chinaodysseypd

A Tale of Three Rivers

Chinese Odyssey 74

Zhongdian changed its name

to San Ga Li La,

a mythical city

in Himalaya.

On the bus to Deqin,

Azaleas ablaze.

Meili snowy mountains

in foggy grey haze.

MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Naxi people believe that God resides in north-western Yunnan. UNESCO World Heritage calls this area one of the most biologically diverse temperate regions on the planet. The Three Parallel River area of Yunnan (云南三江并流 Yúnnán Sānjiāng Bìngliú) contains lakes and meadows, steep gorges, luxuriant forests, snow-capped peaks 19,000’ high, and some of the most stunning vistas to be found anywhere in the world. The three rivers that run parallel are the Jinsha (金沙江, Jīnshājiāng), one of the headwaters of the Yangtze (长江 Chánɡ jiānɡ), the Lancang or Mekong (澜沧江 Láncāng Jiāng), and the Nu River aka Salween (怒江Nù Jiāng.)

Deqin (德欽 Déqīn), a Tibetan town of 300,000 people sits between the Jinsha (Yangtze) River and the Lancang (Mekong) River. In this same part of northern Yunnan, the Nu River runs parallel to the Yangtze and the Mekong. Deqin lies in the Lancang River Valley 30 km east of the 6740 metres high Meili Snow Mountains (梅里雪山 Méilǐ Xuěshān.) In 2005, we had arranged a short pack trip up to the Mingyong Glacier with a dozen middle schoolers. The glacier is located at the base of the main peak in the Meili Snow Mountains. Unfortunately there was a landslide in the area where we were going to begin our journey, so we had to turn back to Deqin. That same road was part of the Ancient Tea Horse Road (茶马古道 Chámǎgǔdào.) It meandered through this spectacular region of China from Lhasa to Lijiang. In the 7^th century, Tibetan horses were traded for Yunnan tea. Caravans consisting of up to 500 yaks would be driven up and over the Tea Horse Road from Lhasa to Lijiang and back.

The Nu River (怒江) aka Salween River

The Nu people live in the Gongshan area (贡山独龙族怒族自治县 Gòngshān Dúlóngzú Nùzú Zìzhìxiàn) of northwestern Yunnan, not far from Deqin. On the 15^th day of the 3^rd month, about the time when the azaleas first begin to bloom, there is a celebration called the Flower Fairy Festival (鲜花节) to celebrate and commemorate the amazing life of a young woman called Ah-Rong (阿茸 Ā Róng) A-rong’s ingenuity, strength, bravery, and beauty are celebrated by the drinking of “holy water” which comes from the caves. Nu people stay up all night dancing, drinking, and singing songs and prayers to fairies and mountain Gods in the hopes that their fields and families will be blessed for another year.

When A-Rong was a young girl, she loved to immerse herself in the nature that surrounded her. She was especially intrigued by birds, butterflies, and bugs. Her favorites, however, were the spiders. She loved their strength, their artistry, and especially their engineering. How could they create a single thread that was strong enough to form a bridge between the branches of two trees? How were spiders able to create geometric designs that were not only sturdy, but beautiful, and almost transparent?

Living next to the Nu River, A-Rong was well aware of both the dangers and the difficulties people had going from one side to the other. Certain times of the year navigating a boat across the river wasn’t only dangerous, it was impossible. One day A-Rong was watching a mosu spider on a tree near the river and finally understood how this spider was able to get his thread from where he was sitting on one branch to the branch of another tree. By “reading” the wind, the spider was able to control a single thread in the direction of a tree across a small stream. As A-Rong patiently watch the single thread eventually grew long enough to fasten itself to the branch of the other tree. Since the thread had a natural glue attached to it, the spider was then able to use the thread as a kind of bridge to transport herself to the other tree. Inspired by her discovery, A-Rong continued to watch spiders create thread and weave webs and it occurred to her that it might be possible to do something similar. She would weave a web across the river.

A-Rong must have tried and failed many times before she successfully created a rope made out of bamboo fiber which was light enough and strong enough to reach across the river. The story goes that an archer sent an arrow with the line attached to the other side and from this first bamboo filament, the people created a system of bamboo rope bridges and zip-lines where people and goods could be transported back and forth across the Nu River during any season of the year.

Impressed by both her ingenuity and her beauty an ‘old toad’ of a chief decided he wanted to make A-Rong his bride. Although stories differ, the general theme is that A-Rong escaped and was captured and contained in a cave where she died (or some say was burned to death) and where her body transformed into a stone statue. Other stories say that A-Rong’s body turned into fields of Azaleas which blanket the countryside every Spring.

The Jinsha River (金沙江, Jīnshājiāng), one of the headwaters of the Yangtze (长江 Chánɡ jiānɡ)

Although the headwaters of the Yangtze River are most certainly in the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai, by the time it becomes the Jinsha river in northern Yunnan, it has already morphed into a powerful force of nature.

In 2004, the central government had almost completed plans for building a dam across Tiger Leaping Gorge. The dam would have risen approximately 200 meters high and would have displaced more than 100,000 mostly Naxi minority people. Since the beginning of the PRC, nature was looked at by Chairman Mao as something to conquer, not to nurture. One of the mantras of the Great Leap Forward was “Man can conquer nature” (人定胜天 rén dìng shèng tiān.) Millions of people were mobilized to defeat nature for the good of the people. When the central government made a decision, there was no room for dissent.

As fate would have it, however, the right mix of local farmers, activists, budding environmentalists, and journalists teamed up to see if they could halt this project in its tracks. The odds of a relatively small group of activists actually changing the course of the Chinese government were negligible, but a 57 year old farmer and “local leader” by the name of Ge Quanxiao (葛全孝 Gě Quánxiào) stepped in to save the day. Spurred by his success in the local villages, the word spread and before anyone knew, the dam at Tiger Leaping Gorge became the subject of a national debate. Like other projects, this one began before it had been officially approved by the central government. Surveyors had begun mapping and laying markers down where the construction was planned to take place. When Ge Quanxiao realized what was happening, he spent countless hours compiling information and educating the residents. Instead of blindly accepting their fate, the villagers decided to fight back. One of their first acts was to confront a group of seven surveyors and ask them for their official documents (which they did not have.). After being told that they were going to need to relocate, the villagers seized these officials and held them hostage in the field. Later they were joined by nearly 10,000 local people and the provincial government actually stepped in to support the villagers. The protesters were warned that armed police would be brought in if they didn’t disband, so they went home with a strong sense that victory was theirs. The next day, the government posted a flyer saying that no dams would be built without the support of the local population and a violent escalation was nipped in the bud.

The story is beautifully told in “Waking the Green Tiger”, a film by Gary Marcuse and produced by Betsy Carson. The second part of their title is “A Green Movement Rises in China.” Further information can be obtained through www.facetofacemedia.ca . Although not the only movement of its kind, this was one of the first incidents of environmental activism in China. In 2004, a movement called “The Green Camel Bell” was already looking at the sludge accumulating in the Yellow River near Lanzhou in the province of Gansu where it was said that breathing the factory air in Lanzhou was equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

Lancang (澜沧江 Láncāng Jiāng) aka the Mekong River

On the edge of Yanjing aka Yerkalo, there is a lovely Catholic Church founded by a group of 35 French missionaries in 1865. At one time, 90% of the residents of Yerkalo considered themselves to be Catholic. The architecture of the church is partly Gothic and partly Tibetan and there is a bell tower and a huge green cross prominently displayed high above the whitewashed front entrance. The Catholic church of Yerkalko is truly unique and continues to operate to this day. Babies are still baptized there, and there are masses on Christmas and Easter. During the first part of the 20^th century conflicts arose between the church and Tibetan Buddhists, and by 1945, when Father Maurice Tornay assumed the position of parish priest at Yerkalo, there was a Tibetan lama leader called Gun-Akhio who had an intense hatred of the Catholics and demanded all the priests to leave or “apostatize and all their children wear lama’s robes.” In August of 1949, while journeying to Lhasa in hopes of meeting with the Dalai Lama, Father Tornay was killed by gunshot for the crime of “spreading the Catholic Religion in Yerkalo.” Like all foreign churches in China, this one suffered during the first years of communist rule and there was very little contact between remaining Catholics there with the outside world. In the 1980’s however, the church was allowed to reopen as a Chinese Catholic Church.

