Upper Ailaoshan—Xinping and Yuanjiang Counties

 

                                                               by Jim Goodman

       Ailaoshan—the Ailao Mountain Range—begins in central Yunnan and runs along the south side of the Red River all the way into northern Vietnam.  Ailao Mountain, at the top end, stands at 3166 meters, while its second highest peak, Phansipan in Sapa, Vietnam, rises to 3143 meters.  But most peaks range from 1500-2500 meters.  Lower Ailaoshan—Honghe, Yuanyang, Luchun and Jinping  Counties—garners  more traveler attention, especially Yuanyang, for its ethnic diversity and its spectacular, water-filled rice terraces.  Yet similar landscapes and branches of the same minorities characterize the lesser known counties of Xinping and Yuanjiang. 

      .The third highest Ailaoshan peak is in western Xinping County, called Guo Snow Mountain, at 3137 meters.  Xinping is a Yi and Dai Autonomous County, which means over half the county’s territory is inhabited by these two ethnic minorities.  The Yi live in the hills of the western and southern districts, along with a few Lahu villages in the southwest and Hani in the south, while the Dai inhabit the lowlands of the river valleys

       Xinping  City, the county capital, lies in a broad valley flanked by hills, 205 km southwest of Kunming and its population is almost entirely Han.  Even before the end of the century it was thoroughly modernized, with concrete skyscrapers and luxury hotels.  No traditional buildings existed except for the city’s one surviving  attraction, Dragon Spring, which doubles as Xinping’s wenhuazhan (cultural center).  Within the grounds are Chinese-style pavilions and roofed walkways, a winding “dragon bridge” to the center of the pond, with lotuses in the water and a pagoda on the side.  At the other end of the park are the wenhuazhan facilities for recreation, such as snooker tables and card tables with stools. 

       The main component of the women’s costume is a long, side-fastened, half-sleeved coat, usually dark blue or dark green.  They add bands of appliqué and embroidery to the borders of the neck, sleeves, lapel and hems, including the inside border of the right front part of the coat.  When donning the coat they fold this end over to expose the decorations and tuck it in a belt, with tasseled and embroidered ends, that ties in the back.  They may also add an embroidered strip of cloth over the stomach.  The coat is worn over a long-sleeved blouse, also with decorated cuffs, and trousers.  A blue turban and a pair of embroidered shoes complete the outfit. 

   The other minority is an animist branch of the Dai, divided into three groups—Dai Ya, Dai Sa and Dai Kat.  Collectively they are known as Huayao Dai, Flowery Waist Dai, after the splash of red and yellow colors around the midriff of their traditional clothing.  Basically black cotton with colored trimmings, lapels, cuffs and waistband, the full outfit comprises a tubular skirt, jacket, vest, apron and headgear.  Designs of all three sub-groups are different, but the components are the same.  The wide saucer-shaped bamboo hat with a pointed top is specific to the Dai Ya.  The Dai Sa wear a black turban and the Dai Kat a conical bamboo cap.

       They live mainly along the Red River, in villages containing 20-40 houses of unbaked brick on stone foundations, two stories high, with flat roofs; like cubes on blocks.   Bigger animals live on the ground floor, people above.  Residents reach the living quarters by ladders or iron staircases.  Bunches of fishing baskets hang on the walls or from posts on the roof.  Pigs have their own sties, usually concrete, grouped together at the edge of the village.  Ducks, geese and turkeys are the domestic fowl.

       Because stretches of low-lying flat land are rare along this section of the river, Huayao Dai made farms on the lower slopes of the hills by cutting terraces into them, usually reinforced with stone, irrigated by streams engineered to direct water through all the terraces and then through  the village below.  It’s the same system employed so famously in Lower Ailaoshan.  And as the Dai are the oldest inhabitants of the Red River lands, they may have been the ones who originated it.  The Yi, Hani and others were later migrants to Ailaoshan  and the irrigated titian (step terraces) are not part of their mythology or traditional history prior to their arrival.  

       The Huayao Dai house type was another cultural export downriver, now common to many Yi, Dai, Hani and Zhuang villages in Honghe, Yuanyang and Jinping.  They use the flat roofs to dry crops as well as sit outside to do some embroidery or just relax in good weather.    

The main town along the river is Mosha, which holds a market day every Sunday.  The town’s residents are mainly Han, but all the nearby villages are Dai and market day also draws Yi and Hani from the hills.  The older generations of ethnic minority women still like to dress in traditional style, adding color to the market.  The youth are not so inclined.

