South of Kunming: Yuxi, Tonghai and the Lakes

                                                                     by Jim Goodman

traditional style street in Yuxi's old quarter

        Most tourism in Yunnan concentrates on places notable both for spectacular scenery and a strong ethnic minority presence.  The mountainous northwest has been a favorite since it first opened, as have been the tropical prefectures of Dehong and Xishuangbanna and, more recently, Honghe Prefecture.   The province is full of wonders and interesting places, though, and a few are just south of Kunming, in Yuxi Prefecture, suitable for a weekend excursion or, in my case, stopovers on the way from Honghe to Kunming.  The landscape was mostly rolling hills and plains, but mottled by lakes.  The towns Yuxi and Tonghai were still old-fashioned in the 90s, uncongested and friendly.  Most people were Han, some Hui, and near Tonghai were Yunnan’s only Mongolian villages.

buildings in the old part of central Yuxi

      The prefecture capital Yuxi City is 88 km sw of Kunming, on a plain flanked by low hills and lots of tobacco plantations.  On a knoll in the southeast suburb, overlooking the sprawling complexes of the Hongtajituan Tobacco Company, stands the Red Pagoda (Hong Ta), the city’s emblem.  A tapering, seven-storey structure, the pagoda dates to the Yuan Dynasty, was originally made of blue limestone and was restored in the late Qing Dynasty.  Red Guards painted it red during the Cultural Revolution.  (At least they didn’t demolish it.)  It’s also the trademark for the Hongtashan brand quality cigarette produced here.

socializing in a Yuxi park

       In the 90s, Yuxi’s expanding suburbs, with the newer and taller buildings, basically surrounded the urban center, which was still dominated by two and three-storey red wooden shop houses with tiled roofs.  A huge, jagged limestone boulder, at least 15 meters high, stood right next to the main downtown street almost in the center of Yuxi, as if the city were built around it.

       Besides the traditional architecture, and a small museum of mostly local artisans’ works, the city also had several parks, including one honoring Nie Er, a native son who was the composer of China’s national anthem. The parks feature the usual pools, pavilions, rest houses, limestone rockeries and potted flowers.  Families stroll here on weekends and older men assemble to play cards or board games while entertained by their pet songbirds in cages hanging from overhead tree branches.

the Red Pagoda

limestone boulder in the center of the city

       Also easily accessible are two forest temples near Yuxi.  Nine Dragons Pool, just ten km north, dates from the Ming Dynasty, when a Buddhist monk planted the pine forest around the temple.  Dragons dominate the sculptures here, writhing around all the pillars and peering out under the roofs.  Within the main shrine stood statues of animal-headed deities—monkey, rabbit, tiger, chicken and ram.

the Weather Forecasting Pond

       The other temple—Black Dragon Pool—is just eight km from the city.  One of the pools of water in this compound is known as the Weather Forecasting Pond, for its color and surface change according to an imminent change in weather.  A watchman is employed there so that villagers can call him up and find out whether it’s going to rain, storm, be overcast or fair weather.

       From Yuxi the road to Tonghai first runs south and then turns southeast into Tonghai County.  After going through some low hills it enters the broad plain lying west of Qilu Lake.  The city sits behind a stretch of farmland on the south shore of the lake.  Archaeological evidence indicates the area was inhabited in Neolithic times.  The city itself dates to the Nanzhao Era.  After the Mongol conquest Tonghai became the main military and administrative post for southern Yunnan during the Yuan and Ming Dynasties.

street in Tonghai old town

Jukui Pavilion in Tonghai old town

       The urban core of old Tonghai lies along the base of a long, wooded hill.  The old city center is in front of the western side of this hill.  In the 90s minibuses dropped me off at the junction to the main street in the old town, lined with trees and traditional red wooden shop houses.  The triple-tiered, tile-roofed, Qing Dynasty Jukui Pavilion—the city’s icon--stood in the middle, halfway to the hill. 

deities in a Xiushan temple

      The last block of this street rose to the edge of the hill and around the corner was a Confucian temple.  A little further along this cobbled side lane stood the entrance to the park in the hill, called Xiushan—Beautiful Mountain.  Tonghai’s top attraction, for both tourists and the religious-minded, Xiushan has been a pilgrimage site since the Han Dynasty.   Temples went up during the Nanzhao Era and Duan Shiping, founder of the Dali Kingdom, Nanzhao’s successor in the early 10^th century, sponsored a major renovation.

