Instant Friendships--Lisu Encounters in Nujiang

  

                                              by Jim Goodman

       After my first journey to Yunnan in 1992, I wanted to see every prefecture in Yunnan and eventually visited Nujiang in the summer of 1998.  Gongshan County was still closed to foreigners, so after a brief stay in Liuku I spent several days in Fugong County.  The mountain scenery along the river kept getting more beautiful further north.  Snow-capped peaks of over 4000 meters were already visible before Fugong city, even though it was the warmest month of the year.  Steep slopes on either side were lined with terraces and settlements speckled the hillsides.  Thick forests swathed the tops and some areas between the villages.

       I had good weather on my arrival and the enchanting landscape provoked me to vow to come again at different seasons.  But by the time I departed I had other reasons.  Nujiang was not on the usual tourist trail and I didn’t know anyone in Yunnan who had been there.  It was an Autonomous Lisu Prefecture because the Lisu made up the majority of the population.  So what would be the Lisu reaction to a Western visitor?  Would they ignore me?  Be too shy? Feel intruded upon by my camera?  Well, as it turned out they were quite friendly, easy to engage with, and only initially shy.  They were as curious about me as I was about them.

       The other attraction of Fugong that reinforced my desire to return was the very visible presence of traditional Lisu culture.  A large portion of the women, young and old, dressed in Lisu style, with long skirts white, blue, black or pinstriped gray, a side-fastened vest over a long-sleeved blouse, a beaded cap and ornaments of beads and shell disks. Some of the men wore the traditional front-fastened shirt of pinstriped gray, often with black cuffs and collar.  And both sexes carried the Lisu-style shoulder bag, even when they wore all modern clothes.

       Fugong stages market day every five days and it’s the most interesting in the whole prefecture both for the show of traditional garments and the range of products on sale.  Women run stalls selling Lisu skirts or jackets, others display ornaments, but besides the usual cosmetics, toiletries, shoes and such, other traditional Lisu products were also available.  These included an array of bamboo cups, beer mugs, spoons, ladles, smoking pipes and bongs.  Others sold baskets of split bamboo and there were several places to buy crossbows, crossbow bolts and bearskin quivers.  You could also buy crossbow victims, like the carcasses of flying squirrels and field rats, along with other animal parts—hooves, antlers, turtle shells--used as medicine.

       Crossbows are one of the salient traditions characterizing the culture of Nujiang.  Men took them to the fields just in case some edible prey appeared and carried them from their villages down to the city on market day, where the stalls selling them were busy with potential customers.  Nujiang is not the only place with crossbows.  They are popular in the Wa Hills, too.  But nowhere else are they so widely in use.

       I also spotted men with crossbows while taking a taxi north to Nujiang’s most famous mountain, called the Stone Moon after the big oval hole just below the peak.  The road rose above the river to provide a suitable viewpoint, as well as a tavern where the driver and I could share a couple drinks. I paid a hundred yuan for the excursion and the next day hired him for fifty yuan to take me to Dapuluo, a village north of Fugong that according to the map looked close to the main road.

       The map was deceptive.  The village lay up a steep slope.  The driver took me to the junction and informed me he could not take his vehicle up to Dapuluo but promised to come back to pick me up when I returned.  The road uphill was more like a wide dirt path, only suitable for tractor-trailers, and so rutted I preferred to walk anyway, which took an hour.  The houses, mostly wooden with slate roofs, lay in a cluster surrounded by rice fields.  It was planting time so most villagers were at their farms.

       After wandering around taking pictures, it was time to go back down and meet the driver, who was already waiting for me.  Before taking me back to Fugong he wanted me to have a meal at his home first.  Maybe he felt guilty about charging me so much just to go several km to the Dapuluo junction.  It was a lavish and leisurely chicken dinner, washed down with rice liquor, with conversations about my life in northern Thailand, the Akha and Lisu there, my research in Yunnan and me learning how to say things in the local Lisu dialect.  My new friend later spread the news about me, for the following morning during market day in Fugong I overheard men speaking about the American from Thailand researching ethnic minorities.  A few introduced themselves and asked me to compare Yunnan and northern Thailand.

       Well, it was going to be easy to make friends here, so two years later, after Gongshan County was open to foreigners, I decided to make Nujiang the primary focus of my Yunnan research.  I started with a few days in Gongshan, including Bingzhongluo and the First Turn of the Nu River.  On the long bus ride to Gongshan I became familiar with another major feature of the Nujiang canyon—rope-bridges crossing the river.  Formerly made of split bamboo, which required changing after a while, now they were wound steel cables, almost all in pairs, and still in regular use, especially those near market day venues.

