Bai - History and Cultural Relations

According to Chinese historical material, when the Qin armies unified China in 221 B.C. they captured the southwestern kingdom of the Bo, taking the Bo as slaves. Starting in 182 B.C. Chinese migration into the Bo lands of the present-day Sichuan-Yunnan border area caused most of the Bo to move south into Yunnan. In Chinese records, during the third century A.D. the name "Sou" replaced the name "Bo." The Sou are said to have rebelled against the Chinese state of Shu, and the famous Chinese strategist Zhuge Liang was called in to mediate. At this time, the Sou-occupied area was the political, economic, and cultural center of the southwest. In later historical records, the name "Sou" also disappeared, to be replaced by "Cuan." After AD. 339 this group became the most powerful one in the region and developed what is now known as the Dian culture. In the eighth century the southern ( nan ) zhao ( zhaoji in Chinese means "to convene," "to summon a council") gathered the region's six other zhao to unify the Erhai District of Yunnan and establish the Nanzhao Kingdom. There is some historical debate over whether the leaders of the Nanzhao State were Bai or Yi people. In A.D. 902, weakened by continuing battles and slave rebellions, the kingdom collapsed. Following a briet period of chaos, in AD. 937 a Bai of Dali named Duan Siping united the Eastern Dian region's thirty-seven tribes and established the Dali Kingdom. For nearly 300 years the kingdom maintained close political and economic relations with the Chinese Song dynasty. In A.D. 1253 the Mongols invaded, bringing Muslim soldiers who settled in the region. The armies of the Chinese Ming dynasty (1368-1644) eliminated Mongol power in 1381, bringing many Chinese military settlers who eventually intermarried with the Bai. In 1874, a Hui Muslim named Du Wenxiu united the Bai, Naxi, Yi, Dai, Jingpo, and Chinese in a rebellion against the Qing dynasty. The rebellion was brutally suppressed eighteen years later. The construction of the Burma Road (1937—1938) brought missionaries and increased foreign trade to the region. In 1949 the Chinese Communist party defeated the Nationalists who had occupied the area, and in November 1956 it established the Dali Baizu Autonomous Region, which is part of the People's Republic of China.