Dongjing Music and Local Interaction in Republican Lijiang

Abstract Communications in mountainous areas of early-twentieth-century Yunnan were poor, and journeys were arduous. Individual Dongjing association members from several different counties have told me of fortuitous encounters with local Dongjing groups while on business trips to other areas, and there were one or two instances of intercounty transmission of the Dongjing tradition during the Republican era;1 but these were the exception rather than the rule. Certainly Lijiang’s Dongjing music appears to have been a repertoire of almost entirely local renown and significance, and to have had little impact outside restricted areas of its home county—mainly the Lijiang basin and the banks of the Jinsha River.