       Leaving Gongshan, I opted to spend a night In Lishadi, in Fugong County north of the Stone Moon, a picturesque town with tall pointed peaks right next to it.  After arriving I headed for the rope-bridge just north of the town that connected the riverbank to the Lisu village of Heizao.  From a distance I observed two men crossing over to the other side, but they were long gone by the time I reached the hook-up point.  However, after a few minutes four little girls came to the other side, hitched up with two harnesses on single cable hooks and then, without parental/adult supervision, the two pairs crossed and re-crossed the swirling river several times.  Witnessing this I deduced 1) it can’t be dangerous and 2) it must be fun.

       On the way back to Lishadi I stopped at a small sewing shop because a beautiful young Lisu woman in full traditional clothing and ornaments was inside visiting her friend the owner.  I took the opportunity to try using the Lisu language small talk I had picked up so far.  She was surprised, of course, and blushed a lot, but the short conversation was successful.  She was from Heizao so I asked her if she rode the rope-bridge.  By way of answering she reached into her pack-basket and pulled up her rope harness and cable hook.  Everyone who lived there had their own gear. 

       So the next time I visited Fugong I asked a Lisu woman I knew running a handicrafts shop to purchase a harness and cable hook for me.  But the nearest rope-bridge was one of the rare single cable types, where I would have to pull myself over from halfway across the river.  A Lisu man in the area came over and I explained, in simple Chinese, what I wanted to do and why here was not the right spot.  He offered to take me to Damedi, several km south, with its ordinary sloping pair of rope-bridges.  And there I experienced my first crossing of the Nu River in the time-honored traditional way.

       My next ambition was to use the Lishadi rope bridge with the excuse to deliver photos of the kids I had watched the previous trip.  It was market day but still early and a young man had just crossed when I arrived at the hook-up point.  He offered to take me to the village.  He left his own cable hook behind and hitched his simpler belt harness to my hook.  We failed to locate the girl I met in the shop but we did find the little girls.  My new friend kept repeating how delighted the girls were with their photos, while the parents plied us with steamed buns and cups of rice liquor. 

       Rope-bridges are not unique to Nujiang.  I saw my first one in use near Qiaotou on the way to Shangrila.  And there are still some along the upper Lancangjiang.  But, like the crossbows, only in Nujiang are they so widely in use.  I took my harness and cable hook with me on several subsequent excursions to Nujiang.  I counted 28 rope-bridges in the canyon, two of them single cables and the rest in pairs.  I rode across the Nu River at eight locations, some more than once.  It was a great way to make a favorable impression on the local people, especially those who had never ridden one themselves.

       It helped make new friends, too.  I carried the cable hook and rope harness in a shoulder bag so part of it was visible and recognizable to people in, for example, Lumadeng on market day.  Very quickly a Lisu man approached, guessed why I had such gear and offered to take me to the rope-bridge a few km north of the town.  He took his own gear along, made sure I tied up correctly and we rode across in tandem and back.  After that it was off to his house for snacks and beers, where his wife happened to be weaving at the time.  That was a skill I knew well and had even picked up a lot of the Lisu vocabulary about it, enabling me to make a few relevant comments to her and compare her narrow loom to similar Akha looms in Thailand.

       I returned to both Lishadi and Lumadeng a few times over the years, both for the rope-bridges and the colorful market days, where most Lisu dressed in traditional style.  They each had areas for drinking local maize beer and rice liquor.  Villages on the slopes were fun to visit because most were non-Christian, unable to pass up a chance to meet their first foreign guest and eager to demonstrate their hospitality by getting that guest pretty inebriated.  Their houses were usually wooden, stilted when on steep gradients, with thatch or tile roofs, simple interiors and minimal furniture.  The hearth was in the center with a bamboo tray suspended above where they stored bamboo baskets and vessels, which would be cured by the smoke from the cooking fire. Hunting trophies, like horned heads of barking deer, they might also mount above the hearth. Big ovens and storage containers flanked the rear wall.

       South of Fugong the houses are usually on stone foundations and most are Christian.  They are just as friendly and hospitable and eager to impress a guest.  They serve tea, though, not alcohol, because Christians, the sect here anyway, don’t drink or smoke.  They could make exceptions, however, as I found out on a trip to Anicha, a Christian Lisu village high up in the Gaoligong Mountains a little south of Fugong, site of a Dulong Cattle ranch.

