Time and fate can rob a people of their possessions, but not their souls. Before merchants became kings, the Yi of southwest
China were anything but a coddled minority. Fierce and proud, they knew nothing of the petty strategems by which modern nations increase their status.
The Sani, a subgroup of the Yi, led lives as colorful as their clothing, treasuring song and dance above gold and silver. Thus, they have little to show by way of written history. But they do have the legend of Ashima, an inspiration to independent women everywhere, as well as those who know that wealth and power is never worth the price of love and freedom.
Ashima’s birth brought abundance to the humble farm of her parents, who had performed a costly sacred ritual for her, as years of seeding in both the earth and Ashima’s mother had failed to bring forth fruit.
But Ashima was worth the expense, and the wait. Even her infant cries were melodious, although she laughed much more often than she wept, and at seven years old could tend the large hearth that is the heart of the Sani home. Moreover, so close to nature’s bosom did she keep that the speech of animals was manifest to her, which drew worship rather than cuckoo signs from her deeply animistic neighbors.
To top it off, Ashima’s beauty defied the attempts of the most talented bards to do it justice, although they sung of it far and wide, even down in the valley below the mountains where Ashima and her folk abided.
At last Azhi, the spoiled scion of the valley’s richest family, heard her praises sung, heard of the face that glowed like the moon, and the feet that were whiter than turnips. Who could resist such charms? He dispatched a go-between to press Ashima’s family for her hand.
Ashima and her family listened to the go-between’s inventory of Azhi’s earthly goods, the fatted beeves, the golden grain, the door hinges made of silver. When the question of her bride price at last was broached, Ashima piped up before her parents could respond, uncharacteristic of one so filial.
A girl is not to be taken
As an animal to barter;
A girl is not just so much grain
To sell for monetary gain.
The go-between prevailed upon the family to reconsider, hinting of dire consequences should Azhi be refused. But this only confirmed Ashima’s scorn for rich suitors who would claim a wife by proxy, and the go-between was sent packing. Indeed Azhi was as unworthy of Ashima as she had feared, and upon learning of his failed suit sent a band of spear-wielding thugs to force the matter.
Summarily refused, the thugs kidnapped Ashima. Bitter and unceasing were the wailing lamentations of her mother and all the villagers, who loved her as an angel fallen to earth. In other cultures, this would be the point at which her true love, poor but noble, would have seized the chance to play the hero. Instead, it was her brother Ahei who pursued his sister’s kidnappers, perhaps a tribute to the chastity of Sani women. After all, Ashima was but fifteen years old.
Ahei did not catch up with his quarry until they had delivered her to Azhi’s opulent estate. Whereas villains in other cultures’ legends might have dealt with Ahei through further chicanery, the Sani abhor the stench of subterfuge. There was nothing for it but that Ahei and Azhi vie with one another in the manly arts, which in the case of the Sani, involved tree chopping, grass burning, and archery. One might predict, and correctly at that, Ahei’s victory over Azhi, which culminated in the former firing an arrow so deeply into Azhi’s family shrine that the latter could not pull it out.
Unmanned, Azhi released his reluctant bride, who sang mockingly, as she rode away behind her brother,
Your front hall, however awesome,
I do not admire at all;
However vast your herds of sheep,
Strong your oxen, as made of stone,
Who cares? Keep them; they’re all your own.
You have plenty of grain to mill,
The reserves stacked high as a hill;
The impression on me is nil!”
What a woman, to spurn a life of luxury and ease, so that she might return to tend her parents’ humble hearth! But not lightly could Azhi cast off his humiliation, and he vowed that if Ashima and her turnip-white tootsies could not be his, they could not be anybody’s.
He arranged for a trio of starved man-eating tigers to be unleashed upon Ahei and his rescued sister, as they journeyed up the forest path to their mountain home. Of course, Azhi had not reckoned on Ashima’s extra-natural powers, and would no doubt have stared in astonishment, as did his hired malefactors, when they saw her speak to the tigers and sing them to sleep before they could bare a fang.
Dirty deeds are even more unseemly in the otherwise honorable. Thus there can be little doubt that Ahei’s subsequent actions did much to precipitate Ashima’s tragic end. Tigers are totemic to the Nasi, yet Ahei slew them as they lay sleeping. That night, Ashima sought repose at the base of a cliff in a narrow canyon. Alas, such was her beauty that it could awaken lust in stone, and the cliff held her fast.
Nature’s own Ashima at once divined the source of her predicament, and knew that only a sacrifice might appease the stony desire of the spirit who dwelt in the cliff. She sent Ahei to fetch a pigeon, a sheep, and a pig, with the proviso that they all be white. The first two were easily found, but try as he might, Ahei could not avail himself of an albino porker.
Perhaps desperation led him to his second subterfuge. Regardless, it did his sister in. Snatching a black pig, and daubing it with white clay, he made his way back to the cliff that still held his sister fast, and slaughtered the animals by Sani rite.
But spirits are far less easily fooled than mortals. The cliff drew in passing rain clouds, which unburdened themselves on all below, the clay soon dripping off to reveal Ahei’s trick.
Ashima knew she was done for, more by deceit than by the cliff’s lust or the rising waters. Still, she had the courage to call out to her disconsolate brother, who at last slogged away lest he too be drowned,
Ah dear elder brother Ahei,
when you miss me and long for me,
stand on the hill-top near a tree,
and call me – just give a loud shout;
your sister Ashima
will answer you from the canyon.
A loud shout from brother
will bring a prompt answering call.
Those who disbelieve this tale have double reason to visit Kunming’s fabled stone forest, for there can be found not only the most amazing sedimentary formations on earth, but also the rock where Ashima met her doom. Her song can still be heard, borne on the wind, by those who know, like the Sani, the worth of a woman. Especially such a woman as Ashima, whose name literally means “more precious than gold”.
