So wrote Joseph Rock in 1925 after he returned from an epic
three-month winter expedition through what he called “the great river trenches
of Asia”.
This is a unique area of northwest Yunnan, where four of Asia’s
major rivers run in parallel for a hundred miles or so, creating huge canyons
separated by high ridge lines of mountains. In this area of south-west China
bordering Burma and Tibet, the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Irrawaddy rivers flow
side by side from north to south before diverging to follow separate paths through
different countries and into different oceans.
The Yangtze is the easternmost river - known as the Changjiang (Long River) in China. Flowing
south from its Tibetan headwaters, the river hits a mountain barrier at Shigu
in Yunnan and makes an abrupt turn northwards, where it enters the Tiger
Leaping Gorge. The Yangzte then hooks back southwards around Lijiang, before
turning east to flow through the heart of China and ultimately into the East
China Sea near Shanghai.
Next is the Mekong river, the Lancang to the Chinese, which maintains its southward flow from
Tibet into Yunnan and then on through Laos, Thailand and into Vietnam, where it
finally enters the South China Sea via the Mekong Delta near Saigon.
The Salween river, or Nu
Jiang, follows the border between China and Burma for much of its length in
Yunnan. The mountain ridge to the west of the river marks the border between the
two countries until the Nu river turns westward into Burma and eventually reaches
the Indian Ocean at Moulmein. A fourth river is the Dulong, a tributary of the
Irrawaddy, both of which flow in parallel with the other rivers in northern
Yunnan and the north of Burma.
The juxtaposition of these major rivers and canyons sees a
dramatic transition from Burma’s tropical jungles to the temperate uplands of
Yunnan. The array of canyons and mountain ridges forms a barrier to the monsoon
rains that sweep east in May-June from the plains of the Indian subcontinent, and
creates a series of unique micro-climates within each valley.
On the map it’s only 70 miles from the Burmese border to the
ethnically Tibetan Yunnan town of Zhongdian (recently re-named as Shangri La),
to the east of the Yangtze. But if you tried to make this journey on foot you would
have a very rough few weeks, if not months, crossing four separate mountain
ranges and the Dulong, Nujiang, Lancangjiang and Changjiang river valleys.
As well as a wide variety of local climates, this region is
also hosts a wide variety of ethnic minorities. The north is the domain of the
Tibetans, while to the west are the Kachin peoples of upper Burma. In Yunnan, each
of the river valleys has a unique blend of minorities: in the eastern valleys the
Naxi and Pumi predominate, while the Lisu, Nu and Drung are interspersed with
Tibetans in the western river valleys.
And Rock’s use of the term ‘river trenches’ is apt, for here they
form deep canyons and gorges, separated by towering peaks of mountains up to
25,000 feet in height.
In World War Two the Hengduan and Gaoligong mountains divides
were dubbed ‘The Hump’ by the Allied pilots whose transport planes flew over
them from India to deliver supplies to ‘free’ China after the Burma Road was
captured and closed by the Japanese army.
In his article “Through the Great River Trenches of Asia” in
the August 1926 issue of National Geographic, Joseph Rock once again opens by
making dubious claims of being the first westerner to explore the region in
depth.
“Few have been
privileged to climb the towering ranges separating the mightiest streams of
Asia ...,” he begins.
“No white man
had previously had a glimpse of many of the scenes here photographed, for the
few explorers who have penetrated these terrifying fastnesses have done so when
the snow-crowned peaks were hidden from view by the enveloping monsoon clouds
of summer.”
What Rock fails to mention is that the region had already been extensively
explored and even settled by missionaries prior to his visit. His fellow botanist
Frank Kingdon Ward had tramped all over upper Burma, Yunnan and Tibet from 1910
onwards on plant hunting trips. Kingdon Ward chronicled his journeys in books
such as Land of the Blue Poppy and Mystery Rivers of Tibet. Rock makes only
a passing mention of other explorers such as Jacques Bacot and Heinrich Handel
Mazetti, who visited the Tiger Leaping Gorge (then known simply as the Yangtze
canyons) before him.
