Wang Shangyong, the prefect of Xundian prefecture (modern Xundian Hui and Yi Autonomous County, Yunnan), composed this gazetteer in 1550. The excerpts below are from the ethnographic section of a chapter on local customs, and emphasize Wang’s efforts at “Sinicizing” the customs of the local population, including Muslims descended from Central Asian soldiers and administrators whom the Mongol empire had deployed to Yunnan.

Joseph Dennis has argued that local gazetteers were more than just records of cultural change on the frontiers; they were also tools of change in themselves: “For a borderland region, compilation of the local gazetteer both signified its incorporation into the Ming state and acted as an agent of cultural transformation in areas populated by non-Chinese peoples.”¹ For example, Xundian had never compiled a local gazetteer before Wang Shangyong’s term as prefect, due to the low literacy rate and lack of written records in the prefecture. Wang’s insistence on initiating a gazetteer project was driven by his desire to stimulate the growth of a local literary culture.²

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Customs (fengsu 風俗): Ethnic groups (zhonglei 種類)

The people under this prefecture’s jurisdiction are of several ethnic groups. They include the Han 漢 people³, the Bo 僰 people⁴, the Semu 色目 people (that is, the Huihui 回回⁵), the Black Luoluo 黑玀羅 and White Luoluo 白玀羅 (these are the same as the Black Cuan 黑爨 and White Cuan 白爨, according to the Gazetteer of Yunnan⁶), and the Dry Luoluo 乾玀羅.

The Han people and Bo people are like those of Yunnan prefecture (Kunming, Yunnan) in their robes and caps, implements, and rites for capping, wedding, mourning, and ancestral sacrifices. By nature, they are cunning, deceitful, and uninhibited by taboos (this comes from the Gazetteer of Yunnan⁷).

The Semu people wear small cloth hats on their heads, rather than headscarves. They wear short robes made of white cloth, with plain unadorned collars. They are villainous and treacherous by nature. They often marry people with the same surname, recite scriptures, and fast by slaughtering livestock.⁸ When they bury their dead, they strip the body naked, regarding this as a sign of purity.⁹ They do not use a coffin when sending off their deceased kin, nor do they make offerings to the spirits of the deceased. They simply throw the body into a pit and judge the auspiciousness or inauspiciousness of the burial based on whether the body makes a sound when hitting the ground. Could anything be more morally degenerate than that? In the twenty-eighth year of the Jiajing era (1549), the prefect Wang Shangyong carried out a wide-ranging survey [of the prefecture] for the sake of improving governance. He proposed changing this flawed [custom] completely. Then [the Semu] finally began clothing their dead before burial and burying them in inner and outer coffins.

The Black Luoluo wear black felt hats. When they meet an elder, they remove their hats and bare their heads as a sign of respect. They use cattle and horses as the bride price in weddings. The groom first goes to live with the bride’s family in a matrilocal marriage. In commercial transactions, they use notches on wood to make contracts. (This comes from the Gazetteer of Yunnan.¹⁰) They do not use inner and outer coffins to bury their dead. Instead, they tie the body up with hemp and cremate it in a sitting position. Could anything be more unseemly? In the twenty-eighth year of the Jiajing era (1549), the prefect Wang Shangyong proposed changing this flawed [custom] completely by penalizing offenders. Now, they dare not follow their former practice.

The White Luoluo are essentially the same as the Black Luoluo, but their language is slightly different. The Dry Luoluo tie their hair into a bun on the top of the head; they wear neither headscarves nor hats and use bones as hairpins. They wear two earrings on each ear and dress in short fur coats with leather belts. They wrap their feet in cloth and tie it on with thin string, so as to move around more swiftly. Both in and out of the home, they always wear swords and are fond of fighting. They make a living through banditry. Since the twentieth year of the Jiajing era (1541), the prefects Lin Bin and Wang Shangyong have successively pacified and managed them. Now they engage in farming to feed themselves and no longer engage in banditry.

The practices described above are all barbarian (Yi) customs. In recent years, the emperor’s transformative influence has gradually spread to this region, and wise men have been placed in charge of its government. [As a result] its robes and caps and ritual institutions have become very similar to those of the Central Plains. Their mourning, burial, capping, and wedding rites are all no longer the customs of old. Only the Dry Luoluo, having the wild hearts of wolves, are difficult to regulate with ritual propriety and moral duty, even though they have given up banditry in recent times. It is just a matter of how effectively one pacifies and manages them.

Appendix

[Translator’s note: The appendix to the gazetteer preserves a report that Wang Shangyong submitted to the Grand Coordinator of Yunnan in 1549 to propose various reforms in the prefecture. The passage below concerns the management of the Dry Luoluo and gives additional information on their origins. It contradicts Wang’s claims (made in the gazetteer itself) to have succeeded in changing the Dry Luoluo’s raiding habits, suggesting that those claims were exaggerated.]

