Red River Rituals in Vietnam

                              by Jim Goodman                                 

 

ritual boats on the Red River at Thô Khôi

      The Red River originates in central Yunnan, southwest China, flows southeast through the province and enters Vietnam at Lao Cài.  From here it continues running southeast all the way to the Gulf of Tonkin.  The alluvial plain alongside it, straddled by many tributaries, is the heart of ancient Vietnam.  Ancestors of its contemporary inhabitants tamed the mighty river, prone to flooding, with dikes, canals and irrigation channels, turned the land into prosperous farms and created a civilization to go along with the achievement.

dancing at the  Thô Khôi đình

       Such incidents were rare, however.  The river and its biggest tributaries also provided a transportation route for the movement of goods and people, knitting scattered and remote settlements together into a social whole and laying the foundations for a nation.  Waters drawn off from the river system nourished the crops that fed the people.  When the French conquered Vietnam they named it the Red River, after the reddish brown color of its water, a name which persisted after Independence.  But to traditional Vietnamese in the Delta it was Sông Cái—the Mother River.  And the aspects of the material life enabled by the river’s exploitation, like wet-rice cultivation and fishing, would be replicated along other rivers, further south, as the Vietnamese community gradually expanded out of the Red River Delta.

all dressed up for the Thô Khôi festival  

       It was inevitable that the river, so essential to everyday material life, also acquired a sacred character.  Whether ancient animist Vietnamese had a divine name for the river, or believed it the dwelling place of supernatural beings, is not known, for the mythology has not survived.  But even today people still believe in the sacred character of the river.  Water from the middle of the Red River is considered the most efficacious for any kind of ritual act requiring some kind of ‘holy water’.

       Ancient Vietnamese traditions include a ritual designed for collecting such water.  Called mộc dục, it involves taking a large jar aboard a boat that heads out for the middle of the river, where the officiating priests collects water from the river and pours it into the jar.  Back on land, people will then use this water to bathe images, ancestral tablets and gravestones.  In theory, any organized party can carry out a mộc dục rite for their own private purposes, but if it were ever a widespread occurrence, it is not at the present time.  Nevertheless, it remains the central feature of two major festivals each year, at the riverside villages of Thô Khôi and Chèm.

stately  procession of the guardian deities

girls bearing one of the 'reluctant' deities

      Thô Khôi is in Gia Lam, on the other side of the river from Hanoi, about 16 km south, on the way to Bát Tràng ceramics village.  The village đình and its temple sit behind a pond a little below a bend in the embanked main road.  Houses and fields stretch out behind.  Together with four associated villages, Thô Khôi stages its annual festival for three days in the latter half of the second lunar month. 

boys carrying one of the 'fickle' deities

       The first day is rather sedate, with no scheduled activities.  Five palanquins which will be used to carry images of the tutelary deities stand in the temple yard and devotees occasionally come to venerate them.  In front of them stands the rack with the very large blue and white porcelain jar, with dragons on the side and little animal heads near the brim, which will be used to store the water.

       On the second morning participants dressed in bright costumes arrive at the đình.  While one woman beat a large drum, a group of women perform dances around the parked palanquins.  After they conclude, bearers pick up the palanquins, six to each, to take the deities on a procession, along with the water jug, to a point on the riverbank just north of the Vĩnh Tuy Bridge.   Their purpose is to invite the deities to witness the mộc dục ritual.

boarding the boat with the vessel for mộc dục 

       Three of the palanquins proceed in a slow and solemn march along the 2 km or so of paths to the riverbank.  But two of the deities are reluctant to leave Thô Khôi, one borne by young men and one borne by young women.  They do not follow the others in a measured and stately straight line.  Instead they dart back and forth, move in circles and loops, go zigzag and back and forth, careen and teeter wildly.  Crowds have to jump out of their way.

