Zhou Qufei’s (1135–1189) Lingwai daida is an ethnographic and geographical gazetteer of the Song empire’s southern frontier, as well as various foreign countries that interacted with it via maritime trade. Zhou compiled the gazetteer in 1178, after spending a total of six years as a minor official in Guangxi, including two stints as an instructor at the prefectural school in Qinzhou and one stint as a deputy county magistrate in Jingjiang prefecture (based in Guilin).

The Lingwai daida contains detailed descriptions of the peoples known to the Chinese as Li, Dan, Yao, Man, and Lao. Some of this is based on Zhou’s personal observations (especially of the diverse population at Qinzhou), some of it is probably second-hand information gathered from his colleagues, and a significant amount of other content is known to have been copied or adapted from his former superior Fan Chengda’s (1126–1193) own gazetteer of the region, the Guihai yuheng zhi (Gazetteer for Governors of the Southern Frontier).¹ The Guihai yuheng zhi was heavily abridged in the Yuan and early Ming periods, but Ma Duanlin’s (1254–1323) Wenxian tongkao (Comprehensive Investigation of Texts), completed in 1307, preserves long quotes from the original version that relate to the southern frontier peoples. These show that Zhou Qufei borrowed heavily from Fan Chengda’s work. However, Fan’s account of the Yao is much more detailed, so I have also included an excerpt from it below.

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From the section “Foreign countries, Part 1”

The Li barbarians (Li Man) across the sea

In Hainan there are the Li Mother Mountains (Limu shan), in which live the Raw Li. They are a great distance from the prefectures and counties and do not pay taxes or perform corvée labor. Beyond the mountains are the Cooked Li, who farm on lands under the state’s jurisdiction (shengdi 省地) and pay taxes and perform corvée. They are under the authority of whichever one of the four prefectures or garrisons they live closest to.² The Raw Li are simple, honest, and uncouth. They do not take kindly to being deceived or offended, but they are not a threat to others. The Cooked Li, on the other hand, include many [Chinese] miscreant commoners from the Hu-Guang³ and Fujian regions, and are cunning, fierce, and dangerous. Though they outwardly pay taxes to the officials, in secret they conspire with the Raw Li to raid lands under the state’s jurisdiction and rob travelers and residents alike. When officials pass through the villages (cun 村) and settlements (dong 峒⁴), they often lodge in the homes [of the Cooked Li].

In the settlements is a female chief of the Li named Wang Erniang.⁵ Her husband’s name is unknown to us. Her family is rich and she is skilled at managing her followers, which makes her strong enough to control the various Li groups. The imperial court conferred on her the title of Worthy Lady (Yiren 宜人).⁶ Any order that Qiongzhou prefecture issues to the Li settlements is always first handed down to Worthy Lady Wang, and none then dare to disobey it. When Erniang dies, her daughter will inherit her title.⁷  

Previously, in the Chongning era (1102–1106), Wang Zudao (d. 1108) served as prefect in Guangxi and pacified 907 settlements of Li bandits, with a population of 64,000 men and women, and opened up more than 1,200 li of roads. He declared that lands that had not submitted to imperial rule in the Han and Tang periods had now all become part of the empire, and he and his staff all received generous rewards.⁸

In the first year of the Chunxi era (1174), Wang Zhongqi, chief of a Raw Li settlement in the Five Fingers Mountain, led eighty nearby settlements, with a population of 1,820 men and women, to submit to our civilizing influence.⁹ The chiefs of these settlements, including Wang Zhongwen and eighty others, went to meet the prefect of Qiongzhou. They visited the Xianying Temple, where they slashed a stone with their swords and smeared the blood of a sacrificial animal on their mouths, swearing an oath to change their ways and never raid again.¹⁰ The prefect of Qiongzhou rewarded them with gifts and sent them back to their settlements.

