Lijiang, June 22-24, 2008
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2008
1
6
18
Trip End
Ongoing
Lijiang,
Yunnan,
China
Sunday, July 27, 2008
No sooner did we step off the bus from Dali than we met up with Celamu, a 20-year-old Tibetan girl who was a friend and former student of our Couchsurfing host, Keith. Keith is a New Zealander in his late 30s who has been living in the Yunnan province for several years, working as a teacher, guide, and self-styled entrepreneur. He currently makes bread and cheese from the kitchen of his old-fashioned Chinese courtyard home just outside the tourist section of Lijiang. Most Lijiang locals are Naxi, one of 56 state-recognized "minority nationalities," as it is termed by the Chinese government, and Keith has many friends in the community. One of his friends is an event planner, and she focuses on resurrecting and maintaining traditional minority ceremonies. She herself is Naxi, and her brother was getting married, so naturally the wedding was traditionally Naxi. We were fortunate enough to arrive in Lijiang on the morning of the ceremony, so Keith invited us along.
Celamu took us straight from the bus stop to the villa on the outskirts of town where the wedding was to be held. When we got there, everyone was standing around in a frenzy of excitement, and the majority of people were wearing traditional dress. They were very happy that we had arrived and greeted us warmly. Even though it was a wedding--which would usually be rude for a stranger, especially a foreigner, to show up for in the West--they welcomed us with open arms and encouraged us to participate in all aspects of the ceremony. It was a surprising but extremely pleasant attitude that erased any trace of awkwardness and made us feel at ease among the group, as well as blown away by their kindness.
The wedding ceremony began where the women segregated themselves from the men to begin the traditional courtship ritual. I was immediately whisked off to a nearby courtyard with the rest of the females, while Dave stayed with the men. Once in the courtyard, we shut two gates behind us. Several minutes later, the men arrived outside the gate and began to sing songs to entice the women to open the gate. It was mostly traditional Naxi songs, including one refrain that was sung and then sung back by the women. They even made Dave sing a song in English to help open the gate! Eventually, they bashed in the outside gate and came right up to us, where the groom and the bridesmaids exchanged refrains of the traditional wedding song. After some time the women opened the gate, and the wedding truly began, with a lunchtime feast. Naxi people sit eight to a table, and our group was joined by the grandmothers of the community, most of whom were in their eighties and nineties, wearing the traditional aprons and caps and speaking no Chinese, only Naxi. Although we couldn't talk to them, we were able to communicate nonverbally, and their toothless smiles delighted us for the rest of the afternoon.
For the second stage in the ceremony, we piled into a long string of rickety, rusty tractors with flatbeds on the back. From there we drove 45 minutes at a very slow pace, winding up the hill to the village monastery. Once at the top we took in the view and then the shaman ceremony began. Under an arch of flowers (evidently a recent addition to Naxi weddings, inspired by Western marriage practices), the couple stood while the shaman burned incense and chanted in Naxi. Naxi is one of the few languages in the world that uses a pictographic form of writing, similar to hieroglyphics. The shamans read the words from the pictographs, which was amazing to see. Most Naxi people are not fluent readers of their own language, as it is commonly reserved as a method of communication for shamans. So it was a rare opportunity to observe the traditional practices in action.
The dancing began while we were still on the top of the mountain, and hardly ceased throughout the rest of the party. Traditional Naxi dancing involves the whole group standing in a circle, holding hands, and doing a relatively simple step around and around in a counterclockwise direction. For me, it was fun at first, but I got tired of it much more quickly than the Naxi people, who seem to have an insatiable appetite for it. Even in my fatigue, I appreciated the fact their preferred style of dancing involves everyone, young and old, of any degree of coordination or physical ability. Rather than individual moves, the focus in Naxi dancing is on uniting the community through dance, and the approach seems to work very well. A comparison of dancing styles would speak volumes about the differences between American and Naxi culture.
After returning from the monastery, the sweet ceremony turned into a big party. Alongside dinner they served endless cups of baijiu, a clear and extremely potent alcohol that they sip straight from tea cups. I couldn't handle more than a sip; Dave managed two glasses and could feel the effects. Everyone else seemed to have no problem with it. The groom and his friends were more than liberal with their consumption, so much so that at least one spent the rest of the evening sick.
The activity that went alongside drinking and eating was a very Chinese version of entertainment--a twist on karaoke. When we'd arrived at the ceremony, we'd been given numbers, and at this point in the evening someone drew numbers from a hat. If your number was called, you had to go up and sing a song. Everyone seemed to enjoy it very much, and it was funny to hear people's improvisations. Of course, being the only foreigners we were obligated to sing a song. We had trouble thinking of anything that all three of us knew, so we settled on doing "Row Your Boat" in a round. It didn't sound good, but everyone politely clapped for us anyway.
The evening finished off with a solid three hours of Naxi dancing, which began before sundown and continued around and around the fire, which was lit in the center of the circle as night fell. Every time Dave and I tried to sit a song out, people would come up to us and try to pull us back into the circle. We didn't want to be rude, so it was a struggle to get rest. Eventually most people were too drunk to dance and the evening petered out around 10 pm.
Most of the rest of our time in Lijiang was spent wandering (and getting lost in) the old town. We met up with some people who we had already met at hostels in Dali and Kunming. We were following a popular route, so it was easy to keep running into the same people. There was a Swiss guy named Ralf who we ran into in five different cities, all in a row. We also prepared for our next leg of travel, deciding to do a stop at Tiger Leaping Gorge on our way to the next stop. We booked our transport through a lovely old women who called herself Mama Naxi. Before setting off for the gorge, she gave us Naxi herb talismans and a small daypack, which we put to good use on our hike and in our travels thereafter.
Tiger Leaping Gorge is about two hours drive from Lijiang. The final twenty minutes of driving is about as perilous as it can get--an old minibus pummeling down a narrow road carved out of the side of the mountain, crossing huge spills of gravel and fording waterfalls. But you can see the gorge, which is called one of the most impressive natural sights in China. There is a popular trek that allows travelers to hike through the gorge in two days, but we didn't have the time or the equipment so we opted for an hour's hike down to the river at the bottom. It was a steep descent and ascent, but the scenery was amazing. From the bottom, you could stare up thousands of feet of rock wall, carved by a gushing river that roars by with unbelievable force. We sat on rocks reachable from the edge of the river, taking in the view before catching a minibus to Shangri-la.