盐井镇 Yánjǐng Zhèn is a town on the Tea Horse Road (茶马古道) in the far south of Sichuan which borders northwestern Yunnan. It sits about 900 meters above the Lancang (Mekong) River and is about 110 km north of Deqin. Most of the 30,000 people in Yanjing are involved in the salt industry. The name of the town, Yanjing means, “salt well.” Adjacent to the town of Yanjing flows the Mekong River and it’s on the banks of this river there exists a unique process for collecting and processing salt. There are salt wells dotted along both sides of the Mekong, and when the salt brine is collected in wooden barrels from these river wells, it is poured into a multitude of salt ponds until it reaches a certain concentration. At that point, it is transferred into a system of salt pans scattered along the river. There, the intense sun and the wind do their work and in a few days the salt dries and is collected in bags to be taken to the market. Both men and women are involved in the processing and harvesting salt, but gender roles are obvious (although the reasons for the gender roles are not.) There are different prices for different qualities of salt obtained, but collecting salt is not seasonal, although due to rain and wind conditions, output varies throughout the year.

Yak Racing in Shangrila

Chinese Odyssey 73

A mini-Potala,

old homes from Tibet.

Zhongdian had a prayer wheel

I’ll never forget.

The summer horse games

headlined racing yaks.

Tiansheng Hot Springs

best place to relax. MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

One of the best experiences during my college years was my ‘gap year.’ Although I wasn’t aware of the term back then, I knew was that sitting in classrooms at a state university wasn’t really working for me. When a friend phoned in early June and asked me to come join a hay crew at a ranch in Horse Prairie near Dillon, Montana, I jumped at the chance. It turns out that my friend, Katie, had been talking to our mutual friend Kate, whose mother happened to be in the room with Katie and Kate. It turned out that Katie’s mother had once had a huge crush on my father when she had been at the same university. The deal was sealed, and later that week I set off from Missoula for Dillon and eventually to Grant and a ranch on Horse Prairie. As the ‘new kid on the block’, I started off shoveling shit in the barn. The next day I found myself armed with a pitchfork at the bottom of a beaver slide awaiting the next mound of hay from above. As the hay was dumped on top of me and a couple of other young crew members, we spread it out across the temporary frame, and in a few hours we had built a 12 ton hay stack with us proudly standing on the top. I lived in a bunkhouse with two other ranch hands. There was one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a pot-belly stove on one side of the room. The toilet and shower were located in the back of the cook house across from us, and it was there we ate “three squares” a day. Three squares meant gobbling down as many eggs and as much bacon, beef, bread, and potatoes as we needed to sustain us through a 12 hour work day of haying. All washed down with percolated coffee and fresh milk from the two dairy cows that were there to supply the ranch families with their daily needs.

Haying was just the first of my “general education classes” at the ranch. I had similar hands on courses in branding, calving, and fencing. Working alongside families who had grown up on the ranch, I learned how to fix machinery, build buck rakes, pound posts and string barbed wire, construct beaver slides from scratch, and how to build and fix fences made out of pine poles that we harvested ourselves. Night courses consisted of boomers and bars, country music, poker, and hangovers. Finally, there was Old Timers Day in Jackson Montana. It turns out that Captain Clark and Sacajawea had passed through there a century and a half ago and Sacajawea had cooked up some pretty good beef herself. This was the day when local ranchers baked bread, dug a giant barbecue pit where they slow cooked the best beef I’ve ever had. Chunks and slices of beef were put between slices of homemade bread slavered with butter and the sandwiches were given away. With a delicious sandwich in one hand and a bottle of Bud in another, we sat down on a blanket on the ground with our friends on freshly cut fields of hay interspersed with camomile and clover. Cowboys, families, from Big Hole, Bannock, Horse Prairie, Dillon, and tourists who were passing through all joined in. I swear to God, my year out of University spent at Horse Prairie might just have been the year of my education where I learned the most.

And it’s here that I segue back into western China. With a history going back nearly two millennia, every year during the 5th month of the Lunar calendar, on the same day as the Dragon Boat Festival, a three day horse festival is held near a city 120 km due north of Lijiang called Shangri-la (香格里拉, Xiānggélǐlā). Up until 2001, the city now called Shangrila was known as Zhongdian. The Five Phoenix Mountain Horse Racing Festival (五峰山赛马节 Wǔfēngshān Sàimǎ Jié) takes place in a 10,787 foot high meadow at the base of the snow-capped Five Phoenix Mountains. In a similar fashion to the people from southwestern Montana folks coming together from the prairies, hills and valleys for Old-Timers Day, people from north western Yunnan came in from the mountains and grasslands to gather with neighbours and family that they may only see once a year. Children play in the lush grass on the hillside as families vie for the best places to set up their colourful tents. While the boys are busy prepping their horses, saddles, and bridles for the races, girls are dressing up in traditional costumes for dancing and singing competitions. There is wrestling, tug-of-war and a plethora of merchants walking around plying their wares. And there’s a fair amount of drinking and gambling. Finding a spot, we watched horse racing on a make-shift track and finally got to see the Yak racing competition. Not all of the yaks who raced were experienced and some wanted to go in different directions, but in the end, there were winners. Actually, aside from hangovers and betting losses, I witnessed very few losers in this fun time in the hills of northern Yunnan.

Don’t go to Xiānggélǐlā hoping to find James Hilton’s Shangrila. You’ll be disappointed. Although there is no train to Zhongdian, there is an airport and a fairly major highway that will get you there from Lijiang in under four hours. Xiānggélǐlā is very similar to other towns of its size in western China. What makes it cool are its surprises: The Little Potala (松赞林寺 Sōngzànlín Sì) is a magnificent temple belonging to the Yellow Hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. At a distance, it reminds one very much of the Potala in Tibet. The Songzanlin Temple houses 1500 monks and stands on the outskirts of Zhongdian on the edge of the grasslands.

In 2014, a devastating fired swept through Zhongdian gutting much of the old Tibetan town. Some of the Tibetan style houses remain. We had a beautiful meal in an impressive 400 year old dark and slightly smoky wooden home with steep stairs and colourful Tibetan wall hangings leading up to the main dining area. Not far away, on a small hill in the middle of town was a giant prayer wheel with Om Mani Padme Hum inside of it where we couldn’t help but feel part of the cycle of life as we joined the line of local people and tourists who kept the prayer wheel turning. The next day we travelled south for about 10 km to some hot springs at Tianshen Qiao (天生橋 Tiānshēngqiáo) where we spent a few hours floating around an oval shaped pool on inflatable toys and mattresses provided by the pool. Once again, we found ourselves the only guests in a magic hot pot that I’m guessing is a lot more popular nowadays.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

Chinese Odyssey 72

Above the Chang Jiang

we heard an old story;

a miraculous tiger

once leapt to his glory.

In a cave at a crossing

we spotted moon bears

like lumbering dogs

with giant derrières.