In general, the Li are given to suspicion. When a guest arrives, they do not immediately meet him but instead peep at him through a crack in the wall. When they see that the guest stands solemnly without moving, then they send their slave out to lay a mat on the floor. Soon after the guest sits down on the mat, the host appears, but he still does not engage in conversation. Before long, he brings out wine and serves foul, rancid food to the guest. If the guest forces himself to eat the food, showing no sign of doubt, then the host is happy and serves him beef and wine. If the guest does not eat the foul food, then he is sent away.¹¹

When they gather with kin and friends, they beat drums with mallets and sing and dance. After three cups of wine, they invite each other to remove their weapons, but they still place their bows and swords by their sides. By nature, they like killing each other over feuds, which they call zuo’ao 作拗.¹² If their kin are killed, they bind the perpetrators in fetters and demand cattle, wine, and silver pitchers as compensation, calling this “redeeming a life” (shuming 贖命).

Marriages are formalized by snapping an arrow. When a Li girl has an illicit affair (bujie 不潔, literally “is unchaste”) with a merchant lodging in her home, her parents [are not embarrassed and] instead boast about this to the neighbors.¹³ When a kinsman dies, they slaughter a cow as an offering, but do not wail or make an offering of rice to the dead. Instead, they only eat raw beef.¹⁴ Their burial custom is to carry the coffin in a procession, with one person walking in front and throwing eggs on the ground. If an egg falls and does not break, then that ground is considered auspicious [and used for the burial].

They all live in stilt houses.¹⁵ Their land produces aromatics, betel nuts, coconuts, small horses, kingfisher feathers, beeswax (huangla 黃蠟), sappanwood, and kapok (jibei 吉貝). The troops in the four prefectures tax the merchants to support their annual budget, and the merchants mostly sell cattle [to the Li] in exchange for aromatics.       

The Li tie their hair into mallet-shaped buns, go barefoot, bare the upper body, and wrap kapok cloth around their waists. They wear silver, copper, or tin hairpins, or use dark red or multicolored silk to wrap their hair buns, or wear small ornamented bamboo hats or pheasant tail feathers. They all wear two silver combs in their hair, and some wear short, woven multicolored skirts. In the Chongning era, Wang Zudao pacified the Li settlements and some of their chieftains were appointed as auxiliary officials. Now, their descendants still wear brocade robes and belts with silver ornaments. Presumably, their ancestors received these clothes from the court.

The people carry Li bows¹⁶ and wear quivers, helmets, and Li swords. The sword blades are two feet long, and their hafts are very long. They use white strips of horn, about a foot long and resembling chicken tail feathers, to decorate the haft. They make helmets out of woven vines. Their women have tall hair buns and embroider (tattoo) their faces, and wear copper earrings that hang down to their shoulders. Their skirts are all made of kapok cloth and are bright and multicolored. None of them wear trousers or jackets; instead, they simply wrap their skirts several times around their bodies. The design of their skirts is such: The four sides are sewn together, the legs go through the opening, and the skirt is fastened around the waist. They bathe together in rivers.  

Half of the Li people can speak the Han language. They form parties of ten to a hundred, change their clothes [to our style], and go to county fairs in the prefectures, where no one can tell [that they are Li.] At dusk, someone blows on a buffalo horn as a signal, and all of them assemble back in their groups and head home. Only then do [people] know that they are Li.  

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From the section “Foreign countries, Part 2”

The Dan barbarians (Dan Man)

Those who use boats as houses and see the water as no different from dry land, living a nomadic life drifting on rivers and seas, are called the Dan. In Qinzhou, there are three kinds of Dan: first, the Fish Dan, who are skilled at using nets and fishing lines; second, the Oyster Dan, who are skilled at diving into the sea to harvest oysters; and third, the Wood Dan, who are good at cutting lumber in the mountains.

