Li Jing (b. 1251) was a Yuan official who served as Deputy Pacification Commissioner for Wumeng and Wusa circuits, in northeastern Yunnan and western Guizhou, in 1301-1303. His main task was to mobilize manpower and resources in Yunnan to support the second Yuan invasion of Burma. But he also participated in the suppression of a major indigenous revolt led by the chiefs of the Shuidong and Shuixi (Mu’ege) chiefdoms in 1301–1303, which briefly captured large parts of northeastern Yunnan and western Guizhou before being quelled by Yuan reinforcements deployed from other regions.¹ In 1303, Li used the information gathered during his travels throughout Yunnan to compose the Yunnan zhilue, the first gazetteer of the region since its conquest by the Mongol empire in the 1250s. A revised edition was published in 1331, but much of its content was lost during the Ming-Qing transition, and only fragments have survived in various texts. The majority of these fragments are from a chapter on the history of Yunnan and a chapter on the customs of the indigenous peoples, both collected in the Shuofu 說郛 compendium edited by Tao Zongyi 陶宗儀 (1322-1403). An annotated Chinese edition of all surviving fragments, correcting various errors in the received text, was completed by Wang Shuwu 王叔武 and published by Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe in 1986.

Li Jing’s ethnographic section begins with the Bai people, who constituted the ruling elite of the Nanzhao and Dali kingdoms. He argues that they have been partly “civilized” by Buddhism but remain ignorant of the Confucian mores that he regards as essential to true civilization. Li then covers the cultures of the other Yunnan indigenous peoples, emphasizing the ways in which their customs and mores are different from and even contrary to those of the Chinese. As Jacqueline M. Armijo-Hussein has observed, “Li’s preoccupation with the sexual practices of the peoples he describes borders on obsession,”² but this prurient tendency was actually quite unusual for his time, as earlier Chinese ethnographers generally avoided discussions of sexuality. The modern image of Yunnan among the Han Chinese as “a place of exotic, promiscuous women and an imagined sexual licentiousness not found elsewhere”³ can thus probably be traced back to the influence of the Yunnan zhilue.

Much of the Yunnan zhilue chapter on indigenous customs was first translated into English by Jacqueline M. Armijo-Hussein as “‘The Customs of Various Barbarians’ by Li Jing (1251-?),” in Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (University of California Press, 2001), 85-100. Ludwig Brinckmann, a German scholar based in Yunnan, published an annotated translation of all the major fragments online in 2023. Both the Armijo-Hussein translation and the Brinckmann translation contain some errors, but I have benefited greatly from reading them. The translations below are mine.

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Our dynasty’s pacification of Yunnan

In the spring of the Jiayin year (1254), the emperor (Khubilai⁴) returned east [from Yunnan, after conquering Dali] and entrusted the high-ranking general Wuliangjidai (Uriyangkhadai) with sole authority to carry out military campaigns. The thirty-seven chiefdoms, the Gold-toothed [Hundred Yi], and Jiaozhi (Đại Việt) all submitted to imperial rule, and Yunnan was entirely pacified. After Wuliangjidai departed with his army, those appointed to replace him were poorly chosen, and their policies changed repeatedly. The celestial (imperial) court was far away and was unaware of this. The people on the frontier frequently rebelled.  

This went on until the Jiaxu year of the Zhiyuan era (1274), when the Manager of Governmental Affairs, Saitianchi (Sayyid Ajall Shams al-Din), was appointed to establish a Branch Secretariat (xingsheng 行省) in Yunnan.⁵ On the very day that he alighted from his carriage, he established prefectures and counties, equalized taxation and corvée obligations, initiated irrigation projects, established military agricultural colonies, promoted honest and able officials, dismissed corrupt officials, clarified rewards and punishments, and showed compassion to the orphaned and poor. During the six years of his administration, the people’s situation underwent a great transformation; the old policies were completely replaced by new ones, yet the people did not find this burdensome. On the day of his death [in 1279], people near and far heard of it and mourned him as if they had lost a parent….  