       However, when Huayao Dai culture is on special display, like the Street of Flowers Festival 13^th day of the 1^st lunar month, their attitude changes.  Held in Longhe village near Mosha, the event highlights everything traditional, especially the women’s clothing and ornaments of all three sub-groups.  Young women dressed in their best dominate the dances, with props from their daily life like balance poles, fishing nets, baskets and pots.  The skits include traditional courtship routines and booths on the grounds demonstrate various aspects of Dai customs—spinning and weaving, embroidery, making sticky rice, blackening teeth, tattooing, etc—and even invite male guests to participate in a courting tradition wherein the gorgeously dressed girl feeds the boy without him using his hands.

       Besides the Dai, the Yi, Hani and Lahu participants also perform on stage.  The Lahu dance is quite unusual.  Half-naked males dance wildly around in a circle, blacken the faces of the girls nearest to them and then engage them in a mock free-for-all.

       From Mosha a main road climbs south into the highlands to eventually reach Malu, the last town before the border witj Yuojiang County.   This is largely a Yi town, on a plain surrounded by steep, forested, largely uncultivated mountains.  In dress, dialect and lifestyle they are close to the Yi of Chuxiong Prefecture.  They even wear the goatskin jackets popular among Yi further north.  It’s made from two goatskins stitched together, sleeveless and open in the front, 

Add caption

      Aside from the goatskins, the men dress in modern clothing, but most women retain the traditional look.  This outfit features a black vest over a long-sleeved blouse, apron, silver-studded stomacher, black trousers and black turban with colored ends tucked into the top.  The vest hangs open in the front, with brightly embroidered lapels, fastened by a long row of silver coin-buttons.

       The other main road out of Mosha runs southeast along the Red River into Yuanjiang County and the capital itself.  The scenery is pleasant and the valley wider.  Halfway to Donge inside Yuanjiang County the road passes some eroded bluffs sculpted by the wind into tall pillars.  It’s designated the Mosha Earth Forest, though nowhere near as big or spectacular as the Earth Forest in Yuanmou County.  From Donge the scenery is drab and marred by the smoke of small factories along the way.

       Yuanjiang City lies at one of the lowest elevations—520 meters—in the province, making it one of the warmest.  Low mountains across the river are devoid of forests or any vegetation, but the plain around the city is richly irrigated and agriculturally productive.  Because of its open location far from the hills the city and vicinity can be subjected to brisk winds, especially in spring, gusting In the afternoon and howling all night. 

       In a drab town of utilitarian concrete buildings only one traditional structure still stands--.  —an ornate, two-tiered hall at the edge of a pond in the city center.  Pavilions with tiled roofs with upturned corners stand in the winding walkway from the land to the hall, which itself serves as a public reading room.

       Yuanjiang is the administrative seat of a Hani, Yi and Dai Autonomous County.  Several Hani groups live in the mountains to the south, the Yi in the eastern hills and the Dai along the river.  Two sub-groups of Dai reside in the county:  the Dai Ya branch of the Huayao Dai and the Dai La, a differently-dressed group more common downriver in Honghe and Yuanyang.  The women wear side-fastened jackets with lots of color across the lapel and sleeves, worn over black tubular skirts with brightly embroidered leg-wrappers.  They live in the same kind of houses, but as the riverside plains are wider here they mostly avoid hillside terraces and raise fruits, sugarcane and vegetables in addition to rice.      

     

       Yi women dress like the Yi in Honghe County, wearing simply a side-fastened jacket of pastel color, moderately embellished along the lapel, plain trousers and wraparound headscarf.  Besides the older Dai Ya women, they are the next likely minority group to visit the city.  The Yuanjiang market may also have a few stalls or street displays run by Bai minority women from Yinyuan district, 40 km south.
       The town itself is a nondescript boring place only interesting on its weekly market day, when Hani come in from the hills.  But in the Yinyuan plain are eight Bai villages, descendants of Bai who fled Dali during the wars that engulfed the crumbling of the Nanzhao Kingdom in the early 10^th century.  They speak a Bai dialect similar to Dali’s and live in houses with open courtyards behind the compound wall, Bai-style garden at one end with ornamental and medicinal plants, murals on the walls and an open-fronted main receiving room, very much like the Dali area.

