venerable red-walled, three-tiered Yunhe Tower, originally erected during the city’s foundation.  The broad street south of the tower was filled with very ordinary style modern buildings, with the last traditional homes at the far end under process of demolition.  But traditional Bai homes and shop-houses still dominated the two streets north of the tower.  Noodle-makers, potters and carpenters plied their trades outside their houses in the small lanes of the quarter.

Bai merchant weighing her goods

bamboo conical cap stall

       Bai women of all ages dressed in traditional style, basically consisting of a long-sleeved blouse, side-fastened vest, trousers, apron and cap or turban.  The older women favored dark colors, mostly black and maybe a dark blue blouse.  Younger women usually donned white blouses, lighter colored trousers and a red, maroon or black vest.  Gray ‘Mao caps’ with bigger brims were the commonest headgear.

       The Bai women of Songgui district, who frequent the city, especially for market day, dressed the same except for the headgear.  Young and old wore a kind of large round black beret, with a jeweled starburst ornament s attached to the left side of the brim. 

copper ware section

       The most colorful people in the city were women of the White Yi minority, from Liuhe Autonomous Yi District in the mountains east of Songgui.  Their distinctive clothing item was a calf-length, long-sleeved tunic, in various shades of blue with contrasting bands on the sleeves.  It split at the waist, with a thin strip hanging down in front and the wider part draped over the back of the hips.  They wore ordinary blouse and trousers underneath and a wide, multi-colored sash belt wrapped several times around the waist.  On their heads they wore a black bonnet that hung over the back of the neck, with colored trimming on the brim.

      They were also the most engaging people in the city.  The Bai were polite and friendly everywhere; the Yi waved hello and approached me to have a conversation.  Their command of Chinese wasn’t much better than mine, so we were able to communicate.  Compared to the shy and skittish Yi around Dali and Ninglang, this sub-group was refreshingly forward.  They were overnight in the city for market day next morning.  More of them came to town on the first buses out of Liuhe next day, all in traditional outfits, but often with non-traditional plastic pack baskets or bright yellow backpacks sporting the Marlboro logo.

       Market day began early and by mid-morning was already crowded.  Bai villagers started arriving shortly after sunrise, some to set up stalls, some to purchase fruits and vegetables at their freshest.  Most wore pack baskets of split bamboo, some with a wooden shoulder board, which was occasionally enhanced with painted designs.

Heqing Bai woman selling garlic

Songgui Bai girl

       Market day stalls, layouts and services spread throughout the old quarter and spilled over into the area around Yunhe Tower.  Sellers set up on both sides of the streets, usually hawking a single item.  It was summer, so lots of fruits—peaches, sour plums, apples, bananas, strawberries, mangoes and pears.  The food market was full of rice, maize, vegetables and meat and, as in Lijiang, women were the butchers.  Various wafers, breadsticks, candies, steamed buns and other snacks were available, though for drinks one had to enter a restaurant.

       Articles of clothing were on sale everywhere.  Some were modern items like trousers, jackets, t-shirts, shoes and baby clothes.  Others were ethnic-oriented—Bai vests, long-sleeved blouses, plain and printed aprons, Bai caps, cloths for the brims and bolts of cotton cloth.  Bai women here are not so jewelry-minded, confining their ornaments mainly to small silver earrings and jade bangles.  Silver clasps and chain necklaces were available at stalls and much fancier stuff at the antiques displays.

spinning board with animal figures

       Besides a range of merchandise, market day also provided services, like shoe repair and sewing machine work near the food market and tooth extraction, blood pressure readings and fortune telling in the new town.  One man managed a stall with a board painted with twelve kinds of various air, land and water creatures (not the ones of the zodiac) in a circle and a movable dragon-headed pointer in the middle.  I didn’t learn whether it was a game board or some sort of fortune telling device.

       Local Bai handicrafts were also part of the market scene; not the embroidered or tie-dyed items common around Dali, but more everyday use goods.  Potters sold everything from teapots, cups and saucers to big storage jars, glazed and painted.  A large section next to the food market displayed copper and brass pots, pans, vases, dippers and utensils.  Bai metalworkers have a regional reputation for their wares and such items are not only part of a Bai household, they are exported up to Lijiang and Shangrila.

       Other crafts were not Bai specialties, in fact common throughout the province, but part of everyday rural usage.  In one of the old town lanes women sold rain capes made of palm bark fiber, quite in demand now that the monsoon had arrived.  Around the corner from the tea market, the street leading east of Yunhe Tower was the basketry section.  Stalls here offered carrying baskets of different types, conical steamer covers, brooms and winnowing trays.  Most trays were ordinary size, but a few were two meters in diameter, mainly used in the fields.  Some of the sellers wove new baskets while they tended their goods.

locally made baskets and winnow trays

       Market activity persisted until late afternoon, when folks running the stalls and layouts finally began packing up to go home.  The basket makers heaped their goods into a tall pile that they carried on their backs.  Other merchants piled their wares in big baskets or rice bags.  Some toted these on their backs, while others put them in a tractor-trailer to return to their villages.

