Brine and Bridges: The Yunlong Legacy

                                                     by Jim Goodman

'wind and rain bridge' opposite Chanfxin

      The attractions of Yunlong, the westernmost county in Dali Autonomous Bai Prefecture, include a pleasant, uncongested city surrounded by hills and temples, an ancient salt mining village and several classic ’wind and rain bridges.’ But until the  recent, sudden popularity of nearby Nuodeng, the old Bai salt village, it suffered from undeserved neglect.

       The usual way to Yunlong starts from Xiaguan, 165 km east.  The route crosses rolling hills with pleasant but unexciting scenery until just before it reaches Yunlong city.  Then the road runs between two towering cliffs called Stone Gate, after which the city got its original name (Shimen).  A more interesting route starts from Lanping, 100 km north, and follows the west bank of the Bi River south to the city. The road passes a few of the old covered bridges on the way, especially around the town of Changxin, several Bai villages, with forested hills above them, and finally crosses to the east bank.  A few kilometers later it rounds a hill and suddenly, just one kilometer away, the buildings of Yunlong city come into view.  Drab, modern structures of concrete and glass dominate this part of the city, but the center has some nice buildings and several parks, and the residential quarters in the southeast comprise two-story, mud-brick houses with tiled roofs.

Yunlong city, seen from Tiger Head Mountain

       Yunlong means Cloud Dragon in English and an iron sculpture of the city mascot stands in the central square.  The office and commercial buildings around it feature Bai-style narrow, tiled awnings over the windows of each floor.  Smaller buildings in the parks and market area exhibit the traditional Bai architectural style and would fit in harmoniously in any Dali Old Town neighborhood.

       A long concrete channel runs through the city, carrying the water of a stream from the hills down to its confluence with the Bijiang at the lower end of town.  All along one side awnings covered with blossoming bougainvillea shade the sidewalk. Running into the city and passing the central square, it empties into the Bi River near an unused Qing Dynasty temple, set on a large stone base, a classic structure still in good condition, but with its interior stripped of furnishings,

arched bridge over the channel

Cloud Dragon sculpture

       A suspension bridge crosses the stream here to a high and steep hill, its summit crowned with a relatively new, multi-tiered pagoda (Wenbita).  Partway up the slope is a small temple honoring an eight-armed Guan Yin.  One of the city’s garden parks lies beside the Bijiang here, with a full view of the hill.  A red sandstone railing along the river features bas-relief sculptures of various animals, not of all of which, like the giraffe and the hippopotamus, live in China.  Yet another park with long roofed pavilions, Bai-style wall sections, potted shrubs and flowers, lies between the main square and the old former temple.

abandoned temple in the heart of the city

       Signboards along the river, erected every thirty meters or so, between the bridge and the former temple, as well as along the last stretch of the concrete channel before the central square, advertise the county’s attractions.  These include pictures of scenic beauties like Tianshi Lake, 10 km west of the city and 2500 meters high; various temples; rope-bridges over the Lancang River in the west; rattan suspension bridges over the creeks and gullies; classical covered bridges in the north; a long suspension bridge at Baofeng, 15 km south, its two sections joined at a tower standing in the middle of the Bi River; and cultural shows like Bai opera and a strange dance called erzige, in which performers dress in what looks like costumes made of palm fiber.

Nuodeng village

       Signposts also depict scenes from the old salt trade that made Yunlong, in dynastic days, an economically important city in Yunnan.  Until recent times salt production, a government monopoly, was confined to a handful of places in the province and Yunlong was one of them.  The wells were located about 7 km away, in the ancient Bai village of Nuodeng.  For most visitors to the county, Nuodeng is the prime attraction and sometimes the only one they come to see.

       To get there the traveler goes north of Yunlong city to the suspension bridge crossing to the west bank of the Bijiang at Guolang, and then south a few km to a loop in the river, enclosing a parcel of hilly land shaped like a Taiqi symbol.  Nuodeng lies on this peninsula, though its evocative shape is not apparent without ascending one of the nearby mountains to get a view down.

entrance gate to Nuodeng village

       After crossing the river on a suspension bridge a trail leads to the village entrance gate, a fine old edifice from the Qing Dynasty.  Inside the gate a stone staircase leads up to the village.  The houses of Nuodeng, some 200 or more, sprawl along the slopes of a hill with a relatively flat summit.   All buildings are still in the traditional Bai style--mud-brick and timber on stone bases, with wide fronts and roofs of gray tiles.  Some have whitewashed side walls.  Most are in compounds with fancy entrance gates.  Narrow footpaths with stone staircases or steps chiseled out of the mud connect the neighborhoods.  At some places on the slopes the gradient is so steep the houses seem to be built on top of each other.