All the Dan are extremely poor, and their clothes are all ragged and covered with patches. When they obtain even a handful of rice, they share it with their wives and children. Husband and wife live together in a small covered boat and have many sons, no fewer than ten per boat. As soon as a child is able to laugh, his mother ties him to her back with soft silk and rows the oars with no difficulty. As soon as the child can crawl, a long rope is tied to his waist, and the other end is tied to a short wooden pole. If the child suddenly falls into the water, they pull on the rope to fish him out. When the child learns to walk, he goes back and forth along the “backbone” of the boat without showing any alarm. By the time he can walk, he is already able to float and dive in water. When Dan boats moor by the shore, the boys gather and play in the sand. In both winter and summer, they go naked, and are really no different from otters.   The Dan, with their drifting life, seem as if they are free and untamable. However, they do belong to distinct administrative jurisdictions, they do observe territorial boundaries, and they do perform corvée obligations to the state. From this we know that there is no escaping from the duties of a subject anywhere between heaven and earth. In Guangzhou, there is a kind of Dan called the Luting 盧停, who are skilled in naval warfare.¹⁷

The Yao people

The Yao people are thus named because they perform corvée labor for the Central Lands.¹⁸ Five counties in Jingjiang prefecture (Guilin) border on the Yao people: these counties are Xing’an, Lingchuan, Lingui, Yining, and Gu. There are various groups of Yao people, and the strongest ones are the Luoman Yao and the Hemp Garden (Mayuan) Yao. There are other groups called Yellow Sand (Huangsha), Armor Rock (Jiashi), Ridge Camp (Lingtun), Bao River (Baojiang), Gift of Feet (Zengjiao), Yellow Village (Huangcun), Red River (Chishui), Lansi, Headscarf River (Jinjiang), Song River (Songjiang), Stable Flower (Dinghua), Soapstone Pit (Lengshi keng), White Face (Baimian), Yellow Job’s Tears (Huangyi¹⁹), Great Profit (Dali), Little Peace (Xiaoping), Beach (Tantou), Cinnabar River (Danjiang), Mi River (Mijiang), Shining River (Shanjiang), and Guarding the Border (Bajie).²⁰ The more remote the mountains and valleys, the more Yao people there are in them. All are under the jurisdiction of Sangjiang Stockade in Yining county.

The Yao people wear mallet-shaped topknots above their foreheads, go barefoot, and carry weapons around. Some go naked, others wear ragged clothes covered in patches, and yet others wear robes and trousers made from patterned cloth. Some also wear headscarves of white cloth. Their chiefs wear blue-green headscarves and purple robes. The women wear blouses and skirts with bright, multicolored patterns, but by custom they like to have patterns on the blouses that are extremely intricate.

Their lands are all mountainous, and when they use their produce as supplies and wish to transport it, it is too heavy to be carried on their shoulders. They instead use a large sack to carry the goods; a large leather strap is looped around the forehead [and attached to the sack], and the sack is carried on the back. They carry even large logs and rocks on their backs.²¹

The Yao people grow crops in the mountains to feed themselves; these include millet, beans, and taro. They have very few rice fields. In years with a good harvest, they live in peace in their nests and dens, but when there is a famine, then they go raiding in all directions. Their land produces shan 杉 (China fir) wood boards, soapstone, beeswax, Lingling aromatic (Lingling xiang 零陵香), and rouge trees (yanzhi mu 燕脂木).²²

[Translator’s note: Fan Chengda provides a more detailed account of how he (as Military Commissioner of Guangxi) addressed the complex problem of Yao raids, one that contradicts Zhou Qufei’s claim that the Yao only raided in times of famine. I provide a new translation of this account below; note that the one by James Hargett in Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010) contains various errors.

In the mountains and valleys, there are very few rice fields and it rarely rains. When their harvest of early-ripening (Champa) rice fails, they have no food and go raiding the lands under state jurisdiction in all directions, seeking just a small amount of rice to avoid starving to death. Eventually, they come to see it as a game and go raiding even in years with a good harvest. Commoners on the frontier who live in close proximity to the Yao are roughly similar to them in customs, temperament, physical strength, and skill, and some intermarry with them, while others enter into feuds with them. They often serve the Yao as guides in exchange for a share of the plunder. The Yao, having become familiar with the paths and roads, now raid again and again, and the frontier commoners can do nothing about it. They attack and destroy fields and homes, and plunder grain and cattle and other livestock—not a year passes by without this. They emerge from the bamboo forests, coming and going swiftly and stealthily, and by the time the prefectures and counties are aware of them, they have fled back into their nests and dens. The imperial troops cannot follow them in and simply encamp as garrisons at the road intersections. The mountains are full of footpaths, and it is impossible to guard them all, especially because the cost becomes prohibitive over time.