Alas! In ancient times, Yunnan was a land of Dan 蜑 and Lao 獠 [barbarians]. Since the Qin and Han, even though we had contact with them, we merely dispatched a general or an envoy on occasion to suppress and halt their violent conflicts, or to encourage those who sincerely sought [our suzerainty]. When those appointed to these tasks were well-chosen, then [the barbarians] begged for mercy and submitted; when those appointed were poorly chosen, then they rebelled one after another. The policy of bridling and compromising continued until the Tang, when the imperial armies were repeatedly annihilated [in 751-754] and Nanzhao began its rise. After the Tianbao era (742–756), the Central Plains were in an unstable state⁶ and [the Tang] lacked the ability and time to concern itself with Yunnan. During the chaos of the Five Dynasties, the Zheng, Zhao, and Yang families successively seized power [in Yunnan].⁷ After the Song dynasty arose, it was caught between the Liao and Xia and lacked the means to make long-term strategic plans. Therefore, the Meng and Duan dynasties rose and fell concurrently with the Tang and Song.⁸  

Then our dynasty began its Heaven-ordained rise and achieved a grand unification. We reverently recall that Emperor Shizu (Khubilai) merely had to point Heaven’s dagger-axe (the imperial army) in its direction once, and the entire land of the Six Zhao⁹ became prefectures and counties [of our empire]. Today, its administration and transformation by civility (wenhua 文化) are equal to those of the Central Prefectures (zhongzhou 中州).¹⁰ How could it have attained this if our dynasty’s sagely transformative power was not all-pervading? But its local customs and sights have not yet been recorded in writing, and this is truly a regrettable gap in our knowledge. Now I have gathered this collection of information about its history, its famous persons, its geography, and its flora. I greatly fear that I have failed to present a comprehensive picture to the reader, but I have at least provided a sufficient outline of essential knowledge about the region.

The customs of the barbarian peoples

The Bai

The Bai 白 (“white”) people use clan names. Han Emperor Wu opened up the Bo Road (Bodao 僰道) and the Road to the Southwestern Barbarians; these correspond to counties under the jurisdiction of today’s Xuzhou (Yibin, Sichuan). [The circuits (lu 路) of] Zhongqing (Kunming, Yunnan), Weichu (Chuxiong, Yunnan), and Dali (Dali, Yunnan), as well as Yongchang [prefecture (fu 府)] (Baoshan, Yunnan) were formerly all populated by the Bo 僰 people, who are now called Bai people.¹¹ In the Taihe era (827–835) of the Tang, the Meng dynasty [of Nanzhao] conquered Qiongzhou, Rongzhou, and Suizhou prefectures and then entered Chengdu, returning south with several tens of thousands of captured young women and artisans.¹² That was the beginning of Yunnan’s brocade and embroidery crafts. In the Bai people’s language, putting on clothes (yi) is yiyi, eating rice is yan gengru, cutting firewood is chaixin, silk is mi¹³, wine is zun, horse trappings are daoni, and a wall is zhuanyuan. There are very many such examples, so it is clear that the Bai people are the same as the Bo people.¹⁴

The men and women wear cigong [hats] on their heads, shaped like the conical bulrush hats worn by fishermen in the Central Plains, but slightly larger. They are woven with bamboo and covered with black felt. When family and friends part before a long separation, they do not bow or kneel to each other and only exchange their cigong as gifts. The men wear felt clothing and mallet-shaped topknots. The women do not wear makeup, but use butter to add gloss to their hair; they tie their hair into braids with blue-green gauze, coil the braids around the crown of the head, and cover them with a black kerchief in the shape of a tent. They wear gold earrings and elephant ivory armlets. They wear dignified brocade dresses, with thin felt jackets covering the upper half of the body. Virgins and widows can leave their homes without any restrictions. Young men are nicknamed Miaozi 妙子 (Fine Lads) and roam around at night, playing mouth organs (lusheng) or singing to express romantic sentiments. They start love affairs on their own and then get married to their lovers.