       Combined with strolls in the countryside, where farmers were busy planting rice, witnessing this vibrant market day scene made my Heqing excursion delightful and worthwhile.  The only negative note was the sight of old houses being destroyed and swathes of rubble near Yunhe Tower.  What kind of new construction was due?  Was the remainder of the old town doomed?

       When in Lijiang again a few years later I made a day trip to Heqing to satisfy my curiosity.  The transformation was startling.  The entire downtown area around Yunhe Tower had been completely rebuilt, but not in any boring anonymous modern way.  Even the nondescript buildings of the new town had been replaced.  Now houses lining the main streets were attractive two and three story buildings that showed obvious Dali influence, but in a distinctly different style.

Yunhe Tower in the 90s

modern Bai house in new Heqing

       Except for one street with all gray houses, the new constructions, designed by a Kunming company, featured whitewashed walls liberally embellished with black paintings under the roof apexes and on the walls.  They had angled tiled roofs, sometimes in pairs, and upper story multiple windows with wooden frames.   Arched doorways and other motifs reflected the inspiration of traditional Bai architecture.

       Yunhe Tower had been renovated and the area around it cleared and made into parks.  A classical two-tiered archway stood at the end of the street south of the tower.   And a big new temple was under construction in the northeast quarter.  Altogether, Heqing was a city that looked better than it did before its modern development.  Nowadays, that’s something rare.

Yunhe Tower post-renovation

                                                                        * * * 

Naxi Religion: a Mixture of Creeds

                                                  by Jim Goodman

Wufenglou, the former entrance gate to Fuguo lamasery

       Before the tragic earthquake of 1996 devastated Lijiang, the old Naxi town of Dayan offered travelers a wonderful experience of traditional urban life.  Concentrating my research on northwest Yunnan then, I explored the city on many excursions in those years, wandering down every street and lane in Dayan, at all times of day, but especially in the early morning, when activity commenced.

       Dayan’s Naxi rose later than those in rural areas.  The first establishments to open were the noodle-makers and those preparing black bean pudding.  People began setting up market stalls and opening shops around 9 a.m.  Women came to the streams to wash vegetables, men led pony-carts of charcoal and firewood and shoppers started appearing shortly after. 

White Horse Pond, Dayan

       The one activity missing was anything religious.  No shrines or statues stood anywhere on the streets.  The only religious building was the temple next to White Horse Pond in the southern quarter.  It marks the spot where the Tang Dynasty Buddhist scholar Xuan Zang, on his way to India to procure religious manuscripts, supposedly stopped to give his horse a drink.  The modest temple, built in the 18^th century, did attract occasional devotees who bought fish to set free in the pond.

       Still influenced by the Confucian tradition, the Naxi maintained their ancestral altars and made offerings to them at festivals.  But even the surviving village temples, those that hadn’t been converted to schools, were hardly active and the big monasteries barely maintained.  In general, the Naxi, in contrast to the Tibetans, Bai, Hui, Dai and Bulang, were not very religious-minded.

pictographs of a dongba manuscript

       Long before exposure to Buddhism or Taoism, the Naxi had established their own belief system, built on the propitiation of natural elements and the presumed existence of myriad unseen forces.  Everything in the world was endowed with a soul and life-force of its own, including inanimate objects such as mountains, streams, fires, cliffs and stones.  Ancient Naxi believed something or other controlled the weather, the rain, the wind, etc., and so deified and gave names to these assumed agents, while lesser deities and spirits were associated with other natural phenomena.  And to account for all that could go wrong in the course of a life the Naxi identified over 500 demons.

wooden swords for funerals and the propitiation of nagas

       To deal with these pernicious spirits, and to properly honor or beseech the gods, a class of specialists arose within Naxi ranks.  Known as a dongba, this specialist performed a wide array of numerous complicated rituals.  To prompt his memory he used manuscripts in coded pictographs and performed rituals both privately for patrons and publicly for the welfare of the realm.  He was so much at the core of traditional religious practice that even today the original Naxi belief-system is known as "Dongba Religion" or "Dongba Tradition."