About 60km northwest of Lijiang, in the province of Yunnan, on the banks of the Jinsha River, a small tributary of the Changjiang (Yangtze River), lies the magnifient river canyon, Tiger Leaping Gorge (虎跳峡 Hǔ tiào xiá). Tiger Leaping Gorge runs between the Haba Snow Mountain (哈巴山 Hā bā xǔe shān) and the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain (玉龙雪山 Yùlóng Xuěshān.) Legend has it that a tiger, in two bounds, leapt across the river in the gorge at its narrowest point to escape from a pursuing hunter. First onto a giant rock jutting out in the river and from there, a magnificent leap to the other side. Rumors of this magnificent gorge began surfacing in the 1980’s, but it wasn’t until 1993 that the Chinese government officially allowed foreigners access. In 1997, some friends decided that Tiger Leaping Gorge would be a great adventure. Unfortunately, tagging along was not an option for me. Naturally, they took their primary school age kids, and not one of them spoke more than a few words of Chinese. The following are some of the memories they shared with me about Tiger Leaping Gorge circa 1997.

“We took the high trail because they were blasting for a road through the gorge at the river level. There were a number of sections where the trail was rather narrow, cut into vertical rock faces. The girls were quite sensible, but the boys, ‘being boys’ would scurry in manners that caused a few adult heart stoppages.

As we traversed, we had no map, guide, or Mandarin. We only knew that we were headed for Daju at the other end of the gorge. When we were unsure of which trail to follow and saw a farmer in a field, a mule train driver, or another Chinese person, we would say “Daju”, and they would point in a direction, which we then followed.

We stayed in a farmhouse about half way. The place where we slept was a single-story building across from a courtyard. The animals were kept under the main residence. The view from the “outdoor loo” was spectacular across the gorge, to snow covered Jade Dragon Snow Mountain on the eastern side.” (KR)

“Along the route we took through the gorge, the farmers were harvesting potatoes. Every time we made a meal stop we would try to get some kind of dish with potatoes. Since they were fresh from the field it would take at least an hour for them to clean, shred, and then cook them up. It was worth the wait because they were so tasty and fresh.” (LK)

“We descended somewhere a little over the middle of the gorge – I think near Walnut Grove. Somewhere in that region, we came across a crew blasting for the road. They would use an instrument like a straight heavy hexagonal 2-3 meter iron rod that had what I would call a “star drill” tip. With raising and lowering the rod by hand and slamming it into the rock, they would eventually excavate a hole approximately 1-2 metres deep into the rock face.

They would drop a lighted dynamite charge with a short fuse down the hole, and then run. There was no way for us to get by the point of the blasting. The trail was too narrow. As soon as the charge was dropped into the hand-drilled hole, all the workers in the area ran in one direction. Since we did not understand (Mandarin or local language) directions, we just ran in the same direction as the workers did.” (KR)

(20 years later) The hike from Qiáotóu (桥头) to Tina’s Youth Hostel’s famous apple pie at Walnut Garden is approximately 17 km on the upper trail. The hike itself is rigorous, but if you plan an overnight stay at the Half-Way House along the way, it’s a really pleasant and beautiful trek. Lucky hikers might get to see a Sea of Clouds in the early morning. Depending on the time of year, wildflowers remind one of why the botanist, Joseph Rock, was so reluctant to leave this spot on the Earth when he finally had to exit China in 1949. An interesting plant which grows wild along the trail is Cannabis Sativa. Funny how I happened upon similar plants in the town of Dali.

The last time I visited Tiger Leaping gorge was in 2007. We were hiking down to the river a few miles down the road from Tina’s. It was a narrow, winding, gravelly trail that seemed to go on forever. As we neared the spot where the small boat was waiting for us, I saw three dogs lumbering on the far side of the river near some huts and caves. Then I stopped. That wasn’t how dogs moved. I was watching three bears playing on the other side of the river. I think they were moon bears because I’m pretty sure I saw white marks on their upper bodies.

The Long March

Chinese Odyssey 71

On a bridge near Shi Gu

was a plaque on an arch —

told how red army soldiers

crossed here in their march.

A six thousand mile trek

lead by Zhu, Zhou, and Mao

through the heartland of China

such contrast to now.

On a

In the 1920’s the Chinese government was in turmoil. For a short period of time in 1924, the KMT aka the Nationalists (國民黨 Guómíndǎng) and the CCP ( 中国共产党 Zhōnɡɡuó ɡònɡchǎndǎnɡ – the Chinese Communist Party) closed ranks in an attempt to rid China of the warlords. Together, they formed the KMT-CPC Alliance (聯俄容共 Lián É Róng Gòng) a.k.a. the “First United Front”, and they created the National Revolutionary Army.

But this was not what the leader of the KMT, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (蒋介石 Jiǎng Jiè shí), had in mind. He decided to end this alliance by purging all communists from the ranks starting with the 1926 Canton Coup (中山艦事件 Zhōng shān jiàn shì jiàn). On April 12, 1927 Chiang then ordered the Shanghai Massacre (四一二反革命政變 sì yī èr fǎn gé mìng zhèng biàn). The Generalissimo ordered his troops to purge all Communists from the ranks of the KMT. With the help of Big Eared Tu (杜月生 Dù Yuèshēng), leader of the Green Gang (青幫 Qīng Bāng), a ‘criminal organization and secret society’, 1000 Communists were arrested, 300 were executed and 5,000+ “went missing.” In the “White Terror” that followed, more than 10,000 Communists in Changsha, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Nanjing, Guangzhou, and Xiamen were executed. This series of events were the spark that ignited the Chinese civil war between the Communists and the KMT. It was a war that never officially ended. To this day, no peace treaty or armistice between these two warring parties has ever been signed.

In 1931, the Chinese Soviet Republic (中華蘇維埃共和國 Zhōnghuá Sūwéi’āi Gònghéguó) a.k.a. “the Jiangxi Soviet” was established by Mao Zedong, Zhu De, and others in the city of Ruijing (瑞金), in Jiangxi (江西省 (Jiāngxī Shěng), a land-locked province north of Guangdong and west of Fujian. It was sort of a country within a country. Máo Zédōng was elected as Chairman. Zhū Dé was his second in command. Deng Xiaoping and Zhou En Lai also joined Mao in Ruijin. Mao, Zhu, and Zhou enjoyed a long and complementary relationships throughout the revolution.

By 1934, Chiang Kai-shek’s five “Encirclement Campaigns” planned on dealing the death blow to the Communists in Ruijin, but spies informed the Communists, and Zhou En Lai (周恩来 Zhōu Ēnlái) came up with a plan. In the late afternoon of October 16, 1934, amidst a confusion caused by a strong rear guard, the main body of 84,000 soldiers of the Red Army under the command of Bó Gǔ (博古) and German Communist Otto Braun (Chinese name 李德 Lǐ Dé) began its strategic retreat from Jiangxi. Several thousand troops stayed behind to serve as the rear guard for the retreating forces. Among them, 29 year old Máo Zétán (毛泽覃), younger brother of Mao Ze Dong, was executed by the KMT. Chiang’s annihilation campaigns had taken their toll on the communists, and they decided that their only play was to abandon their southern bases and regroup in Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia in northern China.

Author, Sun Shu Yun, started her book “The Long March” by saying, “Every nation has its founding myth. For communist China, it is the Long March, . . .” (红军长征 Hóngjūn Chángzhēng.) The Long March is truly an amazing story of perseverance, commitment, and resilience replete with stories of heroism, self-sacrifice, and suffering which has been told to generations of Chinese children.

Mao, himself, was in terrible shape from a bad bout of malaria and had to be carried on a litter by two soldiers at the beginning of the Long March. A very pregnant, He Zizhen (贺子珍), Mao’s 3rd wife, accompanied him. The child she bore during those early days of the Long March was given away to a family in Fujian. He Zizhen was one of only about 35 women who started out on the Long March.