Their houses mostly have upturned eaves, like palaces. Their diet prizes raw meat: pork, beef, chicken, and fish are all minced raw and eaten mixed with garlic paste.¹⁵ Every year, they make offerings to their ancestors on the twenty-fourth day of the twelfth month, similar to the tomb sweeping rites in the Central Prefectures. On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month, they illuminate the sky all night with lit torches tied to the tops of tall poles, and little boys play a game of trying to burn each other with flaming pine branches. This game is called qurang 驅禳 (chasing calamity away).

Buddhism is extremely popular among them; those [monks] well-versed in the Vinaya are called Dedao 得道 (One who has attained the Way) and are customarily held in great esteem. [Monks] who have families are called Shiseng 師僧 (Teacher Monks) and serve as teachers to the children. The people mostly read Buddhist texts, and few of them know the Six [Confucian] Classics. Since the Duan dynasty [of Dali] began, they have selected all their officials and clerks from [among the Buddhist monks]. The custom among the people is that both poor and rich families have a hall for Buddhist worship where they beat drums and reverence [the Buddha] from morning to night. Both young and old constantly have rosaries in their hands, and nearly half the year consists of periods of vegetarian fasting. The various kinds of barbarians (Man-Yi) are stubborn, strong-willed, and addicted to killing, turning their blades on their own close kin over even a minor argument. They do not know how to worship gods and Buddhas, and are like the owl and the jing 獍 beast.¹⁶ Only the Bai people are somewhat less given to killing because of their careful worship of the Buddhas. Judging from this, the establishment of Buddhism is in fact beneficial to improving foreign customs.

Their talented young men are quite skilled in calligraphy, with a style resembling that of the [Eastern] Jin period. There is a Man text that reads, “In the Baohe era [of Nanzhao] (824–839), Zhang Zhicheng was sent to study calligraphy in the Tang.” This is why in Yunnan, they revere Wang Xizhi but do not know how to revere Confucius and Mencius. After our dynasty conquered them and established prefectural capitals, an edict was issued ordering that Confucian temples be established in each capital. The Man regard [Confucius] as the Han people’s Buddha.

They call their marketplaces jiezi 街子¹⁷; the vendors gather before noon and depart at sunset. They use cowrie shells as money and customarily call them ba 𧴩.¹⁸ One shell is a zhuang, four zhuang (four shells) make a shou, four shou (sixteen shells) make a miao, and five miao (eighty shells) make a suo.

When a man dies, their custom is to bathe the body, bind it in a sitting position, and place it in a coffin shaped like a square chest. They beat bronze drums at the funeral, and his children cut their hair as a sign of mourning. Their wailing sounds like singing and does not sound sad. They cremate the body, place the bones in a vessel, and bury it.

Their winters are not cold, and their summers are not hot; flowers and trees grow throughout all four seasons. They have many paddy fields, and refer to five mu of land as a shuang. Their mountains and rivers are beautiful, second only to Jiangnan (the lower Yangzi). Their hemp, wheat, vegetables, and fruits are quite similar to those of the Central Lands.

Their ruler is called the Piaoxin, their heir apparent is called the Tanchuo, their princes are called Xinju, their chief minister is called the Buxie, and their literate officials are called Qingpingguan. The clothing of their elite has, in recent years, become somewhat more similar to the Han style, but in other respects they remain the same as before.

The Luoluo

The Luoluo 羅羅 are the people once known as Black Man (Wu Man 烏蠻).¹⁹

The men wear mallet-shaped topknots and shave their beards; some also shave their heads. They wear a pair of swords, one on the left hip and one on the right, and like fighting and killing. Fathers and sons and elder and younger brothers will attack each other with weapons over a verbal disagreement. They regard it as brave to be indifferent to death. They prize horses with cut tails.²⁰ Their saddles do not have flaps, and their stirrups are carved from wood and shaped like a fish’s mouth, only large enough to fit one’s toes. The married women wear their hair loose and wear hemp dresses. The elite women have brocade piping [on their dresses], while the base ones wear a sheepskin as a shawl. When the women ride horses, they ride sidesaddle. Unmarried women wear large earrings and cut their hair with a long fringe going down to the eyebrows, and their skirts only go down to the knees. Men and women, regardless of social status, all wear felt and go barefoot, and they do not wash their hands and faces for years.

