Blessed in Lijiang

Last week I got an opportunity to visit ancient city of Lijiang situated in Yunnan province of China.  This ancient city has channels brought from Black Dragon Lake which supplies water to city dewallers.  Along the two side of channel there are stone paved roads and they are joined with stone bridges.   The city is more than thousand years old and it was built by Naxi community.  Naxi believes that their gods lives in their houses and hence they do not demolish the house they made.  Therefore, they have the ancient city still alive with them and people look it as a world heritage site.

Naxi community follows their traditional religion and their religious leader is called “Dongba”.  Dongba is highly respected in the region and he provide blessing to Naxi people.  Dongba is hereditary practice and Dongba follows his own culture and religion called “Dongba”.  They also have ancient pictorial Dongba script which is only living pictorial script.  They have been writing in this script for more than thousand years in a special handmade paper which can lasts for more than thousand years.  During my visit I also got blessing from Dongba in pictorial script which is going to last for thousand years.

Lijiang city

Water channel by night

Black Dragon Lake, from where water channels of Lijiang are irrigated.

Age old irrigating technology, now, works as a backdorp for tourist to take photographs.

Dongba “religious leader” of Naxi people, writing in Dongba script at Dongba Cultural Academy.

See! Dongba is blessing me.

Naxi youth showing their traditional dance.

We also showed our traditional dance “Sakela”.  Sakela is performed twice a year – during raising and falling seasons (planting and harvesting), worshipping the land for good harvest.

Behind us, there is a Yangi river (longest river of China) taking 360 degree turn. That’s why it is called “first bend of Asia”.

Naxi women of Sigu village (situated at about 53 km north of Lijiang city) performing traditional dance which explains the art of bamboo hat making.

Group picture time!

How can I forget leader Mao in his land?

We were lucky to get blessing in Dongba script before we leave Lijiang.  This blessing says “God bless your family with love, happiness and prosperity” and this writing is going to last for thousand years.

Note: My special thanks goes to Mr. Colin Nicholas, Mr. Martanis Mail and Mr. Yassin Miki for providing beautiful pictures.