The Other Side of the Azure Mountains—Shaxi to Xiaguan

                                   by Jim Goodman

outskirts of Shaxi, on the Heihui RIver 

       Before highways began linking up various parts of Yunnan in the 20^th century, and trucks started delivering goods everywhere, caravans were the means to carry out long-distance trade.  While they plied over trails on traditional routes connecting all parts of the province, one of the most important was the famous Tea and Horses Road, running from Xishuangbanna in the south, through western and northwestern Yunnan and into Tibet.  Its name derived from its principal trade items—Pu’er tea from southern Yunnan and horses from Tibet.

       Many towns along the route became popular stopovers for the caravans, providing lodging and places to tether their animals.  Among these was Shaxi, in Jianchuan County, northern Dali Prefecture.  The usual way to get there was proceeding north of Xiaguan, at the south end of Erhai Lake, with the Azure Mountains (Cangshan in Chinese) on the west side, then passing out of the valley, through Eryuan County and to Sword Lake, just south of Jianchuan city. 

Yi woman crossing the old stone bridge

typical Shaxi old town lane

the old theater on the market square

      At the junction here a road turns ssw along the Heihui River, which empties into Sword Lake, and soon enters a broad plain dominated by the town of Shaxi.  Never very big, it was nevertheless fairly prosperous until the virtual end of the caravan trade after 1949.  Yet in its slow modernization over the next several decades, Shaxi still retained its old quarter of cobbled lanes and traditional Bai houses, former lodges for the caravan operators and dilapidated, but not destroyed, temples and other public buildings.  It was the last of the caravan stopovers that still looked like one.

       Shaxi is basically a farmers’ town, but from the beginning of the 21^st century it took on a new identity as a popular tourist attraction.  The provincial government launched restoration programs, renovating the old temples and the theater on the market square and promoting its historic connection to the Tea and Horses Road.  The town has a new section of boring concrete buildings, but it is a minor part of Shaxi and such architecture doesn’t appear in the traditional quarters.  New houses have gone up, but in classic traditional Bai style.

Shaxi Friday market

Bai women run stalls on market day

      The town sits on the west bank of the river and a little above the water.  Two bridges cross the Heihui.  One is for pedestrians, centuries old, a classic arched stone bridge with sculpted lion heads at each end and on the side over the highest point of the arch.  The other, for vehicles, is an ordinary level bridge in the 1950s style, with elliptical arches and plain columns at each end.  It looks out of synch with all the old-fashioned buildings within sight in every direction.  But at least it is outside the town proper, where the traditional look has not only survived, but has been enhanced.

Bai woman in Shaxi

Yi woman in Shaxi

       The population is mixed Han, Hui and Bai.  Most of the houses are mud brick with tiled roofs.  Others, like the former boarding houses, are manly wooden.  Some of the richer Bai live in houses with carved gates, more use of stone, and painted decorations under the apex of the roofs like those in Dali or Jianchuan.  Shade trees line the main streets in the old town and trimmed shrubs sit in pots in front of the houses.  Passageways through the lanes pass under the arches of neighborhood gates or of houses that straddle both sides of the lane.

ancient sculptures in a Shibaoshan grotto

       A quiet, almost sedate atmosphere prevails in the old town, where vehicular traffic is basically absent, except for bicycles and the occasional tractor-trailer.  That all changes on Friday, Shaxi’s market day.  Residents of the town, joined by villagers from the vicinity, set up stalls in the old market square and along practically all the lanes in the old town.  The local dentist has an outdoor stall that day, too. 

       Products on sale vary considerably.   One section will feature carved doors and windows, chairs and stools, another all kinds of carrying baskets, yet another tools and horse trappings.  One lane will fill with grains, spices, vegetables and fruits and the next one will offer shoes and clothing.  There will be noodle stalls for those who want lunch and steamed buns and other snacks available at small stands.

stone vagina, Shibaoshan

camel head rock, Shibaoshan

       Market day draws the valley’s Han and Bai, but also many Yi from the mountains, as well as a few Lisu, Naxi and perhaps itinerant Tibetans selling medicinal herbs.  The Yi are the same Nuosu branch that dominates Ninglang County.  Yi women are the most colorful people in the market, with long, bright, tri-colored skirts, decorative jackets and wearing either a large black rectangular hat or a flat, embroidered cloth held in place by hair braids.  And if it’s cool weather, the outfit includes a dark felted woolen cape.