Husbands and wives do not see each other in the day and only sleep together at night. A boy may grow to the age of ten without ever seeing his father. Wives and concubines are not jealous of each other. Even the elite do not have mattresses on their beds; they simply cover the ground with pine needles and sleep on a rug and a grass mat. They prefer to marry their maternal cousins, and are only allowed to marry women from other families if there are no cousins who would make a good match.

When they are sick, they do not use medicine and only rely on male shamans called Daxipo, who use chicken bones to divine whether the sick person will recover. The chiefs cannot do without their shaman by their side for even a moment, as they ask him to divine on matters both big and small. When a man takes a bride, she must first have sexual relations with the Daxipo, and then dance with all the groom’s brothers; this is called “making harmonious relations” (hemu 和睦). Only then does she marry her husband. If one of the brothers does not participate, this is considered a breach of moral duty and leads to mutual resentment [between him and the bride and groom]. The official wife is called the Naide. A son who is not born of the Naide cannot inherit his father’s position. If the Naide has no son, or if her son dies before marrying, then she finds him a posthumous wife, and any man can have illicit relations with the wife.²¹ If the wife has children from these relations, then they are regarded as the children of the deceased man. When a chief dies without an heir, his wife or daughter can be installed as chief. Married women do not have maidservants, only ten or more male attendants, and they have sexual relations with all these men.

When a chief dies, his body is wrapped in a leopard skin and cremated. The bones are buried in the mountains, and only his close kin know the burial site. After the burial, they use precious gems to make a model of the deceased and store it in a high tower. Then they seize a neighboring elite person’s head and use it as an offering to the deceased. If they fail to obtain a head, then they cannot make any offerings. During the offering ritual, all the relatives attend, and they slaughter and sacrifice hundreds and even thousands of cattle and sheep. Every year, they celebrate the twelfth month as the spring festival. They erect a long pole and place a horizontal timber on it. One person sits on each end [of the timber], and they play a game of seesawing up and down.

They keep many professional warriors (yishi 義士, “men of honor”) in their homes, known as juke 苴可, and provide for them generously. In battle, these men fight without fear of death. They are good at making strong armor and sharp blades, the finest of which are worth several tens of horses in value. They put poison on the tips of their javelins and crossbow bolts, and once it touches a person’s blood, he immediately dies.²²

The inhabitants of Shunyuan (Guiyang, Guizhou), Qujing (Qujing, Yunnan), Wumeng (Zhaotong, Yunnan), Wusa (Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County, Guizhou), and Yuesui²³ (Xichang, Sichuan) [circuits] are all of this kind.

I note: In today’s Luliangzhou prefecture (Luliang county, Yunnan) there is an inscribed stele [honoring] Governor Cuan.²⁴ It records that the Cuan clan were descended from the Chu chief minister Ziwen.²⁵ They received the clan name Ban, but at the end of the (Western) Han dynasty, they were granted a fief in Henan and adopted its name (Cuan) as their clan name.²⁶ [Leaders of the clan] served as Commandant for Suppressing the Man and Prefect of Ningzhou.²⁷ Jin Emperor Cheng (r. 325–342) appointed Cuan Shen as Governor of Xinggu commandery (Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan), and after that, Cuan Zan and Cuan Zhen succeeded him in that position consecutively.²⁸ At the beginning of the Kaiyuan era (713–741) of the Tang, Cuan Guiwang was appointed as Area Commander of South Ningzhou and was based in Shicheng commandery, which is today’s Qujing. The Cuan people’s name comes from this [clan]. That is why today’s Bai (“white”) people are also called the White Cuan, while the Luoluo are also called the Black Cuan, although the word [Cuan] is often mispronounced as cun.