For a guerrilla army, the Red Army, was way too laden with “stuff.” Besides printing presses and an x-ray machine that required 20 people to carry, this retreating military carried a library of books and documents, food, weapons, ammunition, and gold so they could pay their way.

New recruits were expected to always abide by the 8 primary rules:

1) Speak politely and help people whenever you can;

2) Return doors and straw matting to their owners [doors were used as beds];

3) Pay for any damage caused;

4) Pay a fair price for all goods;

5) Be sanitary; build a latrine away from houses;

6) Don’t take liberties with the women;

7) Don’t ill-treat prisoners;

8) Don’t damage the crops.

Bo, Braun, and Zhou took their retreat south and then due west, where the crossing of the Xiang River (湘江 Xiānɡ Jiānɡ) in Hunan proved to be a major obstacle. The Red Army lost over half of its forces by January of 1935 – many due to the fighting, but probably just as many to desertion. The original 84,000 soldiers were soon whittled down to around 30,000.

In late January, in the province of Guizhou, there was a famous meeting of the Chinese Communist Party called the Zunyi Conference (遵义会议 Zūnyì huìyì.) Those in attendance were definitely among the Who’s who of the early Chinese communists including Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Lin Biao, and Deng Xiao Ping. It was as a result of this meeting at Zunyi that Mao Zedong soon after emerged as the unequivocal leader of the Chinese Communist Revolution.

From Zunyi, Mao and the Red Army took a surprising turn south and crossed the Jīnshājiāng (金沙江), an upstream branch of the Yangtze River in Yunnan in May of 1935, much to the surprise of Chiang Kai-shek. Mao’s capture of the Luding suspension bridge over the Dadu River on the border of Tibet is legendary, although Deng Xiaoping once told Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor to President Carter, that capturing the bridge at Dadu was really no big deal, but it did make for some great propaganda.

From Dadu, Mao lead the Red Army through the “Snowy Mountains” (Yùlóng Xuěshān 玉龙雪山), in Yunnan in early June of 1935. His troops struggled and many died as a result of the thin air, exposure, and frostbite while crossing a snowy pass of about 14,000 feet with heavy packs. The Snowy Mountains were just the first of several mountain passes the Red Army troops traversed. These mountains were followed by the Zoigê Marsh (若尔盖湿地 Ruò ěr gài Shī dì) “Great Morass”, a 10,000 foot high swampy plateau in northern Sichuan where it rained every day. This wet grassland proved incredibly difficult to navigate and thousands of troops were lost.

Long March – a poem written by Mao Zedong October 1935

Red Army unafraid of the journey

Torrents of water, jagged mountains abound

Five ridges flow like rippling water

Wu Meng mountains roll, mounds of clay

Jinsha water sprays cloud cliffs,

Freezing cables of Dadu Bridge

Thousand li snow in Minshan,

Faces of the three armies illuminate

红军不怕远征难

万水千山只等闲。

五岭逶迤腾细浪，

乌蒙磅礴走泥丸。

金沙水拍云崖暖，

大渡桥横铁索寒。

更喜岷山千里雪，.

三军过后尽开颜

Local people in China’s far west were sometimes openly hostile to the Red Army and other times Mao’s army was met with incredible hospitality and open arms. As much as Mao would have wanted, the soldiers did not always abide by the eight primary rules and occasionally had to resort to theft and threats in order to survive.

In October 1935, 8,000 people, about 10% of the original 84,000 marchers arrived in Shaanxi Province. Even though, at its roots, the 6,000 kilometer “L” shaped Long March was a retreat, it was quickly rebranded as a regrouping and reforming against unsurmountable odds. Mao, Zhou, Deng and company were somehow able to transform a retreat into an epic victory over the hearts and minds of the Chinese people.

In his book, Red Star Over China , Edgar Snow added to the story of the Long March. Snow traveled many months with Red Army troops in 1936 and was able to spend ten days almost exclusively with Mao as he narrated his autobiography. Snow used his conversations with Mao and other leaders to write the first detailed account of the Long March from the perspective of a westerner. Through Snow’s account, both Chinese and foreigners alike, began to take a serious look at the Chinese communist movement.

Lijiang and the Naxi

Chinese Odyssey 70

In the old town of Lijiang,

the streets were confusing.

At night on Square Street

we found dancers amusing.

In the middle of town

ran a clear crystal stream

where paper boats carried

our hopes and our dreams.

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The province of Yunnan has it all. Of the 55 recognized minorities in China, 25 of them can be found in Yunnan. The city of Jinghong in southeastern Yunnan makes you wonder if you may be in Burma. The capital, Kunming, located on the banks of Dianchi Lake (滇池 Diānchí) has a climate more like that of San Francisco. The further north one travels from Lijiang into the foothills of the Hengduan Mountains (横断山脉 Héngduàn Shānmài), the more it seems to morph into Tibet.

It was not long after a New York Times article, In China, Rock’s Kingdom by Bruce Chatwin, in 1986, that Lijiang became a ‘must visit’ place for backpackers with their sights on China. A slight segue off of the “Hippie Trail” that already had backpackers camping out in Yangshuo and Dalian, Lijiang had some even cooler draws. First off was the town itself . . . well the old town that is. The old part of Lijiang was a maze. Lanes and alleys broke out in funny angles. There was a crystal clear canal running through the middle of the town where people would float paper boats with wishes. The backpacker hotels were usually two story rustic wooden houses surrounded by small stores selling clothes, curios, tea, ice cream, and other necessities. In the middle of old town is Square Street where dancers, singers, and other performers entertained at night. But that was then, and now is now. Like so many “destination” spots, Lijiang is no longer ‘off the beaten path.’

Forty kilometres due north of Lijiang is the 18,360’ high Jade Dragon Snow Mountain 玉龙雪山 Yùlóng Xuěshān. The Naxi people know it as Mt. Satseto and nearby lived the famed Austrian-American botanist Joseph Rock. I’m sure the area at the base of the mountain looks very different now than it did when Rock was there in the early to mid-20th century. At the foot of Mt. Satseto is a visitor center where stores sell containers of oxygen for the high elevation, and where I bought a fine cup of Hump coffee years ago. From the same building, one can board a cableway to a viewing platform nearly 15,000 feet in elevation.

It was back at the base of Jade Dragon Snow mountain that in 2006, film director Zhang Yimou first presented a spectacular outdoor extravaganza employing more than 500 Naxi, Bai, and Yi people called “Impression Lijiang.” The performance takes its audience along the ancient Tea Horse Road before introducing you to the lives and the cultures of the people who inhabit this amazing region. There are three shows a day (during peak season) packed with singing, dancing, drumming , and story telling all in beautiful local costumes with the majestic Jade Dragon Snow Mountain as the back drop. Perhaps best know for his ground breaking movies such as Red Sorghum (1987), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), and Hero (2002), “Impressions Lijiang” is one of seven live shows that Zhang Yimou has created scattered throughout China.

One shouldn’t leave Lijiang without learning something about the Nakhi or Naxi (纳西族 Nàxī zú) people and culture. Two foreigners who were fascinated with the Naxi and wrote prolifically about them were Joseph Rock and Peter Goullart. Between these two friends, they explored the Naxi language, lives, and beliefs of the Naxi people. The religion of the Naxi is called Dongba (东巴 dōngbā) and is related to the Tibetan Bon religion. The Dongba religion appreciates and celebrates man’s relationship with nature and the spiritual world. The Naxi people have their own music and their own distinct language and literature. Dongba is also the name of the pictographic script that the Naxi developed in the 7th century CE. Joseph Rock actually wrote the first Naxi-English Encyclopedic Dictionary, which is now preserved in Harvard University Library. In addition to his dictionary, Rock wrote 18 journals and books related to the Naxi culture.