And at the time of Rock’s expedition to the ‘Three Rivers’
region there were already many Catholic and Protestant mission stations and churches
in the upper reaches of the Mekong and Salween rivers. The Catholic missions were
set up by French and Swiss priests in the late 19th and early 20th century, and
the priests travelled extensively across the region and even built the first
proper paths over the mountain passes between the Mekong and the Salween
canyons. So Joseph Rock was not the first to visit this region, despite his
claim to be the first to photograph the canyons and their indigenous peoples.
“Lured by the
magnificence of the mountain rages and the weird and little known chasms in
which these mighty rivers flow, as well as by the strange tribes living on the
slopes of their gorges and in their valleys, early one October I left my headquarters
in the little Nashi hamlet of Nguluko on the Likiang snow range, to explore and
photograph,” he writes.
In October 1924, with the monsoon rains not yet over, Joseph
Rock set out for an autumn and winter visit to the northwest corner of Yunnan.
As usual, he was accompanied by a large retinue of Naxi servants, helpers and
bodyguards, 15 men in all, plus numerous mules to carry his three-month’s worth
of supplies. When he set off from Lijiang, his aim was to walk up the Mekong
(Lancang Jiang) river towards the French missionary post at Cizhong (then known
as Tsechung) near Atuntze (now known as Deqin), and then cross the mountains to
the Salween by means of the Doker La pass, a traditional Tibetan pilgrimage
route.
But first Rock had to first work his way around the Yangtze,
which envelopes Lijiang in its great first bend. Rock did this by passing
through the village of Shigu, situated at the tip of the first bend of the
Yangtze. Shigu was later to become a historic stopping off point for Mao
Zedong’s’s Long March. In 1924, however, Joseph Rock found only a miserable
settlement with flea-ridden rooms and ne’er-do-well opium-smoking Chinese.
In his article, Rock provides a colourful description of the
scene at the end of a long day’s journey as his mules arrived at his
accommodation in rainy Shigu and as “cats, dogs and dirty children add to the
confusion.”
“The lead mule
with his large bell steps into the muddy courtyard, followed by his hungry
co-sufferers. Without waiting to have their loads removed, they fight their way
to the troughs and try to eat through the baskets tied over their mouths. Dogs
are stepped upon, pigs squeal, mules bray, while long dead ancestors are
conjured up unprintable language by the exasperated muleteers. Everywhere mud, dung,
cornstalks and odours which it would be difficult to analyse! Poor cook! In
such surroundings he has to produce a palatable meal!”
On his way to cross the Yangtze-Mekong watershed, Rock passed
the scene of a Nashi funeral, where grey-cloaked mourners prepared paper
replicas of servants and furniture to be burned in a ceremony to accompany the
deceased into the next world. Rock then passed along a narrow track where
spiders’ webs were so thick as to need a stick to be held up in front of the
face.
“Unless one
held up a to separate the yellow threads and make a passageway through this
labyrinth, one’s head would soon have resembled a yellow ball of twine or fuzzy
silk,” he writes.
In this way, Rock plodded in five days up a track to a
settlement called Chutien, on the banks of a tributary of the Yangtze. This is
the same route now followed by a motorable road from Lijiang to Weixi.
In my own attempts to re-trace Rock’s journeys to the “Great
River Trenches of Asia” I had to make four trips to the region over a number of
years. The repeat visits were needed due to my poor planning and ignorance of
the weather conditions on the mountain passes. I also seriously underestimated the
sheer scale of the landscape and the distances involved.
My first venture up the Mekong was in the early spring of 2002,
when bad weather prevented me from making a crossing of the Doker La from the
Mekong to the Salween (Nujiang). The whole trip was marred by setbacks. My first
attempt to reach Deqin by road from Lijiang ended at Zhongdian because snow had
closed the road over the Baima Shan mountain pass. Zhongdian was then still a
primitive and rather grim one-street Tibetan town, a far cry from the “Shangri-La”
(Xiang-ge-li-la) tourist boomtown it would later become.