Moreover, the Yao people often use mountain products, such as sha 沙 wood boards²³ and soapstone, to trade in secret with the commoners of the prefecture for salt and rice. Fields in the mountains are prone to drought, and if they were cut off from all trade and had no food, they would risk death by breaking out [to raid] and would only do greater harm. Commoners along the frontier therefore have commercial dealings with them, but some defraud them and thus stir up enmity and grievance. This leads some [Yao people] to come out [from the mountains] without authorization to commit revenge killings.

Having gained an understanding of the roots of these troubles, in the summer of the ninth year of the Qiandao era (1173), I sent officials to deal with the situation. I demobilized all the government troops [on that frontier] and used only frontier commoners, registering more than seven thousand men who were suitable [for military service] and dividing them into fifty regiments. I appointed a commander and deputy commander at every rank level to keep an eye on each other and prevent each other from communicating with the Yao. I provided them with weapons and training so that they could fend off small raids without having to report them to the officials first. If the Yao attacked one regiment, the others would beat their drums and come to its aid.

Next, I sent a message to the Yao near the frontier instructing them that if they unite with the frontier commoners and do not break the law, they will be allowed to trade; if not, the trade will be cut off. They (the Yao) saw that the frontier commoners were now united [in regiments] and that under these new circumstances, it would not be easy to raid; they also considered themselves fortunate to be allowed to trade and obtain salt and rice, so they all happily obeyed.

Last, I selected a brave official and sent him on a mission with fifty-two Yao chiefs who had submitted at Sangjiang [Stockade]. They went deep into [the mountains to] Shengjing, Luoman, and other settlements that were particularly ferocious and violent and had never submitted to our civilizing influence. They communicated to these settlements the same benefits and costs that I had outlined to the Yao near the frontier, and all accepted these terms as well. I then established two trading posts, one at Yining and one at Rongxi in Rongzhou prefecture. On the emperor’s birthday, the Yao chiefs would be allowed to go to the nearest county capital and participate in the celebratory banquet held to reward officials. The Yao were greatly pleased.

Thus, the military mobilization was established and the frontier’s security was stabilized. In the event that the distant Yao are rebellious, they must first break through the Yao closer to us. If the closer Yao wish to rebel, they must first defeat the frontier regiments before they can get to the cities, and that would be difficult for them. 

Several months later, several tens of Yao regiment commanders, including Yuan Tai, came to the Military Commissioner’s office to report to me and offer their thanks. They all wore purple robes and headscarfs and [stood at attention] holding their staffs of office horizontally. I rewarded them with silver bowls, multicolored silk, salt, and wine, and sent them away with words of commendation. Each of them came with a written oath that read roughly as follows:

“I have received an appointment in the mountains, and will now restrain my men and women. The men may carry sticks and the women may carry hemp and come and go across the frontier, but they may not make trouble. [I swear by] the sun above and the earth below that if anyone turns his back [on this oath], his son will turn into a donkey, and his daughter will turn into a pig, and his whole family line will die out. I will not say good things in front of you but bad things behind your back. I will not toady up to you. When we go up into the mountains, we will take the same road; when we go down to the river, we will take the same boat. Our men will wear their swords on the same side and march as one to kill the bandits. Anyone who doesn’t follow this agreement will be subject to the law of the mountains (shanli 山例).”

The “law of the mountains” means being putting to death. The speech of the barbarians (Man) is crude and inelegant, but I do not want the substance of its contents to be lost, so I am recording the gist of it here. In the absence of better qualified candidates, was given charge of military affairs [in Guangxi] for two years, and in that time the Yao never once intruded upon the lands under state jurisdiction. I therefore submitted the full text of this agreement to the imperial court, and an imperial edict was issued granting permission for it to be followed and implemented [under my successors].

