Nu of the Angry River Gorge and Their Crossings on the Rope

In the tremendous gorge of the Nu river, the stream the Chinese call the Angry River, in the far northwest of Yunnan near the borders of Burma and Tibet, live the Nu, a small people who take their name from the great river of their home. Clinging to the steep slopes above one of the deepest gorges in Asia, they are farmers and gatherers of the mountainside, famous for the rope crossings by which they slid across the fierce river, keepers of the worship of the spirits and, since the coming of the missionaries, in part a Christian people.

This account follows the Nu from their origins among the old dwellers of the gorge, through their steep slope-fields and their rope crossings, into their several fragile tongues, their worship of the spirits and the mountains and their new Christian faith, and the songs, the hymns, and the festivals that mark them. It ends with the Nu of today, small peoples of the deep canyon of the Angry River, keeping their customs and their memory alive in modern China.

The People of the Angry River Gorge
Nu, Nusu, and the Names of the People
The Tongues of the Nu and Their Branches
The Deep Gorge of the Nu River
The Villages, the Rope Bridge, and the Old Order
The Clan, the Village, and the Bonds of the Nu
The Spirits, the Ancestors, and the Coming of the Cross
The Rope Crossing, the Song, and the Ways of the Nu
The Weavers, the Farmers, and the Makers of the Gorge
Grain, the Forest, and the Table of the Gorge
The New Year, the Rites, and the Feasts
From the Highlands to the People of Modern China
The Nu in Modern China

The People of the Angry River Gorge

In the tremendous gorge of the Nu river, the stream the Chinese call the Angry River, in the far northwest of Yunnan, live the Nu, a small people who take their name from the great river that runs through their home. Numbering around thirty thousand, one of the smaller of China’s peoples, they cling to the steep slopes above the river, in one of the deepest and most rugged gorges in all of Asia, near the borders of Burma and Tibet.

The Nu belong to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the great Sino-Tibetan family, kin in the deep past to the Tibetans, the Yi, and the other Tibeto-Burman peoples, though the several groups gathered under the name Nu are not all of one close kindred, and speak tongues of more than one branch. Their forebears are held to be among the old inhabitants of the gorge country, dwelling there before some of their neighbours.

The Nu share their tremendous gorge with the Lisu, who came into it in later times, and with the Derung and the Tibetans of the higher reaches, and the name Nu covers several groups of the gorge who were gathered together by the state. Cut off on their steep slopes by the great river and the towering mountains, the Nu kept their tongues and their customs in one of the most remote corners of China.

To speak of the Nu is to speak of a small people of the deepest of gorges, farmers and gatherers of the steep slopes above the Angry River, keepers of the old worship of the spirits and, since the coming of the missionaries, in part a Christian people. In the tremendous canyon of the Nu, between Burma and Tibet, they hold their own place among the peoples of China.

Nu, Nusu, and the Names of the People

The people are known as the Nu, the name they and the state give them, drawn from the great river of their home, the Nu, the Angry River, that runs in its tremendous gorge through their land. It is by this name that the state recognises them as one of its nationalities, one of the smaller of the recognised peoples, in the far northwest of Yunnan.

Yet the Nu are not a single tightly knit people but several groups of the gorge, gathered under the one name, each with its own tongue and its own name for itself, among them the Nusu, the Anung, and others, whose speech differs enough that they belong to more than one branch of the Tibeto-Burman family. The name Nu, drawn from the river, binds these groups of the gorge together.

The grouping of these several communities under the one name Nu was the work of the modern surveys, which set them apart from the Lisu, the Derung, and the other peoples of the gorge country, though the Nu groups are not all of one close kindred. What they share is the home in the gorge of the Angry River and a long dwelling there.

Whatever the group or the tongue, the people gathered under the name know themselves as the Nu, the folk of the Angry River gorge, keepers of their tongues and their customs in the deep canyon. The name Nu, drawn from the great river, marks them among the peoples of China as a people of one of the most remote and tremendous of homelands.

The Tongues of the Nu and Their Branches

The languages of the Nu are as varied as the groups gathered under the name, for the several Nu communities do not all speak one tongue, and their languages, though all of the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan family, belong to more than one of its groups. The Nusu, the Anung, and the other Nu groups speak tongues distinct enough that they may need Chinese or Lisu to understand one another.