I returned to Lijiang and tried an alternative approach to get
to the Mekong valley from the south, via a town called Weixi. An early morning
bus followed Rock’s route to ‘Chutien’, now known as Judian. This was where Rock
had stayed in a room from which opium smokers had been evicted, and where he could
admire the stars at night through holes in the ceiling. Our bus bypassed Judian
and crossed the Yangtze-Mekong divide via a pass called Litiping, which Rock
had described as undulating alpine meadows with hemlock, canebrake and
rhododendrons growing in profusion, and birds singing. Eighty years later, Litiping
seemed to be a barren stunted grassland interspersed with sheep herders’ rock
shelters.
On the way down to the Mekong, Rock stopped at the small town
of Weixi to rest and restock his supplies and develop some photographs. He also
spent some time providing medical care to the locals of Weixi. In this
backwater, people had blind faith in western medicine, believing that just one
of Rock’s pills would cure advanced tuberculosis. The local cures included cow
dung. Weixi had a post office where Rock was able - despite a lack of
sufficient stamps - to send a letter to Washington DC.
In 2002 Weixi appeared to be a pleasant and rustic market town perched
on the slopes over the Mekong valley. Its cobbled streets and wooden houses
gave it something of the atmosphere of the old Lijiang town before it had a
makeover and became over-run with tourists. Weixi’s steep streets were given
over to stalls selling herbal remedies and household wares. Dark-skinned
Burmese traders sold Indian joss sticks and Vietnamese toothpaste – their
presence a reminder that the Burmese border was close by. Another local
speciality much on display in Weixi was orchids - literally hundreds of them. There
were scores of people on the streets trading orchids in plant pots. The more
aesthetic specimens were changing hands for hundreds of dollars, due to the
prevailing belief that they conferred good luck.
Weixi was a Lisu town and the locals seemed cheerful,
industrious and rambunctious. Many of the Lisu were Christian, and their small
churches could be seen in most villages in the Lancang valley. Some churches
were built in traditional Chinese style with curving eaves, and with a red or
white cross prominently displayed on the front. Oddly, Rock makes no mention of
the strong Christian presence in the Mekong valley during his visit. Perhaps at
that time the work of the missionaries in the Mekong had yet to bear fruit. The
great British proselytiser, J.O. Fraser, (‘Fraser of Lisuland’) of the China
Inland Mission was responsible for converting tens of thousands of the Lisu to
Christianity during the early 20th century, but his work only started around
the Great War of 1914-18 and may not have had much impact on the Weixi area by
the late 1920s. Judging by the number of churches in this part of Yunnan, Fraser
and his colleagues obviously had an enduring impact on the area. He devised a romanised
script for the Lisu language that is still in use today by the Communist
authorities.
From Weixi, Rock descended to the Mekong and arrived at a
riverside village called Kakatang, where he noted that goitre was a major
problem among the local populace. One local man had goitre so big and heavy it pulled
down his chin so that he couldn’t shut his mouth. At the next village of
Petsinhsun - now know as Beixincun -
the headman wanted his portrait taken by Rock, who was amused to see the chief
throwing on silk garments over his dirty clothes and posing “as if he was the
emperor of China”.
It took Rock seven days to travel up the Mekong by mule as far
as Cizhong, whereas it took us just a single day by bus. In Rock’s time, the route
along the river was precarious and dangerous:
“The trail was
appalling and often the loads had to be removed from the packs and carried one
at a time by the mule-men over the treacherously narrow spots high above the
stream,” he wrote.
In 2002, a smooth tarmac road ran up the eastern side of the Lancang river. The landscape was one of
small farms and tilled fields, and many households grew the local staple of
maize. The bus was crammed with boisterous and diminutive Lisu people, many of
whom brought unusual cargoes on board during the frequent stops at the many
villages. Whicker baskets were used as backpacks to transport bushels of plants
or loads of seeds, and one passenger had plastic barrel strapped to her back containing
water in which swam live fish.
When Rock progressed further north up the river valley, he
noted there were fewer Lisu and more Tibetans in evidence. There were also Naxi
living in the Mekong valley but they had adopted Tibetan ways and followed a
Tibetan form of Buddhism, he observed. At a place called Yetche, Rock met a
Naxi ‘king’ who he found to be friendly and dignified. This local dignitary claimed
that in 1905 he had saved the life a British botanist, George Forrest, who was
being pursued by Tibetan lamas intent on killing him. At that time, the
Tibetans had strongly opposed the presence of western missionaries in the
Mekong valley, seeing the mission stations and churches as a springboard from
which westerners would convert all of Tibet to Christianity.