Like so many indigenous cultures and languages, both the language and the religion of the Naxi people is fading. The Cultural Revolution from 1966-76 didn’t help things out. Very few young people after that period of time were really interested in preserving the Naxi culture. In 2004, only about 20 Dongba masters were still active and many of them were old. At that time, almost 80% of the people in the area around Lijiang were Naxi, but only about 30% of the school-aged children there spoke their native language and even fewer could read their hieroglyphs.

In 2017, D.J. Poupard from the University of Hong Kong wrote a postgraduate thesis entitled “Rescued into extinction?: the case of the Naxi texts in translation” Poupard asks the question, “Can translation go beyond the text and rescue a culture?” He suggests that “It may be the case that the uniquely semi-oral nature of the Naxi traditions needs to be re-evaluated and recreated in translation, for the Naxi ritual texts are at once written and oral; they can be read, but not in any fixed form.” But it was the question in the first part of his title is what I found most compelling. Can a language like that of the Naxi be, “Rescued into Extinction?” https://hub.hku.hk/handle/10722/241397

Joseph Rock and Shangri-la

Chinese Odyssey 69

There, a ceramic basin

reflected no crowds

just a river, a tiger,

an ocean of clouds.

I saw snow on green jade

and a dragon above

Joseph Rock’s photographs

geographical love.

Amnyi Machen Joseph Rock Rock, Joseph Francis. “Seeking the Mountains of Mystery.” The National Geographic Magazine, vol. LVII, no. 2, Feb. 1930, pp. 131-85

“Before leaving for China, he purchased tents, a folding canvas bathtub, aneroid barometers, cameras, guns and ammunitions. Other items essential to his expedition were furs, warm bedding, trunks, photographic supplies, paper made from bamboo for drying specimens, medicines and for transportation mules and, sometimes, yaks. He revealed a distinct preference for such luxuries as canned foods and collapsible bathtubs. Edgar Snow, who traveled with him a time or two, wrote, “During the march, his tribal retainers divided into a vanguard and a rearguard. The advance party, led by a cook, an assistant cook, and a butler would spot a sheltered place with a good view, unfold table and chairs on a leopard-skin rug and lay out a clean linen cloth, silver and napkins. By the time we arrived our meal would be almost ready. At night, it was several courses ending with tea and liqueurs.” Rock kept the same cooks with him on most of his expeditions and even taught them Austrian recipes.” (from: THE STORY OF JOSEPH ROCK by Gwen Bell, Seattle, WA – presentation at the National Rhododendron Convention in Portland, OR). https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JARS/v37n4/v37n4-bell.htm

I first “met” Joseph Rock in the old copies of National Geographic that my grandparents used to keep in the side table next to the bed where my uncle slept growing up in Missoula, Montana during the 30’s and 40’s. Somehow, they had never been thrown out. To leaf through an old copy of National Geographic was to pretend to be in advertisements for Ethyl gasoline, Chris-Craft boat builders, Great Northern Railroads – The Empire Builders, Chrysler sedans, Campbells Soup, Whitman’s Chocolate, the new World Book Encyclopedia, American Express Travelers Cheques, and to see risqué photographs of scantily clad native people from all over the world. I loved National Geographic and I managed to scavenge one copy of a National Geographic from that night table which remains with me to this day. I remember laughing at pictures of early 20^th century western explorers like Joseph Rock in Asia, Africa, and South America all decked out in their tropical tweeds, starched white shirts, ties, thick woollen knee high stockings with leather garters, and pith helmets.

It may also have been at Black Acre (my grandparent’s home – named after a legal kadigan – a placeholder name – for parcels of real property) that I picked up James Hilton’s Lost Horizon for the first time. To say I was intrigued would have been an understatement! Was Shangri-la real? Since my initial read, I’ve found several stories which support that possibility. The lost kingdom of Shambala has existed in esoteric Tibetan Buddhist doctrines for centuries. In the Nyingma tradition, there existed hidden treasures and teachings which could only be discovered by tertons (people who had the powers or ability to discover terma (religious texts and treasures). There are also hidden places, sometimes expansive called Beyul which serve as refuges to the blessed ones. These holy places are protected by deities who are assigned by Padmasambhava (8th century Guru Rinpoche – considered by some as the “second Buddha”). Beyul are “secret lands” that somehow transcend physical and conceptual boundaries. Even though they may have specific geographic coordinates, that in no way guarantees that you will be able to find them. Their actual locations are hidden and only those who seek them with the proper spiritual keys will be allowed entrance. According to the stories, the physical beauty of these beyuls is stunning. Rivers, valleys, and hills shrouded in clouds and flowers and huge biodiversity are as important as the spiritual quiet which can most easily be described as harmonious and peaceful.

Amnyi Machen aka Amne Machin (阿尼瑪卿山 Ānímǎqīng Shān) is the name of both a mountain range and the highest peak of that range (6,282 m (20,610 ft). It is located in the province of Qinghai in central China. Getting to Amne Machin was fraught with peril. In nearby Gansu, Labrang was held by a Moslems.

“My own visit, what from extraordinary hardship and the perils of bandits, was so brief that I could make only limited observations. So as yet, the world knows only from the hearsay of all the Amnyi Machen’s mysterious valleys, its lawless Ngokok tribes, and the queen who was supposed to ride over them.” (from Joseph Rock in the February, 1930 National Geographic article “Seeking the Mountains of Mystery)

“The nearby Hetso (合作 Hézuò) monastery was plundered and a Living Buddha was slain.” Rock continues. “One hundred fifty-four Tibetan heads were strung about the walls of the Moslem garrison like a garland of flowers. Heads of young girls and children decorated the posts in front of the barracks.” “Among this carnage,” Rock concludes, “we were forced to give up, for the time being, any hopes of marching on to our difficult goal.”

A year later, he tried again. After spending some time in Labrang in fascinating conversations with the Abbot of Labrang who believed that the Earth was flat and assured Joseph Rock that there were people in the world “with heads of dogs, sheep, and cattle”, Rock and his mile-long entourage comprised of 60 yaks, 34 mules, “20 armed and mounted men of the nomad Sokwu Arik tribe of Mongol origin”, and American missionary, William Ekvall Simpson who he engaged as a Tibetan interpreter, but whom he came to dislike because he felt that Simpson was too much of a “do-gooder” who “lacked firmness with the natives.” As they travelled, they were constantly under the watch of by robber tribes who were somehow held at bay by his Sokwu Arik protectors.

They continued “Uphill and down, through canyons and over passes with odd, gurgling names, we pushed our toiling way through an empty world. Not a human being appeared anywhere in that forsaken region.” As they approached the Gur Zhung Valley, Rock was told “You had better not go, for all the Ngoloks are aroused are awaiting you to rob and perhaps murder you.” Rock persevered.

Until finally “I shouted for joy as I beheld the majestic peaks of one of the grandest mountain ranges of all Asia. . . ” . . atop the Mokhur Nira (Pass), at an elevation of 12,800 feet.

“With difficulty, I tore myself from that sublime view – a view of the eastern massif of the mountain from west of the Yellow River which no other foreigners had ever had. I remained for some time on that isolated summit, lost in reverie and easily comprehending why the Tibetans should worship these snowy peaks as emblems of purity.