Shaxi countryside

       In late afternoon, when villagers start returning home, leading ponies packed with their goods, the scene evokes the time of the Tea and Horses Road.  The caravan trade expanded from the 10^th century during the Song Dynasty, for the latter needed the horses to deal with enemies on its northern frontiers.   Shaxi may have been a caravan stopover by then, though no relics exist from that long ago.

       Nearby Shibaoshan, however, is the site of religious monuments from the Nanzhao Kingdom, with stone carvings from around 800.  Shibaoshan is a tall, steep hill in a wooded rural area, remarkable for the pagodas built into its cliffs and the grottos with stone sculptures.  These date from the Nanzhao and Dali periods before the 13^th century.  They include a seated Buddha flanked by his two favorite disciples, a standing Guan Yin, various multi-armed guardian deities and small Buddha images.

       The most unusual is a stone vagina.  Local women come here, especially when they get pregnant, to pray and to rub the stone.  They believe this act will ease the pangs of childbirth.  Shibaoshan is also host to the three-day Bai Singing Festival at the end of the 7^th lunar month.

Bai woman in Changyi

Yi woman in Changyi

       In the caravan heyday Shaxi was a stopover for groups on the way to and from Tibet.  Merchants might also pick up salt here from nearby mines.  Going south, they needn’t detour to Eryuan and Dali to reach Xiaguan, but could simply continue down the valley of the Heihui River over what used to be called the Bonan Road.  The road is never very high above the river, nor does it cross any hills.  Villages are visible in the flanking hills and all along the riverbanks.

the old mosque in Yangbi

       The road passes through western Eryuan County and the last village before entering Yangbi County is Changyi, which holds its market day Saturday.  Bai and Yi, as in Shaxi, are the main participants.  Except for furniture, most items on sale are the same as in Shaxi, with the exception of walnuts, a specialty of Yangbi County.

      Yangbi is a Yi Autonomous County, with at least four Yi sub-groups living in the hills, which make up most of its territory.  Until a generation ago the Yi lived at a level of basic subsistence.  Then the government introduced the planting of walnut trees.  Yangbi is not the only place in Yunnan cultivating walnuts.  Dayao and Gongshan Counties also have them, for example.  But the soil in Yangbi seemed to be particularly good for walnuts, producing a thin-shelled, tasty, slightly sweet nut, and soon Yangbi became dubbed the “hometown of walnuts.”

Yunlong Bridge, Yangbi

       Nowadays walnut plantations cover 71,000 hectares in the county.  The annual output has reached 50,000 tons, valued at one billion yuan.  Government statistics claim that as a result 70% of the county’s population has been lifted out of poverty.  Harvesting begins in September and to coincide with it the county government stages a month-long Walnut Festival in Yangbi city.  Events include rites to the Walnut God, food-tasting events (and not just walnuts), cooking competition, markets and rounds of singing and dancing performances.

       As the road crosses into Yangbi County the towering peaks of the Azure Mountains rise to the east.  In the caravan era Yangbi city, originally called Shangjie, was an important junction on the Bonan Road.  Instead of going on to Xiaguan or north to Shaxi, caravans could turn west here to Yongping and Baoshan.  The city has a modern section of nondescript concrete and steel buildings around the city stadium, the main venue for festivals.  But it also has an extensive old quarter, largely Hui-inhabited, full of traditional tile-roofed wooden houses.  A fine old Chinese-style mosque sits on a mound above the old neighborhood.

Yangbi old town

Stone Gate Pass behind Jinniu

       Homes are not as elegant as some of the Shaxi dwellings and the cobbled lanes have not been renovated in recent years.  But a walk through it is evocative of an earlier era.  Continuing past the mosque, the lane terminates at the old Yunlong Bridge, the main river crossing for caravans going west.  A suspension bridge with wooden planks laid across iron cables, dating from the early Qing Dynasty, it doesn’t have caravan traffic anymore, but is still in use by villagers living across the river.  On the other side, earlier this century Yangbi Han Buddhists erected a small Buddhist shrine and a pagoda above it.

Xi'er River in Xiaguan

       From Yangbi city the road swings southeast along the river, in this county renamed the Yangbi River, until its confluence at Pingpo with the Xi’er River that flows east to Xiaguan and into Erhai Lake.  The road swerves much closer to the Azure Mountains on this stretch and at Jinniu is a steep cleft in the hills called Stone Gate Pass, now being built up as a scenic attraction with the construction of a walkway along the base of one of the cliffs.  At Pingpo the road turns east along the Xi’er River, passes the southern end of the Cangshan range and glides into Xiaguan.

