The steep country between the Ailao mountains, the Red River (the Yuan river) and the Lancang is the later home of the Hani, who farm terraced rice (English Wikipedia dates the terraces to the Nanzhao age, about 1,300 years back), with Yi and Dai in the valleys.
Each village has its headman and its ritual specialists, and no larger authority is shown. Dali's list puts a Yinyuan bu at Yuanjiang on the Red River and a Xiushan jun at Tonghai above it, and the hills beyond are free. The ethnic names are modern groupings; the Tang Manshu and the Yuan texts use other names (Wuman, Baiman, Pu, Wang, Moxie, Mang) and the match is the scholars', not proved for 1200.
The sources for these hills are Tang and Yuan notices, Chinese Wikipedia pages on the counties and ethnography of much later centuries; none is dated to 1199 or 1200.
Who holds it
- Title
- Village headmen and ritual specialists
- Since
- not pinned
- Born
- not known
- Family
- village headmen and ritual specialists
- Confidence
- low
No source we read describes their meetings or customs for 1200; later ethnography speaks of village headmen and priests, and we do not carry it back.
Overlord
Dali claims the Red River by title through Xiushan and Zuining; nothing is shown that it collects.
How things stand that morning
Self-governing villages; the Red River towns above them are Dali's by title.
What the year holds
What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.
- 1270sThe Yuan make routes and offices on the Red River and over the Hani hills (recalled, NOT re-read).Depends on: The Mongol conquest of Dali (1253 to 1254). Stopped by: No Mongol attack on Dali.
Where the sources disagree
- Map ruling (sheet builder, pass 1): the Hani hills round Honghe are drawn as self-governing peoples, as this record says. The Vietnam researcher anchors Honghe as Dali; the Yunnan researcher owns this ground and stands.
Evidence: General statements and the geography only.
On the map: Drawn from the modern counties where these peoples live; the real range of 1200 had no line and is not known.
Sources and studies
- Wikipedia, Hani people (read this session; no medieval content)
- Chinese Wikipedia, 大理国 (read this session: the eight fu, four jun, four zhen and thirty-seven bu; it cites Yang Shen's Dian zai ji, Wang Song's Yunnan beizhengzhi, Ni Lu's Nanzhao yeshi, the Baigu tongji qianshu)
- OMNIA board, notes_msy.txt and places_msy.tsv (a lead, not a source)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.