Colors and Crowds in Yuanyang County

                                                                 by Jim Goodman

Yi coming to Niujiaozhai on market day

       Variety is the hallmark of every characteristic of Yunnan Province.  This applies to its landscapes, climate, food, lifestyles, languages and especially its people.  One third of the population, occupying two thirds of the territory, consists of 24 different ethnic minorities.  And among the larger ones are numerous sub-groups that dress in different outfits.  For anyone into ethnic fashions, Yunnan is a treasure trove.

       The greatest ethnic diversity in the province is in the four counties of the Lower Ailao Mountains, between the Red River and the Vietnam border:  Honghe, Luchun, Jinping and Yuanyang.  In these counties the Han are a minority, only 12% in Yuanyang, basically confined to cities and towns.  The ethnic minorities have been living here more than a thousand years, cultivating in the same irrigated rice terraces that form such a dramatic backdrop to the area.  And for its landscapes, vibrant market days and ethnic variety, Yuanyang County is the best.

Yuanyang County terraces on a winter morning

       The usual way into Yuanyang County is via Jianshui, from where Highway S214 runs south to the Red River and crosses into the county seat before ascending into the hilly heartland.  About 20 km before it reaches the river, a long village on a flat top ridge with steep sides lined with terraces is visible across a valley to the west.  It is a foretaste of what’s to come.

       Yuanyang city is only about thirty years old, the result of shifting the county’s capital from the old Yuanyang in the hills, now called Xinjie, to the riverside Dai La village of Nansha.  At this location the government had more room to expand.  The original village still exists, though obscured from view by the new buildings. 

Yi village next to Xinjie

       From here the road passes a lot of banana groves and begins climbing.  It’s about 30 km to Xinjie and before long the traveler can see the famous rice terraces cut into the slopes of the hills.  During the dry season they are filled with water and reflect the colors in the sky.  After the planting in April they turn green until September when the crop ripens to yellow.  By November the harvest has emptied the terraces and they once again fill with water.

Nisu Yi belt ends

       In the late 90s, having completed my research of the northwest, I chose Ailaoshan as my next project.  This involved journeys to all its counties, but I spent more time in Yuanyang than anywhere else.  Inexpensive hotels were available.  The terraces and villages were a short walk beyond the urban zones.  Xinjie had several Yi and Hani-run restaurants and a daily presence of many minorities, well augmented on market days, which were every four days.  And frequent minibuses plied the routes back and forth to other village market venues or places to view the terraces.

Nisu Yi gitls wearing the"chicken hat"

       Yuanyang didn’t get much traveler attention then and I was usually the only foreigner in town or, if with a friend, we were the only two foreigners in town.  In winter some Chinese photographers showed up, aiming to take the ultimate terraces photo, when fog covered the lower parts of the hills and left terraces above them to catch the first sunlight.  I often did the same and in constant search of better angles got used to walking along the terrace walls with my knees lightly bent so as not to slip and fall into the water.

       During dry season visits, in late afternoon I liked to take hikes south of the city, heading straight where the main city road turned left at the southern bus station, and out in the rural area towards the terraces and villages, hoping for a dramatic sunset that splashed the water-filled terraces with golden hues.  Once in a while the sun slid behind thick clouds and I didn’t take any photos at all except of people on the trail walking home.  But sometimes, besides friendly greetings, they invited me to their homes for a drink or a meal.  And that always made my day.

Laló Hani mother and daughter

Laló Hani woman

       Hani and Yi villages dominated the Xinjie vicinity, with houses of mud-brick, usually two stories.  Most had flat roofs, sometimes with a small shed on top, but some Hani villages had angled thatched roofs and were called ‘mushroom houses’.  Some villages lay on slopes above their terraces.  Others were on more level ground, surrounded by their fields.  

Laló Hani heading home from the Xinjie market day

      Nearly all the county’s Yi belong to the Nisu sub-group.  As with the county’s other ethnic minorities, nearly all the women dressed in traditional style.  They wore a long-sleeved jacket, fastened on the right side, bright colors for the young and dark for the older women, over plain slacks.  The jacket featured broad bands of embroidered patterns around the shoulders, lapel and sleeves.  Sometimes silver studs covered the entire front.  They fastened it with a belt with large quadrilateral embroidered ends that hung over the buttocks, the most distinctive feature of the outfit.