Joseph Rock was an Austrian born American botanist, explorer, author and photographer, who was, quite literally National Geographic’s “man in China” during the 1920’s and 30’s. A product of his times, like so many of the characters I’ve discovered in my Chinese Odyssey, Joseph Rock was unique. While fascinated by so much of what he discovered, I would not consider Joseph Rock to have been a sinophile, but he did love living in China and spoke Chinese fluently. He seemed to have been a very solitary man in many ways, and appeared to milk his journey of explorations and adventure for all it was worth. When I visited the small Joseph Rock museum in 玉湖村 Yù Hú Cūn aka 雪嵩村 Xúe Sōng Cūn in the early 2000’s, I found a two story modest home outside of Lijiang near the town of Bai Sha where Joseph Rock lived for 27 years and where he did much of his writing and botanical research. He was fascinated by the Nakyi aka Naxi 納西族 Nàxī minority people who lived in and around Lijiang. His Nahki-English Dictionary Encylopedia, was both a dictionary of the Dongba script and an encyclopedia of Naxi culture.

For those who are curious to know more about Joseph Rock, check out “in the Footsteps of Joseph Rock” This amazing photo blog by Australian journalist Michael Woodhead has extensive links to both Rock’s photos and his journeys. http://www.josephrock.net/2004/

Chinese Detective Stories

Chinese Odyssey 68

Ate juicy tomatoes

which monkeys all wanted

Monasteries at Emei

Van Gulikly haunted

Slurped Chong Qing hot pot

at Laozao in Cheng Du

The Dandan Mian

made me run to the loo

Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee

“He can have anyone arrested, he can put the question to suspects under torture, have recalcitrant witnesses beaten up on the spot, use hearsay evidence, bully a defendant to tell a lie, and then trip him up with relish, . . .” (Gulik, Robert Hans van. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee = Dee Goong An: an Authentic Eighteenth-Century Chinese Detective Novel. Dover Publications, 1976)

Robert Hans van Gulik (髙羅佩Gāo Luópèi) , Dutch diplomat, correspondent, amateur primatologist, musician, calligrapher, and “Orientalist” will probably be best remembered as a mystery writer. Van Gulik wrote seventeen mysteries about a Tang Dynasty judicial super star by the name of Judge Dee aka 狄公案 Dí Gōng’àn . Fashioned after a real-life judge who lived in the Tang Dynasty during the reign of China’s only female emperor, Wu Zetian (武則天Wǔ Zétiān.) Judge Dee’s real name was 狄仁傑 Dí Rén jié (607-700), and he was a Tang dynasty prime minister under Empress Wu Zetian.

Born in the Netherlands, van Gulik’s family moved to Jakarta in 1913 when he was only three. His father was a physician and medical officer in the Dutch army corps. At that time, Jakarta was called Batvia and Indonesia went under the name of the Dutch East Indies. It was during his childhood there that van Gulik first began his studies of Chinese, something he continued throughout his life. His university studies focused on East Indian law and culture and he joined the Dutch foreign service in 1935. He served in various capacities in Japan, China, Lebanon, India, and in the USA. While stationed in Chongqing during WW2, he fell in love with and married Shui Shifang and they had four children.

In late 1940’s post-war Japan, while stationed in Tokyo , van Gulik picked up a book called 武則天四大奇案 (Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu’s Reign) in a used book store in the back alleys of Tokyo. This was van Gulik’s first translation. He called it Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee. Since he was living in Japan at the time, his first editions were in Japanese and in Chinese. In 1949, he first self-published 1200 signed English copies.

What’s amazing about the van Gulik books though is the window they provide us to look into a legal system very far removed from ones that most of us are used to. The judge is not only the person who decides the outcome of a case, he also directs the investigations and with the proper mixture of intelligent questioning and irrefutable evidence compels even the most resistant to eventually confess. Torture, beratement, discomfort, humiliation, and even communication with spirits are all legitimate tools for the judge to apply with full compliance of the public. The judge is fully in charge from the initial arraignment through the public executions (of which he has a variety to select from depending on the nature of the crime.)

Starting at a trail near the base of Mt. Emei (峨眉山 Éméi shān), one of the “4 sacred Buddhist mountains” of China, we walked on a trail alongside a crystal clear stream. Bought fresh tomatoes and watermelon slices from local vendors and were surprised by monkeys (actually Tibetan macaques) who demanded their fair share. I wish I could say we walked the “10,000 steps to Heaven” to summit Emei, but I can say that we walked many a step before we arrived at a Buddhist temple (Baoguo Temple报国寺 Bàoguó Sì) which also served as our accommodation for the night. As soon as I set my back pack down in my room, I imagined myself smack in the middle of the Chinese Bell Murders. I was immediately transported to the “Buddhist Temple of Boundless Mercy” and imagined Judge Dee prowling its halls.

Sichuan – Poets, Pandas, and Peppers

Chinese Odyssey 67

Southwest into Sichuan

where four rivers flowed

Gold monkeys and pandas

roamed through Jiuzhaigou

Du Fu and Li Bai

two poets of Tang

Remembered today

in poems, paintings, and song.

Sichuan and China https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sichuan_in_China_(%2Ball_claims_hatched).svg

Sichuan is the Pinyin spelling of Szechuan. Many westerners who see this word associate it with spicy food. The word Si (四 sì) means “4”. The word Chuan (川 chuān) means “river”. The four rivers are the Jiālíng, the Jīnshā, the Mín, and the Tuó. So Sichuan means “Four Rivers.” As you can see from the map, Sichuan is located in the dead center of China, but most Chinese think of it being in western China (kind of like Ohio and Indiana referred to as mid-western states in the USA.) Sichuan used to include the city in China with the largest population – Chongqing (重庆 Chóngqìng) aka Chungking (30.8 million people). In 1997, Chongqing was declared China’s 4^th municipality which meant it was self-governing (like Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin) and no longer belonged to any province. Kind of like Washington D.C. not being a part of any state.

Now, back to the two things that people know about Sichuan:

Sichuan has hot, spicy food: Kung Pao Chicken (宫保鸡丁Gōngbǎojīdīng), Mother Po’s Beancurd (麻婆豆腐 Mápó dòufu), Dandan Noodles (担担面Dàndàn miàn), and Chongqing Hot Pot(重庆火锅 Chóngqìng Huǒguō)
Pandas – Although there are pandas in Shaanxi and Gansu, most wild pandas live in the cool, moist bamboo forested mountainous northern regions of Sichuan at elevations over 5,000 feet (1500 meters). It is almost impossible for a tourist in China to spot a panda in the wild. There are, however, Panda research centers in Sichuan where tourists can see and interact with pandas.

In Dr. John C.H. Wu (吳經熊)’s classic, The Four Seasons of Tang Dynasty Poetry, he called the poet, Li Bai aka Li Po (李白 Lǐ Bái), the “Prince of Spring”. Li Bai’s contemporary and good friend, Du Fu, once said of Li Bai:

“All the world wants to kill him

I alone dote on his genius

Quick-witted,

he has hit off a thousand poems

A waif in the world,

his only home is a cup of wine.”

Born in far western China, or possibly present day Kyrgyzstan, Li Bai was living in Chengdu, Sichuan at age 4 and continued to spend his next two decades there before he began to wander. Li Bai was a living testament to Tolkien’s great line, “not all who wander are lost.” A great friend and soul-mate to Daoist holy men, after meeting Li Bai, Ho Chih Chang (賀之章 Hè Zhī zhāng), a Daoist poet said of Li Bai “Why, you do not belong to this world. You are an angel banished from Heaven.” Li Bai reminds me of the American poet and song writer of the depression era, Woodie Guthrie. They were both prolific in their writing and their poetry had mass appeal. Neither one was able to keep a family together, so strongly were they drawn to the road and their poetry.

