Bai people live mostly around the Dali area in Yunnan. Early in the Tang dynasty, Dali was a local kingdom with Buddhism as its state religion. Until the thirteenth century, the Mongols took over the Dali Kingdom as part of the Yuen Dynasty.
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| (Entrance to the Dali old city) |
The word Bai means white. The Bai people favour white clothes. Their buildings are painted with white decorations. The Bai people still farm in the coasts of Erhai Lake. Many of them have turned into traders. Tea is their key trade commodity. The ancient "tea horse road" refers to the trade routes between Yunnan and Tibet regions. The trade routes have to go through high mountains. Horses were the means of transportation.
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| (House of local Bai farmer) |
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| (Bali performers dressed up in local costume) |
With two hours drive along the mountainous road, we arrived Lijiang from Dali. Lijiang is the home of Naxi people. Lijiang is surrounded by beautiful alpine mountains. The Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is a popular tourist attraction.
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| (Jade Dragon Snow Mountain) |
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| (Lovely Blue Bell flower in the grassland below the snow mountain) |
The Naxi people love to dance, including young ladies and old grandmas.
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| (Dance with Naxi grandmas) |
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| (Young Naxi ladies dancing in the local fire dance party) |
The Lijiang Old Town is now populated with tourist shops and motels. Tourism business becomes the main source of local employment and economic income. Eventhough you can still see Naxi people in their local costume, their lives have been significantly changed by the development of tourism. Similar phenomena are observed in our travel to other homelands of ethnic people. If you are interesting to explore more on this topic, you can read the following book: Nyiri, Pal. Mobility and cultural authority in contemporary China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010.
In the follow on posts, we shall share with you about Tujia, Buyei, Uyghur and Hakka people whom we met in our travels.
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