Xishuangbanna
In the southwest of China and at
the southern most tip of Yunnan Province, there is a picturesque,
fertile and mysterious land - Xishuangbanan. In the Dai
language, "xishuang" is "twelve" and
"banna" is "one thousand pieces of land",
thus "Xishuangbanna" can be directly translated
into "twelve thousand pieces of land". As a matter
of fact, it refers to the twelve regions that are under
its administration. With Myanmar to the southwest and Laos
to the southeast, Xishuangbanna has a boundary line of 1,069
kilometers.
Covering an area of 19,700 square
kilometers, Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture is composed
of one municipality and two counties. The highest point
in the region is 2,429 meters above sea level whereas the
lowest is only 477 meters.Dominated by a tropical rainforest
climate, the average temperature of Xishuangbanna is 21°C.
The capital of Xishuangbanna Prefecture
is "Jinghong", which means "the City of Dawn"
in the Dai language. It is 692 km from Kunming. There are
more than ten nationalities including the Dais, the Hanis,
the Jinuos and the Bulangs, etc in its land. There live over
5,000 species of plants and hundreds kinds of rare and valuable
birds and animals in its 20,000 square kilometers tropical
virgin forest, thus Xishuangbanna is noted as "the Kingdom
of Plants and Animals" and "An Emerald on the Tropic
of Cancer".
The Dai people is good at singing
and dancing and believes in the Buddism, the Buddism temples
are scattering over every village.The village of the Dais
mostly builds by the water, circling with bamboo fence and
covering with the fruit trees, so as to set up the independent
courtyard one by one. The Water-Splashing Festival, namely
the New Year's Day by the Dai calendar will be celebrated
every year in the 6 th month of Dai calendar(on April 13
- 15 by the solar calendar). The rich and colorful activities
attract numerous tourists from home and abroad.
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