I have investigated and found that although this prefecture is small in territorial extent, it contains dispersed Luoluo barbarian populations. Those that live within two li of the city are called Bo people. Those within five li of the other side of the mountains are called White Luoluo and Black Luoluo. The others are all called Dry Luoluo. The population of the [Dry Luoluo] ethnic group (zhonglei) exceeds those of the Bo people, the White Luoluo, and the Black Luoluo. Their ferocious and violent ways are different from all the others. They do not grow crops for food or cultivate silkworms for clothing, nor do they pay taxes. Every day, they make a living by robbing and pillaging. A man who has not gone on at least three bandit raids will not be able to find a wife even from his own lineage group (zulei 族類)….

The Dry [Luoluo] bandits are all scattered vagrants and are in fact the remnants of rebels from Dongchuan, Wuding, Zhanyi, Luoxiong, and Old Yuezhou prefectures.¹¹ In previous years, they fled to this prefecture’s mountainous areas, including Haitou and Xina, hiding out in groups and growing in number and strength day by day. There are now no fewer than forty-odd camps, with over three thousand families. In terms of this prefecture’s geographical layout, the bandit groups surround the prefecture capital and are squatting right in the prefecture’s center, while the barbarians and [Han] people who serve the prefecture are instead dispersed on the periphery. This is truly what they call sleeping with a tiger in one’s arms!   

In the spring, when the people are plowing the fields, they come out to seize oxen and captives. In the autumn, during the harvest, they come out to seize grain, pigs, and sheep. Their movements are hard to track, and not a day of the year passes without some trouble from them. Moreover, they frequently cross prefectural boundaries to raid wantonly. Prefectures as close by as Songming and Yanglin and as far away as Dongchuan and Wuding have all suffered from their depredations. Although their officials have submitted reports, it is difficult to arrest the perpetrators.

Since I arrived to take up this position, I have repeatedly placated [the bandits], and many of them have turned toward [the emperor’s] transforming influence and no longer dare to engage in banditry. But the barbarians’ nature is like that of dogs and sheep. One cannot be sure that they are not feigning compliance on their faces while remaining disloyal in their hearts, or that they are not submitting only temporarily but likely to rebel again in the long run.   

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1. Joseph Dennis, “Projecting Legitimacy in Ming Native Domains,” in James A. Anderson and John K. Whitmore eds., China’s Encounters on the South and Southwest: Reforging the Fiery Frontier Over Two Millennia (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 259-272. ↩︎
2. Ibid., 261-262. ↩︎
3. That is, descendants of Chinese settlers. ↩︎
4. Wang Shangyong apparently uses the ancient ethnonym Bo as a synonym for Bai 白, similar to Li Jing’s Yunnan zhilue (see source 5.14). ↩︎
5. Under the Yuan empire, Semuren 色目人, “people of various types,” was an administrative category for non-Mongol immigrants from Inner Asia and West Asia, while Huihui (“Uyghur”) was a generic label for Central Asians regardless of religion or ethnicity. By Ming times, the meaning of Huihui had shifted to encompass all Muslims, not just those with Central Asian origins. ↩︎
6. The gazetteer cited here is the Yunnan zhi 雲南志 of 1510 (also known as the Zhengde-era Yunnan Gazetteer 正德雲南志), which contains the following quote from an earlier (lost) Yunnan zhi from the Hongwu era (1368-1398): “There are four kinds of imperial subjects (min 民) [in Xundian prefecture]: the Black Cuan, the White Cuan, the Bo, and the Semu.” The 1510 gazetteer itself describes the peoples of Xundian as follows: “The native people include the Bo, the White Luoluo, the Black Luoluo, and the Huihui. The Bo are deceitful by nature and devoted to Buddhism. The Luoluo are mostly vicious and violent, and the Black [Luoluo] are the worst. But all of these groups make a living by raising livestock.” Another section (pertaining to Qujing prefecture) reads: “The Luoluo are also called Cuan, which is sometimes mispronounced as cun 寸. They are divided into the Black [Luoluo] and White [Luoluo]. The Black Cuan are superior in status, while the White Cuan are inferior.” ↩︎
7. This quotes the section on the customs of Xundian prefecture in the Yunnan zhi of 1510, which in turn quotes a lost Yuan-era gazetteer of Rende prefecture 仁德府 (the predecessor to Xundian): “The [local] customs are vicious and crude, deceitful and uninhibited by taboos” 俗狠而鄙，變詐無忌. ↩︎
8. The Chinese tabooed marriage between families with the same surname, considering it incestuous. Wang Shangyong may be referring to cousin marriage, which was common among Muslims, or to the tendency for Muslims in China to use a few Chinese surnames only (e.g., Ma 馬). “Fasting by slaughtering livestock,” which Chinese observers of Islam tended to regard as a strange contrast to Buddhist vegetarianism, probably included both routine ritual slaughter (dhabīḥah) and the festival of Eid al-Adha. ↩︎
9. In fact, Muslims wrap their dead in a white shroud called a kafan before burial, though the body may be naked apart from the shroud. ↩︎
10. This information, too, is taken from the section on Xundian in the 1510 Yunnan zhi, although the part about black hats is quoted from an earlier Yunnan zhi. ↩︎
11. These were all prefectures in eastern Yunnan. ↩︎