       On a small hill near one of the villages stands a thousand-year-old tree.  Its trunk is so wide it takes eight men clasping hands with their outstretched arms to encircle it.  Red Guards destroyed the temple that was once next to it, but at least spared the tree.  Nowadays every year in the 3rd lunar month Bai villagers organize a procession to the tree and perform rituals in front of it.   

       From Yuanjiang a good road runs east about ten km to a Dai village next to a reservoir and then turns south and zigzags up the hills, which rise at  least a thousand meters above the plains.  After reaching Yangjie the road somewhat straightens out and remains high on the slopes.  From here to Nanuo, another 35 km southeast, the landscape begins to exemplify typical Ailaoshan  terrain, with steep slopes covered with water-filled terraces, speckled with tightly clustered Hani villages.  The land just east of Nanuo is the most spectacular section and has been officially designated a Scenic Area.

       The Hani live in mud-brick houses with tile roofs, usually, but not always, two stories and without a compound wall.  The kitchen and dining-reception room are right inside the front door.  Sleeping quarters are upstairs.  Some houses also have small balconies, where family members and guests may sit and relax.

       While the youth and men ordinarily dress in modern clothes, most married women prefer the Hani traditional outfit.  They wear black cotton trousers, fastened by a belt with long embroidered or tasseled ends hanging over the buttocks, long-sleeved blouse and short-sleeved jacket, black around Yangjie and more often white around Nanuo, with some embroidered red stitch lines.. Coin buttons run down the jacket front, with silver clasps at the collar, but it’s usually worn open.

       When the French Mekong Expedition passed this way in 1868 they enjoyed a wonderful reception from Yuanjiang’s mandarins.  These were the first foreigners Yuanjiang folks had ever seen.  When the French party reached the plains near Yuanjiang the city officials marched to greet them at the head of a party that included two hundred soldiers and porters to escort them to Yuanjiang.  Some carried banners, others big character posters welcoming the members of the expedition.  When they reached the city cannon boomed and an orchestra played.

       A century and a half later, foreigners are traveling everywhere in Yunnan and nearly every city has had experience with them.  In many highlands areas, though, a foreign arrival is still a special event.  There won’t be any marching band or procession to meet them, but the traveler will find the people friendly and eager to make the encounter a memorably good one.  For Ailaoshan people, hospitality is part of their nature.

* * *  

                For more information on all of Ailaoshan, see my e-book TheTerrace Builders   

Joseph Rock in Northwest Yunnan

                                  by Jim Goodman

dawn over Dayan, Lijiang's old city

       After a long and arduous journey overland starting from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand, up through northeast Burma, into Xishuangbanna and then through Simao Prefecture to Dali and further north, Joseph F. Rock arrived in Lijiang in spring of 1922.  As a professional botanist who had made a solid reputation for himself working in Hawaii, Rock had an assignment from the U.S. Agriculture Department to collect specimens of a blight-resistant chestnut tree, to help alleviate a blight crisis with the tree in the American species.  He was also to collect seeds of any other previously unknown ornamental or useful plant, native birds and small mammals.   For Rock, the job gave him a chance to go to China, a long cherished dream.

typical red wooden Dayan houses

one of the canals running through Dayan

       Lijiang lay on a high-altitude plain (2400 meters) dominated at the north end by Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (5596 meters), its heavily wooded slopes filled with thousands of different plant and flower species.  It was certainly an attractive place to work.  But although he frequently visited Dayan, the old town of Lijiang, for picking up supplies and taking photographs, he took up residence in Nguluko, a village close to the mountain and the last settlement north of Dayan. 

Jade Dragon Snow Mountain  and the Dry  Plain above Lijiang

       Fascinated by China since his teenage yehen he was still in Austria, (he had already learned to read the language) Rock was there at last, in the peak of health in his late 30s.  It wasn’t a very Chinese part of China, though, for most inhabitants were Naxi, a separate minority with their own distinct traditions.  Eventually, when he completed his botanical assignment, he got more involved in recording and studying Naxi customs, culture, history and especially their unique dongba tradition. 

       The dongbas were a kind of shaman, versed in myriad ceremonies minor and major, who read their prayers with the use of books with a mostly pictographic script, unique in Yunnan.  Over time, Rock with his meticulous devotion to detail, collected the books, learned to read them and translated many.  He also wrote a long and detailed two-volume history of Lijiang.

