Dali

The plain between Cangshan and Erhai has been settled for millennia, and by the eighth century it held a cluster of small states known as the six zhao. One of them, Nanzhao, unified the others around 738 with Tang support and then turned against its patron, defeating Tang armies sent against it and expanding into what is now Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Its capital, Taihe, lay just south of the present old town; the Nanzhao Dehua Stele, raised there in 766, still records the quarrel with the Tang court. Buddhism arrived early and deeply, and the Three Pagodas were begun in this period.

Nanzhao fell in 902 and was succeeded in 937 by the Kingdom of Dali, founded by Duan Siping, which ruled the region for three centuries as a Buddhist state and traded along the caravan roads between Sichuan, Tibet and Burma. In 1253 Kublai Khan's armies crossed the Jinsha and took Dali, bringing the area into the Mongol Yuan empire and, for the first time, under a government based in the Chinese heartland. Yunnan became a province, and Han settlers arrived in numbers under the Ming, who laid out the present walled town in the late fourteenth century.

Dali's later history was violent. The Panthay Rebellion of Muslim Hui and other peoples, led from Dali by Du Wenxiu between 1856 and 1873, ended in the town's capture and heavy loss of life. The modern city grew around Xiaguan, and the old town's revival began in the 1980s, when it became one of the first places in inland China where independent foreign travellers gathered.

Dali is the seat of the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, and Bai culture is the town's defining feature. The Bai are one of China's larger minority peoples, long settled around Erhai, with their own language, a tradition of building in whitewashed courtyard houses decorated with ink paintings and carved timber, and a religion that mixes Buddhism with the worship of benzhu, local tutelary gods housed in village temples. Indigo tie-dye from Zhoucheng, marble worked from the Cangshan quarries — Chinese takes its word for marble, dali shi, from the town — and silver work are the crafts most associated with the area.

The festival calendar is busy. The Third Month Fair, held on the mountain slopes in spring, combines a trading market with horse racing and performance and is described in sources going back centuries. Raosanling sends villagers on a three-day circuit of temples around the plain, and the Torch Festival in summer is shared with the Yi. Bai singing, often in call and response between men and women, and dragon and lion dances accompany them.

The old town has a second, newer identity as a centre of alternative Chinese life: since the 1990s it has drawn musicians, artists, writers and people leaving the big coastal cities, and Renmin Road's bars, bookshops and small galleries owe more to them than to tourism. Bai residents, Han incomers and travellers share the same streets, not always easily.

The prefecture around it holds about 3.3 million people, and Dali City, which takes in both the old town and Xiaguan, a small share of that. Bai people make up the largest single group in the city, alongside Han, Hui and Yi communities. Most residents live and work in Xiaguan, a plain grid of blocks, markets and offices at the lake's southern outlet that few visitors see.

The economy rests on tourism, farming and processing. The plain grows rice, garlic, vegetables and flowers; the lake supported a fishing industry that has been heavily restricted to protect water quality; and marble, cigarettes and building materials are made around Xiaguan. Tourism now shapes the old town almost entirely, with guesthouses, cafés and craft shops occupying buildings that were homes a generation ago, and rents have pushed many families out to the villages.

The health of Erhai is the central local issue. Algal blooms in the 1990s and again in the 2010s led to sweeping controls: lakeside guesthouses were closed or demolished, sewage systems rebuilt, and fertiliser use on the plain limited. Days begin early with markets and tai chi by the water, slow through the afternoon in tea houses and courtyards, and end with evening crowds on Renmin Road. Wind off the lake, known locally as one of Dali's four famous sights alongside flowers, snow and moonlight, is a constant of daily life.

Bai cooking is the reason to eat here, and it is unlike the rest of Yunnan. Dairy is central, which is rare in China: rubing, a firm fresh goat's cheese, is sliced and fried or grilled and sprinkled with salt or sugar, while rushan — milk fans — are thin sheets of cow's milk curd stretched onto bamboo sticks to dry, then toasted until they bubble and eaten with rose jam. Both come from the plain's small dairy herds and appear on almost every local menu.

Fish from Erhai has long been the other staple. Suanla yu, a sour and spicy fish stew seasoned with pickled vegetables and dried chilli, is the best-known dish, and the Bai also cook fish in clay pots and cure it for winter. Rice noodles, mixian, are the standard breakfast, served in broth with minced pork or with a plate of raw ingredients to add. Sandwiched in among them are salted pork, cured ham from the higher country, and the wild mushrooms that flood Yunnan's markets after the summer rains.

The town's street food centres on Xizhou baba, a flat wheat pastry baked between layers of charcoal and sold hot in sweet and savoury versions, and on grilled skewers and fried snacks along the old town's lanes. Three-course tea, santao cha, is served to guests and at performances: a bitter first cup, a sweet second with walnut and rushan, and a third spiced with ginger, cinnamon and Sichuan pepper, meant as a lesson about life. Local beers and fruit wines round out the table.