One of Zhou Qufei’s entries in the section “The customs of the Man” records the text of the Yao oath, but misdates the oath-taking to 1167 and omits much of its context, saying only, “The Yao people ran out of tricks and came out to submit, visiting the Military Commissioner’s office to offer up an oath.”]

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Five kinds of commoners

There are five kinds of commoners in Qinzhou:

The first kind are called Native People (turen 土人). Their kind are descended from the Luo-Yue (Lạc Việt) of old. They live in villages and their appearance is crude and wild. They make sounds with their lips and tongues, but their speech cannot be understood; it is called the Lou speech.²⁴

The second kind are called Northern People (beiren 北人). Their speech is easily understood but has a southern accent. They were originally refugees from the northwest and have, since the turmoil of the Five Dynasties (907-960), been registered as residents of Qinzhou.

The third kind are the Li people (liren 俚人), known in historical records as Li and Lao.²⁵ Their kind came out from the Man settlements (dong 峒) to reside [in Qinzhou].²⁶ They worship only demons and are like animals, their speech being especially incomprehensible.

The fourth kind are called the swidden farming people (shegeng ren 射耕人). They were originally from Fujian and practice swidden (slash and burn) cultivation. Their descendants all speak the Min (Fujian) dialect.

The fifth kind are the Dan people, who use boats as houses and live a nomadic life drifting on the sea. Their speech is similar to the dialects of Fujian and Guangdong, with influence from the accents of Guangdong and Guangxi. The Dan are described elsewhere in this book.

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From the section “The customs of the Man”

The customs of the Man²⁷

The Man-Yi people are tough and fierce, and their customs are absurd and strange. The Central Lands does no more than bridle (jimi) them. They tend to be strong and nimble and able to bear hardship, running up and down the mountains in leather shoes as though in flight. Their weapons include barrel-shaped armor, long spears, javelins, curved swords, ti[gu] 逷𨬟 shields²⁸, mountain crossbows, bamboo arrows, and sugar-palm wood arrows. The people weave bamboo and thatch into two-storied houses: they live on the upper floor and house their chickens and pigs on the lower floor. These are called malan. Their living conditions are crude and simple. In winter, they weave goose feathers and kapok (mumian 木棉) [into clothes]. In summer, they weave banana, bamboo, and ramie fiber into clothing. When eating, they roll rice into balls and scoop water with their hands. They hide their household implements in holes in the ground as a precaution against bandits. The land produces gold, copper, lead, malachite, cinnabar, kingfisher feathers, settlement brocade (dongtian 峒緂), ramie linen (shubu 綀布), star anise (bajiao huixiang 八角茴香), red cardamom (caoguo 草果), and various medicinal herbs. They each seek their own profit without feeling weary….

The customs of the Lao

The Lao live beyond the settlements (xidong 溪峒) along the You River and are customarily called the Mountain Lao. They live on the edges of the mountain forests and have no chiefs or household registers. Among the Man, they are the most unpredictable and changeable. They live by hunting and eating wild game, and will feed on any insect or grub that moves. They do not remember their ages or give themselves names. Every village elects its most capable man [to be the leader] and calls him the Langhuo 郎火; the others are just called Huo 火. At the beginning of the year, they fill twelve clay cups with water and arrange them in a circle to represent the twelve earthly branches. The Langhuo prays over them, and after one night has passed, he gathers the people to go and see them. If the cup for yin 寅 has water but the cup for mao 卯 has dried up, then they know that there will be rain in the first month but drought in the second month, and so on. They believe this method of divining to be infallible.

