Lisu of the Nu River Gorges and Their Mastery of the Crossbow

In the deep gorges of the far west of Yunnan, where the great rivers of Asia run in parallel down from the Tibetan heights, live the Lisu, a mountain people of hunters and slope-farmers famed for their skill with the crossbow. Clinging to slopes so steep that their fields seem to hang from the hillsides, above all in the tremendous canyon of the Nu river, they are also, since the coming of the missionaries, one of the most Christian of all the peoples of China.

This account follows the Lisu from their origins among the ancient Qiang of the north, through their long drift south into the western gorges and their life of the hunt and the slope-field, into their language and its missionary script, their older worship and their new Christian faith, and the crossbow, the song, and the daring knife-ladder that mark them. It ends with the Lisu of today, keeping their song and their bow alive in the deep gorges of modern China.

The Crossbow Hunters of the Deep Gorges
Lisu and the Branches of the People
The Lisu Tongue and Its Written Signs
The Gorges of the Nu and the Mountains of the West
The Villages, the Hunt, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Lisu
The Spirits, the Ancestors, and the Coming of the Cross
The Crossbow, the Song, and the Ways of the Lisu
The Hunters, the Weavers, and the Makers of the Bow
Maize, Buckwheat, and the Table of the Mountains
The New Year, the Knife-Ladder, and the Feasts
From the Ancient Qiang to the People of Modern China
The Lisu in Modern China

The Crossbow Hunters of the Deep Gorges

In the deep gorges of the far west of Yunnan, where the great rivers of Asia run in parallel down from the Tibetan heights, live the Lisu, a mountain people of hunters and farmers famed for their skill with the crossbow. Numbering some seven hundred thousand within China, they cling to the steep slopes above the Nu and the other rivers, in one of the most rugged and remote corners of the whole country.

The Lisu belong to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the great Sino-Tibetan family, kin in speech to the Yi, the Naxi, and the other peoples of the Yunnan highlands, and more distantly to the Tibetans and the Burmans. Their forebears are thought to have moved down from the north, from the borders of the Tibetan plateau, over many centuries, drifting south along the mountain valleys into their present home.

As they moved south the Lisu settled the high, forested slopes of the western Yunnan ranges, above all the tremendous gorge of the Nu river, which the Chinese call the Angry River, where the mountains rise thousands of feet almost sheer from the water. There, in a country of terrible steepness and beauty, they cleared fields on the slopes and hunted the game of the forest with their bows.

To speak of the Lisu is to speak of a mountain people of the deep gorges, hunters and slope-farmers, keepers of a tradition of song and of the crossbow, and, in modern times, one of the most Christian of all the peoples of China. Scattered across the western ranges and beyond into Burma and Thailand, they hold a place apart among the peoples of the Chinese southwest.

Lisu and the Branches of the People

The people call themselves Lisu, and it is by this name that the Chinese state recognises them as one of its nationalities and sets aside the autonomous districts of their mountain homeland. The name is their own word for themselves, and it binds together the scattered communities of the western gorges under a single identity, distinct from the Han, the Bai, and the other peoples around them.

The Lisu are divided into several branches, distinguished by dialect and by dress, whom outsiders once named for the colours of their clothing, so that there were spoken of the Black Lisu, the White Lisu, and the Flowery Lisu. These names marked differences of custom and appearance among communities scattered across a broken country, yet all counted themselves one people under the name Lisu.

Beyond China’s borders the same people are found in the mountains of Burma and in the north of Thailand, where they settled in the course of their long southward drift and where they are known by the same name. Across these frontiers they recognise a common origin and a shared body of custom, song, and legend, a single people divided by the borders of modern states.

Whatever the branch or the border, the Lisu know themselves as one people, sharing a common tongue in its several dialects, a common way of life in the mountains, and a common love of song and of the crossbow. The name Lisu is their own, the mark of their standing among the peoples of the western ranges, carried with the pride of a mountain folk who kept their freedom in the deep gorges.

The Lisu Tongue and Its Written Signs

The Lisu speak a language of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan family, closely akin to the tongue of the Yi and to the other Loloish languages of the Yunnan highlands. Like these it is a tonal language, distinguishing meaning by the pitch of the voice, and it is spoken in several dialects across the scattered communities of the western gorges, differing enough in places to mark off one branch from another.

For most of their history the Lisu had no writing, and their store of song, legend, and lore was carried by memory and by mouth, handed down through the generations in the villages of the mountains. In this oral world the singers and the elders held the memory of the people, and the great body of Lisu song, so central to their life, lived entirely in the voice.