Dayan waterway

       Rock enjoyed both his work and that he was doing it alone, on his own terms.  He got along fine with his Naxi neighbors, learned their language, too, employing many of them, but did not develop; anything like friendship with them.  He taught them how to collect, preserve and press plants, taxidermy on wildlife specimens, how to cook Western-style food for him, assist his photography sessions and photo processing, but never hung out in a tavern for a drink with them or otherwise be socially engaged.  He was kind to them, looked after their health and family matters, but always viewed them paternally, likening the villagers to children, as he wrote in his diary, unsophisticated and innocent.

old town street

       Lijiang was not the only place with chestnut trees and when Rock felt his work crew was trained enough he took them on botanical caravans to Tengchong, Dehong and northern Burma.  Aside from his botanical work, the journey whetted Rock’s appetite for exploration.  When his work for the Department of Agriculture concluded Rock got jobs from National Geographic for organizing expeditions of discovery to remote parts of western China. 

Rock's photo of a Dayan market day

       Beyond Lijiang he traveled up to Deqing through Shangrila County and the forests of the Baima Mountains.  From Deqing he turned south through the Lancangjiang canyon to the Christian settlement of Cizhong.  From there he ascended the Biluo Mountains, crossed the crest of the range and descended to Dimaluo in Gongshan County.  Mountains still dominated the landscape, peaks of the parallel Gaoligongshan Range across the Nu River already visible. 

       It was certainly a photogenic route and Rock stopped often to take dramatic photos.  He chose his angles carefully and produced wonderful shots of scenery, hilltop churches, remote temples and local lifestyles, like caravan ponies being sent across the swirling rapids of the Nu River on rope-bridges.  

rural road in autumn

village north of Dayan

       Technically speaking, it was quite a chore not only to set up and take the photographs, but also to process and print them in the field.  The camera was big and bulky, required a sturdy tripod and used large plates with a very low film speed, and thus long exposures.  This was fine for still-life landscape shots, but for portraits Rock had to ask his subject to remain absolutely still for half a minute or more to avoid any possibility of blur.

Tibetan village, Deqing County

       On these expeditions Rock brought a portable darkroom tent where he developed the negatives and later made prints.  He dried them by pinning them to lines strung across the shadier parts of his campground.  If the expedition were to be a long one, he sometimes dispatched a couple of his workers to take the plates and prints back to Lijiang.

       Never in a hurry, fascinated by everything exotic he encountered, he also traveled in grand style, intentionally designed to impress folks along the way.  Besides the contingent of workers and aides, the caravans included armed guards.  These were turbulent times in southwest China, with warlord armies and local armed gangs on the loose.  He brought a portable rubber bathtub so he could stay clean and a fully outfitted kitchen for his cook to prepare his Western food.  His meals were served on a proper dining table with Western chairs and Rock always dressed for dinner, even though he rarely dined with a guest, and listened to Western operas and symphonies on his portable phonograph.

Baimashan forest, Deqing County

       He was passionate about detailing everything he witnessed, eager to learn the precise meanings and intentions of the rituals, for example.  At times he included so much detailed esoteric information that his editors felt that they had to take much of it out.  Rock fumed, but in the end worked out some sort of modus vivendi with National Geographic.  They sponsored more expeditions to even further remote places in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai, where he discovered new unknown mountains and recorded elaborate Tibetan rituals.

Meiile Snow Mountain group, highest in Yunnan

       All that suddenly came to an end with the Wall Street crash at the end of 1929 and the beginning of the Depression.   National Geographic could no longer financially support expeditions like Rock’s.  The explorer lost his job. 

         Rock returned to his Nguluko home and absorbed himself even more in Naxi history, traditions and religion.  In his view the village dongba tradition, unique to Naxi culture, was in danger of extinction.  Rock was already familiar with it and had written one National Geographic article about it early in his career.  Now he decided to record and preserve for posterity everything he could learn about this tradition, from the purpose and meaning of every ritual detail to the deciphering of the manuscripts.

Rock's portrait of a Naxi woamn

Rock's portrait of a dongba in action

       He was on the alert for any kind of dongba rite anywhere in the vicinity and was there with his camera and notebooks.  Some were simple, involving a single dongba and lasting less than a day.  Others, like special funerals, required a group of them and a series of rites, maybe even with dances, that carried on for several days and nights. 

Lion Mountain rising above Lug Lake

       In his eagerness to get everything exactly right he won the confidence of his informants.  Once, very early in his studies, the performing dongbas asked him not to photograph the rites so as not to upset the attendant spirits.  Rock put away his camera and just took notes.  When it was over, and they agreed that the spirits were no longer around, he persuaded them to re-enact the rites for his camera.