ancient Xiushan templ

out on Qilu  Lake

       After the fall of Yunnan, new patrons sponsored more temple construction in the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.  These are the sights of Xiushan Park, which comprises the entire hill.  Some of them are on steep slopes, above terraces lined with potted flowers.  Others are deep within the forest, accessible by clearly marked trails through the trees, often next to natural pools.  Another lies beside a glade, with a view to the higher hills to the south.

afternoon fishing on Qilu Lake

       Poets and scholars gravitated here in the past.  Among the furnishings of the Xiushan temples are stone tablets with carved couplets, probably composed in one of the twenty or so pavilions and arbors on the hill.  Three temple compounds also feature ancient trees—a Song Dynasty cypress, Yuan Dynasty cedar and a Ming Dynasty magnolia.

       The park has no cable cars to shuttle visitors around, only quiet trails to tread on foot.  It is also bereft of souvenir shops and refreshment stands.  This makes it easier to appreciate the natural settings of the temples and evokes an automatic sense of reverence. There are not so many, each has its own special features and carved deities, and one could see the entire lot in a leisurely manner in just over half a day.

Mongol women planting rice

       North of the main inter-city road at the edge of the old town, beyond a stretch of farmland about 1.5 km wide, lies Qilu Lake.  Just under 37 square kilometers in size, it has an average depth of just over four meters, but is much shallower in the western half, while sometimes reaching as deep as fifteen meters in the eastern side.  The lake is rich in nutrients and plant life, rendering the waters a murky green, but also reducing the amount of oxygen available for fish.  Still, it holds enough shrimp, carp, herring, catfish and bullhead to entice fishermen at various hours of the day, especially towards dusk.

Genghis Khan, Xingmeng

       Long, long ago the waters stretched all the way to Xiushan, which then was known as Qilu Mountain:  hence its name Qilu Lake.  Supposedly a monk dug a hole in the middle of the lake that connected to an underground channel that carried the water all the way to the South China Sea.  The city’s name comes from this mythical event, for tong hai means ‘connecting to the sea.’  The drainage left behind a vast basin of good agricultural land.

       The Zhonghe stream runs along the northern rim of this plain and enters Qilu Lake at its west end.  No streams carry water out of the lake, which instead empties into caves.  Since it’s prone to flooding, villagers have built dikes along the most vulnerable shores.   Along the Zhonghe, in front of Peacock Hill, are three villages inhabited by ethnic Mongolians, the only ones still living in Yunnan.  Though the Mongols conquered Yunnan in 1253, the community first settled here in the late 14^th century, when the Ming Dynasty defeated the Mongol army near Qujing and rounded up, killed or captured all but seven soldiers.

harvest layout in front of Xingmeng

       The seven survivors escaped to Tonghai and wee sitting on the banks of Qilu Lake when they saw a vision of a man with a big fish with a temple on top.  In the local dialect ‘temple’ was a homonym with ‘food’ and so the seven interpreted the vision as an indication they could live off the fish and eels in the lake.  They took Yi wives, hid their identity from authorities for a long time and survived.

       According to their own mythology, it was their own goddess Achala who later came to drive a stake into the lake to drain it to the sea, and then expelled the dragons from the land and enabled the Mongolians to start farming.  They are still there, a community of several thousand, in Xingmeng and its two satellite villages, living in big and solid mud-brick and stone houses with tiled roofs, still practicing customs similar to those of their fellow Mongolians thousands of kilometers away.  In Xingmeng they even have a hall honoring Genghis, Mengu and Kubilai Khan, the first Mongol emperors.

Najiaying Mosque

       Men are usually only present during the busy agricultural months and hire out as construction workers several weeks at a time away from the county.  Most women dress in the traditional bright blue or green jackets, occasionally black, with contrasting bands of color around the sleeve. 

       Besides appreciating the ethnic attire, worn at home, in the field or at the town markets, visitors enjoy wandering through the old-fashioned narrow lanes, see the statues of the Mongol Emperors and may afterwards dine in a Xingmeng restaurant.  Rows of these line the main street leading to the center of Xingmeng.  The specialties, for which they have a high reputation, are Mongolian hotpot, with a heavy emphasis on eel, and roast duck, Beijing style. 