In the early twentieth century Christian missionaries, working among the Lisu, devised a script for their language, a remarkable alphabet using upright and inverted Roman letters, and into it they translated the scriptures and the hymns. This script, still in use, gave the Lisu a written language for the first time and is bound up with the spread of Christianity among them, so that faith and literacy came together.

In the modern age standard Chinese has spread through schooling and the dealings of daily life, and most Lisu now speak both their mother tongue and Chinese. Yet the Lisu language, with its missionary script and its great heritage of song, remains strong among the people, a living tongue of the western mountains carried in speech, in the hymnbook, and above all in the songs that fill the Lisu year.

The Gorges of the Nu and the Mountains of the West

The heartland of the Lisu is the far west of Yunnan, above all the tremendous gorge of the Nu river, the stream the Chinese call the Angry River, which runs south from the Tibetan heights in a canyon of tremendous depth. Here the mountains rise steeply from the water, and the Lisu cling to slopes so sheer that their fields seem to hang from the hillsides, in the autonomous prefecture that bears the river’s name.

This is a country of extraordinary ruggedness and beauty, part of the region where the Nu, the Mekong, and the Yangtze run close together in parallel gorges before parting for their distant seas. The slopes are clothed in forest, rich in game and in plants, and the climate shifts sharply with height, from the warm valley floors to the cold and misty heights, all within a short and steep climb.

On these slopes the Lisu cleared their fields, terracing where they could and, in the old way, clearing patches of forest by fire for dry crops on ground too steep for the plough. They hung their villages on the mountainsides, above the reach of the floods and the heat of the valley, and hunted the game of the forest with the crossbow that became their emblem.

Beyond the Nu gorge the Lisu spread through the neighbouring ranges of western Yunnan and across the borders into Burma and Thailand, wherever the high forested country offered them a home. Rooted to their steep slopes and their mountain fields, and hunters of the forest game, the Lisu made of the deep western gorges a homeland as dramatic as any in China.

The Villages, the Hunt, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Lisu lived in their mountain villages under the sway of custom and the guidance of elders, without kings or a native nobility of their own. Scattered in small settlements across the steep slopes, they governed themselves through the heads of clans and the respected old men, and through the bonds of kinship that tied the households of a village together.

Theirs was a life of the slope-field and the hunt. On ground too steep for the plough they cleared the forest by fire and cropped it for a few seasons before moving on, growing maize, buckwheat, and other hardy crops, and they hunted the deer, the boar, and the game of the forest with the crossbow, at which the Lisu were reckoned among the finest marksmen of the mountains.

The crossbow was the emblem and the tool of the Lisu man, carried on the hunt and in defence, and the boys learned its use from an early age. Skill with the bow was a matter of pride and a mark of manhood, and the poisoned arrows of the Lisu, tipped with the venom of plants, made them formidable hunters and, when need arose, formidable in war.

Above the villages the imperial state ruled the region from afar, at times through native chiefs, but the deep gorges and steep slopes kept the Lisu largely to themselves, remote and hard to reach. Governed by custom, by elders, and by the bonds of clan, the Lisu lived as free mountain hunters and farmers, keeping their language, their song, and their crossbow in the shelter of the western ranges.

The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Lisu

Lisu society rests on the household and the clan, the ties of descent reckoned through the father’s line that bind families across the scattered mountain villages. The Lisu clans bear names, many of them drawn from animals, plants, or natural things, and members of a clan share a common ancestor, honour the same forebears, and owe one another the duties of kin, marrying outside the clan.

The village is the largest everyday unit of Lisu life, a cluster of houses on a mountain slope, guided by respected elders and by the heads of the clans. The Lisu built no wide state and knew no king, and authority rested on age, on descent, and on the respect owed to those skilled in custom and, in the old days, in the rites of the spirits, rather than on inherited throne.

The Lisu were known for a notable equality and freedom in their social life, with little of the rigid rank found among some of their neighbours, and for the warmth of their hospitality, in which the sharing of drink and song played a large part. Courtship was carried on in song, the young men and women singing back and forth at gatherings, and the young were given room to choose their matches.

Women held an honoured place, working beside the men in the fields, weaving the cloth of the household, and joining fully in the song and dance that fill Lisu life. The making of a girl’s dress and ornaments, bright with beads and, among some branches, with shells and silver, was a labour of care, and a woman’s skill and her finery marked her standing in the community.

