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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At the Top of the Nujiang Canyon: Life in Bingzhongluo

                                                       by Jim Goodman

the FIrst Turn of the Nu River

     The usual way to enter the Nujiang Canyon in western Yunnan is by road to Liuku, the prefecture capital.  Already the scenery typical of Nujiang is apparent.  High mountains topping 3000 meters flank both sides of the river.  Going north to the top end of the canyon, the mountains just keep getting higher and often stand very close to the river.  By Fugong they are over 4000 meters, peaks swathed in snow and by northern Gongshan County, visible from Bingzhongluo, even crest 5000 meters.  But it’s not only the mountains that make Bingzhongluo an officially designated Scenic Area.  The district is also blessed with some of the best river scenery in the province and home to an ethnic mix of Nu, Lisu and Tibetan communities, attractions that can be savored even when clouds obscure the snow-mantled peaks.

     From Gongshan Bingzhongluo is 43 km north.  The ticket booth for entry is just before Shuangla, about 7 km south.  From here the road rises gradually until it is about two hundred meters above the river, passing what is called the First Turn of the Nu River.  Here the river loops a plot of land backed by high cliffs that forms one of the “toes” of Biluoshan, the mountain range on the eastern side of the river.  The road opposite is an outstanding engineering feat, cut from steep mountain cliffs.  In the beginning of this century it was still a little hazardous drive, subject to sudden landslides, and passengers all had to disembark and walk a kilometer or so around the loop.  But after another kilometer we rounded the cliff and got our first glimpse of both Bingzhongluo and the other “toe” of Biluoshan.

Zanahong village, the other "toe" of Biluoshan

     Like the First Turn village, this one, slightly larger, lay on a spur of land backed by steep cliffs, but also connected to the other side by a suspension bridge.  The village, Zanahong, is Nu, the farms spread out in front of the houses, with walnut groves at the lower end.  It’s about a thirty-minute walk up a gradual slope past Lisu farms from here to the town.  Bingzhongluo lies on a long, plateau-like spur as high above the river as the road at the First Turn.  It’s basically a one-street town, with a couple hotels and a few restaurants, only lively on Tuesday market days.  Never mind the town, though.  The natural beauty of the place just demands exploration.

Bingzhongluo

     To the northwest rises Kawagapu, 5173 meters high, the tallest peak in Nujiang.  The best view of this is from the top of the mountain beside the road entering Bingzhongluo.  A dirt road zigzags up the side, but I used goat path shortcuts to ascend in an hour.  From cabins at the end of the road it’s a short walk to the platform enabling a bird’s-eye view of the First Turn of the Nu River.  Returning to descend affords appreciation of Kawagapu and the Bingzhongluo setting, as well as other snow mountains of well over 4000 meters.

     From Bingzhongluo it’s a two-hour hike north to the Stone Gate, a pair of high boulders with sheer cliffs flanking the riverbanks.  A road was cut through the cliff on the western side, continuing another ten km to Qiunatong, just beyond Wuli, a Nu village on the Biluoshan side.  Cut off by a sheer cliff from Qiunatong, the people centuries ago hollowed out a trail in the cliff through which residents and caravans could pass.

ancient trail to Wuli

     When I first visited the area in the early 2000s caravans were still a part of life in Bingzhongluo, one of the last places in Yunnan, transporting goods from Yunnan to Tibet.  The journey back and forth took 15 days and could include up to forty animals.  A new paved road past Qiunatong opened a few years later, putting a virtual end to that tradition.  Caravans couldn’t compete with trucks.

     Depending on which season, the scenery on the Nu River will vary.  It’s always a swift river, full of rapids, moving at a rate of up to seven meters per second in some places, but the color and volume changes.  In the summer it is brown and full, though it never floods its banks.  In the winter it is blue-green, running at a lower level, sometimes exposing little beach-like slivers of white sand, such as on the “toes” of Biluoshan and villages just south of the First Turn.  Likewise, the land scenery will vary with the seasons.  Autumn features patches of red and gold in the forested hills and spring sees the blooming of umpteen kinds of wildflowers.

the Stone Gate

    The villages adjacent to Bingzhongluo are Lisu, but most settlements in the district are Nu, the aboriginals of the district, who migrated here a thousand years ago from the Lancangjiang Valley (Upper Mekong) over the Biluo Mountains to the east.  They settled near and above the river, built houses of wood with roofs of slate tiles, plowed fields with two bullocks yoked together and used heated stones as one of their cooking methods.  The other major community in the area is Tibetan, particularly in Puhua village, on the tableland just north of Bingzhongluo, across a gorge cut by a stream running past the Nu village of Jiasheng.  

Nu houses and a passing caravan behind them   

     The first Tibetan into the area was a monk of the Karmapa sect from eastern Tibet, whose mission was to convert the animist Nu to the Tibetan brand of Buddhism.  He made Puhua his base and was soon joined by Tibetan settlers.  The move was part of an expansionist campaign by lamas and officials in Diqing and Kangpu, on the Lancangjiang, to extend not only their religion but also political control over frontier areas beyond the direct reach of the Qing government.

     Both conversion and Tibetan immigration were slow but steady.  In 1782 a temple and monastery went up in Puhua, from where Tibetans administered the whole district.  But they were not very kind to the Nu converts, looked down on them as inferiors and forced them to pay land use tax under the claim all the district’s lands that the Nu had been cultivating for centuries actually belonged to the monastery.  Finding life as Buddhists was not improving their lives, the Nu began converting to Christianity when the first French Catholic priests began proselytizing in Gongshan County from the late 19^th century.