Gushan port

       Tonghai had no Mongolian restaurants.  The local taste is hot and sour, but quite palatable.  The other option was beef specialties at a Hui restaurant.   After the Mongol conquest, Muslim contingents of Kubilai’s army largely ran affairs in Yunnan.  Over time, some soldiers retired and settled in Yunnan towns and villages.  When the Ming forces expelled the Mongols from Yunnan they did not likewise chase out the Muslims.  They just became absorbed into the existing Hui minority.

       In the Qilu Basin Hexi, near Xingmeng, is a Hui town, while other Hui villages lie on the northwest side of Qilu Lake.  The biggest and most beautifully sited is Nagu, with a great view of the lake from several vantage points.  The imposing, Arabian-style Najiaying Mosque stands near the highway.  Houses in Nagu were both old and new, many with Arabic inscriptions on house pillars and pediments.  Older mosques, in a different style, were in the southern quarter.

Solitary Mountain Island

       Continuing north, the next city is Jiangchuan, lying beside Xingyun Lake.  With 34.7 square km it is roughly the size of Qilu, but holds far less vegetation and thus is a habitat for twenty species of fish. The most sought after is the Jiangchuan Bigheaded Carp, renowned for its flavor and its juicy flesh.  The water is grey-blue in color, but the usually calm surface is good for reflecting the sky; hence the name Xing Yun He—Stars and Clouds Lake.

       Xingyun Lake gets its water from a small stream connecting to the much larger Fuxian Lake to the northeast.  Fuxian Lake runs 31.5 km north to south, with an area of 212 square km and a depth reaching 155 meters, making it the third deepest lake in all of China.  Shaped like a raised clenched fist, the larger, northern ‘fist’ part belongs to Chongjiang County.  Most of the tourist development is here, especially the resorts on the northeastern shore and the Lu Chong Scenic Spot on the western side.  The latter features mountain views, caves, palaces, temples and, for a while, the only swimming beach in the province.  But in 2016 the government declared the lake off limits to swimmers and pleasure boats as a measure against ecological degradation.

typical isolated viewing pavilion

Qing Dynasty tower on top of the hill

       Most of the lower part of Fuxian belongs to Jiangchuan County, with the most popular site at Gushan, a port on the southwest shore.  The name means Solitary Mountain and is also that given to the offshore island that is a long narrow hill jutting up sharply from the lake.  Ferryboats take visitors there for the day, or arrange to pick them up the following day, for the island has a few hotels.

view across the island

       All the buildings—hotels, pavilions, shrines—are in classic Chinese style, with upturned corners and tiled roofs.  Pathways lead to scenic viewpoints, gardens, groves, the waterfront and the towers on top of the hill.  Further up the western side of Fuxian archaeologists early this century discovered the remains of an ancient city under the water.  The finds included earthenware, handmade stone works and building foundations.  They believe a city stood there nearly two millennia ago until an earthquake knocked it into the lake.

       Other local legends say an underwater city still exists and that genies and dragons sometimes arise from the waters to help people in times of war or drought. It would be good to contemplate these legends after selecting a nice isolated pavilion to observe the waning of the light on the lake.  Maybe you’ll witness an auspicious apparition, portending a good future for you.  Or maybe you could just imagine one.

view of Fuxian Lake from Solitary Mountain Island

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The Last Mongols in Yunnan

                                                                by Jim Goodman


    Tonghai County in central Yunnan has a number of attractions that make it worthy of an excursion from Kunming, just 130 kilometers away.  The county seat, Tonghai city, lies at the base of a wooded hill a few kilometers southwest of Qilu Lake.  It still has an old quarter next to the hill, featuring a three-tiered Qing Dynasty tower and narrow streets of old-fashioned shop-houses, door gods at the compound gates and caged songbirds suspended from the roof corners.

