Word: xishuangbanna
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...also sparked controversy within China with regard to whether or not the Dai people should hold Songkran, the New Year's festival celebrated in parts of East and Southeast Asia, in which lively water-splashing is a prominent feature. Duan Jinhua, head of the information office in Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture, announced that the fete would not be canceled, but that the sprinkling spree would be cut down from five hours to two. The government of the Dehong Dai and Jingpo autonomous prefecture, on the other hand, has decided to cancel official festivities and leave citizens to their...
...travel adviser at China Highlights, which offers customized tours and cruises in the region, says that she has had relatively few inquiries about participating in the event. "We suspect that the drought has severely affected our customers' itineraries in Yunnan." Those places accustomed to welcoming hordes of tourists, like Xishuangbanna's capital city of Jinghong, have previously been characterized by the most boisterous water-splashing celebrations; there, children and visitors haphazardly fling containers of muddy and colored water about, rushing back and forth to restaurants and strangers' homes to refill. Anouska Komlosy, curator of Asian ethnography at the British Museum...
...When the Red Guards ran riot in 1966, Chai's parents, like thousands of Xishuangbanna's Dai tribespeople, packed up what they could carry, along with their five children, and set off on foot. They made it past the border, trudged bandit-infested goat tracks through Burma, and didn't stop until they reached the Thai border town of Mae Sai. "Growing up in Thailand, I was fascinated by my parents' stories of home," says Chai, 37. "So when I was 17, I came back." He found work as a goldsmith, obtained a Chinese ID card, and last March opened...
...Xishuangbanna is seen as a kind of backyard Thailand by the Chinese, with 2.5 million mainlanders visiting last year to marvel at its tropical lushness and vibrant minorities. "A lot of Thais are coming now too, many to revisit their Dai roots," says Chai...
...HARD There's a murmur, then a babble and then suddenly a roar, and I'm sitting soggy-shoed in a wicker chair, clutching a pink parasol, almost a foot under water. This is white-water rafting, Xishuangbanna-style. Granted, the rapids on this particular stretch of the Nam Baan river, a chocolatey tributary of the Mekong, don't quite deliver Grand Canyonesque white-knuckle thrills. But when you're sitting in a wobbly chair, sliding around atop 20-odd lengths of bamboo lashed together with twine, any white water is, frankly, too much...