       Now the capital of Dali Prefecture and the biggest city in western Yunnan, Xiaguan began as an 8^th century fortified settlement, founded by King Piluoge of the new state of Nanzhao, to guard the southern entrance to the Dali plain.  Taihe, further north, established in 737, served as the Nanzhao capital until it was moved to Dali in 779.  Xiaguan lies at the southwest corner of Erhai Lake, backed by high mountains with its suburbs sprawling into the foothills.

Nanzhao warriors on a fresco at the General's Temple

       Over time it outgrew Dali and was a major stop for caravans heading north on the Tea and Horses Road to Tibet, as well as the Southwest Silk Route to Dehong Prefecture and on to Burma and India.  By the turn of the 20^th century it was also a major tea-processing center.  Its commercial importance increased with the construction of the Burma Road during the Sino-Japanese War to enable the transport of supplies of all kinds from British-held Burma to Yunnan.

       After the war and the foundation of the People’s Republic, Xiaguan’s growth and development expanded.  New industries appeared such as power generation, food processing, papermaking, cigarettes, cement and marble processing and polishing.  The factories are scattered, though, and not concentrated in one polluted area.  The Xi’er River runs through the city center and residents sometimes come to fish with poles from the walkways on the banks or with nets cast from rafts or boats they take out on the water.  A few parks lie along the river and a very large and well-developed one occupies a long offshore island on the lake.

the General's Temple, Xiaguan

       Xiaguan does not feature the old buildings, monuments and relics that characterize Dali or Weishan.  It does, however, have a pair of sites associated with Nanzhao’s history.  On a hill in the western suburbs stands the General’s Temple, dedicated to General Li Mi, who is not a local hero but instead was a Tang Dynasty commander of a huge Chinese invasion force in the mid-8^th century.  This was the third attempt by Tang China to subdue Nanzhao and, like the previous two, it ended in total disaster.  Li Mi lost his entire army and in the end drowned himself.

       The victors gave the dead a proper funeral and interred the corpses, or maybe the ashes, inside a tomb in Tianbao Park, in what is now the western quarter of the city.  It’s just a stone mound with some exterior inscriptions and probably never contained as many remains as the records claimed.  But it’s Xiaguan’s only true Nanzhao relic.

       Many generations after Li Mi’s demise, his descendants established a shrine to his memory and to invoke his protection of the area.  In the Ming Dynasty a three-part temple replaced the original shrine.  Nowadays many local Bai devotees come here to make offerings, especially at the mid-autumn festival, Li Mi’s birthday.  Considering that the Bai were, along with the Yi, the victors over Li Mi’s army, it seems odd that they would be making offerings to him.  But Bai country folk are devout by nature and upbringing and may not even be aware of the historical particulars regarding the object of their worship.  To them, he’s a protective deity and that’s enough.

Yangbi old town and valley

                                                                        * * *

 Delta Tours Vietnam arranges a journey through western Yunnan that includes a stop in Shaxi.  For the itinerary see https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/western-yunnan       

      

       

The Yi Torch Festival—Urban Celebrations

                                     by Jim Goodman

Yi from Fuheng district in Yangbi for the festival

       The summertime Torch Festival is the best-known annual event in the Yi people’s calendar.  With 11% of the population, the Yi are the largest minority nationality in Yunnan, with about 25 sub-groups and five dialects, living all over the province except the southwest borderlands.  Not all the sub-groups celebrate it, and the Bai and Naxi have a Torch Festival of their own, but most visitors think of it as a Yi festival, partly because of the massive publicity given to the extravagant celebrations of it in the Stone Forest.

       Several origin stories exist, but the one most common to Yi in central and western Yunnan attributes it to a hero’s successful defense against the wrath of a jealous god.  Accordingly, once upon an ancient time lived a famous Yi wrestler named Eqilaba, with a reputation for being invincible.  A jealous god in Heaven, determined to undermine his fame, dispatched a champion of his own to challenge Eqilaba.  The challenger lost his life in the attempt.

bridge in Longjiang Park, Chuxiong

       Furious, the god sent a swarm of insects to attack the Yi people’s crops.  Eqilaba organized the people and ordered them to light torches to drive away the insects.  It worked.  The people repelled the attack.  And ever since then, on the 24^th day of the 6^th lunar month, the Yi stage the Torch Festival to commemorate their victory.  Village or city programs may include wrestling matches, bull fights and horse races to enliven the day, and then conclude in the evening by lighting torches and dancing around a bonfire.