The Spirits, the Ancestors, and the Coming of the Cross

The older faith of the Lisu was rooted in the worship of the ancestors and in a rich belief in the spirits that fill the mountain world, the spirits of the forest, the rivers, the rocks, the fields, and the game. Offerings and rites kept these spirits content and secured their blessing on the hunt and the crop, and the priests and specialists of the village stood between the people and the unseen world, reading omens and healing the sick.

In this older world, sickness and misfortune were held to come from the anger of spirits or the neglect of the ancestors, and the ritual specialists performed the ceremonies to set them right, sacrificing beasts and chanting the proper words. Divination guided the people in their undertakings, and taboos hedged about the sacred places and seasons of the mountain year.

Then, in the early twentieth century, came a great change, for Christian missionaries reached the Lisu of the western gorges and won them in large numbers to the new faith. Devising a script for their language and translating the scriptures and the hymns, the missionaries planted churches through the Nu valley, and the Lisu became one of the most thoroughly Christian of all the peoples of China.

Today a great part of the Lisu are Christian, above all in the Nu gorge, where the singing of hymns in four-part harmony fills the churches and has become a mark of the people, joined to their old love of song. Yet among some communities the older worship of the ancestors and the spirits lives on, and the two faiths, the old and the new, both have their place in the Lisu world.

The Crossbow, the Song, and the Ways of the Lisu

The crossbow stands at the heart of Lisu tradition, the emblem and the pride of the people. Skill with the bow, learned from boyhood, was the mark of a man and the tool of the hunt, and to this day crossbow contests are a feature of Lisu gatherings, in which the marksmen show their aim before the assembled community. The making and the mastery of the bow are cherished arts.

Song is the other great tradition of the Lisu, a people who seem to sing at every turn of life, in courtship, at weddings, at work, and at the festivals. Their antiphonal songs, sung back and forth between singers, and, since the coming of Christianity, their four-part hymn singing in the churches, are famous, and the Lisu are reckoned among the most musical of all the peoples of China.

A famous and daring tradition is the festival of the knife-ladder and the sea of fire, held at the new year among some Lisu, in which brave men climb barefoot a ladder of sharp knife-blades and walk or leap through beds of burning coals, showing their courage and, it is held, their protection by the spirits. This dramatic feat draws crowds and is among the most striking of Lisu customs.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the courtship carried on in song, the weddings and funerals with their proper rites, and the festivals with their crossbow contests, dances, and feasts. Through the bow, the song, and the daring feats of the knife-ladder, the Lisu mark the passages of the year and of life in ways carried down from their forebears in the deep gorges.

The Hunters, the Weavers, and the Makers of the Bow

The best known craft of the Lisu is the making of the crossbow, the weapon that is their emblem. The bow is fashioned of tough wood and bamboo, the string of plant fibre, and the arrows tipped in the old days with a poison drawn from plants, and a well-made bow, accurate and powerful, was a treasured possession. The skill of the bowyer, like the skill of the marksman, was honoured among the people.

The women of the Lisu are weavers and workers of cloth, spinning hemp and cotton, weaving it on their looms, and sewing and adorning the dress of the household. The bright dress of the Lisu women, varying from branch to branch, is trimmed with beads and, among some, with shells, silver, and coloured thread, and the making of a girl’s festival finery was a labour of care and a measure of her skill.

Beyond these the Lisu practise the crafts of a mountain people. They build their houses of timber, bamboo, and thatch, some in the old style raised on posts against the steep and the damp, plait bamboo into baskets and mats, and carve the tools of daily life. The working of hemp into rope and cloth, and the gathering and preparing of the many useful plants of the forest, rounded out their crafts.

The forest gave the Lisu much of their livelihood and their materials, the game they hunted, the plants they gathered for food, medicine, and poison, and the timber and bamboo of their building. Yet it is the crossbow above all, with the bright beaded dress of the women, that marks the crafts of the Lisu, an art bound to the hunt and to the mountain life of the deep western gorges.

Maize, Buckwheat, and the Table of the Mountains

The food of the Lisu is the food of a mountain people, built on the hardy crops that grow on the steep slopes of their homeland. Maize is the chief staple, ground into meal and cooked as a porridge or cake, and buckwheat, barley, and other hill grains fill out the table, along with beans, potatoes, and the vegetables of the mountain gardens. Rice, harder to grow on the steep slopes, was a lesser food.

To the grain is added the produce of the forest and the hunt, the game that the Lisu took with their crossbows, the wild plants, roots, and greens they gathered, and the pigs and poultry of the household. Meat was more a part of the Lisu table than of many farming peoples, for the forest was rich in game, and the sharing of meat at feasts bound the community together.

