Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The summit of the range is conspicuously glaciated. It was a dreadful day, swift showers
sweeping up the valley on the wings of the wind; eastward the snowy peaks of the Pai-ma-
shan range were muffled in cloud” (1923:32).
Despite its location on the periphery of the Chinese Empire, or perhaps because of it,
Yunnan has long served as a conduit for economic and cultural exchange between China,
Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. The ancient Tea-Horse Road (Chama Gudao), an import-
ant trading route since the days of the Han Dynasty (206
B.C.E.
-220
C.E.
), traced the banks
of the Lancang for part of its course before arcing westward into Tibet and Central Asia.
Tea porters, most of whom were Tibetan or Naxi, carried heavy loads of compressed tea
cakes over hundreds of kilometers of inhospitable terrain, a way of life that persisted in-
to the early years of the twentieth century. They traded their tea for horses, thus satisfying
both sides: the Tibetans, who could mix the tea with barley flour and yak butter to make
tsampa
, and the Chinese, who quickly became accustomed to using horses in their daily
activities for agricultural traction and transportation.
Beyond the imaginings of Western scientists and explorers, of course, the people who
live in the Lancang basin have their own origin stories that provide a basis for attachment
to place. In the Tibetan areas along the northern extent of the river, villagers herd yaks and
dzo
s, a hybrid between yaks and domestic cattle, using the milk and meat from these anim-
als for subsistence and market exchange. Some households cultivate potatoes and barley,
some of the only crops that will grow reliably at elevations higher than 3,000 meters, and
collect nontimber forest products, including wild herbs, mushrooms, and, most famously,
caterpillar fungus (known in Chinese as
dongchong xiacao
, literally “winter insect, sum-
mergrass”).Thefungus,whichincludes variousspecies belongingtothegenus
Cordyceps
,
has a very peculiar life cycle: fungal spores invade the tissue of a caterpillar, where they
lie dormant over the winter; eventually, in late spring or early summer, the fungal fruiting
body sprouts from the corpse of the worm, whose body has become food for the parasitic
fungus. In traditional Tibetan medicine,
Cordyceps
was used to treat a variety of maladies,
including asthma and high blood pressure; today, on the Chinese market, where it is prized
for its aphrodisiacal properties, it can sell for as much as 500 yuan per gram, providing loc-
al Tibetan households with up to half of their annual cash income and supporting bustling
markets and distribution networks (Galipeau 2012). Herbal medicine stores from Kunming
to Beijing advertise the health benefits of this curious product, allocating prominent shelf
space to glass jars full of
Cordyceps
.
1
The anthropologist Lun Yin, who has conducted fieldwork in the region's Tibetan com-
munities, has documented the cosmological connections between the people and the Lan-
cang River:
