Festival Time for Tibetans and Their Horses

                                      by Jim Goodman

mounted Tibetans on the highway in Shangrila County

       The high plains of Shangrila County, actually the southeastern corner of the Tibetan Plateau, have only been connected by motorable road with the rest of Yunnan in recent decades.   Before that was just a track.  It was a well used one though, for it was an important part of the Tea and Horses Road, wherein caravans carried tea up from southern Yunnan to Zhongdian, as it was then called, and beyond to Tibet and western Sichuan, and Tibetan horses came down from the Plateau to Yunnan, and then beyond to China.

       The trade began flourishing from the foundation of the Nanzhao Kingdom in the 7^th century, whose territory encompassed today’s Yunnan, plus at times various areas beyond, as a result of its periodic wars with Tang Dynasty China.  Both these regimes collapsed early 10^th century.  After some years of power struggles, new regimes established themselves:  the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan and the Song Dynasty in China.

monk on horseback in the countryside

       The Song regime was less secure, for it faced a long-term problem on its northern frontier with mounted enemies.  Rather than try to conquer Dali, mindful that their predecessor had never succeeded in conquering Nanzhao, the Song Court pursued a policy of peace and trade.  China needed the horses for its own armies.   Tibetan horses had a high reputation for being strong, agile and easy to train for warfare.  The Song Dynasty would undertake no steps that might possibly interrupt this vital supply.

       Tibetan horses didn’t save the regime from its ultimate defeat, but on the Tea and Horses Road business persisted.  The route took on a new significance during World War II, after the Nationalist government relocated to Chongqing.  With the Japanese blockading all shipments from eastern China, supplies had to come in by land from Kalimpong, India, through Tibet, thence to Zhongdian and on to Dali and Kunming. 

       This was the last heyday of the Tea and Horses Road caravans.  Nowadays trucks bring in the goods over new highways, reducing the journey from Lijiang to just five hours.  When the county opened to foreigners in the early 90s, it took at least eight, and sometimes was halted for several hours to clear landslides.  Trucks and buses generally left in the morning from Lijiang, as well as from Zhongdian back to Lijiang, so from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, the highway was relatively traffic-free and the main movement along the road comprised Tibetan villagers on foot or horseback.

dressing up Lhasa-style for the festival

a day to wear the fox fur hat

       Tibetan villagers back then were fairly well off.  They had spacious barley fields and vegetable gardens, sturdy and comfortable houses, yaks and other animals, including the family pony.  Some owned tractor-trailers, useful for hauling field produce and going to the city market.  But for visiting other villages, only the pony would do.  Even monks rode them.

pony parked at the festival grounds

       Owners kept their horses well fed and groomed.  They used a heavy leather saddle for riding, but placed under it woven woolen blankets, with artistic motifs taken from their carpet designs.  There are times in the year when the men don’t have a lot of work to do, so they may use that leisure to improve their equestrian skills and try to train their ponies to do more than just carry them around.  And if they’re confident of their success, they’ll want to show off for the annual Horse Races Festival (Saimajie in Chinese).

       Events begin the 5^th day of the 5^th lunar month (this year 30 May), when the barley fields have already been sown, azaleas are in bloom, and work is slack until the rains begin.  Tibetans come from all over Diqing Prefecture to attend, as well as southwest Sichuan, joined by Naxi from Baishuitai, Yi from the southern mountains, Lisu from Weixi County and Bai, Han and Hui from the city.   The venue is the lap of Five Phoenixes Mountain (Wufengshan), just south of the urban area.  Most of the Naxi, Yi and Lisu, and the Tibetans from Tacheng district in Weixi, are members of dance troupes sponsored by the city government, which puts them up in hostels.

tent erected at the festival grounds

       Most of the non-local Tibetans bring tents and pitch them around the festival grounds.  Some Shangrila Tibetans will do the same, for that’s where they will rest and feast in between the festival acts, with meat, vegetables, snacks, fruits, jiu and plenty of buttered tea, dining on their finest old carpets.   They will use their best copperware and silver-inlaid cups and bowls, too, for at festival time one has to make a good impression. 

       Stylistically, the festival requires putting on your best ethnic clothing and jewelry.  Some women will wear the long chuba popular in Lhasa, with a multi-striped apron in front.  They may also deck themselves with the family heirlooms:  necklaces, pendants, rings and hair ornaments.  The men will don wide-sleeved Tibetan jackets, tight pants and fur hats or top hats of brocaded silk with fur flaps.  Village girls dress more simply, but in their newest and cleanest, with as much jewelry as they own.

Shangrila Tibetan girls

Lisu woman guest from Weixi County

       Besides the Tibetan fashions on display, visiting ethnic minorities have their own distinctive outfits.  The Naxi women from Baishuitai wear ankle-length coats, usually black, a few white, tied at the waist, a sheepskin cape and colored yarn braided into their hair.  The contingent also includes costumed dongba priests, from one of the few places where this Naxi tradition survives.  Yi women dress in bright, tri-colored skirts and the men wear wide-legged trousers, turbans and woolen capes.  Lisu women from Weixi dress in a long, flowing skirt and wear a tall, pointed cap, embellished with cowries or silver studs.  To a Western tourist, the outfit evokes the look of a medieval European princess.

masked dance by lamas from Songzhanlin

       In its pre-Shangrila days, the city had not yet built a stadium to stage the festival.  In 1994 there was just an oval track, 400 meters long, with some bleachers on the side.  City officials sat in the center, while local people occupied the other seats, lined up along the track or stood in trucks parked to the side.  Mid-morning the first day, following a few speeches, a riding exhibition commenced, with the horses sporting silver bridles and decorated with ribbons and pompoms tied to their manes and tails.  The riders galloped their steeds twice around the track, then reared up to a sudden halt.

       Next came the dance shows, beginning with a performance by lamas from Guihua Monastery in Songzhanlin, dressed in bright robes and grotesque masks.  This was the most interrupted dance, as Han tourists swarmed all over the troupe to get close-up photos of the masks.  Other Tibetan dances included one where women wave their ultra-long sleeves around like scarves and a few skits from the traditional Reba Dance set.  These featured lots of stooping and spinning by the males, vigorous drumming, women brandishing staffs and characters with animal heads.  In between the Tibetan acts were numbers by Hui girls and by Han schoolchildren.

dancer in the role of a yak

Reba Dance character

       From 1995 the county government began inviting performers from beyond the city’s immediate environs, such as Tibetans from Diqing and Tacheng, Naxi from Baishuitai in Sanba district, south of the city, and their Yi neighbors.  The Naxi dongba priests, mostly very old, in bright silk robes, wearing the paneled crown of the Five Buddhas and wielding swords, danced around the entire track, whirling and slashing at invisible demons along the way.  The Naxi youths, like the Lisu and Yi troupes, performed energetic dances lined up in ranks or joined in a ring.

local Tibetans watching the dances

       Other than the lama dancers, who only performed once in front of the stage, the other groups also staged their shows at various spots on the track, enabling the rest of the audience to see them.  When they concluded, the jockeys arrived for the preliminary rounds of racing.  Some of them rode on the heavy saddle and blankets.  Others used only a thin cloth under them or rode bareback.

       Four horses compete in one heat, which comprises five circuits of the oval track.  But not all four of the horses make a real effort to race.  In the distant past, Chinese valued Tibetan horses for their good response to training.  That’s not so with the contemporary breed.  Saimajie is the event that will demonstrate, to both their jockeys and the spectators, just how embarrassingly unmanageable these ponies can prove to be.

start of a men's race

       Four horses start the race, but rarely do all four complete it.  At least one will choose to trot, or even walk, not race, despite the frantic efforts of its rider thrashing it with his quirt.  It might even be lapped by the heat’s winner—and this is only a five-lap race!  Another horse might just wander off the track entirely or jump into the bleachers and scatter the spectators or throw its rider to the ground.

       Such antics certainly amuse the crowd, who may erupt in a mock cheer for the slowpoke pony that finally dawdles its way to the finish line.  Some of the races can be quite exciting, though, with the winner but a neck ahead of the second place finisher.  After several groups of male jockeys have made the rounds, the last event before a break is a race between two female jockeys, who make just three rounds instead of five, but in a contest as spirited as those of the best male riders.

women's race

       Besides the races, the program includes a demonstration of riding skill.  Jockeys ride at full gallop down the straight part of the track and lean way over to one side to snatch up white scarves lying on the ground at 30-meter intervals.  It’s not easy and no one succeeds in getting all the scarves.  And just as with the races, a few horses will refuse to run, only trot or walk, which of course gives the rider plenty of time to reach down and pick up the scarves.  The spectators just laugh.  Everybody knows how temperamental Tibetan horses are.

       More rounds of racing heats and scarf pickup feats take place after the lunch break.  Tibetan drama groups also stage plays in the field beyond the track.  These will be skits from the Reba Dance repertoire, a 900 year-old tradition that combines dancing, talking, singing, circus acts, comedy and high drama.  The cast will include lords and ladies, generals and ministers, deities and animals, clowns and peasants.  The show could take place under a tent roof, with the sides open to view, or out on the field, with the audience standing in an oval around the players.

picking up a scarf at full gallop

       Activities the second day back then resembled those of the first, minus the ethnic dances that opened the festivities.  Back in the city, however, crowds of outsiders roamed the shops to check out all the different items on sale.  Fancy, Lhasa-style robes, in wool or silk, with imitation leopard-skin cuffs and lapels, Tibetan-style wide leather belts, broad-brimmed summer hats, riding crops, daggers, boots, and horse trappings attracted the men's attention.  Women examined rings, necklaces, bangles, scarves, blouses, capes and earrings.  Besides the clothes, summer fruits filled baskets along the main road, small open-air stalls in the market sold basic noodle and bean gelatin dishes, while on the pavements lay displays of medicinal herbs, roots and animal parts. And in the streets some people were out just to stroll around and look at the variety of people in town, including foreigners.

Tibetan drama at the festival grounds

       On both evenings after it was finally dark, groups of Tibetan youths took over a few of the intersections on the main road and formed circles to sing and dance.  These were the most convivial hours of the festival.  Arms around each other’s waists, girls lined up on one side, boys on the other.   Usually one girl in the group selected the song because she knew all the verses (most songs are long).  So she led and the others followed.  The girls sang one stanza, then the boys responded with another stanza.  The dance steps were simple and each group blithely continued until no one remembered any more lyrics, at which point they picked another song. 

       In the 25 years since the county opened its doors to foreigners Saimajie, like the city itself, has grown bigger. The program has been extended from two days to three, with additions like a staged music show, extra dances and dramas and, incongruously for a festival showcasing horses, a cross-country motorcycle competition. 

       The essence of the festival remains the same, though.  It’s more organized, with a presentation that gets glitzier all the time, and attended by many times more outsiders than two decades ago.  But for the Tibetans, it’s the last round of fun and games before the more demanding work of the rainy season.  It’s a time to dress to impress, meet other Tibetans from other places, perhaps engage in romance, show off equestrian skills and demonstrate the close relationship they have with their horses—things they’ve been doing since long before the first foreigner came to see the festival.

TIbetans from beyond Shangrila attending the festival

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                        for more on Yunnan’s Tibetans, see my e-book Living in Shangrila

 

      

       

From Zhongdian to Shangrila

      
                                                                 by Jim Goodman
   

Shangrila's old town, before the fire

    Shangrila’s old town burned down last week.  A ten-hour fire consumed most of the buildings.  Fortunately, no one died, but it was still a tragedy for those whose possessions the flames consumed, as well a blow to its booming tourist industry.  Yet the destruction of the old town is a bit misleading, for scarcely a handful of truly old buildings were left at the time of the blaze.  These were new or reconstructed buildings catering to the tourist industry—guesthouses, restaurants, bars and (high-priced) souvenir shops.  The original inhabitants had nearly all moved out.  The authentic old town had already been replaced and the new buildings outfitted with fancier wood-carved decorations and very non-traditional picture windows facing the street.  The only parts still authentic, like in Lijiang’s old town Dayan, were the paving stones.

butchering a yak in the old town, 1993

    I was among the first foreigners to visit there in early 1993, just after the county officially opened the doors and it still evoked the atmosphere of a remote frontier outpost.  Only a couple of hotels stood on the outskirts of the old town then, which was entirely a residential area, a few small shops catering to locals.  The people lived in sturdy, two-story houses of timber and rammed earth on stone foundations, a balcony on the second floor, a small yard in front or to the side.  People did domestic work here, like carpentry, chopping wood or skinning yaks and might hang hunting trophies or yak skulls on the second floor balcony rafters.
    This was the first time local Tibetans had met Westerners and the encounters were always so friendly I began to think of Zhongdian as Hello City, after the word I heard a hundred times a day.  On return visits over the next few years I learned some of the local dialect, enabling me to arouse curiosity in the monasteries and invitations to stay overnight in the villages.  Tibetans there were just as curious about me as I was about them.  With a combination of Chinese and Tibetan, we talked about my experiences in Nepal and with other peoples in the area, even the Akha I worked with in Thailand. 

