Is Mengjinglai Scenic Area worth visiting? Is Meng Jing having fun?

Mengjinglai Scenic Area is located in Xishuangbanna, China-Myanmar border area. It has a very unique cultural heritage and imprint. Everyone will feel a different cultural shock and shake your heart. In such a beautiful and quiet place, let your mind get peace. Here are some detailed strategies to share with you.

The name of this stockade is Meng Jinglai. Meng means village, and Jinglai means dragon shadow. It is said that Zhao Shutun, the son of heaven, came here to catch up with a Jin Lu. Later, people found that the shadow of a dragon could be seen vaguely here, thinking that the son of heaven would come again, so everyone waited here, but after waiting for a long time, the son of heaven was not seen, so they simply built a village here and named it "Mengjinglai". Meng Jinglai is only 5 kilometers away from Rhoda Port in China and Myanmar. A Rhoda River lets Meng Jinglai face Myanmar across the river. The border people of the two countries * * * drink a river and catch fish in the same river, forming a unique frontier customs of you and me.

The morning in the village is quiet and peaceful.

The largest Tallinn in Xishuangbanna

Tallinn at the entrance of Mengjinglai Village is the largest Tallinn in Xishuangbanna. In A.D. 1802, the Dai king built10/0 stupas of different sizes in recognition of 102 monks. The remaining 58 pagodas were later restored. Today, Buddhists from neighboring countries still come here to hold religious activities, and the local Dai people hold a "tower pendulum" here every year-the Buddha sits on it and drips water, while the believers listen to the scriptures and worship the Buddha, praying for the safety and happiness of their families. It is said that at most, 30 thousand Hinayana Buddhists gathered here to worship. The glittering towers are like bamboo shoots, so the Dai people also call them bamboo shoot towers. There are many small bells at the top of the tower. In the breeze, they sent the Sanskrit in the sky to the Dai family, wishing them luck and happiness.

Beautiful Tallinn

Next to Tallinn, there is a bodhi tree with a history of more than 2,000 years, which is regarded as a holy tree by local people. Legend has it that it was planted by Sakyamuni's disciples. Every major festival, Dai villagers will come to worship this sacred tree. Alocasia alopecuroides and Dioscorea zingiberensis, the flower of Buddhism, are planted under the sacred tree.

The sacred tree next to Tallinn tells an ancient and magical story.

In addition to this sacred tree, there is a tall ancient banyan tree in front of the Dai building where I live. Is it tall and lush? It looks like a triumphant welcome tree, so it is named "Welcome Tree". But I think the most appropriate place to call it "Welcome Tree" is that it is the only way to enter the stockade, and there is a fork in the road from this tree, so all the guests will see this tree, so it is certainly appropriate to call it Welcome Tree.

The huge welcome tree is also a playground for children.

Read all the Dai traditional crafts at once

As mentioned above, as a tourist destination, one of the main contents of Mengjinglai is to feel and appreciate the traditional crafts of the Dai people. As tourists, the first craft we saw after entering the village was squeezing sugar. Banna is rich in sugarcane, so squeezing sugar has become an ancient craft with a long history.

The sugar press used by Dai families is made of wood. At first glance, you would think it was a well-drilling device (when I posted the picture of the sugar press on WeChat, no one could guess what it was). If you look closely, you will find two big wooden gears under the wooden shelf. The clever Dai family used gears to make two wooden stakes rotate together and put sugar cane in the middle. With the rotation of the stake, sugar cane was planted. Boil the dried fruit juice in a pot, add lime solution to remove sugar bubbles, then air the syrup on the straw mat and slice it, and the most original brown sugar is born.

This ancient juicer

In Mengjinglai, many villagers will set up a small table in front of their homes to sell food and souvenirs to tourists, among which brown sugar is the most, with a pack of three big pieces 10 yuan and a pack of five big pieces 15 yuan. After returning to Beijing, the surrounding "foodies" praised this kind of sugar, saying that it takes 38 kilograms of sugarcane to squeeze out one kilogram of sugar, so this kind of sugar is really not expensive. It's not expensive, but it's heavy. People with little strength should think twice about buying sugar.

Dai papermaking has become a national intangible cultural heritage.

In addition to squeezing sugar, in Mengjinglai, you can also see traditional handicrafts such as cloth dyeing, bamboo weaving, pottery making, wine making, ironing, paper making and brocade. Here, I would like to give a special introduction to Dai papermaking, which has been listed as a national intangible cultural heritage.

The blacksmith's shop in the stockade

I have visited similar hand-made paper in Hotan, Xinjiang before. Hotan used mulberry bark to make paper, Banna used mulberry bark to make paper, and _ trees were planted at the door of the paper workshop. Before making paper, the bark of _ tree is stripped, the epidermis is scraped, mashed into velvet, boiled into pulp, poured into a pool, and repeatedly corrugated in the pool with gauze, so that the fibers are evenly spread on the net, dried and torn off, and it becomes a paper with strong toughness. Locals use this paper to make oil-paper umbrellas and lanterns at the Water-splashing Festival. This kind of paper will not fade after being used for a hundred years, nor will it be eaten by insects. The most rare thing is that it is not afraid of water. It is said that when restoring a Buddhist temple, people found a scripture written with this paper a hundred years ago, and the handwriting was as clear as ever.

The craftsman demonstrated the process of making paper.

If you think that the current Dai handmade paper making is a "tourism performance" project, it is wrong. Not far from Mengjinglai, there is a village called Zhaoman Village. Every family in this village makes paper, which has been ordered by merchants for a long time and is in short supply. The reason is that the housing conditions of urban people have improved, and the demand for various decorative handicrafts has increased greatly, and this kind of handmade paper is an excellent material for decorative handicrafts.

Papermaking in Zhaoman Village has become an industry.

The production process of Dai brocade shows a beautiful craft. Its pattern design is created by skilled skills, and the traditional patterns are mostly triangles and circles. In the process of textile, as long as one of the hundreds of thin threads makes a mistake, the whole pattern will be disordered, so the textile of Dai brocade is also wonderful. In Mengjinglai, there are several Dai buildings with Dai tapestries hanging in front, most of which are shawls, and the price is about 100 yuan. However, it should be reminded that those simple patterns are hand-woven Dai brocade, and those shawls with complex and gorgeous patterns are mostly woven.

Praying with lanterns is a favorite activity for tourists.

If we can catch up with the Buddhist activities in Meng Jing, we will be very lucky, and we can see how the real monks give alms. They line up to receive food from the villagers (yes, only food, no money), and then each monk pours the food into a container and shares it when he goes back, which is very fair.

Monks who receive alms from villagers.