       Not many Westerners were ever in Lijiang in the 1930s, other than a few temporary travelers.  Dayan had two Christian missionaries and a church, but they made no converts the entire time they were there and Rock usually avoided them.  Peter Goullart, a White Russian emigrant, was the only other Western resident.  He had a government job forming co-operatives and personally a naturally gregarious personality who enjoyed socializing with the locals in the Dayan wine shops.  Rock, of course, was the opposite, quite content at being a loner with his own worthy mission. 

Rock's retreat at Lugu Lake

       Rock viewed Dayan as a place already compromised culturally by Chinese Han influence. He fretted the same would happen to Naxi culture in the villages, with the demise of the dongba tradition.  He went to Dayan for supplies or research or photography, but for social calls only occasionally when he felt unbearably lonely and craved some time with fellow Westerns.  The encounter might just be for a dinner or an overnight stay and then we was back to his research work.    He got along with Goullart, but didn’t cultivate a friendship with him.  Rock also knew Edgar Snow, the American reporter covering the Chinese Revolution, and traveled through central Yunnan with him.  Snow was a bit of a libertine compared to Rock, and his willingness to indulge in some of China’s illicit pleasures shocked the rather sanctimonious Joseph Rock.

A Yongshan and his family

       With his dongba informants Rock kept a strictly professional researcher relationship.  In all his time in northwest Yunnan the only true friend he made was A Yongshan, the tusi (local magistrate) of Yongning, who lived on Nyorophu Island in Lugu Lake, northeast of Lijiang and the most beautiful body of water in Yunnan.  As the tusi’s guest Rock stayed in the island palace in an environment of peace and natural wonders, perfect for working on his manuscripts and enhanced afterwards by his long and interesting conversations with his host.

       The majority of Yongning District’s inhabitants are Mosuo, a branch of the Naxi minority nationality.  The primary difference between them is that the Mosuo are still mostly matrilineal, with property owned by the women and passed on to the daughters.  Mongol armies conquered the area in the 13^th century and Kubilai Khan left some of his officers behind to govern the territory.  These men married Mosuo women, but within their clan retained the Mongol patrilineal inheritance system.  This clan, the A, was the smallest of the five Mosuo clans, so that matrilineality still characterized nearly 90% of the Mosuo.

self-portrait in native garb

from the northern shore-- Nyoropho (top)

       With his innate aristocratic, mandarin prejudices, Rock considered the Mosuo system primitive.  The Mosuo had no marriage ceremony to formalize sexual relationships, employing the ‘walking marriage’ custom wherein the male only comes to the female at night, returns to his own mother’s house in the morning, and all children belong to the mother’s side.  This left the woman free to change partners to try to get pregnant, since it didn’t matter who the father was.  Rock simply assumed that meant they were naturally promiscuous.

       Rock didn’t go to Lugu Lake to research the Mosuo, anyway, but as a place to relax and put his Naxi research findings in order.  From Nyoropho he had a direct view across the 2700 meters-high lake to Lion Mountain, rising to over 4000 meters on the northwest shore.  He rarely left the island on his sojourns there and relished the relationship he had with A Yongshan, his best friend in China.  Unfortunately, this friend died in the summer of 1933 and Rock never found an equivalent replacement.

witness to a dongba rite

      Rock took solace in his work, for he was convinced of its importance.  Other scholars were specializing in Tibetan studies but he himself was the only one working with the Naxi tradition.  Besides, he didn’t particularly like Tibetans; interesting rituals but as a people dirty and uncouth.  He didn’t like the Yi in the mountains, either, partly for the same reasons but also for their slave system.  He was never inclined to visit them, but given Rock’s mandarin pretensions, one wonders what might have happened had he visited a village and been hosted in grand style by a Black Yi aristocrat.  Maybe he would have learned about the bimaw, the Yi dongba equivalent, and the Yi books with a separate alphabet, covering Yi myth and history, legends, prayers, riddles and pharmacopoeia.  A change of opinion, then?

       Rock quite liked Naxi people, however, and maintained friendly relationships with his staff and his neighbors.  The aim he had set for himself, to record the entire history of the Naxi nationality, translate the dongba manuscripts, record and explain all the traditional rituals, was enormous.  And in view of the cultural threat coming from modernization and assimilation, Rock was in a race against time.  He devoted as much time and energy to his projects as humanly possible, until the new post-Revolution government in August 1949, forced Rock to pack up his boxes of research and leave China.  He was never allowed back.