      Yet despite coming precariously close, they never fall over or hit anyone.  No director stands in front of either palanquin to guide the movements.  The bearers themselves claim that they have no control over their bodies once they pick up the palanquin.  The deity makes them go forward or backward, bend down or straighten up, lean this way or that and run or walk.  The bearers cannot make conscious decisions of their own and the deity manages to control the movements of all six bearers, simultaneously and in synchronization.

after the duck in Thô Khôi

chèo theater performers

gathering of forces--chèo theater

       Eventually the reluctant deities arrive at the bank with the others.  The water jug goes aboard, robed and mitered priests climb on and the boat sails off to the middle.  There a priest uses a long-handled scoop to collect river water and pours it into the special jug.  That done, the boat returns to the shore, where the palanquin bearers and dancers have been taking a break, and when all are ashore, the bearers pick up  their loads and the long procession back to the đình begins.  The same antics performed by the bearers of the troublesome deities prevail and after some wild diversions from the route the two finally wind up joining the others in the đình courtyard.  They stay there for the rest of the festival.

dragon on the prowl at Chèm

       The ritual part of the festival is over, but the very definition of lễ hội, Vietnamese for festival, implies more.  Lễ is the ritual and hội is the entertainment.  The hội for the second afternoon is quan họ, a special style of romantic singing, in solo or duets, a well known tradition of nearby Bắc Ninh province.

women's rituals at Chèm

       The entertainment for the third morning is competitive duck-catching.  Four ducks are set loose in the pond and when they have swum out to the middle five youths jump in the pond to catch them.  On the occasion I witnessed one boy quickly grabbed two ducks and after a few minutes another boy caught one after cornering it.  That left one duck and three hunters.  The last duck continued to elude them so long that one boy tired and left the pool.  The other two tried to corner it, but when they dove under the water to grab it, the duck popped up several meters away.  The crowd began to cheer for the duck.  It managed to stay free several more minutes.

       The evening hội was chèo theater, a dramatic tradition dating back to the tenth century   Đinh Dynasty.  The cast can be rather large, and the stories somewhat involved, but the costumes are attractive and the dialogue is both sung and spoken.  They are usually dramas of good and evil and the good guys win in the end.

mộc dục on the river at Chèm

tổ tôm điếm booth

       Later in the year, during the three days around the full moon of the fifth lunar month, an even bigger mộc dục ritual takes place in Chèm, a riverside village just west of the Thăng Long Bridge.  Sited on the south bank of the river, the đình’s layout and architecture date from an early 19^th century renovation.  But the original construction was in the Tang Dynasty years and the village is quite old. It is reputedly the birthplace of the hero Lý Thang, a general employed by China’s first Qin Emperor in the 3^rd century BCE. to fight Xiongnu invaders.  After vanquishing the enemy he was given the emperor’s daughter in marriage and invited to stay. 

 

after the duck, blindfolded

      He declined because he wanted to return home to take care of his sick mother.  The emperor gave permission and the princess accompanied the warrior to Vietnam.  The Qin Emperor allegedly then had a big statue of Lý Thang erected on his northern defense lines to try to fool the Xiongnu into believing their menace was still around.

       At Chèm the mộc dục ritual boat goes out on the river all three mornings, accompanied by a dragon and lion.  Supported by a team of energetic young men, the dragon writhes and prances all over the courtyard and then marches along the dike with the lion to the landing pier.  The pair descends the steps and clambers aboard the boat, which is a little bigger than the one at Thô Khôi.  Priests in ceremonial robes follow, along with other ritual participants and some of the festival crowd. 

cockfighting at Chèm

       After a dragon dance on deck, the boat departs for its short journey to the middle of the river.  Apparently the need for the sacred water is greater for the five villages participating in the ritual, for the priest fills three large porcelain jars with it each morning, not just one. When this is completed the boat returns to the pier and the dragon, lion, ritual participants and spectators disembark. The dragon dances back to the đình and salutes the guardian deity with a couple bursts of fiery breath.  That’s it for the dragon and lion performances, but activities in the compound persist.

taking positions for human chess

       The main temple is busy with rituals involving two groups of elders, one male, one female, who take turns lining up inside in ranks facing each other, while the group leader in front center makes the bows to the image and leads the prayers.  The men wear long silk coats, usually blue, black miters on the head with cloth tails hanging down the back and fancy shoes with upturned, pointed toes.  The women dress in matching pink silk jackets and skirts. Sometimes the participants twirl banners or make slow and stately candle processions, but for a show with more action, spectators can turn to one of the festival’s entertainment programs.

