The Warlord Era

While some of the more accessible of the remote parts of Yunnan, Lijiang for example, were run by court-appointed Chinese administrators,most were governed, almost as private fiefs, by the tusis. Many of the tusi were Han or else belonged to minorities other than the leading one in the district. Tusis usually saw themselves, especially the hereditary ones (some were lifetime appointments but not hereditary), as nobility vis-a-vis the tribes in their charge. The latter suffered as much oppression fmm them as they did from the Han. In many areas, where the tusi was of a different ethnic group than most of the district's people, the people largely ignored him, in Ninglang County, for example, the Mosuo tusi had no control at all over the Yi in the mountains, who indulged in clan feuds according to their own laws and periodically raided the valleys with impunity. On the other hand, the tusis of Gengma, Mengding, Luxi and Zhefang were Dai princes backed by large Dai populations,with standing armies and enough local prestige to resist Sinification and get away with paying lip service obeisance.

Yunnan's distance from a court in the final throes of terminal illness enabled not only isolated transmontane tribal potentates to ignore emperor's writ. The province's Chinese saw themselves as somewhat separate fmm the rest of China. Even before the dynasty fell in 1911 Yunnan was already in the Warlord Era. Native governors ran the province as they pleased, accountable neither to the Qing court nor to the Republic which succeeded it. As a result, much of Yunnan's farm land was given over to opium production. Yet the warlords did keep a kind of order in the province, if only to protect their illicit trade.

Long Yun

During the Civil War years, Yunnan, under its warlord governor Long Yun, mostly steered clear of both sides. Two Red Army contingents passed through on the Long March, 1935-36, The first, under Mao Zedong and Zhu De, made a feint on Kunming, then swerved through the northeast, crossing into Daliangshan in Sichuan. The second, under He Long and Xiao Ke, marched west across the central plateau, turned up to Lijiang and crossed the Jinshajiang at Shigu. It camped for the winter in Zhongdian before heading north to join the other Red forces at Yanan. While landlords and other Communist targets hid in the cities, the Communists won friends among the common people. Han and non-Han, by paying fair prices for goods and services, a practice so unlike that of any other armed force passing through, in particular the rival Nationalists. Long Yun did his diplomatic best to keep both armies out of Yunnan.