Hani village just south of Xinjie

       The usual women’s headgear was a long strip of black cloth with a panel of embroidery at each end.  They wrapped it around their hair and tucked one end into the top and left the other dangling over the side.  The favorite of the girls, and even young married women, was the “chicken hat” (wúbi túmaw in Yi).  So named because of its intended resemblance to a cockscomb, it was a colored piece of hard cloth, cut to shape and covered on both sides with inlaid silver or nickel bulbs, cultured pearls or white pile embroidery, with spaces left open to form arabesques and spirals.

Hani in tie-dyed imdigo

Hani woman in Huangcaoling

       Nisu myth attributes the origin of the wúbi túmaw to a story of two young lovers caught in the forest by the Prince of Devils.  First he killed the young man, then tried to capture the young woman.  She fled through the forest, with the Prince of Devils in hot pursuit, until she came to a village in a clearing.  A cock crowed, which stopped the demon in his tracks.  A witness to that, she guessed the demon was afraid of roosters.  So she grabbed it, chased off the demon and ran back into the forest to where her lover lay.  The cock crowed again and the young man came back to life.  Ever since then Yi girls wear the hat in honor of the rooster, to symbolize good luck and happiness in love.

Hani women in Majie district

       To make the floral, spiral, arabesque and other patterns on the jacket, belt ends and headgear, the Yi used paper stencils cut by specialists and sold at market days.  Xinjie’s market day always had tables selling the stencils, while at several other stalls women sold Nisu jackets, headgear and belts.  Hani women also ran stalls with Hani jackets, headgear, vests and bolts of cloth.  And a couple stalls sold silver ornaments, mostly those used to decorate jackets and hats—rings, buckles, coin buttons, chains and pendants.

Hani girls in Niujiaozhai

       Several subgroups of Hani live in the county.  Around Xinjie and south as far as Panzihua live the Laló Hani, whose women wear dark blue or black jackets, fastened on the right side, over blue or black trousers.  Bands of appliquéd designs in light, contrasting colors go around the cuffs, upper sleeves, neck, shoulders and calves.  Married women don a heavily fringed headscarf, held by a silver clasp in back, under which hangs a long, silver studded tail, 5 cm wide.  Unmarrried girls dress in brighter colors and wear no headgear.

       A slightly different style prevails among the Goho Hani of Huangcaoling district, southwest of Xinjie.  Goho jackets feature embroidered and silver-studded lower sleeves and are tied with a belt with big tabs hanging over the buttocks, similar to that of the Nisu, usually with spiral designs.  And the cap is a round one, with silver studs in the front and pendants on the side.

Niujiaozhai Hani in the Xinjie market

Dai woman and red sticky rice

       In the western part of Yuanyang County, around Shalatuo and Niujiaozhai, the Hani women’s jacket resembles that of their Nisu Yi neighbors, but hangs in the back over a separate cloth underneath.  The lower end and corners of this piece are heavily embroidered, as are the lower parts of the trousers.  It’s also tied with a belt with the ends draped over the buttocks, though these are either triangular or 10 cm-wide embroidered strips.

Xinjie on market day

       Just west of Yuanyang city, in Majie district the Hani wear similar bright jackets, but some attach a tie-dyed indigo section to the front.  A subgroup closer to Xinjie favors the tie-dyed cloth for the entire jacket.  Nisu Yi in Majie dress like those in Xinjie, but the ‘chicken hat’ is always studded with silver.  And in the eastern districts, besides Laló Hani, one can meet the Black Hani, who also dominate northern Jinping County and tie their artificially lengthened braids in a coil on top of the head.

       On market days, all these costume variations and embellishments made the moving crowds a constant swirl of color.  And with the fancy Yi and Hani belt ends, headgear tails and embroidered baby-carrriers, the women could be just as attractive from the back as from the front.  Around 80% of those attending were women and probably 95%, young and old, would dress in traditional style.