       Just as Rock had foreseen, changes soon overtook the old ways.  The dongba tradition was all but forcibly wiped out, surviving only in remote villages.  Decades later, with the launch of the Reform Era, minority culture was no longer disparaged.  It didn’t mean every ancient practice revived, but it did enhance pride and interest in ethnic culture and history.  For the Naxi, with a very unique history and culture, the prime source of information is the work of Joseph F. Rock, the prescient preserver of their ancient traditions, a man who worked passionately to achieve just this kind of legacy.

Dayan 45 years after Rock's departure

                                                                   * * *           

.  for more on Joseph Rock, Lijiang and the Naxi, see my e-book Children of the Jade Dragon

Land of Opportunity: Chinese Migration to Southern Vietnam.

               

                                                                      by Jim Goodman

modern Chinese temple in Chợ Lợn, Hô Chi Minh City

       With the collapse of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, many Chinese who were not confident about their future under their new Manchu overlords, opted to leave China altogether for overseas relocation.  A popular choice was Faifo, today’s Hội An, a thriving port in Central Vietnam that already had a resident Chinese community since the mid-15^th century.   In 1567 the Ming Court legalized overseas trade to the south, though not to Japan, and more Chinese arrived to set up trade, joining the Japanese and Vietnamese already there.

street in old Hội An

       The new wave of immigrants after 1644 made the Chinese community the largest in Faifo.  Known as the Minh Hương (Ming loyalists), they first moved into Trần Phụ and Lê Lợi Streets  and later organized themselves into separate communities linked by place of origin in China.  Each built its own temple and communal house, still in use and among the city’s main tourist attractions.  The principal Chinese trade item was silk, which mostly went to the Japanese in exchange for silver. 

       At that time Vietnam was divided.  Though the Lê Emperor was the figurehead ruler of the nation, two families, both from Thanh Hoá province, formed competing governments.  The Trịnh Lords ruled the north down to what is now Quảng Bình, while the Nguyễn Lords governed the lands south all the way to Nha Trang.  Hostilities between the two sides broke out periodically for two generations.  Four Trịnh invasions failed and one Nguyễn counter-invasion also failed.  In 1672 the two sides signed a truce and established a boundary between them that remained intact for over a century.

Chinese assembly hall in Hội An

       Faifo was the Nguyễn regime’s first and most important port.  During the trading season the city hosted great fairs featuring both luxury goods like silk, aromatic woods and jewelry and local products like sugar, pepper, rattan, cinnamon, musk, eaglewood, lac and gold.  Taxes collected on Faifo’s commerce, while deliberately moderate, nevertheless were the single biggest source of state revenue.

       Meanwhile, back in China, though the Manchus had declared a new dynasty, they did not yet directly control all of the country.  In the south they made agreements with ex-Ming generals to rule on behalf of Beijing with a large degree of local autonomy, even the right to collect taxes of their own and keep their armed units.  Eventually the local governors decided they could ignore the Qing Court entirely and revolted in the 1670s.  Under the young, untested new sovereign the Kang Xi Emperor, Qing forces subdued all the revolts and extinguished the last Ming restoration attempt.

Chinese temple courtyard, Hội An

       In the waning years of the revolt a group of 3000 armed Ming soldiers arrived in the Nguyển Lords’ realm seeking asylum.  For security reasons the Nguyễn Court did not want them settled anywhere near the capital.  And to refuse them asylum was to invite trouble.  So the Court split them into two groups and dispatched them to Biên Hoà and Mỹ Tho in the Mekong Delta.  It didn’t actually have any authority to do this, for the Nguyễn state’s borders then were only as far south as today’s Khánh Hòa province.

Hà Tiên harbor

       Nominally, the Delta was part of Cambodia, but it was largely swamp back then, with most Khmer settlements near the mouth of the Mekong, too far for direct government control and so autonomous from the beginning.  Moreover, instability at the Cambodian Court was the norm, as royal factions fought each other for power.  Too weak to prevail on their own they sought allies from Siam or Vietnam.  In 1679 a pro-Vietnamese king ruled in Udong, Cambodia’s capital, so getting permission to settle the Chinese in Biên Hoà and Mỹ Tho was no problem.