In the winter of the sixth year of the Dade era (1302–1303), I, Li Jing, served under the Administrator [of the Yunnan Branch Secretariat] Tuotuo (Toqto’a)²⁹ in the pacification of a revolt in Yuesui. I saw with my own eyes a man, shot dead by an arrow, who had a tail about three inches long. I asked the native people about it and was told that such people are born occasionally, and that they usually turn into tigers in their old age.

The Gold-toothed Hundred Yi³⁰

The Gold-toothed Hundred Yi 金齒百夷 have no writing system and use notches on wood to make agreements.³¹ When one of their chiefs dies, if someone who is not his son or grandson declares himself the next chief, they all gather and attack him.

Their men tattoo their bodies and remove their beards, sideburns, eyebrows, and eyelashes. They cover their faces with red or white clay, and tie their hair with colorful silk. They wear red and black clothing and embroidered shoes, carry mirrors around, and when in pain, they cry out “A-ye-wei,” just like opera singers in the Central Lands. [The men] do not participate in agriculture and only watch over the children.³² During the Tianbao era (742–756), they came with Cuan Guiwang to pay homage at the Tang court; the Cuan Nong 爨弄 opera of today actually originated from them.³³ The women remove their eyebrows and eyelashes and do not use makeup. They tie their hair into two buns, wear embroidered brocade clothing, and use strings of cowrie shells as ornaments. They devote all their strength to farming, working hard without a break. Only when they give birth do they get a brief rest from their labors. As soon as they have delivered a child, they carry it to the river and take a bath. Then they hand the child to the father and return to their labors.³⁴ Even with their chickens, the hens lay the eggs but the roosters incubate them.

The climate in their land is humid in the lowlands and hot in the highlands. Most of them build stilt houses out of bamboo. They live beside rivers and bathe ten times a day; parents and children and elder and younger brothers bathe together, unconstrained by any sense of shame. When they are sick, they do not take medicine and merely put ginger and salt in their noses. They offer betel nuts, slaked lime made from crushed clam shells, and fuliu (betel) leaves to their guests [to be chewed together]. They have few horses but many sheep.

They are violent and strong-willed (zaba 雜霸) and lack centralized authority. If even a minor quarrel breaks out, they start killing each other. When they have defeated an enemy, they place the severed heads under their stilt houses, and the troops and commanders all assemble, decked out in full military gear with pheasant tail feathers stuck in their topknots and weapons in their hands. They form a circle to dance around the captured and killed enemy. Then they kill a chicken as a ritual offering to [the enemy dead] and have a shaman chant over it, “Your chief and people must come quickly and submit to us!” When the ritual is concluded, they discuss who achieved merit and fame [in the battle], distribute rewards and punishments, and drink wine and make merry before the gathering ends. When they capture a town or fort, they do not kill its ruler but drive his whole family away, or imprison them for the rest of their lives.

They marry both within and outside their clan, and do not value virginity, being as sexually promiscuous as dogs and pigs. Their young women wear red headscarves and let the rest of their hair hang down. If they die before marriage, the men whom they have had affairs with all come to mourn them, each carrying a banner. Women whose funerals get up to a hundred banners are seen as exceptional; their parents often wail, “Our daughter was loved by so many, who would have expected her to die so young?”  

They gather to trade every five days. The women trade in the morning, and the men trade at midday. They use felt, cloth, tea, and salt as trade goods. Their land has many mulberry and silkworm thorn (zhe 柘) trees, and they cultivate silkworms throughout the year.

Those who gild two of their teeth are called the Gold-toothed Man.³⁵ Those who blacken their teeth are called the Lacquer-toothed Man. Those who tattoo their faces are called the Embroidered-faced Man. Those who tattoo their legs are called the Flowery-legged Man. Those who use colorful silk to tie their hair into two topknots are called the Flowery-horned Man.

Among the Man of the southwest, the Hundred Yi are the most numerous. Their lands stretch from Tibet in the north to Jiaozhi (Đại Việt) in the south, and their customs are roughly the same.