This variety of speech, unusual in so small a people, reflects the broken and isolating country of the gorge, where the great river and the towering mountains cut off one community from another, so that each kept to its own tongue through the long centuries. The name Nu covers, in truth, several small peoples of the gorge with related but distinct languages.

For all of their history the Nu had no writing of their own, and their store of song, legend, and lore was carried by memory and by mouth, while in later times, among the Christian Nu, the missionary scripts of the Lisu and other tongues served for the scriptures and the hymns. The great body of Nu tradition lived in the spoken and the sung word.

In the modern age standard Chinese has spread through schooling and daily life, and the Nu, living among the Lisu and other neighbours, often know also the Lisu tongue, so that many are bilingual or more. As small peoples of the gorge among larger neighbours, the Nu face strong pressure on their languages, which are among the most fragile in China, and their keeping is a matter of real concern.

The Deep Gorge of the Nu River

The homeland of the Nu is the gorge of the Nu river, the Angry River, in the far northwest of Yunnan, above all in the counties of Gongshan and Fugong, where the great river runs south from the Tibetan heights in a canyon of tremendous depth. Here the mountains rise thousands of feet almost sheer from the water, and the Nu cling to the steep slopes above the river, in one of the deepest gorges in all of Asia.

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 plants, and the climate shifts sharply with height. At the famous first bend of the Nu, the great river sweeps in a great curve about a spur of land, one of the sights of the gorge.

On the steep slopes above the river the Nu cleared their fields, terracing where they could and clearing patches of forest by fire on ground too steep for the plough, and they hung their villages on the mountainsides above the reach of the floods. To cross the great river, too fierce for boats in its narrows, the Nu strung ropes from bank to bank and slid across on them, a famous feature of the gorge.

Rooted to their steep slopes and their mountain fields, and gathered in the deep gorge of the Angry River, the Nu made their homeland in one of the most remote and tremendous corners of China. It is a land of towering mountain and roaring river, of hillside village and rope crossing, where small peoples of the gorge kept their tongues and their customs in the shelter of the deep canyon.

The Villages, the Rope Bridge, and the Old Order

In the days before the reach of the modern state, the Nu lived in their villages on the steep slopes of the gorge as farmers and gatherers, under the sway of custom, the guidance of elders, and the bonds of the clan, and, in some places, the Tibetan lords or the native chiefs of the region. Each village was a community of households, ordered by the ties of kin and the authority of the old and the wise.

Theirs was a life of the slope-field and the forest, for on ground too steep for the plough they cleared the forest by fire and cropped it for a few seasons, growing maize, buckwheat, and other hardy crops, and they gathered the rich produce of the forest, the plants, the game, and the honey of the gorge. It was often a hard and poor life on the steep and remote slopes.

To cross the great river, the Nu strung ropes of bamboo or of hide from bank to bank and slid across them on a wooden slider, a daring and famous means of crossing the fierce and roaring water, and by these rope crossings they went from slope to slope of the gorge. The making and the use of the rope crossing was a skill and a mark of the gorge peoples.

Governed by custom, by elders, and by the clan, and lying on the marches between the Tibetan, the Burmese, and the Chinese worlds, the Nu lived as farmers and gatherers of the deep gorge. Small peoples of the Angry River, keepers of the worship of the spirits and, in their remoteness, long left to themselves, they held to their ways through the long centuries in the shelter of the great canyon.

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

Nu society rests on the household and the clan, the ties of kin that bind families across the steep slopes of the gorge. Descent is reckoned through the father’s line, and the members of a clan share a common ancestor, honour the same forebears, and owe one another the duties of kin, while the village, often a community of related families, was the everyday frame of life on the mountainside.

The Nu built no wide state and knew no king, and authority within the village rested on age, on wisdom, 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 ties of kin and the bonds of the small village were the frame of Nu life in the remote and broken country of the gorge.

The Nu were known for a notable equality and a gentle way in their social life, with little of the rigid rank found among some peoples, and for the warmth of their hospitality. Marriage was made according to custom, marked by the exchange of gifts and by feasting, and the songs of courtship gave the young a voice in the choosing of their matches.

Women worked beside the men in the fields and the forest and, as weavers, clothed the household in the cloth they made, and the dress of the Nu women, with its beads and its ornaments, marked them among their neighbours. Through the household, the clan, and the small village, the Nu individual was bound into a close community of the gorge, holding to its identity in one of the most remote of homelands.