       I witnessed the Torch Festival of the Nuosu Yi in Ninglang city in the northwest on my first trip to Yunnan in 1992.   The following summer I attended a multi-village celebration of it in the mountains northeast of the city.  Some years later, when my research took me to other parts of Yunnan, I tried to see it with the Huayao Yi in Shiping County.  But just when all the participants, dressed in their finest, turned up at the venue it began to rain heavily and didn’t stop until morning.    

dinosaur display, Chuxiong Museum

       That was unlucky, but not unusual.  The 6^th lunar month is in the middle of the rainy season.  A few years later I scheduled another attempt, this time near Damedi, in Shuangbai County in Chuxiong Prefecture.  But a landslide had just recently cut off the village.  So I opted to take the earliest minibus to Chuxiong city and try to see it there.  Chuxiong is a Yi Minority Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, which means the folks in charge of the government are Yi.  They would be sure to sponsor something.  And the closer I got to the city the more the skies cleared, though they remained dark to the south.

the stage at the Yi nationality theme park in Chuxiong

       Chuxiong was never a popular tourist destination.  Most travelers in the 90s only knew it from a lunch break stop on the bus route from Kunming to Dali.  And by the end of the decade buses used the new highway and didn’t even stop in the city.  The city had little of interest; a couple nice parks, a single Buddhist temple, and a plethora of new, unimaginative, concrete buildings.  A statue of Miyilu, the heroine of the Yi Flower Festival in spring, was the only visible Yi motif in this capital of a Yi Autonomous Prefecture.

       By 2000 that had changed.  The city now had a new prefectural museum, one of the finest in the province, much of it—four floors in the central part of the complex--devoted to various aspects of local culture, predominantly Yi.  The ground floor displays all the items used in traditional daily life—tools and implements, baskets and containers, hunting and fishing gear and musical instruments.  There are also house models of the Yi and Chuxiong’s other minorities the Miao, Lisu and Dai.

selling Yi guitars in Longjiang Park

Yi bimaws in ceremonial clothes

       The second floor exhibits over fifty traditional clothing outfits, mostly women’s, from the prefecture’s Yi sub-groups, other parts of Yunnan and sub-groups from Guizhou and Sichuan.  The exhibit includes spinners, winders, looms and accessories like jewelry and embroidered shoulder bags.  The third floor features the books in the Yi alphabet used by the bimaw, or religious specialist, as well as grotesque wooden masks, painted gourds, lacquered bowls and other antiques.  The fourth floor contains books on Chuxiong and the Yi.

Yi women with torches ready to light

lighting their torches

       It is not just an ethnic museum, though.  Rooms around the center are devoted to other topics.  One features the prefecture’s fauna, its reptiles, amphibians, birds, insects and mammals and another the extinct creatures of the past, such as the dinosaur skeletons found in Lufeng County and the remains of ancient man.  There’s a calligraphy room, exhibiting elegant brushwork as well as thin pieces of wood shaped into Chinese characters.  Another hall features ceramic and bronze artifacts from the Zhou Dynasty, with paintings beside them that show how they were used.

Yi singing group performing in Chuxiong

       The other major change in the city was the recently completed construction of an elaborate park northwest of the city on the other side of the Longchuan River.  With the wordy name of The Park of the Ten Month Calendar Culture of the Yi Nationality in China, this was the new venue for the Torch Festival.  Previously, the celebrations were held in the roundabout with the Miyilu statue.  But this was now covered by an overpass complex and the statue removed. 

       The park’s name refers to the pre-modern Yi calendar that divided the year into ten, 36-day months.  The month contained three ‘weeks’ of twelve days, each named after an animal in the Yi zodiac.  The Chinese also have a twelve-day cycle with each day named after an animal, but the two zodiacs are slightly different; the Yi pangolin day being one example.  The Torch Festival back then was Yi New Year Day.

Yi dancers at the Torch Festival

      It seems everything in this park was intended to be big and impressive.  Enormous blocks of carved stone stand at the entrance, depicting dance scenes from the Yi Laofuzhuan (Dressing Up as Tigers) festival in Shuangbai County, flanked by a huge bronze drum replica.  Dominating the rear of the park is a tall, carved column, surrounded by smaller ones, on top of a monumental edifice of walls and stairs. 

