Yaks in Yunnan

                                                                          by Jim Goodman

yaks grazing in Diqing Prefecture, Yunnan

       The road running from Lijiang, which sits on an elevated plain at 2400 meters, to Shangrila, high up on the Tibetan Plateau at nearly 3300 meters, offers some of the greatest scenic variety in Yunnan province.  After leaving Lijiang the road cuts through hills speckled with Naxi villages to the Jinshajiang, then turns upriver as far as its confluence at Qiaotou with the Chongjiang, a cleaner, swifter river than the usually muddy, sluggish Jinshajiang.

       From Qiaotou Shangrila County begins and about 20 kilometers north the road passes into Yi territory, characterized by log cabin hamlets and potato and maize farms high up on the slopes, gurgling streams below and pine forests all around.  After another 15 kilometers the road begins winding its way uphill until it reaches a chorten with strings of prayer flags attached, marking the entry into a broad, high, rolling plain.  This is the southeastern corner of the Tibetan Plateau, studded with villages of whitewashed houses and flat tile roofs, with huge wooden drying racks in the fields and thickly forested mountains behind them.  And in the pastures between the settlements and along the rural streams roam the yaks.

yak on a village path, Shangrila County

       Bigger than the largest breed of cattle, with a hump over the shoulders and cloven hooves, these domesticated yaks are yet smaller than their wild yak progenitors.  Long gone from Yunnan, and now found mainly in northern Tibet, southern Xinjiang and Ladakh, India, the wild yak males are 1.5-2.2 meters tall at the shoulders and 2.5-3.3 meters long, with a tail of 60-100 centimeters.  They can weigh from 300-1000 kilograms.  Females are smaller, about one-third the size and weight.

       No doubt in prehistoric times people living at high altitudes hunted wild yaks for their meat.  Eventually they realized the animal could be of greater use to then if they domesticated it, which ethnic Qiang herdsmen achieved about 4500 years ago.  This proved to be quite successful.  Nowadays estimates of the wild yak population range around 15,000, while domesticated yaks number in the millions.  They are classified as a separate species—bos grunnians, the ‘grunting ox’, after the sound it makes, rather than the ‘moo’ of cattle.

spring plowing

       Domestic yaks are somewhat smaller than their wild cousins, but are still pretty bulky, males weighing up to nearly 600 kg, females usually about 250 kg.  The male’s horns extend 49-100 cm, slightly curved upward at the tips.  The female’s horns are straight and 27-64 cm long.  Yaks primarily use their horns to dig through snow and ice to get at the edible plants underneath.

       The layer of atmosphere at this altitude is about two-thirds the density of that at sea level and even significantly thinner than that at Lijiang.  Visitors coming up from lower altitudes notice this right away in their breathing, suddenly a little laborious, especially if walking around or uphill too much.  The usual advice is to take it easy the first couple days until the body is used to it.  Presumably, the same thing happens to lowland animals brought up here, though that’s rare anyway.

milking a yak

       Yaks, and their human keepers the Tibetans, are already physically adapted, for they have bigger hearts and lungs.  Yaks are also better fitted against the cold than people, who must don layers of clothing to insulate themselves.  Yaks have a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and their chests, flanks and thighs are covered with long, shaggy hair over a thick woolen undercoat.  Able to withstand sub-freezing temperatures in the winter, they can suffer from heat exhaustion when temperatures climb above 15 degrees Centigrade.  Likewise, they can become sluggish, with breathing difficulties, if taken to the denser atmospheric layer below 2600 meters altitude.

selling yak cheese in the Shangrila city market 

       Mating season is July-September, with a single calf per mother born in April-June.  The newborn yak calf can stand and walk ten minutes after birth.  After about five years they are fully grown and usually live about twenty years.  They do not eat grain, but feed on grasses, herbs, leafy plants and occasionally lichens and mosses.  Because they ferment the food slowly, they only consume 1% of their body weight daily.  Cattle, by comparison, with a faster digestive system, require 3%. 

