Fugong County is located in the southwest border in Yunnan Province. It overs a total area of 2724.64 square kilometers and has a population of 99893. 123km north of Liuku, mainly populated by the Lisu tribe. There are rice terraces just outside the town centre on the slopes all along the river, easily accessible by walking. All along the trek up the slopes, the view extended to the Gaoligong Mountains with snow crowned peaks soaring over 4000m. Multiple minorities promote the colorful and long-standing history of Fugong county.

The History of Lisu People

Fugong county is inhabited by minorities of Lisu, Nu, Pumi, Dulong, Bai, Tibetan, Yi, Naxi, Dai, Hui, Jingpo, Lisu as dominant ethnic group, the minority of the total population of 92%, resulting in a large inhabited by ethnic minorities. The Lisu have a long history of being oppressed by greedy landlords and governments. The Lisu revolt of 1801-03 proved devastating. The Qing government mobilized a huge army of more than 10,000 soldiers from three provinces. Chinese writers criticized this campaign as "using a cattle knife to kill chickens." During the 1940s the Lisu had to pay 65 different types of taxes and levies - including one for each airplane flying over their region! This provocation resulted in thousands of Lisu seeking life in a new country. Missionary Lilian Hamer described one scene as the Lisu she had sought to reach left en masse: "I saw little children clinging to their mother's skirts, older folk carrying iron cooking pots, blankets, oil lamps. I stood outside my door and watched this wholesale evacuation of the people I had served and loved, mourned and wept over."

The Southern Silk Road History

The Southern Silk Road was mainly composed of West Route (Maoniu Route) and East Route (Wuchi Route). The West Route originated from Chengdu, wandered through Sichuan Province via Ya'an City, Maoniu (Hanyuan), Qiongdu (Xichang), and took traders to Myanmar (Burma) by way of Dali, Baoshan and Tengchong. Then its ancient trade route extended through to Juandu (India), Bangladesh and even Middle East. The East Route was very narrow and had only five-feet wide, so it was also called 'Wuchi Route'. It began from Chengdu, passed through Yibin, Zhaotong, Qujing and reached Kunming, where one branched road went to Vietnam and the other one wound to Dali, joining the West Route. Traders found steep and high mountains in the southwest region of China extremely challenging to negotiate. In order to overcome difficulties, clever ancient people built characteristic bridges and plank roads along cliffs by perforating holes on mountains. Even now people can found the holes left on the sheer cliffs.