The Moxie

The Moxie Man 末些蠻 are to the north of Dali and [south of the] border of Tibet, near the Jinsha River.³⁶ Their land has a cool climate and has many sheep and horses, as well as deer musk and iron. They live in inaccessible terrain along the river, with chiefs and stockades scattered like stars, divided into many independent groups with no single ruler.

The men are skilled in warfare and like hunting. They carry short swords ornamented with the shells of giant clams. If even a small dispute arises, they ring their bells and start killing each other, only stopping when the women of the two [feuding] families intervene to mediate. The married women wear felt shawls and black dresses, go barefoot, and tie their hair into beautiful tall topknots. The unmarried women cut their hair with a long fringe going down to the eyebrows, and weave their skirts out of wool cords. They go topless without shame, but change this practice upon getting married. They are sexually promiscuous, observing no taboos. They do not worship gods or Buddhas, and only go up to the mountaintops to make sacrifices to Heaven on the fifteenth day of the first month. The ceremony is very solemn, and afterwards hundreds of their men and women will gather, hold hands, and sing and dance in a circle for entertainment.

By custom, they are extremely frugal and have a simple diet. In one year, half of their food consists of radishes.³⁷ The poorer families season their food with nothing but salt. Their powerful men respect government officials and slaughter cattle and sheep every winter, vying with one another to invite [the officials] to a feast. Not one day goes by without an invitation, and if even one guest declines to attend, they regard that as a serious embarrassment.

When one of them dies, they use a bamboo mat to carry him to the foot of the mountains. They do not use coffins, and cremate their elite and base people in the same place. They do not collect the bones after cremation. Those who have died unnatural deaths are cremated elsewhere. In their other customs, they are quite similar to the Black Man (Wu Man, i.e., Luoluo).

The Native Lao

The Native Lao Man (Tulao Man 土獠蠻) live throughout the area south of Xuzhou (Yibin, Sichuan) and north of Wumeng [circuit].³⁸

When their boys reach the age of fourteen or fifteen, they ask their companions to knock out two of their teeth, and only then can they get married. They live in the same rooms as their pigs and sheep. They do not have spoons and chopsticks and simply roll rice into balls with their hands before eating it. They use tall sleds (gaoqiao 高橇) to slide up and down the mountain slopes, like running deer. The women go barefoot and wear tall topknots with hats made of birch bark. They wear two large earrings on each ear, wear dresses made of black cloth, and wear chains and pendants around their necks as ornaments. When they go in and out of the mountain forests, they look just like monkeys. When one of them dies, they put his body in a coffin and place it on the top of a high cliff; they consider it good luck if that coffin is the first to fall.³⁹

The fields in these mountains are few and infertile, so they practice slash and burn agriculture. The rice that they harvest is hung [in sacks] under bamboo roofs, and they turn the sack around and pound it daily before eating. They often pick lychees and sell tea leaves for a living.  

The Wild Man

The Wild Man (Ye Man 野蠻) live scattered among cliffs and valleys to the west of Xunchuan.⁴⁰ They have no clothes and use bark to cover their bodies. Their bodies and faces are ugly and repulsive. They have few men and many women, so each man has several tens of wives. They carry wooden bows to defend themselves from raiders. They do not practice farming and simply go into the mountain forests to gather plants and animals to eat. They do not have eating utensils and simply eat their food off banana leaves.

The Woni

The Womi Man 斡泥蠻 live in stilt houses in the mountain forests five hundred li southwest of Lin’an (Tonghai county, Yunnan).⁴¹ Their way of life is extremely frugal. They hoard cowries in their homes, in underground stashes (jiao 窖) of 120 suo.⁴² When they are about to die, they instruct their sons, “I hid this number of stashes in the past. You can collect several of them, but do not touch the others. I will use them in my next life.” That is how stupid they are.

The Pu Man

The Pu Man 蒲蠻 are also known as Puzi Man 撲子蠻.⁴³ They live to the west of the Lancang (upper Mekong) River.  They are brave and strong by nature and specialize in banditry. They ride horses without using saddles. They go barefoot and wear short suits of armor that leave their knees and shins exposed. They are skilled in the use of spears and crossbows. They stick pheasant tail feathers on their heads, and when they charge forward [on horseback], they look as if they are flying.