The foreign kingdoms (Fan 蕃) sell horses to our officials yearly²⁹, and when their merchants travel through Lao territory, [the Lao] always demand goods as well salt and cattle; otherwise, they will block the horse trading road. The officials also use salt and multicolored silk to placate the Lao. Older records identify twenty-one Lao groups, including the Flying Heads³⁰, the Tooth Removers, the Nose Drinkers, the White Shirts, the Flowery Faces, and the Red Trousers. Today, there are extremely many to the southwest of the You River, probably more than a hundred. Fang Qianli of the Tang wrote in his Yiwu zhi (Gazetteer of Exotic Things): “After a Lao woman bears a child, she immediately leaves the room. Her husband lies down, in a [feigned] state of exhaustion, acting like a nursing mother. If he is not careful [about his diet], he will fall ill, while his wife feels no discomfort.”³¹  

Embroidered faces

The Li women of Hainan embroider (tattoo) their faces. This is presumably because many Li women are beautiful and used to be kidnapped by outsiders. The Li women who wished to preserve their chastity tattooed their faces to stop this practice, and women have emulated them to this day. Embroidering the face is [a coming of age ritual] like the hairpin ceremony in the Central Provinces. When a girl is about to reach adulthood [at fifteen years], they hold a drinking party for her relatives and female friends, and the girls themselves use needles to tattoo intricate patterns of flowers and moths. The rest of the face is covered with light millet grain patterns. There are women with fair white faces and green tattoos; the patterns are clear and the workmanship exquisite. Only slave girls do not get tattooed. In the settlements (xidong) of Yongzhou (Nanning, Guangxi), slave girls are tattooed on the face to keep them from running away, and that is different from the Li women.

Drinking through the nose

Many of the settlements (xidong) in Yongzhou and villages in Qinzhou have the custom of drinking through the nose. The method for nose drinking is to put a small amount of water in a ladle made out of a gourd, and add salt and several drops of mountain ginger juice to the water. The ladle has a hole that leads to a tube like the spout of a pitcher. They stick this in the nose and let the water flow up to the brain, then around the brain and down into the throat. The rich make these ladles with silver, and others (in descending order of value) are made of tin, clay, and gourds. When drinking, they always chew a piece of salted fish in their mouths, so that the water flows into the nose and does not clash with their breathing. After drinking, they always burp; they say that there is no better way to cool the brain and excite the diaphragm. One can only drink water through the nose; those who say that wine can be drunk like this are wrong. Those who say that one scoops water with one’s hands and drinks by sucking it through the nose are also wrong. The histories speak of the Yue people having the practice of drinking through the nose.³² Can it be anything other than this?

Stomping and shaking

Among the Yao people, on the first day of the tenth month of each year, the whole settlement gathers to make sacrifices to the Great King Dubei.³³ In front of his shrine, the single men and women form separate groups and hold hands to dance. This is called “stomping and shaking” (tayao 踏搖).³⁴ If a man and a woman are attracted to each other, then the man will make whooping noises and leap over to the women’s group. He lifts the woman he likes onto his back and comes back with her. They thus become husband and wife. They form pairs like this by themselves, rather than through the arrangement of their parents. Those who fail to find a partner simply wait for the next year. If a woman goes for three years without a man carrying her away, then her parents may kill her, believing that the world has rejected her.

Men with ten wives

The south is extremely hot and not suitable for men, only for women. Presumably this is because when yang and yang meet, they destroy each other, whereas yang and yin seek each other out and nurture each other.³⁵ I have seen the women in Deep Guang³⁶—how abundant in number they are! The men are short and small in stature, with dark and sickly complexions. The women, however, have shiny black skin³⁷ and fleshy bodies; they are strong and seldom fall sick.³⁸ In the city marketplaces, the peddlers are all women.³⁹ Among the common folk of Qinzhou, every man has several wives, and the wives each go peddling at the marketplaces to support one husband. They have a husband in name, but without any real benefit, just so that people will not say that they have no man to rely on. As for the husband, he spends the whole day strolling around carrying his son; if he has no son, then he lives an easy life with his hands in his sleeves. The women each build huts in different places and allow their husband to come and go between them, without comparing or competing. As for the chiefs of the settlements (xidong), they typically have ten wives, and when their wives bear sons, they draw no distinction between the sons of wives and the sons of concubines⁴⁰, resulting in feuds and killings [between sons of different wives].

