Do as the Dai do
June 22nd, 2006
Members of the Dail Ethnic Group in Traditional Dress
We arrived in Jinghong, in the southwester part of Yunnan Province, China, Saturday morning. Jinghong is a tropical city and I immediately felt the heat as I got off the plane. Many local residents opened umbrellas as they disembarked to protect themselves from the sun. We walked to the airport exit and through a gauntlet of smiling women in native costume, each handing out brochures to various tourist sites.
THE AIRPORT AT JINGHONG, CHINA.
Jinghong is bit like Honolulu, except that it’s landlocked and doesn’t have the trade winds to keep it cool. The lush foliage is similar, though, and the streets are lined with palm trees. Jinghong is the “peacock” city and you see them throughout the region.
Jinghong is a small city by Chinese standards. It has fewer than 200,000 residents, though it’s growing rapidly. It attracts a fair number of tourists from the rest of China. Like Kunming, it is home to a number of Chinese ethnic minority groups, including the Dai. (The Dai operate their own “autonomous prefecture” within Yunnan province called Xishuangbanna, which means “twelve thousand rice fields.” Jinghong is the capitol of the prefecture.)
The streets of Jinghong are busy, but manageable. I see cars, motorbikes, small buses, three-wheel motor carts, and bicycles everywhere we go. I see fewer bicycles but more cars than I expected. (I’m sure that General Motors would approve, but I hope that the Chinese keep their need for speed under control. It’s hard to imagine that China will ever have the infrastructure to handle a few hundred million cars — or the ability to handle the pollution, which would result.) I have yet to see a hand-pulled rickshaw and I imagine they are reserved for tourists visiting Shanghai and Beijing.
We are staying at the Yunnan Aviation Sightseeing Hotel, which is run by the Yunnan Aviation Company. The hotel has an Asian flavor and serves a mostly Chinese clientele. I am sharing a large room with a colleague. The hotel has 154 rooms, a game room, sauna (closed when I checked), massage room (open when I didn’t have time), business center, nightclub and shop. It overlooks a small park made to resemble an ethnic (Dai) village.
Sightseers can watch a variety of television shows in the Sightseeing Hotel, including MTV, but not CNN. The hotel carrys a government-controlled, English language news service instead.
The Sightseeing Hotel in Jinghong, China
After checking into our hotel, we boarded a tour bus to visit the Ganlandba Dai Village. Crossing Jinghong’s “new bridge” (built in 1999), we got our first glimpse of the Mekong, a broad, muddy river with a fast current. (It is known as the Lancong River in China.) The Mekong runs from China to Vietnam, but is not always navigable. This is the rainy season, however, and the water level is high.
Jinghong is in the tropics and you’ll find a center for research on monkeys in the mountains outside the city, accessible by tram. The hills here are covered with rubber trees. The Chinese government owns most of these trees, which local residents cultivate by hand. The Chinese are building their third dam on the Mekong. We passed the entrance to the construction site.
The Ganlandba Dai Village is a “living cultural center” showcasing the culture of the Dai people, one of the minority groups living in Yunnan Province. (There is a another park, the Yunnan Nationalities Village, outside Kunming. Both parks are similar to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii.) The Dai are unique. They have maintained their Buddhist faith. They have their own language. They have a distinct appearance. In truth, the Dai are more closely related to the Thai people than to Han Chinese.
A MEMBER OF THE DAI ETHNIC GROUP WITH HIS BABY
While many of China’s minority groups live in the mountains, Dai villages are located in the foothills. Their homes feature pitched roofs clad with wood shingles. The ground level in every Dai home is open to the environment. Family members live on the second floor in a large, undivided room (“loft living” in the United States). China still enforces the “one child” rule, but minority groups are allowed to have two children per family. (I’m not sure why the government has made this distinction. Presumably, the one child rule was more difficult to enforce in minority communities.)
A TYPICAL DAI HOME.
Entering the park, we walked through another gauntlet of attractive young women, as the women sang native songs. We saw several women spinning thread, listened to a Dai couple sing traditional songs, sat for tea, and witnessed a traditional wedding celebration performed for visitors. We then visited a Buddhist temple.
ENTERING THE GANLANDBA DAI VILLAGE
A DAI COUPLE SINGING, IN TRADITIONAL DRESS.
TEA ANYONE?
A DAI WEDDING CEREMONY
After touring the park, we attended a dance performance in a large, open-air pavilion. The performance featured hundreds of beautiful young women in an elaborately staged revue. Each dance number featured a chorus line of Dai women, each dressed exactly like the other, in traditional native dress. (Just how “traditional” is the subject of some debate.) Some of the young women seemed bored and I doubt that many of them had professional training. Just the same, the overall effect was terrific. Each number painted a vivid picture.
After attending the dance revue, we walked over to a large courtyard to watch dancers recreate the annual “splash festival.” (The splash festival is held once a year in Thailand on New Years Day — in April, according to the traditional Thai calendar.) Hundreds of young men and women paraded around a large fountain listening to the sound of beating drums. When the music stopped, they jumped into the water splashing everyone within reach. And then again. Musical chairs with water.
READY TO GET WET?
IT’S COMING.
WAIT FOR THE MUSIC TO STOP…
SPLASH!
We attended another dance review later that evening in the Balanaxi Performance Center in Jinghong. This revue showcased Yunnan’s various ethnic communities in traditional costumes. This show was superb with excellent production values and highly trained dancers. I would describe it as a combination of Chinese gymnastics, Cirque du Soleil, and The Lion King. Here are some photos of the three performances.
INSIDE THE BALANAXI PERFORMANCE CENTER IN JINGHONG, CHINA.
We were the only westerners who attended these performances. It was interesting to watch the Chinese spectators. They seemed to enjoy the performances, but they did not follow them closely — or quietly. Spectators at the evening revue, which was excellent, rarely applauded. At least a third of the audience left the theatre before the dancers finished their final number.
A Thai professor, who is traveling with our group, calls the show an example of “invented tradition” and “Han orientalism.” The majority Han, he says, have a romanticized view of China’s ethnic minorities as happy, colorful people dressed in exotic clothing. Ethnic women are marketed to Han men as slender, scantily clad bathing beauties. (I saw an astonishing number of attractive, petite women in these shows.) Some people are offended by these “ethnic minority-fashion shows” — and not just because of their portrayal of women. This show in particular featured some dancing Buddhas, which might be considered sacrilegious.
It’s worth noting that the Han population is increasing in the Xishuangbanna prefecture. This may mostly be the result of development, but it has also insured that the majority Han have a strong voice in the region.
Entry Filed under: Freeman Fellowship
Trackback this post