Landian Yao women in Xinjie

Nisu mother and child

       In the south, Huangcaoling held its market day on Friday and the Dai La town of Huangmaoling on Saturday.  Depending on the12-day animal cycle, Majie, Panzihua and Galiang hosted market day every six days, while Niuzhaozhai, Shalatuo, Xingcun and Xinjie staged it every four days.  They were always crowded, even in the rain.  Though the activity at each resembled that of every other venue, it was worth the journey just to see the ethnic variety and ever more views of a spectacular landscape, especially Panzihua, with a great view of the vast valley known as the Tiger’s Mouth.

Nisu Yi pattern stencils on sale in Xinjie

       My own favorite was Xinjie’s, every dragon, rat and monkey day and attracting the largest and most ethnically diverse crowds.  Starting from the center of town near the bus station and stadium, stalls and layouts spread down the steps and all along the long ridge forming the lower part of the city.  Besides the Nisu and Laló Hani, three or four other Hani subgroups would turn up, as well as Dai La and Zhuang from villages lower down on the road back to the Red River. 

       The Dai wore short-sleeved black jackets, fastened on the right side and trimmed along the lapel. sleeves and hem with bright color bands.  The plain black skirt reached to the calves, which were bound with embroidered wrappers.  The Zhuang dressed much like the Nisu, but with ruffled trimming to the jacket collar and different headgear.  Usually some Landian Yao turned up, too, standing out from the colorful crowd by their all black garments—tight trousers, loose jackets, headdress cover.  The only color component was a skein of magenta thread hanging from the collar down the front of the jacket.

Xinjie on market day

Zhuang mother and daughter

       Farm crops, fruits, vegetables and household goods comprised most of the merchandise on sale.  Yet there were always busy Yi and Hani stalls selling traditional clothes and cloth for making them.  Some odd traditional medicine plants and woods were also available and for snacks one could try steamed buns, the grilled bee larva or sticky red rice.  And wash it down with a cup of rice liquor.

Hani clothing stall in Xinjie

       Around three p.m. the crowds began to thin, as those living far away began to pack up and go.  Local Yi and Hani might hang around another couple hours.  And I would head for the rural road south of the town to get photos of them walking home towards the setting sun.  Sometimes I even got a photogenic sunset,

       After the turn of the century the scene began changing, particularly in Xinjie.  In 2002 the very scenic terraced fields around Panzihua, the Tiger’s Mouth, won the national government’s support for its bid for UNESCO recognition as a World Heritage Site (eventually awarded 2013).  That prompted the city government in Xinjie to make some drastic changes.  It ordered the leveling of the central bus station and the stadium, to be replaced by a three-story Cultural Center.  The place where all the minibuses parked now had a stone model of the terraces, with life-sized bronze sculptures of farmers and buffalos in them. 

       The main streets into the city were widened and the market venue altered.  Instead of the continuous line of stalls from the center down through the ridge in the lower section of the city, now the market day areas were scattered in separate, disconnected spots.  Attendance on the day I witnessed was only about a quarter of that in the so recent past.  But other market days were as full and lively as ever.  And the wonderful rice terraces flanking the city were untouched.  Yuanyang was still a county replete with color, in the landscapes and in the amazing diversity of its peoples, colors that would never fade.

sunset on the terraces south of Xinjie

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               For more on Ailaoshan and its people, see my e-book  The Terrace Builders

Babao to Haizibian: Through the Middle of Wenshan

                          by Jim Goodman

the hill scenery at Babao

       Twenty years ago I had an assignment to revise and update the Yunnan and Guangzi chapters for the Insight guidebook to China.  This was my only trip to China in which I ventured beyond Yunnan.  Certainly the scenery along the Li River from Guilin to Yangshuo is a spectacular sight, but the rest of the destinations, like drab and gray Nanning, were not so impressive.

       Moreover, the local Chinese were unlike what I’d become used to in five years of journeys through Yunnan.  They were polite, but my conversations were always brief, ending shortly after they learned what my occupation was—researching the ethnic minorities in Yunnan.  They knew nothing about ethnic minorities even in their own Guangxi, didn't want to and just couldn’t understand why I found “those kind of people” at all interesting.

Zhuang village next to Babao

       Since no one in Nanning could recommend any minority-inhabited areas anywhere near the city, I decided, having finished my work there, to curtail my exploration of Guangxi.  With the remaining time on my visa I would visit a place in Yunnan where I had not yet been—Wenshan Prefecture in the southeast.  I bought an overnight bus ticket to Babao because I’d seen a nice photograph of the hills there in a big Yunnan picture book. 