Tonghai old quarter

    From the old town a walkway leads up the hill.  Called Xiushan (Beautiful Mountain), the hill has for centuries been a Buddhist sanctuary.  The walkway winds through the thick forest to several secluded temples, dating back to the Tang Dynasty, and passes open vantage points.  These afford a view north of the broad plain from the modern part of Tonghai sprawling below the old quarter to the distant minarets of the Hui town of Najiaying on the north side of Qilu Lake.  Around the hill the view south encompasses the hills of the Yi district of Lishan.  One of these, a few km southeast of Tonghai, contains a limestone cavern called Fairy Cave.
    Ancient temples, caves, traditional urban quarters, even Yi villages are not unique to Tonghai, but common to many places in the province.  What makes Tonghai special is the existence of three villages at the base of Peacock Mountain, a large hill several kilometers west of the city.  This is Xingmeng Autonomous Mongolian District, the only place in the whole province that is home to the descendants of the Mongol conquerors of China. Their presence here, a very long way from Mongolia, Outer or Inner, is a living historical vestige of an important story in Yunnan’s long history—how it became part of China.

Qilu Lake and the Tonghai plain

    In the 13th century the territory of what is now Yunnan belonged to the Kingdom of Dali.  It was the successor to the Kingdom of Nanzhao, which used to battle Tibet and Tang Dynasty China for supremacy in the southwest.  It fell to internal coups shortly after the Tang Dynasty collapsed.  The Song Dynasty that eventually won out in the post-Tang succession struggle, decided to adopt a non-aggressive attitude towards Dali in order to maintain trade links.  The item prized by the Song Court was the Yunnan pony.
    The state’s greatest security threat was on its northern frontier, where the enemy comprised mounted nomadic forces.  Song China needed horses for its defense and therefore required good relations with Dali so that nothing interrupted trade on the traditional Tea and Horses Road from Yunnan to Tibet.   Not threatened on any of its frontiers, nor ambitious to extend them, the Kingdom of Dali enjoyed a long period of peace, even after Genghis Khan’s Mongols conquered the northern part of China.

Kubilai Khan statue, Sansheng Temple

    The Song Dynasty held off the Mongols for another century, so the Mongols decided to attack China from its weak, southwestern flank. This entailed subduing the Kingdom of Dali on the way.  In 1253 Kubilai Khan led a massive expedition through Sichuan’s mountains and crossed into Yunnan at Yongning in the northwest.  Easily subduing the local Mosuo and Pumi, he left Mongol officers in charge of the district and headed south towards the Lijiang plain, home to the Naxi minority.
    The Naxi, confronting a force many times bigger than their own, opted to help the Mongols cross the Yangzi River on inflated goatskin rafts and joined the campaign against Dali   Kubilai pitched his tent near the old stone bridge in what later became Lijiang’s old town and prepared his next campaign.
    Dali put up a spirited but futile resistance, but Kubilai left the dethroned king in charge of the area as his local official.  He left a small occupation force and then moved on to take control of the rest of the erstwhile kingdom.  Leaving a Central Asian Muslim ally in charge of the province, now incorporated into the Mongol Empire, Kubilai Khan then returned to the Mongol capital to get involved in a succession struggle for several years before he came out on top.  Following that he conquered the rest of Song China, from the north rather than the southwest, and in 1279 set up the Yuan Dynasty in Beijing.

houses along a canal near Xingmeng

    Yunnan remained under the control of Central Asian Muslim governors, backed by Mongol army units, throughout the Yuan Dynasty.  When it fell in 1368 Yunnan remained the last Mongol stronghold south of the Yangzi River for another thirteen years while the new Ming Dynasty consolidated its control in the rest of the country and plunged into a succession struggle.  But when that was settled the Ming Emperor dispatched an army to expel the Mongols from Yunnan.  Ming forces crushed Mongol forces at the Baisha River near Qujing in 1381, then hunted down remnants all over the province until they were confident they had killed or expelled every last member of the race.  From then on Yunnan was part of the Chinese Empire.

Mongol woman planting rice

    One small group managed to evade the Ming army, escape to the hills, change their way of life, live in disguise and wait until the political climate improved for them to admit that they were Mongols.  This is the small, tightly knit community that settled in Xingmeng.  Over the centuries it survived on fishing, then farming, and finally, in modern times, on both agriculture and the construction business.  Despite these lifestyle changes, they maintained the social customs and traditions they brought with them from the northern steppes.  Most women still wear the traditional jackets, vests and caps, often adorning them with silver clasps, buttons and pendants.  They live in sturdy houses with high, thick walls, separated from each other by narrow cobbled lanes.  They worship at the Guan Yin Temple but also, in Xingmeng village, have their own Sansheng Temple, honoring, and housing large sculptures of, three of the great empire builders of their past--Genghis Khan, Menggu Khan and Kubilai Khan.
    Local legends incorporate supernatural elements into the community's historic shifts in lifestyle.  When the Ming troops all but eradicated their presence the last seven fugitives sat on the shore of Qilu Lake pondering their future.  Suddenly an old man emerged from the waters, standing on a rhinoceros skin.  Inviting them on to the skin he pointed to a huge fish supporting a temple.  Back on shore the men realized that because the words for "food " and "temple" were similar the old man had been telling them that fish could be food.  And so they began drawing on the fish and eels of Qilu Lake for their sustenance.