Nu woman with Nujiang-style pipe 

young Nu woman in traditional style

     Finding the new religion encouraged Nu insubordination, the Puhua lamas organized attacks on the churches in the early 20^th century.  This provoked Chinese military intervention, the destruction of the monastery (rebuilt afterwards) and the incorporation of Bingzhongluo district into the provincial administration.  A century later ethnic and religious animosities have long been extinct.  Nu and Tibetan intermarry.  Some Tibetans are now Christian, while some Nu are still Buddhist, including a few of the monks at Puhua.

     When the Tibetans first brought Buddhism to Bingzhongluo, the Nu discovered an interpretation of the world that was far more complex, organized and encompassing than their own simple animist concepts.  As a people who’d been beyond the perimeter of Chinese culture, the Nu also felt the Tibetan religion to be the product of a society more powerful, advanced, sophisticated and prestigious than anything hitherto encountered. 

TIbetan monastery at Puhua

     For the Nu, proof of Tibetan cultural superiority was in the latter’s ability to establish political control over people who greatly outnumbered them.  Besides Buddhism, the Tibetans also had a martial tradition.  The Nu did not.  Tibetans also used better tools and were better farmers, passing on their knowledge to local Nu, which enabled them to increase agricultural production.  Tibetan influence on the Nu persisted even after the Nu adopted Christianity.  Tibetan chortens stand in the fields of Christian Nu villages and strings of Buddhist prayer flags flutter across the canyon next to the Christian Nu village of Jiasheng.  Many Nu women dress in the Tibetan style, with long-sleeved blouses and the colorful, horizontally striped apron.

     The Nu have their own traditional style clothing, featuring a vertically striped wraparound long skirt with a distinctive, subtle arrangement of subdued colors.  Women weave the cloth on a back-strap loom, which can be hooked up to a house post, tree trunk, or even the back of a tractor-trailer.  The cloth is also used for blankets, headscarves, shoulder bags and vests worn by both men and women.

on the trail to A-rong's cave

     The unique colored stripe pattern Nu people attribute to their ancient culture-bearing heroine A-rong.  She created the design after watching a sunset.  The Nu also credit her with inventing the rope-bridge, supposedly because she was enamored by a young man on the other side of the river.  With a giant crossbow she fired a line fixed to an arrow to the other shore, fastened her end to a tree and scampered across.  She also introduced irrigation canals and other agricultural methods and was renowned for both her beauty and her intelligence.

     These qualities aroused the ardor of a local bandit chief who tried repeatedly to woo her.  Meeting constant rebuffs, he then seized her and sealed her in a cave near Bingzhongluo, where she died and turned into stone.  Time passed and eventually the Nu built a shrine to her in this cave and instituted an annual festival in her honor on the 15^th day (full moon) of the 3^rd lunar month.  Nowadays it is the biggest event of the year in the Bingzhongluo area, celebrated by the Nu from all the district’s villages.  The A-rong story is something every Nu knows, so whether they are Christian, Buddhist, animist or atheist, they will come to her cave-shrine this day because it’s kind of Nu National Day.

Tibetan hostesses welcome devotees

     The Nu call it Xiannujie, Heavenly Maiden Festival, but it is also known as the Festival of Fresh Flowers for the many wildflowers blooming at the time that are also part of the offerings at the shrine.  In its contemporary version the event includes a stage show of Nu, Tibetan, Lisu and Dulong dances in the town and a lively market scene with merchants hawking goods ranging from cheap manufactured items brought up from Gongshan to ethnic minority handicrafts, Tibetan antiques and paraphernalia, fruits, kebabs, snacks, rice spirits and beer.

     The main event, though, is the visit to A-rong’s cave shrine, where the host for the day is not Nu, but the Tibetan village of Puhua.  Devotees begin the one-hour hike there from Bingzhongluo from early morning.  The route bends around and behind Puhua, affording a fine view of that village and Stone Gate rising beyond it. Halfway to the cave, devotees pass through an entrance gate erected by the Puhua hosts, where four beautifully dressed young Tibetan women offer people welcoming cups of refreshment—water first, then rice beer, finally rice spirits.  From there it’s still a long walk to the cave, but the spot is soon visible thanks to the many lines of prayer flags strung from the trees above it.

     Inside the cave flower offerings, especially azaleas, ears of corn, representing the agricultural knowledge A-rong introduced, and votive lamps surround A-rong’s shrine.  Overhead droop two long stalactites said to be A-rong’s breasts.  Water slowly drips off the ends of these and some devotees collect these drops in glass jars, which takes several minutes to fill, and smear it on their heads and faces, drink it or take it home for private ritual use.  Others prostrate before the shrine or circumambulate it a few times and kowtow afterwards.

circumambulating A-rong's shrine

     On a slope below the cave devotees next stop at the tent erected for a group of Puhua lamas conducting prayers with the aid of old books and the occasional addition of flute, drum and viol accompaniment.  One monk offers rice-beer to anyone who comes inside to pray or to listen.  The scene around the cave stays active until late afternoon, for Han and Lisu from further down the canyon, as well as Nu from more distant villages, continue to arrive.           

     Back in Bingzhongluo the returning crowds explore the markets, sample the snacks, watch the dances, get drunk and hop buses going south.  By ten p.m. the shows are over and only the die-hard revelers remain around the few drink and food stalls still operating.  The next day city cleaners dismantle the stage and sweep the streets.  The Nu put away their ethnic clothing until the next excuse.  Color and excitement concluded, the town reverts to its usual level of minimal activity and all that’s left to enjoy on a normal day again in Bingzhongluo is, well, the utterly magnificent scenery.   

young Nu woman collects water from the"breast" of A-rong

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