The Tibetans Lamas’ hostility boiled over when they murdered
western missionaries in the area around Atuntze [now known as Deqin], and put the
foreigners’ severed heads on display at the monastery there. As a result of
this gruesome incident, the western powers put pressure on the Qing authorities
in Yunnanfu (Kunming) to punish the Tibetans and provide protection to
missionaries. The Chinese retaliated by razing several Lamaist temples and giving
the land to western missionaries. The Han Chinese government had their own
agenda to destabilise and undermine the political power of the Tibetan lamas.
When he continued further north up the Mekong,
Rock noted how the scenery became noticeably grander beyond the village of
Yetche. The river was now hemmed in by steep hills on both sides. Then, as now,
there were few bridges spanning the Mekong. Instead, the locals relied on a
cable ‘flying fox’ method to cross the river. Rock describes in lairy detail
how he and his entourage - 15 men with all their horses and mules and supplies
- slid over the roaring river on ropes. These days steel cable slide crossings
are still in common use along the Mekong, but in Rock’s time the ropes were
made from twisted bamboo strands greased with butter. Rock relates how his
party were advised to walk a few more miles to a ‘new’ rope slide as the
Cizhong rope was past its ‘use by date’ of three months!
Once across the river, Rock backtracked south to
the mission station at Cizhong, where he met a French priest, Pere
Jean-Baptiste Ouvrard, who had been working in this area for 14 years. Again,
it is odd that Rock says almost nothing about Cizhong and its distinctive Catholic
church. Perhaps he wanted to be the centre of the narrative and did not want to
draw attention to the fact that others had been here well before him. Or
perhaps it was an aversion to the Catholic church after his unhappy childhood
experiences in Vienna with an overbearing and obsessively religious father. In
his article, Rock only mentions that the priest helped him recruit a further 13
Naxi, Lutzu and Tibetan porters to help on the next stage of his journey - the
crossing of the Mekong-Salween divide.
At Cizhong we crossed the river using a small
iron suspension bridge and headed over the crest of a hill to find the village
clustered around a square that doubled as a basketball court and outdoor
waiting room for a primitive medical clinic operating out of a shack. A few of
the local Naxi and Tibetan old folks were sitting around with glucose IV drips
in their arms [to ‘restore energy’] or with huge nail-like acupuncture needles
embedded in their knees.
After a drink at the medical shack we were taken
up the road by an old gent who introduced himself as the caretaker for the
Catholic church. He seemed delighted when I told him I was a Catholic and took
us up to the church at the top of the village and opened up the doors for us to
have a look around.
It was quite a strange feeling to walk past a
Buddhist stupa into the forecourt of a Chinese-Baroque-style Catholic church in
the middle of a mixed Tibetan and Naxi village in Yunnan. The church seemed old
but well maintained - a bit like the caretaker himself. We padded round the
silent interior, peering up at the colourful statues of Jesus and the Virgin
Mary, trying to translate the Chinese language Christian posters on the wall,
and looking for the original decorations.
On the ceiling there was a beautiful arrangement
of symbols that combined Eastern tradition with Christian intent. Lotus flowers
and swirly ying/yang symbols were interspersed with stylised Roman crosses. The
altar was richly decorated with a pink floral cover, augmented by hangings of
yellow silk and vases of local pink and red flowers. Above it, a statue of
Jesus and the Latin inscription “Ecce Agnus Dei’. The small bell tower was reached
by a set of creaky wooden stairs, and offered fine views over the valley and
the cluster of houses that made up Cizhong. Most houses had satellite TV dishes
on their flat roofs, which detracted somewhat from the otherwise rustic feel to
this traditional village.
After an awkwardly reverential half hour spent
padding around the dark interior of the Cizhong church gazing at the
decorations, I made what I thought was a generous contribution to the
collection box. However, my feelgood mood was quickly dispelled when the
caretaker then demanded an extra 20 kuai ‘admission fee’ for letting us look
round!
