The Dai of Xishuangbanna

by Tony Lambert

Wild orchids sprout from the trunks of graceful palm trees overlooking the mighty waters of the Mekong. Graceful Dai women in sarongs go to market, where the scent of exotic spices fills the warm air. Xishuangbanna is a paradise of rare tropical plants. The weather is always hot and humid. This furthest southern corner of southwest China is only a few miles from Burma, and beyond, Thailand. The one million Dai people who live here are, in fact, closely related by language and culture to their cousins in Chiangmai. Xishuangbanna is a Dai word meaning “land of twelve thousand rice fields,” and rice cultivation has been the traditional mainstay of the Dai farmers.

Jinghong, the “city of the dawn” in the Dai language, is the capital of Xishuangbanna. The Dai have a long history and are first mentioned in the annals of the Han dynasty over two thousand years ago. For four hundred years Xishuangbanna was a vassal kingdom to the Bai kingdoms of Nanzhao and then Dali. The area became a permanent vassal of China after the fall of the Dali kingdom to the Mongols in the 13th century. However, it had a degree of autonomy with its own petty kings for over eight hundred years. In 1500 AD Jinghong boasted over 10,000 households and over 200 Buddhist temples. However, in the 17th and 18th centuries the area was ravaged by invasions, civil war and epidemics —the area was particularly prone to malaria. As late as 1949 it had only a handful of brick buildings and tigers roamed the suburbs! Today it has a population of over 55,000. It has several Buddhist temples which with their thin spires and saffron-robed monks are similar to those in north Thailand. Hinayana Buddhism is part of the local culture, and some young boys still become monks at the age of seven or eight when they study the Buddhist scriptures for several years before returning home.

The Dai are proud of their distinctive culture. They have produced over five hundred epic poems—the largest number of any group in China apart from the majority Han. Their language has three distinct dialects, and to complicate matters further, traditionally has used four different scripts. The one most commonly seen in Xishuang-banna appears to be similar to the curved Burmese script.

The typical Dai house is built on stilts out of wood and bamboo. The top floor, supported by 36 wooden pillars, is the family’s living area with a cool veranda. Downstairs is used to store firewood and to house chickens and cattle. The floor of the living room is plaited with bamboo strips and kept spotlessly clean. Rice, fish and bamboo shoots are staple foods—and moss pie is a local delicacy! The moss is scraped off river stones and wrapped in a banana leaf and roasted.

The water-splashing festival at Dai New Year in mid-April now attracts many tourists. Whole buckets of water are emptied over people. Dragon Boat races are also a major feature of the festivities.

Buddhism came to the area by the end of the 8th century AD. The oldest pagoda dates back to 1204 AD. The form of Buddhism is Hinayana and similar to that practiced in Burma and Thailand. It is therefore very different from the Mahayana Buddhism common throughout the rest of China. The Buddhist scriptures in Dai comprise 84,000 different sections

Apart from the Dai people there are many other minority peoples in Xishuangbanna including the Hani, Lahu, Bulang, Wa, Jinuo, Yao, Miao, Yi and Zhuang, as well as a few very small groups which have not yet been officially classified. In the old days many of them practiced “slash and burn” agriculture, and some were so poor they wore banana leaves instead of clothes. Conditions have improved but even today remote villages lack basic medical facilities. Yunnan still has many “leprosy villages” where those afflicted by this disease are cut off from society. There are probably about 2 million people in the province who are mentally or physically handicapped in some way. Christians—both local and from overseas—motivated by the love of Christ are now able to reach to remote regions bringing both physical and spiritual help.

One Christian leper prayed for thirty years that help would come to his village. It did—but let us pray that others in great need will not have to wait as long.

WITNESS ON THE MEKONG

The Dai never seemed open to the gospel in the way some other tribal groups in Yunnan were, such as the Miao and the Jingpo. In 1893 the American Presbyterian Mission sent Daniel McGilvary from his base in Chiangmai in northern Thailand to Jinghong—on the back of an elephant! The first small church was established in the 1920s, but persecution forced the believers to set up their own separate Christian village. The New Testament was translated into Dai and published in 1933. However, the Dai were not very receptive and few turned to Christ. Buddhism was very much part of the culture.

A handful of Christians survived the Cultural Revolution. In the village of Mengyun, on the edge of Jinghong, a small house church was established. By 1995 several small meeting points had been started in the area, and the number of Christians had reached about 400.

Since then the gospel has made rapid progress in the area, reaching other minorities and also the Han Chinese in Jinghong. As so often the case, much of the foundation work was pioneered by a godly Bible woman.

Today there is a large brick-built church overlooking the Mekong River with a congregation of about 500 people. Several hundred others crowd into a low bamboo shack which has been erected alongside. On Sundays two preachers hold two services simultaneously—such is the enthusiasm! The church has a young Dai pastor, and the number of Christians in Xishuangbanna has grown from a handful only twenty years ago to 2-3,000 today.

In 1993 the complete Dai New Testament was reprinted in Nanjing and is available at the church in Jinghong.

Copyright OMF International