       Arriving about noon, I checked into a guesthouse in the center of the old town and had a meal in its restaurant before I started wandering around.  While I was eating I heard the only other customer, a Chinese man, ask the manager, ‘What’s the foreigner doing here?’  ‘Probably the scenery,’ the other replied.  ‘Also for the ethnic minorities,’ I told them.  ‘You are interested in the ethnic minorities?’ the manager asked me.  ‘Yes.’  “Then when you finish your meal, go out the door and turn right at the first street until you are past the hill.  Then turn right again.  There’s a Zhuang village there.  You will like it.  They still keep the traditional statues over the house doorway to keep away evil spirits.”

Zhuang women laying out warp threads for the loom

       What a different attitude towards minorities that was compared to my encounters with Han people in Guangxi.   Anyone could have told me how to get to the nearest Zhuang village.  But here was a Han resident informing me not just of the directions, but also of a particular minority cultural trait he thought would pique my interest.  In my time in Babao I found the Han people quite appreciative of their Zhuang neighbors, considering them a prime asset of the district, as well as the Miao and Yao, who lived further away but were frequent visitors.  They have had a longer and closer relationship with the minorities than the Han have in Guilin, Liuzhou and Nanning.  Consequently, they view them not as inferiors, but as interesting equals.

typical Zhuang house near Babao

       I took the manager’s advice and soon entered Babao’s scenic hill area.  A Zhuang village lay at the base of the nearest hill, of mud-brick houses with tile roofs and, as the manager had promised, a niche above the doorway holding a snarling, lion-like creature.  Two women in a lane were busy laying out the warp threads that would be mounted later on a loom.  The women’s clothing wasn’t particularly attractive—medium blue, side-fastened jacket over black trousers and a white turban on the heads.  But all the Zhuang women wore it.

villagers coming to Babaoi  for market day

       Villagers were full of smiles upon meeting me and soon folks invited me in for tea.  They hadn’t had many foreign visitors back then, if any, and my presence was a sensation for the children.  They followed me all through the village, bursting into animated discussion whenever I stopped to take a photograph.  The hill behind the village had a staircase to a viewing platform at the top, but the children didn’t ascend it with me.

       This is the best view of the landscape Wenshan people call Little Guilin.  Looking east, the limestone hills, generally 50-200 meters high, in a variety of shapes, rise above a perfectly flat plain, with a river meandering among them.  Zhuang villages of 50-60 houses, densely clustered, lay beside many of the hills, their rice fields filling the spaces between them.  The hills can have very smooth sides, look like cones or gumdrops or crouching cats, covered with green vegetation, but too stony to make terraced farms.

Zhuang villagers bringing storage baskets to sell

       The same river also runs through the town, crossed by stone bridges, straight and arched, that add to Babao’s atmosphere.  It rained throughout my first night there, making an excursion to the waterfalls next day impossible, for no vehicle would chance taking the unpaved road.  But it was market day that day, when those bridges were active with rural folks coming into town.   The rain was occasionally heavy, but mostly just a drizzle and ceased by the afternoon.

       Local residents and villagers set up early, with stalls selling clothing, shoes, household goods, toiletries, cosmetics, noodle dishes and snacks, as well as vegetables, grain, bee larvae, tools, fishing nets and baskets.  Zhuang villagers also brought huge bamboo storage baskets to sell and men carried small pigs in bunches, tied up and suspended from each end of a balance pole.  By mid-morning Miao from the surrounding hills arrived, some selling Miao women’s clothing components and accessories.

a rainy market day in Babao

       Two kinds of Miao turned up.  Women of the more numerous group wore plain, side-fastened jackets in various solid colors, occasionally with some sleeve decorations, over bulky, pleated, knee-length white or black skirts.  Long, rectangular, fully embroidered and appliquéd panels hung from the waist to the hem, front and back.  Another group wore ankle-length pleated black skirts, the top half covered with colored strips, with long-sleeved black jackets embellished with colored strips on the sleeves, hem and lapel.

