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Published: September 9th 2009
So my second part of Dali story will be more about the Bai people and their lifestyle.
They call themselves BAI, which has a first meaning of white, but what they mean by it is actually PURE. Also their traditional clothing is basically white, with colorful highlights. Women wear special kind of head thing, which is wowen with symbols, representing
feng ,
hua,
xue and
yue. All four of them are connected with romance and falling inlove. But the Bai have their own story for each of these symbols.
FENG-the wind (Xiaguan wind)
myth:
in Chinese mythology it is also possible for animals to acquire a human form (like Kung-fu Panda, hehe). So there was a snake, who has become a beautiful young lady. She fell inlove with a goodlooking young man, who was to avoid getting involved with a snake, imprissoned by some monks, The prison was under the surface of the Erhai lake. The snake went looking for Buddha, to gain his knowledge and advice on the matter. Buddha gave her a bottle, full of wind and told her to use it to blow the water out of the bed of lake and save her loved one. There
was a cautious monk, who tricked her. He was vaiting for her on a 'tian sheng qiao' bridge and tripped her over. Bottle falling down and breaking of course (I suppose she was vearing some stylish stilettoes and a dress way too long!). The wind escaped and since then the wind is strong in that valley, especially on that bridge.
fact:
because of topografy of location of the longitudinal lake valley among ranges of fairly high mountains, strong north wind (bei feng) is created, being harder in winter time, when it,s believed to be so strong it's impossible to stand on one special bridge: 'tian sheng qiao'. Otherwise the wind is not cold, nor it brings any sand or dust along
HUA-the flower (Shang guan Flower)
legend has it thet in the Yun dynasty, there was a tree, giving off fragrant smell up to 10km away. It had large flowers and iot was blooming all year round, but strangely...always with only 12 flowers. It was also called 'Tribute Tree' cause it's black and hard fruit was served as a tribute to the emperor. This eternal tree attracted crowds of people, also crowds of government officials, who have always been
served 'forever' by the local comunity. So people had to work hard all the days to satisfy high guests. Suddenly the tree dissapeared. Some say, that some smart guy has cut it, to make the local people's lives better and peacefull again.
anynow, Serbs have a good saying about it: Svakok gosta za tri dana dosta!
the fact is that the Bai live with loads of flowers and a family always tries to keep them at home if not having a garden with some water stream, going trought it...
XUE-the snow (Chang shan Snow)
It goes something like this: it was always very dry in their land...and that was a problem for farming. So there were a sister and a brother, who went looking for the great Buddha, to ask him to teach them some magic to solve that problem. When they find Him and accquire the knowledge, they return to their home valley. The brother tricks the Bad energy, and somehow (don,t bknow the details here, sorry...) sends him to the top of the mountain range. The sister transforms herself into snow and freezes the Bad matter! So the most of the year you can see some snow
on the top pf the Cangshan mountain range.
YUE-the moon (The Moon over the Erhai lake)
symbolises the Erhai lake! the mid-autumn festival ,s highlight here is everyone going to the lake with boats, to admire the big full moon reflect itself on the surface of the water. They believe that that month's full moon (15th day of the 8th month by traditional chinese calendar) is the biggest and actually most beautiful to admire one night after it's full size...it's supposed to be a bit golden then...
My explanation of the Bai purity:
moving trouhg the Bai valley made me think, why it really all feels so clean? How do they function? They function with the given environment, especially with the use of water and the wind element. Just from the western mountain range there are 18 streams of water, coming straight down and being magnificently used for field water distribution and as water channels to take uot all the dirt from the towns and willages (hopefully in near future they will add cleaning stations, since it all ends up in the lake eventually). The raster of the streets cathes both kinds of wind: the north one...cleaning the
longitudinal streets' air and the daily winds from the mountains to the lake...cleaning the vertical streets' air. So the Bai, being very skilled farmers, have turned the given conditions into a very well functioning system. That, along with the rectangular plan of most of their villages and towns around the Erhai...totaly reminds me of the Romans and their special solutions for everything.
The town of old Dali is with the same two directions of streets further developed into horizontal promenades (direction paralell to the lake) and vertical streets (direction mountain-lake). Bothe having many visible elements of water. The most special is the 'waterway' street, wich is so sucessful that a new part pf town is being reconstructed and soon to be filled in with the tourist spending facilities, generating lots of special kind of spaces for hanging out.
Same kind of vertical axis is of course present with the 3 pagodas site, again...a stream being used...to take all the human pollution down from the monastery above it.
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KATJA LAVRIA
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Helou Ksenja! Odkriva neverjetne kotičke sveta! Ne vem, a dela fotomontae, al je res tko lepo. Me začenjajo srbet pete:)))) katja