       The city’s Han, who form at least 90% of the population, also enjoy the Torch Festival as a holiday of their own   On this day red lanterns and vertical banners decorated shops and offices.  Stages went up in Longjiang Park for performances by singers, jugglers and magicians, street vendors were everywhere and some Yi men set up stalls selling ‘moon guitars’, gourd-pipes and flutes.  Since the government-sponsored program would not begin until after dark, early arrivals from the Yi contingents in the prefecture, dressed in their finest traditional clothing and ornaments, wandered the urban streets and parks.

the festival bonfire at Chuxiong

       At sunset people began heading for the park.  The program was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. but got delayed until after 10, when the fireworks launched from tall buildings in the city center had already been illuminating the sky.  Then a group of Yi girls, in red jackets and turbans, climbed onto the stage in front of the columns and lit their torches.  They strode offstage to a central bundle of faggots in a big iron cauldron in the plaza as other Yi contingents followed them, including a few bimaws dressed in fancy ritual garments and miters.

       The bimaws seemed to be there just for show, for they didn’t actually do anything.  (In traditional village celebrations, aside from morning ancestral rites performed by the senior lady of the household, the Torch Festival never involved any ceremonies.  It was a secular event, full of games, songs and dances.)  The young women tossed their torches into the pile of faggots and soon a bonfire was blazing.

Yi visitors in the Yangbi park

       Performers still occupied the stage for a while—solo singers, duets, comedy skits and groups of traditional Yi singers and musicians.  Finally the stage action concluded and the Yi sub-group contingents in the square commenced ring dances around the fire.  The activity continued past one a.m., both here and in the city.

       Most Yi-inhabited areas hold the Torch Festival on the 24^th day of the 6^th lunar month.  The exception is Dali Bai Nationality Autonomous Prefecture, where the Yi follow the Bai custom of marking it on the 25^th day.  This gave me the chance to see it again the day after the Chuxiong affair.  I left in the morning for Yangbi, 38 km from Xiaguan, the nearest Yi-administered county in Dali Prefecture.  Thanks to detours because of road repairs and construction of a new road from Xiaguan to Yangbi, it took most of the day to get there.

torches in a Yangbi street

Yangbi statue of Miyilu

       Yangbi is a much smaller city than Chuxiong, notable for its old bridge, traditional Hui quarter and indigenous-style mosque.  The rest of it is a rather run-down modern city with the only Yi symbol being its own Miyilu statue.  It is a Yi-run county, though, so its local government sponsored the celebrations, meaning sub-groups from all the county districts would be paid to come to the city for the event.

Nuosu Yi group in Yangbi

       Rather than the bundles of long wooden sticks of Chuxiong, the torches here were mostly structures of colored paper in several tiers, with pennants on each side, like the Bai torches, and stood at intervals in the streets.  Dark clouds were already filling the sky when I arrived, making the torches’ bright colors stand out.  By the time I got my hotel room night was beginning to fall and the procession to the central stadium was about to begin.

       Four different sub-groups participated, wearing distinctly different outfits.  The least colorful of them dressed mainly in black and white with sparse embellishment.  The men wore long-sleeved white shirts over dark pants and an open black vest.  The women wore the same shirts with sleeveless, knee-length black tunics trimmed in blue over black trousers, with a wide white belt.  Women of another sub-group wore knee-length, side-fastened tunics, blue on top and black on the bottom, with thick, multi-colored, appliquéd bands around the collar, hems and lower sleeves. 

       The female contingent from the western district of Fuheng wore brighter, flashier tunics and aprons, covered with appliquéd strips and embroidery.  Complementing this were their round black caps with a silver band along the bottom and colored pompoms sticking up from them.  Their men wore plain white shirts and black pants.

Nuosu Yi girl

Nuosu Yi man

       Finally, the cast included the Nuosu Yi from the northern part of the county.  I knew and had written about them in Ninglang County, but didn’t know they also lived this far south.  The women dressed in long, tri-colored skirts, vests and long-sleeved blouses and the same very wide-brimmed hats as in Ninglang, or the flat cloth head cover with a front brim that is more common in Xichang, Sichuan.  The men wore black turbans, embroidered vests and black woolen capes.

another Yi contingent in Yangbi

       When all those in processions had filed into the stadium and taken up positions around the central torch, two Nuosu Yi youths, shirtless and in wide-legged trousers, beat drums and cavorted around the torch.  Then two of their women came out to give a bowl of rice-liquor to each of the men charged with lighting the torch.  Because it had been doused with paraffin already, the torch caught fire easily.  One of the Yi groups then commenced dancing around the burning torch.