送別 Sòngbié

下馬飲君酒 Xiàmǎ yǐn jūn jiǔ,

問君何所之？ wèn jūn hé suǒ zhī?
君言不得意 Jūn yán bù déyì,

歸臥南山陲 guī wò nánshān chuí.
但去莫復聞 Dàn qù mò fù wén,

白雲無盡時。 báiyún wújìn shí.

Farewell – Li Bai

Come down off your horse, my friend, and have a drink!

Where are you off to?

Nowhere in particular.

Heading towards the Southern Hills.

That’s all I know for sure.

Just plan to drift like the clouds.

Dr. Wu said of Li Bai: “He is the perfect embodiment of the spirit of romanticism, in life, as well as in letters. He is romantic, imaginative, passionate, contemptuous of form and convention, grandiose and picturesque in thought and language, remote from experience, and visionary – there is no romantic quality that he lacks.”

If we consider Li Bai as the “party poet”, then Du Fu, aka Tu Fu (杜甫Dù Fǔ), could rightfully be called the “Poet Sage” (詩聖 shī sheng.) The young Du Fu was a great admirer of Li Bai, who was twelve years his senior. Li Bai, a romantic, reckless alcoholic, married multiple times, much more drawn to Daoist alchemists than he was to the Analects of Confucius, was the polar opposite of Du Fu, devoted Confucian scholar, who desired nothing more than to be a contributing civil servant, and a devoted family man. And yet, the “yin” and the “yang” were friends who held one another in the greatest esteem.

Climbing High – Du Fu

Swift wind, heaven high, an ape’s cry of grief,
At the islet of clear white sand, birds circle round.
Endlessly, trees shed leaves, rustling, rustling down,
Without cease, the great river surges, surges on.
Ten thousand miles in sorrowful autumn, always someone’s guest,
A hundred years full of sickness, I climb the terrace alone.
Suffering troubles, I bitterly regret my whitening temples,
Frustratingly I’ve had to abandon my cup of cloudy wine.

登高 Dēng Gāo
风急天高猿啸哀 Fēng jí tiān gāo yuán xiào āi
渚清沙白鸟飞回 zhǔ qīng shā bái niǎo fēi huí
无边落木萧萧下 wú biān luò mù xiāo xiāo xià
不尽长江滚滚来 bú jìn cháng jiāng gǔn gǔn lái
万里悲秋常作客 wàn lǐ bēi qiū cháng zuò kè
百年多病独登台 bǎi nián duō bìng dú dēng tái
艰难苦恨繁霜鬓 jiān nán kǔ hèn fán shuāng bìn
潦倒新停浊酒杯 liáo dǎo xīn tíng zhuó jiǔ bēi

American Indians and Chinese

Chinese Odyssey 66

In the Banpo museum

at the edge of Xi’An

There was “Hopi” clayware

and ancient floor plans

In 4000 BC

were the same stories told

in Pueblo kivas and

Shaanxi bungalows?

Ban Po Basin 5-7 thousand years old

Growing up in Montana and Oklahoma, both states with large indigenous populations, I learned from my history classes that Indians walked across a land bridge from Asia over to Alaska across the Bering Strait during the last ice age and that the first documented site of an Indian settlement was in Clovis, New Mexico around 13,000 years ago. Lots of pieces were missing, but still, that worked for me . . . at least until I was exposed for the first time to American Indian creation stories in Roger Dunsmore’s Humanities class at the University of Montana. It was also during university, that I finally realized that the study of history was not necessarily static and that new discoveries meant different hypotheses which included the peopling of the America’s. National Geographic articles showing the Olmec stone heads discovered near La Venta, Mexico left me without a shadow of a doubt that not all pre-Colombian Americans were of Asian heritage. In the early 80’s, I took a group of public high school students from Oklahoma to Shanghai for a six week study course. One of the members of our group was a Native American who was constantly being addressed in Mandarin. Mainland Chinese were not only convinced she was Chinese, some insisted that she was Cantonese. She was, in fact, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee.

There have been many connections made between North America and Asia. I don’t have any doubts that there were people who crossed the Beringia Land Bridge and filtered down through the Americas over the course of thousands of years. I also have little doubt that America was peopled from other parts of the world as well. Some tribes and nations have stories and songs that suggest that they have always been in a particular region of America and I have no proof that they were not.

But it was the bowl above that really caught my eye when I walked into the small building that housed the Xi’An Banpo Museum (西安半坡博物馆) in 1982. The clay and the designs were similar to bowls I had seen at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma growing up. But these bowls were Neolithic Chinese, from about 4,000 BCE and they represented what is called Yangshao Culture (仰韶文化 Yǎngsháo wénhuà). Besides Yangshao culture having a presence in the loess plateaus along the Yellow River near Xi’an, remnants and artefacts from Yangshao Culture reach beyond Shaanxi into Henan and Shanxi (note: There is a Shaanxi and a Shanxi). Relatively little is known about the Yangshao people who lived at Banpo other than they were farmers who grew millet, wheat, and sorghum. They understood water and built terraces to prevent flooding. They also built pens for domesticated sheep, pigs, dogs, cattle, and goats.

Banpo was a community of small houses, each 10-16 feet across partially sunk into the ground. This was done to keep the homes cooler in the summer. The houses appeared to be of a wattle and daub variety similar to those of American Indians who lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky. Wattle and daub used wooden strips and/or branches woven into a lattice design and coated generously (daubed) with a mixture of mud, clay, animal poop, and straw. The roofs were conical and made of grass bundled together (thatch) which allowed the rain to run off.

It was the frog, pig, and bird faces, the deer and fish figures, and the geometric designs that really hooked me though. They were made with strong black lines, circles, rings, triangles. Some were etched while others appeared to be pressings of fabric or rope. On some of the pots were cuttings and lines that could have been an elementary form of writing or merely identification symbols. Among the nearly 10,000 artefacts and stone tools that have been uncovered were sickles and plows, bone and stone beads, ceramic bowls, basins, water jars, and urns (both for cooking and for burial). There were also fishhooks, bone needles, arrowheads, stone axes, and knives found in Banpo.

The fact that a cemetery was found very near the village suggested that there were defined burial rites and religion. Near the ancestral bones were found some of the best preserved artefacts of the Banpo people indicating the belief in an afterlife. Of the 130 adults buried there, all were buried face-up with their heads pointed towards the setting sun. Infants and young children were buried differently. They were placed in clay urns with a hole on the top.

In my search for other American Indian/Chinese Connections, I found very little. I did, however, discover two stories that were amazingly similar.

“Smearing the Bell”, was a story that first appeared in Song Dynasty China (960-1279 CE.) After a robbery, a group of thieves was assembled and confronted with a temple bell that had a magical power. If a real thief touched the bell, it would ring. If an innocent person touched the bell, it would remain silent. So the Magistrate placed the bell behind a curtain after ordering his constables to paint the bell. The thieves were then instructed to reach behind the curtain and strike the bell. Each of the men reached in and “touched” the bell, but the bell did not chime. Then, the Magistrate noticed that one of the men who claimed to have struck the bell had clean hands. When the Magistrate confronted the thief, the thief confessed.

‘Children of the Frost’, a story by American, Jack London, author of “The Call of the Wild” (1903), told of an Indian woman in the Klondike who reported to a local ‘Shaman that she had lost a blanket. The Shaman took a raven and placed the raven in a black soot covered pot in a dark room. He then commanded every villager to put their hand into the pot and touch the raven. If a thief touched the raven, the raven would cry out. All the villagers went in, but the raven never cried out. Then the shaman noticed one man with clean hands and confronted the thief, whereupon, the thief confessed. The blanket was found in the thief’s house and was returned to the woman.^1”

¹Ting, Nai-tung. “A Comparative Study of Three Chinese and North-American Indian Folktale Types.” Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 44, no. 1, 1985, pp. 39–50. JSTOR.