       A few rituals lasted several days and required recitations from over a hundred books.  Among the most frequent were:  propitiation of the nagas—the huge, dragon-like serpent spirits believed to be the invisible owners of the land; the expulsion of demons, with rituals varying according to the type of demon and sometimes involving dancing while wielding swords; rites for suicides, who were nearly always young couples whose parents had forbidden their marriage; and funerals, the most spectacular being that of a dongba.  The highlight of the latter was the display of a painted scroll twenty meters long and a recitation of a text explaining the illustrations.

dongba performing a ritual at Dazui, Lugu Lake

dongba funeral painting

       In the old days, village dongbas customarily wore large-brimmed felted wool or bamboo hats.  Otherwise they did not stand out among the villagers.  They lived in the same kind of house and while the ceremony patrons fed them for the occasion, they did not receive a salary.  The only social advantage a dongba had was the prestige accorded by being one.

mural inside Dabaoji, Baisha village

       For rituals they generally donned a five-lobed crown, called kho, with deities painted on each lobe.  They employed thick, oblong cards with figures painted on them, called dzu, which they stuck upright in groups of 7, 9 or 11, in bowls of rice in the middle of the altar.  They also used wooden swords, called khobya, painted with pictographs, which they thrust into the ground next to streams (to propitiate the nagas) or on a hill away from a funeral site.  For some rites the dongbas also made small figurines of deities and demons out of corn flour.

mural at Suhe Dajue Temple, Xiawu village

       The venues for these rituals could be anywhere within the village or outside by a stream or on a mountain.  There was no dongba temple of any kind, though.  The first temple in Naxi territory was to their own war god Sanduo, but it was built in 784 under orders of King Yimoxun of Nanzhao, the state that ruled over Yunnan at the same time as the Tang Dynasty in China.     

       Lying at the foot of Jade Dragon Mountain, just below present-day Yufeng Temple, Sanduo's temple is called Beiyuemiao—Temple of the North Sacred Mountain.  A statue of the god, in white armor and helmet, brandishing a white spear, astride a white horse, stands outside the temple entrance.  A manuscript inside contains prayers to the god, as well as the legends and exploits associated with him.

Tibetan deity in Yufeng Temple

Naxi fresco at Suhe Dajue Temple, Xiawu

       The most famous legend is of Sanduo’s aid to Azong, the last Naxi ruler prior to the Mongol conquest of Yunnan in 1253.  The god appeared to Azong in a dream, complimented him as an "upright" magistrate and promised to help him on the battlefield.  From then on the god appeared whenever Azong went to war, “rushed furiously in the front line of battle," and disappeared in a storm afterwards.

Wenfeng Monastery

       After the Mongol conquest Mahayana Buddhism gained a foothold in Lijiang with the construction of Jinshan Temple and Donglin Temple.  Dabaoji in Baisha village is its finest Ming Dynasty expression.  Daoism found a place as well in Dayan and adherents built the Jade Emperor Tower Temple and the Royal Heaven Temple.  Its philosophy was popular among the literati and its Dongjing music became part of Naxi tradition.

       The introduction of Buddhism and Daoism influenced Naxi painting, which rapidly evolved from the simple, almost crude pictographs of the dongba manuscripts to the sophisticated wall murals that graced thirteen temples in the Dayan area.  The overall balance of the murals, the orderly disposition of the figures, reflected the Han tradition.  Subject matter could be Mahayana Buddhist or Daoist themes.  The vivid coloring, emphasizing red, gold, black and silver, and the decorative aspects, reflected the Tibetan influence.

monk in his quarters at Wenfeng Monastery

Wenfeng Temple lama

       Sadly, most are gone, for nine of the temples fell to ruins and the other four were completely destroyed or badly vandalized during the Cultural Revolution.  The outstanding extant example is at Dabaoji in Baisha village.  The main fresco depicts the Buddha achieving enlightenment, surrounded by haloed holy men and bodhisattvas that appear to be floating in the clouds.  Other murals feature Tibetan lamas, dakinis, fierce deities and magistrates in hats and robes conversing, while elsewhere the Day of Judgment takes place.  Vignettes of contemporary life, such as plowing or weaving, are sometimes in the margins.

thangkas at Puji Monastery

       Nearby Dading Tower also has some Qing Dynasty frescoes, mostly restored, except for the gouged-out eyes. The only other testimony to the expertise of classical Naxi painters is the smaller set of murals at Xiawu village, west of Baisha, in the Suhe Dajue Temple.  Against a black background, the figures are skillfully painted, emphasizing gold, red, black, white and yellow, with fine details on the faces and in the jewelry.

       Lijiang’s lamaseries date from the end of the 16^th century, with the introduction of the Karmapa (Red Hat) sect of Tibetan Buddhism.  The earliest was Yufeng Temple, built between 1579 and 1619 at the edge of the forest on Jade Dragon Mountain, a kilometer up the hill from Beiyuemiao.  The great camellia tree, which attracts so many to the Sanduo Festival, was planted a century earlier, so one of Yufeng's courtyards was constructed around this tree.  Carved doors and windows, a pebbled courtyard floor in geometric designs and the remains of the original interior frescoes are the other attractions of this temple.

