Lost in Yunnan

A multicultural province

The Mosuo tribe is one of the most interesting tribes with its matriarchal aspects in society.  Females are the heads of households and inheritance runs through mothers.  Marriage is often described as walking marriages since men function to provide for reproduction by slipping into a woman’s home at night and leaving the next morning, but have no responsibility to help raise a child and or care for the wife.  The father figure of a family is taken on by uncles.  While the male can have sexual relations with as many women as he likes, they are shunned by their village and peers if they do so without the consent of the woman, so basically they have to end a relationship before starting another.  

The Nakhi tribe is populated mostly in the northwestern part of Yunnan and Lijiang and are well known for their Dongba pictograms, which were developed in the 7th Century and can still be spotted on the streets.  This tribe is heavily influenced by Tibetan culture, as can be seen from their Tibetan prayer flags and carvings of their religious gods and spirits, which can be found through different natural elements.  Nakhi women are known for their hard-working nature.  From managing livestock to cooking and cleaning, they are good at everything.  It is often said in Nakhi tradition that if the man are relaxing with their smoke pipes, drinking and minding their pet falcons, the woman at home must be doing a very good job!

Yunnan’s delicacies

Eating for health

There’s an endless list of health food items when you roam around markets in Yunnan looking for something to bring home.  Hotpot cow liver mushroom Between June and September is the mushroom harvest season in Yunnan, so this is the best time to be eating delicious and juicy mushroom hotpot, especially with the mushroom soaking up all the sweet juices of the stock, which is usually made from chicken bones.  Pairing hotpot with a delectable piece of roasted pumpkin pancake filled with red bean paste is the way to a happy stomach.  Of the approximately two thousand varieties of edible mushrooms, 800 can be found in Yunnan.  Cow’s liver, pig’s stomach, white man’s head are all mushroom names.  The Hani tribe  has even built homes in the shape of mushrooms.  Amidst the green fields and mushrooms, it feels as though I was transported to a scene in Alice in Wonderland!

Spirulina is well-known for its health benefits, from immune system boosting to having anti-ageing properties.  Yunnan’s Chenghai Lake near Lijiang is one of the three places in the world that has natural spirulina.  The other two are Lake Chad in Africa and Lake Texcoco in Mexico.  The spirulina sold in Yunnan come in tablet form and can be taken like a medication or ground up for shakes or simply added to food.

The energy boosting magic maca is another product that has been attracting tourist dollars in Yunnan in recent years, just as it has in Peru.  Grown in Yunnan’s highlands, the maca in China is often soaked in alcohol and drunk.  But be warned: maca counterfeits are rampant on the streets, so it’s better not to buy if you’re unsure about what you’re buying.  

Lijiang

Water village

Lijiang is a beautiful water town in Yunnan.  An earthquake in 1996 brought this previously little known town to the world’s attention and it has since been rebuilt to attract tourists.  The town was mostly populated by the Nakhi tribe and today, little old ladies with their traditional costumes can be found dancing in the town centre.  Wooden buildings with beautifully carved window frames sitting across each other on either side of small bridges are the icon of Lijiang, as are the narrow cobblestone paths that can easily confuse tourists.  These buildings house numerous bars, restaurants and souvenir shops today.  While there is little water flowing through the many channels in the town, in the old days, the water flowing through was clean enough to drink and was the main water supply to each household.

Tea horse caravan trail

Route to the west

The tea horse caravan trail was the arduous route that Tibetans, Indians and the Han Chinese took to trade. with each other back when there wasn’t a convenient way to travel between Tibet, Myanmar and China, mainly in the Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.  The Tibetans would trade their horses for Chinese tea, sugar and salt.  Stretching across some pretty risky terrain, including canyons, gorges and the Qinghai-Tibet and Hengduan mountain ranges, this route provided Tibetans with health necessities that complemented their meat heavy diets while the Chinese exchanged muscular horses in preparation for battles.  Starting at Xishuangbanna in the original Pu’er tea villages, the route from China spans across Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La and Lhasa and then on to India, Nepal and Myanmar.  The route is over 2000 km long with 56 stops.  While the route was mainly used around a thousand years ago, long before that, over 3000 years ago, communication between the Chinese and Tibetan tribes took place, as evidenced by tombs found on the road.  More than twenty ethnic groups can be found along the trail, including the Nakhi people in Lijiang.  Today, pilgrims to Tibet and the sacred Meili Snowy Mountains still follow the route on their pilgrimage.

Tibetan traditions

Shangri-La ancient town

In Shangri-La’s old town, you can find plenty of boutique inns.  This is the best way to experience living like the locals.  Last year, a fire broke out nearby, destroying hundreds of homes.  Fortunately, the other half old town wasn’t affected too much.  But the closely built wooden houses do pose a great danger in Shangri-La’s dry climate.  The cobblestone streets and wooden buildings haven’t changed too much since the times of the Tea Horse Caravan Route over 600 years ago.  This was when Tibetans would travel long distances to trade their horses for Han people’s tea and all the way to India for spices.  

