Dukezong Ancient Town is the important town of caravan in the junction of three provinces, and is the best preserved old city in the Tibetan areas. Following your dream here is a kind of freedom and a kind of luck.
It is winter again, the sky is too blue to
believe, the snow on the mountain top has been melted by the hot sunshine. Looking
up to the top, a goldentop temple sits in coiling incense smoke, I stand at the
foot of mountain to walk to the depth of ancient city along the flagging.
It is the Dukezong Ancient Town sitting in
Jiantang Town, Shangri-La County, Yunnan Province, so it is also known as Jiantang
Ancient Town, with the altitude of 3,300 meters. There is a small hill like
tortoise on the wide dam named as Daguishan Hill, and the people of all
nationalities live around the hill from generation to generation, and it gradually
turns to be the Dukezong Ancient City today. Since ancient time, it is the
significant town of Tea-Horse Road, is also the only way which the Yunnan-Tibet
Road must be passed.
Diqing Plateau has large temperature
difference in day and night, and the winter is very cold. But the Dukezong
Ancient Town is warm and serene, because in the south of ancient town there is
a row of hills shaping the natural barrier to stop the cold wind entering. There
are three rivers in north of town nourishing this land and the people living in
this land. The famous Songzanlin Temple is located at the north plateau, which
is the largest Tibetan Buddhism temple.
Dukezong is the Tibetan language, means of
the blue moonlight city, similar with the shape of the Shambhala City in
Tibetan Buddhism. According to the history, Dukezong Town was the castle
firstly built in Tang Dynasty by Tubo people, and Mushi Tusi built the
Moonlight Stockade here in Ming Dynasty and then the Shangri-La became a city
in Kangxi Emperor time in Qing Dynasty and the ancient town was expanded in
several to be the present Dukezong Ancient Town.
I stay at my friend's home for this trip,
his mother is the Naxi nationality and his father is the Zang nationality. In
this small city, besides the Naxi and Zang nationalities still there are Lisu,
Pumi, Bai, Han, etc, totally 23 minorities. Every nationality has its religious
faith, culture, folk-custom and origin, so the Dukezong ancient town is a
multi-nationalities living museum. Of course, if like to know more about
details of their live or the more bright side of their lives, the time and
chance are most important. Usually, the various activities are held when events
happen, such as build the house, merry, enter college, etc. And one of the
necessary one is the banquet to entertain surrounded people.
People living in Dukezong all drink same
water in a well. After thousand years, residences all keep their religious faiths
and the living customs, to live together harmoniously around the Daguishan
Hill. They live the life to be story and then live story to be life, and is
appreciated and enjoyed by the tourists from home and abroad as well as me. The
well at foot of Daguishan Hill has long history of thousand years, it is said
it was left by the fairy maiden, so the locals value it very much, they regard
this well as the milk of mother.
My friend's mother making the buttered tea
says her husband likes to use the water in this well to make tea. According to
her, they used to getting water in the morning and evening, but the families
all use the tap water, and the harmonious scene is less. She says, until now
every family all go to the well to get water in the New Year's Eve, as the
water in this well has luck, and only the luck men have chance to take luck
back home. Nowadays, the old well has built to be a new pool for visitors to
photograph and there are bowls for visitors to taste the sweet water beside the
pool.
Friend's family still keeps the Tibetan
breakfast and lunch, only the dinner is grand and rich. The father always
drinks some homebrewed highland barley wine. After dinner, the mother and
father lead me to dance in the center square - Sifang Street which is the entertainment
place for locals and was the trading place earlier. At present, Sifang Street
which has some stalls offering some conveniences to visitors is surrounded by
the big Tibetan houses. At night, these stalls are instead by the bonfire, and
the locals and visitors dance the happy Guozhuang around the bonfire. With
songful music and the laughter, the square is full of the passion.
The father most likes to talk about the
stories about horse-transportation. Dukezong is the important ancient town of
Tea-horse Road, the horsing people in the old trading time were all the Tibetan
guys, and most of them come from the Mangkang in Tibet and the Shangri-La in
Yunnan. This old town was also the gathering place of businessmen and
horse-transportation. In some houses in center with hundred years, I find some
figures recorded on the beams and pillars. According to the professors about
the Tibetan culture, these figures were the records of goods number by the
horse-transportations.
In the storage of this family, still there
are some facilities on the way of horse-transportation, many of them are very
old and the further has been grinded over. The father says the horsing people
give the lives to mountain when they out of the door, what only they can do is
just pray to the god as the roads are so dangerous that many people never come
back.
It is only a corner of the life in Dukezong
Ancient Town, it is mysterious and simple, but they are the values of this old
city.
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