Tibetan girl near Napahai

    Zhongdian’s Tibetans not only were friendly to foreigners. They also got along well with their Han neighbors.  There is a very good historical reason for this.  The county sits on a high plateau of about 3300 meters and features big barley farms.  Harvesting these fields requires two or three families working together a couple of days before it’s completed.  And the annual yield from this and their other agricultural and pastoral activities makes the county’s Tibetans rather well off.
    Further north, in Diqing County, the land is much more rugged, dominated by steep mountains, with much less flat farming land.  Here a single family can harvest its field unaided in less than a day.  People are more dependent on animal husbandry and live in smaller, less-endowed houses.  In the past, whenever particularly hard times or animal epidemics hit the Tibetans here they formed armed parties that raided the plains of Zhongdian.
    Chinese administration in this corner of the southwest did not commence until the Ming Dynasty.  Initially it was not direct, either, but through the Mu family rulers of Lijiang until the early 18th century.  Thus, Naxi soldiers defended Zhongdian’s Tibetans from their wilder cousins from further north.  Some of

Tibetan man in popular fur hat

them stayed on in Zhongdian and the old town in the 90s had a Naxi quarter of several houses in the red wood style of Lijiang, in contrast to the whitewashed walls of Tibetan homes.

   Later the Chinese army took over the task of protecting Zhongdian’s Tibetans and wound up especially active in the turbulent waning years of the Qing Dynasty.  This basically accounts for the friendly relations between Zhongdian’s Tibetans and the Han community.  They attend each other’s festivals and intermarriage is not unusual.
    Besides its agriculture Zhongdian was also an important post on the ancient Tea and Horses Road that ran from southern Yunnan all the way to Lhasa.  Tibetan ponies were prized by other communities in Yunnan’s mountains, but also by the Song Dynasty armies, who faced threats from mounted warriors on the northern frontier.  Pu’er tea from Yunnan was popular in Lhasa.  The traditional caravan route became suddenly important strategically during the Sino-Japanese War, when supplies from India went by caravan from Kalimpong, next to Sikkim, through eastern Tibet, then Zhongdian, Lijiang and Xiaguan.  
    Some Tibetan merchants from Zhongdian moved to Lijiang during the war, putting up in houses near Dayan’s Old Stone Bridge.  They helped defend the city against an attack by a brigand gang from Heqing.  But when the war ended so did the lucrative caravan trade and the Tibetans returned to Zhongdian.
    The old town didn’t have its own market, for residents only had to walk a few blocks to the central open-air market in the city. Even the new town looked fairly quaint in the early 90s. Most of the buildings were single story, the tallest being those government offices with Tibetan-style facades. Restaurants were small and had names like The State Guest House Trade Union Dining Room and Apart From The State Guest House Dining Room. Shops along the main street included several, since relocated, catering to the local Tibetans, selling bolts of wool and brocaded silk, fur hats, wool carpets in Han or Tibetan designs, and clothing in both the local and Lhasa styles.

selling yak cheese in Zhongdian's old market

    In the center of town was the open-air market, where Tibetans hawked fruits, snacks, vegetables, lumps of yak cheese, cups and bowls, butter churners, robes and headgear, meat and daggers. Bai people ran a corner offering copper and brass pots, cauldrons, bells, horse trappings and utensils. The stalls were always full and the range of fruits and vegetables surpassed that in Lijiang.  Customers included local Han and Tibetan, plus a few resident Bai and occasional Yi and Naxi from the southern part of the county.
    Other than a few small shops offering barley spirits, the town didn’t offer any nightlife and mostly closed up after 8 p.m.  When the nights were warm enough, some of the old town residents, especially the youth, gathered in the old town’s central square for an hour or so of ring dances.  This changed during the early summer, when it was mushroom season and villagers brought in their haul for sale in markets that stayed open, along with refreshment stalls, until past midnight.

temple mural--Tibetans welcome Long March soldiers

    Besides wandering around the old town, markets in the new town and the nearest villages, visitors always toured the temples.  Just outside the southwest quarter of the old town stands the hill called Zhushan, with a small shrine on top that afforded a good view of the old town east and the plains west and a large temple at its base.  It had some interesting wall frescoes back then, since replaced, including a fresco of local Tibetans and lamas greeting He Long’s Red Army forces on the Long March, one of the mythical hero Gesar astride his war horse, one of Chinese ladies in late Qing Dynasty gowns and one of a pussycat.  The other temple, on a hill in the southern part of the old town, was less interesting, though the view from the top of the old town was better since you could see the lanes between the houses.
    From the old town it was about an hour’s pleasant walk or more to Songzhanlin and the biggest monastery in the prefecture, dating from the 17th century.  Or one could rent a bicycle, though the pebbly roads made it difficult to pedal. I wandered freely throughout the monastery, alone or accompanied, often stopped by monks who wanted a chat with a foreigner or wanted me to photograph them, even when they were doing their recitations or performing a ritual.  This was the pre-digital camera era and I was not able to show then the results.  But they were more interested in the camera itself and wanted to look through it, especially when I attached the telephoto lens.   And after the session concluded they invited me to have buttered tea with them.