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1. According to the Yuanshi (History of the Yuan), the Shuidong chief Song Longji launched the revolt by claiming that the Yuan intended to conscript all indigenous men for the Burma campaign and enslave their wives. ↩︎
2. Jacqueline M. Armijo-Hussein, “‘The Customs of Various Barbarians’ by Li Jing (1251-?),” in Susan Mann and Yu-yin Cheng eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (University of California Press, 2001), 88. ↩︎
3. Ibid., 97 n. 11. ↩︎
4. Khubilai is retroactively called “the emperor” here, but he did not become Great Khan of the Mongols until the death of his brother Mongke in 1259. ↩︎
5. The Branch Secretariats were large administrative regions in the Yuan empire that eventually developed into permanent provinces. ↩︎
6. Due to the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763) and its aftermath. ↩︎
7. The Zheng family overthrew Nanzhao’s last ruler in a coup and ruled a kingdom called Da Changhe in 902-928. In 928, the governor Yang Ganzhen overthrew Da Changhe and installed Zhao Shanzheng as emperor of Da Tianxing, but then deposed Zhao a year later and founded his own kingdom, Da Yining. In 937, the governor Duan Siping overthrew the Yang family and founded the Dali kingdom, which ruled until the Mongol conquest in 1253. ↩︎
8. “Meng dynasty” refers to the ruling dynasty of Nanzhao, whose original chiefdom was called Mengshe but whose rulers did not use surnames. “Duan dynasty” refers to the ruling dynasty of Dali. ↩︎
9. The Six Zhao were the chiefdoms unified into Nanzhao in the early eighth century. ↩︎
10. That is, the Chinese heartland. ↩︎
11. There is actually no strong evidence for equating the Bo and Bai peoples, despite the superficial similarity of their ethnonyms. ↩︎
12. This Nanzhao attack on Chengdu took place in 829–830. ↩︎
13. The received text reads mu 幕, but this must be a mistranscription, as the ninth-century source Manshu (Book of the Man) by Fan Chuo states that the Bai word for a length of silk was mi 幂. ↩︎
14. Li Jing’s logic is unclear here, but he seems to be arguing that since the Bai speak a foreign language, they must be descended from an ancient foreign people rather than Chinese settlers. ↩︎
15. This practice of eating raw meat with garlic sauce is also mentioned in Marco Polo’s description of the province of “Caraian” (Qarajang, the Mongol name for Yunnan), based on observations made in the 1280s. See Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 105. ↩︎
16. In Chinese mythology, the owl eats its own mother, and the jing beast (which resembles a tiger) eats its own father. People who violated norms of filial piety and familial love were thus often compared to these animals. ↩︎
17. This term is still used in Dali today, but is pronounced as gaizi. ↩︎
18. Marco Polo also mentions the use of white cowrie shells (imported from India) as money in “Caraian”: Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 105. ↩︎
19. The Black Man were one of the constituent peoples of Nanzhao. The Luoluo are the ancestors of today’s Nuosu or Yi peoples. ↩︎
20. According to Marco Polo’s description of “Caraian,” the local people “remove 2 or 3 joints from the tailbone, so the horse can’t swish his tail on the one atop him or when he runs, for they think it is a base thing when the horse runs swishing his tail.” See Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 106. ↩︎
21. The first part of this sentence is somewhat confusing, but seems to imply that a Naide who has no son can still find a wife for her imaginary son and let her bear a grandson for her by other men. ↩︎
22. Marco Polo, too, notes that the people of “Caraian” poison all their arrows. See Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 106. ↩︎
23. Under the Yuan empire, the former Yuesui commandery was actually known as Jianchang circuit. ↩︎
24. This is the Cuan Longyan stele of 458, which still stands in a temple in Luliang county today. ↩︎
25. Ziwen was the style name of Dou Guwutu, who served as chief minister of the state of Chu in 664-637 BCE. ↩︎