I found two studies of American Indians and Chinese in America during the 19^th century which I also found interesting just in case anyone might be interested:

“They Looked Askance”: American Indians and Chinese in the Nineteenth Century U.S. West by Jordan Hua, Honors Thesis, Professor Townsend, April 20, 2012

Horizontal Inter-Ethnic Relations: Chinese and American Indians in the Nineteenth Century American West Author(s): Daniel Liestman Source: Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 327-349 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/971376 Accessed: 22-02-2020 01:03 UTC

Emperor with an Ego

Chinese Odyssey 65

We followed the footsteps

of men made from clay

who travelled the Silk Road

in Chang An by day

At night in their chariots

they served their Huang Di

He died, they died too

far away from the sea. Qin_Shi_Huang_(Chinese_characters).svg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Qin_Shi_Huang_%28Chinese_characters%29.svg

As far as dynasties go, the First Emperor of China’s was really short. During his reign of only eleven years (221-210 BCE), Emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇帝 Qín Shǐ Huáng Dì) left a legacy that continues to this day. Indeed, the very name “China” probably has its origins in this first imperial dynasty. Qin is actually pronounced very similar to the English word “chin”. Emperor Qin Shi Huang standardized Chinese writing, weights and measures, established a common currency and connected the various walls at the northern border of China to create the Great Wall of China (万里长城 wàn lǐ cháng chéng.)

The Qin Dynasty was pivotal in the standardization of the Chinese written language. Emperor Qin did that by making the script that he was most familiar with – the Qin script, the official script of China. Other styles once popular in different parts of China eventually disappeared. The Qin script was simpler than most. In the picture above, the first row of characters and the second row are the same. The top script, known as zhuànshū 篆書 is usually translated as “seal script”, because it was used in “chops” or “seals” that appeared on documents and works of art. The second form of writing was called lìshū 隸書, “clerical script” and was the traditional Qin form of writing – a simplified form of the seal script. A side note here. While Emperor Qin was very intent on unifying the Chinese written language, he also sought to unify Chinese thought. What better way to make history begin with him, than to kill scholars and destroy documents of recorded history? And so, he tried – with some success.

Emperor Qin also felt the need to simplify and standardize weights and measures. When he became emperor, China was a mishmash of different measuring systems. Qin Shi Huang started by going decimal and dividing a day by 10’s. A day was actually made up of one hundred kès (刻). Emperor Qin also had a special affinity for the number 6. Six chǐ (尺) = one bu (一步 yī bù ). A chǐ was roughly equivalent to a foot (the approximate length of the space between the joints of a standard stalk of bamboo.) 300 bù was equal to one lí 厘(sometimes called a ‘Chinese mile’ – actually about 1/3 of an English mile.) Finally 1 jīn 市 equalled about 1.1 pounds or 500 gm. A jīn is also referred to as a “catty”. A liǎng was also known as a “Chinese ounce” or a “tael” and was how foreigners weighed silver. In the past a jīn was equal to 16 liǎng, but nowadays there are 10 liǎng 两 in one jīn.

Contrary to popular belief, Qin Shi Huang did not build the Great Wall of China. Early portions of the wall built to protect kingdoms began to appear in the Spring and Autumn Period (771–476 BCE) and were followed by more sections of walls in the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE). What Emperor Qin did was to connect those east-west walls in northern China from Gansu all the way to Manchuria, just to the north of Korea.

Emperor Qin was a brilliant military strategist who ruled with an iron fist. One by one, the kingdoms of the Warring States fell. He killed, castrated, or enslaved those who stood in his way. He was a megalomaniac who was obsessed with the after-life and was tenacious in is search for immortality. To that end, Qin Shi Huang decided to make his tomb a mini-kingdom of Qin where he would take an entire life-size army with him (as well as real life servants, concubines and craftsmen.) While Qin Shi Huang was building his tomb, he sent Xu Fu 徐福 XúFú , a Chinese alchemist and explorer from Guangdong, off on a sea voyage with 3000 virgin boys and girls to search for the pill of eternal life (長生不老藥 chángshēngbùlǎo yào.) Legend has it Xu Fu and his entourage ended up in Japan, and some scholars credit him with helping to develop farming techniques and introduce new plants and agricultural advances there. In some parts of Japan people still worship Xu Fu as the God of farming. And Marvel features him as a Chinese character in some of their comic books.

Since the uncovering of a terracotta head and bronze arrowhead by peasant farmer, Yang Zhifa (杨志发) and his five brothers while digging a well during a drought in the village of Xiyang (西杨乡), about 35 kilometers east of Xi’an in 1974, only a small portion of the entire tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi has been unearthed. The parts which have not been removed are rumoured to have rivers flowing with mercury, gem encrusted ceilings and treasures galore. Legend says that the tomb was shaped like a miniature map of China at the time of his rule (I’m thinking Shenzhen’s “Miniature China” – 小人国) complete with the kind of crossbow booby traps which likely inspired some of the special effects in the Indiana Jones and National Treasure films. So far, only about 2,000 life size terra-cotta soldiers, horses, and chariots have been uncovered and about 1,000 restored. On average, it takes almost six months for a team of three experts to restore one soldier. The work is painstaking and made more difficult by the fact that the clay quickly loses its color when it is exposed to air. Estimates suggest there may be upwards of 8,000 more terra cotta figures to unearth. Sima Qian (the most famous Han Dynasty historian) said that 700,000 laborers worked to create what I think of as ‘a macabre monument to narcissism.’

Qin Shi Huang Di arranged for a plethora of steles (碑石 bēi shí) (stone slabs with intricately inscribed words created to memorialize individuals and events) to be prominently displayed all over “the middle kingdom” with accolades dedicated to Qin’s accomplishments. Of those, seven still remain. Nothing says “ego” better than the words from one of four of the 2200 year old still intact steles memorializing Qin Shi Huang. Before it was carved, it would have most certainly have been approved by the emperor himself:

“According to the season of mid-spring,

The mildness of Yang had just arisen.

The August Emperor travelled to the east,

On His tour He ascended (Mt.) Zhifu,

Looked down on and illuminated (the lands by) the sea.

The attending officials gazed in admiration,

Traced back and contemplated (His) excellence and brilliant

accomplishments,

Recalled and recited the fundamental beginning:

The great Sage created His order,

Established and fixed the rules and measures,

Made manifest and visible the line and net (of order).

Abroad He instructed the feudal lords;

Brilliantly He spread culture and grace,

Enlightening them through rightness and principle.

The six kingdoms had been restive and perverse,

Greedy and criminal, insatiable –

The August Emperor felt pity for the multitudes,

And consequently sent out His punitive troops,

Vehemently displaying His martial power.

Just was He in punishment, trustworthy was He in acting,

His awesome influence radiated to all directions,

And there was none who was not respectful and submissive.

He boiled alive and exterminated the violent and cruel,

Succored and saved the black-haired people,

And all around consolidated the four extremities.

He universally promulgated the shining laws,

Gave warp and woof to All-under-heaven –

Forever to serve as ritual norm and guideline.

Great, indeed, was […]

Within the universe and realm

One followed receptively His sage intent.

The multitude of officials recited His merits,

Asked to carve (this text) into stone,

To express and transmit the constant model.”

Source: Ouellette, P. (2010, February 1). Power in the Qin Dynasty: Legalism and External Influence over the Decisions and Legacy of the First Emperor of China. Retrieved October 10, 2014, from Haverford College: http://thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10066/5251/2010OuelletteP.pdf?sequence=1