       Soon it began raining, though that didn’t dampen the dancers’ spirits, especially the lead male wielding a long curved sword.  But when it got heavier the audience fled for shelter and the dancers stopped.  After 40 minutes the rain was just a slight drizzle, so the dancers and crowd returned and all the contingents got their turn.  The torch had continued burning and folks added more paraffin-soaked rags to keep it going.  In spite of the rain, the dances were quite vigorous and no one slipped on the wet pavement.

taking rice liquor before lighting the  torch

lighting the torch in the Yangbi stadium

       From the top of the bleachers men set off a series of fireworks.  While not as plentiful as in Chuxiong, they were quite spectacular and closer to the audience.  The dance groups occupied other areas of the stadium besides around the main torch and continued for another couple of hours.  Out in the city streets, the torches that had been standing all day were now piles of cinders, while youths with mini-torches prowled the streets with resin in one hand to toss onto the torches to make them flare up whenever they met anyone in their path.

       Around midnight the activity began slowing.  The stadium emptied of dancers and observers.  The last shops still open shuttered their doors.  The kids with the flare-up torches ran out of resin powder.  Reveling was over.  It was time to retire, review memories of the day and sleep secure in the knowledge that, being Yi, they will be able to enjoy it all again next year.

Yi waiting to add their bundles of sticks to the Chuxiong bonfire

                                                                        * * *    

A Guest of the Cool Mountain Yi

                                                        by Jim Goodman

Yi festival in the mountains of Ninglang County

       Southwest China’s Yi nationality is the fourth largest ethnic minority in the country.  They inhabit mostly mountainous terrain in southern Sichuan, western Guizhou and Guangxi and throughout nearly all of Yunnan, where they form 11% of the province’s population, the most numerous of its 25 ethnic minorities.  Ancestors of Yunnan’s Yi founded the Nanzhao Kingdom, which vied for supremacy with Tang Dynasty China from the 7^th century for control of southwest China until both regimes collapsed in the early 10^th century. 

        Though the Yi permanently lost political power in Yunnan they were still the dominant ethnic group in the successor Bai-run Kingdom of Dali and remained so after the Mongol conquest in the mid-13^th century.  Only when the Ming Dynasty sponsored large-scale Han immigration to Yunnan did the proportion of Yi in Yunnan begin to reduce. 

Yi women in the Ninglang city market

            Contemporary Yi are not, and never really were, a homogenous nationality.  In Yunnan alone there are over two dozen sub-groups, residing in different kinds of ecological conditions, speaking five distinct dialects.  That much I knew myself before I ever visited Yunnan.  But on my first journey there the first Yi I wanted to meet were the Liangshan Yi, the Cool Mountain Yi of Ninglang County.  I had read about them already in a Peter Goullart account of his journey with a Black Yi aristocrat as well as when doing research on the Long March.  The Red Army had a memorable encounter with the same branch of the Yi in southern Sichuan.

       Maps of southwest China compiled by Western explorers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries marked the entire Liangshan area, the Greater Cool Mountains in Xichang, Sichuan and the Lesser Cool Mountains in Ninglang, Yunnan as “Independent Lololand.”  The designation Lolo, which translates as something resembling savage, was the pre-1949 term for the Yi.  While today all Yunnan Yi refer to themselves as Yi when speaking to outsiders, among themselves they use their own name for their sub-group:  Nisu in Yuanyang, Tuli in Weishan and Midu, Sani in Shilin, etc.  The Liangshan Yi call themselves Nuosu—the Dark People.  While they dominate Ninglang County, the Nuosu also reside in Lijiang, Shangrila, Lanping, Jianchuan and Yangbi Counties. 

Nuosu Yi villlage in early autumn

      “Independent” did not mean a separate state.  It was more of a no-go zone for outsiders, particularly Han, because the Liangshan Yi society was a slave-holding one and outsiders risked capture and sale as a slave.  It was a very complex one, though, and one’s status was not permanently fixed.  At the top were the Black Yi aristocrats, comprising about 15% of the people at most.  Below them were the White Yi, serfs to the Black Yi, around 50% of the population.  They did not have the privileges of the Black Yi and were often drafted to fight in the ceaseless feuds the Yi lords had with each other.  But they could not be enslaved or killed with impunity.

