Dayan Town

The ancient city of Lijiang has a very special site. Here, every advantage of the natural environment is exploited to the full, making the town warm in winter and cool in summer, comfortable to 1ive in. Its layout is special too-without enclosing walls or crossroads. Favorably situated. with mountains to its back and water alongside, the town enjoys a harmonious relationship between mankind and nature.

Is there any relationship between Dayan Town in Lijiang and deep thought? The small town, cooking smoke, brick and timber houses, gurgling creeks, bean-curd makers, copperware shops....there seems to be no traces of the history of thought. But in fact, thought in Dayan lies in its everyday life, something that exists but is not subjected to close scrutiny.

Dayan is a town of ordinary residents. People build it for living and life, not for leaving their names in history. Built for living. the town is Warm, cordial, ordinary, equal and spontaneous. The stone-paved streets shine glossy in the moonlight. The musty smell of mud and timber from the walls is closely linked with the earth. This town has experienced a hundred earthquakes.

You enter a deep courtyard, push open the doors and the bolts emit a squeaking sound. Some musicians have incorporated such sounds into their musical work. The sound evokes a sense of solemn ceremony. In fact, the Naxi are an ethnic group whose houses have no doors. Their homes are places for living. They live their world not behind closed doors, but out in the open. Dayan, therefore, is a town without walls, without barriers to keep it separate from the world. Its streets lead all the way to the corn fields, to the pine-clad hills, to the rivers....

The Naxi players of ancient music in Dayan are thought of as being able to communicate with the gods. They talk with the ancient gods, reporting to them on who is sick and who has just died, on disasters and bumper harvests, praying for forgiveness and happiness. On enquiry I learned that they are teachers, tax collectors, cobblers, tailors, and leaders of a horse caravan...Their repertoire is not from well-recorded music pieces or from the national opera houses, but sitting among them are people like Bach.

Dayan is a living town. In his Forgotten Kingdom, Peter Goullart wrote:"Starting in distant villages early in the morning, the streams of farmers began to converge on Lijiang soon after ten o'clock. along the five main roads....Shortly after noon the market was in full swing and was a boiling cauldron of humanity and animal. Towering Tibetans elbowed their way through the struggling masses. Boa villagers in their mushroom-shaped cloaks waved bunches of turnips. Chungchia tribesmen in their coarse hempen shirts and trousers, with peculiar little queues falling from their shaven heads, listlessly promenaded with lengths of narrow and rough hemp fabrics. Naxi women ran frantically after some wayward customers."

In 1994, I found that part of the scene described by Goullart still existed, but it seems now that all this happened a long, long time ago.