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

The older faith of the Nu was rooted in the worship of the spirits that fill the gorge world, the spirits of the mountains, the forests, the rivers, the rocks, and the fields, and of the ancestors of the household and the clan. Offerings and rites, led by the ritual specialists, kept the spirits content and secured their blessing on the crop, the hunt, and the health of the people, in a world alive with unseen powers.

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, and divination guided the people in their undertakings. Taboos hedged about the sacred places and seasons of the gorge, and the great mountains were held in reverence.

Then, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, came the Christian missionaries, who reached the remote gorge and won many of the Nu, as of their Lisu neighbours, to the new faith, planting churches through the canyon, both Catholic and Protestant. The old church of Chongding at Bingzhongluo and others stand as marks of this conversion, and among the Nu Christianity became a firm part of life.

Among the higher reaches of the gorge, near the Tibetan world, some Nu took something of the Tibetan Buddhism of the plateau. Today many Nu are Christian, while others keep the older worship of the spirits and the ancestors, and among some the faiths mingle. Yet whether in the old faith or the new, the reverence of the mountains and the honouring of the ancestors run deep in the Nu world.

The Rope Crossing, the Song, and the Ways of the Nu

The most famous of Nu traditions, born of their tremendous gorge, is the rope crossing, the sliding across the fierce Nu river on ropes strung from bank to bank, a daring and skilful means of crossing the roaring water that became an emblem of the gorge peoples. To ride the rope above the raging river, hooked to it by a wooden slider, was a feat of the everyday for the Nu, and a wonder to those who came from without.

Song and dance run through Nu tradition, in courtship, at weddings, at work, and at the festivals, and the people are known for their songs, above all the antiphonal songs of courtship, and, among the Christian Nu, for the singing of hymns that took up the old love of music. The rich oral lore of the Nu, their myths, their history, and their chants, is a treasure of their tradition.

The worship of the spirits and the mountains, with the rites of the ritual specialists, ran as a tradition through the older Nu world, and among the Christian Nu the church and its festivals became a great part of life. The dress of the women, with its beads and ornaments, and the customs of the courtship and the wedding, marked the people.

Around these run the customs of the year and of life, the rope crossing and the life of the gorge, the courtship carried on in song, the weddings and funerals with their proper rites, and the festivals of the old faith and the new. Through the rope crossing, the song, and the worship of the spirits and the mountains, the Nu mark their identity and the passages of life in ways carried down from their forebears in the deep canyon.

The Weavers, the Farmers, and the Makers of the Gorge

The crafts of the Nu are the crafts of a small people of the deep gorge, farmers and gatherers of the steep slopes. The clearing and terracing of the mountainside for the hardy crops, and the gathering of the rich produce of the forest, the plants, the game, and the honey, were the great skills of the Nu, wringing a living from a steep and difficult country.

The making and the use of the rope crossing was a craft peculiar to the gorge peoples, the ropes of bamboo or of hide strung across the fierce river and the wooden sliders by which the people rode across, a skill born of the need to cross the roaring water. The building of the simple houses of timber and bamboo on the steep slopes was likewise a craft of the gorge.

The women of the Nu wove and dyed cloth, and sewed and adorned the dress of the household with beads and ornaments, and a distinctive craft of some Nu was the weaving of a coarse but strong cloth from the fibre of hemp and other plants. The making of a woman’s dress was a labour of care and a measure of her skill.

The plaiting of bamboo into baskets and mats, the carving of the tools of daily life, and the working of the gifts of the forest rounded out the crafts of the Nu. The crafts of the people are those of the gorge farmer and gatherer, the skills of wringing life, shelter, and a way across the river from one of the steepest and most remote of homelands, the deep canyon of the Angry River.

Grain, the Forest, and the Table of the Gorge

The food of the Nu is the food of the deep gorge, built on the hardy crops that grow on the steep slopes, above all maize, buckwheat, and other hill grains, ground into meal and cooked as porridge, cakes, and flatbread, with beans, potatoes, and the vegetables of the mountain gardens. Rice, harder to grow on the steep and narrow land, was a lesser food than the hill grains.

To the grain is added the rich produce of the forest and the river, the game the Nu hunted, the wild plants, roots, and greens they gathered, the honey of the wild bees, and the fish of the streams, and the pigs and poultry of the household. The forest and the gorge gave the Nu a wealth of wild foods to add to the crops of their steep fields.