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1. In 1173–1175, Fan Chengda served as prefect of Jingjiang prefecture (based in Guilin) and Military Commissioner of Guangxi. He compiled the Guihai yuheng zhi in 1175. ↩︎
2. These were Qiongzhou prefecture and the garrisons of Changhua (formerly Danzhou prefecture), Zhuya, and Wan’an. ↩︎
3. That is, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi. ↩︎
4. Dong 洞/峒 (cave or grotto) was the standard term for a relatively small settlement or community of southern indigenous peoples in Song administrative and ethnographic writing, possibly derived from an indigenous word. It was often combined with xi 溪 (stream) when referring to these settlements in the plural, forming a phrase that literally means “streams and grottoes” but may be better understood as “mountain valley settlements.” In this sourcebook, I translate both dong and xidong as “settlement(s).” ↩︎
5. Fan Chengda notes: “In the four commanderies [of Hainan], many [Chinese] people have the surname Li, probably because they are descendants (yizu 裔族) of the Li. But the Li people of today are mostly surnamed Wang.” ↩︎
6. This title is often translated as Lady of Suitability, following Charles Hucker’s A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China, but I have adopted a translation that feels more natural and better conveys the meaning. Other sources state that Wang Erniang received the title Yiren in 1171 for helping the Song authorities to put down a local uprising. ↩︎
7. According to other sources, Wang Erniang was elderly and had no sons, and therefore received permission from the Song court to pass her title on to her daughter. She died in 1181. Her career is reminiscent of that of Lady Xian, a Li female chief of the sixth century, and seems to reflect a matriarchal aspect to Li culture. ↩︎
8. Wang Zudao served as prefect of Guizhou (Guilin, Guangxi) for four years, during which he pursued an aggressive policy of expanding Song state authority in western Guangxi and the Li areas of Hainan, including the Li Mother Mountains. This was, of course, one of the policies that Su Guo (or Su Shi speaking through him) had argued against in 1098–1100 (see source 5.10). ↩︎
9. While the average size of the settlements pacified by Wang Zudao was 70 men and women, the average size of these eighty settlements was 22. The reason for this difference is unclear. ↩︎
10. The use of the blood of an animal in this fashion was a feature of Chinese oath rituals since ancient times, and is not distinct to Li culture. The slashing of a stone may have been a Li custom, however. ↩︎
11. The version in Fan Chengda’s gazetteer adds that the host then never again has dealings with the guest who failed to earn his trust. ↩︎
12. Fan Chengda’s gazetteer, which was the source for this passage, has the similar zhuo’ao 捉拗. Both are evidently transliterations of a Hlai language phrase. ↩︎
13. Zhou Qufei evidently finds this attitude bemusing and somewhat scandalous, but the Li did not have the same mores regarding female sexuality as the Chinese. The girl’s parents were probably proud of the material benefits that their daughter’s relationship with the merchant were likely to bring to the family. ↩︎
14. Fan Chengda’s version notes that eating raw beef was seen among the Li as the ultimate expression of mourning. ↩︎
15. Fan Chengda’s description is more detailed: “Their houses are made of two levels of scaffolded wood. They live on the top floor and keep their livestock on the lower floor.” ↩︎
16. In his gazetteer’s section on implements, Fan Chengda describes Li bows as wooden recurve bows with bowstrings made of vines. ↩︎
17. The Luting are described in the late Tang text Lingbiao luyi (see source 4.24) as descendants of the followers of Lu Xun (d. 411), a Daoist rebel who occupied Guangzhou in 404–410: “In the past, Lu Xun seized Guangzhou, and after his defeat, his remaining followers fled to the islands in the sea and lived in the wild, eating only oysters and piling up the shells into walls.” By Ming times, local lore in the Guangzhou area had reinterpreted the Luting as a race of merpeople, and they remain a feature of Hong Kong lore. ↩︎
18. This claim by Zhou Qufei contradicts Fan Chengda, who wrote that in spite of their name, they do not perform corvée labor. Fan also notes that the Yao are descended from Panhu via the Man of the Five Rivers (see source 5.3), whereas Zhou Qufei does not mention this myth. ↩︎