Cool Mountain Yi, in felted wool cape

       Two kinds of slaves ranked below the White Yi—field slaves and house slaves.  Unlike the situation in the pre-Civil War American South, the field slaves were actually better off.  They had to labor in the master’s fields, but could actually work their own private plot, make money and either buy their freedom or buy a slave of their own to work and then amass enough capital to, for example, buy out the slave’s whole family.  Meanwhile, their slaves could work their own plots and even buy a slave to work for them.  The lowest status in Nuosu society, therefore, was to be a slave of a slave of a slave.

       House slaves didn’t have that option, however, and their lives and conditions were subject to the personality traits of their owners.  Some were nice; some were harsh, even cruel, as attested by the display of torture instruments in the Xichang Museum.  After 1949, though, no “Independent Lololand” could exist.  The new Communist government, however, moved gradually to eliminate the slave system.  They began by winning over Black Yi slave-owners, already aware the system was doomed, to emancipate their slaves in return for positions in the new autonomous governing body. 

carrying water in wooden buckets

       Not all acquiesced, though, and the government was obliged to mount a military campaign in 1956 against recalcitrant Black Yi in remote areas.  It lasted two years and the cemetery in Ninglang is full of the graves of young Chinese soldiers who died in the campaign.  All that is a distant memory today.  But while the old slavery system is dead, the Nuosu are still one of the most conservative of Yi sub-groups. Typical characteristics associated with Yi culture—the mid-summer Torch Festival, the role of the ritual specialist called bìmaw (also spelled bimo), the use of the ancient Yi script—are not necessarily part of Yi life everywhere in Yunnan.  But with the Nuosu they are.

       Among the Nuosu customs maintained is that of an almost ritualized form of hospitality.  For Ninglang’s Yi there are three kinds of guests and each type requires a separate kind of reception.  The most common is a fellow villager or other familiar guest, who will be seated by the fireplace and served with whatever is available, tea and potatoes usually, liquor occasionally. 

       The second category is the special guest, one of high rank or from some distance away.  For them the host slays a two-legged animal; a chicken usually, but it could be a duck or goose.  For the third type, a very rare guest from especially far away, the host kills a four-legged animal—small pig, sheep or goat. 

typical Yi log cabins

        Coming from Thailand, I qualified as the third type of guest in every remote mountain village I visited overnight.  In Ninglang Yi houses where I made regular visits every season or so for a few years, my hosts killed chickens.  Part of this hospitality routine was to take a prognosis of the event, while the chicken was being cooked, by inserting two toothpicks into two small holes in the chicken’s thighbone.  If the toothpicks leaned too close together that meant the guest was trying to take advantage of the host.  If they were too far apart it signified the host was trying to evade hospitality responsibilities.  If they formed a nice “V” (as mine did each time, fortunately for me and the hosts) then the visit would proceed harmoniously.

the hearth

       For the second and third type of guest, liquor is an integral part of the reception.  Overnight guests might bring their own, but the host is obligated to serve some.  But first he pours a bit into a small cup, moves it counter-clockwise around the hearth, then places it in a high place in the room as an offering to the ancestors.  Only after this does he serve some to his guest, with an exchange of toasts.

       Yi in the mountains of Ninglang County are not wealthy.  To welcome guests by slaying their animals is an expense beyond their ordinary budget.  Traditionally though, the guest acknowledges this by offering kàba, or compensation, before departure, three times, since it is also custom to politely decline twice.  Fully informed of this by my Yi friends I did the same, but the amount I was advised to give was always much less than the value of the food and liquor served me.  The Yi never seek to ‘profit’ from the encounter. 

raising a toast with maize liquor

       Along with the meat of the requisite animal, my meals with my Yi hosts included potatoes and buckwheat bread, two Cool Mountain staples.  Villages are sited too high up to grow rice, so buckwheat, barley and millet suffice instead, with some of it traded for rice in the markets.  They also grow maize, but its main use is for alcohol or animal feed.  Potatoes, turnips and radishes are the main vegetables; chickens, pigs, sheep and goats their main livestock.  They usually live in log cabins with tiled roofs, the hearth in the main receiving and dining room and bedrooms to the sides.  Overnight guests, however, sleep beside the fire.  