26. According to the family history of the Ban clan appended at the end of Ban Gu’s Hanshu, they were descendants of Ziwen (Dou Guwutu) who changed their clan name from Dou to Ban after the Qin conquest of Chu in 223 BCE. According to the Cuan Longyan stele, the Ban clan was given a fief called Cuan at the end of the Han, and renamed itself accordingly. However, this claim is not corroborated by any other source and is likely to have been fabricated to associate the Cuan with prestigious Chinese ancestors. ↩︎
27. According to the Cuan Longyan stele, Cuan Longyan held these titles in the mid-fifth century. Ningzhou prefecture was established by the Jin dynasty in 271 and encompassed much of Yunnan as well as the western part of Guizhou. ↩︎
28. The narrative is heavily truncated and simplified here, as Cuan Zan and Cuan Zhen were leaders of the Cuan in the sixth century, and neither man held the post of Governor of Xinggu. ↩︎
29. There were several Yuan officials and nobles named Toqto’a, and little is known about this one. However, Basic Annals of the Yuanshi (History of the Yuan) record that he was Administrator of the Yunnan Branch Secretariat until mid-1303, when he was transferred to serve as one of two Administrators of the newly established Sichuan Branch Secretariat. ↩︎
30. In the Yuan and Ming periods, “Hundred Yi” was a generic name for the Dai/Tai-speaking peoples of southern and southwestern Yunnan. This was often combined with the expression “Gold-toothed,” although not all of the peoples practiced tooth-gilding. ↩︎
31. Marco Polo has a similar description of a province in Yunnan called “Cardandan” (Zardandan, “gold teeth” in Persian): “They have no letters and do not write; this is no marvel, for they are born in a very out-of-the-way place amidst great forests and great mountains…. But I tell you that, when they deal with one another, they take a bit of wood, either squared off or round, split it in half, with one of them holding one half and the other the other half; but it is quite true that first they make two or three wedges, or as many as they like.” See Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 107-108. ↩︎
32. Marco Polo also notes that in “Cardandan,” the men devote their time to war and hunting, while the women and enslaved prisoners of war do all the household work. Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 107. ↩︎
33. Cuan Nong (or “Five Flowers Cuan Nong”) was another name for the Yuanben 院本 opera of the early Yuan period. ↩︎
34. Marco Polo’s description of “Cardandan” notes that the father spends forty days in bed with the infant (i.e., couvade) while the mother returns to her chores. Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 107. ↩︎
35. Marco Polo’s description of “Cardandan” notes that only men gild their teeth, not women. Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 107. ↩︎
36. The Moxie can be identified as the Naxi/Nakhi and Mosuo peoples. ↩︎
37. Reading 圓糧 as a corruption of 圓根 ↩︎
38. The identity of this people is unclear, but they may be the ancestors of the Bo 僰 or Ku 谷 people in Qiubei county, Yunnan, who still practice the “hanging coffin” custom and claim to be descended from refugees from the Yibin (i.e., Xuzhou area). ↩︎
39. Marco Polo’s description of the province of “Toloman,” which corresponds to “Tulao Man,” mentions this burial practice: “When they die they burn their bodies; as for the bones that are left that won’t burn, they take them and put them in a little casket, then they carry them to the high mountains and put them in large caverns, hung so that neither man nor animals can touch them.” Marco Polo (trans. Sharon Kinoshita), The Description of the World (Hackett, 2016), 115. ↩︎
40. The people described here were known as Xunchuan Man 尋傳蠻, Naked Man 裸形蠻, or Wild Man 野蠻 in the late Tang period. They are the ancestors of the Kachin peoples who inhabit the Kachin Hills of Myanmar and the Dehong Dai and Jingpo Autonomous Prefecture in western Yunnan. ↩︎
41. The Woni are believed to have been the ancestors of the Hani people. ↩︎
42. According to the earlier explanation of cowrie denominations among the Bai, a suo was eighty shells, so 120 suo equals 960 shells. ↩︎
43. The Pu or Puzi are believed to have been the ancestors of the Blang or Bulang people. ↩︎