Puji Monastery

       More dramatically sited is Wenfeng Monastery, high up on Wenbishan, nine km southwest of Dayan.  Completed in 1733, it is isolated far above the nearest village, lying beside a forest and spring.  Until 1949 monks came here to perform an unusual ascetic rite.  Digging holes near the spring, they climbed into them and made them their residences for the next three years, three months, three days and three hours.  During this period they never left their holes and spent the time meditating, chanting and otherwise purifying themselves.  When they finally emerged, they were supposed to be endowed with supernatural powers, such as the ability to fly.

       Puji Temple, all but hidden in a forest five km northwest of Dayan, was the third Karmapa lamasery, originally built in 1771.  Two great crab-apple trees with twisted trunks stand in the main courtyard.  Time, the weather, and neglect have reduced most of the exterior wall murals to mere traces and outlines.  But the interior furnishings are in better shape, featuring painted religious scrolls (thangkas), bright silk suspended banners and various images of the Buddha and venerated Tibetan lamas.

special lantern hung for the Mid-Autumn Festival

       The other two Karmapa temples were Zhiyunsi, on the shores of Lashi Lake, and Fuguosi, above Nguluko, the northernmost village on the Lijiang Plain.  Zhiyun Temple has been turned into a school and the buildings of Fuguo Temple were removed to Black Dragon Pool Park in Lijiang.  The very ornate entrance gate, Five Phoenix Tower (Wufenglou), graces the southern end of the park.

       After 1949 the lamasery residents were reduced to a bare minimum.  Proscribing their dongba ceremonies, the government co-opted the dongbas by making them village chieftains.  Beyond the Lijiang Plain, though, the dongba tradition survived, even if not so openly, especially Baishuitai, its birthplace in southern Shangrila County.   After the reforms of the 70s and 80s it became more public. 

       Around Lijiang, hardly any former dongbas were still alive.  The rituals did not revive, but the local government set up the Dongba Research Institute near Black Dragon Pool Park and hired them to translate the pictograph manuscripts that had survived.  A museum next door exhibited some of these books, plus the hats and robes, wooden swords, funeral paintings, drums, figurines and other items associated with dongba rituals.

Sanduo--the ancient Naxi war god

floating a lamp in Dayan at the Mid-Autumn Festival

       Like other minority nationalities in Yunnan, the Naxi were reviving their traditions, but that didn't necessarily include whatever religious piety they once had.  While in areas far from Lijiang, like Baishuitai, or Dazui, the Naxi village on the northern shores of Lugu Lake, the dongba tradition continued, not many young men were taking up the role.  No new dongbas appeared in villages on the Lijiang Plain.  The mind-sets of the Naxi people had moved beyond the animism and nature-worship that essentially characterized the dongba tradition.

       None of Lijiang’s lamaseries regained their former popularity.  In the 90s Zhiyun Temple was still used as a school.  Lay caretakers looked after Pujisi and two septuagenarian monks lived at Wenfengsi.  Only Yufengsi had been able to recruit any new novices.  About twenty were living there by mid-decade, compared to the hundreds resident before 1949.  The new mood of official tolerance meant monks could preach again and a Tibetan huofu (reincarnated lama) of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) order set up in Dayan to instruct Naxi in Tibetan-style Buddhism.  But after two years of scant success he departed.

the old camellia tree at Yufeng Temple

       Traditional festivals, however, came back into vogue.  The Naxi celebrate the major Han festivals, but sometimes with special features.  Their New Year rites include an outdoor Sacrifice to Heaven and at the Mid-Autumn Festival for venerating ancestors, they hang fancy big lanterns at their doorways.  On the first day, with firecrackers and hot-air balloons, the Naxi salute their ancestors and invite them to their homes.  On the second night they place small paper lanterns, usually lotus-shaped with a candle in the center, into the streams.  And on the third night they inscribe their clan names on paper and make sacrifices of fruits and grains to their ancestors.

       The biggest traditional event, 8^th day of the 2^nd moon, is the Sanduo Festival, honoring their chief indigenous deity.  In the morning they hike up to Beiyuemiao, kowtow to Sanduo’s statue and leave offerings.  Afterwards they ascend to Yufengsi, where the old camellia is in full bloom, to pose for photographs.  Then they may make a stop in the compound where the lama is performing his rituals for the occasion.  Upon departure they will head for a spot in the woods or on a nearby hill and have a leisurely picnic.

       Back in Lijiang in the afternoon, they may form up for ring dances in one of the squares. Sometimes traditional orchestras are contracted to play for the day and much feasting ensues from dark.  Ostensibly a religious festival, but one totally identified with the Naxi identity, people relish this as a time of socializing and public entertainment.

Naxi devotees passing a reliquary mound en route to Yufeng Temple

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For more on the dongba and the Naxi, see my e-book Children of the Jade Dragon.

Lijiang and Baishuitai are both stops on Delta Tours Vietnam’s route through northwest Yunnan.  See the details at https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/northwest-yunnan