Yao girls on their way to Babao

       Yao from one of the Landian branch sub-groups also attended market day.  The females dressed in hip-length black jackets and trousers.  They wrapped their hair inside a black cap, topped by an engraved or embossed silver disc.  A bright belt around the waist and strings of beads and pink thread tassels around the neck added dolor to the outfit.  Children dressed the same as adults, but wore round caps with a broad band of colored strips around the base and tassels attached to the top.

       From Babao, Highway 323 ran straight west through the middle of Wenshan via Yanshan, then past the prefecture boundary to terminate at Kaiyaun.  The scenery consists of low, rolling hills, pleasant but not outstanding.  The main changes I noticed en route were among the minorities.   Zhuang villages in southwestern Guangnan County comprised stilted, wooden houses, though the women dressed like those in Babao, except for a few stripes on the sleeves.

Yi women in Ameng

young Yao woman in Ameng

      After crossing into Yanshan County, around Amemg I found the Zhuang women wearing very different, much more colorful ensembles:  short green jackets with broad bands of mostly red trimming on the sleeves, lapel, neck and hem and a wide cap with the front heavily brocaded, a skill for which Zhuang women have long been famous.  Yao women dressed in black like those in Babao, but with a large white collar on the jacket and embossed silver plaques just below it.  Ameng was holding market day when I passed through and Yi women were also in attendance, wearing short black, side-fastened jackets with colored bands on the sleeves and all around the lower half of the jacket.

Zhuang woman on the road to Yanshan

         Yanshan city lies at the northern end of a long, elevated plain, mottled with limestone hills, a few of which pop up within the urban area.  A medium-sized, modernized city with wide avenues and new buildings, it had a park on the eastern side where stood big sculptures of the city mascots—a pair of chickens.  Elderly folk practiced tai qi exercises here in the evenings.  It was a relatively quiet city, without the loud karaoke bars that marred my evenings in Babao.

       In the center of Yanshan stands a rocky hill called Chengzishan.  The Hui quarter lies south of it and an unusual mosque is at the foot of the hill, its central green domed tower flanked by a pair of thin minarets with sharply pointed tops.  A viewing tower on the hill gave me a view of nearby Tinghu Reservoir and the broad farms growing pseudo-ginseng, a local specialty.  A park at the base of the hill provided a late afternoon venue for urban men to meet, relax, and listen to the caged songbirds they brought with them.

the suburbs of Yanshan and Tinghu Reservoir 

       I took a day’s excursion to Haizibian, in the narrow strip of territory between the eastern and western chunks of the county, sited next to the natural body of water called Bathing Fairies Lake (Yuxianhu).  It is bounded by low hills on the southern shore, contains several small islands, a Zhuang village at the near end and a Miao settlement at the far end, with water clean enough to be drawn by villagers for domestic use.  Apparently attempts had been made to turn it into a resort, for groups of floating cabins lay just offshore and the village’s Qing Dynasty temple had been turned into a hotel, with the former monks’ quarters transformed into rooms for guests and a subsidiary building made into an entertainment hall for ethnic minority dance shows.  An arched bridge stood next to the boat landing and a fancy pavilion offered views of the lake scenery.

Miao woman near Haizibian

       No one was lodged in them at the time, nor were any of the floating cabins occupied.  In such a picturesque setting, with friendly and colorfully dressed Miao, Zhuang and Yi in the area, I was surprised it wasn’t filled with tourists, or at least city day-trippers from Yanshan and Wenshan.  There were no restaurants or bars in the vicinity, though, and most shops in Haizibian were closed except on market days.   

       I hiked the trail along the shore to the Miao village near the end of the lake.  All the women wore their traditional outfits of pleated batik skirts and bright jackets, heavily embellished with strips of embroidery and appliqué.  I watched a weaver at work and got invited inside next door for tea, liquor and snacks.  Then I wandered around the village and its mud-brick, tiled, one-story houses before returning to the trail along the lake back to Haizibian and flagging down a minibus going to Yanshan.

       My time then was too limited to stay longer.  So I added Haizibian to the list of places in Yunnan I wanted to further explore one day.  Ten years later, while heading for Kaiyuan, west of Wenshan, I detoured to Haizibian to stay a couple nights and get a second look.  I wanted to stay in the old temple converted into a hotel, but it was locked, the rooms shuttered and the entertainment hall turned into a storage room for crops.  I had to settle for a room above a small shop.