       Now that the truce with the Trịnh regime was in effect, the Nguyễn Lords began turning their ambitions to the south.  Vietnamese had just started clearing land in Đông Nai and the Nguyễn Court hoped the admission of Chinese settlers would enhance river commerce and provide stability for further Vietnamese immigration.  In Biên Hoà this worked out according to expectations, but in Myỹ Tho Yang Yandi set up a pirate regime that preyed on all commerce.  He was later killed by his subordinate Huang Jin, who built a fort at Mỹ Tho and continued to harass river traffic.

Chinese temple in Hà Tiên

imported deity--the Jade Emperor, Hô Chí Minh City

       In 1686 the Nguyễn Court dispatched 6000 soldiers to defeat Huang Jin’s forces and took control of the fort, which became their base for eliminating the piracy threat.  In 1698 they demolished it.  That year the regime also took formal control of Biên Hoà and Prey Nokor, to be renamed Saigon, while more Vietnamese and Chinese immigrants arrived.  Many of the Minh Hương took Vietnamese wives and learned to speak Vietnamese, while retaining their Chinese identity and customs. 

Tuê Thánh Chinese temple, Hô Chí Minh City

       A large proportion of the Minh Hương came from Fujian, one of the provinces in the Revolt of the Three Feudatories.   Another group of Ming Chinese exiles, from Guangdong and led by Mạc Cưu, at first settled in eastern Cambodia and in 1700, with the permission of the Cambodian Court, Mạc Cưu founded a new city, called Hà Tiên, at what is now the southwestern tip of Vietnam.  With an excellent harbor, a mixed population of Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Malay and Siamese, Hà Tiên became the most important port in the Gulf of Thailand.

temple interior, Chợ Lợn

      The third group of Chinese immigrants, called the Thanh Nhân, came during the 18^th century, from different parts of south and central China.  They maintained the hair braids and clothing style of Qing China, did not intermarry with Vietnamese, nor learn their language.  They organized themselves in associations called bang, based on regional affiliations, and raised military units to keep the peace.  Saigon drew a great number of them and they were responsible for the city’s commercial growth.

       Among the three groups, the Minh Hương came closest to assimilation.  Some of them rose to become ministers and advisors in the Nguyễn Lords’ government.  Mạc Cưu’s faction from Guangdong became an early and faithful ally of the Nguyễn Court.  While the Thanh Nhân group stayed aloof from Vietnamese society, they were reliable Nguyễn allies.  Their armed units even put down an uprising led by a renegade messianic Lao prince near Mỹ Tho in 1731.  The Chinese had less interaction with the indigenous Khmer, but in general got along with them. 

herbal medicine ship, Chợ  Lợn

residential neighborhood, Chợ Lợn

       The Mekong Delta continued to lure immigrants in the 18^th century.  Chinese set up shops in other towns, like Sóc Trăng, Trà Vinh and Cần Thơ, while Vietnamese continued to migrate from Central Vietnam to drain swamps, build canals and clear new farmland.  They did not attempt to displace the Khmer, just moved into vacant land in their vicinity.  The Khmer were still the largest community in the Delta, but they had always been autonomous, self-contained communities.  Even when the Nguyễn took administrative control of the Khmer areas the Court left them pretty much as they were.

       The same could be said for the Vietnamese and Chinese communities.  The Delta, still largely wild land, was a patchwork of little autonomous areas, with their own military units that sometimes cooperated with the Nguyễn Lords’ regime, sometimes ignored it entirely.   Even the regime’s own military units often acted according to their own interests.

local commerce on the Saigon Rive

       By allying with Cambodian royal factions in the endless succession quarrels, the Nguyễn regime could extract greater territorial concessions whenever their side won the contest.  But it never established the direct authority in the Delta that it enjoyed in central Vietnam.  Subject to its own palace intrigues, the Nguyễn system began collapsing in mid-century.  In 1771 the Tây Sơn Revolt commenced, named after the village in Bình Định province that was home to the three brothers who commanded it—Nguyen Nhạc, Nguyen Huệ and Nguyen Lữ.

       The Tây Sơn forces steadily advanced north, but halted short of Phu Xuân, the Nguyễn Lords’ capital near modern Huế.  Meanwhile, the Trịnh Lords broke the truce and in 1774 captured Phu Xuân.  The Nguyễn family fled to the Mekong Delta.  But the Trịnh forces retreated north later and the Tây Son took over the city.  In 1777 they sent an army into the Delta, shattered the Nguyễn defenses, captured and publicly executed every member of the Nguyễn royal family except for 14-year-old Prince Nguyễn Ánh.  After that the invaders returned to Phu Xuân.

modern architecture in Hô Chí Minh City

skyscrapers dominate Hô Chí Minh City

       For the next 25 years Nguyễn Anh patiently organized his restoration campaign.  His family had not really established a strong base in the Delta and he could only win support by arousing loyalty to him personally.  He did this by cultivating personal relationships with regional commanders and keeping promises to those who joined his cause, even surrendered Tây Sơn officers.  He had several reverses along the way, barely escaped with his life at one point, but eventually united the Mekong Delta people and marched north, took the Tây Sơn capital and established the new Nguyễn Dynasty in 1802.

