The beauty of Lugu Lake lies in its structure. Ringed by great mountains, on its jade-platter surface float 7 crystal-clear small islands, like pearls dropped on a dish of jade — a beauty wrought as if by heaven itself. Faced with this scene, a poet once said that the beauty of Lugu Lake is hard to put into words; standing before it, anyone with any camera, simply pressing the shutter, will come away with a photograph good enough for a national salon.
Two Famous Islands: Liwubi and Xieva E
When you arrive at Lugu Lake, accompanied by the clear, lovely singing of Mosuo (摩梭) girls, take your seat in a pig-trough boat (猪槽船) and head first for those two famous islands.
One is Liwubi Island (里务比岛), a fine place for pilgrimage and burning incense. On the island there is a lama temple (喇嘛庙); you may light butter lamps and burn incense, for yourself or for everything there. Liwubi Island is the centre of religious activity at Lugu Lake; every year at the Tibetan-calendar festivals, believers from the surroundings cross by boat to the island to pray for blessings.
Then, in a small skiff afloat on that piece of jade, row on towards Xieva E Island (谢瓦俄岛). This is the place where the chief administrator A Yunshan (阿云山) once received distinguished guests such as Joseph Rock (约瑟夫·洛克) and Li Lincan (李霖灿). A Yunshan was the chief administrator of the Yongning tusi (chieftain) office in the Republican era and the most influential figure in the Lugu Lake region at the time; he built a villa and a prayer hall on Xieva E Island and received scholars such as Rock and Li Lincan, which made the island the cultural centre of Lugu Lake in that age.
But everything of that time has been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. Today, the somewhat ostentatious, gilded buildings on the island were only put up in 2001, supposedly also for tourists to visit. Once the culture has gone off its true flavour, it is a little like a newly rich peasant putting on aristocratic dress — you can never quite believe it is the real thing.
The Pig-Trough Boat: From Dugout Canoe to Boat of Love
Lugu Lake's boats are called pig-trough boats; in the Mosuo language they are "rigu" (日古). The earliest pig-trough boat was a thick log hollowed out, its two ends sharpened — shaped like a long pig trough, whence the name. Sitting inside this primitive dugout, the mind wanders without end: you feel suddenly in that remote, ancient age when "wood was hollowed into a boat to cross what could not be crossed", and you think of the Han-dynasty myth of Zhang Qian (张骞) riding a raft to the source of the Yellow River.
The first written record of the "pig-trough boat" is in the Yan Yuan County Gazetteer of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty: "The Yi people hollow a great tree and, with birch bark to help, cross the water; they call it the 'pig-trough boat'." Today the pig-trough boat is no longer a single log; most are larger craft built from planks, to carry sightseers over the lake scenery. Besides serving as a transport for carrying pigweed and firewood, it has also become the boat of love for couples drifting on the lake — under clear breezes and bright moonlight, lovers pass their feelings through song, pouring out their love; the boat drifts on the water, the people grow tipsy in the light skiff.
The Origin of the Pig-Trough Boat: A Mother's Legend
Why is the pig-trough boat so named? The Mosuo people have an ancient legend.
It is said that in the distant ages there was no lake here, only a village, where people worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, living in peace and contentment. In the village there was an orphan, and he was mute; he made his living herding sheep for others, every day driving the sheep entrusted to him by the various households up Mount Gemu. One day, as he herded on the mountain and ran to and fro after the flock, he grew tired and fell asleep beneath a great tree. He dreamed of a large fish speaking, which said: "Kind child, how pitiful you are. From now on you need not toil so; just cut the flesh from my body and eat — a small child like you cannot eat much."
When the boy woke, he searched the mountainside far and wide, and at last in a cave he found a great fish. He cut off a slice of flesh, cooked it and ate it — the fish was delicious. The next day he went again, and where he had cut the day before, the flesh had grown back. So it went, winter turning to spring, and the little shepherd grew fair, plump and rosy.
But a greedy man in the village learned of this. He wanted to make the great fish his own, so he gathered some strong men of the village, led nine fierce oxen to the cave mouth, roped the fish, and had the nine oxen drag it out with all their strength. Even as the fish was dragged from the cave, disaster struck — from that cave burst a flood, rolling sky-high, submerging the forest and scouring the hillsides, and in an instant the village was about to be drowned.
At that moment a mother was feeding her pigs, with two small children playing beside her. Seeing the flood bearing down on them, she acted on a flash of wit: she placed her two children inside the pig trough, and herself perished beneath the water. The two children sat in the pig trough and drifted with the current, escaping the disaster. And so the pig-trough boat was born. To remember that great mother, people still use the pig-trough boat to this day — and Lugu Lake is therefore called the Mother Lake.
A Plain Metaphor
Through this simple, plain story, it is not hard to see the Mosuo understanding of nature and of humanity. First, human beings, facing nature, always want to be the winners — and again and again they are beaten back. Second, why was the shepherd boy a mute? Only he was the one who truly understood: each day he cut only the slice of flesh he needed, and took not the whole, so that nature could fully recover and he was satisfied — this is taking in moderation. But when those strong men and fierce oxen appeared, he was robbed of speech; he could not persuade them.
Between people, and between people and nature, there is indeed a need for some sincere exchange and dialogue. Otherwise, with earthquakes, floods and sandstorms on one side, and felling, enclosing the lake and hunting on the other, who the final winner is is perfectly obvious.
Related reading: Goddess Gemu and the Mountain Worshipping Festival: Lugu Lake's Valentine's Day · Rock and Lugu Lake: how a botanist introduced the "Kingdom of Women" to the world