We stayed the night at Cizhong in the house of a
local teacher, Mr Lee, who lived next door to the church and looked after its
vineyard. The grapes had been introduced by the French priests and still
produced a red wine, which was served to us that evening out of a plastic jerry
can. The strain of grape used was now unique to Yunnan, he told us, as it was
an old and unproductive variety no longer used by the French wine industry. It
was as rough as guts.
Over a dinner of gristly chicken in a globby
yellow soup, Teacher Lee told us a bit about the village. It was half Tibetan
and half Naxi, he said. A bit like his own family - he was Naxi and his wife a
Tibetan. And despite being an overseer of the Catholic church he himself was a
Buddhist, as witnessed by the large mural of the Potala palace and the pictures
of the Dalai lama over his fireplace. A collage of family photographs on his
wall also showed his own travels to Tibet.
Mr Lee told us that the village was a harmonious
place, where Christians and Buddhists had lived together peacefully for
centuries. About 80% of the villagers were nominally Christian, but there was
no longer a priest in the village - only a visiting cleric who tended to many
of the small churches in the Mekong valley. Mr Lee lamented that the younger
people of Cizhong showed waning interest in Christianity - they were more
interested in karaoke, clothes and mobile phones. Materialism rather than
Marxism was the biggest threat to the local church congreation, it seemed.
Mr Lee’s house was neat and pleasant, with
the sturdy wood fittings common to most Tibetan houses in the region.
Downstairs in the yard there were pigs, cows and chickens. Upstairs on the flat
roof, corn was stored and there were more rooms including his son’s study room,
complete with a desktop computer.
Later I learned a little more about the history of
Cizhong and its unique Christian history. French missionaries established a
church here in the late 19th century after their initial efforts further north
in Tibet were thwarted by aggressive opposition from then-powerful monastery
lamas. The first French churches were burnt down and many of the missionaries
were killed by local mobs with the tacit approval of the Tibetan lamas. Cizhong
was selected as a spot to re-build a church because - despite its Tibetan
populace - it lay outside the borders of Tibet and beyond the influence of the
lamas.
Under Chinese protection, the missionaries were
able to establish a new church and tried to set an example in the ways of the
Lord to their Tibetan flock. It obviously worked, and many local Tibetans and
Naxi were converted. But the north west of Yunnan was never a safe place under
the unstable Chinese warlord regimes - and the missionaries continued to be
plagued by bandits and lawlessness.
In 1905 the Tibetan lamas attempted to drive the
Catholic missionaries out of the Mekong valley altogether - and succeeded in
doing so initially after killing two priests. Swiss missionaries from the Order
of St Bernard then took over from the French. The last western priest at
Cizhong was Father Alphonse Savioz, who lived there from 1948 to 1951 until he
was driven out by the newly-installed Communist authorities. He went to live in
Taiwan and was eventually able to re-visit his old parish in the 1990s. One of
his colleagues, Fr Maurice Tornay was not so fortunate. As parish priest at the
Tibetan village of Yakarlo in the north, Fr Tornay came into conflict with the
Tibetan lamas in the late 1940s. He tried to negotiate a ‘truce’, but was
murdered while en route to Lhasa. Maurice Tornay was declared a martyr and
saint by Pope John Paul in 1992.
And so, despite its image as a tranquil ‘Shangri
La’ of Christianity in the wilds of Yunnan, Cizhong had a turbulent and unhappy
past and an uncertain future. It was slowly becoming known as a tourist spot,
and it may not be long before coach loads of tourists clog up the dusty lanes
of this village. Already a Kunming company has started to develop a ‘Cizhong
wine’, allegedly based on the grape variety originally introduced by the French
priests.
From Cizhong, Joseph Rock crossed over the 15,000
foot high mountains to the Salween (Nujiang) in the west via the (Sila) Se La
pass, and spent two weeks exploring the settlements and monasteries of the
Salween valley.
Leaving most of his supplies behind at Cizhong,
Rock ascended first from the Mekong river up a steep zig-zagging track through
oak and pine forests to a ridge about 11,000 feet up. From here he had great
views of the Baimashan mountains south of Deqin. Continuing up to the bleak
pass, Rock passed through deciduous forests of maples, with wild cherries and
rhododendrons growing in the bush.