A famous Lisu way of welcome is the drink they share with a guest, in which host and guest drink together from a single cup, cheek by cheek, as a sign of friendship and trust, a custom that speaks of the warmth and the love of drink and song for which the Lisu are known. Rice and grain wine, brewed in the household, is the drink of hospitality and of every festival.

The gathering and preserving of the mountain’s gifts, the drying and smoking of meat, and the pickling of vegetables helped the Lisu through the seasons. From the maize and buckwheat of the slopes to the game of the forest and the shared cup of wine, the food of the Lisu is rooted in the steep fields and the rich forests of the deep gorges that are their home.

The New Year, the Knife-Ladder, and the Feasts

The great festival of the Lisu is the new year, the Kuoshi festival, held at the turning of the year and kept with the whole community for days of feasting, of the wearing of the finest dress, of song and dance, and of the crossbow contests in which the marksmen show their skill. It is the high point of the Lisu year, drawing the scattered families of the mountains together to greet the coming season.

Among some Lisu the new year brings the daring festival of the knife-ladder and the sea of fire, in which brave men climb barefoot a ladder of sharp blades and pass through beds of burning coals, a feat of courage that draws crowds and is among the most striking of Lisu customs. The bravery of the climbers is held to secure the blessing and protection of the spirits for the year to come.

For the Christian Lisu of the Nu gorge, the festivals of the church calendar, above all Christmas and the singing gatherings, have become great occasions, when the villages come together and the four-part hymn singing for which the Lisu are famous fills the churches and the valleys. The love of song that runs through Lisu life found in the hymn a new and cherished form.

The turning of the farming year and the passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony. At all these occasions the bright beaded dress, the crossbow contests, the antiphonal songs and the hymns, and the shared cup of wine bring colour and sound, so that the Lisu meet the great moments of the year and of life alike with song, with feasting, and with feats of daring.

From the Ancient Qiang to the People of Modern China

The Lisu are counted among the peoples who trace their descent, in the deep past, from the ancient Qiang of the borders of the Tibetan plateau, from whom sprang many of the Tibeto-Burman peoples of the southwest. Over many centuries their forebears drifted south along the mountain valleys, settling at length the deep gorges of western Yunnan that became their home.

Through the long centuries the Lisu lived remote in their steep gorges, ruled from afar by the imperial state and at times by native chiefs, but largely left to their own ways in a country too rugged for close control. The records tell of Lisu risings against the pressures of the state and the encroachment of others, and of their movement further south into Burma and Thailand in search of land and freedom.

The early twentieth century brought a great change with the coming of the Christian missionaries, who won the Lisu of the Nu gorge in large numbers, gave them a written language, and planted the churches that transformed their spiritual life. This conversion, remarkable in its scale, made the Lisu one of the most Christian of China’s peoples and bound faith, literacy, and song together among them.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Lisu were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, and an autonomous prefecture was established in the Nu gorge, with autonomous counties elsewhere. The modern age has brought roads, at last, to the once almost inaccessible gorges, along with schools and the reach of the market, drawing the remote Lisu into the wider life of the country.

The Lisu in Modern China

Today the Lisu number some seven hundred thousand within China, living still chiefly in the deep gorges and mountains of western Yunnan, above all in the autonomous prefecture of the Nu river, with communities across the borders in Burma and Thailand. From the remote slope villages to the growing valley towns, they remain a mountain people rooted in the dramatic country of the western ranges.

Modern life has come even to the deep gorges, for roads now thread the once nearly impassable canyon of the Nu, bringing schools, electricity, and the reach of the market to villages long cut off from the world. A growing trade in tourism draws visitors to the tremendous scenery of the gorge and to the crossbow contests, the festivals, and the famous hymn singing of the Lisu.

The same forces bring change and strain, for the pull of the towns and of migrant labour draws the young away, and standard Chinese and modern schooling press upon the Lisu tongue and the old ways. Yet the Lisu language, with its missionary script and its heritage of song, and the Christian faith that has become so much a part of Lisu life, remain strong among the people.

The Lisu carry their heritage with pride. The crossbow and its contests, the daring knife-ladder, the antiphonal songs and the four-part hymns, the bright beaded dress, and the warm hospitality of the shared cup all endure as marks of who they are. A mountain people of the deep western gorges, the Lisu keep their song and their crossbow alive among the many peoples of modern China.