XIMENG and the WOODEN DRUM FESTIVAL
I spent International Socialist Workers Day ("May Day") celebrating two Wa ethnic festivals in towns along the Myanmar border.
I took a night bus from Kunming to Ximeng (西盟县), a small county of 60,000 people in the westernmost part of Pu'er prefecture (普洱市), right next to the border of Myanmar. It is a Wa ethnic "autonomous county", a designation given to any county where ethnic minorities make up the majority.
I'd seen a hand full of Wa people in Kunming before, but I'd never seen so many Wa in one place. The first thing one notices is that they look extremely different from other Chinese (including from other Chinese ethnic minorities). The Wa have noticeably darker skin than any other ethnic group in China. They look more like Burmese or Indians, which makes a lot of sense given their geographic proximity to those countries. Their language falls under the Austroasiatic language family, which includes the Khmer of Cambodia was well as scattered ethnic minorities throughout the highlands of Southeast Asia.
The Wa ethnic group live on both sides of the Myanmar-China border, with about 800,000 in Myanmar and 400,000 in China. The Wa in China all live along the Myanmar border in the prefectures of Pu'er and Lincang in Yunnan province. The geopolitical situation of the Wa is quite fascinating. On the Myanmar side, the Wa govern their own de-facto "Wa State" which technically lies within Shan State of Myanmar. The degree of control that the Myanmar central government actually has over this region is not entirely clear to me. All that is clear is that neither side appears to have complete and total control.
A couple years ago, violence broke out in the region, and tens of thousands of refugees spilled across the border into this region of China where they resided temporarily. My friends in Ximeng told me that it was surprisingly orderly, with the Chinese army providing shelter and food until the refugees could return home. Apparently, the border is quite porous. Families span both borders. I met some people in Ximeng who were born in Myanmar but grew up in China.
According to Wikipedia the Wa army of Myanmar is the largest narcotics trafficking organization in Southeast Asia, mainly producing opium (long endemic to the region, also called the "Golden Triangle") and exporting it as processed heroin, as well as ketamine and meth. China is a huge market for these drugs, which means this region is presumably one of the busiest narcotics trafficking corridors in the world. I didn't see much evidence of drug smuggling, but on the bus ride out our bus was searched thoroughly by narcotics cops for about 45 minutes. One villager in Ximeng, upon my refusal to accept the cigarette he offered me, reassured me "don't worry, it isn't laced with heroin".
The reason I went to Ximeng was to celebrate their annual "Wooden Drum Festival" (木鼓节). The wooden drum, made from felled logs, is a symbol of the Wa people, along with cow heads. The drums themselves only made a brief appearance during a choreographed performance.
I'd been to a couple of ethnic festivals before, but this was my favorite by far. The other festivals mostly resembled the American county fair or carnival. Portable rides, carnival games, barbecue shacks, lots of drinking, a general party atmosphere. At the other festivals, some people came dressed in ethnic clothing.
At the Wooden Drum Festival, ethnic costumes predominated. In addition to the Wa, there were also sizable numbers of Lahu (拉祜族) and Dai (傣族) people, each distinctive in their own ethnic garb.
I don't want to delve too deep into the loaded concept of "authenticity". Part of the festival were clearly put on for show. The festival was subsumed under the larger prefecture-wide Pu'er Tea Festival. Busloads of tourists and dignitaries were brought in to watch the choreographed and heavily produced dance performances. TV crews were there to film the festivities. Women wearing official "hostess" cheongsam and red "welcome" banners guided tourists around the festival site. I can't even lay claim to being the only foreigner there. I ran across two others - a Spaniard, and an American tea merchant who was a "VIP" in the tea festival.
But the spectacular nature of the shows and official presence seemed out of sync with what is really quite a traditional festival in this small, out of the way place. And what a place it was! I was told that the new Ximeng County seat is a new city, built after the old county seat started sliding down a hillside. Looking at the new city on Google Earth, one can see that it was literally carved out of the rainforest. Luckily, the city is tiny. The surrounding rainforest is still intact. From any point in town, you look up at lush green rainforest draping across steep mountainsides. It's a stellar location.
The weather alternated between sunny and cool, clear, and foggy. The foggy times were probably the most beautiful, giving the place a more ethereal tropical jungle feel.
I went to Ximeng upon the invitation of Jing Ling, a girl I met randomly on the Chinese instant messaging service QQ. She added me at random a few months ago, not even knowing I was a foreigner. The connection proved convenient, because here I had a host to guide me through the festival. I stayed in her house during my stay in town. That was lucky because the hotels in town were all booked up by government officials. Jing
The choreographed performances were great, but I preferred the spontaneous dance circles that formed afterwards in the central square, in which I was able to take part in. Words don't really do the overall vibe in Ximeng justice. I got lots of colorful photos which you can see at my flickr site.