Bathing Fairies Lake (Yuxianhu), Haizibian

       The resort not only had not revived, it was in ruins.  The bridge was mostly under water, the boats gone, the floating cabins dismantled and the few restaurants and viewing pavilions on the shore empty, stripped of their glass and furniture.  Nevertheless, the lake was still beautiful, village architecture still the same and people just as friendly as on my initial visit. 

       Luckily for me, it was the peak of market day when I arrived.  All of Haizibian’s fifty or more shops were open and local ethnic minorities set up stalls on the streets to sell products of their villages.  Besides the nearby Miao, the market attracted many Yi and Zhuang, whose women all dressed traditional style.  The Yi here are a branch of the Sani, who also live in neighboring Qiubei County.  They wore blue jackets, white if unmarried, with contrasting colored bands around the sleeves and along the lapel. 

       Zhuang women dressed much more colorfully than those in Babao and Guangnan.  Their jackets had two colors, blue and brown or black for the older women, black and brighter shades for the younger ones, with embroidered bands around the sleeves and along the hems.  Over the jacket they wore a long bib, with the top part or edges lavishly embroidered.  Some wore plain black turbans, others a headscarf with a brocaded front, like around Ameng, or a tall cap laden with triangles of silver studs.

fancy Zhuang headdress for market day

Zhuang woman at Haizibian mareket day

       In the late afternoon I walked along the lake and discovered that everything else about the area was unchanged.  Villages still looked the same.  No development projects had added new factories or buildings.  Ox carts still carried people around, not motorbikes.  Rural life carried on as it always has.  It’s easy to imagine the eventual resurrection of a resort scene here.  More people are traveling than ever before, searching for the natural and the authentic.  Unspoiled destinations are getting scarcer all the time, even in Yunnan.  Bathing Fairies Lake won’t remain neglected forever.

drawing water from Bathing Fairies Lake

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Puzhehei—A Second Sani Homeland

                                                          by Jim Goodman

Yi village and Pearl Lake

       Landscapes in Wenshan Autonomous Zhuang and Miao Prefecture, southeastern Yunnan, jutting into Guangxi province on its eastern side and bordering Vietnam to the south, differ greatly from the rest of the province.  High mountains characteristic of most of the province don’t exist here.  Instead, small limestone hills of less than a thousand meters height speckle broad plains.  In some places they appear in scenic clusters and Puzhehei, in Qiubei County, where lakes, streams and ethnic minority villages flank the hills, is the most beautiful example.

       About 13 km north of Qiubei city a road bends west to a flat plain studded with small hills and scattered Miao, Han and Zhuang settlements.  It’s another two or three kilometers to the resort  at the edge of the lake, while villages in the immediate area here are Yi.  Puzhehei’s natural attractions made its development as a tourist resort inevitable, but on my first visit in 1999 the business hadn’t really taken off yet.  There were a few hotels and restaurants and a stadium where local Yi put on shows for the occasional tourist group.

farmland beside Pearl Lake

       Next to the resort a few dozen boats lay moored in the water, for the prime activity for most visitors is to take a boat ride on the watercourse that begins with Pearl Lake, at 530 hectares the largest of the district’s 70-odd lakes and ponds, most of them connected by streams to form a 20-km boat journey.  The ride includes stops at a few of the 80 large caves within some of the 300 hills in the area.  

       Having already been to the best of Yunnan’s caves, I passed up the boat ride option and spent my time on foot exploring the area, climbing the small hills to get better photo angles and wandering along the lakes and streams.  The hills come in a variety of shapes.  Some are like round skull caps, others look like thimbles, some like straight or leaning triangles, others long and low, one side higher than the other, resembling crouching animals.

Sani village, Puzhehei

       Puzhehei is a Chinese transcription of a Yi language word that means ’pond teeming with fish and shrimps.’   Gathering those fish and shrimps is part of the local Yi lifestyle.  A few families use cormorants to catch fish.  Most villagers take their canoes out onto the lake to cast nets, but also lay long, tubular, netted traps, held together by poles every meter or so, just under the surface along the shoreline for catching shrimps, small fish and a few crayfish.  After pulling in their catch, the people lay them out on the walkways to dry.

