In the dense forest of the Meili Snow Mountain range in remote southwest China, English football chants were the last sound I expected to hear. Yet the uneven chorus of 20 Tibetan muleteers singing “Here we go, here we go, here we go” accompanied our party along the steep muddy incline from Yebon village. But that was not all. As I sat astride a mule that had surely passed its sell-by date, I looked down into the smiling eyes of my teenage guide, who met my gaze with the words “I love you”. Stunned, I stammered a thank you. She replied: “I love you” again. Evidently the only English she and her friends know is either the language of the terraces or some throwaway term of endearment, no doubt imported via satellite television.
This is deepest Yunnan province, once part of a Greater Tibet, but incorporated into China proper after Beijing’s takeover in 1950, and until recently a difficult place for Western tourists to get to.
However, with new roads and local airports opening, and the powers that be in Beijing embracing tourism, a visit to the usually suspicious Middle Kingdom is becoming much easier.
My journey through Yunnan started eight days earlier in the 800-year-old Unesco World Heritage-listed city of Lijiang, a small regional town that has become a big draw for tourists, both domestic and foreign.
Yunnan is home to 25 ethnic minorities. Standing out in Lijiang are the Naxi (“Na-shee”), a matrilineal group whose women wear sky-blue flat caps and criss-crossed robes, the distinctive pipe-smoking Yi women wearing large umbrella-like hats, and the multicoloured opulence of the Bai.
For early birds, a morning wander through the Old Town’s maze of cobbled streets may be rewarded with an impromptu display of traditional dancing by the Naxi. The women’s arms are linked as they move slowly to the music from a boom box held by a man in a silk vest and Chinese cowboy hat.
The region is rich in culture and history, and for the most part Lijiang lives up to that. The Old Town is a warren of narrow streets and intricately decorated low wooden buildings, many used as shops selling traditional medicines and a variety of teas. Yet, even with marvels such as one of the few remaining Ming Dynasty stone bridges, there is a sense that it is all part of a show, a show aimed at giving wealthy Han Chinese and Western visitors a taste of a rarefied past.
Adding to the surrealism is a large image at the edge of the main square of a bearded Colonel Sanders and his KFC outlet, a place where Chairman Mao would surely have once dominated.
Just a short walk from Lijiang’s hustle and bustle I got a sense of how things once were, even if it was only a glimpse. The Black Dragon Pool, at the foot of the Jade Dragon Mountain, dates from 1737 and is a manicured landscape of reflecting ponds and bridges, pagodas and gardens that could have been taken straight from the brush of a local artist.
But the past and its traditions are now under threat. He Zhiben is a local shaman, a spiritual guide whose centuries-old occupation was once revered as the pinnacle of Naxi culture. Now fewer than 100 shamans remain in the province, a situation that may ultimately prove to be the undoing of Naxi traditions. The Naxi language is the last hieroglyphic language still being used in the world today , and with most Naxi being illiterate it is up to educated shamans such as He Zhiben to pass on local knowledge and customs. But with the increasing influx of outside influences from both Beijing and the West, there are no young people willing to take up the mantle. It seems likely that septuagenarian He Zhiben will be the last of his kind in Lijiang.
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