Songzhanlin in the early 90a

    Almost as soon as Zhongdian opened for foreign tourists local agencies began promoting the place as a Shangrila for visitors, in the symbolic sense of a kind of paradise in the mountains.  Besides the county’s natural and cultural attractions, they also offered treks along He Long’s Long March route and the road taken by the Tang Dynasty Princess Wencheng when she journeyed to Lhasa to wed the Tibetan King Srongtsan Gampo.    These were obviously directed at Chinese tourists with a sense of their country’s history.

    The use of the Shangrila themesoon graduated into claims that Zhongdian was the actual Shangrila of James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon.  So-called pundits from Kunming and even Beijing claimed their “investigations” proved James Hilton modeled his Shangrila on Zhongdian.   Apparently they hadn’t read the book, for Hilton’s Shangrila lies in a forested valley, not a flat plain like Zhongdian.  The triangular snow peak visible from the fictional Shangrila does resemble the shape of Meili Snow Mountain, but Meili is only visible several hours’ drive north of Zhongdian. 
    Never mind.  The purpose of the Shangrila hype wasn’t to prove anything, but to give the county a shining, exotic tourist image.  Other places in the Himalaya region made the same claim, such as Bhutan towards the end of the century, but not so vociferously.  In 2001 the city officially changed its name from Zhongdian to Shangrila, which comes out in the Chinese pinyin form as Shangelila.   But the old town had already been altering its look and its character since Zhongdian got its airport in 1996.  Flights from Kunming rose, in season, from three or four per week, depending on weather and demand, to several per day at the summer peak.

early 90s view of Shangrila plain

    From then on Zhongdian underwent rapid development.  The new town expanded east and north, practically filling up the plain north to the hillock approaching Songzhanlin.  Tibetans in the old town began moving out, selling off or renting out their houses to aggressive tourist industry businesses.  Within a few years virtually every old house had been replaced by a tourist-oriented establishment, with their signs lining the lanes.  Ticket booths went up on the approach to Songzhanlin, where the monastery got new gilded roofs, and even at the best vantage point to photograph Napa Lake further north.
    Old town businesses began calling the place Dukezong, a name I hadn’t heard in the 90s.  Tibetans I spoke with then referred to it as Jèdâw, the last syllable nasalized, and used that word when they sang songs about it.  It sounded like a corruption of the Chinese name Zhongdian, or perhaps of the original Tibetan name of the town--Gyalthang.  At any rate, on my last visits in 2008 it was clear that Dukezong was something quite different from the Jèdâw I had known.   No evidence of

drawing water at the village well

traditional Tibetan life here anymore.  To see that again I had to return to villages I knew around Napa Lake.

    No tourism industry influence had penetrated these villages.  New homes had arisen since my first visits, but in the traditional style.  The people still lived the same way, did their daily and seasonal chores as before, still wore the local Tibetan clothing, and were just as warm and hospitable as ever.  About the only change I noticed was that they had cell phones, which they used to call in old acquaintances to meet me again.   
    Back in the old town for a last stroll, my happy experience in the Napahai villages

a happy mood at harvest time

tempered my feelings of regret for its total transformation.  The old way here has gone forever and I’m quite sure that when reconstruction begins it will seek to replicate exactly the theme park sort of place it had become.  But the fire was not a blow to Shangrila’s indigenous Tibetan culture.  That was unscathed and persists alive and flourishing in the plateau’s villages.  Before James Hilton used the word, Shangrila was a traditional Tibetan concept of an idyllic place where people lived in harmony with their environment, their gods and each other.  In that sense, in view of the lifestyle and manners of the people, to call the place Shangrila is not out of line.  One could argue it’s even appropriate.   

the northeast corner of Napahai

                                                                       * * *
   
                        for more on Yunnan's Tibetans, see my s-book Living in Shangrila