I have always dreamt of China. From when I was a boy, and was fascinated by the Chinese magician in the Rupert stories, and then later as an adult, when I became absorbed by the philosophies of Chinese Taoism and Buddhism, it has struck me as the strangest and most exotic of all countries, full – in my imagination, at least – of secrets, mysteries and enchantments.
So it was with a sense of awe that I found myself there for the first time, on a whistle-stop tour of the rugged Lijiang region in the southeast of the country. As I approached the ancient town of Lijiang, across the Himalayan plain, there was a low mist across the fields and, rearing in the distance, mountains iced with snow. It was spring, and there was a softness to the air that made me feel as if I was inside one of the evocative traditional Chinese paintings that emphasise the harmony between man and nature – always relegating humans to a tiny role in the broader natural canvas.
The region is the most diverse in China with around 22 separate minority ethnic and cultural groups. Dominant among these is the 300,000-strong Naxi tribe, an extraordinary remnant of China’s ancient past. With a culture stretching back around 1,400 years, the Naxi was once a matriarchal society, with women inheriting all the property, and men bringing up the children. My guide, Min, was half-Han Chinese and half-Naxi. Her skin was light, and she was petite, but traditionally, she explained, ‘The Naxi were dark, fat and strong. People wanted daughters, not sons. The women went into business. The women killed the pigs. The women worked the fields.’
Min took me to visit Lijiang old town. This is a place straight out of my imagination, a childhood fantasy of what China would look like. Crisscrossed by canals and ancient bridges, the beautiful patchwork of low buildings with their flying eaves and four-round-a-courtyard patterns again emphasised the ancient Chinese belief in uniting humans with their environment. The town looked as if it had sprung out of the ground itself with terraces rising gently from the town square to the new Looking at the Past Pavilion on Lion Hill.
The rather stern sounding invocation from the government at one of the entrances to the town – ‘Be Patriotic and Law Abiding, Have Good Sense and Keep One’s Word, Unite and Friendly, Hard Working and Thrift’ – belied a relaxed holiday atmosphere. I spotted miniskirts and gelled hair. Min and I made our way slowly through the alleyways of the town. We walked past a house festooned with coloured paper (it indicates mourning: green for the first year, yellow for the second, white for the third), and headed to the central square. A group of 30 elderly Naxi women were performing a traditional dance. They wore red sleeveless jackets, blue and cream aprons, sheepskin capes and red slippers. Four men headed the group and a man with a gourd pipe stood in the centre, while dancers shuffled around in an ever-expanding circle as tourists and locals joined in. The circle grew to include more and more participants. The dance is utterly simple, which is its point. It welcomes everybody in.
Min took me to the highest part of town, Lion Hill, to visit the pagoda there and look down on the town from above. We passed 800-year-old cypresses on the way, and from the top we could see for miles across the Himalayan plain. Again, a certain softness in the air which you never quite get in Europe blurred everything into a pointillist picture.