       The brine wells lie a short walk from the bottom of the village.  Supposedly, production of salt began here in the Later Han Dynasty.  By the middle of the 9^th century, during the Tang Dynasty, the village that grew up beside the wells became known as Nuodeng, the same name it has today (though it was often referred to as Nuodeng Well).  Every household participated in salt production.  In those centuries before the introduction of refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food like meat and fish.  So this trade was destined to make Nuodeng rich.

stone stairway to a Nuoeng neighborhood

compound gate in Nuodeng

       To produce salt is not particularly laborious, but it does require paying attention to the application of heat and the evaporation process.  Workers begin by boiling the brine in a large cauldron over a wood fire.  As the water evaporates it leaves behind a residue of salt crystals.  These are heaped into wooden baskets to dry in the sun.  When all the crystals have been released and dried, workers stuff them into a two-piece bamboo mold to press them into cylinders.  The final step is to place the cylinders on an iron tray and heat it to harden them.  The entire process takes a full day.

Yi woman in Yunlong

       Ponies and mules fully laden with salt cylinders joined the caravans transporting the salt to distant places.  A portion of it went east to Dali and beyond, but most of it was consigned to caravans on the Tea and Horses Road to Tibet and the Southwest Silk Route to Burma and India.  The salt trade grew increasingly lucrative in the Ming and Qing Dynasties and Nuodeng won the sobriquet ‘the richest village in China.’

       Enjoying their prosperity the villagers built themselves fine homes, embellished their compounds with carved entry gates and constructed temples to Buddhist and Taoist deities.  They also installed a Confucius temple at the top of the hill and used it to educate their children.  In the Qing Dynasty over a hundred Nuodeng villagers won government commendations for their performance on the national examinations.  Six of them were chosen to be government officials.

       With the collapse of the Qing Dynasty the salt trade, and every other kind of caravan business, became vulnerable to banditry on the main routes.  After 1949, peace returned to this remote area, but the availability of cheap sea salt, plus the spread of refrigeration, doomed Nuodeng’s salt business.  Today most of the wells have been abandoned and only a few families still engage in salt production.  And that’s not to market the salt, but to use it for salted ham, a famous local dish that was, in the heyday of the caravans, exported along with the salt cylinders.

       Villagers prepare this by first draining the pig carcass of its blood and removing excess skin and fat.  Then they cure it with corn liquor and rub salt all over it.  Throughout all the steps they must remain vigilant against flies.  Finally, they hang up the salted carcass to dry for 12-24 months.  Because the villagers feed the pigs corn, yellow beans and green vegetables, and the salt has a high potassium content, the ham has a delicious and unique taste.

temple on top ofTiger Head Mountain

       A popular TV show, “Bite of China,” ran a feature on Nuodeng ham a couple years ago, prompting skyrocketing demand for it from all over the country.  Villagers could sell it for at least 100 yuan per kg, so they stopped eating it themselves.  The media exposure also brought a new influx of tourists, for Nuodengi s a rare example of a large village without t a single modern building marring the unanimity of traditional Ming and Qing Dynasty houses.  Around 40 of them have now turned their quarters into home-stay venues, offering travelers basic accommodations, meals with the family and a traditional Bai social and cultural environment.

Anlan suspension bridge at Changxin

       Nuodeng is also popular as a day trip out of nearby Yunlong.  Chinese from Yunnan usually opt to stay in the city’s hotels.  They may even skip the Bai village altogether, for their main purpose here is to make the climb up Tiger Head Mountain at the southeast edge of the city to the temples perched on its summit.  The path up begins gradually but soon becomes a zigzag trail up steeper cliffs, passing small shrines, both Buddhist and Taoist, pagodas and pavilions etched into the crevices along the way.

       A Buddhist temple sits at the top.  A small waterfall emerges from the mouth of a stone tiger head next to it.  Narrow paths lead to other pavilions on the adjacent ridge.  And of course, from anywhere up this high the view down to Yunlong city is spectacular.  There are several ways down, too, ending up at different points in the city.  The paths are especially crowded on Buddhist holy days like full moon and new moon.

       Otherwise, Yunlong is rather sedate except on its Sunday market day.  Then umbrellas go up over small stands hawking sundry types of merchandise all over the commercial area.  Villagers from all around bring in their farm produce to sell and the hustle and bustle lasts until late afternoon.  Unlike other market day venues in the prefecture, though, the Bai do not dress in the ethnic style.  Some Yi minority folks from the eastern mountains may turn up, however, and the older women are likely to be wearing their traditional black turbans and a long coat with embroidered flowers.