       The Yi in Puzhehei are the Sani sub-group, most of whom live in Shilin and Mile counties further north.  They migrated to Puzhehei several generations ago, though I did not get the story of how and why.  Their dialect is the same as that spoken around the Stone Forest and they dress in similar apparel. 

Sani buffalo cart

tourist boats at the resort

       While I did wander briefly through a couple of villages on my hike that time, on the second visit eight years later, I spent more time in the nearest Yi village than I did looking for angles to photograph the scenery.  While the resort area was only modestly built up in the interval, the biggest change, other than increased boat ride prices, was the apparent effort to turn the Yi village adjacent to the resort into a showcase of Sani culture.

laying out the netted traps

       Crossing the stream at the end of the resort area, a path leads through the trees, passes a life-sized recumbent stone tiger and comes to a stone statue of what looks like a sitting tiger cub behind a row of carved wooden figures beside the village entrance gate.  A couple of nice, big traditional buildings just inside the gate serve as restaurants.  A right turn on the path behind them leads to an area looking like the village ritual grounds.

       A tall stone pillar stands in the foreground, its surface carved with clumps of twisting vines topped by little demonic faces.  The area behind the pillar is studded with stone statues of the heads of rather fierce-looking creatures, with big eyes and wide, fanged mouths, obviously demons of some kind.  A few heads lie on the ground, others sit on small brick pedestals and some stick out of the ground two meters high.

submerged trap

       Behind this field of grotesquery a path leads to a stone staircase up the hill beside the village.  From the summit one has a broad view of the whole area, a vantage point to revel in the various configurations of water, hill and plain that change with every direction you point your eyes.  In addition, you can see rice fields of rich red soil flanking the ponds and streams.  Dikes by the shores enclose the lake water in small ponds for shrimp farms.

      The lakeside Yi village below this hill and opposite the field of sculptures mainly consists of traditional mud-brick, two-story houses with tiled roofs, in the same style as those in Sani villages around the Stone Forest.  A few whitewashed, three- or four-story concrete houses had been erected since my previous visit.  A few of these and the older houses offer home-stay services for visitors.  For this, at a quite moderate price, the boarders get a clean room with a comfortable bed and meals, which always include, whether ordered or not, a plate of deep-fried little shrimps.

enchanting landscape of Puzhehei

       The main village square is just a couple blocks from the entrance gate.  At one end of the square a stone tiger (or cub), similar to the one by the entrance gate but bigger, with a wide open snarling mouth, sits on a pedestal, the surface of which has an inscription in the Yi script.  Several houses in the vicinity have Yi mythological figures, generally demons with big eyes and fangs, painted on the exterior walls.  Other houses have carved wooden masks hanging on the outside wall.  Most consist of a single ferocious visage, but a few include a smaller demonic face or two on the head of the larger one.

       Such wooden masks are part of Yi culture elsewhere in the province.  The Yi Museum in Chuxiong has a display of some that are exactly the same style as those in Puzhehei.  The same masks are used by the Yi in Weining, Guizhou province, in a dance depicting the creation of the world.  They are also used by various Yi sub-groups to ward off evil, represent mythological creatures or in rites to propitiate spirits. 

stone Yi demon head

grotesque village sculptures

       In Puzhehei I didn’t learn to what use they were employed.  Many houses also mounted a small clay tiger image on their roofs, obviously a protective device and a custom shared by other ethnic groups in the province.  But besides the wooden masks, others, round, of clay or papier-maché, and not at all fierce-looking, adorned the walls of other houses.  Yi-style ‘moon guitars’ and the long-handled, bucket-shaped three-stringed instruments also were on display.  So perhaps the masks, like the other items, (except the rooftop tigers) were there simply to proclaim Sani ethnicity.   

       The main square, surrounded by shops and a few snack stands, is also the terminus for the various conveyances coming into the village.  Oxen and buffaloes pull one or two passengers in cabs or haul trailers loaded with bamboo or products of the fields or forests.  Pony-drawn coaches carry up to four passengers, residents and visitors, from the resort to the village and back.

Yi wooden mask

      Other than the paved way from the entrance gate to the square, all the other lanes in the village are unpaved.  Unless it’s raining, these are rather active on any normal day.  Village women tend to do a lot of their agricultural chores outside their houses:  sorting chilies, binding bundles of spices, stacking firewood, shelling maize and laying out their freshly harvested grain for drying.    