       The program will always include a quan họ performance at least one of the afternoons.  There may be a cockpit, where gamecocks go after each other while the observers (and owners) anxiously await the outcome.  A different mood entirely pervades the Chèm version of duck-catching.  Instead of a pond, they release a single duck into an enclosed corral and just one lad, blindfolded, goes after it

human chess participant

dragon descending to the pier

       Another entertainment venue in the compound will be an area for tổ tôm điếm, a unique Vietnamese card game.  Unlike Western playing cards, those used in tổ tôm điếm are much bigger, long and narrow, with 120 cards to a deck.  The obverse side features traditional portraits in the center and Chinese ideographs above and below depicting the card’s rank and suit.  The dealer operates from a booth and the players sit in front at a narrow table.  Players draw and discard until they have a set of 21, the value of which depends on how many cards are identical, of a progress in a suit, whether of the same rank, etc. Unless they’re also aficionados of the game themselves, spectators are unlikely to decipher what’s going on,, or whether the player whose cards they can see has a good set or not.

men's rituals at Chèm

       In some years the đình also sponsors a performance of human chess, wherein people play the parts of the chess pieces.  This is an easier event to follow, even for those who don’t play chess.  The participants, one side of boys dressed in red silk and one side of girls in yellow silk, hold staffs with a Chinese character identifying the ‘piece’ they represent and after a ceremonial entrance they take their assigned spots on the chessboard painted on the ground.

       The two players carry pennants, walk around to survey the set and then indicate a movement by flagging one of the pieces and leading its move, either to another spot or off the board altogether.  Because they are operating at the same eye level as the ‘pieces’ and not bent over a board, it is more difficult to judge which moves to make.  Meanwhile a singer narrates the progress of the game, suggests moves and makes comments.  Like the mộc dục ritual itself and the tổ tôm điếm card game, human chess is yet another unique aspect of Vietnamese festivals, still part of the culture many centuries after their creation.

leaving the pier at Chèm for  the mộc dục ritual

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                                                                    *                                               

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

                                                                  * * *        

Through the Hills of Honghe County

                                   by Jim Goodman                       

terraced farms in rural Dayangjie district

       The hills of Honghe County are part of Ailaoshan, the chain of mountains that begins in central Yunnan and runs southeast into northern Vietnam.  The range flanks the right bank of the Red River and averages 2500 meters in height.  In Honghe County, like its neighbors Luchun County to the south and Yuanyang and jinping Counties to the east, ethnic minorities inhabit the highlands and the landscape features rows of irrigated rice terraces stepping down the slopes.

       On my first excursion I took the road west of Yuanyang City (ex-Nansha) along the Red River.  The valley is fairly broad and villages and farms line the way, interspersed with groves of tamarind, banana and lychee.  The people are the same animist Dai La branch in the valleys of Yuanyang County, and live in flat-roofed, mud-brick houses, drawing water from an adjacent stream to channel through the village.

the lower neighborhoods of Honghe City

       Several kilometers before the county capital the road begins ascending slowly past a rather barren, uncultivated slope until the lower end of Honghe City.  The buildings here were all modern, even back at the end of the 90s, and residents all Han.  But remnants of an old town, the main markets and administrative centers were further up the hill.

      Near the market by a small pond surrounded by old houses a walkway took me up to the top of the slope.  It ended in a park, dominated by a Qing Dynasty tower housing an even older bronze bell.  A view tower stood nearby, looking south across the hills.  But the hills beyond had no terraces, forests, villages, pastures or anything—just lumpy shapes against the sky.

old town remnants in Honghe City

       Somewhere over the crest of those visible hills, however, lived the Hani, the ethnic minority I had come to visit.  I was especially interested in the Yiche, from photos I’d seen of the women’s traditional clothing--short-sleeved black jackets over extremely short pants, with no leggings, plus a plain white peaked cap.   

       Especially when worn by the young women, it was altogether the sexiest outfit in Yunnan.  In meeting several Hani sub-groups already in neighboring counties, I found the females overwhelmingly preferring to dress in their traditional style.  I was hoping the same would hold true for the Yiche. 

       Told they lived somewhere near Langti, 67 km southwest, I took an early minibus there next morning.  After about half the distance we crossed over those barren hills and the landscape changed, with steeper hillside slopes, forests, terraced farms and villages.  Langti lies alongside one such slope, though the townsfolk themselves are mostly Han. 

bell tower at the top of Honghe City

       I arrived mid-morning on a market day.  Most of the villages in the vicinity are Hani, some Yi, and market day drew two Hani groups.  The majority belonged to the Rani sub-group.  Their women wore cotton, indigo-dyed, long-sleeved, side-fastened jackets with some trimming along the lapels, neck and hem.  Plain black trousers and a brightly colored hand towel-headscarf completed the outfit.