       People also cross breed yaks with cattle, producing a slightly smaller animal called the dzo.  The male dzo is infertile, so the female may later be mated with a full-blooded yak.  The Shangrila plain has many of these, but still has a vast number of pure yaks.  All types are used the same way as draft animals and sources of food.

yaks on the road north of Diqing

       Tibetans use their male yaks for heavy tasks like pulling plows and hauling logs.  Being bigger and stronger than the females, they are the pack animals carrying loads on the caravans.  The females are more valued for their milk, with its high butter fat content, from which Tibetans produce butter and cheese, essential parts of their diet.

       Usually men milk the yaks and women turn the milk into butter and cheese.  To make butter they pour milk into a meter-tall wooden tube and churn it with a pole until it reaches a certain temperature.  Then they add a little cold water (warm in winter) and the butter floats to the top and congeals.  Scooping it out, they next press it into round cakes in cold water.  To make cheese they heat the milk over a low fire, which separates it into curds and water.  After cooling, the resultant curds are strained into a cloth and dried into lumps of cheese.  Each area produces a different taste.  That of Shangrila is slightly tart, while that of Diqing tastes best when boiled and served in melted butter.  That of Benzilan, where they add sugar to the milk, is rather sweet.

yaks in winter on the Shangrila plain

       Most rural families own one or two yaks, or at least a female dzo.  Yaks are tame by nature, easy to train and don’t require breaking in like horses.  When not put to work they roam freely to feed and can be easily led back to the owner’s compound.  They are kept in a separate shed or occupy a ground floor room of the house, as the family living and sleeping quarters are on the upper floor.

       The life of a yak follows a seasonal pattern.  During the winter they stay on the Shangrila plain.  The only work required of them might be to haul timber to the site of a new house.  In the spring farmers yoke a pair of yaks together to pull a plow across the barley fields.  A woman guides the animals in the front, while a man operates the plow behind them. 

Yaks in Baimashan

       Spring is also the time the yaks shed their downy undercoat, which people comb out to collect, then process into a fiber similar to cashmere.  The long outer hair makes belts, ropes and bags.  The undercoat and outer hair grow back during the summer.

       Besides the farmers’ family yaks, herders manage numbers of them in the open spaces between the villages, especially in the glens around Bita and Shudu Lakes, east of Shangrila city, Napa Lake to the north and the valley beyond Songzhanlin.  These yaks won’t be put to work as draft or transport animals, but instead are raised for their meat and hides.  In the summer the herders take them up into the mountains, to elevations over 4000 meters.  Baimashan, between Benzilan and Diqing, is a favorite destination.

yak herders' summer camp in Baimashan

      Each family takes charge of up to 40 animals.  They must stock up ahead of time on rice, barley flour, tea and other provisions, for the nearest villages are often quite distant.  To ensure they have the means to ignite fires they carry chips of resinous spruce, and pieces of flint and steel.  They build temporary shelters for themselves, either simple log cabins or tents, often reinforced with a stone foundation.  The rains having brought out fresh grass, flowers, herbs and plants to the pastures, the yaks fatten quickly and the cows yield lots of milk.  In October herders bring them back to lower altitudes, like the Shangrila plain, to stay for the winter.

dueling male yaks

       Herds can be as large as 200 animals, but they are usually much smaller, of 10-20 females and their calves.  Males stay solitary or in groups of four to six.  They can be cantankerous towards each other, sometimes fighting by ramming their heads and pushing the opponent until he gives way.  At night the females huddle together, with their calves in the center, to protect against the cold.

yaks in Yao Shan, Ninglang County

      Besides Shangrila and Diqing Counties, yaks also live high up on Yao Shan—Medicine Mountain—in northern Ninglang County.  The herders here are Yi and the yaks are raised for their meat, hides and milk products and not put to work.  Yak meat is very nutritious, full of protein and with low fat content—3.9%, compared to 9% for chicken and 24% for beef.  The hairy hides make warm blankets and the tails are sold as flywhisks.  In areas short of firewood, dried yak dung serves for fuel.  People also use the skulls as house decorations, sometimes inscribing them or the horns with prayers.