Dadaqiao wind and rain bridge

       Sunday is also market day in Changxin, 36 km north, on the west bank of the Bi River.  The town lies on the other side of the Anlan suspension bridge, built in the 18^th century, its wooden planks just wide enough for pedestrians and pack animals.  The market scene is much the same as in Yunlong, with perhaps more livestock on hand, and no evidence of ethnic clothing.

       However, Changxin is worth a visit anyway for the old covered bridges in its vicinity.  Called ‘Wind and Rain Bridges” (fengyuqiao), They have a protective roof and sometimes walls on each side and were designed as refuges from sudden storms.  Such bridges exist elsewhere in Yunnan, but usually in villages far off the beaten track, never in major towns.  In Yunlong County four of them are on the main north-south road.

Tongjing Bridge at Baoluo

       The oldest, Caifengqiao, constructed in the late Ming Dynasty, slightly arched and with wooden walls on each side, spans the Bijiang at Shendang village, between Baishe and the Lanping County border.  Opposite Changxin a straight bridge without walls on the sides, and built much later in the Qing Dynasty, crosses a stream coming down from the mountains.  A little further south, over a smaller stream, stands Dadaqiao, a more beautiful Wind and Rain Bridge, made of brick, wood and tiles, arched in the center with wooden walls each side, its towers on either end partially whitewashed.

       At Baoluo , 2 km north, stands the other covered bridge in the area.  This one, Tongjingqiao, built in the late 18^th century, is longer than those opposite Changxin, for it spans the Bi River.  Also slightly arched, the bridge is mostly wooden, with brick towers at the two ends.  A large Bai village lies on the other side and this particular covered bridge sees far more traffic, of man and beast, than the others.

       The Wind and Rain Bridges, like the preserved traditional Bai village of Nuodeng, even the old temples, used and unused, are like living relics of pre-modern China.  This is becoming known to a greater number of discerning travelers, for there are few places like Yunlong County so evocative of a bygone era.

Tongjingqiao wind and rain bridge

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WHERE SALT WAS KING

                                                            by Jim Goodman

riverside houses by the abandoned wells

    At first glance Heijing is just a charming little town along a clean but shallow river in the mountainous middle of Chuxiong Prefecture, in central Yunnan.  Terraced fields step up the slopes on both sides.  The blue-grey humps of higher mountains loom to the north.  Smooth red sandstone lines the Longchuan River banks and is the main building material in the town.  It’s not spectacular, but anyway pretty.  Only after entering the town does one begin to get an idea why the provincial government has begun promoting it as Yunnan’s latest undiscovered tourist spot.  Until 1949 Heijing was one of the most important cities in Yunnan and its residents among the province’s wealthiest.
    The evidence is at once apparent in the fancy sculpted gate and monuments at the southern entrance.  Down the road past this gate and off the lanes in the upper part of town across the river stand many fancy, capacious Qing Dynasty houses.  Some have long been unoccupied and are badly in need of restoration, including the magnificent Wu family mansion, with five stories and 99 rooms.  Others vanished with the shrinkage of Heijing, for they were home to a species of businessman that became extinct within the founding of New China and the reorganization of the nation’s commerce—the wealthy salt trader.  Those black holes in the riverbank are abandoned salt wells.  Heijing once had eight functioning salt wells and supplied most of northern Yunnan, including Kunming.  Now only one remains operative, while most of the salt used in Yunnan today comes from the eastern provinces.

roof carvings on a salt merchant's house

    The town’s name is a contraction of Heiniujing—Black Buffalo Well.  It was named after the black buffalo that discovered the well 2000 years ago when taken for grazing in the area by a local Yi girl.  Later on the buffalo fell into this well and, according to legend, metamorphosed into a huge boulder still there at the bottom.
    This was the first salt well in the vicinity.  Serious production only began in the Tang Dynasty.  It peaked during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, when the government organized and supervised the salt trade and regulated its distribution. By the end of the Qing Dynasty salt tax collection constituted 47% of the provincial revenue.
    Heijing produced its salt from wells that were up to 80 meters deep.  Seven or eight men turned a huge wheel, to which was attached a wide pail two meters long to scoop up the brine.  The work crew them boiled the brine in big cauldrons until only a residue remained.  This they pounded and cleaned, laid out blocks of it on the riverbank to dry and then cut these into cakes for transport.   

decorative Heijing house roof

    Caravans of pack mules or porters conveyed the salt from Heijing to various destinations in central Yunnan.  Six sentry stations were erected in the vicinity to watch for smuggling which, given the nature and importance of the commodity, was always rampant.  Porters themselves chipped off bits of the salt cakes they were carrying and sold them later.  Arrested smugglers had their salt confiscated, but were jailed for only two nights.