       In the traditional Sani division of labor, men do the heavy agricultural work like plowing and threshing.  They are also responsible for the fishing and take their boats out onto the lake from early to mid-morning and maybe again around an hour before sunset.  Usually they go out solo, but sometimes the wife comes along to pole the boat along the shoreline while the husband lays the traps.

       Women more or less do all the rest of the work, both in the fields and at home.  Deeply immersed in the behavioral codes and the work and social responsibilities of women in Yi society, they are more tradition-minded than the men.  They are more likely to be aware of what day in the lunar calendar or animal cycle it is, whether that is a propitious day or one to avoid certain kinds of activities.  They will worry about the influence of bad spirits that the men maybe don’t believe in anymore.  The men are more exposed to the outside world, its new ideas and very different concepts about everything.  The women adhere to the old ways.

working outside the house

       A consequence of this traditionalist mind-set is that Sani women prefer to dress in Sani garments, not just on special occasions but every day.  Over plain black trousers they wear a side-fastened, long-sleeved jacket, usually light blue, occasionally red.  A rectangular piece patched on vertically below the lapel and the sections of the sleeves from the biceps to the cuffs are in contrasting colors, usually black, sometimes embellished with embroidered flowers.  Around the waist they tie an apron, usually white, blue or black. 

       To top off the outfit women wear a round headdress, heavily embroidered on the sides with rows of embroidered flowers, the color red dominating.  Some of these headdresses have flaps protruding from the front sides.  Some women wear headscarves instead, while those donning the traditional headgear while working during the day may keep it protected by wrapping it in clear plastic.

       Unfortunately, I had already checked into a hotel in the resort area before discovering the possibility of staying in the village.  I did take my meals there, though, and learned that my visit coincided with that of provincial Party officials and the family running the restaurant invited me to observe the performances that night that the village would stage for the guests.

Sani village with its view

      The venue was the grounds opposite the village, around the tall, carved, stone pillar.  Three different troupes performed:  young women, young men and older women.   The young women wore trousers that matched the blue of their jackets, which were fancier than usual, with spangled trimmings.  The young men wore wide-legged trousers, plain black or blue with two bands of contrasting color above the cuffs, and were shirtless with open vests.

       Usually in ethnic minority clothing tradition the younger women wear the flashier, brighter, more eye-catching outfits and the older women dress in darker, duller colors with little or no embellishment.  Not this night.  The jacket of the older women was longer and over it they wore a covering bib-apron in many panels of color, with long thin tails hanging down from the waist in front.  The headdress was more elaborate, with embroidered, butterfly-shaped flaps added to the front.

       The program began with the young women dancing while embroidering cloth.  Then they did a number with the young men, playing moon guitars while the men played the long-necked, 3-string lute.  In another dance the boys didn’t play the instrument but instead waved it over their heads while they danced.  The choreography was quite vigorous and obviously well rehearsed.

the young men's troupe

       Even more impressive were the sets of the older women, who were just as energetic as the youth.  They included dances that mimed farming activities, with baskets or sickles as props.  They also danced playing moon guitars or the same Sani mouth-harp common in Shilin County.

       I can safely assume the audience of a couple dozen Party officials appreciated the show.  It was probably a normal experience for them, for entertaining important guests to make a good impression has long been a part of ethnic tradition in Yunnan.  I have experienced this myself in several remote parts of the province, when the ’important guest’ was defined as me, the first foreigner.

      My own appreciation was different.  I had just spent a day exploring the villagers’ environment, watching them work, eating their food and enjoying their company.  Now, unexpectedly, I had the bonus of observing how they entertained themselves with their traditional dances and music.  They did it for their guests this night, but in the same way they do it for themselves at festivals, weddings and other celebrations.  And they seemed to enjoy their performance even more than their audience.  

       Nine years later, following dramatic increases in tourism, the harmony and mutual appreciation that characterized the atmosphere then has reportedly been altered by the introduction of hassling and hustling.  But one first impression I had, reinforced with my return, will surely endure.  In deciding where to make their homes, whether among the pillars of Stone Forest County or the hills and lakes of Puzhehei, the Sani certainly choose enchanting landscapes.

older women's group playing the Sani mouth-harp

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