       To a great extent the Tây Sơn aided his cause by their extremely harsh rule when they occupied the Delta.  Learning of his survival, in 1782 Tây Sơn forces invaded the Delta, advanced into Saigon and slaughtered at least 10,000 Chinese residents.  Their purpose was to crush the Nguyễn economy (Portuguese merchants in Saigon then were also murdered).  They’d done that before in Hội An and Đà Nẵng, but after this incident Chinese in the south threw all their support behind Nguyễn Ánh. 

the Chinese-built Clay Pagoda in Sóc Trăng

       Three years later the Tây Sơn returned to defeat a Siamese naval expedition in support of Nguyễn Ánh.  This time they left a residual military force to administer the region, so brutally as to alienate those parts of the population that had previously been unaffected.  Regional militias from all three major communities joined the Nguyễn side and helped expel the Tây Sơn in 1788 and marched all the way to Hanoi for his final victory.

       The new emperor took the name Gia Long and appointed one of his southern commanders to govern the Delta.  Chinese businesses revived and grew, though the Delta was still very under-populated and the Vietnamese not a majority there until well into the 19^th century.  When the French took Cochinchina, as they called the Delta provinces, they promoted policies that favored the Chinese.  Along with the British and Russians, they had already forced on China the First Convention of Peking, which permitted Chinese to seek overseas employment, especially to their colonies.

       The colonial regime also sponsored the internal migration of northern farmers to unoccupied lands in Cochinchina to make new farms.  Chinese immigrants came to set up commerce in the new towns, though most 19^th century immigrants settled in northern and central Vietnam.  But in the 1920s and 30s, around 600,000 Chinese fled the civil war and moved to Vietnam, mostly in the south. 

Chinese temple in Trà Vinh

opera  performers, Hô Chí Minh City

       They thrived in their new locations, thanks to French favoritism, and continued to dominate business and commerce with the creation of South Vietnam.  With the northern conquest in 1975 and the imposition of a state-run economy, the Chinese community suffered enough to lead many of them to try to escape, like the ‘boat people’, especially after the Vietnam-China War in 1979, when all Chinese residents’ loyalty to Vietnam was under suspicion.

       That suspicion disappeared after the 1990 normalization of ties between the two countries.  Vietnam had already launched its new, semi-capitalist economic renovation program and the Chinese in the south were quick to take advantage.  Hô Chí Minh City, ex-Saigon, became the most prosperous city in Vietnam, with towering skyscrapers comparable to other Southeast Asian metropolises like Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.. 

Chinese opera performance, New Year in  Hô Chí Minh City

       It’s still the most modern-looking city in the country, even while development has sponsored similar changes throughout Vietnam’s cities.  Hô Chí Minh City has a few old temples, but no real Old Quarter like Hanoi, just some remaining European buildings from colonial times.  Chợ Lợn, the city’s main Chinese quarter, (the name means Big Market) has also modernized, but is still a tourist attraction for its very Chinese atmosphere, food, market, Buddhist temples and Catholic Church.  The Chinese temple to the Jade Emperor, in another part of the city, still attracts devotees and visitors.

       Vietnam’s Chinese, officially the Hoa minority, are now fully integrated into Vietnamese society.  While they may retain many Chinese customs and practices, the exclusivity that used to mark the Thanh Nhân Chinese has vanished.  Vietnamese have historically been wary of China, often with good reason, but in general accept the Hoa community as fully Vietnamese.  Relations between the two countries flare up at times, usually over competing offshore sovereignty claims, but local anger tends to target recently established Chinese business enterprises and not the home-grown Chinese community.  

       The Hoa are the main engine driving Vietnam’s industrial and commercial growth.  The government is not likely to upset their role, no matter what happens with China.  Vietnam’s Chinese, in turn, are not going to do anything politically to undermine their enhanced economic condition.  To them, more than ever, Vietnam is a Land of Opportunity.

Chợ Lợn Market, Hô Chí Minh City

                                                                 * * *