The Nu are known for a hearty and simple cooking suited to the gorge, fond of the wild and the gathered, and for the brewing of a grain wine drunk at their gatherings and offered to guests. The gathering and preserving of the gifts of the forest, the drying and smoking of meat, and the storing of grain helped the people through the seasons in their remote home.

Grain wine and other home-brewed liquors are the drink of hospitality and of ritual, poured for guests, shared at the festivals, and offered to the spirits and the ancestors. From the maize and buckwheat of the steep slopes to the game, the wild plants, and the honey of the forest, the food of the Nu is rooted in the fields and the forests of the deep canyon of the Angry River.

The New Year, the Rites, and the Feasts

The festivals of the Nu turn on the year and on the honouring of the spirits, the mountains, and the ancestors, and, among the Christian Nu, on the calendar of the church. The new year, kept in the gorge with the gathering of kin, the wearing of the best clothes, and the sharing of the good things of the table, is a great occasion of the year, drawing the scattered families of the slopes together.

Among some of the Nu a festival of the flowers or of the mountain gods is kept, with offerings to the spirits of the peaks and the gorge and prayers for the welfare of the people and the crop, and the rites of the ritual specialists, with their chants and offerings, mark the great occasions of the older faith. The reverence of the great mountains runs through these rites.

For the Christian Nu, the festivals of the church calendar, above all Christmas and the singing gatherings, have become great occasions, when the villages come together and the hymn singing, taking up the old love of song, fills the churches of the gorge. Thus among the Nu the old rites and the new feasts both draw the people together.

The passages of life, birth, marriage, and death, gather the kin for ceremony, the wedding marked by feasting and the antiphonal songs of the people. At all these occasions the dress and the beads, the songs and the hymns, and the grain wine bring colour and warmth, so that the Nu meet the great moments of life and the year with feast, song, and the honouring of the spirits and the ancestors.

From the Highlands to the People of Modern China

The Nu are held to be among the old inhabitants of the gorge of the Angry River, dwelling on its steep slopes from ancient times, before some of their present neighbours came into the canyon. Their forebears, Tibeto-Burman peoples of the marches, settled the gorge and lived there as farmers and gatherers, in a remoteness that kept them long apart from the wider world.

Through the long centuries the Nu lived in their gorge on the marches between the Tibetan, the Burmese, and the Chinese worlds, at times under the sway of the Tibetan lords or the native chiefs, but largely left to themselves in a country too rugged and remote for close rule. In later times the Lisu came into the gorge in growing numbers, settling among and around the Nu.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought the Christian missionaries, who reached even the remote gorge and won many of the Nu to the new faith, planting churches through the canyon. This conversion, as among the Lisu, made Christianity a firm part of Nu life in many communities, joined to the old worship of the spirits.

After the founding of the People’s Republic the Nu were recognised as one of the official nationalities of China, sharing with the Lisu, the Derung, and others the autonomous prefecture of the Nu river. The modern age has at last brought roads to the once almost inaccessible gorge, along with schools and the reach of the state, ending the isolation of centuries and drawing the Nu into the wider life of the country.

The Nu in Modern China

Today the Nu number around thirty thousand, one of the smaller of China’s peoples, living still chiefly in the deep gorge of the Nu river in the far northwest of Yunnan, above all in the counties of Gongshan and Fugong, in the autonomous prefecture they share with the Lisu and others. A small people of the gorge, they remain rooted in the steep slopes above the Angry River.

Modern life has come even to the deep gorge, for roads now thread the once nearly impassable canyon of the Nu, bringing schools, electricity, and the reach of the market, and bridges have largely replaced the old rope crossings, though a few are kept as marks of the old way. A growing trade in tourism draws visitors to the tremendous scenery of the first bend and the gorge.

The same forces bring change and strain, for the pull of the towns and standard Chinese schooling press upon the several Nu tongues, which, as the speech of small peoples of the gorge, are among the most fragile in all of China. Christianity is a firm part of life for many, joined in places to the older worship of the spirits and the mountains.

Through change the Nu carry their heritage with pride. The memory of the rope crossings, the songs and the hymns, the worship of the mountains and the ancestors, and the dress and customs of the gorge endure as marks of who they are. Small peoples of the deep canyon of the Angry River, among the old dwellers of the gorge, the Nu keep their customs and their memory alive in modern China.