On our March visit, however, we were told quite
categorically by Teacher Lee in Cizhong that the pass over the Se La was closed
by deep snow. We attempted a recce and spent half a day trudging slowly and
breathlessly up a path behind Cizhong, gaining great views up the Mekong valley
and of the mountain to the north. There were no other houses or settlements
higher up in the mountains, but the herders we encountered up there were also
emphatic that the mountain pass over to the Salween valley was closed.
Reluctantly, we turned around and plodded back down to Cizhong.
The next day we continued our journey up the
Mekong on foot. Walking up the dusty road beside the river it took us half a
day to get to Yanmen (Swallow’s Gate), where we stayed for a night. The Tibetan
and Naxi people we met along the way were very friendly – and many of them
invited us into their homes to rest and have something to eat. We took up this
offer in one small settlement where we heard strange thumping and groaning
noises emanating from one of the houses. Inside, we found three young Tibetan
monks sat on the floor in an upstairs room performing a house blessing
ceremony. They banged drums, blew horns, rang bells and chanted unceasingly,
unfazed by the appearance of two foreigner spectators.
Tired from our day of walking, we rested in the
house for a while and shared some noodles with our hospitable Tibetan hosts. In
some ways, they looked very similar to the Mekong Tibetans photographed by
Joseph Rock. They passed the time printing colourful home-made prayer flags and
making butter sculptures, which were scattered throughout the house temple.
Maize seemed to be the main local crop and the locals spread corn on the road
to have the husks split by the wheels of passing vehicles (not that there were
many).
Beyond Yanmen we passed a narrow gap in the steep
sided gorge, from which a mountain torrent emerged. This was the outlet of the
notorious Londjre gorge that Joseph Rock descended with trepidation on his
return to the Mekong from the Salween.
“Of all the trails along which we had passed thus
far, none could compare with that which leads from Londjre gorge out into the
Mekong. It is a veritable corkscrew up a weird black chasm, at the bottom of
which roars the stream coming from the sacred Dokerla. The trail is built
against a rocky wall of sandstone in short, steep zigzags, a most appalling
structure of tree trunks suspended over the deep, narrow, yawning black canyon
with overhanging cliffs. A gale was blowing in addition, which meant that at
every turn one had to brace oneself against the wind, holding tightly to the
cliff.”
We did not go into the Londjre gorge, but
continued upriver, where valley narrowed further so that the Mekong ran swiftly
between dramatic high walls of rock. We still wanted to try crossing over the
mountains to the Salween, and held out a faint hope that the Doker La pass
might be open to the north, even though the Se La was blocked by snow. The
Doker La is a major pilgrimage route for Tibetans. It marks the official
cultural border between China and Tibet, and according to Rock, it saw
thousands of Tibetan pilgrims crossing it every year.
“A constant stream of pilgrims treads the narrow
trail with the sacred prayer Om Mane Padme Hum ever on their lips as they whirl
prayer wheels in their right hands. Thus they acquire merit. Many commit
suicide by throwing themselves down the Dokerla, for to die on that sacred spot
means emancipation and deliverance from re-birth. Some there are, especially
nuns and monks, who do nothing all the year long but cross the Dokerla in
penance.”
To reach the Doker La we no longer needed to use
the rope bridge that had been the only means of crossing the Mekong when Rock
visited. There was now a rickety iron bridge, across which mules were plodding,
and which seemed swayed and creaked in the strong wind blowing up the Mekong gorge.
After crossing, we sweated our backpacks up a
steep trail for much of the afternoon. The weather worsened as we got higher,
and everyone we met along the way told us there was no way across the Doker La.
The mountain ridge ahead of us was socked in with cloud, and it was starting to
rain more heavily. As it started to get dark we conceded defeat – we weren’t
going to ‘do’ the Doker La on this trip. In fact, we didn’t even know where we
were.
Fortunately, a rough-looking Tibetan goat herder
was kind enough to invite us to spend the night at his farm. In the gloomy
interior we juggled with walnuts and watched a Hong Kong kung fu movie on his
old fashioned TV. The farmer was only in his 40s but was already a grandfather
- his teenage daughter was breastfeeding a little baby while piglets and
kittens and puppies frolicked underfoot. And so it was that we spent the night
sleeping on the floor of his threadbare wooden house, at an altitude of around
12,000 feet above the Tibetan hamlet of Yongjiu on the Mekong.