Singmeng

     Settling at Xingmeng at the base of Peacock Mountainl the last Mongolian men had to marry Yi women and inculcate them into their language and customs.  Their community began to multiply and then years later the Goddess Achala arrived at Qilu Lake, subdued a dragon responsible for flooding the plains, and dug a hole at the lakeside.  Excess water dropped through this hole and emptied into the South China Sea.  Hence the county's name pf Tonghai--"connecting the sea."  Achala then subdued more dragons and removed them to the hills to "dragon pools"--springs--to irrigate the new fields.
    Since then the Mongolians have been farmers, though they still trap eels and small fish in the canals that connect Xingmeng with the lake.  In recent decades, the men have worked much of the year in the construction business, enjoying a high reputation as carpenters, stonemasons and bricklayers.  Consequently they are out of the area most of the time and Xingmeng's residents, except for the busiest times in the agricultural cycle, are mostly women and children.
    To get there from Tonghai visitors take a short minibus ride of six kilometers to Hexi, a small town that holds a weekly market attended by many Xingmeng residents.  From there a turn towards the north leads the next two kilometers to Xingmeng, at the base of Peacock Mountain.  Along the road are several restaurants offering the local specialties—Taichi eel and Beijing-style roast duck.  Tour groups from the capital sometimes make a one-day excursion from Kunming to Xingmeng just to eat the roast duck and see if it really is Beijing-style, generally agreeing that it is just like what they eat back home in the north.

street scene in Xingmeng

       

   threshing grain

    Since the turn of the century Xingmeng has been gaining attention as one of the more unusual tourist destinations in Yunnan, drawing over 10,000 visitors annually.  Near the entrance to Xingmeng a new, Mongolian-style building houses the Ethnic Culture Garden and the number of restaurants has grown.  The glitzy additions are all near the village entrance, though, and a leisurely walk through the narrow lanes is still an exposure to a rural atmosphere that hasn’t changed much, other than the introduction of electricity, for centuries.  Men are usually out on construction assignments, while women perform some of the household chores, as well as farming activities like threshing the grain, in the open yards next to their compounds.  Appreciative of the interest in them, they are polite and friendly to outsiders and ready to engage in conversation.

threshing in eh villa

    Only in 1979 were Xingmeng's people officially recognized as part of the Mongolian nationality.  The male leaders of Xingmeng at once dispatched a delegation to Inner Mongolia to invite Mongolian teachers to come instruct their children in the written and spoken language and the customs of the steppes.  Bi-lingual signs, in Chinese characters and Mongolian script, began going up over the shops and public buildings.  Young men took up traditional sports like wrestling and archery.  Women proudly wore their ethnic clothing again, so long suppressed during the dark years of the Cultural Revolution.  It was a great time to be openly Mongolian once more.
    Yunnan's Mongolians have their own locally evolved customs as well as those they retained over the centuries, and speak a dialect that is closer to the local Yi dialect than to anything heard in Inner Mongolia.  Their greatest cultural event is the Nadam Festival held every three years in December.  (The next one is in 2014.)   Modeled on the Nadam held in the Mongol homeland, it celebrates their recognition as one of Yunnan’s minority nationalities and honors Kubilai Khan.  Xingmeng’s Mongolians dress up in their best ethnic clothing, as well as in costumes from the northern steppes.  The district and county governments subsidize the expenses, guaranteeing a grand show.  They stage wrestling tournaments, archery contests and equestrian performances, all the kinds of events that entertained their ancestors before and after they conquered China.  From the enthusiasm and ethnic pride on display, it’s as if the Yuan Dynasty had never really fallen.

to the fields near Xingmeng

           
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