skinning a yak in Shangrila city

       Beyond their ubiquitous physical presence on the Shangrila plain, the importance of yaks in the lives of the local people is plainly evident on a trip to the city markets.  Tibetan women sit behind tables laden with lumps of yak cheese and discs of yak butter.   Nearby stalls sell yak tail flywhisks, belts and bags made from yak leather, slings and pouches of yak hair, tubular wooden churns for making yak butter, combs and pipes carved from yak horn and rows of dried skulls.  Vendors sell fresh meat as well as strips of dried yak meat jerky. 

yak jerky on sale in Shangrila city

       When receiving guests into their homes Tibetans traditionally set them by the fire or other warm place and prepare refreshments.  The hostess will churn some butter, add hot tea and serve the standard Tibetan drink—buttered tea, believed to warm the body better than tea without butter.  A bowl of barley flour and a plate of cheese slices come with the tea.

       Yak products are also found in the temples.  Monks use yak tail flywhisks to shoo away insects indoors.  Rows of small yak butter lamps line the altars in front of the images, some of which are yak butter figurines painted with bright colors.  Butter images melt when the temperatures warm up.  Like the sand mandalas swept away after their ritual use, they are thus symbols of impermanence and new ones made for the cooler months.

yak tails, Shangrila city market

       When welcoming visiting dignitaries, high officials or renowned lamas, or at the start of an important festival, Tibetan communities will stage a yak dance.  Two performers dance under a single yak skin, one at each end.  They cavort while surrounded by spectators and occasionally dash into the amused crowd and scatter them out of their way.

       Yaks are also part of Tibetan mythology as embodiments of gods and demons.  The wild yak was an obvious inspiration in ancient times.  It was unpredictable and prone to violence much more severe than the head-butting contests of domestic yaks.  It was a dangerous prey, too, and so difficult to hunt that those hunters who did succeed were feted as village heroes.

making butter tea for the guests

yak skulls, Shangrila city market

       In the usual Good vs. Evil contests, the Lords of Heaven may assume the form of a white yak, in one story a huge white yak that emits blizzards from its mouth and nose.  Black yaks, with fiery eyes, are the incarnation of the demons of Hell.  In the Tibetan epic of Gesar of Ling, the goatherd Palé happens to witness a duel between a white yak and a black yak.  When he sees the latter is about to win, suspecting it as a demon in disguise, he kills the black yak. 

yak passing by the barley drying rack in autumn

       The surviving white yak reveals itself to be Gyamzhin, the Lord of the Gods, and offers half his palace or half his kingdom or whatever his rescuer demands as reward.  Palé requests that one of Gyanzhin’s sons be sent down to rule over Ling.  Eventually Heaven sends Gesar to be born in Ling.  Among the adventures Gesar has in his career are periodic duels with yak demons.   

       During the winter festivals at Songzhanlin and Dongzhulin, as well as the Horse Racing Festival the fifth lunar month in Shangrila city, masked lama dances are part of the program.  The skits depict some kind of gods vs. demons battle and both sides wear horrific masks.  And on Hell’s side will be at least one performer in the mask of a black yak demon.

       When the dances conclude and there’s a pause before the next event, the audience breaks up into small groups for refreshments.  Most likely this will be buttered tea from a thermos and pieces of jerky and cheese.  They might even consume it while sitting on a yak leather mat.  Yaks are in one way or another connected to practically everything Tibetans do.  It’s hard to imagine what they would do without them.

herder milking a yak in his sumer Baimashan camp

                                                                        ° ° ° 

We’ll see plenty of yaks on Delta Tours Vietnam’s route through northwest Yunnan.  See the schedule at https://www.deltatoursvietnam.com/northwest-yunnan

      

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

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