The next morning we woke up feeling stiff and
cold, but our decision not to continue on to the Doker La was vindicated - it
was pouring with rain. We said a big thank you to the farmer and headed back
down to the Mekong. The route that had taken us several hours to climb up now
took only an hour in descent. At the windy bridge we managed to find a shack to
eat noodles, and we took a minibus along the last part of the route up to
Deqin. It was a scary ride, along a narrow road that rose higher and higher above
the river, and which had precipitous drop offs and some very scary tight
corners.
Deqin was a scrappy town of ugly Chinese concrete
buildings, wedged in the mountains. In Rock’s time it was known as Atuntze, and
it comprised just a few stone and mud buildings and a small market place (“where
people from the northern steppes bartered merchandise with the Chinese”).
Rock says little about it in his article except that it was still “essentially
a Tibetan town”, despite being annexed by the Chinese into Yunnan in 1703.
It was at the Fei Lai Si monastery just outside
Deqin that we got a glimpse of the “peerless peak” of Miyetzimu (Meili) that
Rock described so rapturously as “the
most glorious peak my eyes were ever privileged to see. No wonder Tibetans stand
in awe and worship it. It is like a castle of a dream, an ice palace of a fairy
tale, or an enormous mausoleum with gigantic steps and buttresses all crowned
by a majestic dome of ice tapering into an ethereal spire merging into a pale
blue sky.”
By 2002 the viewing area for the mountain had
become a tourist trap, with hawkers selling joss sticks and other offerings to
be made at one of the many shrines. The tourist route also included a visit to
the Minyong glacier that lies beneath Meili Xue Shan.
Instead, we opted to travel the same route back
down into the depths of the Mekong canyon, but turned left at the river to
visit the hamlet of Yubeng. At the junction of the road near the Mekong we
stopped at a small Buddhist chapel, called the ‘Jungle Temple’. Inside, there
were effigies of Buddhist deities, but also evidence to confirm Rock’s
observation that the local people also worship the mountain itself as a deity.
The route to Yubeng branched off south above the
western bank of the Mekong. Once again, the road was a nightmare for anyone
with a fear of heights, as it was basically a ledge hacked out of the steep
side of the canyon, high above the river.
We stayed a night at some hot springs above Xidang
before walking over to the Tibetan mountain hamlet of lower Yubeng, where we
spent three frustrating days waiting in a wooden shack for the weather to
clear. It didn’t. It rained incessantly and fog blocked out any views of the
surrounding mountains. We had little to do except sit round a fire that gave
off little heat and hope tomorrow would bring better weather. We tried playing
snooker on the outdoor table under a dripping plastic sheet. I dubbed myself the pot black champion of the
Mekong.
When the third morning dawned grey and wet, we
tried to beat the encroaching cabin fever by hiking through the deep snow to
see a sacred waterfall and a ‘magic lake’. It proved to be a miserable hard
slog with slushy boots and we saw very little. Yubeng didn’t feel like Shangri
La.
We spent a final night down in Xidang and went to
a Tibetan ‘disco’ in the village hall, situated right underneath our guesthouse
room. It started off with traditional Tibetan music but later switched to
western dance tracks. Young glassy-eyed Tibetan guys hung around on the
sidelines of the dance floor and leered at their rivals. A few scuffles broke
out and we retired to our room. It was impossible to sleep because the music
thumped on into the early hours.
When it got to 3am and with no sign that the music
would stop, I made the mistake of thinking that I could forgo sleep and make an
early start on the road back to Deqin.
My sleep-deprived brain reasoned that I could walk
down the track to the main road in a couple of hours and hitch a ride on an
early truck or bus heading back to Deqin. However, after about twenty minutes
walking down on the road I realised with horror that Tibetan villagers let
their guard dogs out to roam at night. Pursued by snarling mastiffs, I ran into
a deserted shack and spent the remaining the hours of darkness cowering within,
clutching my backpack in front of me as a last line of defence. It was an
inauspicious end to my trip, and it would be five years before I returned to
further explore the ‘river trenches of Asia’.
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