       Dulong Cattle are raised for their meat and never used as traction animals. They are easy to manage and would provide an extra income for the village.  The project was started by Bobby Morse from Chiang Mai, whose family had been Protestant missionaries in Nujiang before 1949.  His Fugong manager took me up there.  As our hosts prepared our dinner they asked me if I drink liquor with my meal.  “Sometimes,” I answered, not to obligate them.  But perhaps it did, for they went out and fetched a ‘lax’ Christian villager to bring a bottle of corn liquor and drink with me.  I had my alcohol and a companion to converse with

       My final trip to Nujiang coincided with the Mid-Autumn Festival.  But aside from moon cakes in the Fugong market there was no sign of the celebration.  The Christians don’t mark it and neither, apparently, do the animists.  Told of a traditional village high up the slope not far from the city, I hiked there hoping for good news.  Alas, more than one resident informed me nothing was scheduled. It began to drizzle so a family invited me into their house.  

       Inside I spotted a crossbow in the corner and two trophies, an eagle and a pheasant, mounted on the wall.  Both were headless, probably because their heads were inserted into bottles of home-made liquor, like I’d seen among the Yi of Ninglang.  They also had a loom that was used for making straw floor mats, with stones tied to weight the heddle threads.  Hadn’t seen that before.

       The rain stopped before I got too drunk.  I thanked the family for their hospitality and thanked the rain for delaying my departure and enabling me to learn about one more aspect of Nujiang culture.  If I ever make it back, I’m sure there is more to discover.  All I need to do is make new friends—easy among the Lisu of Nujiang.

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The Last Wild River in China

                                                                              by Jim Goodman

the Nu River in upper Gongshan County

       Even in Yunnan, a province famous for its different landscapes, biodiversity and ethnic variety, Nujiang, its westernmost prefecture, stands out as something special.  Three of its four counties straddle the Nu River, one of East Asia's mightiest, 2020 km long from the Tibet-Qinghai border to the Gulf of Martaban (a.k.a. Moktaba) in Myanmar.  And throughout the river's 315 km-long run in Nujiang Prefecture towering mountains flank it on both sides. It is the longest stretch of sustained great scenery in the entire province, looking ever better the further north you go or the higher you climb up the slopes on either bank.

Liuku, Nujiang Prefecture administrative capital

       The Chinese have dubbed Nujiang theGrand Canyon of the East, in conscious reference to the Grand Canyon in southwestern United States.  The latter, though, is very different.  The Colorado River cuts through a flat tableland, with mountains far away, and its main feature is the stunning and picturesque erosion of the canyon wall.  It is also uninhabited.

       In the Grand Canyon of the East, by contrast, mountains flank the river, sometimes rising near vertically from the banks.  Villages and their farms mottle the slopes, in between forests that swathe two-thirds of them.  The people are mostly of the Lisu minority nationality, with smaller numbers of Nu and TIbetan in the north, Yi and Bai communities in the south and Han in the cities.

the Nu River near Chenggan

waterfall just south of Fugong

       The river runs at an average altitude of 800-900 meters.  The mountains, the Biluoshan range east of the river and the Gaoligongshan range to the west, rise an average 4000 meters on either side. The forests vary with the altitude.  Nearer the river grow bamboo, teak, kapok, fig, banyan and tung, an oil-bearing species.  From 1600-2800 meters are bald pine, cypress, yew, chestnut, leach, walnut, magnolia, camellia and Yunnan cherry. Up to 4000 meters, the dominant species are fir, rhododendron, hemlock, dragon spruce, Yunnan pine and dwarf bamboo.

riverside rice fields in summer

       The forests also contain all eight of Yunnan’s famous flowers (azalea, camellia, rough gentian, primrose, orchid, lily, magnolia and meconopsis) and 6000 species of plants, including 370 recognized medicinal plants.  Around 1600 species of insects peculiar to Nujiang live in the canyon, as well as 280 kinds of birds and 70 different mammals. 

       The name of the river is taken from the name of the indigenous Nu nationality in the northern part of the canyon.  (The Lisu didn’t move in until the 17^th century.)  In their language nu means dark; hence, the dark people and the dark river.  In Tibet, the Nu River is Heishui (Black River).  But for nu, the Chinese use the ideograph for ‘angry’, which certainly doesn’t characterize the temperament of the people.  But it does seem appropriate for the river. 

plowing a field next to the river

      Rapids make up much of the river’s course.  Its rate of flow can be up to seven meters per second, slightly increased in the summer from rain-fed tributary streams.  In spite of carrying this extra volume of water, the Nu River never floods.  It is safe to plant crops on land just a few meters above the water.