LANCANG
From Ximeng I planned to travel to the much larger and more famous Monihei (摸你黑) festival in Cangyuan (沧源县) county of Lincang (临沧市) prefecture. On the map Ximeng and Cangyuan are a mere 37 miles apart as the crow flies. But the crow would fly over Myanmar, and I'm not allowed to enter Myanmar.
I did give it a little thought. I'd heard of foreigners sneaking across the border into Myanmar. As the border is mostly mountains and rainforest, and runs for hundreds of kilometers, people say it's quite easy to do. But the problem is, what if one gets caught? Crossing the border and then crossing back is one thing, but trying to illegally cross a country and re-enter China in a different location could be much trickier. I would play it safe and get to Cangyuan through China instead.
This required me to circle around the border on the only available road. This didn't look so bad on the map, a mere 105 miles. Yet it took me an incredible 13 hours to make the trip! More on that tiring trip later, but first a bit on Lancang (澜沧), a small city which conveniently lies a couple hours from Ximeng. Lancang is the home town of Xiao Yan, the cousin of Wang Ping, the lady whose wedding I participated in as best man a couple months ago. I'd kept in touch with Xiao Yan since the wedding, so I called her up and arranged to hang out in her hometown of Lancang for a day. As it turned out, Wang Ping was there too, visiting from Kunming at last minute because her uncle lost his fingers in a construction accident.
Despite the somber mood over the uncle's severed fingers, I had a good time with Xiao Yan and Wang Ping, visiting the Lahu Culture Garden Park, learning the origin story of the Lahu, whose symbol the bottle gourd was carried by a fish across the seas, swimming at the local hot springs, and enjoying a meal and night of karaoke on the dime of the uncle's boss.
CANGYUAN and MONIHEI
The day I left Lancang I would spent 11 hours in an old, run down bus. Even if the road had been fine, it would have been a slow trip, for the bus was exceeding slow climbing hills, and there were a lot of hills.
But the bus was the least of it. This national highway, the only road connecting Pu'er and Lincang prefectures for hundreds of kilometers, is under construction. The beginning was on an already-finished new road. Then the new and old roads separated, with us taking the latter because the new road was still under construction. Bumpy and curvy, I thought the old road was pretty bad. That was until we hit a canyon where lack of space forced the old and new roads to combine. In other words, the only route was to take the construction road, which was full of bulldozers and heavy machinery busy hacking away at the cliffs to widen the road. This meant we were constantly stopped behind construction vehicles, only being allowed to go through in starts and stops. I started to wish I'd taken the illegal route through Myanmar.
Making the trip slightly more tolerable were an amusing group of passengers on board - a group of boisterous artists, musicians, photographers from eastern China, heading to Cangyuan for the same reason as me - to see the Wa ethnic group and celebrate Monihei.
Finally we arrived in Cangyuan. Cangyuan is the home of the Wa Monihei festival, the main event of which consists of a giant mud fight in which thousands of people get totally covered in mud. It was my main reason for coming.
Unfortunately, my main reason for going was a flop. Due to a misunderstanding over the festival dates, I arrived two days too early, and had to leave a couple hours too early. The big mud fight was scheduled for 2:30 pm on May 2nd, but I had to take the only bus back to Kunming that day at 3:00 pm in order to make it back the next morning in time to go to work at 9:00 (the bus ride takes 13-14 hours). As a result, I missed the mud fight by a hair. I was really disappointed. But I was able to live vicariously through Sean and several other foreigners who came down from Kunming just for Monihei, and whose schedules allowed them to stay in time for the fun.
I did have some fun in Cangyuan, soaking up the general festive vibes, and appreciating the beautiful mountain surroundings. A British lad named James and I traveled to a village called Wengding (翁丁), where the houses are all the traditional style, made from wood and thatched roofs. It all seemed quite authentic until I asked a villager, who revealed that the thatched roofs were all installed just five years ago at the government's behest in order to attract tourism. I guess it worked; it attracted us. James and I went hiking in the nearby valley, then camped outside the village.
Although I didn't get to participate in the mud throwing (which Sean described as simultaneously fun and horrific....mud being shoved in ones facial orifices...) I was still really happy to have made this latest excursion, not least of which was because I got to get accustomed with two new ethnic groups, the Wa and Lahu, and because I went to a corner of Yunnan that I'd never been before.
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