Yi girls dance at theTorch Festival

       Among the conservative traits the Nuosu Yi have retained, particularly among the women, is the preference for traditional clothing.  Females of all ages wear a long, cotton skirt, pleated from the knees down, each of the three or four wide sections a contrasting color; bright pastels for the younger women, darker tones for the older ones.  They hold it in place with a long, narrow, fringed belt, with a triangular purse, fully embroidered or appliquéd with crescents, whorls and spirals, bordered by necktie-shaped, decorated cloth tassels and suspended from the belt.  The purse and belt ends bounce against the skirt while she walks.    

       On the upper part of the body the woman wears a long-sleeved blouse with striped or embroidered cuffs and a silk or velvet vest.  Headgear depends on marital status.  Those married with children don a wide, rectangular black hat, while the unmarried or married without children wear either a flat, embroidered rectangular cloth held in place by tying the braids over the top of the head, or a large, rounded black hat, the edges trimmed with color bands, the hat held in place by a scarf tied over it and fastened under the chin.  For ornaments they will use strings of amber, coral and filigreed silver beads, disk-shaped earrings with attached pendants and embossed silver plates around the neck. 

Yi women on a mountain trail

traditional Nuosu woman's purse

        Among the women, traditional clothing is not just for special occasions but is the norm for everyday life--fieldwork, tending to the animals, cooking, fetching water, chopping wood and going to the market.  Men usually dress in modern style clothes, but may wear a dark turban and both sexes wear the distinctive Yi woolen cape.  Most common is the felted, A-line type called vombaw.  More expensive types are from woven wool:  the vahlah—fringed at the knees—and the heavier jyeshi—pleated top to bottom. 

Nuosu Yi girl, Ninglang County

        Ninglang is a Yi Autonomous County, so Yi officials run the administration, subsidize the annual Torch Festival celebrations in the city and encourage the maintenance of Yi traditions.  While Yi officials, teachers, businessmen and so forth may no longer themselves cling to the old animist world-view, their womenfolk are still steeped in it.  I once attended a traditional ritual expulsion of evil spirits in the house of my Yi friend, an English teacher in Ninglang, whose wife insisted on the ceremony due to some domestic bad luck in recent days.

       A young bìmaw in his late 20s conducted the rites beside the hearth, wearing a special round bamboo-frame woolen hat, reading incantations from a Yi-language manuscript.  Then he poured a bit of water on the coals to create steam, grabbed the sacrificial cock and waved it through the steam to purify it, moved it clockwise over the hearth to retain the good spirits in the house, counter-clockwise to repel the bad ones, and several times over the host couple’s heads to expel evil and prevent nightmares.

       Continuing recitations without the use of the book, the bìmaw next knocks the chicken senseless, slices it through its mouth, breaks the left wing bone at its shoulder and cuts a hole in the skin at that spot.   After more incantations the bìmaw picks up the dead animal, puts his mouth over the hole at the shoulder and blows hard.  This makes the cock crow as if it were alive, which makes any lingering evil house spirits take fright and flee.  Just to be sure, the bìmaw repeats the procedure several minutes later.

young Yi bìmaw

       The final act is to throw the cock and the sacrificial knife outside the door.  If the blade and the cock’s head and feet point away from the house, as it did the time I witnessed, the rite is deemed successful.  If they point towards the house the bìmaw has to repeat the rite with a fresh chicken.  When successful, the host gives the bìmaw a bottle of liquor and some money, placed in a bowl of buckwheat flour.   Then they all dine together when the hostess cooks and serves the chicken.

       With an attitude typical for Nuosu men, however secular-minded and well educated they may be, my Yi friend saw no reason not to participate in this “superstitious” event.  For him it was a positive occasion showcasing his people's time-honored customs.  The bìmaw’s youth testified to the continuing strength of Yi culture. It takes several years to qualify for the role of theYi ritual specialist and obviously the next generation was keeping the tradition going.  And though my friend may not have believed in the true efficacy of the ritual, it was fine with him that the women and children did.  The rites restored their sense of worry-free domestic harmony.  And that’s a bonus for the non-believer as well.  Being modern doesn’t mean you have to stop being Yi.

Nuosu Yi woman--pride in the traditional look

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           for more on the Ninglang County Yi see my e-book Children of the Jade Dragon