    It does change color with the rains, becoming a dull medium brown.  When the rains cease and good weather prevails again, the river turns blue-green.  The water level is lower and at some points, especially in Gongshan County, patches of white sand appear along the banks.  In between the long stretches of rapids, where the river runs relatively smoothly, people use rafts or canoes to cross to the other side or to cast fishnets.  They also fish from the shore with poles or use a net stretched between two curved bamboo rods.

crossing the river by rope-bridge

fishing from the bank, Nujiang-style

     Nujiang was one of the last places modernized in Yunnan.  Not until the 1950s did the government begin constructing a good road from Liuku to Bingzhongluo to replace the caravan trails.  They also built suspension bridges to cross the river, replacing the previous rope-bridges, though in 2000 about two dozen rope-bridges were still in place.  By the turn of the century electricity had been extended to the highest villages. People’s lives had marginally improved, but a large portion was still mired in poverty.

Fugong city

       In 1999 the government banned logging throughout the province.  This was Nujiang’s biggest earner and in attempting to replace it, the local government the following year proposed a hydropower development project involving the building of 13 dams at various points on the river, including a 300-meter-plus behemoth at Maji, and two large reservoirs.  This would result in a power generation of 21 million kilowatts, 3 million more than the one at the Three Gorges in Sichuan, which would be exported to southeast China.      

       The proposal also claimed that as a result of switching to cleaner hydropower the nation could use some of the profits from the dams project to spend on environmental protection.  That point provoked opponents of the dams to launch a campaign against the project.  They wanted to extend the idea of environmental protection to the whole canyon, citing its ecological diversity. Though it comprised but 0.4% of the country’s total area, the canyon was home to over 20% of China’s plants and flowers and 25% of the earth’s animal species (over half of China’s).

rafts used on the river

      The dams would also kill off Nuiang’s 48 species of fish, 36 of them unique to this part of the river, by preventing them from spawning upstream.  Changes in the river’s current would lead to greater contamination, while the putrefying flooded plants would cause a greater emission of greenhouse gases than coal-fired industrial plants. Besides the ecological destruction, the dams would displace 10% of the valley’s half million residents, including the entire population of Gongshan city, saddling the government with the messy problems of resettlement and compensation.

      Though the central government approved the project in the summer of 2003, eco-activists and other opponents kept up their campaign.  By the end of the year they had persuaded Premier Wen Jibao, who called a ‘temporary’ halt to the project.  It was not part of the next five-year plan, nor any since.  In China, the Nu River still runs free.

on the trail to Lumadeng

Gaoligong Mountains at Lumadeng

      It’s possible to explore the Nujiang canyon starting in the far north.  But that involves trekking from Cizhong, on the Lancangjiang, and over the Biluo Mountains to Dimaluo in Gongshan County and then down to the road along the river.  The usual way in is from southwestern Dali Prefecture to Liuku in the south, from where a good road now runs all the way to Qiunatong at the top of the canyon.

suspension bridge below the Stone Moon

      The road into Liuku follows a stream until its confluence with the Nu River.  Liuku, Nujiang’s largest city and administrative capital, straddles the river at the confluence and mountains of 2500-3000 meters flank the river north and south of the city.  Turning south at Liuku, the road continues along the river through the same kind of landscape until Shangjiang.  Then it passes into Baoshan Prefecture, where the mountains are suddenly further away and the river’s current less hurried.

      Though it’s the capital of a Lisu Autonomous Prefecture, Liuku doesn’t have much of an ethnic flavor.  Minorities here and in nearby villages dress in modern styles.  The city has a scenic location, with good views from the bridges and the riverside park on the eastern bank.  As for social scenes, the most interesting takes place at the eastern gate of one of the pedestrian suspension bridges, where a few White Lisu women gather towards evening to sell rice liquor and sing old Lisu songs.

the Nu River near Lishadi

      The road north through Lushui County keeps to the west bank.  Gradually the mountains rise higher, steeper and closer to the river, though still without any snow at their peaks.  At Chenggan, in northern Lushui County, cliffs plunge vertically at the river’s edge.  Continuing north, the road crosses a bridge to the eastern bank just as it passes into Fugong County.  It will stay on this bank all the way to Gongshan city.