        Some of the young girls wore a hat shaped like a sitting chicken, like that of the Nisu Yi in Yuanyang County, but studded with little silver half-globes.  The ancient origin of the hat narrates how a voracious ogre was chasing Hani girls (or Yi girls, for the Nisu tell the same tale) through the hills very late at night.  Just before it caught up with them, a cock crowed to announce the coming sunrise.  Because the demon could only be active in darkness and was powerless in daylight, it stopped the pursuit and hurried back to its lair.  To honor the chicken and commemorate the event, the girls designed the hat and wear it as part of their tradition.

Hani child in Langti wearing the 'chicken hat'

Rani and Yiche Hani in the Langti market

       Yi women in Langti also wore side-fastened jackets, but in light, pastel colors, tied with a belt that hung down in the back, with flowery embroidery at the end of the tabs.  The other Hani group was the Yiche, from villages to the north.  But the only traditional clothing they wore was the plain white peaked cap.  The market ran along the main street in town and ended in a large square.  Stalls lined the way, selling cloth8ng, shoes, vegetables and fruits, chickens, snacks, herbs, etc.  A pony market was near the square and a few stalls sold turkeys or rabbits and one a couple of big snakes, which the seller probably caught himself.

terraces near Langti

       In the early evening two Chinese friends turned up, here for the same reason as me.   According to a Yunnan festivals book the next day was supposed to be Guniangjie, the Young Girls Festival of the Yiche Hani.  Surely we’d see the famous traditional short-shorts then.  Our Yi lodge manager knew nothing about it, but directed us how to get to the nearest Yiche village. 

       After about a 90-minute hike early next morning we reached a Yiche village of mud-brick, tiled houses in the central Yunnan style sprawled across a ridge.  We didn't spot any festival activity or anyone wearing traditional clothes, other than the cap.  Soon a man appeared on our path and invited us to his home.  Over a round of tea we told him of our intention to see the festival.  Well, they didn’t hold it in this village and anyway it was six days earlier, on a monkey day.  The book was wrong.

Yiche Hani village

       As for the clothing, he said the Yiche stopped wearing it in the Cultural Revolution.  Besides condemning it as a manifestation of  “little nation chauvinism” the Red Guards denounced it as immoral, provocative and looked stupid.  But after the Reform Era, unlike all other Hani groups, the Yiche did not revive wearing their traditional clothing, other than the cap.

       The outfit originated with the sub-group’s eponymous founder Yiche.  After escaping a fire in the mountains set by his enemies, most of his clothing tore or was burned away except enough to make himself this skimpy outfit.  But later, after the Yiche had safely settled in the area, women took up the costume as a fashion.  As for the white cap, it dates to their time of troubles.  It was designed to fool enemies when the Yiche retreated to their fields or forests to hide amongst the white camellia flowers.  The enemy would only see these caps and think they were flowers and not people’s headgear. 

Honghe County Yi

Yiche girls in the early 60s

       Our host didn’t think anyone in the village even had a full traditional costume.  Not the shorts, anyway.  He did introduce an older woman who had a traditional jacket.  Waist-length, deep indigo blue, it had seven layers with overlapping hems, symbolizing their rice terraces.  But the village didn’t have a complete traditional outfit to even photograph, with or without a model.  The festival had passed and so after buying a turkey from our host and enjoying an afternoon meal, we left.  My friends returned to Kunming and I stayed on in Langti another night.

Yiche bride and attendants, early 60s

       The following year I returned to Langti earlier in the calendar and after a night headed for Dayangjie, the center of Yiche land.  With its promontories, ridges, steep, terrace-filled slopes and pocket valleys, the district is much more scenic than around Langti.  It was goat day, market day in Dayangjie, and local folks were setting up their stalls as I arrived.  

       Most were Han or Yiche, though the market drew a few Yi, Hani from Langti and another sub-group from further south.  Their women wore wide black trousers and a short jacket, usually light blue or white, with appliquéd patches on the hems and corners, and a belt with long end tassels draped over the buttocks.  On their heads they wore headscarves or black turbans festooned with silver chains and pendants.  The Yiche wore their white caps and drab modern clothes.  The older ones donned deep blue caps and once in a while I saw a single-layer indigo jacket.  Never mind, the next day was Monkey Day, Guniangjie, and surely they’ll dress up for that. 

market day in Dayangjie

       No.  The only action resembling a festival involved a mixed group of youths hiking up to a small hill a few km distant and having a picnic beside three old trees.  Some market stalls stood next to them and an old man occasionally rang a gong.  By one o’clock it was over.  The presence of a gong hinted it was a vestige of a festival, now vanished like the adolescent dormitories of the past and the components of the traditional female attire.