19. Reading 意 as 薏 ↩︎
20. Most of these names, except for Mijiang and Bajie, are from a list provided by Fan Chengda. ↩︎
21. These sacks seem to be a version of the Austroasiatic carrying basket. ↩︎
22. The identification of Lingling aromatic and the rouge tree remains uncertain. ↩︎
23. Fan Chengda explains elsewhere that the sha tree is very similar to the shan (China fir), but is especially tall. The Yao would split its lumber into boards and sell them to Chinese merchants, who would then transport them to Guangdong by river. ↩︎
24. In the Lingwai daida section on local customs (fengtu 風土), Zhou Qufei gives some examples of words in the “Lou speech.” It was most likely one of the Zhuang languages, which belong to the Tai family. ↩︎
25. Not to be confused with the Li 黎 of Hainan. Some scholars believe that the two ethnonyms have the same origin, although Li 俚/里 is used in pre-Song Chinese sources and Li 黎 is not. ↩︎
26. Zhou probably means the Man settlements south of the Zuo River (see map). ↩︎
27. Zhou Qufei refers to the indigenous people of western and southwestern Guangxi as the Man, as distinct from the Yao people of the Guilin area in northeastern Guangxi. ↩︎
28. There is a lacuna in the text after ti, but Fan Chengda’s gazetteer (which was evidently its source) has two graphs that are read as tigu. The meaning of this term is unclear; it may transcribe an indigenous word. Note that Hargett’s translation of Fan Chengda misreads the pronunciation of the second graph as pu. ↩︎
29. This refers to the Dali, Ziqi, Luodian, and Temo states in Yunnan and Guizhou, which carried on a lucrative trade in horses with the Song through a trading post at Hengshan Stockade. ↩︎
30. On the “Flying Head Lao” myth, see source 4.38. ↩︎
31. On Fang Qianli, see source 5.8. This quote is also found in Fan Chengda’s gazetteer and is the only surviving fragment from his Nanfang yiwu zhi. The practice described here is known to Western anthropology by the French term couvade, and is known to have existed in various other cultures. The Taiping guangji preserves what seems to be a more complete version of the same fragment: “In the south, a Lao woman gets up right after bearing a child. Her husband lies down on the bed and observes the same diet as a nursing mother. If he is even slightly careless with the precautions, he will develop all the ailments that afflict pregnant women. His wife, on the other hand, feels no discomfort, cooking meals and cutting firewood without difficulty.” Also extant is a similar account from a late ninth-century text, the Nanchu xinwen (New Stories Heard in Southern Chu): “Among the Yue, there is the custom that when a wife has born a child, after three days, she bathes in the river and returns home. She then serves porridge to her husband, who sits on the bed, wrapped in a blanket and carrying the baby. This is called ‘the birthing father’ (chanweng 產翁). That is how topsy-turvy they are.” ↩︎
32. This refers to Jia Juanzhi’s memorial from 46 BCE, the text of which is found in the Hanshu; see source 2.4. ↩︎
33. Nothing else is known about this Yao deity. ↩︎
34. Fan Chengda’s gazetteer uses the graphs 踏傜, implying that the term means “stomping Yao.” ↩︎
35. Chinese cosmology viewed the yang polarity of qi as hot and the yin polarity as cold. Men were seen as higher in yang and women as higher in yin, hence the idea that men would overheat more easily in a hot climate. ↩︎
36. Zhou Qufei apparently uses the phrase Deep Guang (shen’guang 深廣) to mean the Guangxi region. ↩︎
37. Reading 黑理 as a mistranscription of 黑黝. ↩︎
38. Since ancient times, the Chinese had noted that women tended to outnumber and outlive men in southern regions, but this phenomenon has not yet been scientifically verified and explained. It may have to do with men’s higher propensity for contracting severe cases of malaria. ↩︎
39. This seems to be related to the dominant role of Southeast Asian women in trade in premodern times, on which see for example Anthony Reid, “Female Roles in Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia,” Modern Asian Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (1988), pp. 629–45. ↩︎
40. Unlike the Chinese, who practiced the dishu system. ↩︎