       From Pihe, sited opposite a steep sheer cliff and the first town inside the county, the scenery keeps improving.  Mountains are higher, steeper, closer and craggier.  Waterfalls plunge from the sides more frequently.  Terraced fields rise higher on the slopes and several rope-bridges are installed along the river.  Most of residential Fugong city, the county capital, lies on a slope adjacent to the narrow strip of land beside the river. 

Maji village, northern Fugong County

      A few mountains in the vicinity crest at over 4000 meters, permanently mantled with snow. The city has the canyon’s biggest and liveliest market day, held every five days, with the greatest variety of products on sale. Most of the Lisu women from nearby villages wear their traditional clothing while in the city, especially market day.  Crossing the bridge to the west bank leads to a path south to villages and their farms beside the river, a walk especially rewarding during planting time or the early autumn harvest.

      Continuing north, the Gaoligongshan mountains creep closer to the river.  To attend Lumadeng’s Wednesday market day, villagers on that side have to make a long descent and then walk on a narrow path on a steep slope just above the roaring river rapids.  Or they could come down north of the town and use one of the rope-bridges to get to the road into Lumadeng. 

Gongshan city

      Between here and Lishadi, the next town north, stands Nujiang’s most famous mountain—the Stone Moon.  Though not one of the highest Gaoligongshan peaks, it is unique for its huge oval hole, 80 meters wide, just beneath one of the peaks. On the approach to the Stone Moon the road climbs higher than usual above the river, thus affording a great view of the phenomenon from a point above the gorge just south of it. Further on, around Lishadi, too, the mountains take on attractive shapes, with fluted cliffs near the summits.  One right beside the road is peaked like a perfect isosceles triangle.

      Continuing north, the road follows the river past the same kind of mountain scenery into Gongshan County.  Here mountains of 4000-meter peaks are more common, their slopes more forested.  The main road crosses the river before entering Gongshan city and then continues on the west bank of the Nu all the way to Tibet.  For the most part it stays just above the river, but nearing Bingzhongluo is rises a couple hundred meters above the river level, thus affording a wonderful view of the First Turn of the Nu River.

First Turn of the Nu River

      Here the Nu River swirls very dramatically around the ’toes of Biluoshan’—two protrusions of land at the bottom of steep cliffs, each one hosting a village.  Bingzhongluo, on a high plateau above the river, is just around the corner.  From this town Kawagapo Mountain, 5173 meters high, is visible.  Most of the villages in northern Gongshan County are of the Nu ethnic minority, but there a few Lisu and Tibetan settlements as well as Dulong on the other side of Gaoligongshan.

      Going upstream, the new road passes through the Stone Gate, a pair of sheer vertical cliffs flanking the river.  Road engineers had to blast a tunnel through the cliff on the western bank to clear passage for the road.  Continuing north, just short of Qiunatong, a sheer cliff on the eastern bank features a long tunnel through it to allow for local and caravan traffic connecting Qiunatong and the Biluoshan side villages.

the southern 'toe' of Biluoshan

      Travelers cross a suspension bridge to enter Qiunatong.  A mixed Christian Nu and Tibetan village, this is the last major settlement in Nujiang Prefecture.  The boundary of Tibet Province is just a little further.  But across the boundary the landscape changes abruptly, as it did south of Shangjiang.  The mountains are still high, but lie further away from the river, with very little forest cover. 

      The termination of the dams project did not halt development in Nujiang.  The government has continued to renovate and improve the main highway, extend it north into Tibet, construct roads up the slopes of the more densely inhabited mountains and build more suspension bridges spanning the river, designed for motor vehicle traffic as well as pedestrian. 

      With more tourists coming to Nujiang, the canyon now has more hotels and restaurants, the inevitable minority song-and-dance shows and even an established spot just beyond Lumadeng where visitors can experience riding a rope-bridge.  In northern Gongshan County near Shuangla, a pair of Nu villages, Christian on the east bank, Protestant on the west bank, a toll gate in place for over a decade charges non-locals a fee to enter Bingzhongluo Scenic Area.

Stone Gate cliff on the western bank

the river on the way to Qiunatong

      These additions may slightly augment Nujiang’s tourism income, but do not alter what is really the main attraction of the canyon—its pristine natural scenery.  Residents may eventually cease wearing their ethnic garments and suspension bridges may one day replace the last of the rope-bridges.  But the mountains, waterfalls, tributary streams, flora and fauna of the last wild river in China will continue to enchant visitors for many generations to come.

the Stone Moon, Fugong County

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