       Later I learned that the last time the Yiche dressed up for a full rendition of Gunaiangjie was for a film company several years earlier.  The company brought the outfits themselves and didn’t leave them behind when finished filming.  So nobody had one anymore. 

       Back in Kunming, a Hani teacher I knew who had written a book about the Yiche insisted I had gone the wrong time.  It was two monkey days later.  He hadn’t witnessed it and didn’t know whether the girls dressed up for it.  I couldn’t stay that long, but the following year I made one more attempt.  Those in Dayangjie who knew anything about any festival thought something happened last month somewhere.  That corresponded to the time of my previous visit.

older Yiche woman, Dayangjie market

another Hani sub-group in Dayangjie

       Nevertheless, I didn’t mind coming again.  Walks out of town to admire the scenery and friendly encounters with the people made it worth it.  Instead of returning to Langti I took a minibus on a newly cut road west to Yuanjiang.  After keeping along the ridge for about forty minutes, the bus then slowly wound down to the Red River, passing the most desiccated hills I’d seen in the province. 

       Yunnan doesn’t have a true desert, but this area is the closest to one.  There must be a hole in the annual monsoon clouds overhead, for the slopes were barren of vegetation, fields or trees.  A couple of small hamlets lay on the hill, but I didn’t stop to find out how they made a living in such an environment.

Yiche Hani on the way to the fields

       Two winters later I made a fourth excursion to Honghe, this time going from Mojiang to Dima in the far west of the county.  Dima was reputedly the site of the oldest continuously inhabited Hani villages and the only Hani community with a record of violent conflicts with neighbors over land and water.  Dima town was just a small administrative center with a modest marketplace and a single guesthouse.  Villages lie on ridges in the vicinity, about 25-30 mud-brick tiled houses above their irrigated terraces.

       Dima’s past pugnacious attitude and suspicion of strangers had long ago disappeared and my reception in the area was quite positive, though I was probably the first foreigner they ever met.  The closest and biggest village was a short walk over to and up the nearest hill.  With a splendid view ahead, I passed men plowing with buffaloes in the terraces and women walking on the roads. 

       The traditional women’s outfit consists of indigo-dyed cotton jacket and slacks, trimmed in light blue at the cuffs and collar, with silver coin buttons.  They braid their hair and add colored yarn to lengthen it, wrap it atop their heads, and wind an embroidered band of cloth around the lower part.

Yiche Hani village and terraced farms

Dima Hani weaver at her loom

       When I arrived I saw a weaver at work on a loom just outside her house.  It resembled the stand-up Akha loom in Thailand, producing a strip about 25 cm wide.  Its reed featured many inscribed decorations and looked very old.  One of her neighbors invited me to her house for tea.  Besides my limited Chinese, we could converse a bit in Hani.  Unlike the Yiche dialect, the one here was closer to that spoken in Luchun and Yuanyang, where I had picked up a lot of common words and phrases.  That dialect in turn was similar to that of the Akha in Thailand, of whose language I already had a working knowledge. 

       About weaving and clothing and even farming I knew the vocabulary, so we talked about that.  My hostess invited me for dinner and then summoned neighbors to meet a foreigner who could speak Hani—a double phenomenon.  And when I ran out of Hani-Akha words I could fall back on my rudimentary Chinese.  For the hill people Chinese is a second language, too, so they were not likely to trip me up on unusual vocabulary or grammatical constructions.

Hani women chatting on the road near Dima

Dima Hani woman

      The most memorable part of our conversation came after I had described the Akha in Thailand and how, except for the farming, much of their way of life and belief resembled theirs.  My hostess then commented that the Hani and the Akha were children of the same mother.  As their representative, so to speak, I was promoted from friend (yitso in Hani) to family (menum).  So here were the Dima Hani, with a past reputation for extreme isolationism, embracing the far away Akha people as family relations.  It left me with a very positive assessment of the Hani of Honghe County.  The ethnic revival in Yunnan had enhanced consciousness to embrace a wider tribal identity and solidarity.

rice terraces next to Langti

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                  For more on Honghe and the Hani, see my e-book The Terrace Builders.