The Bai people of China: Dali, tie-dye and three-course tea

Who the Bai are and where they live

The 2020 census counted 2,091,543 Bai, which makes them the 13th-largest of China’s ethnic minorities. Their Chinese name, 白族, means ‘white people’, and the Bai word for ‘white’ appears in their own names for themselves, such as Baipzix, reflecting a strong Bai liking for the colour.

Most Bai live in the Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture (大理白族自治州) in northwest Yunnan, around Erhai Lake and the Cangshan range. Smaller communities live elsewhere in Yunnan, including Lijiang, Kunming, Chuxiong, Baoshan and Lincang, and outside the province in the Bijie area of Guizhou and Sangzhi county in Hunan.

Dali has a long history as a capital. Dali Old Town, on the plain between the Cang mountains and Erhai Lake, was the capital of the Nanzhao kingdom (779–902) and the Kingdom of Dali (937–1253); the plain has traditionally been home to Bai and Yi people.[1][2][3][10]

The Bai language

Bai is a language of the Sino-Tibetan family, but where exactly it sits is still debated. It has been described as a sister language of Chinese, as a separate branch of the family, and in other ways. On the surface its vocabulary and grammar are close to Chinese, while it also shares words with the Lolo-Burmese languages.

At festivals such as Raosanling you will hear Bai tunes (白族调), folk songs sung in the Bai language.[3][7]

Tie-dye, three-course tea and Bai houses

Bai tie-dye (白族扎染, Báizú zārǎn) is the craft most visitors take home. White cotton, or cotton-linen, cloth is drawn on and tightly tied, then dyed with indigo from a local plant, steamed, dried and untied to reveal the pattern. The patterns are small natural motifs spread evenly over the cloth, and more than a thousand designs have built up over time. Zhoucheng, 23 km north of Dali Old Town and the largest Bai village in Dali with about 1,500 households, is the centre of the craft. Bai tie-dye was on China’s first national intangible cultural heritage list in 2006.

Three-course tea (三道茶, sān dào chá) is a Bai tea ritual, most common around Dali and served at festivals and weddings. The first cup is bitter: Cangshan green tea roasted over charcoal in a small pot, which crackles when the boiling water goes in. The second is sweet, with thin slices of walnut and brown sugar. The third, the aftertaste cup, is made with honey, a little Sichuan pepper and cinnamon. Together they are said to stand for the bitterness, sweetness and reflection of a life. The custom traces back to the Nanzhao period, and it joined the national heritage list in 2014.

Bai courtyard houses have whitewashed walls and grey tiles, carvings and painted tiles of flowers and animals. A classic layout is ‘three houses and a screen wall’ (三坊一照壁): buildings on three sides of a courtyard and a large white wall on the fourth that reflects light into the house. Xizhou, a mostly Bai town about 20 km north of Dali Old Town between Erhai Lake and the Cangshan mountains, has hundreds of these courtyard homes; the Yan family compound on the town square is now a museum of local history and Bai architecture.[3][4][6][8][9]