At a height of 24 metres, the gold prayer wheel in the centre of the town is the largest in the world.  Prayer flags can be found everywhere, especially near monasteries and prayer wheels.  The five colours: blue, white, red, green and yellow represent sky and space, air and wind, fire, water and earth respectively.  Tibetan Buddhists have a habit of doing prostrations praying on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, which can be a journey of thousands of kilometers.  At the centre of the square leading up to the prayer wheel was a Tibetan mastiff.  The poor thing was being circled around to attract tourists to pay to take pictures with it.  The furry creature didn’t look too content in the summer heat!

Yak butter and more!

Tibetan food

Yak butter tea is an essential in Tibetans’ diet.  You can find it during all three meals, at home and in small shops everywhere.  The combination of yak butter, salt, tea leaves and water gives it a salty taste and a very strong smell!  The traditional way to drink butter tea is to pour it into a large bowl and have it passed between guests and after each guest takes a sip, the bowl is refilled again.  With the yak butter in the tea, there is plenty of calories in the drink, which is needed for those living in the high altitudes in Shangri-La.  The most authentic way to prepare butter tea is to pour boiled tea into a container with fresh yak butter and salt and churning it before storing it in copper pots.  Yak buttermilk is often made into soft cheese curds and yoghurt.

Tsampa, a staple made from roasted barley flour, is often eaten with the tea.  The blob of flour is placed inside a bowl some small amounts of butter tea and stirred with a finger for it to absorb the liquid.  Tibetans then eat the flour, washing it down with plenty of liquid.  There’s not much taste to the tsampa, but it’s eaten mainly to fill a hungry tummy.  For a more liquefied version, the barley flour is cooked like congee, which makes it a lot easier to digest.  Another popular item is momo, made from mashed potatoes and dough and shaped into balls with a minced meat filling.

Not surprisingly, with the high altitudes and cold winters, filling foods like noodles, dumplings, cheese made from yak milk and plenty of meat are eaten.  There isn’t much variety when it comes to vegetables, mainly stir-fried potatoes and cabbage since these can be grown at high altitudes. The Pu'er tea (great for digestion) brought in via China to Tibet did much good to the health of Tibetan's meat and oil heavy diets.

Gandan Sumtseling Monastery

Treasure of Shangri-La

From afar the Gandan Sumtseling Monastery shines like a jewel in the sky with its gilded roofs and contrasting colours of red and white.  It’s no surprise that it’s also known as the Little Potala Palace because of its resemblance with the famous Tibetan monastery.  It is the largest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet.  Housing about 700 monks in its compounds, this important monastery is a must-visit for those visiting Shangri-La.  Walking up the steps leading to the monastery was a bit of a challenge with the symptoms of altitude sickness taking over my body, especially as my head felt heavier and heavier.  But once I got to the final step, I was rewarded with a gorgeous view of Shangri-La’s many prayer flags fluttering in the sky, beckoning me to its reflective ponds, green pastures and azure blue skies.

Built in 1679 by the fifth Dalai Lama of the Gelukpa during the rule of the Qing emperor Kangxi, the monastery was severely damaged in the 1950s, but was fully restored by the 80s.  The correct way to walk in a monastery is clockwise and never turn back as that is a sign of bad luck.  The main hall of the monastery has numerous paintings depicting the life of the Buddha and at its centre sits an eight metre Shakyamuni Buddha.  The smell from the yak butter lamps is quite distinct in the main hall.  Other lamaseries can be found in the compound for monks to reside in.  More on Tibetan traditions on my next blog!

Shangri-La

Yunnan’s Garden of Eden

James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon brought the mysterious land of Shangri-La to the curious minds of the West but as it was a fictitious novel, the book made the mystery even more complicated as no one really knows where exactly this ideal land of Shangri-La is.  The utopian land described as Shangri-La was one of longevity and peace and where multiple religions co-existed.  Zhongdian in the northwestern part of China’s Yunnan Province claimed to be this land and officially took on the name of Shangri-La in 2001.  This Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is located in the highlands, with elevations of 3800 metres and above.  Travel by flight is the easiest from nearby cities such as Kunming and Chengdu.  If you enjoy travel by vehicle, Shangri-La is only a four hour drive from Lijiang and scenic spots such as the Tiger Leaping Gorge and the first bend of the Yangtze River can be viewed along the way.  Some visit Shangri-La as a midway stop on the way to Lhasa.

This idealistic land is known to be one where you would regret not visiting for a lifetime but once you’ve been there, you would regret for a lifetime that you’ve been there!  I guess part of the reason could be the romanticizing of the idealistic notions of the land for those who haven’t been.  With the desertification of grasslands from grazing and years and years of lack of rainfall, the green pastures, flowing rivers and snow capped peaks that exist in people’s minds don’t necessarily exist in Shangri-La.  But in parts of Shangri-La, these beautiful features can of course be found and one thing that warms visitors’ hearts is the passionate and welcoming smile of Shangri-La’s Tibetan people!