    In order to acquire the right to participate in this lucrative trade an aspiring Heijing salt producer first had to purchase a license from the provincial government.  Government agents established quotas for the registered producers, allocated the brine and collected the tax on the spot.  But producers devised various schemes to obtain more brine, produce past their quota and sell the surplus on the black market.  Even without cheating, though, licensed producers could grow wealthy just meeting the government demands.

housepost base

    By the end of the Qing Dynasty 84 families were in possession of such a license.  They were the richest folks in town, with multi-story houses and large household staffs. They employed artisans from Dali to make their furniture and outfit their homes with decorative plaques and door panels, screened windows, arched roof supports, painted tiles under the courtyard eaves, dragon-headed water basins and sculpted lion heads on the bases of the house posts.  

entrance to a salt merchant's mansion

     That anyone at all got fabulously wealthy dealing salt may seem extraordinary at first.  Nowadays salt is easily available, sells for 1.5 yuan (7.5 baht) per kg and as a preservative has largely been replaced by refrigeration.  Rice costs an average 1.8 yuan (9 baht) per kg.  But before 1949 salt was worth much more than rice.  One liang, known to Westerners as the Chinese silver dollar, bought 1.8 kg of salt or 7-8 kg of rice.

    With no competition and a constant heavy demand, Heijing’s salt trade generated wealth for everybody in town, not just the 84 license holders.  Porters only had to work 3-4 hours per day to make a good living.  Itinerant merchants made frequent stops and the town hummed with prosperity.  Even the vegetable vendors wore ornaments of gold and jade.
    But it was the rich who defined the public life of the city and patronized religion.  Before 1949 the town and its environs boasted fifty temples and mosques, plus one Christian church.  Contemporary Heijing has but four:  Zhetian Buddhist Temple in the lower town, Zhenjuechan Buddhist Temple high up on the west bank hill, Feilaisi, dedicated to the Chinese trinity of faiths—Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism and just above the upper town, and the Wenchan Confucian Temple in the centre of the upper town.

Zhenjuechan Buddhist temple

     Above the upper town’s cobbled streets and two-story shop-houses two tall columns mark the boundary between burial plots of those who died normal deaths and those who died violently, accidentally, or without having married.  High above this lies a smaller cemetery called the Monk’s Tomb.  Here is the grave of a former warlord who abandoned his military career to become a monk.  After he died a former officer of his built this special tomb and erected six statues of monk-guards to protect his soul.  This site is one of the few extant examples of this old custom.
    To the Wenchan Temple, with its own ceremonial gate, pond, elephant-headed roof struts and old dormitories, the salt traders sent their sons to study.  For a small town, Heijing had a high number of accomplished scholars who passed the final round of examinations in the imperial court.  Their descendants today proudly keep the commemorative boards issued to them by the court in Beijing.

carved doors of a wealthy house owner

    Besides the reverence for education the salt traders cultivated a sense of Confucian ethics.  They honored virtuous wives, defined as those who embodied Confucian principles when they became widows, as did the Qing court, especially in the years of the Dowager Empress Ci Xi.  The Memorial Gateway for the Chaste and Dutiful Women at the head of the lower town was erected during her time to honor several such Heijing ladies.  Even today the Confucian tradition is still influential, for Heijing’s older generation is known for its conservatism.
    That may explain the subdued contemporary nightlife, for there’s little to do after dark.  But in its heyday nightlife in Heijing sparkled with parties and public spectacles hosted by the rich.  The main street was lined with opium dens and mah-jong parlors, where the porters tended to spend the greater part of their time and wages.  Food vendors worked the residential lanes where the salt traders lived.  From the upper stories of their high-walled houses the customers lowered a tray by rope, the vendors filled it with various dishes, the household hoisted it up and then lowered down the money. 

Wenchan Confucian temple

    Aside from the opium addicts, most Heijing residents spent the evening watching one of the public opera performances sponsored by a rich family.  For ten months of the year at least one opera, often more, was performed nearly every night by professional Beijing and Yunnan Opera troupes whom the salt traders paid to come to Heijing.
    Life in old Heijing was easy and good.  The salt traders devoted much of their wealth and leisure to the pursuit of culture.  In doing so they enriched not only their own lives but also those of all the town’s residents.  When they disappeared as a class no one took their place.  Heijing shrank and took on the character of an ordinary small town in Yunnan.  Evocative relics remain, from the memorial gates and vacant mansions to the carvings on the posts and doors, and even the ancient salt wells.  With a little imagination the visitor can conjure a vision of Heijing in its prime, when houses were works of art, scholars were venerated, high culture was glorified and salt was king.

the Monk's Tomb

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